by Sharon Sala
He laughed, which only made her madder.
“You don’t fight fair,” she muttered.
His laughter ended. “And neither will your enemy. If you don’t learn this well enough and soon enough, you and your people will die.”
It wasn’t the first time he’d referred to a cataclysmic event, but it was the last time she wanted to hear about it without an explanation.
“You’ve said that before,” she snapped. “Explain yourself or stop talking about it.”
His eyes narrowed. There was strength in her words, as well as her actions.
“In a very short time what you call a meteor will fall from the sky and it will hit earth and destroy it forever.”
The bread in Layla’s hand fell from her fingers into her lap as she stared at his mouth, watching the way his lips formed the words that were ending her world. Later, she would remember thinking how could such a dire and horrifying warning come from a beautiful mouth?
“Before it happens, water will foul. The electrical power that runs your country will end. Food will become a most valuable commodity, and man will turn against his brother for water. For a while, the predators will rise to the top of the food chain while man, who once held that place, will become helpless to protect themselves.”
Layla didn’t know she was crying until he reached out and wiped a tear from her face.
“Death is always a sadness,” he said softly. “Even the death of a dream.”
Then he leaned forward, cupped the back of her head with his hand and pulled her to him.
She knew he was going to kiss her and she welcomed it, but was not prepared for the impact of his mouth upon hers. The moment they touched, she not only felt the pressure of his lips, but smelled the sweat on his skin and the sexual urge thundering through him.
She moaned.
Moments later he was out of his clothes and she was beneath him. As he pulled down her pants and yanked off her shirt, she was trembling, desperate for the moment of impact.
Chapter Five
He took her in hunger, more than ready for the powerful rush of blood he knew would surge through his body. Her legs were parted, her body trembling in anticipation. He fell between them and slid into her hot wet depths without restraint, then buried himself as deep as he could go. But when he began to withdraw for a second pass, she locked her legs around his waist and pulled him back.
Layla was already half out of her mind then she heard him laugh. The joy he found in human existence was an aphrodisiac she had not expected. He’d eaten his food with blatant pleasure, and at the moment, he was so high on making love she couldn’t have stopped him if she’d tried.
Once he’d brought her to a climax with nothing more than a sweep of the energy that had brought him into her world, and now he was taking her to another level of lovemaking from which she might not recover.
He was big and he was hard.
She was hot and she was wet, and together they were about to ignite.
Niyol rode her without restraint, too hungry for the climax to prolong it. She was reaction to his action, building passion, building energy mass until he became so full he overflowed. She felt him shatter, but was not prepared for the impact to her when it happened.
Not only did he send her into orgasm, but while he was coming, she felt his as well. She screamed until she had no voice as he spilled his seed. The climax blew apart their capacity for thought. There was nothing they could do but hold on and wait for the pieces of their minds to settle and make them whole again.
***
The sun had moved just enough to burn through a gap in the leaves above them and down onto Niyol’s back. He groaned, reluctant to move from the comfort of her body.
Layla felt him shift and held him tighter, unwilling to turn him loose. He’d said that she would love him, and he’d been right. He was a virtual stranger, and yet there was a bond between them stronger than a lifetime of living could have forged. He’d already warned her he would leave, which made her desperate to cram that lifetime together into whatever days they had left.
When he raised up, his hair fell down around his shoulders, forming a barrier between her and the heat of the sun. His gaze raked her face and neck as he eyed the silver chain with the tiny bird and then lower, looking with pleasure at the slim build of her copper-colored body, burnished by the sheen of mingled sweat. When his penis began to stir and then engorge, he inhaled sharply.
“It is good to be human,” he said softly, and once more began to move, only this time in a slower, more dedicated rhythm.
Layla closed her eyes and arched her back to meet the thrusts, concentrating wholly on the feel of his body within her depths. When the climax came again, she was in his head. He was right. It was good to be human.
***
Sunset was a few hours away and they were now all the way down into the gorge of Canyon de Chelly. The floor of the canyon was surprisingly fertile and green compared to the land above it. The occasional rock spire rising up from the canyon floor was as a lone King on a chess board. But the canyon floor was not deserted.
It was also home to many of the Dineh who lived and worked the land—herding sheep, growing crops, living a rural life far away from the group housing that constituted reservation living.
Niyol and his woman did not ride through unnoticed, but their presence was not questioned, not even when they scattered grazing sheep.
The motorcycle engine was a steady roar in her ears. Although she was now wearing the bike helmet and Niyol’s hair was bound into a ponytail at the nape of his neck, her skin was sere; her eyes dry and wind-burned.
The first time they passed a site of pueblo ruins, the drums were suddenly loud in her ears and she wondered what that meant. Niyol heard the thought.
The Old Ones acknowledge your presence.
Layla gasped. You mean they know who I am?
Both sides of the veil know your name.
The burden of what she’d been given was finally sinking in. It was both a frightening and sobering thought to know so many lives rested on her ability to survive what was coming.
Remember, I am with you.
And just like that, the burden lifted. He was right. She wasn’t in this alone. A Windwalker makes anything possible.
It was nearing dusk when they finally stopped. Niyol brought the motorcycle to a stop in a canyon deep between two massive walls of rock towering above them on both sides.
The canyon valley was both narrow and flat, peppered with sparse scrub brush and a thin line of small trees running through the middle where a thinner ribbon of water flowed.
The canyon looked like Mother Nature had taken a cake knife to the land and carved out a huge slice for herself. Except for a couple of shallow caves along the canyon floor, the walls on either side appeared impenetrable.
“We stop here,” Niyol said, pointing to a small pool beside the nearest cave. He pushed the motorcycle inside and began unloading it.
Layla dropped to her knees beside water and drank until she had quenched her thirst. After she splashed her face and neck to wash off the dust, she stood, relishing the quick breeze. As soon as she carried her backpack inside the cave, she went back to help.
They worked together until the bike was unloaded, and then she went to gather dry wood for a campfire while Niyol began setting up camp.
He stopped once to watch her, satisfied she took the initiative without complaining or being told what to do. He knew how Jackson Birdsong had raised her. Long before she’d proven herself worthy, he’d known everything there was to know about her, but he’d forgotten how much he would love her again. When she started back to the campsite, he turned away, a little confused as to whether it was appropriate to let so much of his feelings show. Being human was, at times, also confusing.
“This should be enough to get th
e fire started,” Layla said, as she dumped the armload at his feet. “There’s more dry wood down by the trees along the wash.”
He glanced up at the sky. “It will be dark in a few minutes.”
She shrugged. “We’ll need the fuel. It will be cold when the sun goes down. Light the fire and I will have a beacon to follow back.”
As she strode off in the direction of the trees, he gathered up some dry grasses then began building the fire near the front of the shallow cave.
He started with a four-foot circle of loose rocks gathered from inside the cave, then twisted the dry grasses into knots before laying them on the bottom. He covered the grass with small sticks, then larger ones, until he had a decent-sized stack ready to light.
He paused, looking out in the twilight. She was on her way back. He put a match to the woodpile, watching intently as the flames began to eat through the grass, then the smaller sticks, to the larger ones on top until they had fire. Night had officially arrived as he walked out of the cave. He couldn’t see her, but he knew she was near because he could feel her heartbeat.
Layla’s vision adjusted to the dark as the light slowly faded. The canyon wall went on forever. It was so high it would have been easy to believe it was where the world ended.
The cave to which she was headed was an even darker shape against the night until she saw a glimmer of light.
The fire was alive.
The armload of wood she was carrying was awkward and heavy, but she lengthened her stride, guided by the light in the darkness and the man silhouetted before it.
She blinked, and when she looked again he was gone. She heard the sound of footsteps then he was before her; taking the burden she’d been carrying. She relinquished the limbs gladly, but winced as a stray limb caught against the back of her healing arm.
He heard her gasp.
“You are hurt?”
“It’s nothing, and it’s getting cold.”
“You go. I am behind you.”
She jogged toward the cave and the brightly burning fire. Once inside, she pulled her backpack closer to the fire and took off her shirt to inspect the healing wound on her arm. It stung from the new scratch, but nothing had burst open. She dug out the medicine she’d brought with her, spreading ointment down the length of the new scar. Keeping it supple would aid the healing, and there was too much at stake for her to get sick from infection.
Niyol was almost to the cave when he saw her kneel and take off her shirt. He stumbled, caught by the beauty of her body in the firelight and stopped to watch from the shadows, remembering she was his. By the time he came into the cave, she had put her shirt back on. He dumped the wood near the fire then walked up behind her. He ran a hand beneath her hair as he turned her to face him.
“You are hurt?”
“Just a slight scratch. It’s okay.”
He felt guilt, a human trait he did not enjoy.
“I am sorry you were given no time for proper healing.”
She slid her arms around his waist, willing herself not to weep.
“Time is my enemy,” she said softly. “The time will come when it will take you away from me.”
Pain rolled through him so fast her image blurred before his eyes. In sudden panic, he pulled her into his arms.
“Being human also hurts.”
Layla stifled a sob.
Somewhere beyond the cave a coyote yipped, and another answered nearby. They’d seen the fire. They’d sensed the human element in their midst. But like the dog in her grandfather’s village that had seen Niyol coming and run, the coyotes also sensed a being not of this world, giving him and the fire a wide berth.
Later, after they’d shared more jerky and water, Layla slipped out to go to the bathroom, feeling her way along the canyon wall until she was satisfied she’d gone far enough.
Squatting to relieve herself in such a place, and in this way, reminded her of her life back in Oklahoma when she had hunted the woods with her father. As a child she had been afraid of the dark, and yet she loved Jackson Birdsong so much that when he took his dogs out to hunt at night, she begged to go with him.
With no brothers or sisters, her parents had been her world, and her world grew smaller after her mother’s unexpected death at an early age. She and her father had cried together when it happened, and given no other options, faced life without her.
Halfway back to the cave she saw a streak of light up in the night sky and paused, watching as a shooting star sped across a dark palette awash with heavenly bodies.
Skywalker.
Layla turned. Suddenly Niyol was standing beside her and she hadn’t even heard him approach.
“You mean that’s not a shooting star?”
He shrugged. “It is what you call it, but with a passenger on board.”
Layla looked back up at the sky. “Always?”
He took her hand. “It is cold. Come back to the fire.”
“Which means you’re not going to answer my question, right?”
“Some things are best left unsaid.”
She let him lead her toward their camp, but her thoughts were tumbling one over the other. It was suddenly obvious how ignorant humans were, living in this world without thought for things unseen.
***
George Begay felt the same anguish he’d felt the night his Frances had died. He didn’t believe Layla was dead, but she would never be his granddaughter again. She’d been set up as a sacrifice, and at the same time, a savior. He’d seen the men in his dreams—the men who would come after her. He’d seen fighting and blood and death, but they had not shown him the faces, so he didn’t know her true fate. And so he grieved for what was already lost, as well as what was yet to come.
The Dineh knew she was gone. A few talked about hearing a motorcycle that morning, but no one had seen the rider. They already knew a crisis of world proportion was imminent before Layla even returned to the reservation. The council fires were burning; the elders warning what was imminent, and the younger people confused and afraid.
The Dineh knew the history of their people and what had happened at the Bosque Redondo in 1864. The Navajo called it the Long Walk. The U.S. government called it relocating some Indians, and took the Dineh off their lands, forcing them to other land in New Mexico. It was often compared to the Trail of Tears the Cherokee endured when they the government took their lands in the East and sent them halfway across country to Oklahoma territory on foot.
Many of the Navajo escaped the soldiers’ roundup by hiding in the canyons and the high mesas and continued living as they always had. But thousands were taken, and thousands had died. Only that was then, and this was now, and they couldn’t believe something that dire would happen again. The appearance of the Windwalker left families in turmoil, and a tribe divided by fear and the unknown.
But the Navajo wasn’t the only tribe in crisis. It was happening all over North America, from the east coast to the west coast, from the southern border of the continent to the northern most boundaries. They’d all seen the video and the believers were waiting for another sign—the one that would tell them it was time to run.
***
It was a sound, a breeze on her face, an instinct that something wasn’t right.
Layla’s eyes flew open and saw a moving shadow on the floor in front of her, which meant someone was behind her. She rolled out of her bedroll onto her feet; her father’s hunting knife clutched tight in one hand.
Niyol was holding two skinned rabbits already spitted and ready for the fire.
“Most impressive,” he said. “I bring food.”
Layla groaned, holstered the knife, and ran her fingers through her hair in frustration.
“I could have killed you,” she muttered.
“You are not yet that good, but it is of no importance because I cannot die,” he
said bluntly, then leaned the spitted rabbits against the stones, angling them toward the fire. “It will take a while for them to cook.”
“I know that, and believe it or not, after a long night’s sleep and nearly scaring me half out of my mind, I need to pee.”
He grinned as she strode past him. He had forgotten that humans were also funny.
***
Two black SUVs drove onto the Navajo reservation just before sunrise with the location of George Begay’s house already set in the GPS.
Emile Harper knew they were there because he’d sent them, but they were flying under radar, and technically had no backing or approval of the United States government. As for the men, it wasn’t their first rodeo. They considered any confrontation the locals might cause to be of no concern, and considered picking up one woman and taking her back to D.C. a simple task.
They were driving eastward and topping a hill just as the sun breeched the horizon. For a fraction of a second the driver was blinded by the day’s first light, but his vision cleared just in time to slam on the brakes. The second car, which was driving in the dust trail of the first, barely missed rear-ending it.
All of a sudden the walkie-talkie in the first car squawked. The driver in the second car was pissed.
“What the fuck, Conroy? Over.”
Conroy was still staring out his windshield as he picked up the radio. There were thousands and thousands of acres on the Navajo reservation, and a good three hundred armed men right in front of them. All he could think was how the hell did they know we’d cross here?
“We’ve got trouble. Over.”
He was trying to figure out how to put a spin on their presence as he headed toward the tribal policemen, who he hoped were in charge. Law was always better than mob rule, and there was a seriously large mob in wait. He couldn’t decide whether to play dumb or pull a pissed-off attitude, but he kept flashing on an old cowboy movie he’d once seen, about a small caravan of covered wagons trapped down in a valley by the hundreds of Indians mounted on horseback, lining both sides of the rims above.