Whatever past regrets he had, it didn’t change what was to come. Adam would learn soon enough.
Geoffrey looked up to the entryway to the hogan as Adam stepped through with his bow and quiver in hand. Rebecca rose to greet her son with a hug, but Geoffrey knew better by now that he wasn’t welcome to embrace Adam in the same way. Not anymore. He wished he could have had his little boy back, the one who ran to him and jumped into his arms so gleefully. He wanted back the days when he could put Adam on his shoulders and take him for walks down the river as they talked about life and all the things that any boy should know. They just never talked about that most important thing that mattered so much now.
Adam didn’t even look his way as he set the bow and quiver by the door.
“Was the hunt successful?” Rebecca asked. She, too, was beyond forcing her son to acknowledge Geoffrey anymore. When he was younger, she’d make them speak to one another, but now Adam was a man and could choose for himself whether to be estranged from his father or not.
“Yes,” he said in his mother’s language with a confident air. “We took down an old bull with a gimp leg.”
Rebecca nodded, though she refused to return in the same tongue. “Your trip was short.”
Adam nodded. “I’m getting better at finding the weak ones,” was all he said, though the strained smile told Geoffrey volumes more.
Rebecca told him about how skilled of a hunter he had become, and knowing that he could pick out the weak and injured from a herd of buffalo only added to what Geoffrey already suspected.
He remembered the days leading up to his first shift. He experienced feelings, impulses, things that should have given him some clue as to what was coming. There was an animalistic nature creeping up within him that bloomed the moment he first shifted. The same must have been happening to Adam, though he probably didn’t want to accept it.
Adam finally glanced toward Geoffrey, his eyes emanating the years spent in seething resentment for the man he thought he could trust. If Geoffrey could have saved him from such hatred, he would have. He knew that kind of loathing, because it was nestled deep within his heart, hidden away and reserved for the day he ever saw his own father again.
All Geoffrey did now, under the glare of his only son, was nod in greeting. Adam didn’t return it, but turned back to his mother and ask, “Do you need anything?”
Rebecca paused and then leaned down to take up the water pot by the door. “Go fetch us some more water. There’s not much left.”
Adam took the brightly painted pot and turned to leave the hogan without another word. At least he looked at Geoffrey. That was an improvement from his last visit when Adam refused to step inside the hogan as long as his father was in there at the same time.
His wife gave him an apologetic look, but Geoffrey didn’t need it. He couldn’t have expected much from Adam, but it didn’t bode well for the rest of their relationship. How would they spend the next centuries together? Would Adam remain so obstinate, or would he come to realize that Geoffrey and Hugo were to be his most important allies in his training years?
The drifting embers from the fire swirled up with the smoke, disappearing against the dark evening sky as Adam listened to the songs he knew by heart. Beside him, Anaba sat with her bowl of cooked buffalo meat, looking even prettier in the tawny glow of the campfire that danced across her face. None of the villagers had gotten up to dance yet, many were still talking and feasting.
He had already finished off his meal, but unlike most nights, he was left hungry. Everyone in the village was given their portion and begging for seconds would have been disrespectful, even if there was plenty of roasting flesh that hadn’t been claimed from the carcass.
Across from him, his parents sat with his uncle, talking softly about something that made all three faces sour with a look of concern. With luck, they were talking about when Geoffrey and Hugo would leave again, and Adam hoped it was soon.
“Is something wrong?” Anaba asked over the chanting of the ancient songs and beating of the drums.
Adam smiled. “Not at all.”
Her eyes narrowed upon him. “Are we sitting too close to the fire? You’re sweating.”
He hadn’t noticed, but found his forehead damp when he brushed his hand across it. “I guess I do feel a bit warm.”
“We can sit farther back in the shade if you’d like.”
Adam’s first thoughts about the dark shade beyond the bright firelight had nothing to do with the refreshing coolness it would provide. Instead, he thought about how such darkness could conceal them from prying eyes that belonged to gossiping lips. He nodded his approval and helped her to her feet so they could step around some of the others who sat behind them.
As soon as Anaba took her place just on the edge of the light, farther back than anyone else dared to sit, a sharp ache shot through Adam’s stomach, worse than anything he had experienced before. This was no hunger pain. He grunted and pressed his hand to his belly.
“Now I know something’s wrong,” Anaba said. “Are you ill?” She reached out to take his free hand and held it tight as if that would make this sudden affliction go away.
Adam shook his head. “Perhaps I am.”
The pain came again, this time snaking through his limbs until he almost couldn’t stand anymore. He regained his balance and tried to catch his breath. A stray thought crossed his mind that perhaps Adam shouldn’t have looked at his father earlier that evening. He knew that Geoffrey wasn’t a skinwalker, not the same ones the medicine men spoke of, but perhaps this was the result of some sort of magic. Maybe that’s why his father decided to come back home.
He turned and looked to the fire circle again and saw both Geoffrey and Hugo watching him with an intensity that at least confirmed that they were aware of what was going on.
He met Anaba’s concerned gaze and he felt his world begin to tilt out of focus.
“I need to go,” he said before stumbling farther into camp. If he lied down for a while, maybe it would go away.
She called after him, but Adam would not answer. He couldn’t explain what he couldn’t begin to understand himself.
With each step, the pain persisted, sending jolts through his arms and legs as if he were being beaten from the inside out. His blood felt hot like the fire he distanced himself from. The bones within his flesh ached, squeezed by this unnatural illness until he thought they would break.
When he finally made it to his hogan, he fell to the dirt floor and gripped at his chest, willing it to loosen so he could breathe again. Adam tried to stretch out his back and legs to lessen the pain, but it soon became too difficult to move.
The flap over the doorway was drawn back and he heard the quick shuffle of feet as his father and uncle rushed in. They seized his arms and pulled him to his feet, but Adam blindly pushed them back in the shadowy darkness.
“We need to go,” Geoffrey insisted, taking hold of his son again to guide him to the exit.
Through the intense agony, Adam shoved him again. “Get away from me!”
Hugo clamped his hand around the back of Adam’s neck and tugged him along. “The less you fight it, the easier it’ll get.”
The three made their way back out of the hogan and Adam lost the will to resist them again. At first, he was able to keep up with their hurried steps, but then they soon had to drag him out of the village, because the pain rendered him too weak to even hold up his head.
This must have been what his father had warned him about years ago. The shift. Soon, he’d become like a beast, the same beast he saw his father transform into by the river ten summers ago. Adam couldn’t let that happen. They were well out of the village by the time he could form a coherent thought. The sound of drums was far off and the tiny sliver of moon above wasn’t much to see by, but he could still make out the voices of Geoffrey and Hugo through the excruciating pain that consumed his body.
“How much farther?” Hugo asked.
“Far enough
so they won’t hear him screaming.”
“What about the river?”
“Not far enough.”
Adam put one foot beneath him, but it wasn’t enough to help him get away. “Leave me,” he groaned as his bones cracked into unnatural positions. He refused to cry or to scream as his father mentioned. He was a warrior, a hunter, a man. Adam wouldn’t let them see him crumble so easily.
With one last burst of will, he threw them off and managed to make it a few yards before tripping over his own feet. He pounded at the earth with his fists as he bit his tongue to keep from shouting out. The metallic taste of blood filled his mouth. It was as if something were inside, trying to claw its way out with a violent force that he wasn’t sure he could dam up.
Geoffrey and Hugo were still beside him, but they made no move to lift him.
“Son, listen at me,” his father insisted. “You can’t force this back. You have to let it happen.”
Adam only shook his head. “I’m not skinwalker,” he continued to repeat over and over under his shaking breath.
“No, you’re not,” Hugo barked. “You’re a damn werewolf, now quit being a child and do as we say.”
A current traveled up his spine and straight to his skull and for a moment, Adam wondered if it would burst. His fingers popped and he finally looked to his hands to see them sprouting fur as black as a moonless sky.
Geoffrey was right. There was no way to hold this transformation in. Letting go of himself, he allowed one tear to stream down his flushed cheeks before he gave into the shift.
Chapter Three
The morning sun burned through Adam’s eyelids as he gradually ascended from the dark void of unconsciousness. He could hear the slow rush of the river beside him and smell the rich wild grasses that grew along its banks as they tickled his skin. Some distance away, he heard voices, many voices, like the low murmurs of a secret conversation carried on the winds and he couldn’t make out their words. But two of these voices were significantly closer, so near he thought they were standing right next to him on the shore of the river.
Every muscle and bone in his body ached, his flesh raw as if he had been trampled by buffalo. He remembered nothing of the night before, nothing after he let the shift take him. Adam laid there a little longer, his eyes closed and heart rabbiting in his chest.
He was what he vowed to never be. Just like his father, a werewolf. He tried to imagine what he must have looked like. Not once had he seen the full form of the beast, only the partially morphed figure he had seen his father become that night years ago.
Besides the throbbing ache throughout his body, he almost felt no different. Though, when he allowed himself to be still, he could sense something else deep within his core. It stirred there, a gentle and peaceful energy that seemed to quell every riotous thought that dared to alarm him.
He didn’t think about where his father and Hugo might have been. He ignored the keen awareness that he was completely naked. Adam simply laid there, listening to the world with every bit of essence within him. This went beyond just experiencing the earth and perceiving its movements as the elders had always taught him to do. This was like feeling the very rhythm that their songs were inspired by. If he listened closely, he could hear the earth shivering and trembling underneath him, thrumming with a vitality all its own.
Despite his tiredness, Adam smiled. He had never felt so attuned to nature. Was this the work of whatever werewolf blood coursed through his veins? Or did this have to do with the entity inside of him that seemed to wait in a state of mild curiosity. Adam wasn’t even sure how it was possible that he could be feeling one thing, and yet another all at the same time.
The near voices of his father and uncle drew him back to the present and he heard them shuffle across the dirt to make their way to him. It took a long time before they finally stopped, and their shadows blocked out the sun from beating down upon his face.
Adam cracked open his eyes and squinted up at the two men, whose faces peered down at him in sharp relief.
“How do you feel?” Hugo asked, his voice in a hushed whisper, though more than loud enough, as if he were nearly shouting.
“Like a mad horse decided to stomp my head,” Adam replied as he winced and tried to rise.
His father crouched down to assist him, but Adam felt no compulsion to push him away as he might have the day before. Whatever happened last night, it was Geoffrey and Hugo who ensured that he survived it. For that, he was grateful. So, also, was that presence inside of him.
“You’ll be sore for a short while,” Geoffrey said softly, “but you’ll be well enough to move soon.”
Adam opened his mouth to ask why he had blacked out when a sharp sensation spread across the back of his head and down his neck. It was as if someone had taken a prickling cactus and rolled it along his skin, but not pressing in enough to cause pain. He rubbed at the tingling skin.
“That will fade away too,” Hugo said, answering his unspoken question.
“What is that?” Adam asked.
Geoffrey reached behind him and retrieved a leather pack. “That’s how you’ll know when other werewolves are near.” He pulled out a pair of cloth trousers similar to the ones he and Hugo wore. “You might want to put these on.”
Adam took the pants and settled them into his lap to conceal his nakedness. “Last night…”
“You turned,” Hugo said. “Just as your father and I do every month, sometimes twice a month.”
“Twice?” Adam repeated with horror laced in the very word.
“Only by choice,” Geoffrey corrected, sliding a mildly scathing look to Hugo for his slip of the tongue.
“Choice?” Adam gasped. “Who would want to go through this twice?”
Geoffrey let out a breath and looked to the sky as if the right answer would drop from the clouds. “It’s not right for a werewolf to shift alone,” he finally said.
Taking a moment, Adam made the connections. “So you both shifted with me last night?”
“We did,” Hugo said before folding his arms across his chest. “It was a shift as much by choice as by necessity.”
“What he means,” Geoffrey added, “is that when a new werewolf shifts for the first time, he can be uncontrollable and violent. He needs someone to be there to contain him, or else he could cause some great harm.”
Adam looked to the earth beyond his bare feet. His mind, a jumbled mess of thoughts, scrambled for some meaning to it all. His father and uncle shifted, endured so much excruciating pain, all so Adam wouldn’t hurt anyone in his inhuman form. By the absence of blood on his hands, he knew they had done their job. They were looking after him as much as they were taking care of those in the village. It was just as his mother had said so long ago. Geoffrey and Hugo were the protectors of the Diné, not a hounding evil.
He had been ungrateful all this time for the kind of sacrifice that Geoffrey and Hugo made for him and the rest of the Diné. And it took one evening of horrendous torture to make him realize it.
Hugo tapped the tip of his boot against Adam’s calf and began to walk away. “I’ll go get you something to eat before we leave to go back to the village.”
Adam absentmindedly shook his head. “I can’t go back,” he muttered to no one in particular.
“You will,” Geoffrey said. “One day, when you have a better hold on yourself, you can go back to your clan, I promise.”
How could he? How could he sit around the fire circle again and look everyone in their faces, knowing that he was so different from them? He had been different before with his green eyes and lighter skin, but this was something not so evident. This secret he now bore pressed upon his shoulders like a heavy mantle. How could he see his mother again, knowing that she would know exactly what had taken place last night?
What about Anaba? Would he ever see her again? Was there a future for them? His mother and Geoffrey made their marriage work, but could Adam be confident enough to ask for her acceptance?
<
br /> Adam leaned forward on his elbows and hid his face in his dusty hands. Geoffrey sat down beside him in the dense grass, but neither of them spoke. What could be said? That he had been wrong all along? That he should have listened to his father? Every bit of it was true, but how could he put it into words?
“It won’t always be this way,” his father said, breaking the silence between them. “Your ears will grow used to the constant noise, you’ll learn how to ignore some scents, and after some time, the shift won’t be so painful. It’ll get easier.”
Adam laced his fingers together and pressed them to his lips in a thoughtful way. “How long?”
Geoffrey was quiet for a moment, then said, “We can live for a very long time. It may take decades for you to be fully in control of yourself.”
He closed his eyes. Decades. Decades before he could even think about going back to the village. Back to his mother. The burden just became a little heavier.
“What else?” he asked.
“Do you not remember the talk we had years ago?”
Yes, Adam remembered that they had talked, but he couldn’t recall every detail. He had been too preoccupied with hating his father at the time. “Refresh my memory,” he said.
So Geoffrey went on to explain that Adam couldn’t eat the crops the Diné grew. He could only eat meat and some fruits. He had to be careful about becoming too excited or a bit of his wolf would come out in his eyes. Was that the entity he felt within him? A wolf?
His father said that it would take time to train Adam how to properly use his new abilities like extreme strength and speed. He would shift once a month, but after a while, he would begin to recall the shifts with perfect clarity. It’d take even longer for him to learn how to shift at will, but there were ways to force the shift if needed.
“We’ll get to demonstrate all of these things in due time.”
The Native_A Legacy Series Novella Page 4