Together, Hugo and Adam broke open the lid of the crate to check the contents. Rows upon rows of glass vials were nested against layers of soft hay to keep them from clashing together during transit. There were three crates total.
The two werewolves exchanged glances, silently asking for the other’s opinion on how many should be taken. The crates held at least fifty doses of medicine, and were small enough that a man could carry them between his arms with ease.
Hugo held up one finger.
Adam held up two.
Their silent disagreement could not be settled so easily. Adam knew that if they only took one crate, and it wasn’t enough to cure everyone, then some of his tribe would die because they decided to take the bare minimum from the Comanche. If they took two, there may have been more than enough, but that would leave the Comanche with just as little.
Both jumped when they heard a tipi flap slap open not far off. They listened to the shuffling of moccasined feet make their way toward the supply tent. Without a word, Hugo and Adam dove for cover and waited. Within seconds, he realized that they had never put the lid back on the crate of medicine, which sat within plain view from the door.
Adam braced himself, willing his breaths to come out soft and steady. There was every reason to be fearful, but he couldn’t allow himself. Over and over, he had declared himself a warrior, a brave fighter for his people. Now, more than ever, they needed him to stay calm. If the Comanche heard his raspy, shivering breaths, or heard his feet so much as shift on the dusty floor, their mission would be a failure.
Yet, the Comanche never stepped foot in the tent. He heard the man approach, pause, and then turn away to walk across the camp toward the center tipi where the other men congregated. Did he see their footprints leading up to the tent? Did he only suspect that someone was there? Or were they still safe.
Hugo emerged from his place behind a barrel of barley and went back to the medicine crates. He picked one up and then pointed to the other sitting with its lid still fastened on with nails. In complete agreement, he picked it up and tucked it under his arm as they left the tent.
The hard part seemed to be over. Adam and Hugo slipped past the tipis, being mindful not to jostle the fragile packages they carried. Even the tiniest clinking of glass on glass could alert their presence to some sleeping child or wakeful mother they passed by.
Once out of the village, Adam felt the tightness in his chest and torso loosen. A surreal sort of joy spread through him and he ran a little faster in their escape. Just when they were passed the checkpoint where the scout kept watch, Adam saw the dead trunk of a fallen tree that he recalled leaping over on their way to the village. This time, he neglected to jump.
The front of his leg rammed into the log and he went tumbling as he had the other day when he first learned the true extent of his werewolf speed. His arms and head curled around the crate, but that didn’t keep the contents safe. He heard vials shatter and smelled the medicine spilling onto the hay padding.
A great shout from the high ridge told him that he had been spotted.
Hugo skidded to a stop and ran back to pull Adam to his feet by the collar of his shirt. With his pants torn and a swelling pain in his arm, Adam found his footing and continued their getaway, though he wasn’t sure if he even needed to be carrying his precious cargo now. He couldn’t tell how many had cracked during the fall and there was no time to check.
The sound of his panting and drumming of feet against the earth as they ran completely overtook his senses and Adam wouldn’t allow himself to look back to see if the Comanche were after them.
They arrived back to the camp and didn’t even try to be discreet about it. Geoffrey burst from his bedroll and looked from his son, to his brother, and then to the crates they held in their arms.
“What did you – “
“No time to talk,” Hugo interrupted as he went to fetch his horse. “We need to go.”
Geoffrey began to scold them for going behind his back, but Adam wouldn’t listen to any of it. He had his own berating voices inside his head to contend with. Adam should have been watching where he was going. He should have known that log was there. He shouldn’t have allowed himself to get so careless. Now, the Comanche would know exactly who took the medicine. As long as they could flee the region fast enough and make it safely back to the sacred lands, they would be fine. If not, the blame could be placed solely on Adam’s shoulders, even if it was Hugo’s decision to steal the medicine.
He kicked sand over the old campfire, spreading the ashes with his free hand so the Comanche wouldn’t know they had ever been there.
Hugo strapped the crate to his saddle and took the other from Adam so he could do the same while he rapidly packed up the rest of the supplies.
“Are you even listening?” Geoffrey shouted.
“No, I’m not,” Adam replied calmly as he mounted his mare and turned her toward the west, toward home. He didn’t even bother to wait for his father and uncle before kicking her onward into a gallop. Behind him, the two men argued, but Adam kept going, racing ahead into the night as if distancing himself from the acrid stench of the spilled medicine would make him forget his terrible mistake.
One of those vials was a life, the life of a Diné, and he hadn’t treated it with the care it deserved. That vial could have helped his mother, his friend, one of the other hunters in his village, or an ill hataałii.
He urged his horse on faster and fought back the tears that burned at the corners of his eyes.
Geoffrey poured the contents of the medicine vial into the bowl of water as Rebecca continued to cough in her bed. He had wasted too much breath scolding Adam and Hugo for their foolish decision to steal from the Comanche. All the way to the village, he tried to convince himself that the end would justify the means somehow, and he was right. They easily lost the Comanche and they hadn’t seen any evidence of a retaliation or serious effort to take the medicine back. They were well out of harm’s way and able to help the village with their stolen provisions.
In the time they had been away, several more of the villagers had fallen ill, including one of the medicine men. Adam and Hugo were in the midst of distributing the medicine as he had instructed, and he knew that as soon as he saw them well again, it would have all been worth the trouble.
Geoffrey eased Rebecca into a sitting position, so she could take the medicine. He hated the way he had to steady her with one hand while tilting the bowl to her cracked lips with the other. Her face wrinkled with disgust as the medicine flowed across her tongue and down her throat.
“I know it tastes foul, but it will help.”
Rebecca took another sip and sputtered out a cough again, nearly knocking the bowl from Geoffrey’s hands. He set it down on the floor beside the bed and did what little he could to help clear her airway, so she could breathe again.
“Where’s Adam?” she asked once he lowered her head back onto the pillow.
“He’s giving out medicine. He’s fine.” Geoffrey had to laugh at himself. “In fact, he’s more than fine. You should see how easy it is for him. It was never so easy for me when I was his age.”
A faint smile alighted her face and he wondered if it was the medicine that put her in good spirits, or the knowledge that her son would prove to be a fine and capable werewolf.
“That is good,” she said softly. “Is he happy?”
Geoffrey shrugged, even though her beautiful dark eyes were closed. Her eyes had swollen shut as her illness progressed. “I don’t know if he’s happy, but he seems content.”
Rebecca’s breaths were shallow, her heartbeat slower and weaker than it had been before he left. Perhaps Adam was right. If they had taken the time to search for medicine elsewhere, Rebecca and many other of the villagers might not have been here upon their return. In the end, it might have been a good thing they stole from the Comanche.
At the time, he had been so angry with his son and brother for going against his wishes. Now, he co
uld only feel relief that the worst was over.
“When will you leave again?” Rebecca asked after a few moments of silence had stretched between them.
Geoffrey took her hand in his and squeezed it. “We’re not going anywhere until you’re well again.”
She took a deep, ragged breath, and he knew that the medicine must have been working when she didn’t cough upon the exhale. “What about – “
“Adam is adjusting well enough that he can stay for a while. Don’t worry about him.”
It was the truth. His son was excelling far beyond anyone’s expectations and if things continued, he wouldn’t need to distance himself from human contact for as long as they had anticipated. As long as he conceded to using a gun instead of his claws to hunt for food, he could integrate into society within a few years instead of a few decades, if he wished. He could even return to the village.
If he did, Geoffrey would have an even tougher decision to make. They couldn’t stay in the Navajo Territory forever. Exploring into Mexico reminded him of the thrills that travel could provide. They still had so many more places to see, so many more myths to learn and discover. The edges of the map were slowly filling in and Geoffrey wanted to be part of that.
If Adam chose to stay in the village, Geoffrey and Hugo would have to continue on without him. It’d tear his heart into pieces to leave his son behind, but he had come to realize something important. His son was no longer a boy, but a man. He could make his own decisions, chart his own course, and make his own path in this life. After Geoffrey was done giving him what guidance he could, the rest was up to Adam. As much as it would pain him to let go, he had to do it.
“You must drink this,” Adam insisted to their eldest medicine man, Hastiin Ayání. Adam had spent many hours sitting beside Ayání, listening to the stories about the Holy People and how they created the earth they now lived on. Nowhere in his stories were there ever werewolves. It called into question everything Adam believed, everything he had ever been told about his people.
But now, Adam was asking Ayání to put aside all he knew and drink the medicine water. They had come too far for this old man to refuse their help.
Sitting upright with one of Adam’s mother’s woven blankets wrapped around his shoulders, Ayání would not look at the bowl Adam offered him. He simply stared out the entrance to his hogan, his body racked with a fever that would not break. No matter how many sand paintings he created or how many songs he sang, the sickness would not leave him.
There were plenty of things Adam didn’t understand about his father’s world, but after he saw so many others in the village begin to recover after drinking the medicine, he knew that Ayání would not get better without it.
Playing the patient one, Adam set the bowl in front of Ayání’s crossed legs and sat beside him to stare out over the same stretch of land beyond his hogan. He could keep that stiff upper lip all he wanted, but Adam would not budge. He respected the hataałii too much to leave him.
There had been a time when Adam wanted to become Ayání’s apprentice and learn the healing ways of the Diné for himself. Now, that wouldn’t be possible. Not for a long time, anyway. If Geoffrey had his way, Adam would never become a healer. Yet, as a werewolf, he could do so much more than draw pictures in the sand or brew a bowl of tea infused with herbs that could cure a stomach ailment.
As soon as he entered the hogan of a sick family earlier that morning, he realized he could do more than just see the sickness in their faces, but smell it on their bodies. His wolf gave him the gift of insight that no medicine man could possibly have. Perhaps someday, Adam could be a great healer.
If that ever did happen, he wouldn’t be as obstinate as Ayání. He would have an open mind and open heart to new ways, unlike he used to.
“I know what has happened to you,” Ayání said, his old voice breaking the silence between them. “You have become your father’s son.”
He looked to Ayání, waiting for some hateful rejection for his cursed spirit. Did he think that Adam was a skinwalker? Or did Ayání know the truth that Adam had rejected as a young boy, that there was a distinct difference between the trickster shapeshifter and a werewolf?
Or did he speak of something else? Had the few days away from the village produced a change in Adam’s spirit that the old man could sense somehow? He was the oldest and wisest of their village, and saw many things that others couldn’t. He knew how to speak to the Holy People, after all. Maybe they told him what Adam had done for the village, for his people.
“I will not drink the medicine,” Ayání continued, “because it will not help.”
Adam shook his head. “It will. I’ve seen it work in the others who are sick.”
Ayání lifted a trembling hand as one side of the blanket fell away from his shoulders. “No medicine can take this sickness away.” He pointed to the northeast, toward one of the sacred mountains. “You must seek out the cure.”
With a frustrated sigh, Adam lifted the edge of the blanket and draped it back over the elder’s arm. “We’ve already brought back the cure, Ayání. It’s in that bowl. You have to drink it first and then you’ll be well again.”
The healer shook his head. “This will not help,” he insisted. “You must go to the mountain and find the cure.”
Adam turned away and rolled his eyes, so the healer wouldn’t see his annoyance. He couldn’t walk away without knowing that Ayání had at least taken one sip. How could someone stay so rigid in their beliefs and not accept the help that was offered to them?
He looked back to Ayání. “Is there a plant or herb on that mountain?”
“No,” he said. “There, you must look inside yourself. Then, you will find the cure.”
Adam narrowed his eyes upon the man who spoke nonsense. “Inside myself?” he questioned.
Or maybe it wasn’t nonsense. Over the last few days, he had learned not to ignore the prodding of the wolf spirit within him. If Ayání suspected the truth, that he was a werewolf, then maybe there was something he saw that Adam couldn’t see for himself. Not until he confronted his wolf. But what could it tell him?
“If I go to the mountain,” he said after Ayání wouldn’t answer him, “will you drink the medicine.”
The old man finally turned to regard Adam with a stern look. “Go to the mountain,” was all he said. He would not promise anything.
Relenting in this futile effort to make the man understand, and giving up on comprehending anything for himself, Adam rose to his feet. “Fine. I will go to the mountain and when I get back, I hope that bowl will be empty.”
“It will be,” he said with a nod.
Adam pointed a warning finger at his elder. “And not spilled on the ground.”
Ayání gave him a weary smile and waved him off. “Go to the mountain.”
He sighed and threw up his hands. “I’m going, I’m going.”
As he walked away from the hogan, Adam questioned the wisdom of this journey. Perhaps he should get his father or Hugo to join him. The more he debated on such an idea, the more his wolf writhed and refused. This journey was for him alone, and whatever truth he learned would be his own to discover.
It was clear that Geoffrey and Hugo could not respect the connection that Adam had with his wolf. They could tell him many things that the wolf couldn’t, like silver and some plant called wolfsbane were to be avoided. Or that he would shift once a month and that there was the possibility of shifting of one’s own free will. But they couldn’t teach him how the two souls were intertwined, fastened together with some spiritual tether that could never be broken. They couldn’t teach him what only his wolf could know.
On the mountain, Dibé Nitsaa, maybe there was something the wolf had to show him that couldn’t be shown elsewhere on the Diné land.
Taking one last look to his village, he listened to the coughs and groans of the sick that depended on him for help. He listened to the soft words of his parents speaking in their hogan some
where out of sight. Adam took a deep breath and summoned the courage he needed to leave one more time. He would return, and he hoped that Ayání was right, that the cure was somewhere inside of him. If it wasn’t, he’d have a stern talk with the elder when he returned.
Adam faced the high peaks of the faraway mountain and sped toward them.
Hugo saw Adam leave the village and run into the distance, sent on some foolhardy errand by the medicine man he had spoken with. Geoffrey was probably too busy with his wife to hear his son flee. The right, brotherly thing to do would have been to run and tell him what Adam was up to. But Hugo didn’t go to Geoffrey. He went to the sick medicine man for answers.
He found the one they called Hastiin Ayání sitting just outside the doorway to his hogan, eyes fixed upon the mountains that Adam had run off to. The bowl they had been contending over sat in front of him, empty.
As Hugo approached, he checked the ground for any evidence that Ayání might have thrown out the medicine as Adam had told him not to. The sand around him remained light and showed no splotches of dark, matted clay or puddles of discarded water.
“You took the medicine?” he questioned, shoving his hands into his trouser pockets.
Ayání gave him a sly look. “Of course. Why shouldn’t I?”
Hugo jerked his thumb toward the mountains. “You gave Adam such a hard time about it.”
“The boy wouldn’t have left otherwise.”
He smiled despite himself and shook his head. “Why send him up to the mountains if you intended to drink it the whole time?”
With great effort, Ayání rose to his feet and met Hugo’s dark eyes with his own. “This sickness goes beyond anything I have ever seen in our tribe. Nothing I have done could make the evil go away or restore the balance. Something powerful has cursed the Diné and only Adam can seek it out.”
One of the many things he didn’t understand about these natives was their obstinacy when it came to matters of science. “This disease has nothing to do with curses or magic. It’s something that spreads from person to person. Only medicine can keep it from spreading again. Geoffrey has explained that to everyone already.”
The Native_A Legacy Series Novella Page 9