by Ed Masessa
Henry and Brianna were asleep in the back of the van when it pulled to a stop in the parking lot of the Blue Coffee Pot Restaurant in Kayenta. “Henry.” Grandma Gailene shook him gently. “There is someone who needs to meet you.”
Henry rubbed his eyes, and Brianna yawned widely. “If they only need to see Henry, I’ll just stay here and sleep.” She curled up on the seat.
“You should come, too,” Grandma said sympathetically. “The invitation is a rare one.”
“Where is Coralis?” asked Henry.
On cue, Coralis emerged from the restaurant with the sour look of a man who had sniffed rotten vegetables. He held a Styrofoam cup at arm’s length, quickly glanced to see if anyone was watching, and ceremoniously dumped it in the trash. “I’m not sure what was in that cup, but it couldn’t have been what I asked for,” he grumbled.
“They must have given him the tourist blend,” Grandma Gailene whispered. “The good coffee is reserved for the locals.”
Coralis continued his show of displeasure, hacking like a cat bringing up a fur ball, wiping his tongue with a napkin. Henry stifled a laugh, unsure of Coralis’s mood but picking up a bit of mischief in the old man’s face. “Bahtzen bizzle?” Henry asked.
“Indeed, young man!” Coralis laughed. “But watch your tongue. There are ladies present.”
Grandma Gailene led them into the restaurant, where the hostess nodded a playful smile at Coralis, who winked and said, “Touché.”
The tables were three-quarters occupied, every patron clearly of Navajo descent and mostly men. They wore flannel shirts, rugged jeans, and wide-brimmed hats. Henry’s stares were answered with barely perceptible sideways glances. He recalled what Grandma Gailene said about a rare invitation and suddenly understood. This was a place for locals, not tourists. And whatever kinship Henry felt for this place, he was at best a newcomer and at worst an outsider. He was suddenly self-conscious.
They walked to the rear of the restaurant and entered the kitchen, where cooks ignored them as if they were merely pots and pans sitting on a stove top. Tucked into the back corner was a door. A thick oaken door surrounded by runes and ancient symbols. A door Henry recognized from an underground cemetery in New York City.
Coralis grunted in satisfaction. “Ah, now we’re getting somewhere.” He studied the symbols. “This is no common entrance. There is sacred ground beyond this point.”
Grandma Gailene motioned for him to continue, and he raised a wand and lightly touched symbols in each of the four corners. The door latch popped. Coralis opened the door and stepped through.
Henry swallowed hard as he crossed the threshold—hesitant and unsure of himself. Coralis’s words of wisdom came back to him: No one is ever ready for the odd and unusual turns of life. It made him feel a little better.
The first flight of stairs ended in a basement the likes of which he expected to see in a restaurant. Cans of food lined shelves along one wall, while boxes of cleaning supplies were stacked along another. But he could sense there was more to this space than met the eye.
Coralis advanced to the center of the room and withdrew another wand—weathered and off-white, slender, with several knobby protrusions. Henry gasped as he realized it was a bone. Coralis whispered over it and the bone glowed with a subtle green hue. “Green,” he said curiously. “This should be interesting.”
Before Henry could ask what he meant, Coralis laid the bone wand down and flicked it into a spin. It slowly gained momentum, but once it got going, it quickly morphed into a circular blur. Directly beneath it, the floor began to change, smooth concrete turning to dust. The diameter widened by a foot.
Coralis had returned to Henry’s side. With a light touch to his shoulder he held the boy fast as the glow rippled beneath their feet. A tingling sensation traveled up Henry’s leg, and when it reached his heart, a feeling of euphoria engulfed him. His earlier trepidation was replaced with a giddy sense of joy.
When the ripple met the walls, Henry laughed aloud. Inch by inch, the walls and everything on them wavered like a mirage before disappearing. But it didn’t stop. The ceiling disappeared as well.
The glow, once again circular, closed in upon itself until it was the size of a quarter, then a dime, then the tiniest pinprick of light that popped out of existence. The bone stopped spinning and sagged like an exhausted runner.
They were left standing at the entrance to an awesome cavern, the size of which should not have been possible so close to the surface. Henry did not recall seeing a mountain behind the restaurant, yet the enormous cavern could only exist within one.
“That would explain the green.” Coralis’s voice echoed. “The wand I used was a Revealer. It can be used only once.” And before the echo stopped, the wand crumbled to dust. “Did you sense anything before I used it, Henry?”
He nodded. “I felt there was more here than I could see … but I never expected something like this.” His voice cracked as if parched.
“How is this possible?” asked Grandma Gailene.
Coralis examined her with curiosity. “They haven’t confided in you, have they? They sent you as the messenger, but didn’t tell you why.”
“I am not as gifted as my daughter,” she replied softly. “And those who have skills like the men and women of your Wandmakers’ Guild—those with the power to call upon the very Earth—are extremely rare. Even among full-blooded Diné.”
“What does that mean?” asked Brianna from Henry’s hand. “What is Diné?” She pronounced it Din-eh, as her grandmother had.
“It is the name of our people before we were known as Navajo. The Navajo Nation was once the Dinétah.”
“Come.” A deep voice rumbled through the cavern. In that one word, Henry could feel something that had been dormant and ancient come to life within his chest. With his free hand, he gripped the wand in his pocket and felt a warmth that comforted him.
“Come,” the voice said again, but this time another word was fed directly into Henry’s mind. “Welcome.”
It wasn’t until they had walked half the distance across the cavern that Henry noticed it was he, not Coralis, leading the way. He glanced worriedly at the Wand Master, who motioned him to keep going. As they got closer, he could make out the shape of a pile of rags at the base of the far wall. And closer still, the rags became a man—one so ancient he appeared to be made from the earth around him.
“Sit,” said the voice in his head. It was kind but insistent. Henry sat across from the Navajo man. “Diné,” the voice corrected him. Coralis and Grandma Gailene flanked either side of him. A small pile of fist-sized rocks lay between them and the Diné chief—for what else could he be, thought Henry. He placed Brianna on the ground and saw the briefest flicker of surprise in the old man’s eyes. And that’s when Henry recognized him. The face from his mother’s mural.
“We meet again,” he said to Coralis slowly, deliberately, as if unaccustomed to speaking more than a single syllable at a time.
“It has been a very long time.” Coralis bowed his head in respect. Something unspoken passed between the two men. The image of two heavyweight boxers sizing each other up before a big fight occurred to Henry.
“Ah, forgive me,” the Diné chief said to Grandma Gailene and the children. “I am Joseph.” He leaned forward and rearranged several of the rocks in a peculiar pattern, then pondered them for several minutes before speaking to Coralis. “He has the blood.”
Coralis nodded. “And the talent.” He added, “And the innocence.”
Joseph acknowledged the silent message. “You are his grandmother?”
“Yes,” Grandma Gailene said hoarsely.
“The generations are important, especially now. There is much at stake. I have foreseen this day. Evil will rise tonight, but the form it takes has not been revealed. Perhaps the great Coralis has knowledge of it?”
“Not all,” Coralis said uncomfortably. “But with some luck, we will know what we are facing.”
Joseph cough
ed. Henry realized he was laughing. “Luck? You entrust the fate of the world to luck?”
Coralis’s back stiffened. Henry shifted closer to Grandma Gailene, expecting him to explode with anger. “Knowledge and wisdom are important, but in battle, luck can swiftly shift momentum.”
“Then we will need our share,” said Joseph. He held out his hands with his palms facing outward as if he were warming them over an imaginary fire. Henry felt something tug at a knot in his stomach, a gentle but firm pulling sensation. As Joseph’s hands moved, so did the knot, from one side to the other, then up into his chest.
A strong scent of incense, musty and bitter, drifted into Henry’s nose and filled his mind with hazy images, like figures moving in smoke. Gradually, the shadowy forms took concrete shape, and Henry was witnessing a battle scene. A man who could only be Joseph in his youth led a company of warriors against a pale-skinned invader. The man wielded a wand that controlled wind and fire. The essence of evil oozed from his pores.
Henry flinched as the man looked directly at him and pointed the wand. Fire erupted and Henry screamed, breaking the trance. “What just happened?” His voice echoed loudly. No one answered. Coralis, Joseph, and Grandma Gailene sat with their legs crossed, palms facing upward on their knees, eyes closed. Brianna lay next to him, asleep—and in human form!
Before the shock could register, incense again pervaded his senses, and he was back at the scene of the battle. But this time Henry stood alongside the foreign man, who smiled at him. “So, you’ve chosen to join me after all,” said the man in a familiar voice. Henry looked into the man’s face: the face of his father.
He screamed and woke again. This time everyone was awake and staring at him—and Brianna, to his sadness, was still very much a hedgehog.
“You have failed him, Coralis.” Joseph’s voice was barely a whisper.
“I did all I could,” Coralis answered with the tired edge of a defeated man. “But the moonbeams had already merged with his aura, and to pull any more out of him might have killed him.”
“He may yet choose to be our enemy,” said Joseph.
Coralis shook his head gravely. “His heart is true.”
“Perhaps,” whispered Joseph. “Perhaps.”
“When the time comes, he will not fail us,” Coralis insisted.
“And the girl?” Joseph asked, motioning toward Brianna. “The change in her goes beyond her physical appearance.”
“When the time comes, she too will be our ally. I give you my word.”
Joseph arched an eyebrow. “I hope the word of Coralis is enough.” He stood and pressed his back against the cavern wall. The rock melted away, revealing an opening as dark as pitch. “Come,” he said. He stepped into the opening and the darkness swallowed him whole.
“Because a blind man cannot see, his other senses become more acute—more sensitive. He can smell or hear things before others can. The man with sight takes things for granted. The blind man truly appreciates that which he cannot see.” Joseph led the way in darkness, his voice trapped within the walls of a narrow tunnel that left only enough room to travel in single file. “Follow my voice. Extend your senses. Do not be frightened by the dark.”
Brianna giggled and Joseph stopped. He turned to see a dull glow emanating from Henry, and sighed.
“Sorry.” Henry shrugged.
“Fine.” Joseph sighed again. “Just keep up.”
Behind him, Henry heard what might have been a muffled laugh coming from Coralis. “It’s good to keep him on his toes,” he said directly into Henry’s mind.
Henry wasn’t too sure about that. He liked the old man and wanted to show respect. He cursed the residual moonbeam that would not let go, and swore to himself to fight against it.
They walked a great distance. If there were any twists or turns in the tunnel, they were so gradual that they were imperceptible. Occasionally, Joseph muttered words in a language unfamiliar to Henry.
Time seemed to slow down—their steady pace might have taken them miles before they came to the end. A solid wall blocked their path and Joseph knelt. He began to hum, then chant to a rhythm that sang to the earth. Coralis and Grandma Gailene stood to either side of Henry, each taking a hand and gently squeezing. Joseph’s voice rose in volume, the chant assuming a sense of urgency.
Then it abruptly stopped.
He picked up a twig—an item out of place on the otherwise bare ground. He stood and touched the twig to four points on the stone wall, the outline of a door that silently opened outward.
Despite all that Henry had seen over the past weeks, he gasped.
Joseph beckoned him to enter. “Come and meet our allies, my son.”
The labor was exhausting but Markhor found his rhythm. As did Dai She. By the time he had extracted the next crystal from the chamber, Dai She had transformed the previous one into a perfect glasslike pillar. With great relief, he hauled the final crystal to the mouth of the cave. What appeared to be one last obstacle was quickly overcome when Dai She used a wand to melt a hole through the pavement so the crystal could be mounted into the earth beneath it.
Markhor wiped the sweat from his forehead, so physically spent that he momentarily lost his concentration, revealing his true self. He looked upon Dai She with a mixture of pride and regret. A split second before Dai She looked up, he regained his composure, but Dai She had noticed something.
“What was that?” he snapped.
“What was what?” Markhor asked innocently.
“Your face,” he said suspiciously. “For just a second—”
“We are both exhausted,” Markhor interrupted. “I suggest we get some rest. No point in going through all this work only to make a careless mistake from lack of sleep.”
Dai She continued to stare untrustingly at him.
“If you’re seeing things that aren’t there, perhaps you are already too tired.”
Dai She flushed red with anger. “There will be no mistakes! It is you who are weak.” He bristled with energy. Markhor thought he would lash out at him … and he’d seen what he was capable of. But he settled down and the energy dissipated. He walked into the shade of the tunnel. “Get me something soft to use as a pillow. You take first watch. No more than an hour.”
A shadow shifted and they both looked to the horizon, where the top edge of the full moon had just crested.
“What are you waiting for? Do it now!”
Markhor used what energy he had left to mask his disdain—and to imprint a sleep spell into Dai She’s mind. Dai She yawned, long and widemouthed. Markhor smiled. He nudged Dai She’s leg to make sure he was out, then let the facade of Henry’s father completely dissipate as he raised his arms to soak in the rays of the bad moon.
The new cavern was nothing like the one Coralis had revealed earlier. This one was much smaller—or perhaps it only seemed that way because of the number of people in it. Henry counted off a group of ten and estimated there must have been close to a hundred people gathered. “Allies,” Joseph had called them. Men and women with power over the Earth.
Flaring torches lined the roughly circular walls at regular intervals, bathing the cavern in an eerie red glow.
Joseph signaled for everyone to sit. All but one obeyed the command. A young girl about Henry’s age stepped forward, weaving her way through the assembly. She carried a single wand, delicately carved and finely polished. In the cavern’s dim glow, the wand looked like an extension of her hand, matching her slim fingers. She pointed it at him.
Suddenly Henry grimaced in pain! He fell to his knees as agony exploded in his head. Then as suddenly as it appeared, it was gone. And in its place was a vision of a world untamed by man. It occurred to him that if there was a picture of the world “in the beginning,” this was it.
The vision rushed at him, revealing plains of long grass that bent before him as he soared past. He crested a small rise and gasped in awe. A herd of bison stretched from horizon to horizon. He floated above them, close enough
to reach out and touch them.
As he crested the next rise, a herd of wild stallions appeared, as vast as that of the bison. He zoomed past one horse after another, until he came to a regal beast the color of night. His coat was flawless, as if painted with purest black, then dipped in lacquer.
As Henry approached, the horse reared up on his hind legs and kicked out in fury. Searing heat interrupted the vision. It faltered and Henry panicked. He felt himself falling and was afraid of crushing one of the horses. Or worse, getting trampled by the herd. But just before he touched the ground, something lightly brushed his shoulder and the cavern came back into focus.
The young girl stood back and smiled. Henry swallowed, hard. Despite all he had just seen, the only thought in his head was how pretty she was. He felt the heat returning, but this time it was from blushing.
Joseph made a few soft noises that erupted into laughter. And suddenly everyone was laughing. Henry’s initial reaction was anger, but one look into the face of the girl and it dissipated as quickly as it appeared. “What just happened?” he asked her.
The laughter died and the assembly rose up.
“You have just seen the past and the future,” the girl said.
Henry had no experience with describing such things, but from the way authors described things like this, he’d say her voice was the color of the rainbow and the scent of wild flowers. “Who are you?” he managed to ask.
“I am your dream girl … figuratively speaking, of course.”
“Of course,” he answered, though her answer made no sense to him.
“My name is Serena.”
Henry could not think of a more appropriate name. With no effort at all, he saw her aura. It was … peaceful. The most beautiful arrangement of light and color he could imagine. He wanted to ask if she was a goddess, but realized how absurd that would sound.
“Never be afraid to ask a question, Henry.” It was Joseph’s voice this time.
Henry looked from Joseph to Coralis. “I wish you two would stop doing that.”