by Jen Minkman
Josh kept his gaze on the sand in front of him. “Because I fell in love with you, they could harm you. Because I love you, they want to harm you. And they will keep trying to harm you until you’re dead.”
Hannah froze. “They want to kill me?” she choked out. Her heart was suddenly beating erratically. She inadvertently shook her head, as if to deny and take away the words Josh had spoken.
“You’re afraid.” His mouth was set in a grim line. “And rightly so. You should be afraid. You have no idea what those monsters are capable of.”
He suddenly hugged her in a tight embrace, stammering helplessly, “I shouldn’t have allowed myself to fall in love with you, but I couldn’t help it.”
Tears welled up in her eyes. Josh sounded so guilty, afraid and desperate.
“Hey.” She nudged him in the side, crawling into his embrace. “I don’t blame you. I’m happy you fell in love with me. Despite everything.”
He raised his head, locking eyes with her. “You have no idea how careful I have been. How afraid I was things might go wrong. How angry I was ... how sad I felt when I discovered those chindi had found you after all. I saw the medicine pouch around your neck while you were sleeping at Antelope Canyon.”
“So that’s why you left me.”
“You can still leave me. I’d understand it if you wanted to.”
Hannah closed her eyes, suddenly seeing Josh’s face in front of her like it was in her dream about the rock plateau above Canyon de Chelly. Another life. A decision that had cost her so much anguish. She now understood a lot more about her dreams, but there were still many unanswered questions, too. She shook her head, but Josh didn’t seem to notice. He stared into the distance, his mind wandering.
“I was always on my guard against them.” The words spilled out like a torrent now that he had finally broken his silence. “Ever since I knew what could happen to me and my lover. Always careful ... but there was no real reason to be, in fact. I simply wouldn’t allow myself to love anyone, not after all I’d seen during my vision quest. I vowed never to let myself fall in love. And then something happened I didn’t expect. You came back to St. Mary’s Port after a long time. Ben told me you’d be here for the summer. I was looking forward to seeing you again. In my mind, you were a long-lost sister.”
He smiled at her, and she felt herself blush shyly. “But that’s not what fate had in store for me,” he continued. “When I saw you sitting there in your car at the gas station, singing along to your radio with such abandon, something stirred in me that I couldn’t stop. That evening on the beach only made it stronger. I felt such a strong connection to you. I just wanted to be close to you. Hold you in my arms. Love you without holding back. I wanted to kiss you, make you laugh out loud, make love to you. I felt young. I was young and reckless in your presence.”
Hannah blinked. What a strange way of putting things. Josh sounded like he was already an old man when he’d met her.
“That Wednesday afternoon in the kitchen...” A small smile played around his lips. “If you hadn’t backed away from me, I would have made my move right then and there. But there was something in your eyes holding me back, and I suddenly got so insecure. I thought I’d made a mistake. You probably only saw me as a little brother, nothing more.”
“No, I didn’t. I just felt shy.” She blushed.
“Well, it stopped me right in my tracks, and that’s when I came to my senses. I was ready to kick myself. I hadn’t considered what could happen. Hadn’t considered your safety. I decided to keep a distance and see if weird things would happen around you.” Josh bit his lip. “Thursday morning, when you were in Page...”
“You saw me standing in front of the music store,” she finished.
“You saw me look?” he asked, ashamed.
“Yeah. Something was off about your behavior. There was this ... wall between us. An invisible barrier.”
“I saw you, and all of a sudden, I saw three strange shadows appear behind you. It only lasted for a second – they disappeared so quickly that I thought I’d made it up myself, but it was still enough to throw me. I didn’t go outside to talk to you. I wanted to think about the vision. And I wanted to make sure I wasn’t just hallucinating about things I was scared of.”
“Is that why you were so afraid when that coyote started to howl close to Rainbow Bridge? And I had that vision?”
“Yes.” New tears welled up in his eyes. “I thought I was going mad. I already suspected the chindi terrorized your dreams, because Ben told me you had trouble sleeping and you had nightmares.”
Hannah stared at him feeling guilty. “And a few days later, you found that medicine bundle around my neck. You knew I’d been keeping things from you. And you knew everything you were afraid of had actually happened.” She stared at her feet. “Sorry. Really.”
“You couldn’t help it. I should have told you sooner. I should have warned you. I shouldn’t have gotten you involved in the first place.”
“Don’t say that, Josh. Like you had a choice. When you fall for someone, you fall for someone. You can’t help it. I couldn’t help myself, either.” She smiled.
He nodded, smiling himself. “Okay, you have a point. I don’t regret it.”
“Nor me.”
“Not even now?”
“No. Not even know.”
He grabbed her hand. “In the four days following our break-up, I tried to protect you by performing a ritual.”
“So you weren’t in Tuba City?”
“No. I was in the mountains with a special jish Sani lent me. I had to break all ties between us. That’s why I ditched you the hard way. It would help the ritual if you weren’t in love with me anymore. Hearing from Sani how deeply unhappy you were when you paid him a visit on Friday was horrible, though. He was actually giving me grief about the way I was handling things. He insisted I should confide in you.”
Hannah couldn’t help smiling. Here she’d been thinking Sani had fobbed her off, but the old hataalii had scolded Josh like he was a stubborn grandson.
“And so you did,” she said.
“Yes,” he simply said.
So this was it. Josh had an invisible burden, like Ben said. It was something he hadn’t been able to discuss with anyone except the medicine man of the village. This was the answer, but it only brought up more questions.
Hannah put an arm around Josh’s shoulders. “But ... why are you cursed? Who are these warlocks?”
“A vindictive hataalii and his twin sons.”
“Why are they seeking revenge? For what? What have you ever done to them?”
A bitter smile crept up his face, and he almost squeezed her hand to a pulp. “Something terrible,” he replied, so quietly she almost couldn’t hear him.
“H-how terrible?” she stuttered. Oh. This story was suddenly taking a turn for the worse.
He sighed. Hannah’s heart hammered in her throat when he stayed silent for a very long time. “Be honest with me,” she whispered.
Josh pulled his hand free, sat back against the rock and stared into the distance. “Okay. I killed someone. A Spanish woman. The hataalii’s lover, who then turned against me together with his family.” He turned toward her and his gaze didn’t leave her eyes. He was really serious.
Hannah swallowed. Oh my God. Murder? “But how... You? How can that be? It can’t be. When did you...?” she trailed off.
“During the Pueblo Revolt in Arizona,” he replied.
Hannah stopped breathing. Her eyes went wide. She stared at Josh.
“In the year 1680,” he added.
Hannah had dug her heels in the sand of Lone Rock Beach, leaning her elbows on her knees. The flip-flops she wore were cutting into the skin between her toes, but she didn’t register it. She was only aware of Josh, who’d scooted away from her, staring at the rock rising up from the lake with a grim face. Lone Rock. The way he sat there, he looked like a lone rock himself, unapproachable and untouchable, surrounded by water. Han
nah tried to gather courage to speak to him again. She gingerly moved closer, put an arm around his shoulders and kissed his cheek.
Finally, Josh broke the silence. “Do you believe in reincarnation?” he asked quietly.
“Yes. Although I don’t think about it every day.” Her heart sped up. Actually, in the past few days that had been different.
“Imagine having to think about it every day. Because you still remember what happened in your past lives.”
She stared at him. Slowly, it began to dawn on her. “That must be quite a burden.”
Josh let go of her and took his wallet out of his jeans pocket. Carefully, he plucked out two photographs from a section at the front, showing them to Hannah. She took the black-and-white pictures, looking at the top one. It featured a group of soldiers, and it said ‘1943’ in old-fashioned handwriting underneath. She focused on the men, who were all wearing soldier’s uniforms and were clearly of Navajo descent. The man in the upper left corner caught her eye. She rubbed the face with the tip of her finger, as if it would change under her touch. The eyes staring back at her from the photo were Josh’s eyes.
He slowly nodded, like she’d asked him a question. “Yes. That’s me. I was one of the codetalkers, the Diné who fought in the Second World War against Japan. I was thirty-three years old in that picture.”
She blinked, staring at the soldier with Josh’s face, older and wiser, from a different era. She wished she could say something, but she was completely tongue-tied.
Fingers trembling, she put the picture aside and looked at the other one Josh had handed to her. It featured an elderly man with a tired, gaunt face. Harsh lines showed around his mouth, but his eyes looked gentle and friendly. The man was dressed in a mixture of traditional Navajo clothes and late nineteenth-century American fashion. Her gaze fell on the date scribbled in the bottom right corner – 1868.
Her eyes squinting in concentration, she suddenly saw the familiar traits of Josh’s face in the expression of the old man.
“The Americans called me Barboncito,” Josh spoke. “I was one of the Diné leaders. This photo was taken after I signed the treaty with the United States. We were allowed to return to our homeland. I was forty-seven in this picture.” He shook his head. “A difficult, unfair life makes you old beyond your years.”
Hannah blinked her eyes in confusion, handing the photos back to Josh. “Where did it all start?” she stammered. “Who are you? And why do you keep coming back as the same person, with the same face and with all your memories?”
Josh put the pictures back in his wallet and hugged his knees, staring at the horizon.
“I was born in the year 1520, according to your calendar. America was untouched and empty. My tribe roamed the southwest, hunting deer and gathering wild plants. We were in balance with nature around us. Asdz Nádleehé, Changing Woman, our goddess, took care of us. The sky and the earth were our parents. We walked the earth in beauty, and we respected the way everything in the universe had its place.”
A tiny shiver went through Hannah’s body. Josh suddenly sounded so different – so unworldly. She wanted to take his hand and sit closer to him, but she didn’t dare.
“When I turned fourteen, I went to the desert alone, searching for my animal spirit. It was an intense vision quest. My totem animal, the bear Shash, manifested himself.” Josh sounded dreamy. The absent look in his eyes clearly showed her he was re-living the moment he was telling her about. “He told me that the life of our people would radically change during my lifetime. On the third and final day of my vision quest, he showed me how the change would come about. He gave me a terrible vision.” Josh shuddered. “I saw people sailing the ocean and landing on our shores. They brought disease. They had hairy, pale faces and they divided the world into good and evil, thinking everyone should think like them. They walked on the earth as if God created it for them alone, believing they didn’t need to share any of it with their brothers and sisters. And with all their riches, they were so empty inside. I could see them flooding our continent, changing our culture, destroying our old ways of life. I saw how we would be torn asunder, how our land would be exploited and abused.”
Tears shone in his eyes, and Hannah couldn’t help putting her arms around him in a gentle embrace.
“In despair, I turned to Shash. I wanted to know why he’d shown me the vision, and what I could do to stop those things. So he offered me a chance to protect my people, through the centuries. He gave me his life force and his mark, so I would have a long life line.”
Hannah swallowed. “And that way, you could help your people?”
He nodded. “I return, time and time again. I have the same memories, the same visions, but more wisdom each lifetime. I am Shash, protector of the Diné since the European invasion. My people’s medicine men know me. I am a mythical figure each generation silently waits for to bring peace and change to our world. Every hataalii awaits my arrival, and keeps it a secret when I appear. In each lifetime, I wake up during the vision quest I take after my fourteenth birthday. It helps me remember who I am and what I am supposed to do.”
“To make peace,” Hannah mumbled. “And to find it for yourself.” She remembered what he’d told her.
Josh nodded slowly. “I am a man of peace, a peace leader, and I’m thankful for the task that was given to me. I chose it myself. But it gets lonely sometimes. The people around me move, live their lives, touch me and leave me again. And I stay behind – in the shadow of time.”
Hannah kept quiet, her mind spinning. Finally, everything was clear. Why Josh seemed so old for his age. Why he knew so much about Diné history. Why he had a birthmark shaped like a bear. And why he always kept his distance from people, not even allowing himself to love her.
“What about those skinwalkers?” she asked feebly. “Are they as old as you?”
Josh sighed. “That’s an entirely different story. The yenaldlooshi came to visit me after the Pueblo Revolt in 1680 to confront me in their coyote shapes. A father and his two sons. During the attack on a Spanish mission, I killed a woman working at the convent. She turned out to be the hataalii’s lover. In fact, he had stopped being a hataalii at that point. He practiced black magic. Like his two sons.”
“And he was angry.”
“And he wanted revenge. He said he wouldn’t rest until he’d taken from me what I had taken from him.”
“Did you have a wife then?” Hannah inquired softly.
“No. At the time, I was sixty years old, and quite frankly, I didn’t take his threat seriously. I only discovered later that their curse reached far beyond the boundaries of one lifetime.”
Hannah’s eyes widened. “How? Are they time-travelers or something?”
“They’re not really here,” Josh replied. “They still live in the seventeenth century. They’re in a trance. They have entered the veil, the world between worlds, and they are dreaming. They’re oneironauts – dream travelers. Using the veil, they find my long life line. They enter my life, seeking out my loved one. The only thing they want is revenge. They cursed me, and they will never give up. They don’t have to. ‘Never’ doesn’t mean anything in this context. Time is of no consequence to them.”
“They’re... dreaming?” Hannah asked doubtfully. “So how can they be here? This is not a dream. This is the real world.”
“There are many realities.” Josh shook his head. “I can’t explain it fully. For some peoples, the dream world is as real as the normal world.”
“So they’re like ghosts. A mirror image of themselves.” Hannah was talking more to herself than to Josh. Only now she understood why Amber hadn’t seen auras with the skinwalkers. They weren’t really here. They only appeared as dream images, using the emotional bond between her and Josh to seek them out. And as long as she stayed with him, they would be able to find her. As long as she stayed with him, loving him, they would keep trying to kill her.
She put her face in her hands and started to cry. This was so
incredibly unfair. It was like her whole world was turned upside down, leaving her empty-handed. Josh had turned into a stranger with a life she could never really share with him.
“I’m so sorry I’m crying,” she sniffed. “I wanted you to open up to me, I wanted to help you. Really be there for you.”
“I know.” His tone of voice was so understanding and resigned it made her cringe. This was terrible. She couldn’t accept that he’d been right all along about leaving her. She couldn’t leave him.
When she looked up again, a sudden black cloud veiled her eyes. She stiffened. Not another vision. Was she in danger again?
No. It didn’t feel like that. A bright pinpoint of light shimmered somewhere in the distance, emitting rays of warmth and safety. Holding her breath, she strained her eyes to make out what it was that she was looking at. It was blue, and it was fluttering. “Follow me,” she heard a light voice that sounded feminine, but somehow not human. “Whenever you’re lost, follow me.”
She tried to focus on the image in front of her, and suddenly, she saw what it was – a small, blue butterfly dancing above her head. The same butterfly that had helped her in the haunted house.
“I’m not lost,” she replied in thought. “I just don’t know what to do. I’m scared.”
The butterfly darted to the right, and all of a sudden, the sun started to shine. Hannah found herself on the rocky outcropping overlooking Canyon de Chelly.
In front of her were Josh and an unfamiliar Diné woman. A woman with long, plaited hair and a delicate face. Very slowly, the image became clearer, like somebody was adjusting the lens on a camera. The young woman looked up at Josh with so much love and pain in her eyes it took Hannah’s breath away.
She was that woman.
Josh looked back at her with a sad expression in his eyes. So sad. It stabbed right through her heart.