As if the threat of memories alone is enough to compel me, I find myself on my knees, reaching behind the narrow space between the head of my mattress and the wall. My hand hits cloth, and beneath it I feel the pommel of a sword. I know the rest of the sword is four feet long, its blade forged from the raw lightning that the sun gifted to his son as a weapon. His son who was once my mentor, once the only man I ever thought I’d love. But I tricked that man, trapped him and imprisoned him in the earth. I know I didn’t have a choice, that it was either him or me. And as much as I loved him, I loved myself just a little bit more.
So now the sword is mine.
I leave the sword where it is. It’s not meant for a simple bounty hunt. It’s too sacred, too bound in power and memories for me to take hunting with Hastiin. But one day maybe. Until then it stays put.
My shotgun rests on the gun rack next to my bed. It’s a beauty. Double-barrel-pump action with a custom grip. I take it from the rack and slide it into my shoulder holster. Adjust it so it sits just right, an easy draw from the left. Glock comes too. It rides on the hip opposite from my Böker. I pat it all down, reciting my list of weapons softly to myself, just to make sure everything’s where it’s supposed to be.
Tah catches me as I come out of my bedroom, a mug of Navajo tea in his wrinkled hands. “I thought I heard you in there,” he says cheerfully. “I’m ready to go. Just need to find my hat . . .” He trails off as he sees my weapons.
“Hastiin’s here,” I explain. “Some kind of emergency at Lake Asááyi and he needs backup. But he said he and the Boys’ll help us build your hogan tomorrow. They’ll even do all the heavy lifting.”
Tah’s thin shoulders fall forward in disappointment. For a moment he looks all of his seventy-odd years.
And I know that’s my fault, even before today’s small disappointment.
But Tah straightens, smiles. “Well, tomorrow’s just as good as today. I made some tea. Want to at least take a cup? It’s not coffee. . . .” He shakes his head, chuckles a happy laugh. “Remember when my grandson brought me all that coffee?”
“And the sugar, too,” I say. “I remember.”
I smile back, but it’s not much of a smile. In fact, it feels like I’m trying to smile past the broken place in my heart. We haven’t much talked about Black Mesa and what happened with Kai. And he hasn’t asked. But I saw him once, head together with Hastiin’s, when he thought I wasn’t listening, and I’m sure the mercenary told him what I did. Well, at least his side of the story, anyway. But Tah’s never asked me. Maybe he doesn’t want to know the truth.
“Just you wait, Maggie. He’ll come. Kai will come. And then maybe you’ll quit your moping.”
I look up, surprised. “I thought I was doing okay.”
He shakes his head. “Maybe we’ll both quit our moping.” He folds his hands tight around his mug of tea. Stares out the window at nothing. Or maybe he’s staring all the way across Dinétah to the All-American, where his grandson is alive and well.
Alive and well for more than a month and he hasn’t come to us. To me. When I asked Hastiin if he knew why Kai hadn’t come, he said, “Ask him yourself.” But I can’t. I’m too proud, or too scared to push it. If Kai doesn’t want to see me, I have to respect that. Even if I crawl into bed every night to stare at the ceiling and think about him. Even if I stumble out of bed bleary-eyed and restless a handful of hours later, still thinking about him. Even if every day starts and ends with the image of him lying dead at my feet. My last and most terrible deed, even worse than betraying my mentor. All of it eating me alive.
“When he’s ready,” Tah says quietly, more to himself than to me. “When Kai is ready he’ll come to us.”
I want to ask Tah when he thinks that will be, but he doesn’t know any more than I do. So I check my weapons again, my fingers lingering on the comfort of cold metal, and leave.
Chapter 2
Hastiin and the Thirsty Boys are gathered by their vehicles. Three of us pile into an armor-fitted jeep, Hastiin in the driver’s seat, me at shotgun with my shotgun literally across my lap, and another Thirsty Boy, the young one who was petting my traitorous pup, in the back. Two other Boys climb onto terrain-friendly motorbikes and lead us out. My dogs escort us, tails wagging, as far as the cattle guard that marks the edge of my property.
“Take care of the old man,” I tell my dogs, as the jeep rattles its way over the metal grating. They bark a happy farewell before turning back toward the trailer. Hastiin pulls out onto the road and turns us west.
“So how far to Asááyi these days?” I ask. “I hear that road’s shot to shit.”
“Half an hour.”
“Half an hour?” I ask, incredulous. “It’s eight, ten miles tops. Your jeep can’t go any faster than that?” Granted the road isn’t much more than a winding suggestion up the side of a mountain and down into the canyon and drought has pockmarked the red earth with massive potholes, but there’s no reason we shouldn’t get there in half the time Hastiin suggests.
“He drives like an old man,” the Thirsty Boy in the back remarks cheerfully. I glance back. He’s young, fifteen. Sixteen, maybe. Hair in a traditional bun, nice brown eyes. Somebody’s kid brother. No, check that. Now that I’m closer, I can see. Somebody’s kid sister.
“A girl?” I ask Hastiin. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”
Hastiin frowns. “Just ’cause I don’t like you much, Hoskie, doesn’t mean I don’t like women.”
I snort. “Yeah, right.”
“I’m the best tracker in Dinétah,” the new girl says. “He had to bring me if he wants to catch the White Locust. He didn’t have a choice.”
“I thought I was the best tracker in Dinétah,” I say.
The new girl’s eyes get big, and I give her a smile to let her know I’m not serious. Turn in my seat to get a good look at her. That almost bony frame, the crooked nose, the dimple I can see clear enough on her cheek, but that Hastiin hides behind his scruff of a beard. I turn back to Hastiin. “You’re related, aren’t you?”
He grumbles something.
“Speak up, Hastiin.”
“He and my mom are cousins!” the girl says. “Brother-sister, Navajo way.”
I used to think Hastiin was a hard-ass, one of the grizzled mercenary types that had seen it all and learned not to give a shit. Granted, he was always a dick to me before Black Mesa, so I might have been biased. But these past few weeks I’ve spent a lot of time with the man, and I’ve learned that underneath that rough exterior is a bit of a softie. I’m starting to appreciate him, and I think he feels the same way. I won’t ask him though. He’ll just deny it and demand that I crawl through a field of prickly goat’s head to prove how much he doesn’t care. But it doesn’t mean I can’t tease him.
“Our tracker’s got a point about your driving, Hastiin. Why don’t you let me drive?”
“Why don’t you sit there and look pretty, Hoskie?”
“Why don’t you retire while you still can, old man?”
Hastiin’s niece makes a choking sound. He looks back in alarm. “You okay?”
“No,” I say, “she’s not okay. She’s dying, very slowly, because it’s taking too long to drive to Lake Asááyi.”
Hastiin snorts, amused at my dumb joke. The jeep jerks forward as he presses the accelerator. I don’t even crack a smile. Like I said. Softie.
We make it to Asááyi in under twenty minutes.
Chapter 3
“What are we up against?” I ask, sliding out of the jeep parked at the edge of the lake. My moccasins kick up swirls of red dust. Around us stretch the red and white striated cliffs of Bowl Canyon. Pine trees dot the sides of the rock face, incongruous spikes of determined survival in a world made of hard surfaces and callous time. Long before the Big Water, before even the Diné became the Earth-Surface People that we are today, this part of the world used to be the floor of a great sea. The bilagáana scientists call that continental shift geology. We Diné don’t disagree exactly. We find the same strange ocean-born fossils in our rocks, the same signs of a world before ours, foreign and unfamiliar. We just attribute the current face of our homeland to different sources.