“Hey, Coyote, who’s your friend?”
“That’s Coyote. Coyote, meet Mr. Druid.”
“Howdy, Mr. Druid,” the man said. His voice was deep, like Michael Clarke Duncan’s, a low resonant bass that you felt as much as heard.
“Hi,” I said, then frowned at Coyote. “What do you mean?” I asked. “Is he from another tribe?”
“Nope, he’s from the Diné,” Coyote replied, obviously enjoying my confusion. “You don’t know our stories as well as you should. Most tribes have only the one Coyote, but in some versions of the Diné Bahane’—the tale of Emergence — there are two.”
“I’m Great Coyote,” the deep voice said. “Or sometimes Coyote Who Was Formed in the Water.”
“And I’m the one the Diné call Áłtsé Hashké,” Coyote said, then tossed his head at his companion. “He definitely has the better reputation. I get blamed for everything.”
“Two Coyotes?” I said. “What should I call you? Black Hat and White Hat? I can’t call you both the same thing.”
Coyote in the white hat said, “I tell people sometimes that my name is Joe,” he said. “Does that work for you?”
“Very well,” I said, and turned to Coyote in the black hat, who’d apparently been playing me for a sucker much longer than I thought. “And what about you?”
“You ain’t gonna call me by my real name, so just keep callin’ me Coyote and that way you won’t get confused.”
It was no wonder, I thought, that Frank hadn’t been sure which one of the First People Mr. Benally was. His comment that they were “capable of trickin’ a fella pretty good” made much more sense now. To my magical sight, Coyote and Joe looked exactly the same. There was no way to tell them apart. Only in the visible spectrum did they appear any different, and I’m sure that was by choice.
“Gotta thank you, Mr. Druid,” Coyote said. “Haven’t been able to get a shot at these boys in a long time.”
Joe nodded. “That’s right. This time we should be able to take care of them.”
“Take care of them how?” I gestured at the red gasoline containers. “You going to burn the bodies?”
“Well, for a start. If we stopped there, then the First World spirits could take off,” Coyote explained.
I was lost for a moment, but then I nodded. “Oh, I see. Because they’re bound to the ch’įįdiis and the ch’įįdiis are bound to the bodies.”
“Right. So if we just burn ’em and disperse the ghosts, then they’ll hightail it to Window Rock or someplace, turning regular assholes into superfast shape-shifting cannibal assholes.”
“Don’t you have a ritual to combat these guys?”
Coyote lifted his hat and scratched his head. “Well, Mr. Druid, it’s all defense and no offense. It’s protection like the Blessing Way, and there’s some exorcism in the Enemy Way — but there’s nothin’ to kill ’em with. All the killing rituals are on their side—’cause they’re practicin’ Áńł’įįh, the Witchery Way. Sometimes we get lucky and can turn their own spells against ’em. But these guys got smart and stopped doin’ ceremonies like that a long time ago, stopped spreadin’ their corpse powder around. Ain’t a doubt in my mind these spirits were behind that. They used their speed and strength to kill people and left me an’ the hataałiis nothin’ to work with.”
“So how do you kill them?”
“You can’t kill ’em,” Joe said, his voice cut with a note of impatience. “They’re damn spirits. All you can do is send ’em somewhere else — somewhere safe.”
“An’ that means sendin’ ’em back to First World,” Coyote said. “These things have been playin’ around up here for far too long. Once we get ’em back there, they’ll be stuck.”
“Why would they be stuck?” Granuaile asked. “Is there flypaper for spirits down there or something?”
Joe laughed and squatted down on his haunches to untie his jish. “That’d be nice, ’cause then they wouldn’t bother us when we visit. But Coyote means they won’t be able to leave First World again. The doorway to Second World was closed long ago, an’ now only he an’ I can go back there an’ return again.” He peered up at Coyote. “We’re gonna need to get these caltrops outta the way, though, before we can start.”
Granuaile said, “There’s a couple of brooms in the hogan. I’ll go grab them.” As her footsteps crunched behind me, I felt foolish standing there with a naked sword, so I gingerly crept back into the circle, keeping my distance from the skinwalker’s body, and recovered the scabbard. I sheathed Moralltach and slung it over my back. Coyote tossed his manila envelope onto the ground behind him; whatever was in there wasn’t important to him right now.
Inside Joe’s jish were some feathers, rattles, pouches of herbs, and two sacred buckskins. He divided the contents with Coyote.
When Granuaile returned with two brooms, we carefully brushed all the caltrops to the south side against the wall. She saw Frank there and quietly said, “He was such a sweet man. How did he die?”
“Heart attack. They didn’t get him, though. Other way around.”
She didn’t reply, only nodded, and then leaned her broom up against the wall of the butte. The two Coyotes were murmuring to each other in their own language. When they finished, Joe set off toward the other skinwalker, who had fallen to his death some thirty yards away to the west. Coyote stepped closer to the blackened one that Frank had killed and motioned us over.
“Wanna tell ya somethin’ in case somethin’—well, just in case, all right? See, in the beginnin’, me an’ Joe weren’t much differ’nt than that thing you see there.” He pointed at the boiling blackness of the First World spirit. “Except we were a whole lot sexier, o’ course. First Man and First Woman, they were spirits of the air too. We were people of mist, if you wanna think about it that way. An’ as we rose up through the worlds, we changed, an’ these bodies were given to us by the Holy People.” He tossed his head toward the spirits before continuing, “These fuckers, however, came up with us from First World, but they never got their bodies. They’re unevolved, see? Unless you wanna count the fact that they’ve turned from plain ornery to pigshit evil. Thing is, like Joe said, we can’t do anything to ’em when they’re spirits. So we’re gonna give ’em bodies. Their own bodies, not somebody else’s body they can possess and turn to the Witchery Way. Then we step on ’em.”
“Beg your pardon?” Granuaile said.
“They’re insects,” Coyote said. “Not sure what kind. Could be ants, could be those hard-shelled bigass beetles, could be dragonflies or locusts, but insects no matter what. When we get through with this ceremony, they’ll be bugs, and we can kill ’em easy and send ’em back to First World. They won’t be coming back, though. So you two can help by kinda standin’ over there.” He pointed to a space between the two skinwalker corpses. “Once they’re bugs, they’re gonna try to get away — they’ll skitter around or fly or somethin’—and we could use your help to chase ’em down.”
“What if they do get away?” Granuaile asked.
Coyote shrugged. “Ain’t that big a deal. What’s the average life span of a bug? They’ll die eventually. A bird will eat ’em if we’re lucky. They’ll be on the slow train to First World instead of the express, that’s all. The important thing is they’ll be mortal and won’t be able to harm anyone after this. We’re gonna get started now before the ch’įįdii start to disperse, all right?”