Trail of Lightning (The Sixth World #1)(33)
I can’t say why the memory rushes back with the force it does. I’m good at keeping it locked away. Maybe it was Tah’s careless mention of my childhood, maybe Coyote’s crude prodding at the ugly facts, and maybe the truth was that any time I get the least bit comfortable and let my guard down, it’s there, waiting for me, and it always will be.
The blood.
I remember there was so much blood.
Rivers of it, lakes of crimson soaking into the cheap carpet around my grandmother’s broken body. She’s wearing her bathrobe, a fuzzy blue-and-white Walmart bargain find that I keep trying to get her to throw away. She insists it’s fine for an old woman, and teases me for being vain for preferring my pink velour sweatpants, also last season from Walmart, but certainly more fashionable than her baggy thing.
We are sitting on the couch watching an old Western. We don’t often run the generator just to watch videos, but we’re celebrating. It’s my sixteenth birthday. We’ve even made cake.
On the screen a proper white lady in a bonnet and hoop dress is asking the beleaguered hero with a star pinned to his chest for help against the Comanche Indians. I make some crack about the ridiculous braided wigs the “Indian” actors are wearing, and my grandmother hushes me, not wanting my sixteen-year-old cynicism to ruin her good time.
We both flinch at the unexpected hammering on the door. Short on its heels comes the hooting and laughter and the pounding on the walls outside. Somewhere a coyote yips wildly, its own eerie laughter. Faces glimpsed and then lost through the windows, flickering in and out like firelight. Around and around, and we realize they’re circling us. At least half a dozen of them, maybe more, dancing around our trailer like movie Indians circling the wagon, but we’re all Diné here, and for a minute we can’t figure out what’s going on.
We stare at each other, stunned helpless in our confusion and panic. Slow terror creeps up my neck, cold whispers licking at my ears. I sit there uselessly. Until my grandma yells at me to get the shotgun. She keeps one by her bed. In the other room.
But by then it’s too late.
The door bursts open, ushering in the February air and the evil that rides behind it.
I catch a glimpse of the yee naaldlshii witch wearing the wolf skin and dead man’s jewelry before his pack of followers is through the door, flowing around him like an uncontained tide.
I sprint for the gun. Hear my grandmother’s voice rise in shrill indignation. And then the terrible sound of impact as something cracks across her skull.
There’s a heaviness on my back, and I’m falling, tackled from behind. My chest hits the floor. Air whooshes from my lungs. The taste of chemicals fills my mouth as my head is shoved into the carpet. A fleshy hand scrapes across my face, smelling like burned pig fat. I bite, drawing blood. A man screams and lets go.
A chance to run, and I fight with all I have, scrambling on hands and knees to get away. Until a booted foot smashes me to the ground. Strong fingers massage the back of my head, almost a loving caress through my hair at first, and then he grabs a fistful and slams my face into the floor. Again, again. Pain explodes behind my eyes, blood flows where I bite through my tongue. He doesn’t stop until I lie still.
My vision begins to fail under the onslaught of agony. I force my eyes to focus long enough to see the witch’s face peer down at me. He’s wearing a wolf’s head on top of his own, the jaw gaping at his forehead and the boneless arms hanging down past his ears. The witch’s eyes are a pale gray and his teeth, as he smiles at me, are rotted and yellow.
His face disappears as the edges of my world close in and everything goes black.
I wake. For a moment, I think I must be dead. But my mouth still tastes like ammonia and blood. And there are voices, arguing. The witch and his men. My head throbs in blacks and purples and the words they speak are too fast for me to follow. Strange words I don’t recognize. No. There’s one. Ná’á’ah. The Navajo word for butchering.
And I know why they’ve come. What they plan to do. And that the fat I smelled on the man’s hands wasn’t pig fat at all.
Another voice. My grandmother. I dare to open my eyes, and at first all I see is the dizzy swirl of snow through the open door, the pale landscape bled white and cold. Then my grandmother speaks again, this time a low desperate begging. A scrambling noise, grunts and shouts, and the popping sound of a fist striking jawbone. My grandmother silenced. I hear a new noise and can’t figure it out. Until I do. The sound of rope against wheel, as they string my grandmother from the ceiling.
Sudden hands on me. I’m hauled to my feet. The earth careens, unsteady. Blood drips from my nose, my lips. I swallow and taste my own death.
The witch shoves something at me. Forces my fingers tight around it. He steps back, diseased eyes never leaving mine. Points at my nalí and then mimes a sharp cut across her throat. He whispers one word. Mercy.
My hand shakes. I drop the knife. Someone laughs, a sound like the hooting of an owl. The witch shakes his head in mock disappointment. It’s a joke to him. It’s all a joke.
The punch to my gut comes so fast all I feel is the dull nausea afterward. Tears flood my eyes.
A braver girl, a smarter girl, would fight. Would take that knife and use it against the witch. Find a way to kill them all and save her grandmother. Be the hero. But I’m not that girl. I’m slow and dumb and can’t even hold a knife in my shivering hand.