The Wind Thief (Vanished, #4), page 6
She shrugs. “The Quik-N-Go only takes cash. You’re the one that carries cash.”
The Smoker pops an eyebrow my way.
“Not a lot of cash,” Caroline adds quickly. “Like, just a very little bit of cash. Look, I’ll do it if you want.”
“No, hold on,” I mutter, digging out my wallet as I walk to the scratched-up window. The kid behind it looks about fourteen and stoned out of his mind. A ton of cigarettes sit on the shelves behind him. The Quik-N-Go basically sells cigarettes and energy drinks.
“Can you tell me what that fellow with the card table back there likes to smoke?”
The kid grabs a packet of some brand I’ve never heard of and rings it up. I pay him and walk back before I can think too hard about it. I can honestly say this is my first cigarette purchase. Forty-two-year streak broken right there.
I slide it across the card table, and the Smoker gives me a little bow of thanks before slitting it open, flicking one out, and lighting up in what seems like one fluid motion. He takes a deep drag and nods toward the sky. Then another. I fight the urge to start asking questions, starting with the empty clinic across the street. I’ve learned the blunt approach doesn’t work so well around here.
The Smoker holds the cigarette up to his line of sight like he’s appraising the thing. “Switched to lights to go a bit easier on the ol’ lungs,” he says. “Sort of a New Year’s resolution thing.”
I tap my fingers together and clear my throat. Caroline gives me a tiny shake of the head, and I swallow what likely was going to be an unkind remark about the health merits of light cigarettes versus regular old cigarettes when one smokes forty a day. In short, you’re dead either way. But if I went around offering unsolicited medical advice to every Navajo I saw, we’d be run out of town pretty quickly.
“Do you hear that?” he asks, eyes distant.
I listen but can’t hear anything above the buzz of the halogen lights and the constant thwacking of the moths that flock to them in the summer. Not at first.
Then I catch a sound. Underneath it all is a distant keening, a soft cry that almost seems a part of the sky itself.
“That is Tsoodził talking. You call it Mount Taylor.”
“Mount Taylor? No way. That’s halfway to Albuquerque.”
“When Tsoodził wants to be heard, distance doesn’t matter.”
Caroline shivers despite the heat. “So that’s wind?”
Smoke rolls lazily from the Smoker’s nose as he speaks. “Could be. Tsoodził talks when the wind blows. But Tsoodził also talks when the wind is going to blow.”
He takes one last drag, all the way down to the filter. “Nobody showed up today, right? At the clinic?” He gently puts the cigarette out on the ground before stashing the butt in a pocket. “Back when I was selling… other things… at the Arroyo, if we saw a dip in business, we knew it was because another shop had moved in.”
I blinked. “Now, hold on. What you do and what I do aren’t really on the same—”
Caroline cuts me off. “Who moved in?”
The Smoker plucks a stray bit of ash from the sleeve of his threadbare Cleveland Indians baseball jersey and furrows his brow as he watches it float away on an indiscernible breeze. “Jacob Dark Sky.”
The old Navajo’s sightless gaze comes back to me in a flash. Same with the way that black bear totem blazed when he touched it. I swear he could almost see me while I phased.
“I thought he was just here for Kai,” I say, my mouth dry. “Some nonsense to stop hand trembling, which in her case is simply a very treatable presentation of high blood sugar.”
The Smoker ignores my digression, and I feel a bit like an idiot having blurted it out.
“Word got out that he was doing old medicine. Powerful medicine,” he says, watching a stray bit of trash flip end over end through the empty CHC parking lot. “People say he is strong in the old ways, stronger than the elder twins, even.”
“What do you say?” Caroline asks.
His gaze turns toward her, and he seems taken aback for a moment. Shocked that anyone would care what he thinks, least of all one of us. But that’s where Caroline gets people. Not only does she ask, she actually cares. It’s in her DNA.
“I don’t know what to think,” he says. “But I know Dark Sky is starting a Holyway tonight. Rumor is it’s some kind of Windway. And I’m invited.”
The Smoker shrugs on his loaded pack. Settles it carefully on his back. “A true Windway takes days. But I hear Dark Sky is on another level.”
“And you really believe all this?” I ask, trying and failing to keep my cynical half at bay.
The Smoker clears a wheezy rumble in his chest and scratches gingerly at that spot on his neck again.
“He’d better be,” he says. “Otherwise I think I’m in real trouble.”
The Smoker walks off down the sidewalk without another word. That strange wind picks up a notch, the one he says rips around Mount Taylor even though it’s too far away even to catch a glimpse of on a clear day.
I believe that the Smoker and I are on opposite ends of pretty much everything, and I think he’d be the first to agree. But on this, he and I see eye to eye.
It feels like we’re all walking into trouble.
6
CAROLINE ADAMS
Whenever Grant has a problem and he doesn’t know what to do about it, he does this thing where he awkwardly takes up space in your general vicinity because he doesn’t really know how to start the conversation he wants to have. Just sort of hangs around, hands in the pockets of his jeans and a preoccupied look on his face.
I think it’s something ingrained from the days when he was a kid, not even ten years old but already on his own a lot. His grandfather loved him, but Abernathy was old school and distant. He had to figure out a lot of adult stuff by himself, at an age when kids shouldn’t be worrying about much of anything.
Grant told me once that when he was young, a group of older middle school kids chased him on his bike for three straight years every day after school. Kids, being kids, don’t really care if you’re an orphan or not. Middle school kids can be especially monstrous. But he dealt with it—mostly by running, which I totally get.
That kind of a childhood turns boys into men who have difficulty asking for help.
The third time I turn around in our little box of a kitchen and nearly bump into him, I say, “Alright, out with it.”
“What?” Grant asks, suddenly picking at his thumbnail.
“Usually, you’re always out doing something, here, there, in the garage, anywhere. When you stand around like this, something’s up. It’s Kai, isn’t it?”
Grant is still somehow surprised that I guessed right. I’m not sure what exactly he thinks I do all day when he’s on those twenty-minute phone calls with her, walking around the A-frame like it’s a running track. That Texas twang carries for days out here.
“I gave her the pump and the monitor and told her Dad would teach her how to configure the whole thing, but...”
“But what?”
Grant scratches at the surprisingly well-filled-in scruff at his chin. When did that get there? Every time I stand next to him, he seems taller. And a little more unsure. Especially when I remember the little eight-year-old boy he was, marching fearlessly into the Arroyo for the first time with a bird on his head. The longer we live, the more of that raw confidence seems to go out the window.
“But something ain’t right. Hos took her back to the trading post, where he’s putting up with that guy Dad saw, some medicine man from the Colorado Creek reservation out west named Jacob Dark Sky. But the elder twins don’t know him, and Chaco says he ain’t how he seems…”
I put my hands on his arms and try to will his smoke calmer. It’s changed color over the years. I remember when he was a boy, it bopped around him like a puppy, the harvest-brown color of goose down. It’s darker now, stronger, searching. It still calms at my touch. I bank that one. Still got it. I’ll try to remember that when I feel like I’m dropping every other ball in my life.
“Where’s Chaco?” I ask.
That bird is our first line of defense in the spiritual world but also in the world of Grant’s mind. And now that I think about it, I haven’t heard the rustle of his wings in a while.
“He was with me at the Arroyo. But he went across to the other side of the veil. He’s been over there more and more.”
Grant leaves it at that, but I know what he means. Chaco has been looking for Ben. With very little success.
“Is everything okay over there?” I ask, trying to keep my voice as professional as possible, which I realize is an odd thing to do when talking to family.
Grant runs a hand through his hair, longer now than it’s ever been. “He says a bad wind is rising in the thin place. That it’s been gathering bit by bit for a while now. How, or why, he can’t say. Just that it’s been a long time coming, and Dark Sky showing up made it a lot worse.”
When I first met Grant, he and Owen and I fought our way through a mess that came through a break in the thin place in the black desert of West Texas. Let’s just say it was not a super fun time. The longer we’ve lived here in relative peace, the more that whole ordeal feels like it happened to someone else. Like they told me about it over some very strong cocktails.
But it didn’t. It happened to me. To us. And now, something is happening again.
“I feel it too,” I say. “It’s like the smoke is… looking that way. Toward the Bodrey place.”
“I wish I knew what Dark Sky is gonna do to her,” he says, his eyes pleading.
“Do you want me to go out there?” I ask. In a way, I’m flattered. Grant thinks I might actually be able to hold my own with a bunch of radical bootleggers and a self-professed Navajo holy man in the Rez backcountry. That’s just nuts. Right now, I’m having difficulty deciding if I can finish the mac-n-cheese I set out to make in this kitchen.
“Just a quick phase in and out. I want to know what I’m up against, and I thought since you can see things, maybe you’ll see something Dad missed.”
I can’t help but think how Owen would be hurt to hear Grant talk like this. He would never let it show, of course. At least not until it came spilling out of him at three in the morning, when both of us are staring at the ceiling above the bed.
Owen has been pulling double shifts at the CHC. He’s staying late right now, manning the after-hours clinic, hoping someone shows up. That’s part of who he is, and I love him for it, but it’s the type of drive that sometimes lends itself to a sort of “male refrigerator blindness” when it comes to noticing things. And he can’t see the smoke like I can.
Plus, Grant’s right. I can be in and out.
Fine. Just a peek.
Two steps in the thin place takes me to the doorstep of the Bodrey trading post. I’m there in seconds. I bet the pot of water I left simmering for the mac still has another five minutes until it’s boiling. Yes, I realize that is unsafe, but Grant is there. The other week, I phased to meet Owen at a house call in Sheep Springs, and when I phased back to the A-frame, I realized I’d left the sink running for, like, twenty minutes.
Half of me is trying to avoid thinking of the phrase baby brain. The other half can’t help but wonder if phasing is good for a tiny ball of cells in my uterus. If said tiny ball of cells exists, that is. I still get stage fright every time I look at that pregnancy test. That’s all it takes to get the anxiety ball rolling in my head.
Thankfully, Jacob Dark Sky is here to distract me.
He’s standing on the packed dirt in front of the warped wooden front steps of the trading post, along with Hosteen, as if expecting me. He’s old but not diminished, even shirtless, which is saying something. The high-summer insects pepper the hissing propane lights, but they don’t bother him. A cane is propped against one knee as though it’s an accessory. In the streaming sepia of the in-between place, his eyes are completely black, and I know in an instant that he’s blind. He’s exactly as Owen described.
What Owen can’t have seen is the pure white smoke that streams from Dark Sky’s eyes, wafting with the movement of his head as he speaks to Hosteen, settling over the two of them and most of the porch like a halo of smoke.
The scene is so shocking that I need a moment to register that he’s paused in whatever discussion I stepped in on.
Dark Sky tilts his head like a dog trying to pick up a sound.
“What is it?” Hosteen asks, looking around and through me.
Dark Sky can’t see me either—that’s the rule of this place—but he’s not totally missing me like Hosteen. He may be blind to the physical world, but he’s picking something up in the place between. The white smoke pouring from his eyes spreads out around him like probing roots. One weaves its way toward me with creepy intention.
“Nothing,” says Dark Sky, thumbing the banded silver grip of his cane. “Just a whisper on the wind is all. Perhaps a visitor. But this will be a ceremony that calls visitors.”
The probing smoke scatters in the wind. Hosteen says something in Navajo that I can’t follow as Dark Sky slowly stands and grabs a pinch of pollen from a worn leather satchel at his waist.
“We are announcing ourselves, Hosteen. What comes will come. And is welcome.” He dusts the pollen over Hosteen’s head and hands the pouch over. Hosteen does the same to Dark Sky.
“Come,” Dark Sky says. “The hogan is ready.”
Hosteen looks at him strangely. “Why are you speaking in English?”
Dark Sky looks out over the valley below the trading post, where a hogan made of brush is glowing like a paper lantern in the dark sea of sand.
“Come,” he says again, planting his cane firmly. “It takes me longer to walk downhill these days than I’d like to admit, and we need to get started.”
Hosteen follows, his question unanswered and likely forgotten. But I know why Dark Sky spoke English.
He was talking to me.
I gauge the distance between where I stand and the glowing hogan below. Far for an old blind man, maybe, but not for me. I take a practiced stutter step and zip on down.
I’m on the flat below even as Dark Sky and Hosteen are still bobbing shapes against the red-rock face of the cliff above. They’re making their slow way from the top of Crooked Snake down a path that looks like it was carved by the persistent press of millions of footfalls.
I take a deep breath. A lot about the crow totem scares the crap out of me, but I’m a big fan of the half-mile shuffle. I was never very fast as a kid, and running still makes my legs itch. But with my crow, I can beat darn near everybody on this living plane anywhere.
The hogan in front of me is unlike any I’ve seen before. Traditional hogans—the ones just off the Arroyo—are made of clay and mud and framed out to a dome shape with a door facing east, toward the rising sun. They’re functional but not exactly charming, unless you really love sitting on dirt—pretty claustrophobic too. But I think that’s the point. It’s a bit like a kiln. Add some heat and smoke, the right ceremonies and people, and those who enter can come out changed.
But those are the Arroyo hogans. This one reminds me a little bit of a wedding canopy. I know if Grant could hear my thoughts, he’d roll his eyes until they were in danger of dropping out, and the Smoker would say, “Prime white-people shit.” But hey, I call it like I see it. And what I see are four big pine logs, their wood rubbed so smooth that they shine in the evening sun, holding up a canopy of woven piñon branches.
It’s very pretty. The whole scene here on the flat would be wedding-planner worthy if not for Kai, glassy eyed and partially slumped next to a central fire pit underneath those freshly cut piñon branches.
The sight of her like this hits me harder than I would’ve expected. I let go of my crow and flash through into reality before I even know what I’m doing. I’m at her side in an instant, checking her pulse, feeling her brow, and trying to get her to track my finger. I’m in full Nurse Mode before it occurs to me that Dark Sky and Hosteen are minutes from discovering me here.
Kai is in a thin leather getup that looks ceremonial. She leans on me without really meaning to. “Mom?” she asks, disoriented and lost. “I feel weird.”
Her cinnamon skin is ashy and her forehead drenched in sweat. Her tongue sticks to the roof of her mouth when she talks. She blinks and rubs at her eyes, trying to focus. Blurry vision. Cotton mouth. Could be ketotic hyperglycemia. Owen and I have seen far too much of it go untreated around here. Her blood sugar is probably through the roof.
“Honey, you need to lie down,” I say, and I look around helplessly as tears come to my eyes. I hear a distant chanting, Dark Sky singing his way in. He’ll see me in seconds, if he hasn’t already.
Kai lies down, presses her forehead to the cool dirt, and gets lost in the fire. She needs insulin. Maybe the pump Grant gave her is somewhere in the trading post, but even if I found it, I couldn’t carry it through when phasing. What she really needs is a hospital bed and an endocrinologist. I take out my phone, thinking I can call the IHC emergency line. No service, of course. Sometimes, I wonder why the hell I even bother having a phone on this reservation.
The voices are very close now.
“Kai?” It’s Hosteen, his voice hard, sensing something is wrong.
“I’ll be right here,” I whisper to her. That’s all I can say, all I can do.
I grab the crow the second I see the toe of Hosteen’s boot poke around the branches. Kai and the summer hogan become a sand-colored wash, blurred at the edges. The bite of the thin place is instant, but I’ve gotten better at withstanding it. The longer I can stick it out, the better chance I’ve got at figuring out how to help Kai.
Hosteen sees his sister and rushes over to her. Kneeling down, he places one hand gently on her shoulder. True worry fills his eyes. I know because it’s in his smoke too. It looks strange on him, like seeing a scarred pit bull nuzzle up to someone.
“Kai! What’s wrong?” He looks helplessly over at Dark Sky. “What’s happened to her?”
