Tricked
“It has to be here. I’ve gotten permission to build here from the Kayenta chapter, I’ve gotten you permission to live here while we do it, and my workforce and business connections are all in Kayenta. This here is where we change the world, Mr. Druid.”
Chapter 4
As we were hiking back down the hill, three white work trucks rolled up behind the car. They were full of people in jeans and orange T-shirts, some wearing cowboy hats and others wearing hard hats. One man in a hard hat started giving directions, and the workers moved to get stakes and sledges out of the truck beds along with surveying equipment and one of those portable toilets. A woman and an older man stood next to the man in the hard hat. They weren’t wearing orange shirts, and thus I concluded they weren’t technically part of the work crew.
All three of them were very happy to see Coyote. They shook hands and traded smiles full of affection for one another. Their faces turned expressionless, however, when Coyote began to introduce the white people. He remembered our fake names, thankfully.
“Reilly and Caitlin Collins,” he said, “this here is my construction foreman, Darren Yazzie.” The man with the hard hat nodded at us and mumbled a “Pleased to meet you.” He was a well-muscled fellow in his mid-twenties, his eyes mere slits in a sort of perpetual squint from working outside all the time. He wore his hair long and braided in the back in a single thick queue.
Coyote pointed next at the woman, who appeared to be in her late twenties or early thirties. She wore a thin black Windbreaker over a yellow polo shirt. Her hair was pulled back and tied in a simple ponytail, and she had a pair of eyeglasses with thick black rims resting on her nose. A hundred subtle cues of body language told me that there was a keen intelligence behind those eyes; I knew she was important to this project before Coyote said a word. “This,” he said, “is Sophie Betsuie, the head engineer.”
“Hello,” she said, shaking our hands firmly. “Nice to meet you.”
The elderly gentleman had character carved into his face, arroyos and washes of years trailing above and below his mouth, around his eyes, and down his neck. His black cowboy hat sported a silver band set with turquoise in the front, and he had a buttoned-up broadcloth shirt tucked into his jeans. He had a giant chunk of turquoise floating at the base of his throat, because he’d apparently missed the memo that said bolo ties were out of style and quite likely had never been in style at all. His belt buckle was an enormous silver job worked in fine detail, though I couldn’t say what the design was, since I didn’t take time to examine it carefully. I was too distracted by his aura, which had the telltale white light of a magic user in it.
“That’s Frank Chischilly,” Coyote said. “He’s a hataałii.”
Oberon asked as I shook hands with Frank.
No, he said hataałii. In the Navajo language, it kinda sorta means a medicine man.
Excellent question.
“I’m honored to meet you, sir,” I said.
“Likewise,” he replied. To Granuaile, he didn’t offer his hand but rather tipped his hat and said, “Miss.” His voice was scratchy and warm, like a wool blanket.
“What brings you out here, Mr. Chischilly?” Granuaile asked before I could.
“Well, he has to be here,” Coyote explained.
“Oh,” Granuaile said, nodding, then added, “Sorry, but why does he have to be here? I’m not too clear on what that thing was you called him. Are you a tribal official, Mr. Chischilly?”
“Nope,” he said, a faint trace of a smile on his chapped lips. “I’m here to do the Blessing Way ceremony, once we get a hogan built up there.”
“Cool!” Granuaile said, a huge grin lighting her face, and then it disappeared, replaced by uncertainty as Frank’s vague amusement vanished. “Oh. I mean … I didn’t mean to assume. I would love to watch, but I’m not sure if that’s allowed. I actually don’t know what the Blessing Way ceremony is, so forgive me if I just sort of stepped on your toes there, I feel really stupid if that makes you feel any better, and—”
Chischilly raised a hand to stop her stream of apologies and gave a shrug. “Hey, it’s okay with me if it’s okay with Mr. Benally.”
Before I could ask who Mr. Benally was, Coyote said, “It’s okay with me.”
Interesting. Granuaile and I pivoted on our heels to face Coyote with our eyebrows raised, and Oberon said,
“Thank you, Mr. Benally,” I said, emphasizing the name.
Sophie Betsuie chose that moment to ask, “Is this your dog? What’s his name?”
“Snugglepumpkin,” I said.
Sophie snorted in disbelief but recovered rapidly, wiping a nascent grin off her face. “Oh. That’s really his name?”
But why?
I nodded somberly. “That’s his name.”
“Oh. Well, that’s … simply … adorable.” Sophie put her hands flat on her thighs and bent her knees a bit as she looked at Oberon. Her voice took on that saccharine-sweet tone people use when they talk to something they think is cute. “Yes, you’re adorable, aren’t you? Are you a good boy, Snugglepumpkin?”
Oberon wagged his tail and came over within petting distance.
“Oh, yes, you are a good boy, yes, you are.” She stopped making sense and instead made high-pitched squeals of delight as she scratched Oberon’s giant head; the rest of us stood and watched as a woman with an advanced degree completely lost her mind.
Okay, explain to me what you’re doing, I said.
He sounded particularly smug about that last part.
Oberon, you shouldn’t have done this.
When she snaps out of it she’s going to be embarrassed, and we just met her.
Bark once and she’ll stop out of surprise.
Oberon barked.
“Oh! You’re getting excited, aren’t you, Snugglepumpkin? I’d better stop, then.”
“So how long you think it’s gonna take you to get that road graded for us up to the top of the mesa?” Coyote said, redirecting us back to business. “I wanna start buildin’ that hogan as soon as possible.”
“Should be good to go by tomorrow morning,” I replied.
Sophie frowned. “I beg your pardon? You’re going to have a functional road built to the top of that mesa by tomorrow morning?”
This was also news to Darren Yazzie, whose workers would presumably be accomplishing all this. “Wait, how are we gonna do that? We don’t have the right equipment out here.”
Whoops. Coyote had already clued me in that these people weren’t aware of his true nature—or mine—but I’d answered him without adjusting for “normal” ears. I covered brilliantly: “Uh—”
“I think we’re talkin’ ’bout two differ’nt things,” Coyote interrupted, a sly smile on his face and a glint in his eye that told me he was enjoying my mistake. “Don’t mind Mr. Collins here. He’s just a geologist. Completely worthless when it comes to buildin’ shit. He can ’splain the fuck outuva rock though, heh heh.”
I shot Coyote a glare while Granuaile coughed to hide a laugh. Darren and Sophie confi
ned themselves to smiles, but Frank Chischilly chuckled hoarsely.
See, this is why I enjoy Oberon’s constant commentary. Much of the time it’s a bit distracting and funny enough that I might laugh inappropriately in the face of people who can’t hear what he says. But in this case, it saved me. If he hadn’t been around to point out that I looked irritated, I might have said something stupid and escalated things with Coyote. Instead, I excused myself by saying, “It was nice to meet you all, and I hope to speak with you later. I have some work to do right now though.” I turned and strode up the incline to the base of the mesa, Oberon and Granuaile following in my wake.
Typically you never get your goat back, I explained to Oberon. So you’re left with two choices. Either you let it go and get another metaphorical goat, or you try to get their goat in a sort of eye-for-an-eye revenge thing. Most people get another goat.
“That was an interesting encounter,” Granuaile observed, once we were safely out of earshot. I grunted sourly, and my apprentice laughed. “You’re going to build that road tonight out of spite, aren’t you?”
I grinned, amused that she could read me so easily. “If I can get the elemental to cooperate, I will. Then I want to see our so-called Mr. Benally explain it to Sophie and Darren, because I’m supposed to be a geologist who can’t build shit.”
“I think it’s funny how he messes with you,” Granuaile said.
“You do, eh? Well, we’ll see how you like it once he starts playing his tricks on you. They’re not always harmless tricks, you know. There’s a dark side to all tricksters. Coyote laughs at other people’s misfortune more than anything else, and this little name and occupation game of his could be the setup for something bigger down the road.”
Granuaile’s amusement faded. “We’re protected against him, though, aren’t we?”
“Protected how? You mean magically?” I snorted. “Coyote doesn’t need magic to trick us. The only thing we can do is try to stay ahead of him. Gotta be smarter than the anthropomorphic canine.”
No, I said that Coyote’s a dog in the shape of a man.
Anthropomorphic.
“Crap,” Granuaile said. “Now I’m going to be paranoid about him pulling something on me.”
“Ehhhxcellent!” I said, steepling my fingers together like Mr. Burns on The Simpsons who’s always talking to Smithers. Then I switched genres. My voice took on the high nasal tones that comic-book villains tend to have when adapted for the Saturday-morning cartoons. “You should cultivate paranoia, because they really are out to get you!” I dropped my hands and resumed walking and talking normally. “He’ll notice that, by the way. He’ll smell your anxiety and fear, so you need to relax without appearing to be consciously relaxing.”
“Right, sure. Now that we’re talking about it I won’t be able to.”
“Insidious, isn’t it? But you can do it. It’s a Druid thing.”
“Whatever, sensei.”
“I’m being semi-serious. Once you’re bound to the earth and you can see in the magical spectrum, you’ll be dealing with two different sets of stimuli. I showed you what it was like before, remember? Right before those German witches tried to kill us, I bound your sight to mine.”
“I remember.”
“Now remember how disoriented you were. That’s major-league cognitive dissonance, and you’ll need to embrace it and master it if you want to accomplish anything. You’ll also want to project complete calm to enemies when you’re planning to stab ’em in the pancreas. And if you ever want to shift planes with anyone, you’ll have to hold their totality in your mind along with your own. The essence of Druidry is training the mind to both handle contradictory input and construct contradictory output.”
What? Oh. Well—
I continued to lecture a bit more, to disguise the fact that I was getting my ass handed to me by my dog. “One of the reasons I require you to learn so many languages is that you can use each of them as a different headspace; they’re going to provide you with a framework in which to multitask, and they’ll also help you avoid mistakes. You’ll want to use Old Irish for your magic and English for everyday use, so that you’re firmly separating your bindings from your regular speech. Then you’re going to want to pick a language to use for elementals that’s different from either.”
“But I’ve already started using English when talking to them,” she replied, sounding a bit worried. Two elementals had given her a small piece of themselves so that she could speak with them before she got bound to the earth.
“That was only with Sonora and Ferris,” I pointed out. “There are plenty of other elementals out there, and if you continue to use English with them once you’re connected to the earth, you’ll wind up calling them accidentally and broadcasting your emotions when you don’t want to.”
“Why does the language matter at all? Speaking to them is all emotions and images anyway.”
“Again, each language is a different headspace; it patterns your thinking and gives it a unique signature. So once you make contact with an elemental in a certain headspace, that’s what they become attuned to. For Sonora and Ferris, you’ll always need to think in English. But if you stick with English as you meet new elementals, you’ll unconsciously start to call them when you’d rather not—they’ll pick up on your thoughts when you’re angry or overly excited and wonder if you’re talking to them. And it won’t be long before you’ll start to annoy them.”
“Oh. What language do you use when you speak to elementals?”
“I use Latin. Since it’s a dead language, the pattern of my thoughts doesn’t change with the popular culture. But you can use Greek or Russian or whatever you’d like.”
“Latin sounds good,” she said, and I gave her a nod of approval. She was progressing well with her Latin. And in … zeal, I guess. I don’t know how else to put it. She was different somehow since my return from Asgard, but I couldn’t pin the tail on the donkey named Why. We had found very little time to talk about anything except what might have happened to Mrs. MacDonagh and how we would survive the vengeance of the Norse. I had probably spent more time than I should have brooding in silence over both problems. Circumstances had hardly allowed me to conduct Granuaile’s training peacefully or, indeed, in any way conducive to shaping a mind for Druidry.
An unwashed, bearded phantom of my memory rose to scold me, a loaf of bread in one hand and a yew staff in the other, his wee, beady eyes glaring at me from under grizzled brows. It was my archdruid, who I’d assumed was dead these many centuries past but still lived on in one sense as a rather loud voice in my head. His staff blurred, and I could almost feel the pain of one of his sharp raps to the skull: “Pay attention, Siodhachan!” he said. “You’re cocking it up again!”
He was right. But Granuaile’s training would have to stay on my back burner until I could finish cooking what Coyote had ordered. We stopped at the base of the mesa and sat down, yoga style. Oberon stretched out and panted, his tongue lolling to one side.
“I’ll have to spend a bit of time working at this,” I explained.
Granuaile squinted up at the sky to check the sun—a routine precaution for the fair-skinned living in Arizona, who must live in fear of crispy skin—and saw that a thin layer
of stretched cotton clouds diffused the January sun’s weak rays. She gave a short nod.
“All right. I have plenty more Latin to learn,” she said. “I’ll go get my laptop out of the car. But before I do, I need to ask: How much can you tell me about the Blessing Way ceremony?”
It was a difficult question, and I frowned before offering up a disclaimer. “I’m not an expert on this. More like a vaguely informed outsider.”
“Good enough. I’m clueless.”
“Well, first you have to understand that the training period for a hataałii is even longer than that for a Druid. We’re talking twenty years or more. There’s lots of memorization, lots of practice, lots of collecting the proper materials for the rituals. So what does that tell you about Frank?”
“He’s probably smarter than me and ten times more patient.”
“Heh! I think he might be wiser; let’s say that. And I bet he knows more about the medicinal properties of native plants than I do. But you probably nailed the patience thing. Some of that comes with age.” I took a breath to order my thoughts before I continued. “Okay. There are many different kinds of these ceremonies. The Blessing Way is an entire branch of ritual practice. The Navajo word for it is hózhji. You can perform the Blessing Way on a mother and her newborn, for example, or on a soldier going to war, or you can bless a building and make it holy, like Frank is going to do. There’s also the Enemy Way, which is used to get rid of evil influence—or on people who have been away from the tribe a long time and need to reconnect to their roots. But what all the ceremonies have in common are songs and prayers, which call to the Holy People, remind people of their origins, and bring them into harmony with the universe. Often there’s a sandpainting of the Holy People to help things along—it’s the only time they’re allowed to depict the Holy People visually, so all those sandpaintings the tourists buy are just art for art’s sake; they’re not anything of religious significance. They have a word in their language, hózh, which encompasses everything good, and we simply translate to ‘blessing.’ But it’s beauty, peace, harmony, order, good health, happiness, and more. I should probably add that there is also another branch of practice, called the Witchery Way, that turns everything on its head—let’s hope we don’t run into anyone practicing that. So Frank is going to lead the Blessing Way, but you’ll see it’s not a tremendously formal occasion where people are bowing their heads and kneeling as some old crone leans down on a pipe organ to fill the air with a sense of piety. People will be talking or eating while he’s singing. They’ll be socializing and filling the place with love. That’s all part of it. And we can do that too—we’ll just stay out of Frank’s way as he does his thing.” I intended to watch him carefully. The magic in his aura indicated that he wasn’t an average hataałii—but, then, I shouldn’t have expected anyone average to be in the company of Coyote.