Disclaimer: I do not own the Teen Titans.
Coyote – Chapter 11
Karen Thunder Horse stared out the window at their young guest.
"She's beautiful, Charlie," she said. "A little...odd, though."
He turned a page of the photo album he was holding. "What makes you say that, love?"
"She keeps giving the dog baths. I don't think Old Bill's ever been this clean! And she's really quiet for a teenager. She's always polite, but she won't talk much about herself. When we went shopping, she avoided talking to just about everybody. The only thing she seemed interested in buying was a bag of candy. I've never seen anyone so enthralled by Jolly Ranchers!"
"She's been ill, Karen. She doesn't have a lot of energy, yet. Well, except for washing the dog, it seems. You know how it gets with us empaths."
"Mmmmm. I sure do." She turned around to look at him. "Charlie, you're not giving her that drug, are you?"
"Karen!"
"You know I don't like that shit...you know what it's done before."
He stared at the wall. "The formula's improved, love. That won't happen again."
"Promise me. Not on her."
He turned another page of the photo album. "All right, Karen. I promise. No Compound 20."
She joined him at the table, curling one leg underneath her as she sat down. "Pictures of your grandfather?"
"Yes," he replied as he turned another page. "I was hoping that telling her about our grandfather would open her up to talking about her own family. Like you said, she doesn't say much. She's using her mother's last name, and she won't talk about her father at all." He closed the book with great care and rested his hand on the cover. He took a deep breath before he spoke again. "Karen, I think – I think she was abused."
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Dearest Garfield:
Where are you? Where am I? I do not know where to begin. I am not sure what to say. I have never written a letter like this before. I am not sure what has happened to me. I move about, I speak, but I still feel very weak. I feel very disoriented. The pain still comes and goes, but I am recovering. I am not confident enough in my strength to phase back to the tower to find you. Victor did not send my communicator with me. They hide the telephone from me, and oddly enough he has no connection to the internet, so I cannot even send you electronic mail. I have had no word from you, but I am not sure how you would have gotten it to me.
Charles tells me that everyone agreed to send me here. I cannot tell if he speaks the truth. He and his wife are very kind to me, and I am beginning to recover. I believe I am safe here. But I do not like being sent away like this, without anyone even asking me, without having a chance to say good-bye to you. I do not believe you would have agreed to this. I do not understand Victor's reasoning here, and I am unable to contact him as well. I do not want to be away from you. I miss you terribly. I want to reach out to you, but we both know what happens with my subconscious when I am weak! The results can be rather horrifying. So I do not seek you out that way, to keep you safe.
I must keep this brief. I do not have much time to myself. I have enclosed the address here so you can at least know where I am. I will slip this into the mail as soon as I can – I have not left you –
Be safe, beloved
R-
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Thunder Horse took the pipe from his mouth. "I'm sorry I never sent you pictures of the glyphs in the weapons cave. Remember, the cave we were looking for when we first met?"
"I do remember," Raven replied with a shiver. Karen was behind her, braiding her hair into a single braid down her back. The brush through her hair and the motherly attention was a balm to her shaken spirit. It made her miss her own mother; such simple acts between them had been strictly forbidden. But she could close her eyes and imagine Arella being allowed to do this.
"Well, would you like a chance to see them in person? They are fascinating. And there are lots of other places I'd like to show you, now that you are strong enough to walk about. Who knows? Maybe it'll spark an interest for you. As in future career? It would be nice to have someone in the family in the business. Especially with the way you can travel – it would come in handy in getting to remote sites!" He beamed as he pointed at her with the stem of the pipe.
She cast him a doubtful look.
"I know you must be afraid of the place, Dawn Child. But going back there might be good for you, to see the good that came out of the bad there."
Karen slipped an arm around her shoulders. "Charlie, don't you ever quit with the psychiatry?"
"Everything is a mixed bag, my love. Everything has a bit of good and a bit of bad in it. For every bad cave we find, we need to find the good that comes out of it." He held out a folder. "Here, child. Here is a partial translation of the glyphs. The strange thing is, the glyphs themselves are native to areas like Chaco, but the manner of speech is quite different. Maybe that will pique your interest?"
She took the folder while trying to not lean to far away from Karen's ministering hands. Her eyes grew wider as she scanned the transcript.
And he comes, the destroyer of worldsRed devil ripping open the sky
To rule with his bloodline the peoples of the earth
But the deceiver himself is deceived
The bloodline and her twin, the heart of a star,
destroys the destroyer from withinTwin? Heart of a star? Could that mean Azar? The folder shook in her hand. "And this is only a partial translation? There is more?"
"There's more. I could use help with the rest. I can teach you--"
"How soon can we leave?"
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The Jeep Cherokee rattled down the canyon road. Thunder Horse watched his passenger out of the corner of his eye. She spends so much time in quiet. How long has she been in pain like this?
He remembered Karen's words : Her knowledge is so spotty, Charlie. She only knows bits and pieces of what a teenaged girl should know. And sometimes she acts like she's older than me! It's like her mind is full of holes. And I only know that from watching her. She'll talk to me, but she won't tell my anything important.
He turned over his newly-found relative's behaviors in his mind. He shielded himself from her, so she would not sense his prying thoughts. She acts like someone who has been isolated most of her life. I'm sure there has been abuse here. Not physical, maybe, there's no real sign of that. And with her empathic ability to heal herself, there would be no evidence of it, anyway. But emotional? Definitely. Angela, what kind of man did you marry? What sort of monster did you allow to hurt this child? He shifted in his seat. If I could only get her to talk to me, really talk.
"So I was thinking," Charlie said, gesturing with one hand while driving with the other, "that the glyphs might be referring to Coyote, since it talks about a deceiver."
The words shook her out of her meditative reverie. "Excuse me? Coyote?"
"Coyote is just one name for this – this being. You know that I study the lore of many peoples, not just the Lakota. The Trickster being appears in many traditions. Many nations refer to him as Coyote. Others think of him as a spider. Or sometimes, even..." He smiled slyly at her. "a raven."
He continued before she could reply to that. "Trickster does have many guises, but I tend to call him Coyote. And he has many reasons for being. He creates both order and chaos wherever he goes. He gives with one hand and takes with the other. He is a shapeshifter, always changing his appearance. There are so many stories – often funny ones –"
"So he is a source of jokes? And he changes shape? He sounds...familiar."
Thunder Horse chuckled. "Well, the stories have humor in them, but the concept of Coyote himself is not funny. Although I could see what some of my relatives would think of your green friend if they ever met him." He turned the jeep onto another dirt road and headed north. "They would think Coyote had walked up out of nowhere...but Coyote himself is not funny. He can bring evil, but along with the evil he can bring good. And when he brings good, some evil follows. I must tell you Grandfather's stories sometime. He knew so many! He is the one who taught me much of what I know about Coyote. Then you would understand."
"The 'mixed bag' that you are so fond of?"
"Yes. A necessary evil, you might say. Life takes on a whole new meaning when you live in two worlds like I do. I have to weigh everything from two points of view. There's my doctor's heart, that forces me to see the facts and judge them scientifically. Then there's my Lakota Heart."
"Lakota Heart?"
"Yes, seeing with the wisdom our grandfather passed on to me. Seeing with compassion. And with a mind open to the spiritual--ah, here we are." He parked the Jeep at the edge of a familiar vista. "Remember this?"
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I do not like this place.
She stepped forward, one foot in front of the other, waiting for that same wave of fear and despair that had found her the first time she had been here. It never came.
Something is missing that was here before. She took a deep breath and focused on the beam of light that she shone ahead of her. The chamber was largely empty, but she knew that not long ago it held a cache of deadly weapons in secret for the Black Rose Underground – a group with members still on the loose. And one of them was looking for her.
This is not the safest place for me to be, she thought. But I must see this. The meanings of the glyphs are too close to me. I need to know what they say. Is there some new knowledge here? Something else I need to know?
She nearly tripped over the remains of a wooden crate. But even its empty shell gave off few vibrations of the suffering that she sensed before. That suffering had been almost alive.
Charles beckoned to her; his body was half in the shadow and half in the ray of light. "Here they are."
She directed the beam of the flashlight to his hand. The air was thick and chilly in the darkness of the cave. She shivered as she moved forward to the wall. She rested her hand on the damp stone.
"The translated part is here, and here," Charles said, not looking at her. "I wanted to work on the translation of this portion today. I believe there are some actual drawings in the next section. It would help me a great deal if you would work on uncovering those for me." He brought a square pad of paper out of his pack. "Here you go. A gift. You can sketch and write what we find on this. You can even take it home with you...when you go back." An if hung in there between them. "It can start your career as an archaeologist, maybe."
She nodded in reply as she accepted the small book. Her eyes were locked on the glyphs. I am afraid of what I will find.
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Her dust-covered hand flew to her mouth.
And I was right to be afraid.
The Red Devil, the verse had said. And there he was, four eyes and horns, grinning at her from the cave wall. I will never be used to that face. I hope I never am used to it. He was dead now, but years of carrying the burden of his legacy had taken its toll on her heart. She kept brushing the dirt away from the other drawings, tears racing down her face and making muddy tracks on her cheeks the whole time.
I do not want him to know. Not now. I will lose what family I have if I...
Charlie's hand rested on her shoulder. "Dawn Child? What is it?"
A sob escaped her throat. Don't say it... don't...
She felt his eyes studying her. That shield that she always sensed around him slipped a little as she felt him opening his mind up to her. She quickly strengthened the barriers in her own, and she knew he sensed that defensive move as well.
"Little sister, I know that someone has hurt you, hurt you terribly, in the past. It still hurts you. Tell me. Tell me who did this terrible hurt to you."
Her hand slapped the colored stone in front of her. "He did."
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A/N: The partial translation here is, of course, referring to her father, Trigon. Enough to pique her interest, to be sure. Here is an example of her curiosity at its strongest.
The Angela that Thunder Horse is referring to is Raven's mother. Raven calls her Arella, which is the name she was given in Azarath. Angela Roth is her real name.
Some of the information on Coyote that I used for this chapter can be found at: http/ Paper: "Coyote in Navajo Religion and Cosmology" By Guy H. Cooper