Son of the Skinwalker

by J.R. Wulfe

Howling Wolf, Standing Bear, Henry. He has many names. He forgets, now, how many. In bygones days he was the unwanted Indian among settlers and the hunted skinwalker to his people. He had no escape but the backcountry; the isolated dwellings of other darker things than he. But it had not always been so. As a child, by chance or divine meddling a touch of magic came into his life.

1. Stories My Grandmother Told

Cheyenne Reservation, Wyoming : 1982

Grandmother Istas Still Water was telling stories again. Mathias loved to sit at her feet and listen to her speak. It was true Chris and Thomas Lone Elk made fun of him for such enjoying things but it seemed to him only right. Grandmother listened to him when he spoke about winning the basketball game and besting Big Nose - whose birth name was Jordan, but no one called him that anymore - at a game of cards. Besides, it was warm and cozy by the fire on the square rug he had claimed for his own; the storms raging breaking against the house in random gusts only enhanced the storytelling atmosphere with its random bangs as the low hanging branches of the Great Sycamore planted alongside the house crashed into the shutters.

The house was not much but it was home. There was a bedroom for his parents and a smaller second bedroom that was his when they did not have over-night guests. And when they did he slept on the drab green couch pushed in front of the fireplace. He did not mind so much; it was both warm and comfortable and certainly better than the hard floor. He minded least of all when he was ousted from his bed for Grandmother and her sparse over night visits. She always spun such stories that they, he and May, could hardly be pried away before the sun rose again.

Grandmother swore to Maheo, The Great Creator, that the stories of their people were as true and accurate as those things referenced in the missionaries Christian gold-edged bibles. Mathias had come into possession of one such pocket-sized bible, which missionaries were known for handing out. Free goods were free goods. He took the pocket-book bible and flipped through the pages when the mood struck, which admittedly was not often. He preferred the stories of his people; those at least did not leave him asleep and drooling into his pillow ushered into early, unsought, slumber. The book came to be his when a missionary had staked out a spot on the Rez next to Old Grey Wolf's pottery store. Old Man Albert Grey Wolf's son, Sam Grey Wolf, did not like this. His mouth pulled in a thin straight line of displeasure and his eyes glared darkly but he said nothing. Out of respect to the old man's wishes he kept the peace.

The newcomer talked loudly to anyone and everyone unlucky enough to pass too closely, a stack of free bibles at his feet. And whenever he had spied someone passing by he hurriedly picked one up and held it out in offering to that person. Many accepted, only to throw them into the trash or kindle to the fires later, because it would have been viewed as rude to refuse a gift. Mathias knew this because Chris and his brother were notorious gossips with a nose for being in the right place at the right time. Or, sometimes, the wrong places at the wrong times. That, and Grandmother had done the same thing.

Mathias watched the happenings from the sidelines wondering what it was the newcomer with the black coat and hat did to put food in his belly. After all, he could hardly eat those bibles he was so free with. The missionary was a tall and spindly man, not much muscle in his lanky arms or color on his pasty white face obstructed with a sharp, hawk-like nose. His build was unimpressive and his manner bone dry in the recitation of his speeches to the wind and the air and the few scattered shoppers of the pottery store. Mathias had no liking for the man. He talked and talked and talked, but when residents approached he did not know how to listen.

Grandmother said he had no ears for listening and a silver tongue for talking.

Slowly, Mathias came to agree with her, too. For all his endless talk the missionary man did not really help. This irked at Mathias and made frustration well up inside his belly, to see and be able to neither say nor do anything about it? It was enough to make his insides burn like hot coals fresh from the fireplace. Still Mathias did nothing. He, like Sam Grey Wolf, kept the peace.

Day after day the missionary came and he did not buy goods from Old Gray Wolf's pottery store or purchase trinkets to help the Little Coyote family who sold hand-woven dream catchers made of real feathers and furs to make ends meet, he did not spare change for the panhandlers, which were admittedly somewhat shady in appearance. The tall missionary-man did nothingthat might actually offer help of any sort to anyone on the Rez.

Mathias, privately, thought people on the Rez would be more willing to listen to a man seeking to 'save their immortal souls' if their bellies were not so often empty.

Still, he needed to put more fire in his belly if he was to make born storytellers like Grandmother and Old Grey Wolf listen; the missionary's voice sounded like the low droning of a insect buzzing about the ears and face.

Mathias came to see he was right and before long the residents and the missionary man came to an impasse, one that neither could break and Mathias knew, finally, the man would soon leave. Give up his efforts to baptize the Indians onthe Rezand let life return to its usual patterns. Mathias was anxious for this time to arrive.

The man with the black coat and hat claimed to be a 'man of God' and he spoke very eloquently for all that he spoke not with them but at them instead, which won him no favors among the Cheyenne. Still, his elocution was good. Mathias might even have listened once or twice as words spilled out and cluttered the air with righteous sounds.

This ended when he watched the missionary strike a local Rez dog without provocation. It whimpered as it scampered off making tracks for a less populated location. From that point on the missionaries' words rang hollow to his ears, no matter how finely they were dressed up. Putting a bowtie around the neck of a donkey did not make it any less of an ass nor did words that did not follow deed fall as anything but hot air.

It wasn't a very kindor merciful thing he had done to the Rezbitch.

In fact, Mathias had seen the same done by drunks and wife-beaters, lay bouts and thugs, but from such men it was expected. And then came this spindly, reedy voiced man talking big and what did he do? He did the same as all the others. It was infinitely more wrong-headed, this one act of casual cruelty from a man who preached mercy. From that point on the dislike in his heart was rooted deep and he did not care enough to undo it.

He carefully heeded the words of Grandmother for she was yet to be proven wrong.

Mathias did not understand the man and his lacking of knowledge - understanding - bothered him. It grew and grew festering under his skin. He had allowed himself to listen and been, in the end, tricked by fine words that amounted to nothing. He did not want to make the same mistake twice. Why had the man acted that way? Mathias turned the thought over and over in his head. The man should have ignored the dog. He could have 'turned the other cheek' as he said Christian men were taught to do and the pocket-book bible inferred. But he had not. The tall missionary man with the hard, wrinkly mouth and snow-white hair had not done what he told others to do.

Mathias had seen and heard worse things done on the Rez. It could be a hard unforgiving place. But he was not so unmovable that he saw the need for beating a dog. It just was an ordinary tan colored bitch nursing puppies with nothing at all special about it other than that Mathias had looked in on it and it's little ones on the sly. He had provided what little scraps he could spare for the puppies.

It seemed doubly wrong somehow, this act, coming from a man making all the claims the missionary did. He acted with unprovoked violence beyond a bit of barking in the backdrop of his sermonizing to a people and a place that neither welcomed nor wanted his presence. After that incident Mathias preferred the tan colored Rez bitch's barking to the missionary's double-speaking manner and he stopped listening.

It became nothing more than the buzzing of a bee that needed to be swatted away from the face.

But he kept the book.

Grandmother Istas might not have had not had anything niceto say when he had shown her the book but she had not seen fit to take it from him either. Instead she told him more stories about their people and the ways that she feared would die out if the youths of her times did not care to learn what their parents and Grandparents had to offer. In an effort to please her Mathias made himself comfortable and asked her to tell him, if she wanted. He decided it was only right to do so.

Grandmother Istas made time for him more often than any other in his life. She shared many things and many stories. Among the tales she spoke of something that was seldom ever named by any other among the Cheyenne. Grandmother's stories of the past gave Mathias pause sometimes. She swore them as true as the missionary mans tales but he was not so sure that he took those bible stories as absolutes and the lone representative for said religion had failed to acquit himself well. But then, Mathias also knew, the Christian truths were sometimes no less fantastical than trickster coyotes, spider Gods, and chieftain daughters who lay with strange-men and ended up birthing puppies who became stars.

Besides, not all Cheyenne are respectable, upstanding members of the tribe, Mathias reasoned.

He was not a bigot. There were always good people and bad people on both sides of the equation; that was the way of the world. Not all Indians where like Ada and Jonas Black Elk, proprietors of the Red Pony in town. They had good standing among the community and often provided food and goods onthe Rez when business was good.

Not all Indians are good so it is only right that not all missionary men are bad.

Mathias folded his arms across his chest as he considered the matter. He would not care to be judged by the brushing of one stroke and came to the conclusion that he would retain an open mind for the time being. Settled on a course of action Mathias prepared himself for long hours of listening, as was their oral tradition. It was the perfect sort of day for winter stories anyways. The wind outside was battering their small house fiercely.

Mathias could hear thunder rolling down from the mountains. Right now there were two wildfires tearing through the land up in Beaver Creekand Bear Lodge, probably because some asshole campers didn't put out their campfire and now they all had to suffer with the hazy, smoke-congested skies that made Grandmother's breathing congested and nasal.

Mathias felt the first twinges of genuine concern shoot through him and prayed a bolt of lightning didn't strike a match in the already hot tinder of the mountains, burning them all out of house and home. It could happen but he prayed it did not. The storm rattled the windows, howling like a pack of rabid wolves as it tore through their little patch of land on the Rez.

For this reason, they were all - he, May, and Grandmother - huddled inside by the small fireplace. Cooped up inside by bad weather they had little to do besides listening to elders trading wintertime stories. Chris Lame Elk had gone home hours ago before the weather took a bad turn, leaving just him and May Still water to listen to Grandmother. It was probably for the best. Chris frightened easily and for now they were effectively trapped. He secretly enjoyed these hours sitting by the fire with May and Grandmother. But no one else needed to know that.

Grandmother told the kind of stories the elders boxed children around the head for repeating, so there had to be something worth knowing hidden in her, sometimes rambling, accounts.

Mathias had asked his friends' parents about skinwalkers once before. Driven by a boy's honest curiosity to know things that he should not. They had become very squirrelly, unwilling to share anything.

"Don't speak of such things," he was told, "Don't ask me that again," he was chided. It was don't this, and don'tthat, but no one would explain to him why. He liked to understand things, to know their place in the world.

It helped him to better understand himself and his place in the world but the grown-ups didn't understand this about him. Except for Grandmother Istas. She always looked deep into his eyes; her fingers perched beneath his proud chin and gave him an answer he could abide.

"There is a proper time and hour for such stories, do not trouble the rest with these questions Mathias, and when the hour has arrived I will tell you what you wish to know."

"Perhaps someday you will come to wish you did not know," Grandmother Istas had said, but she had been smiling a little so Mathias had not let himself be overly troubled.

He would have his answers and was satisfied. Grandmother Istas was old and kind, and she smelled constantly of sage. But she did not lie.

"I have not forgotten your questions Mathias, do you wish to hear a story?" the old woman asked him, her eyes gleaming in the soft glow of the crackling fire. "Do you wish to hear a story known only to the Still Water ancestors? About the mixed-blood skin-walker who lived among the Tsistsistasfor a time?"

"Yes, Grandmother," he said, May lilting an echo of his own voice.

"Please, tell us," May implored, her maple eyes brimming with excitement.

The old woman nodded. "Such curiosity in your hearts, such wide-eyed wonder!" she said, wistful for the days of her own youth, perhaps.

Mathias imagined she must have asked twice the number of questions he did and received three times as many rebukes to know as much as she did.

"I will tell tales of the yee naagloshii, but you must remember this one rule, and never cross from it, my little doves. What we speak of does not leave this room. The words yee naagloshii do not cross your impertinent curious lips outside this room, understand? Do you remember what I have taught you? And why?" she demanded, her look lingering on Mathias who nodded to show he understood she spoke to him at that moment.

Mathias swallowed, his throat tight as he recalled what she had said to him. "To speak it is to call it."

Scary stories were fun. He enjoyed them as much as the next Indian boy on the Rez but there was something infinitely scarier about Grandmother Istas stories. To Grandmother they were more than words. They were the words of her ancestors, experiences passed down through oral tradition. It made the yee naagloshii, the wendigo, and puckwudgies far more fearsome than Freddy Kruger or the Swamp Thing.

These beings, unlike mainstream media monsters, were real. They existed somewhere out there in the dark corners of the world. And sometimes, Grandmother claimed, in their very own backyards which never failed to send cold tendrils of fear straight down his spine. He was old enough to know that what he saw on the television was false creations dreamed up in someone's mind and that the beings Grandmother spoke of were not. Mathias knew it had to be so because Grandmother had said as much. And Grandmother Istas did not lie.

Slowly, as he and May matured when the weather was poor and they were alone in the house Grandmother would tell them things that the elders would not have them know. She did not swear them to secrecy when the tales were done. He and May both knew without being told that if they broke her confidence the stories would end and never begin again. Grandmother knew things the others had forgotten.

The other reasons for men and women to take to burning sage and juniper and for carrying a handsomely made cane whittled by a powerful Medicine Manfrom Oklahoma, made of a white ash tree.

Mathias had always imagined Grandmother Istas had lived an interesting life before old age confined her to a small circle of land. Where she passed her days in a perpetually rocking chair watching people walk by from her place on the front porch, weather permitting. At age eleven and a half Mathias knew things other boys his age did not: that there were two certified ways to kill a skinwalker and neither was easy.

Grandmother smiled down at them, her chair squeaking as it rocked, forward and back, forward and back.

Mathias fell into the rhythm of the sound and the hypnotic dancing of the orange flames a deep hush falling across the room.

"Have you heard the tale of 'The Trickster and the Skin-Stealer', my little doves? No, I thought not."

"It might be a bit hard on such young ears, but, well, you see things twice as violent all the time on that television so I do not think I am doing irreparable harm," she muttered. "I would wait until you were older...But I will not live forever to tell these stories to you, you know."

Mathias watched as May frowned, her brow bunching into a concerned thundercloud that Grandmother headed it off at the pass with a gentle cluck of her tongue.

"Now, now, no need for that look, all things which live, die. Eventually, it is the way of things."

"This story begins, as many often do, with a death," Grandmother explained.

Mathias huffed. If it were going to be that kind of story he would rather sit out in the rain until he was soaked to the bone and muddy as a dog. Grandmother knew him well, though, and chuckled, muttering about boys. He did not understand and she did not explain.

"Yes, Mathias, it is a story of love, and loss, and how a cursed skin-stealer wronged a beautiful, young Cheyenne woman grieving by a river," Grandmother went on to explain, the lack of humor in her tone catching his attention.

"It sounds like a sad story, Grandmother," May said, staring down at her small folded hands.

"There is a great deal of sadness in the world," Grandmother replied, patting her on the head and resumed her rocking. "This is the story of Swift Coyote and Little Fox with a small role played by a warrior called White Star."

"If there was a skin-walker around why didn't the warrior kill it?" Mathias asked. "I would have killed any skinwalker that I met!"

Grandmother's mouth was pursed into a line of disapproval as she fixed him with a sharp look. "Enough! Still your tongue before it leads you into trouble!" she barked.

Mathias grumbled but obeyed.

"Not all battles are won with blood and bone."

Mathias frowned. "Then how?"

Grandmother poked his forehead, not unkindly, with her sturdy cane. "Why, by using the other gift Maheo gave you, other than your fists - yourwits, my young brave."

"Okay, but how?" Mathias demanded.

"Have you ever read Sherlock Holmes, Mathias? No. Perhaps you should, all this curiosity - it should not go to waste. Maybe you will become a detective, or tribal policeman someday, with all this driving need to knowthings you possess!" she chortled, ruffling his hair.

Mathias grunted flattening it back into place; he hated it when she did that. Which considering it was Grandmother Istas? She probably knew.

Sitting at Grandmothers feet he considered what it would mean to join tribal police, the men and women who were meant to protect the people of the Rez and it sounded right. Mathias might have suspected the ring of destiny to be loud in his ears – if he believed in such things.

Mathias scooted closer, listening to Grandmother's voice washing over him, telling the story of Swift Coyote.

"It begins with a beautiful Cheyenne woman, or Tsistsistaswhich as you know is our word for ourselves." Grandmother paused, chucking May by the chin. "Do you know what that word means? No. 'Beautiful people,' May, for our ancestors' clean-cut features I imagine."

"Where was I…" Grandmother muttered. "Right, Swift Coyote. She was kneeling by the Sweetwater River, which now flows through central Wyoming and east to the Pathfinder Reservoir on the North Platte River. It follows the Oregon Trail from Casper to South Pass, beautiful open land, before pollution and city smog blotted out the stars...but enough of the past. This woman, she was alone, mourning a recent loss," Grandmother explained. "Her husband had been killed."

Mathias pretended he was not interested in this beautiful woman, alone by the river. He pretended he did not care the same way he told himself that there was nothing he could do for the tired Rez bitch and its wiggling puppies. Mathias did this by staring hard into the fire and yet his ears clung to every word. He wanted to know what this beautiful woman had to do with the feared skin-walker that no one would tell him about; no one except for Grandmother.

So, out of respect, Mathias listened.

The Origins of A Half-Blood Skinwalker, Forgotten Tales:

A long, long time ago, when the world was newer and the stars ever bright in the endless, black night sky there lived a nomadic group of Cheyenne. They had encamped beside a large river, allowing them to sate the thirst of themselves and their beautiful red and white-colored ponies. Beside the river knelt a beautiful young woman named Swift Coyote. She had long raven-black hair that fanned down her back in a Stygian like shadow.

She was crying, her tears dropping down into the waters she gazed into, as her heart was cleaved into two parts.

Running Eagle, her husband, and heart's song was dead.

Slain by some creature in the dark of night when he and six other braves had gone out to trade with the Blackfoot tribe for food and supplies. Out of the seven braves only one, White Star, had returned. Everyone believed thatit was back to plague them some more as the long cold of winter began to set in. Whispers were forever buzzing through the air now as they spoke in circles of that which they feared.

He Who Walks On All Fours, the yee naagloshiisome tribes named the beings. A pity, it was not only them it stalked and harassed. Elders burned sage and juniper in the hope of warding off its evil presence, whittling their white ash tree utensils into sharp points as a means of last resort.

Swift Coyote who did not always do as she was told or listen to the words of those who came before did not know if she truly believed in such a being as a yee naagloshii. Such a being was said to have once been a powerful Medicine Man before turning to the Witchery Way and inflicting harm instead of healing.

Hawk Woman, the matriarch of their tribe said it had been a bad sign that Little Deer heard her father's voice calling to her in the night before the braves had left. It had been the first sign of bad things to come. A stampeding buffalo had killed little Deer's father two seasons past.

She did not know if it was what had killed Running Eagle and she did not care. She was consumed by her grief. She wondered if it might steal the skin of her loved one and call for her in the dark. She thought, maybe, she would go. To look upon her heart's song one last time before giving way to death which came for all, sooner or later. All things which live, die. These were the words of her Grandmother and how bitterly they tasted.

Swift Coyote felt oneness with the earth, her knees moistened by the moss beside the river, and the soft burbling of the water lovely as a baby's first laugh. But it did not return Running Eagle to her. Maybe they were wrong, maybe there was no need for her dear friend Little Fox to sleep with a sharp, white ash tree stake beside her bedding, and the incessant burning of sage and cedar and juniper to keep the being from entering their lodges.

'It was a deformed wolf or bear, perhaps, that had slain and eaten their braves,' Swift Coyote told herself but even as the thought occurred a twig snapped in the distance disturbing her thoughts. She glanced across the river, frozen, wondering what manner of creature had joined her by the river. It was no creature she spied. It was unlike any animal that walked or crawled upon the earth that she saw. It was neither human nor beast in manner. Tall and muscular like many Cheyenne warriors were tall and muscular with strong ropy arms but they hung too long, leaving the impression of deformity.

She had summoned it to her with her reckless thoughts.

It was the skin-walker, the yee naagloshiii, it had many names and all struck terror into the hearts of those who stumbled across its path. For it stank badly of death, decay and rot. Swift Coyote's eyes widened until the whites were showing and her mouth parted in a soundless scream of terror. In the days to come, she would never be able to truly describe what she witnessed, only that the scent of death was heavy in the air and that it was man-like but not a man at all.

It had an awkward rolling gait, as it hunched towards the river's edge, piercing her with its black hollow eyes. Eyes that held her transfixed; she was bespelled into stillness. She was trapped, unable to tear her gaze away from it. It was naked, adorned only by a massive black wolf pelt draped across its back.

The being wore it with the wolf-face pulled low, so it was its eyes that peered out at her unblinking and black as pitch, brimming with strange unnatural desire. It had come, summoned by her forbidden thoughts, exactly as Grandmother said it would happen.

'Never speak of it, do not even think of it if you can help it, child,' Grandmother had warned.

It was common knowledge passed down around the campfires that one did not speak its name, or think its name, without undertaking great personal risk. As a child, she believed in the blind way all children believed their elders. As a woman, she accepted the importance of shared stories and thought about it no more. How wrong she had been for now she was trapped. She despaired of ever again seeing the morning sun rising into the eastern sky.

To invoke their name was to invite them in. What foolish pride, to doubt the wisdom that came before! 'The old woman had been right,' she thought, transfixed by the black pits that were its eyes unable to move. Swift Coyote was caught like a rabbit in a snare, drowning in the fathomless dark of its inhuman eyes. It could mask his skin to take the shape of a man, but his eyes gave him away; they were wolf-eyes set on a man-like face.

Terror clawed at her chest, willing her lungs to take breath and scream. But she could not. It would not let her, holding her fast with his hypnotic stare. She shivered as the man-like-creature began its approach. It stalked across the river that divided them in purposeful and slow strides, grinning a snake's opened-jawed smile, for it knew she could not run. Her heart pounded so loud it became all she could hear.

Thud, thud, thud, it went rattling against her ribs. She was not prepared to join Running Eagle. She toppled backward on the bank as the yee naagloshii towered over her casting a massive shadow she could not escape. She stared, unable to look away.

"Swift Coyote," he said, his voice becoming guttural and inhuman but also male in tone. It was a wolf's snarl tempered with human speech. If ever a world were to speak it would sound like the skin-walker did that day.

"Three times you called to me, and so I have come," he declared, his teeth flashing in a false mimicry of a smile.

"No," she whispered, the words sticking to her mouth as she tried to speak them. "Leave! I did no such thing," she spat, forcing her head to the side. It was better to speak to the river and trees than be entrapped by those hollow inhuman eyes.

"Not so fast, little rabbit. Not so clever, to call on me," he said, and when he laughed it was the cackle of a black-winged crow.

The air became thick and hard to breathe, stinking like rotten meat spoilt by the midday sun and it was no longer the half-man kneeling between her legs, her buckskin dress riding up to reveal the naked flesh of her calves. It wore a new face Swift Coyote looked upon. It was the face of Running Eagle. Only it was not her husband; for her eyes could never deceive her heart.

The creature was nothing more than a shallow imitation of what Running Eagle had been in life. It had stolen his face, his body, but it wore it like ill-fitted clothes, lacking the fire of his spirit and the good humor that always graces his smile. What irony had befallen Swift Coyote? Forced to look upon Running Eagle's face and not see any of the parts of him she cherished. Those were not the eyes of her heart's song. Never had he been so hard-faced and cold in manner.

Unable to bear it - to see Running Eagle's skin worn by the cursed yee naagloshii, she beat at the monster's chest in helpless rage.

"Take back your own skin foul thing, but do not wear his face before my eyes!" she snarled, fighting as clothes were torn from her body until she was naked below his gaze.

The being, which wore her husband's face, took for itself her husband's rights claiming her body with a lustful frenzy.

It wore Running Eagle's face while prying into her secret places as her feet splashed and kicked at the edges of the river. Cruel laughter mocked her wild thrashing and large hands pinning her wrists to the ground.

Defenseless, she went limp and silent, her hands tearing at prairie grass digging into the earth until dirt and mud lined her fingernails. Human shaped teeth sank into her neck penetrating her flesh and she feared she was being devoured whole. The stories did not speak of it eating human flesh, but that meant nothing. It was not a story that pressed its hardened sex between her legs but a creature of flesh and blood. A perversion of the natural way that smelled so strongly of death that her stomach roiled and nausea threatened.

Blood, slick and wet burned a path from neck to breast curling around her heaving ribs. The wound burned like fire and sweat beaded on her brow, her spirit struggled against the poison leaching into her blood.

"No," she breathed in such soft sorrow that the river spirits heard her cries. In answer, they made the world hazy and distant.

Pulling her conscious self out from under the stink of death, away from hot fetid breaths grunted into her ears. A blanket gently draped across eyes to make them unseeing of that face which haunted her sight. She was made unfeeling to the weight pinned between her hips, the deep ache of rough, ill use her body was put to. Swift Coyote drifted, a leaf floating in a sea of numbness until the act was done.

"You are marked, woman," the man snarled, "bound by blood spilled and blood shared until such time you bear my child into this world."

A sickly green flash of light surrounded them, the color of decaying hyssop bushels, and when it subsided she noticed that something smelling of copper and bitter had been smeared across her parted lips as she lay in the dirt shaking. It coated her tongue and slipped down her throat before she could spit it out.

"You are mine, ó'kôhóme."

After speaking those parting words the dark creature retreated. As silent as the shadows that began to dance across the ground as evening fell he left Swift Coyote where she lay, blood-smeared with her spirit bent to the point of breaking, teetering along the knife's edge of deathly despair. In the long moments of silence between night and day, she had many dark forbidden thoughts, of joining theCamp of the Dead and Running Eagle. The thought of parting from Little Fox, who was such a dear friend to her, without word or warning, stayed her hand. Little Fox had long since lost her birth mother and father to the Pox, it had taken them when she was only a child and on that fateful day, Swift Coyote swore she would not willingly go where Little Fox could not follow. Swift Coyote knew she could not break a vow she had held to for twenty years.

Time passed but Swift Coyote did not much notice it's passing; she did not know for how long after she remained, it might have been minutes, or it could have been hours, gathering her scattered wits and torn clothes.

Little Deer had been right. Grandmother had been right, too. Swift Coyote winced as her body throbbed and ached with pain but she did not let that deter her movement. She regained her footing and with painstaking slowness limped her way back to camp, back to Little Fox whose kind smile never failed to uplift her spirit. She knew that by now she had been missed.

It was with no little happiness, subdued and squashed, as it was, that Little Fox was the first face she spied as she made her way back. The shrieking she might have done without but it did not trouble her either. Little Fox had cried out when she saw her friend return, bloodied and bruised with her once fine dress torn in peculiar ways.

Because she was very smart and just as kind Little Fox gently took her friend by the elbow and led her to sit by the fire, brushing back her long black hair to better wash and clean the flesh wound left by the skin-stealer. Swift Coyote jumped at every brush of her knuckles to her bare neck but said nothing to stop her.

Little Fox knew something of what had transpired by the river but she said nothing.

The brave White Star heard the commotion and ran to see what the fuss was about, his eyes becoming hard as flint rocks when they took in the disarray of Swift Coyotes clothes and the blood coating her neck. Long had White Star loved Swift Coyote from afar, but she had chosen Running Eagle for her husband and so he had given up, accepting Snow Bird as his first wife. She had died giving birth to a stillborn and he had remained unattached since, but often did his eyes fall to Swift Coyote.

For the first time, Swift Coyote realized there must be twigs and foxtails netted in her black hair, mud-encrusted to her feet and beneath her nails. Wilting under his searching gaze Swift Coyote turned her face to the ground in shame.

"Who has done this?" White Star thundered maddened that such an act had happened within such a close range of their encampment.

It was only through the small mercy of Little Fox glaring hard into his direction until he felt her gaze like a fire on his skin that he desisted and refrained from asking, 'why did you not call out for help?' or other unhelpful questions to further shame Swift Coyote.

So often it was that Little Fox was known to be kind that others forget that kindness sprung from a deep well that would happily overrun and drown in murky depths those who threatened her dear ones.

White Star relented and crossed his arms over his chest, scanning the gently swaying trees, and encroaching darkness knowing he would get no answer tonight, and now that the deed was done seething over the past would not miraculously make it undone.

Swift Coyote knew White Star would make war with the cursed yee naagloshii and die the same death as Running Eagle if she spoke now so she retained her silence. White Star was hot-tempered, quick to rush actions that required slowness. Running Eagle had been the counterbalance to White Star's recklessness. But now Running Eagle was dead and therefore unable to offer White Star his solemn counsel.

Swift Coyote sighed, staring down at her hands instead of White Star's angry face.

"Peace, White Star," Little Fox said quickly interceding, being the sound voice of reason among the three friends.

"Do you not have eyes to see? She is not well."

Swift Coyote stared into the sparks of the small campfire lost in the chaos of her own mind. Little Fox gently urged the events by the river from her in fits and starts long into the night with soft hands and gentle words. They had been friends since their youth and she brought comfort Swift Coyote knew would have been otherwise impossible. So she told Little Fox who darted off to speak to the elders in her place.

"It was the -" Little Fox began to ask upon her return after having spoken with the matriarch at length, but Swift Coyote's hand snapped out with violent force, cutting short her words.

Little Foxes cheek reddened, tears of hurt feelings shining in her doe-brown eyes.

Swift Coyote sucked in a breath, speaking in a low, trembling voice. "Do not speak of it, or it may come for you, too."

"I could not bear the thought of that," Swift Coyote said, tightly gripping Little Fox's hand in her own that trembled still.

"Not to you, not ever."

Swift Coyote did not know what the elders said, she was too tired, to heart-sore to care. That night as she sat before the crackling fire she cut off her beautiful long black hair and wounded her calves with sharp rocks in the throes of ritual mourning. She made visible to all her tribe the unseen wounds of her heart; it helped to carry the burden of her losses. That night and many that followed, her sleep was restless and her dreams haunted by a storm of whispers calling her deeper and deeper into the forest.

"Where are you?" she called out, rushing towards the sound of Running Eagle's voice. But no matter how fast or nimble she made her feet she could not catch up.

"Stop so I might find you!" she shouted into the dark. Her only answer would be the barking-howl of a coyote that became a ravens-caw and then, lastly, a man's chilling cackle.

"Come to me,ó'kôhóme !" the voice whispered, fetid breath wafting across her face. A clawed hand enclosed around her arm from behind. It held her bruising tight.

She awoke to Little Fox calling her name but with no Little Fox. She took a moment to calm the pounding of her heart as she lay in bed drenched in sweat. It was then that she felt the stinging of her arm. She looked to her shoulder, where the beast of her dream had grabbed her and saw a five-taloned like scratch, bloodied and red with infection.

Swift Coyote learned not even her dreams were safe from the cursed skin-stealer who had stolen her husband's face and her honor. Swift Coyote bolted upright, throwing back her bedding as she stumbled from her lodge and into the trees to empty her stomach. She retched hard enough that she was sent to her knees. She patted her stomach a strange unwelcome thought rising to the surface. Could it have gotten her with a child on its first try? She wondered to herself.

She leaned against the rough bark of a sycamore, her knee-high moccasin boots unsteady, and her nether's achingly tender and swollen from defilement. Was she even now carrying its half-breed child? She thought in despair. Such a child was neither human nor skinwalker - an abomination to the natural world. But she knew that it was possible. A man could get a child off his wife on their first night, after all. Whatever it was now, once the skin-stealer had been just a man, too, once a long time ago. Swift Coyote cursed foully and viciously enough that her ancestors would surely weep in their ancestral lands.

She would not nurse a mutant yee naagloshii at her teat. She would concoct a secret women's remedy and be rid of the unwanted thing growing inside her. No one would ever need to know the whole truth. She went foraging into the woods for the next few mornings, though she startled at every snapped twig and cawing bird, as she went about collecting the necessary mixture of herbs: rue, juniper, and hellebore. After this, careful to keep her doing secret, Swift Coyote smashed the herbs together with crushed ants and downed the bitter herbs praying to the spirits that it would take. It did not.

It occurred to her that the creature had cast Bad Medicine over her with his strange magic and the exchange of blood for blood.

She was bound to it, and it to her, she feared. Which meant that it might be through unnatural means that the child's life, and hers, was preserved despite her best efforts.

The next morning she became sick again only this time it did not go unnoticed. Little Fox watched her with sad knowing eyes. But she said nothing and neither did Swift Coyote. What was there to be said? Like Grandmother enjoyed crowing, 'it was what it was' and there was no helping it.

Desperation drove her to recklessness. Again and again, morning after morning, Swift Coyote smashed juniper and rue downing the bitter-tasting concoction that was intended to end the life of the thing she carried, but it did not work. The thing inside her womb clung to life - a sickness that would not be expelled.

It was as determined to live as she was that it should die. They were all three bound, she, the skin-stealer, and his bastard whelp. She gnashed her teeth to realize the futility of fighting what could not be killed, poisoned, or otherwise done away with. One night in the clutches of a great miasma of darkness she took a small sharp knife to her wrists in the privacy of her lodge, praying that Little Fox might someday understand. This too proved pointless. She woke, hale and hearty, the little sickness moving in her belly.

She was at a crossroad with few paths left to her but one last attempt one that might yet send her after Running Eagle into an early grave. She would seek out thickweed, a plant with thin, narrow stems and pale blue blossoms. It was sweet-scented, a clever disguise for a plant that when ingested in large amounts could be fatal as the rattlesnakes bite. So be it, she decided. No yee naagloshii would be born of her flesh and blood! No hollowed-out thing, this, this - spirit-stealer and skin-taker that grew inside would live to take its first breath. Running Eagle had been stolen from her by the child's father, knowing this how could she stand to look at it, at herself, carrying this mutant?

No. She was young and strong, capable of laboring in the fields for crops, weaving baskets, sewing, and keeping house. There would be other loves in her life other children who were full-blooded Tsistsistas. Swift Coyote was not blind to White Star's watching eyes. She had a future. She had a life to live, if only she could be unencumbered of this burden. She had this one last trick that may yet prove fruitful.

She was sick for three days and nights but she did not bleed and she knew she had failed again. She had no more tricks left and sank into despair that not even Little Fox could shake her from with her smiling eyes and unobtrusive kindnesses.

No bodies were ever recovered from the attack. There was not even bones left behind for the bereaved to lay to rest. The men were simply gone like ash scattered on an eastern wind; their blood and flesh swallowed up either by the creature who slew them or the earth as scavengers gorged themselves on easy meat. Hawk Woman was inconsolable for many days in her grief for her husband having been taken the same night as Running Eagle. Swift Coyote had mourned Running Eagle for four days and four nights but on the fifth, she set aside her grief and endless tears as she set about resuming her life. Running Eagle was dead, his spirit at peace in the afterlife. It was time to seek her peace.

"What will be, will be, what the spirits have chosen is not for me to fight," Swift Coyote said, her words heard only by the shadows dancing on her lodging, and the howling wind.

Six months later in preparation for the birthing time, Little Fox accompanied her to a place near the river where they made a place to bed down and wait for the appointed hour. What should have taken many hours, as first births often did, took only four instead. Her screams rent the air but when it was done, her pain-filled cries fell to silence and a child was lying in the dirt. When she looked into small dark eyes staring back into her own she cried bitter tears, the first she had cried since her defilement by the river, for what she knew had to be done.

Swift Coyote wanted to hate this child. In fact she had hated it for the whole time she had carried it inside her, the little sickness she could not be rid of and yet she experienced something altogether different now. The moment was here with the child born of her defilement resting in her arms and she realized something. She did not hate this little thing, it had been an unwanted burden, yes, but her hate was gone. Burnt out by the guileless eyes staring back shimming with the soft like of all the night stars.

How could she hate this little thing, small and defenseless as he was to her will? What bright eyes, and a pert - proud - nose he possessed! No hint of deformity or evilness in his soft, light, copper skin that would certainly darken in time. He had five fingers and five toes and his eyes were unmistakably and so beautifully human.

Swift Coyote did not even have a name to give the child and already her heart longed to attach itself to this small, defenseless thing she cradled in her arms, her chest full to bursting with a mother's love. It seemed the most natural thing in the world, to feel this way. This small one who she tried so hard to prevent from taking his first breathe. She had a son, her son. But it could not be. It was the son of a skin-stealer, the very same who had slain Running Eagle and Hawk Woman's husband. There could be no safe place for such a creature among her people.

Little Fox turned away as Swift Coyote placed a farewell kiss to the child's forehead and thrust his frail-looking body below the water.

It was a kindness, Swift Coyote told herself. What kind of life could a skin-stealer's son have? Being neither human nor fully beast there was no place for him to belong. Swift Coyote's heart broke anew as she wished the child had born some mark of the father, sharp teeth, inhuman eyes, or hairy, clawed hands.

Instead? He had been perfect.

Swift Coyote's shoulders shook violently, hot tears mingling with the water as she released open-mouthed sobs. Her eyes were squeezed shut so she would not have to see. Soon all she could hear was the water as it rushed over her hands. Her hands then began to go numb and she tightened her grip, unwilling to send the child to a watery grave as well.

When enough time had passed for the deed to be done Swift Coyote lifted him out of the water. His body was still and cold to the touch; all human warmth having been leached out of his body by the river waters that stole his life. Swift Coyote leaned into Little Fox's shoulder, grasping for warmth to ease the bitter sorrow encrusting her heart.

Her son, like Running Eagle, was dead.

"Look!" Little Fox cried, her eyes wide.

The child squirmed in her arms, life flooding back into his dark eyes. His mouth opened and he began to cry, hands flailing, grasping for anything to hold onto. Swift Coyote watched as his lungs filled with air as he howled out his unhappiness into the relentless dark, the cruel unfeeling world, he had been birthed too. She gasped aloud.

Without thinking she gave the child her pinky to hold onto. The crying immediately ceased. She found his grip strong for one so small.

'What an impressive will for life the little one possessed,' Swift Coyote mused, beginning to hum old tunes. The same soothing notes her mother had sung to her as a babe.

"It is a sign," Little Fox hurriedly said, her voice hushed and quiet.

'What a treasure it is to have a friend who could know my thoughts so well,' Swift Coyote privately thought to herself entranced by small dark eyes glittering up at her.

Little Fox understood her choice long before it had been consciously made.

"That is what we will say, my friend. You put him in the water and the spirits have said that you must raise him and so you will."

She was Tsistsistas, so too would be her son. And with his fine unblemished skin, and clear shining eyes how could such a place be denied? All would be well. She would make it so, somehow, with Little Fox's help.

Little Fox squeezed her shoulder. "You will not be alone, I am here."

Swift Coyote nodded absently, staring down into the small angular face. "It will be as you say, Little Fox."

"He is mine, my son, and the waters cannot have him."

Little Fox laughed into her shoulder knowing well the look upon her friend's face. "May the Spirits help He Who Walks On All Four should he try to rip you asunder," she snorted.

"Now, what will we call your little howler?"

Swift Coyote tore her eyes off of her son and listened to the soft burbling of rushing water, meandering its way downstream, and the far off howl of a lone wolf echoing across the land. A melancholic symphony as it stood on the plains, muzzle tipped back as it called out to the pale winter moon.

"Howling Wolf," Swift Coyote announced, nodding to herself. "Can you hear the ho'nehe? How loud and sad it sounds," she murmured.

"Howling Wolf then," Little Fox agreed, her eyes edged with sadness. "He will be like that no'nehe, alone and wandering, fighting for the right to be."

"He will be my son," Swift Coyote snapped, fixing Little Fox with a hard narrow-eyed glare. "He will have me," she repeated, warding off the heavy truth in her friend's words. It was a truth she did not wish to hear.

"And he will have me, too, Swift Coyote," Little Fox placated. "A son of your blood I will love as if he were born of my own."

Swift Coyote lifted her eyes from her son to admire the strength of her friend's love. To claim a child born of a hatedskin-stealer was no small feat and yet there was no lie in Little Fox's round face.

Little Fox sighed. "But we will not live forever, my friend."

Swift Coyote said nothing, the tears overflowing from her eyes speaking more than words could express.

'No, not forever, but it will have to be strong enough to last the ages,' she thought, tracing the curve of her son's face in a feathery caress. She could see nothing of his skin-stealing father in him now. He was guiltless to the circumstances of his birth, she knew that now, she would work to make others see it too.

How far she had come in a matter of hours - from placing his head beneath the water to knowing she would spill blood to give him the chance at one more breath.

He was hers.

Her son, Howling Wolf. And the skin-stealer would not take him from her. Swift Coyote and Little Fox sat beside the riverbed, their heads bent together and their voices intermingled; they began to scheme in that way men knew to fear. When the sun crested the mountain they had devised a plan that would ensure the safety of Swift Coyote's son. And, if they were lucky, bring an end to the yee naagloshii harassing their tribe.

Both women knew in their hearts that skin-stealers were once men, and even the wisest man could be tricked with enough forethought and cunning.

In the early morning hours, the two friends held hands sharing the same thoughts, listening to the cheerful noise of songbirds flitting about in the trees as hope bloomed in their chests. If they could do this thing the Tsistsistaswould owe them a steep debt. Tolerance would open the door; perhaps, in time it would grow to become acceptance of little Howling Wolf, son of Swift Coyote.

It came as no surprise to either woman that White Star had no wish to be part of their planning. He believed that Swift Coyote should give the child to its own kind if she no longer had the will to kill it herself. White Star had offered to do the deed himself but the press of her knife to his balls had silenced his unwanted advice. Little Fox's steely glower had stilled his tongue on the subject altogether.

Between the two of them White Star was, in this, outmatched. If he kept on insisting on this course of action he would be sent from their company and not welcomed back and he did not want this. He wished to help if only to ensure that the women did not become prey for the skin-stealer. For the child, he did not care, but for Swift Coyote and Little Fox he accepted the decision that they had come to for there was no argument that Swift Coyote did not refuse. She would see no harm done to her child. It was born of her flesh, what did it matter that the father was strange and foul? She claimed the whelp as her own with the fierceness of a den mother, ready to bare fangs and claw.

White Star, while dismayed, was also impressed and, eventually, he was won to the two women's cause.

Swift Coyote was aware that White Star had designs of his own in mind but she let it be. There would be a time and a place for such matters and she determined that this was not it. She, Little Fox, and White Star spent long hours speaking of the old stories. Together they sorted through everything that had been passed down to them from their forefathers in the hope that something might help to defeat it. Without a powerful Medicine Man, there was little chance they could kill it. They were resilient beings, not easily brought to heel.

Their local Medicine Man, Lame Bull, had gone to a nearby Blackfoot encampment and would not return for many days leaving the enactment of the plan to her, White Star, and Little Fox.

Members of the tribe pitied her situation, but they would not help. She could see it in their eyes and turned away faces. They wanted nothing to do with the infant son of a yee naagloshii. Let it die, Swift Coyote. That was the common consensus of her tribe but she could not. Hawk Woman could not be reasoned with and was speaking of exile for themboth if something was not done soon.

Swift Coyote told no one that she had tried to take his life and she did not have it in her heart to try again. She had swum the icy black river of that grief once; she would not traverse it again. The spirits had seen fit to take Running Eagle and in the same breathe given her a new purpose, Howling Wolf, her son.

And he was her son by blood and bone and he bore no outward mark of his cursed father. The spirits of the waters would not take him and it would be over her corpse that his cursed yee naagloshii father would succeed in the same.

"I will call him forth and ask the spirits of the land to bind him to pact law, where each must act and obey to the letter of his or her word," Swift Coyote announced. "In this way, the skin-stealer will not be able to act out of hand. I will then lure him with a challenge, devise the games and the rules."

Little Fox hummed, her face turning thoughtful.

"This could work," she muttered.

"What do you think White Star?" she asked, turning to the warrior who frowned back at her. His face etched in an unbreakable cast of solemnity.

"It could work," White Star finally conceded. "But we must plan carefully Swift Coyote, or all will be lost, not just your son."

Swift Coyote and her two companions set out into the woods guided by a bright Hunter's Moon that lit the forest paths. It was eerily still and quiet as they made there way farther and farther from camp. Little Fox carried her son on her back. She feared he would come to harm if he remained alone among the tribe. He was still very small and defenseless. She could only pray to the Great Spirit God, Meheo, that he grew big and strong. Failing that, clever would have to do.

They came to a stop in a clearing where the moon illuminated the trees and surrounding area. It was here that they built a fire. Swift Coyote, Little Fox, and White Star raised their hands, breathing in the cedar smoke wafting in the air, chanting and singing their voices raised in harmony, their tongues curling around words older than time itself. It was the language of the First People.

In this place let him be found.

In this place, by these rules must he, and we, be bound.

By the light of the Hunter Moon. Let him appear, in accord

to this pact. By these rules we are all bound -

To the manner in which

we must act.

Swift Coyote stepped away from the fire, cedar smoke clinging to her skin and spoke to the waiting ears of darkness in a clear, strong voice that carried far out into the deep darkness of the night.

"He Who Walks On All Fours, I name you, Father of my Child," she called out, once, twice, and thrice.

"I call on you who begat a child of mixed blood from my body."

Then he came, slithering out from the dark, a faceless form that as it drew nearer became man-like in appearance but not wholly human. His eyes glowed faintly, yellow-hued, and his mouth was pulled in a mawkish smile.

She shuddered at the sight of him, remembering hot breath and grasping hands, the ruthless thrust of his body in places he did not belong. She folded her arms across her chest and straightened her spine. She would not be cowed by the faint whisper of a memory. 'What was done, was done,' she reiterated in the confines of her mind.

Pulling at old wounds would help no one, least of all her. Not when she needed clarity of thought and words.

"That is a good try, little coyote, but that is not my true name," the skin-stealer snickered, laughing with the voice of a maddened dog. "I hope for your sake you have armed yourself with more than bits of cedar and a name that is useless to wield," he added, turning from the two women to eye White Star.

"Ah, another strapping warrior, I see. Do you imagine he can save the tattered shreds of your honor? Do you imagine his medicine is powerful enough to save you whom I have claimed as my blood bound?" he asked, wearing a smile that showed too many teeth.

The creature was the perfect chameleon and yet it could not resist letting its true color bleed through onto the canvas of its chosen skin. It relished in the terror and the sweet, sharp smell of fear, feeding off it like an aphrodisiac.

"Enough talk or else the sun will rise before our business is complete," Swift Coyote grit out, her face pinched with disgust.

"You called and I have come, little coyote, for you possess something that is mine. Return it to me and we can part ways," the skin-stealer reasoned. "What need have you for such a thing, in either case? It is a half-blood," he chuckled, holding out his hand.

"Not so fast, skin-stealer," Swift Coyote drawled, schooling her face to be as smooth and hard as stone. There was too much at stake and she knew she could not lose this game or all that she hoped for would be lost. "I wish to test our mettle, yours and mine. This is the true purpose of having called you forth."

The skin-stealer threw back his head and laughed, it was not a pleasant sound and shivers tingle up the companions' spines.

"No, it is not a little coyote but a mad-woman stands before me!" he snorted, confident that he had little to fear from two women and a lone warrior.

Swift Coyote continued as if he had not spoken at all, her hands remained clenched into fists at her sides.

"I have a proposition for you if you have the ears to listen!" she declared, lifting her chin with pride.

The skin-stealer chuckled, an elongated tongue flicking out to wet his lips. "Hmm, speak then. I am curious, it is not often I trade words with women."

Fear pulsed below Swift Coyote's skin, fierce and strong, but she did not let it show. She buried it deep inside where the skin-stealer could not see it.

"I will race you on foot, but only if you become a wolf. The one who makes it past that tree up ahead first wins and may ask a favor, which must be granted, as there earned prize."

The skin-stealer cocked its head to the side, curious. "Why should I bargain when I can take what I desire?"

"Why? Because we four are now bound by pact laws. Have you forgotten already?" she taunted.

"Or is it that you are afraid this frail woman fresh from birthing labors can outrun the great skin-stealer?" she exclaimed, knowing well how to best prick at the pride of man.

"You are so big and strong, and I am small and thin," she continued, knowing even the small gray rabbits could escape the hungry fox with the right circumstances.

"Very well, woman. We shall race, and what does the winner receive?"

"Why, whatever they ask for, do you agree?"

"Let it be as you say. I will let you go first, in the spirit of fairness, though it is long forgotten to my heart."

They raced along the forest path, and Swift Coyote, true to her name, won. During the daylight hours, the three companions had dug a hole in the ground large and wide enough for a massive wolf and down, down; down it fell, impaled on white ash tree spikes.

But it did not die.

Swift Coyote watched with cold impassive eyes, as it emerged unscathed from the trap, its wounds sealing themselves for none had chanced to pierce the creature's heart.

The skin-stealer clawed his way out of the hole and gnashed his teeth, angered by her trickery. He was wounded but yet lived.

"You cheat!" he snarled, reaming his vaguely human form. His arms, however, were over-long and the teeth in his mouth were too many and far too sharp to pass for humans.

Swift Coyote lifted her chin. She remained unbowed in the face of the skin-stealers yellowed glaring eyes, his sharp, sharp teeth, and the surrounded stench of death that permeated the clearing. She thought of her son and made her thoughts brave, her back unbending.

Underneath the stench, the horrible visage, it was still just a man with a man's thoughts and a man's weakness.

"You dare speak to me of cheating? You who have powerful medicine far surpassing this frail woman's body?"

The skin-stealer snorted and looked upon her with new eyes, beginning to understand. He could see that while her strength was lesser her mind was sharp as the cougars-unsheathed claws. Strength honed with bitter anger, well deserved.

"What boon do you ask, woman?"

"Leave my village and my son in peace for the rest of your existence."

"That is long indeed, best out of three, and I will free you from my blood pact too - you will no longer be my blood bound then," the skin-stealer countered.

"So long as I choose the game, skin-stealer."

"Very well, choose."

White Star, Little Fox, and Swift Coyote conferred for long minutes before returning to where the skin-stealer waited, impatient at their chatter.

"You claim to know all, choose rightly from what I will ask you, and if you are correct you may do with my life as you will," she said, choosing her words with care. "Show to me the face of he who I love most, he who holds first place in my heart."

The skin-stealer laughed, his head thrown back in a hearty cackle. "Ah, you poor man, it is not you," the beast said, looking directly at White Star who became still and unmoving as a great oak tree.

"I heard her silent screams at the riverbed, you know," the skin-stealer boasted, puffing out his chest in pride.

"I made her scream newer, sweeter, screams, too."

Little Fox pressed the flat of her palm to White Star, forcing him to remain still.

"You have lost," the skin-stealer said pityingly at Swift Coyote. As if, perhaps, some part of the creature had hoped she might win again. The forest stunk of rotten meat and it's face transformed to her dead love, Running Eagle.

Swift Coyote smiled, her teeth a feral slash of white in the near-pitch darkness.

"Wrong!" she crowed, "He was my love, this is true, but you stole his life and then gave me a new one in his place. It is this life, my sons, which is forever first in my heart. I was a wife, then a widow, and now, firstly mother."

The skin-stealer snarled with impotent rage, bound by the words of their agreement to do no harm.

"You filthy lying woman!" he raged. "It cannot be so, how can one such as you love a beast? Son of yee naagloshii!"

Swift Coyote snarled back, her expression fearsome as she beat her chest.

"He is the son of Swift Coyote - now and evermore!" she said with such ferocity that the skin-stealer was moved to caution.

There was a strange power to speaking words, and on that night Little Fox and White Star knew that her son would never be only the get of a skin-stealer.

The skin-stealer looked at her with such confusion that something close to pity was roused in her heart. She had won because he did not believe any human could love something born from such violence.

Swift Coyote had outsmarted the skin-stealer.

"This last game I choose, my clever coyote," the skin-stealer insisted and Swift Coyote had no choice but to bend to his will.

"Very well," she said, mimicking his words.

"Tell your warrior to throw down his arms and that you will come away with me by your own will, to dwell in darkness with the skin-stealers that dwell in the canyons to the north of the plains. Leave your son in the care of this Little Fox to be reared. Agree, of your own free will with no thought of tricks and I will here and now swear never to do harm to you, your son, your tribe, or any descendants born of your bloodlines."

This was more than they could have dreamed and Swift Coyote having to weigh her life in the balance of her child and tribe was inclined to accept. It was a good offer, the best she might receive from the likes of a skin-stealer.

Swift Coyote listened to White Star shouting his refusal, his voice loud as rolling thunder, as she solemnly dipped her head in agreement to the skin-stealer's offer.

"Speak, woman, and know that I will hear the lie in them if you are not true to your words," the skin-stealer cautioned.

"I will go," Swift Coyote pronounced, determined to live by her word even as terror clawed at her heart.

To go away with this cursed thing? Live all her days in darkness? It frightened her to do this thing, but she knew she would have to abide by her word. Pact law was a double-edged blade that could cut either way.

"To save my son, to save my tribe, I will go."

The skin-walker growled in frustration, for yet again his plot had been foiled. The woman did not lie, she would go, and she would dwell to the end of her days with cursed skin-stealers to save her son from his clutches.

If she had spoken a lie he would have taken all that he desired this night and every night to follow. But she had not, and even he was bound by the pact they had enacted. Swift Coyote had won the freedom of her tribe for the sake of her son.

"Go, go, that I might never see your face again," the skin-stealer growled, his arms cutting through the air in dismissal. "Be known henceforth as She Who Outwitted the Dark. Take your son, take your freedom, you belong to no man or skin-stealer, woman, for on this night neither was cleverer than you."

The skin-stealer turned his gaze to Swift Coyote. For a single moment, the pale shadow of the man he'd been once a long time ago stared back at the woman as if it were he who was somehow transfixed by Swift Coyote. Swift Coyote glimpsed a lean, angular face, eyes brown like the hide of an elk, and clean-cut features...a man who had been Tsistsistas. A man not so different from Running Eagle, or White Star, or any of the others who lived in her village.

White Star hurried to her side, his large hand enclosing her wrist as she and the skin-stealer locked eyes, and the moment was broken. The veil fell back into place and all she could see in the skin-stealers was the fathomless black, restless darkness that would never know true peace for so long as it drew breath.

'Perhaps, to such a one, death would be a kindness,' Swift Coyote thought and turned away, whatever the skin-stealer had been once? He was that man no more. He was yee naagloshii now and forever bound to the dark roads of the Witchery Way he had chosen and for him, there was no turning back. The pale shadow of the good man he had been driven out by the corruption of his heart.

'Perhaps, death will find him in its own good time and he will reap all that he has sown, but it will not be this day,' she thought, knowing just as surely that someday the skin-stealers time would come. Death came to all, eventually.

'All things which live, die,' her Grandmother used to say when the children gathered at her knee and Swift Coyote no longer doubted the wisdom that came from those who lived long and hard before.

Swift Coyote strongly believed this truth might hold true even for yee naagloshii and set all thoughts of the wretched creature and its fate from her mind. She was free, free of the binding, free of its presence, and she had her son.

She took hold of Little Fox's hand and together the four of them returned to camp with a new story to tell. How it came to be that the skin-stealer would bother their tribe no more and Howling Wolf, son of Swift Coyote, was given a place among the Tsistsistas.

Mathias tossed a wadded up newspaper into the fire, lost deep in thought. A half-breed yee naagloshii, had been allowed to live alongside the Cheyenne? The very idea chilled his blood, shivers running down his spine. Taking in a thinglike that was not the same as assimilating a stolen white settler's child or enemy tribes' fallen warriors and young among their number. It was yee naagloshii! Mathias pondered the story Grandmother told and believed with his entire being that the warrior White Star should not have allowed the child to live and Swift Coyote should have done her duty to preserve and protect her Cheyenne tribe from the offspring of a skinwalker.

A rabid dog was put down and a cursed thing was not coddled like an infant babe at the mothers' breast. Grandmother said full-blooded yee naagloshii were dangerous, and powerful enemies. If that was in fact the truth, then why allow it to live? What reason did the three friends have to believe the half-blood would be any different from the rest of its kind? Mathias wondered in frustration. It made no sense. Not any more than the missionary-man and his singular act of senseless violence against the Rez bitch whose life was already hard enough without his unwanted interference.

"What happened to the tribe Grandmother? Later, I mean," Mathias asked unable to hold the question inside a moment long.

He felt he needed to know, it felt deeply important that he knew everything he could about this strange happening Grandmother Istas spoke of. "Is there anything more to this story?"

"I do not know all things Mathias - but I do know the tribe was massacred without cause or warning. Make of that what you will. Was it the half-bloods doing or some other chain of events? Who can say?" Grandmother sighed, shrugging her frail, bent shoulders as she spoke.

Mathias saw her shiver as a particularly strong gust of wind beat against the house and retrieved her plain brown shawl from the couch and draped it around her shoulders. She patted his hand before he retreated to his place by the fire.

"The stories survive because a Cheyenne woman named Still Water married into a Blackfoot tribe, escaping the slaughter by two months, or so the story goes. I was told this by my Grandmother and now I am telling you, my little doves."

"Why did they let it live?" Mathias asked.

"It was a baby!" May defended, clearly displeased at the idea that the half-blood should have been killed. Mathias did not share her concern but he saw no need to make it plain either.

May was young and kind, it did not surprise him that she agreed with Swift Coyote and Little Fox.

"Yeah, baby Hitler, or Mussolini, maybe," Mathias grumbled, unable to resist pricking one little needle into the blank surface of her innocent optimism.

"A mother's love spared the half-blood," Grandmother broke in before they could continue their dispute. "Whether that was right or wrong it is not for us to decide. Little Fox said the Great Spirit wanted the child to live, who's to say that she was wrong?" Grandmother asked, grinning at him with a light behind her old eyes that shone like that of a much younger woman with all the possibilities of the world in them.

It was infectious and Mathias grinned right back, toothy and carefree.

"There now," Grandmother chuckled, a soft breath laugh as she patted his head and he was so lost in the moment he did not even mind.

"This world is a strange and puzzling place we travel, my little doves. It is full of many deep mysteries."

Mathias tossed another piece of crumpled newspaper into the fire watching the edges burned and curled inward until they became ash.

"Only a mother could love a monster - a half-blood skinwalker," he whispered under his breath but he knew Grandmother heard. For an old woman Grandmother Istas possessed both sharp eyes and keen ears.

"Perhaps, Mathias, perhaps," Grandmother's look was speculative and Mathias did not understand, again, what was there to love about such a thing?

A monster was a monster, right?

Mathias thought about it, turning it over in his head and came away with the same conclusion, the potential danger such a being presented was too much to leave to chance.

It should have been destroyed.

Mathias tossed and turned that night, haunted by yellow coyote eyes gleaming in the darkness of his dreams. Nothing good could come from letting a skin-walker go free into their world. Someday that bell was going to toll and someone would have to pay the price for a mother's mercy. He was certain of this but he was also certain that he was just a boy and there was nothing he could do.

Mathias sat up in bed, throwing off his covers. Slaying a skinwalker was beyond his abilities; he knew that much was true at least for now. He was only eleven years old and very aware of how much smaller and shorter he was in comparison to the bigger, older boys in his class. He would grow, in time, he knew so he let that thought go. He would not be young and small forever.

Mathias stared sullenly out the window, watching the rain pelt the ground with hard splats and decided there was something he could do. He eased open his bedroom window and slipped outside into the rain. He could barely see where he was going but that was all right. He knew the Rez like the back of his hand and in less than thirty minutes he had found the Rezbitch and her puppies huddled between two boarded up and abandoned houses.

He had made up his mind that he had to do something as he lay in bed so he did not hesitate when the moment to act arrived. Stealthy and silent as a shadow he pried off the board, which secured the backdoor shut and with a lot of coaxing relocated the family into the abandoned house. He did not see the harm seeing as no one else would be using it for quite some time. He imagined the looks on his parents tired faces and knew they would not stand for it. They had enough mouths to feed, they would say. No, they would not have let him bring theRezbitch and its puppies to their yard so this would have to do.

"It's not a palace, but it is dry," Mathias said absently stroking the rough fur of the Rezbitch.

It was looking at him in such a manner that it made his heart sad. He had not done much, and he knew he should have done something sooner.

After saving the Rezbitch and her pups he snuck out of the house more often and at odd hours to check on the family in the following weeks to come. His parents barely noticed but he was fully aware of Grandmother and her keen, watchful eyes. One the third day of the second week of this Grandmother gave him a loaf of bread and a side of turkey, chucked him under the chin and said "For the mamma and her pups, Matty."

He froze, blinking a few times as he tried to figure out what had given him away, but Grandmother only smiled as she shook her head.

"You have a gentle spirit, Mathias. Now, have you considered keeping on for yourself?"

"My parents-"

"Oh, you leave that to me, Matty, you leave that to me," Grandmother said, patting his head. "It is only right that you should be allowed to keep at least one, it was an unexpected kindness you did for the poor things, one that was given without expectation of reward."

Grandmother nodded, murmuring to herself, quiet enough that Mathias barely heard her words at all.

"Yes, and little May's family could use one, too, to keep away the vermin you know?"

"May's parents just lost their vermin chaser Rex to the cancer, they might let her have a new one, she did well with Rex" Mathias quickly agreed, as he realized he hadn't thought far enough ahead.

He hadn't considered anything other than getting them grown and out of the wet and rain that night. They would need homes if they were to be spared the hardships of the hardy, tan colored Rez bitch's life.

"Good, I will speak with them first thing tomorrow," Grandmother said and suddenly it wasn't just him checking in and feeding the family. It was Grandmother Istas, May and he bringing food and attention to the puppies and the weary-eyed Rez bitch whom watched the going on of the humans with a quietly grateful regard.

Grandmother Istas, storyteller and co-conspirator began her work of gently nudging his parents towards acceptance.

May's parents, however, had needed none knowing the value of a well-trained dog to chase and kill the raccoon, rats, and opossums. Soon enough they were strong enough to leave the Rez bitch and May picked the large brown male puppy for herself and her family, which were pleased with her choice.

Mathias looked among their number and knew which he would take for his own yard once Grandmother had finished her work with his parents. The pups were soft and playful, always licking and nipping as they tumbled together across the floor, learning to bark and bare their teeth in play-acts of dominance. It was fun to watch them.

Each day he looked at his Grandmother and she sadly shook her head and he understood. Knowing he could not wait any longer or else the pup's best chance at being taken into good homes would vanish he carefully loaded them up into a wheelbarrow and took them on a long walk to Black Dog Animal Rescue. It was many miles, but he could not drive and his parents would not take him.

The people at the rescue were kinder than he might have expected, maybe they could see how unhappy he was about all of this and set aside their natural suspicion of unwanted puppies being thrust into their care. Maybe they were simply used to taking the unwanted cast offs of others.

Mathias thought of the Rez bitch that he had led in with a tattered rope for a leash and he could not do it. He could not give her away to these people. She was not as young and pretty colored as the rest. He knew her chances were not good no matter how fair and good the people here tried to be.

He returned home a little sad at the loss of the small ones but contented with the knowledge that he had done the best he could for them in the end. TheRez bitch was the one he would have chosen anyhow.

"You will be Rez," Mathias said, paused to look down at the dog that dutifully looked back and chuckled to himself. And it was decided; between them two that her name would be Rez and he would do all he could for he even if she was not rightfully his.

Tired from all the walking, Rez's leash of rope in his hand, Mathias almost walked right past his Grandmother. She was waiting for him on the front step, stern and serious enough in expression that it gave him pause.

"Grandmother?" he asked, beginning to worry.

Rez whined, licking the knuckle of his hand as his breath caught in his throat as he waited.

"You parents have given their final word," Grandmother said, and he felt his heart drop to his knees as he began to doubt he might be allowed to keep old Rez off the streets and alleys.

"You have to give your word to train the dog and take care of its every need yourself, you must work to pay for its food and needs, can you agree to this Matty?" Grandmother asked.

"Yes!" Mathias said, his voice cracking with excitement.

"I see you chose the old one? How interesting. I look forward to seeing the man you will become," Grandmother chuckled.

Mathias tended to Rez for the rest of her days. He asked around for jobs and nothing was too much or to hard, which earned him a reputation as a hard worker that would catch the attention of then tribal police officer Sam Gray Wolf, son of Gil Gray Wolf who worked at the pottery store. Mathias hunted local vermin and pests to keep Rez's belly full.

It was sometimes hard but Mathias found he did not mind. It made him feel good to know that there had been something good he could do and he had done it. It had been the right choice, he decided each time he watched Rez leaping among the autumn leaves or romping with May's Rex II. Rez lived a long life and a better one that would have been possible for an ordinary Reservation stray, he knew that ant it made the loss that came later easier to bear.

In 1989, on a brisk spring evening Rez lay down to sleep at the foot of Mathias bed, old and gray at the muzzle and haunches, never to awaken.

Mathias held her one last time, cold and stiff in his arms the light gone out forever from her eyes and quietly carried her to her favorite spot by a creek and buried her deep in the earth so her spirit might find peace in its favorite place where they had shared many happy times together splashing in the summer: he, May, Rex II, and old Rez.

He decided beneath the branches of a large oak tree that's branches, which seemed to shield the stray tears that ran down his face from being seen, that he would not do that May had chosen to do.

He would never have another Rez.

As he grew older, wiser, learning new stories at Grandmother's knee Mathias would know there were many kinds of monsters in his world; many were of his own kind. But never, in all that time, would he forget the lessons his Grandmother taught him and May on those long winter nights. He believed, even as many winters passed and gray threaded his black hair, in the stories of his elders. Grandmother Istas was many things to many people but she did not lie.

Humans, some would claim, were the worst of them all. But not Mathias, he remembered the stories. On bad days predatory eyes still crept through the corners of his dreams and on those nights he found no sleep no matter how hard he tried. There were other nights to when he stared into the darkness of his yard and felt something staring back.

It is nothing, just a coyote or fox. Perhaps it is a wolf, Mathias told himself as he kept his lonely night watch, the blanket loosely draped over his shoulders a bizarre feeling of exposure washing over him, making the hairs on the back of his neck prickle oddly. On those nights he kept Rezclose to his side. Hidden from his parents between the cover provided by the bed and the nightstand. He told himself on those nights his mind was playing tricks. But he did not fully believe that. He knew too much now.

He never spoke of those events to Grandmother, she had become old and frail and he did not wish to see the worry deepen the lines of her kindly face. She had always been good to him; there was no need to trouble her thoughts with dark, but baseless, suspicions. He had yet to see or hear anything and for all that part of him wanted to be big and brave and kill a skinwalker the older, wiser part of him hoped they and such things as that might never darken his path.

Mathias turned twenty-one with a BA in criminal psychology, Jonas, Ada, and Grandmother conspired behind his back and in the end the only choice he had was to bury his pride and make sure their earnings were put to good use. Shortly after graduation Sam Gray Wolf approached him about taking a job on the Rez, giving a long speech about helping his people, and Mathias accepted.

"You had me at I have a job for you," Mathias had replied and both of them had laughed.

"Good, I think the tribal police could use some new blood, someone who is not hardened by the job and is willing to work hard for what they believe," Sam had said when the laughter died down.

"Can I ask? Why me?"

"I remember you and that Rez dog of yours back in the day when you were just a scrawny, scrappy kid with to much pride – how you worked hard to keep the animal fed and well behaved, all alone? I noticed and I wasn't the only one. You did not have to do that, hell kid, many walked right past the animal. But not you, so that's 'why you' I guess. You did something even when you didn't have to, and here we are."

Mathias had blinked; taken aback that Sam would remember or had even known about what he had done for Rez and her pups, all those years back.

"Yeah, here we are," Mathias had finally agreed.

"I expect good things from you, kid."

"I won't let you down," Mathias had vowed, meaning every word.

Sam Gray Wolf had just grinned as he'd shaken his hand, a knowing glint in his eye that made Mathias determined to live up to the older man's expectations. He decided if he couldn't kill skinwalker's or wendigo's then he would put bad people behind bars. It was as good a start as any to helping his people.

Mathias slept better after that, long and soundly, undisturbed by the yellowed gleam of coyote eyes gleaming in the dark of night.

But he never forgot.