Trail of Lightning (The Sixth World Book 1)

by Rebecca Roanhorse

And now they are looking to me to be their hero. But I’m no hero. I’m more of a last resort, a scorched-earth policy. I’m the person you hire when the heroes have already come home in body bags.

I ignore them and tell myself I don’t care.

But I’ve always been a terrible liar.

That maybe he doesn’t believe much in saving either.

I’ve never been much for tradition, and it’s better all around if we just stay strangers.

I’d forgotten in my months of self-imposed isolation how much I hate a crowd, and how much a crowd hates me.

Maybe they don’t want to pay because I’m a woman. Maybe because I’m not Him.

But I force myself to swallow down the familiar hurt, the ache of abandonment. The pathetic flutter of desire.

“I’m not scared,” he mutters, a final volley. But it’s not true.

I keep moving anyway, sure of my path. And for a moment, lost in the beauty of the waning sunlight and the steady rhythm of my breath, I forget I am here to kill something.

My pleasure fades along with my daylight.

But now that I’m talking, it feels urgent that she know. That she understand why I have to do what I’m going to do.

And I tell myself she understands that I’m saving her, even if it doesn’t seem like it.

And I can’t help but think that if this was the right thing to do, why does it feel so fucking wrong?

I didn’t know her name.

This wasn’t our end. This was our rebirth.

It was beautiful. It was ours. And we were safe. Safe from the outside world, at least. But sometimes the worst monsters are the ones within.

Well known and well liked, which makes me wonder what he’s doing spending time with someone of my questionable reputation at all.

But it’s his eyes I like best. Lively and full of mischief, like he’s in on something way more fun than anything you know about.

It’s not that I don’t want friends, don’t want family. I do. I want them as much as everyone else. It’s just . . . complicated.

An immortal. Around him, I didn’t worry. But with other people? Flesh and blood and human? I don’t think I want the responsibility.

Now the kindness in his eyes makes more sense.

“Are you scared?” “Hell, yes.” I push back in my chair. “I would be stupid not to be, taking this on alone.” “You don’t have to do this alone,” he says brightly. “I know someone who would make a great partner.”

“Right, big medicine. Well, then you don’t want him around me. All I can teach him is death.”

I can’t see his eyes behind those mirrored sunglasses, but I get the feeling he’s staring at me. Sizing me up. Fair enough. I’m doing the same to him. “That’s right.”

If I didn’t know better, I’d say he set me up.

A few passersby look over out of curiosity, but nobody’s stopping to witness the impending police brutality. At least not yet.

“Who the hell are you?” Longarm sneers. “You Hoskie’s new girlfriend?” Kai frowns, confused. “Longarm thinks you’re pretty,” I explain.

It’s a nice laugh, clear and genuine, but I still can’t get over his lie.

“Coyote crosses your path. It’s bad luck, for sure. Sometimes it means something worse.”

“Greed is universal,”

“Seems anywhere there’s a natural resource, there’s someone willing to hoard it for themselves to make more money than they can spend.”

“Water is life,” I say. “And you can’t drink oil,” he replies, the old Protector slogan we all learned as kids.

“Some people see the bad things that happen to them as a burden, others as potential for growth.”

“Some things are just bad. There’s no redeeming value in suffering. All that noble savage shit is for suckers.”

And I’m the only potential monster around for miles.

“So many ghosts,” he whispers.

In Navajo, the souls of the dead are ch’įdii. They are the residue, the evil deeds every man and woman leaves behind at the moment of death. They can possess the living, causing drowning sickness. Drowning sickness can be a slow death, a sinking into melancholy and depression until you forget to get out of bed, forget to eat, and eventually, forget to breathe. Or drowning sickness can be aggressive, an attack that feels like you’re suffocating, being pulled under and into the grave. Quick or slow, either way, ch’įdii kill.

“Don’t let a pretty face fool you.” I lean against the filing cabinet, amused. “You know, now that you mention it, I bet Grandpa Tah was a looker. He’s still got that twinkle in his eye.” He gives me an exaggerated sigh. “I meant me. I’ve got the pretty face.”

“They’re still men,” he says, his voice a deep roll of thunder. “They are still five-fingereds. To call them monsters is to misname them.” “I don’t see how it matters what we call them. Dead is dead.” To me it’s splitting hairs not to think these men monsters. After all, there are plenty of human monsters too, just as twisted and evil as anything supernatural.

“Words matter,” he says. “The name you give things, it forms them when you speak. You must always be careful with your words.”

A story about Coyote and the Black God Haashch’ééshzhiní. Once the two tricksters were best of friends and were tasked with setting the stars in their place in the sky. Haashch’ééshzhiní, the Keeper of the Fire, had a plan for how the stars should be set. It was methodical. Ordered. But Coyote grew bored with his plan and tossed the stars into the sky haphazardly with an impetuous flip of a blanket.

He laughs. Nobody ever laughs at my dumb jokes, and it’s enough to make me flush, pleased.

I may not be able to see the ch’įdii, but I feel them in my gut, like a rising sadness that makes me want to howl, to weep for everyone and everything I’ve ever lost.

“Lightning out of a clear blue sky,” Kai says. “Weird.” “Yeah, weird.” Although I know it’s anything but. Lightning without a cloud in sight means one thing. Visitors.

“What do you want, Ma’ii?” I say, my voice impassive. “What do you want? What do you want? What do you want?” He rears up, affronted. To ask four times forces an answer from the trickster.

East is white, south is blue, west yellow, and north black. And this one,” I say, turning the multicolored one in my hand. All colors, all directions. “Where did you get these?”

“Long ago it is said that First Man and First Woman were fashioned from the ear of a cornstalk. First Man from the white corn, First Woman from the yellow. They were covered in buckskin cloth and then Níłch’i blew across them, giving them life. It is that breath of Níłch’i that made them human, just as it makes you human.”

“Níłch’i is the sacred wind. The giver of life. I want you to go to Canyon de Chelly and use the hoops to bring me the breath of Níłch’i.”

“The sad truth you do not wish to face, Magdalena, is that sometimes the ones we call our heroes are the greatest monsters of all.”