Trail of Lightning (The Sixth World Book 1)

by Rebecca Roanhorse

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 load my shotgun with shells full of corn pollen and obsidian shot, both sacred to the Diné. Ammo meant for taking out the yee naaldlshii and ch’įdii and any of the other monsters that call Dinétah home. If I’m wrong and this monster is of the more common human variety, the ammo will work just fine on him, too. A hole in the heart is a hole in the heart, no matter what makes it.

Neizghání once told me that evil was a sickness. He told me he could see it on people, like a taint. That the bilagáanas had it wrong, and evil wasn’t just some spiritual concept or the deeds of a bad man. It was real, physical, more like an infectious disease. And you could catch evil if something evil got inside you.

I remember the first time I saw the Wall. I had expected something dull and featureless. A fifty-foot-high mountain of gray concrete, barbed wire lining the top like in some apocalyptic movie. But I had forgotten that the Diné had already suffered their apocalypse over a century before. This wasn’t our end. This was our rebirth.

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.

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

Trauma, scars. That’s what I know, what I’m good at.

“Being a hero’s not about being perfect. It’s about doing the right thing, doing your best to get the people you care about home safely.

“Everything you’ve done, your past, it’s all just a story you tell yourself. Some of it is true, but some of it is lies.”

“Love’s not supposed to try to kill you.”