"When the Badger Grows Horns" 2/5
Previous
Chapter 2
Nihighan ’Ayóii Hooghan ’Át’é
“John?” Mary said as they carried her parents’ bedstead outside the next afternoon. “I was wondering... how did your father’s family end up with the name Winchester?”
John took a deep cleansing breath, let it out again, and shrugged. “It was... 1868, I think. The family had escaped the Long Walk by hiding among the Zuni, so when the People came back to the new reservation, my family had to register with the BIA. Of course, the BIA man couldn’t understand my ancestor’s name. But someone remembered him admiring one of the new repeating rifles that the soldiers had; we weren’t allowed to own guns then, but my ancestor said he wished he could have a hunting weapon that didn’t need reloading after every shot.”
“So the BIA man said ‘Winchester’ and your ancestor reacted?”
“Yep.”
Mary laughed. It was a quiet, subdued laugh-he wouldn’t have expected anything else, considering their task-but it still helped to clear John’s mood somewhat. Gone was the edge of hysteria that had tinged her laughter after the funeral, which had worried him a little. And the sound was oddly reassuring. They’d burned sage in the living room just to be safe, even though Mary was sure her parents’ spirits had moved on, but superstition or not, John was still uncomfortable being in a house where someone had been murdered, and helping Mary pack up the last remnants of her past wasn’t exactly fun. They would both be glad to be done.
Even so, the task was proving to be easier than either of them had feared. Uncle Robert had indeed cleared out almost everything except the major pieces of furniture, the kitchen furnishings, and Mary’s bedroom, and he’d left enough packing supplies for the things that remained. One of the neighbors offered to take the things they didn’t want to Goodwill. Mr. Woodsen, the garage owner, had very kindly loaned the newlyweds a pickup and a flatbed trailer onto which to load the pieces they were keeping. And by some minor miracle (though Mary hadn’t seemed surprised), the house John had wanted to rent was available for immediate move-in. So by the time Mike got off work that evening and arrived to help and to deliver what remained of John’s things, both the truck and the Impala were loaded and ready to go, and John already had the keys to 485 Robintree. All Mary had to do was to lock the front door of her childhood home and leave her key in a lockbox for the realtor.
John thought he heard some murmurs of “There goes the neighborhood” from some of their new neighbors when they started unloading the truck at the new place, but Mary just said, “Ignore them, shiyéyóó,” and kissed his cheek.
Once the Winchesters were settled in their new home, their lives fell into a pleasant, quiet routine. The Campbell house sold quickly, and Mary put that money and all the rest of her inheritance into savings so that they could afford to buy their own house when they had kids. John stayed on at the garage, and once she found someone to carpool with, Mary took a part-time clerical job at KU. They went back to Arizona for Thanksgiving and Christmas every year, and John bought a CB radio for the Impala so that they didn’t have to wait until they got to his parents’ hooghan to begin their visits. They also made friends in Lawrence and got involved with the community in small ways, and John slowly acclimated to life outside the reservation even as he let his hair grow out to shoulder-length. Mike met a nice woman named Kate and married her a year later. Mr. Woodsen set a date for his retirement. Seasons changed. Technology changed. Styles changed. Good economic times came, went, and threatened to stay gone. Oil shortages made national news. Cars started becoming more “fuel-efficient.” President Carter set the national speed limit at 55 mph, though John tended to disregard that fact as soon as they passed a city when they went back to Dinétah. Mary wrote down everything that happened, in spite of John teasing her that her journals must make for pretty boring reading looking back. She simply smiled and refused to let him read any of them, preferring to keep the old ones locked in the safe with his revolver.
And for five years, aside from an occasional phone call from Uncle Robert, the Campbells never made any attempt to remain in contact with the Winchesters. It bothered John far more than it did Mary, who seemed to think she was better off staying as far away from her side of the family as possible. She put it down to disagreements over the family business far more than any concerns about her having married an Indian.
Then one dark and not-yet-stormy night in mid-May of 1978, shortly after John got home from work, Mary answered the doorbell with what sounded to John like a hushed and hurried attempt to get someone-a male someone-to leave. So John cleared his throat and walked up behind her to greet the two very tall, very tan, very green-eyed men who were looming over his wife.
Mary turned back to him. “Sorry, shiyéyóó. They were just....”
“Mary’s cousins,” said the shorter of the two with a grin. “We couldn’t stop in town without swingin’ by and sayin’ hey, now, could we?” He held out his hand. “Dean.”
And that jogged a distant memory; John couldn’t quite place it, though. “You look familiar,” he said as he shook hands.
Dean blinked. “Really? You do, too, actually, you know. We must have met at some time. Small towns, right? Gotta love ’em.”
John returned the smile and turned to the other man, who looked dazed. “I’m John.”
The other man, his long chestnut hair tied back like a Diné elder’s, took his hand but didn’t speak.
“This is Sam,” Dean supplied.
“Sam? Mary’s father was a Sam.”
“Yeah, it’s a family name.”
Sam nodded, but he didn’t let go of John’s hand. In fact, it looked like he was fighting tears. But when John called him on it, he let go, snapped out of whatever funk he was in, and blamed it on the long drive.
And then Mary tried several times to prevent John from inviting them inside for a beer.
Well, she might have been head of the house, but John was not about to let these Campbells get away without a proper visit. One of his chief complaints about life in the city was that too few of their friends were willing to take the time to just sit and chat, and Mary had agreed every time he’d brought it up before; but these cousins seemed very willing to stay, so John didn’t understand what Mary’s problem was. She was even discourteous enough to try to convince them not to stay for supper.
Before they could actually argue about it, however, the phone rang, and John left Mary with the Campbells while he answered it. It was just as well that he did, too, because it was Mr. Woodsen calling to tell John that he was going to have to cut John’s hours, if not let him go altogether. After a moment of quiet pleading, John convinced Mr. Woodsen to meet with him-but the old man would brook no delay. He wanted John at the garage in ten minutes or else.
John bit his lip as he hung up, shooting a quick glance into the living room. He hated to leave without warning, but Mary and her cousins were deep in discussion about something, so maybe he could get there and back without anyone noticing his absence. So he scribbled a note and dashed out to the car.
He got to the garage in under five minutes, but the place was dark. John let himself in, called for his boss, and turned on the lights.
That was when he saw Mr. Woodsen’s corpse in the middle of the shop floor.
John froze with his hand on the light switch. It had been five years since he’d last been that close to a dead body, and he’d wanted to keep it that way. But before he could back out and go for help, a red-haired woman emerged from the shadows and threw him across the room with one hand. She wavered as he got to his feet, but before he could properly attack her, she threw him again, and this time he blacked out briefly.
He came to just in time to see Dean go flying and Mary-his Mary-pick up a silver short sword that Dean had dropped and start fighting with Bitsii’ łichxíí as if she’d been training for hand-to-hand combat all her life. It did her no good, even when she found a tire iron and plunged it through Bitsii’ łichxíí’s chest; all Bitsii’ łichxíí did was to bleed and to pull the tool out of her chest.
“Sorry,” Bitsii’ łichxíí said as Mary stared. “It’s not that easy to kill an angel.”
... A what?
“No,” called Sam from another part of the shop, “but you can distract them.”
John had just enough time to register the blood on Sam’s hand before Sam slammed his open palm against some kind of sign he’d drawn on the wall. Light flared from it, and Bitsii’ łichxíí vanished.
Radiating fear and guilt, Mary turned to meet John’s eyes. But John could only stare in disbelief. Hearing third-hand that Mary was from a family that hunted skinwalkers was one thing; this... this was something else.
Sam raced outside to help Dean while Mary pulled John to his feet. “We need to get out of here before she gets back,” she said quietly.
John glanced back at Sam and Dean, who looked to be no worse than winded, and nodded. “We should take just one car; your cousins won’t get lost that way.”
“That’s a good idea.”
“We shouldn’t try to drive all the way to Arizona tonight, though.”
Mary smiled a little and shook her head. “No, I... I know of someplace closer, a safe house about fifty miles from here. Not many people outside the family know about it.”
Sam and Dean had joined them by that point. “Sounds like a plan,” said Dean. “We gotta get somethin’ out of our car, and then we can go.” He then gave John a critical once-over. “You doin’ okay there, John?”
John bristled and drew himself up to his full height. “I’m fine.”
Dean nodded once in satisfaction, and the Campbell cousins walked away as if they shared a mind. John put an arm around Mary’s shoulders and walked her out to the Impala, waiting by her door as the cousins pulled a duffle bag out of their trunk and slid into the back seat in a way that seemed oddly right yet incredibly wrong.
John managed to hold himself together long enough for Mary to give him enough directions to get out of Lawrence before yelling, “What the hell just happened back there?!”
“That,” said Dean, “was Anna. She’s... well, let’s just say she’s a monster. It’s kind of a long story, all tied up with... with the family business.”
“Monsters. Monsters.”
“Yes,” Mary replied, sounding guilty-whether for keeping the secret or for letting John be attacked by one, he wasn’t sure.
“Monsters are real?”
“I’m sorry....”
John ignored Mary. “And you fight them? All of you?”
“Yeah,” Sam confirmed.
Then they all started defending this insanity at the same time, and John... might have exploded just a little. After that, aside from Mary giving directions and the Campbells murmuring something to each other that John didn’t catch, the car was silent for the rest of the trip.
The fact that they kept talking past him once they got to the Campbells’ safe house didn’t help his mood any, either, nor did the fact that they kept treating him like a civilian who needed to be protected instead of the Marine he was. Not until John sliced open his own hand to draw the blood needed for the sigil Dean said they needed did Dean seem inclined to take him seriously. So when Sam came to check on his sigil-drawing progress, John snapped at him and suggested that his father was irresponsible for raising him and Dean in this life rather than keeping them safe.
“He was trying,” Sam replied, looking hurt. “He died trying.”
John frowned. Suddenly this conversation was giving him the strangest feeling-almost like Sam wasn’t sure whether he was talking about his father or to his father.
Sam went on to explain very briefly how his mother’s death had driven his father to hunt and how Sam had once hated the man. “Truth is,” he concluded, “my dad died before I got to tell him that... hádí biniinaa ’ást’į bik’i’diishtííh. Doo nihish’į ’ást’į jiinishba’. Doo... yishąąd.”
John had no idea what to say to that, and he wasn’t sure what was more unsettling, the sentiment, the way Sam had looked him in the eye when he said it, or the fact that he’d slipped into Diné bizaad without seeming to realize it... almost as if that were the language in which he wished he’d been able to reconcile with his father. That didn’t make sense; Dean had said that they were distant cousins but that Samuel Campbell had been like their grandfather. But none of the Campbells had ever indicated that there was another Diné in the family.
-Sam couldn’t really have been talking about him, could he?! The man was in his late twenties, at least; how could he be John’s son, talking about him as if he were already dead?
Feeling awkward, John turned away from Sam and started drawing another sigil on the back door. From his new position, John could just overhear Dean and Mary talking, and whatever Dean was saying was making Mary progressively more upset until:
“We’re from the year 2010. An angel zapped us back here-not like the one that attacked you. Friendlier.”
... Maybe Sam had been talking about John. Time travel would explain a lot.
“You can’t expect me to believe that,” said Mary.
Dean paused and started over, and John found himself unable not to listen. “Nilchíní niidlį́į́. Dean Winchester yinishyé - bíká nimí, nihimásání yinishyé. Dóone’é Campbell ei’ nishli, Ashiihi bá shíshchíín. Sam Winchester shitsílí bidiné - bíká nizhé’é, nihicheii bidiné. Bénáshnii-when I would get sick, you would make me tomato rice soup because that’s what Amá Sání used to make you. And instead of a lullaby, you would sing ‘Hey Jude’-that’s your favorite Beatles song.”
Mary was clearly fighting tears as she returned, “I... I don’t believe it. No.”
“I’m sorry, but it’s true.”
John drew a deep breath, shook his head a little, and got back to work. The concept was mind-boggling, sure, but really, if monsters and blood magic were real, why not time travel? If he had to be rescued by anybody from the future, he’d rather it be his own sons, especially since they seemed to be good men. But he did try not to listen to whatever Dean was telling Mary about their future, given the grim nature of what little he’d already heard from Sam; Mary would write it down later, he was sure, and she would tell him if it was something she thought he needed to know.
Of course, she hadn’t thought he needed to know about fighting monsters until one tried to kill him, and he would apparently end up doing it himself one day....
Then, just as John finished the sigil, Sam joined the conversation in some language John didn’t know, and his curiosity got the better of him again, so he was listening when Sam said five English words to Mary that nearly stopped John’s heart:
“You’ve got to leave John.”
“What?” Mary gasped.
“When this is all over, walk away and never look back.”
“Bithidh sinn nior air rugadh,” Dean said, falling back into that other strange language briefly. “He’s right.”
“I can’t,” Mary replied. “You’re saying that you’re my children, and now you’re saying....”
“You have no other choice,” Sam interrupted.
Heartsick, John turned away and tried not to listen to his sons-his sons, men he had clearly raised to be strong warriors who honored their family, strong and clever and brave, the hunting insanity notwithstanding-pleading with their mother to ensure that they were never born. Why would anyone-
“Listen,” Sam was saying, “you think you can have that normal life that you want so bad, but you can’t. I’m sorry. It’s all gonna go rotten. You are gonna die, and your children will be cursed.”
Oh, gods, what had they gotten into?
Mary was stubborn, though. “There has to be a way.”
“No,” said Dean. “This is the way. Leave John.”
“I can’t.”
“This is bigger than us. There are so many more lives at stake.”
“You don’t understand. I. Can’t. It’s too late. I’m....”
Mary paused, and John had to stop himself from turning back to see what was going on in that silence. But it felt like an eternity before she finally dropped the bombshell:
“I’m pregnant.”
Torn between ecstasy and terror, John turned-and terror won out as he saw what had become of his handiwork. Get a grip, Marine, he told himself and hurried in to alert the rest of his family that the sigils were gone.
Not ten seconds later, the lights started flashing as an ear-piercing whine began to build from somewhere, and Sam drew the silver sword. The windows shattered. A Zhini calling himself Uriel walked in, followed by Bitsii’ łichxíí; Sam shoved Mary behind him as he and Dean moved into a defensive position... and chaos broke out. John almost couldn’t keep up with who was doing what where. He did see Sam drop the sword, but before John could pick it up, Bitsii’ łichxíí punched him in the chest, knocking him through the window and down the hill and rendering him unconscious briefly. When he came to, it felt like there might be enough damage to his ribs, heart, and lungs that he wouldn’t recover. It was all he could do not to panic.
But then he saw a light-no, not a light, an honest-to-goodness yei.
My name is Who-Is-Like-Diyin-God, the yei spoke into John’s mind in Diné bizaad, which shouldn’t have startled John as much as it did. I am able to save your wife. But I must enter your body to do so. Will you let me?
John was too dazed to say anything but yes. And then the light overwhelmed him, and he knew no more.
John woke in his own bed the next morning with Mary beside him, but he was totally disoriented. So was she. Neither of them could remember a thing that had happened from the time John had gotten home from work the night before.
“Something happened, though,” John mused, “something important-something... something you wanted to tell me?”
Mary blushed and bit her lip. “Well, it’s a little soon to be completely sure....”
He blinked. “Be sure of what?”
“I’m pregnant.”
John’s expression of glee at this news was cut short by the telephone ringing. It was Mike.
“John? Where the hell are you, man?”
“At home, genius. I’ve only got one phone number.” John glanced at the clock then and confirmed that he wasn’t late for work yet; why was Mike so anxious?
“You been home all night?”
John frowned. “I... think so. Why?”
“Old Man Woodsen’s dead. Probably a heart attack, but the ME says his eyes were burned out. There’s a stolen car outside, and there are signs of one hell of a struggle inside-windshields smashed, shelves knocked over, tire iron looks like it was used to stab someone. Only the one body, though. Oh, yeah, and some weird symbol on one of the walls; investigator thinks it’s drawn in human blood. Think we’re gonna have to paint over it so it doesn’t rust....”
John’s heart raced, though he didn’t know why. “Do the police have any suspects?”
“Not yet, but you and I are in the clear. Fingerprints in the stolen car match the handprint that’s in the middle of the symbol, and preliminary tests on the blood on the tire iron came back with some weird type that matches a Jane Doe who was brought into the hospital a couple of days ago and disappeared last night.”
“Wait, preliminary tests? How long have you been there?”
“Since 5-ish. Paper boy walked by, saw the mess, called it in. I called you five times this morning, Chief.”
John sighed. “Sorry, man-I never heard the phone ring. Mary and I were both out cold.”
A beat passed before Mike asked, “This isn’t another ‘family emergency,’ is it?”
“No, you idiot. Look, give me fifteen, and I’ll pick up some doughnuts and coffee from Jay Bird’s on my way in.”
“Okay. Sorry, I just....”
“You’re stressed. It’s okay, man. See you in fifteen.”
“Sure. Thanks, Chief.”
“John?” Mary asked as he hung up the phone. “Haidzaa?”
John summarized what Mike had just told him. “You’re sure you don’t remember us going to the garage last night?”
Mary shook her head. “Why would we?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I dreamed it-I have weird dreams sometimes.” Then he kissed her cheek, threw on work clothes, and headed out to the Impala.
It wasn’t until he was pulling out of the driveway that he noticed that the car had somehow lost half a tank of gas and gained about 100 miles on the odometer overnight, but there was no evidence that anyone other than John himself had driven it. John was too spooked to share that tidbit with anyone but Mary, who didn’t know what to make of it, either.
The day after the funeral, Mike got a call from Mr. Woodsen’s attorney; the old man had apparently had some kind of premonition and left the garage to Mike in his will. Mike wasted no time in having the attorney help him restructure the company to make John a full partner, and it was Kate who suggested that, after a decent interval, they rename Woodsen’s Garage to Guenther & Winchester. John drew the line at allowing any kind of ‘tribal’ symbol on the new sign, however; he preferred for new customers to judge his work on its merits, not to choose him for being hip or to avoid him for being Indian.
Then, a few days after the incident, John and Mary got a letter from John’s parents. Amá Sání Chee had had a nightmare-the kind that came with a migraine and usually came true in some fashion.
She said she saw two men riding across the land on a great black horse, Joe wrote. They had green eyes and brown hair, and she was sure that they were your sons. Their chests were marked with a five-pointed star in a sunburst. A weakened yei and a crippled Bilagáana followed them, and all around them yeii and chindí were fighting, sometimes for them, sometimes against them. The sky grew dark, and lightning flashed across it from east to west. And between them, the men carried a basket that held a horned badger.
John thought it was nonsense, but Mary said, “The lightning flash and the badger-those are omens, right?”
John shrugged. “They’re supposed to be signs of the end of the world.”
Mary hummed thoughtfully and wrote it all down in her journal.
The months passed quickly once they knew for sure that Mary was pregnant. Mary quit her job, and John found a three-bedroom house that they were able to buy with Mary’s inheritance. Once they were moved in and had set up the nursery, Mary surprised John by picking up a cheesy little angel figurine at a garage sale and setting it above the crib; somehow she’d gotten the notion that angels were watching over their child, but John didn’t have the heart to tell her that after ’Nam, he didn’t think angels were any more reliable than the Holy People had been. And now that he was a full partner at the garage, John found himself with more work than he knew what to do with, which quashed his hope of being able to stay in Dinétah long enough after the holidays for the baby to be born there.
Mary was hoping for a girl, Deanna Emily. John was hoping for a boy, though he couldn’t settle on a name; Samuel Joseph was one of the better combinations he came up with, but somehow it didn’t feel right for this child. Finally, at some point during their Christmas visit to Dinétah, Mary suggested Dean Iain, and John liked the idea. So did Amá Sání.
Robert Campbell had been only mildly congratulatory when Mary told him that she was expecting, but the Chees were overjoyed, and Emily Winchester and Sarah Chee insisted on coming to Lawrence to help Mary once the baby was born. Amá Sání wanted to come, too, but Uncle Ron persuaded her that there was too much to do on the ranch for all three women to be gone at once. Where things got awkward was with Amá Sání’s desire to have a Blessing Way for John and Mary, since the singer whom the family preferred was getting too old to travel all the way to eastern Kansas and Mary was concerned that no one in Lawrence would be willing to attend. Finally, Amá Sání suggested the compromise of holding the Blessing Way over... the Impala.
“’Akonee’,” she said when John objected that it wasn’t their house. “As much time as you spend on the chidí bi’tiin coming back and forth to us, that chidí needs blessing just as much as a hooghan does, especially now that you’ll have a child with you.”
John knew better than to argue, and they went ahead with it. And the smile the ceremony put on Mary’s face made the whole thing worthwhile.
It was just as well that the Winchesters had to head back to Lawrence shortly after New Year’s, however, because January of 1979 was bitterly cold throughout the Midwest and Southwest, and despite having a built-in furnace, Mary was much happier to spend the last three weeks of her pregnancy in a house that had central heating. Emily and Aunt Sarah were especially looking forward to not having to tend the fire for a while, and the three of them spent most of the holidays chattering happily about meals and other practical plans for welcoming the baby to the world.
In the end, Mary’s water broke just moments after the Chee women arrived on the 24th, so John had very little to do for her other than driving the family to the hospital. He wasn’t allowed in the delivery room, either, so he found himself pacing in the waiting area until the doctor called him into the recovery room and placed a tiny warm bundle in his arms. It squirmed and made a squeaky little noise.
“John,” said the doctor, “I’d like to introduce you to your son, Dean.”
And as John stared in wonder at his baby boy, a distant echo of a proud voice stole through his memory-Shizhé’é yéé ho’ałtsosįįh yínaashineeztą́ą́....
“Everything, shiye’,” he whispered. “I’ll teach you everything I know. I promise.”
Next | Glossary