Secrets: The Truth is Slowly Revealed
By: B W
(© 2023 by the author)

The author retains all rights. No reproductions are allowed without the author's consent. Comments are appreciated at...

BW@tickiestories.us

Chapter 5
 A Close Call 

“Obviously, your great-grandfather didn’t die, so what happened?  How did he survive being bitten by a diamondback rattlesnake?”  

“He said he must have passed out at some point, and when he regained consciousness, discovered he was in some kind of a shelter.  He didn’t know how he got there and he didn’t see anyone around, but he was determined to get some answers. 

“Where am I and what am I doing here?” he shouted.  “I remember being bitten by a rattlesnake, but I don’t recall anything after that.”  

Shortly after he finished speaking, a voice replied from a dark corner of the shelter.  He strained to see if he could spot who was there, and slowly an image came into focus.

“Don’t worry.  You are safe here, so lay back and rest.  You need to regain your strength.  You are very lucky that I discovered your nearly lifeless body and brought you here so I could heal you.”

“Who are you?  What’s your name?”

“My name is not important, but I am a shaman, or what you white men call a medicine man.  I saw that you had been bitten by a snake and brought you here so I could treat you.”

“What did you do to me?”

“I gave you fluids from the body of an opossum and performed a ritual while asking the spirit gods to allow you to live.” 

“You used fluids from an opossum?”

“Yes, the opossum is immune to the bite of nearly all poisonous snakes and the fluids I withdrew from its body has kept you from dying.”

“Do you mean that awful tasting stuff that I vaguely recall drinking earlier?”

“Yes, that would be the fluids I removed from the opossum’s body.”

“Even though it tasted like shit and it took forever to get the horrible taste out of my mouth, I thank you for saving my life.  Are you a Navajo?”

“Yes, that is what the white men call my people.  I believe you are one of the soldiers that have been searching for us.”

“Yes, I was, but I don’t agree with what the army plans to do with you and your tribe when they find you.”

“I take it they are going to do the same thing with my people that they did with our cousins, the Apache?”

“Yes, the army wants to place your tribe on the same reservation that they moved the Apaches to, but I wish I didn’t have to help them do it.  Is there possibly somewhere that you could take your people where the army couldn’t reach them and wouldn’t care if you were there?”

“I know of a place like that and I could take some of my people there, but I doubt it will stop the soldiers from trying to find us.” 

“Is it very far from here?”

“It is not far, but it would still be half a day’s walk to get there.  It is a sacred place and it is not nearly large enough for all of my people.”

“Then is there a smaller group of Navajos you can take there?”

“We do have different clans and there are even smaller groups based on our mother’s family, and her mother’s mother before her.”

“Ok, I suppose that would work.  Do you think you’d be able to find enough food there so a group of that size could survive?”

“Yes, we have stored extra food in many different locations in case we could no longer get back to our homes.  Some of the food is stored there.”

“Ok, then take as many of your people there as you can and I will try to discourage my superiors from wasting their time trying to locate you.  I might be able to get them to agree, as long as you’re all living peacefully there and not causing any problems.  Where is this place?”

“The white men call it Canyon de Chelly.  The people you call the Spaniards gave it that name many years ago by turning our word Tséyiʼ, which means inside the rock, into the word Chelly.”

“Ok, just tell me where it is and I’ll try to talk my superiors into letting you remain there.  I just wish I had my horse, because it’s going to take forever for me to walk back to where I was to meet them when I completed my task.”

“That will not be a problem then.  I discovered your horse wandering not far from here yesterday and it is in a corral outside this shelter.  When I found the horse I wondered where its rider was, so I followed its tracks back to the place where I found you.  You weren’t moving, so I looked to see what was wrong, and that was when I discovered you had been bitten by a snake.  I used your horse to bring you here so I could heal you.”

“Thank you for saving my life and I will do my best to protect you and as many of your people as I can.”

“That will be much appreciated.”

“I will try to give you as much time as I can to get there and make any preparations that you may require to peacefully defend yourselves.  I feel it would be best if you talked the others that will not be going with you into surrendering so they can be taken to the reservation.  I’m afraid that if you don’t do that then the army will probably hunt them down and kill many of them in the process.”

“If we are able to move to Canyon de Chelly without any problems, I would like you to come back and find me after you are no longer a soldier.  If you do, I will give you a special gift for being so kind and doing what you can to protect my people.”

“Did your great-grandfather’s plan work?” I asked, growing impatient. 

“Yes, the shaman led a group of about 300 Navajos to the rim of the canyon and they took refuge there.  Although my great-grandfather wasn’t completely successful in discouraging Carson from going after them, he had given the shaman’s group enough time to construct the items they would need to survive.” 

“What kind of things?”

“They made several rope ladders to make it easier for the woman and children to climb up from the valley below and reach the rim of the canyon so they would be out of reach of the army.  They also used long ropes to lower clay pots into the stream that ran below the cliff to provide them with water, but they could only do this when the army wasn’t around.“ 

“Does it mean Carson’s troops left them alone after that?”

“Unfortunately, Carson ordered his troops to chop down thousands of peach trees that grew beside the stream, which took another source of food from them.  The army also killed or captured some of the Navajos braves that had been with the shaman, but most of them survived.” 

“That’s good, but what happened to the others that didn’t go with the shaman?”

“Many of them surrendered or were captured, and then they were forced to walk many miles to get to the same reservation where the Apaches were now living.  Just as had happened with the Apaches, many of the Navajos died before they reached the reservation.  And after they arrived, their lives were very hard and many fights broke out between the Navajos and Apaches over the limited resources.”

“I thought they were cousins, so why were they fighting?”

“They did it to survive.  They ended up fighting over the limited supply of drinkable water and usable firewood, as well as other resources they needed to survive.  The situation between the two groups was far from perfect, but at least the army was no longer hunting them, as long as they stayed on the reservation.”

“Yeah, I can tell the situation was less than perfect, but it probably would have been much worse without your great-grandfather’s help.  Did the shaman survive and did your great-grandfather go back to get his gift?”  

“Yes, he went to the canyon as soon as the war ended and he’d been discharged from the army.  When he got there, he sought out the shaman to learn what he’d meant when he said he would give my great-grandfather a very special gift a few years earlier.  This is what my great-grandfather told me the shaman said.”

“I’m very grateful that you helped to save many of my people from being killed.  I could tell by your actions that you are an honorable man, and for that reason I wish to give you two gifts.  The first is to make you a member of the Navajo Nation.  That may not seem like much of a gift to you, but as soon as you are a member of the Navajo Nation it will allow me to give you the second gift.  It is something that very few others have been given previously, and those that have been given this honor were all born Navajo.  However, before I do this, I wish to ask you a few more questions.”

“My great-grandfather agreed that this would be fine, and when the shaman was satisfied with his answers, he agreed to give my great-grandfather a special ability that had never been given to anyone who had not been born a Navajo.

“So, is that how he became a skinwalker?”

“Yes, it was, but the shaman didn’t make him an evil skinwalker, like most of the other skinwalkers are.  My great-grandfather was to become one of a very few good skinwalkers!”

“Was anyone else with him when this happened?”

“No, it was just my great-grandfather and the shaman, and as the shaman performed the rituals, he explained to my great-grandfather why every other skinwalker is evil.  He said it was because a curse had been performed on them when they were created.  By cursing the evil skinwalkers when they were created, the tribe was able to use those skinwalkers to get back at those who had wronged them.  Unfortunately, after much time had passed and those who’d created the evil skinwalkers had died, the tribe lost control of them.  Once that happened, the evil skinwalkers would harm anyone who crossed their path.”

“So, none of your family will ever turn evil?”

“No!  The shaman eliminated the curse and changed the rituals before he performed them on my great-grandfather.  He also removed the aggressive and evil tendencies of each of the animals that he taught my great-grandfather how to transition into as well.  Now, my great-grandfather, along with the rest of us, will only use this ability to do good, not evil.”

“So, how does this work?”

“We’re not totally certain, but we believe the rituals somehow made it possible for the shaman to transform the DNA strands in my great-grandfather’s body.  We have no idea how this occurred, because neither my great-grandfather nor the shaman understood there was such a thing as DNA at the time.”

“Why didn’t they know that?”

“This happened in 1865 and DNA wasn’t discovered until the 1950s.  Not only that, but DNA wasn’t understood until much later.  Hell, even today scientists don’t understand everything about how DNA is used by our bodies.” 

“Ok, I understand now.”

“The shaman performed a series of rituals on my grandfather for each of the first few animals that he’d be able to transition into.  After a while, however, my great-grandfather’s body had stored up enough of the animal DNA so it wasn’t necessary to do so many rituals for each of the other animals.  When the various rituals had been completed, my great-grandfather was capable of changing into a large number of different animals.  Even so, the shaman wanted him to stay on the reservation even longer so he could practice changing into those animals until he’d perfected each one.  It’s the same thing my great-grandfather did when he trained his son years later, and what his son did with my dad, and what my dad did with me.”

“Does it take a long time to do this and what exactly did the shaman do?”

“It takes a few months to learn how to transition into different animals, but it takes years to perfect the ability.  It may take even longer than that if you’re having trouble learning how to do it in the first place.  The shaman would wrap my great-grandfather in the various animal skins, one at a time, so his body would absorb the animal’s DNA and allow it to mix with his own.  He’d then have my great-grandfather practice turning into each of those animals until he could make the transition flawlessly.  Of course, my great-grandfather had to be naked while he was doing this so the animal’s hide would come into contact with as much of his body as possible.  It was also so his clothing wouldn’t prevent it from happening and his clothes wouldn’t be destroyed when he decided to transition into one of the larger animals.” 

“Didn’t your great-grandfather’s family worry when he didn’t come home after the Civil War ended?”

“No, he said they probably felt he was just making the army his career and he would eventually send them a letter to explain this and let them know how he was doing and where he was living.”

“That’s right they had to send letters back then.  Did your great-grandfather ever go back to join his family?”

“No, he didn’t.  Before he enlisted in the volunteer army he’d never been out of Colorado before, so now that he’d been able to see other parts of the country he was determined to spread his wings, so to speak.”

“Has your family always lived in Colorado?”

“Yes, my great-grandfather grew up in the Colorado Territory and the rest of his family was still there when Colorado became a state in 1876.  That’s why Colorado is called the Centennial State, because it became a state exactly one hundred years after the Declaration of Independence was signed.  My great-grandfather eventually returned and even built the first cabin that was on this site, but by then the family members he knew were no longer alive.  My grandfather, my dad, and I have all grown up in Colorado as well, and if you’ll stop interrupting me I’ll continue telling you more about this.”

 “Sorry, I keep getting distracted by side questions because this story is so interesting.”

“Ok, I forgive you then.  As soon as my great-grandfather could successfully transition into a wide range of different animals, the shaman then had him practice transitioning into the likeness of different people that he knew.  My great-grandfather started with different family members, and this included both sexes, since he was already very familiar with how they looked.  Once he could change into each of them, the shaman had him mimic the forms of the men he served with in the army, as well as the images of members of the tribe that he’d been introduced to.  As soon as he could do each of those things successfully, the shaman gave him his blessing and sent him on his way home.”

“How was he able to change into all of those people?  Didn’t he need to come into contact with their DNA first?”

“No, we all have human DNA, so he merely had to learn how to manipulate some of the different DNA strands to mimic the person’s appearance.”

“Wow, that’s an amazing story.  How old was your great-grandfather when all of this happened?”

“I’m not sure, but I’d say he was probably in his mid-twenties at the time.”

“Wow!  That means he had to be born around 1840, right?  That would mean he’d have to be over 180-years-old by now.”

“Yes, that’s what he told me one time when I asked him how old he was.  It’s another benefit that comes along with being a skinwalker.  We live longer than other people, and instead of gauging our life spans in decades, we’re capable of surviving for centuries, unless we’re killed before then.”

“Wait?  Does this mean you’re going to live for centuries too?”

“Yes, I am.  You might think that constantly switching forms would make us age faster, but somehow it slows our aging process down so we live far longer than we otherwise would have.  Once the process of puberty is completed, and that should happen for me in another year or two, I’ll appear to only age one year for every decade or so that you age.  Of course, I’ll be able to alter my appearance so it will appear as if I age at the same rate as everyone else, although in reality my body will age much more slowly.”

“But won’t people become suspicious when you celebrate your 150^th or 200^th birthday?”

“Yes, but my great-grandfather didn’t have to worry about that until after World War II.  Before then he’d merely change his appearance and move to somewhere else in the state, but now that the states and  the federal government are keeping better records and they can track our DNA, that’s no longer possible.  My great-grandfather had to do something different in 1980, so he went off on a hunting trip and then just never returned.  He left his rifle lying on the ground next to the hunting clothes he’d been wearing.” 

“Why did he do that?”

“To make it appear as if he’d been killed by a wild animal.  After he’d undressed, he transition into a bear, but he could have transitioned into a mountain lion or a wolf instead.  He then ripped the clothes he had been wearing to shreds and left some bear fur and some blood on what was left of his clothes.  Don’t worry, though, because he used another animal’s blood to make it appear as if he had been mauled to death by a bear, but that’s going to be harder for us to pull off from now on.  The authorities will be able to test the DNA in the blood to see if it’s ours, but I’m sure we’ll be able to figure something out, because my grandfather is going to have to do that before long.” 

“Why?  How old is he?”

“He was born in 1940, so he’s in his eighties now, but he’ll figure something out.  The rest of us can always pretend to drown in the ocean or get lost in a forest or just go missing in some remote area, but we’ll have to leave enough clues behind to make the authorities conclude that we’re dead.” 

“So, what did your great-grandfather do after the other people thought he was dead?”

“Long before that happened, he began planning for this eventuality.  Just before his wife went through menopause, he had her fake a late-life pregnancy, and then he claimed his wife had delivered the baby at home.  This was my grandfather’s younger brother who never really existed, and when my great-grandfather faked his death he’s been able to use that identity for the next phase of his life.  That’s why he’s now my dad’s uncle and my great-uncle.”

“But didn’t your great-grandfather need a baby in order to get a birth certificate and other documents that he needed for the baby?”

“Of course, but since he’s capable of changing into other forms, he just had to transition into a baby long enough for his wife to take him in be given a physical by a pediatrician.  The pediatrician then filled out the forms necessary to get him a birth certificate, and then later my great-grandfather applied for a Social Security card for his ‘son’.  He also waited until after his wife died before he faked his own death, and then he assumed the identity of the son that had never actually existed.  My grandfather will eventually have to do something similar.”

“But didn’t people wonder where that son had been until that happened?”

“Yes, but my great-grandfather and his wife merely told others that their son was being home-schooled.  My great-grandfather also transitioned into his son every now and then so his son could go places where others would be able to see him, just to lessen their concerns.  He would also transition into his son whenever he had to appear for some other reason, such as when his son had to take a standardized test for school or to take a driver’s test so he could get his driver’s license.  They would also tell people their son was working on the family farm so other people wouldn’t have any reason to have seen him around very often.” 

“Ok, that makes sense.”

“And if anyone ever asked why they never saw his father with him during any of those times, his wife would make up an excuse for why her husband couldn’t be there.  Most of the time she would say he was away on business, visiting a sick relative who lived far away, or he was attending a funeral in another town or city, and that always seemed to work.”

“Ok, I understand now.”

“It’s just becoming more difficult for them to do those things now, but we’ll continue to find ways of adjusting as needed.  Since there are also more of us now, we’ll also be able to help each other out to pull this off.”

“Yes, I suppose you will.”

Now that he’d told me all of this, we went into the cabin and headed to bed.  Devin fell asleep fairly quickly after we kissed and made out for a while, but my head was spinning from everything I’d learned, so it took me quite a while longer to drift off.  I even cuddled with Devin hoping it would help me relax, and eventually I fell asleep as well, but it didn’t mean I had a restful slumber.

That night I dreamed about some of the things Devin had told me earlier.  Sometimes I merely envisioned the various scenarios that Devin had explained, but other times I would dream about things that had not yet happened and possibly never would.  Most of those dreams were about Devin and I, and they provided me with more questions that I’d have to ask Devin when I got a chance. 

By the time I woke up, I was fairly comfortable hanging around with a bunch of shape-shifters. Yes, for the time being I guess the term shape-shifter paints a better picture of how I view them, at least until I become more comfortable with the term skinwalker.   Although I can’t help but wonder when the next time will be when they to change into something else, I finally thought I’d come to terms with what they could do.  However, my certainty about this was soon going to be tested when I met Mr. McCaskill’s father and grandfather. 

To be continued...