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Granuaile said, "There’s a couple of broorab them" As her footsteps crunched behind ingerly crept back into the circle, keeping my distance from the skinwalker’s body, and recovered the scabbard I sheathed Moralltach and slung it over round behind hiht now

Inside Joe’s jish were some feathers, rattles, pouches of herbs, and two sacred buckskins He divided the contents with Coyote

When Granuaile returned with two brooainst the wall She saw Frank there and quietly said, "He was such a sweet et hih Other way around"

She didn’t reply, only nodded, and then leaned her brooainst the wall of the butte The two Coyotes were e When they finished, Joe set off toward the other skinwalker, who had fallen to his death some thirty yards away to the west Coyote stepped closer to the blackened one that Frank had killed and motioned us over

"Wanna tell ya soht? See, in the beginnin’,you see there" He pointed at the boiling blackness of the First World spirit "Except ere a whole lot sexier, o’ course First Man and First Woman, they were spirits of the air too We were people of mist, if you wanna think about it that way An’ as we rose up through the worlds, we changed, an’ these bodies were given to us by the Holy People" He tossed his head toward the spirits before continuing, "These fkers, however, caot their bodies They’re unevolved, see? Unless you wanna count the fact that they’ve turned fro is, like Joe said, we can’t do anything to ’eive ’em bodies Their own bodies, not somebody else’s body they can possess and turn to the Witchery Way Then we step on ’e your pardon?" Granuaile said

"They’re insects," Coyote said "Not sure what kind Could be ants, could be those hard-shelled bigass beetles, could be dragonflies or locusts, but insects no h with this ceres, and we can kill ’e back, though So you two can help by kinda standin’ over there" He pointed to a space between the two skinwalker corpses "Once they’re bugs, they’re gonna try to get away--they’ll skitter around or fly or somethin’--and we could use your help to chase ’em down"

"What if they do get away?" Granuaile asked

Coyote shrugged "Ain’t that big a deal What’s the average life span of a bug? They’ll die eventually A bird will eat ’em if we’re lucky They’ll be on the slow train to First World instead of the express, that’s all The i is they’ll be onna get started now before the ch’įįdii start to disperse, all right?"

He bent down and grabbed a pouch of corn pollen and an eagle feather

"U before I could form a coherent question, and I kneouldn’t stop for un Joe’s voice joined in from over by the other skinwalker, and that left Granuaile andto do but worry

My apprentice asked the philosophical question first "Is he trying to create so, sensei? Can he do that?"

"I’m not sure," I said "Maybe"

"But how?"

"I don’t know Let’s go stand over there where he asked us to"

Granuaile kept talking as we moved "Don’t you kno the stories went? How did First Man and First Woet their bodies? You can’t tell me you don’t remember"

"Well, I’asoline," I said, watching the two Coyotes sprinkle gas on the skinwalkers’ bodies as they sang and danced around them clockwise

She snorted "That’s a safe bet"

"I understand why they’re doing it: They have to unbind the spirit from the ch’įįdii before they can shove it into a body It just seems to be a very modern way to do it You’d think they’d use so"

Granuaile frowned "Yeah, that is weird He seeh"

"True And it’s not an i the spirit a body The buckskin has a lot to do with that" Both Coyotes had set the bodies on fire now and the spirits were billowing, straining to get away They definitely did not like the light Nor did they want to be bound to those ch’įįdiis anymore