Tricked

attention, but it was casual interest. The ceremony was conducted in Navajo—a language I do not speak aside from a few stray words—but Frank was singing and working on a sandpainting on top of a sacred buckskin. It would be one of the Holy People, though I wasn’t sure which one yet.
    I turned on my faerie specs to see what magical energies, if any, were being employed, and discovered that Frank was doing something much more complicated than I expected.
    To a Druid’s eyes, all magic, regardless of origin, is an exercise in binding and unbinding. Other systems differ from Druidry in what they’re able to bind and how, and usually they call on different energies from Gaia’s, but all those circles and pentagrams and sacrifices accomplish a binding of some sort. Customarily there is a religion involved and a generous helping of faith. Shamanistic systems, like those of many Native American faiths, often seek to bind people more closely to the spirit world for healing and protection or else unbind them from the influence of a malign spirit. I find them all fascinating and a little bit scary, because, except for my own shape-shifting—which involves my own spirit—I have no influence on the spirit world. A Druid’s bindings are physical. But what Frank was doing was occurring almost entirely on the spiritual level.
    My suspicion that everyone would play a part in the ritual was confirmed; whether they knew it or not, whether they were actively participating or not, some portion of their energy, their spirit, was contributing to the protection of the hogan. It took no effort on their behalf; Frank was gathering it, channeling it, and redirecting it, and he was doing this through his singing and his sandpainting. Since I had never seen this ceremony performed by any other hataa³ii , I didn’t know if it was normal—but I suspected Frank might be in a league of his own. In my sight, the energy flowed from the others in multicolored undisciplined globs toward Frank’s sandpainting, and then it flowed outward from there as fine white rays of light. These rays shot toward the base of the walls. The ceremony wouldn’t be complete until the fourth day, according to Frank, but his preliminary songs during construction and his current singing was already energizing a rudimentary protection along the base—and a good thing too. Oberon, who was inside with us, barely had time to warn me before the attack began. I was about to pop open a can of liquid sugar when his ears pricked up and he growled.
    › Hey, Atticus, something’s coming— ‹
    A bestial feline scream rent the night and a crunching impact shuddered the north wall of logs, rattling the roof and eliciting more than a few curses of surprise. It was quickly followed by another impact directly behind where I was standing, which enveloped me in a cloud of sawdust and shot splinters into my back.

Chapter 7
    As any war veteran will tell you, there is a vast difference between preparing for battle and actually facing battle for the first time. You can be told that reading Victor Hugo will sap your will to live, but you can’t understand what that means until you’ve read a few chapters and your eyes have glazed over and someone has to revive you with a defibrillator. Sophie and the six crewmen might have understood intellectually that skinwalkers possessed superhuman strength and speed, but to see it in action freaked them out a little bit. The creatures had nearly punched through the walls on their first try.
    Frank Chischilly cast a pleading eye over at Sophie and kept singing. He couldn’t stop what he was doing without stopping the flow of magic; he had to keep singing, had to keep sandpainting.
    » Keep on with the ceremony! « she bellowed. » Join in, help Frank where you can. It is our best defense. « They nodded, and some of them offered up their voices along with Frank when they knew the words; the choruses were repetitive.
    Any idea what’s outside? I asked Oberon.
    › Smells like some kind of cat. But they smell wrong somehow. ‹
    I turned around, thinking I would ask Coyote, only to discover that he wasn’t in the hogan at all. Come to think of it, the last time I remembered seeing him was right after I told him off.
    » Where’s Mr. Benally? « I asked one of the workers.
    He shrugged. » He left a while back. «
    » Gods-damned sheep-loving tricksters, « I muttered. Always figuring out ways to get other people to fight for them. But