The Moon Tells Secrets

 

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For Faith

 

acknowledgments

I'd like to thank my agent, Faith Hampton Childs, for her continuing support, encouragement, and most

of all, for her friendship. I'd also like to thank Monique Patterson for her editorial support and advice, as well

as Holly Blanck and Alexandra Sehulster for their editorial assistance. And to my family; my gratitude for always being there.

 

navajo skin-walker: the yee naaldlooshii

In some Native American legends, a skin-walker is a person with the supernatural ability to turn into any animal or person he or she desires.… Similar lore can be found in cultures throughout the world and is often referred to as shape-shifting by anthropologists.

Some have gained supernatural power by breaking a cultural taboo. In some versions, men or women who have attained the highest level of priesthood are called “pure evil,” when they commit the act of killing a member of their family, thus gaining the evil powers that are associated with their kind. It is also believed that they have the ability to steal the “skin” or body of a person.

There is a hesitancy to reveal these stories to those considered “others” or to talk of such frightening things at night.

—excerpted in part from
Wikipedia

 

 

 

My subject is late. Our appointment was for nine
A.M.
, but an hour has passed and I've heard nothing. A loss of nerve is often the case in matters such as this, particularly when one considers the consequence for betrayal of these “sacred” oaths. I hope the information offered will be worth my time and the fee I've offered to pay and that there will be no objection to my taping our interview.

I am eager—yet strangely wary.

 

—
Denice Henry-Richards

Interview Notes

Recorded April 18, 2011, 10
A.M.

Subject: TKA

 

1

raine

There are days when I wonder why I was blessed with him—this boy I love with all my heart, who may cost me my soul. I know I must keep him safe from what wants him—wants us—dead, and that the older he gets, the more desperate it will become. Some nights I can't close my eyes for worrying, can't breathe, but then my son will kiss me on my cheek and whisper—
Slow down, Mom, take a breath
—and I'll smile at him, and take that breath like he tells me to. Me, a full-grown woman, listening to an eleven-year-old kid.

I named him Davey for King David, who my granddaddy used to say was twice blessed by God. That was his name, too, and of all the family I knew, I loved him best. Before he died, he taught me how to read and draw and shoot a gun, an old pistol from the war he kept tucked away in his closet. I loved that name, David, the softness of it touched up with strength. But I didn't know how blessed—or cursed—he was when I named him. That came later. His father, Elan, wanted me to name our baby after him, but we'd only been married a year before he died and Davey was born a month after he was gone. I was desperate then. I loved him so much, and I had a newborn son to raise and make as happy as I could—as blessed as I could make him. I couldn't say Elan's name out loud without weeping, and I didn't want to cry those tears on my child.

I can say Elan's name now but still wonder why he left us, even though that isn't the whole truth and I know it. He didn't leave, he was slaughtered, and I know the thing that took him is on its way for Davey, too, and me, because of what my son becomes.

You wouldn't know it if you look at him. He was a pretty baby, is a good-looking boy, and will grow into a handsome teenager. Bright round eyes always on the edge of dreaming, and his Harry Potter glasses make them look bigger. Eyelashes so thick, the Foodtown lady teased him about them last week, that he must be using his mama's mascara—unfair, she said, that a boy should have lashes as pretty as his. He just grinned, the tiny mole just on the side of his lip playing up his wide smile. His hair is black and iron-straight now; Navajo hair he got from his father and Grandmother Anna. He's growing up fast, too fast, and within his boyish body I can see the contours of the man he will become.

His hair was kinky when he was little—curly-kinky like mine and soft around his face like an angel's. My angel with skin as brown and smooth as a Hershey bar. I used to call him that: my Hershey bar with almonds—sweet with little bits of hardness poking through. That edginess will come out the older he gets, Anna warned, the fierceness, viciousness. I didn't believe her, but I do now because I've begun to see it—unlike most of the stuff Anna told me. Usually I just smiled. Anna was as full of lies as she was of love, and half the time I didn't believe what she said. But now I do, since she's been gone; I know now she was telling as much truth as she dared.

She told me early about Davey shifting. Shifting ran through Elan's family, she said, so I'd better get ready, and she'd smile her sly wolf smile, eyes as hard and cold as marbles. Elan must have had it in him, too, what Davey has, but he never showed it—not to me, anyway. It was in her cousin Doba, too, Anna said, who looked so much like her, people mistook them for sisters, but the resemblance ended at temperament. Anna hadn't seen anyone in her family for years, not even Doba, whom she said she'd loved like a sister once. She never told me why she never saw her.

After Davey was born, I lived with my own people, distant family on my father's side, until I got tired of them telling me I was nothing, that the damned baby made too much noise. They were set in their old, ugly ways, used to peace and quiet, and there was too much crying at night, they said, too much giggling in the morning. I moved out after that, to live with Anna, hidden like she was in her red brick house high on top of a hill, high enough so she could take in everything there was to see, be prepared for anyone who might be coming for us.

But the only thing that came for us was Anna, as far as I could tell. I was scared of her that first time I saw her shift and use the gift that Davey has. I decided then that there was nothing I could do but run from her, too, until she found us and brought us back, to keep us safe, she said. And I went because I knew then there was nowhere else I could go, not with Davey being like he was.

And then Anna died, leaving me alone to hide with the money she left, with those last words chasing me wherever I went:
Don't trust nobody. Not family. Not friend. Don't let it get him like it got my son, not until he is ready to meet it. And remember that blood must pay for blood. A debt must be paid. Your boy can never forget. That is his destiny.

*   *   *

Davey tugged my arm, bringing me back to where we sat in this old church smelling of disinfectant, mold, and incense. The maroon velvet cushions in the pews were faded and ragged, and the pages of the hymn books stacked on rickety shelves so old and torn, they made me wonder how anyone could read them. Yet it was a graceful place—ceilings high and arched, streaks of light glimmering in through red and blue stained glass. No denomination. Probably started out one thing and ended up another. But it was sanctified, sacred space; I could feel that.

“Hey, Raine? What we doing here?” he asked.

“Don't call me Raine,” I snapped. I hated for him to call me Raine. It made me feel like he didn't respect me, didn't believe I was really his mother. I was so young when I'd had him, and Anna played mother for so long, taking over our lives, making the tough decisions, paying our way, it made me bitter.

“How come we're here, Raine?” He was stubborn, like his mother.

“Cut it out,” I said. “I told you this morning, darlin'.” He didn't like me calling him darlin', any more than I liked him calling me Raine.

“Mom, please don't call me darlin'! That's embarrassing. That's what you call a kid.”

“Then don't call me Raine. How many times do I have to tell you that?” He gave me a half grin. A truce. I edged over to give a hug, and he eased away. Too old for that, too, especially in public. “We won't be here much longer. I just need to go up front and pay my respects, say good-bye.”

“To who?”

“My aunt Geneva.” But it wasn't just her; it was all of them—the ones I'd never heard from or known and just plain forgotten. My mother and father had died when I was a kid, and my grandparents died after Davey was born. As far as I knew, Geneva was the only family left from my mother's side, and now she was gone, too.

“How come you need to say good-bye?”

“Because she's my mother's family.”

“Like Mama Anna.”

“Like Mama Anna. But from my side, not your daddy's. Her name was Geneva Loving. Like my name was Raine Loving.”

“Didn't Mama Anna have family, too?”

“Some.”

“What happened to them?”

“Dead, too, I guess,” I said, although I didn't know.

I thought about Doba, remembering how I'd seen her at Anna's funeral, she and the rest of Anna's family. There'd been four there, all with that iron-straight hair and eyes that never left you. Anna's uncle, whose name no one would say, sniffed around the house like he was smelling for something special until he left, and everybody looked relieved—even Doba, who followed his every move.

When Doba walked into the room, it was like Anna had sat straight up from her casket. Same iron-straight hair, worn brown face, thin fingers that stroked the air like they were tasting it. I'd wondered if Anna's luminous eyes were hidden behind the dark glasses the funeral director gave us so the sun wouldn't hurt our eyes. Doba must have cried as much as me. By then, I'd grown to love Anna like a mother, so I had a space in my heart for Doba, too.

She stared at me and Davey for a long time that day, taking us in like the long-lost relatives we were, made me promise to let her know where we were going so she could stay in touch. Don't want to lose you like I did my cousin, she said. There aren't that many of us left. Just him. She looked in the space where her father had stood, this uncle who had no name. I wondered if they all had the same “gift” as Davey, but I didn't ask. I tried to stay in touch, but not so often as I should have.