looked away. The singer watched him for a moment, then turned to Victoria. "Yee naaldlooshii," he said.
The younger Indian cringed at the words. Speaking in soft tones, the singer placed his hand on Naalnish's shoulder. Victoria's heart filled with sympathy. The things the old man said terrified her, and she had only come to know of them in the past few days. For Naalnish, who surely had heard stories of such creatures since infancy, it was as though his childhood fears were coming to life around him. If she had come across a man in Oxford who claimed to have witnessed Frankenstein's monster with his own eyes, Victoria knew she would feel much the same.
Naalnish nodded at the old man's words and turned back to Victoria. "I am sorry," he said. "It is forbidden for us to speak of such things."
"I understand," Victoria said, offering what comfort she could with her eyes. "I am truly grateful for all your help, and I will pray that this woman will not harm you or your family for it."
"Thank you," he said. He took a deep breath, then continued. "The word he spoke would be 'skin-walker' in your tongue."
"Skin-walker," Victoria said, testing it out. The words sounded ominous, and yet it seemed to fit. "What does a skin-walker do?"
"What you have seen," Naalnish translated. "They take the shape of animals. They do this to hunt, to hide, to play tricks, and to attack people. To take an animal's shape, they must wear the skin of the animal and no other clothing."
"That explains why she was naked in the barn that night," Victoria said, mostly to herself, but Naalnish translated her words anyway.
The singer nodded. "And why she wore nothing in your dream that was not a dream."
"Still," Victoria said, "that doesn't quite explain everything. Why is she able to control the man she travels with, the one Cora calls a vampire? Is that also a power of the skin-walker?"
"Yes and no," he replied. "The ant'iihnii are of many paths, as I have said. Some walk more than one. If she can do this thing, she must also walk The Frenzy Way. This way gives ant'iihnii the power of will over others."
Victoria remembered her strange feelings when the skin-walker first questioned her in the barn. "So they can control someone's mind?"
"No," the old man said, shaking his head. "Not control, but pressing on the will like a stone on corn. If your will is strong, you may keep it, but you will still feel the pressing."
"That vampire must be weak-willed, then," Victoria said. "An odd thing to think about such a creature." She shook her head, then moved on to the most important question of the day. "So how do we protect ourselves from this skin-walker? Can she be killed?"
The singer inhaled deeply. "Our stories say it can be done," he said, "but it is not easy. The ant'iihnii protects itself well. When it is in an animal shape, it may be wounded, but it is very quick. When it is human, it has magic to make bowstrings break and guns fail."
Victoria's heart sank. His words were filling the holes in her understanding of their encounters with this skinwalker. Cora didn't seem to know any other way of dealing with a threat besides shooting at it, and that clearly wouldn't work. "So what can we do?"
"She has shown her face to you," he replied. "Skin-walkers will not do this unless they must, for it puts them in danger. If one sees her face and calls her by name, her magic will not work. You have seen her face. If you learn her name, you may do this."
"I don't know that we will," Victoria said dejectedly. "I wouldn't even know where to start looking for her."
"I cannot help you with that. Many Dine were lost in Hweeldi, and those that returned spread like dust in the wind. The skin-walker may travel far in her animal shape, so she could sleep in a place far away.
"Still," he said, "even without her name, you may wound her."
"How?" Victoria's eyes became clear and bright, her spirit eager for the old Indian's words.
The singer reached toward the embers. His gnarled fingers curled around a handful of ashes near the fire's edge. Lifting his hand up, he nodded to her. She cupped her own hands and held them out. The ash filled them, soft and weightless. When she pulled her hands back, a ghostly cloud hung in the air between