Little Red War Gods. Patrick PhD Marcus

      Having expected to go under immediately, Nastas was encouraged to find Musashi swimming like a duck with four feet. When a branch reached up from the glut of choking debris and cut his bicep to the bone, he cried out. Implausibly, they were abreast of the truck. Nastas could see the girl from his angle but she couldn’t see him. Musashi bellowed loudly as the lightening gave way and darkness engulfed them; he surged forward, his head dipping under. Nastas grabbed for Musashi’s mane. When he did, he felt the girl. With all of his might he pulled, the sky and water lighting up so that he could see her face bursting from the water as he hauled her upwards onto his lap. He felt her clinging to him, terrified. She was alive! Remarkably, she was looking at him, appraising him, then she was limp on his thighs, unconscious.

      One more blast of lightning revealed a boy framed in the truck’s broken window. He had the look of someone who’d already resolved to die. The boy extended a shaky hand toward Nastas as he struggled to maintain his grip on what appeared to be the head of a broken Navajo idol. It was a thing shockingly familiar to Nastas. Satisfied that at least someone would know his fate and that Becka had been rescued, the boy tilted his head in acknowledgment and was gone. The truck disappeared under a wave. “She will have to protect him,” Nastas whispered, thinking of the great Spirit of the idol. “There is nothing I can do.”

      Nastas was amazed that Musashi was somehow still swimming when everything around them gradually drowned. Reaching a high bank, Musashi tore himself from the water, his body quivering. He kept walking, slowly gaining distance from the river. Dense, pounding rain filled with the gold of thunder whipped around Nastas’ face. He fought to keep the girl from falling, her dead weight seemingly always unbalanced. Exhausted and in terrible pain, he was sure he could hear himself begging Musashi to relent, to let them rest. Passing near an enormous cactus, Nastas felt the transition from muddy earth to hard road. Musashi quickened his pace. Several cars heading in the opposite direction passed them by, their passenger’s heads whipping around in disbelief, their headlights no more than dying candles as they sped off. A green sign appeared as the rain abated to a mist: FLAGSTAFF 120 MILES.

      Almost half an hour had passed since the first driver made a call to 911. Soon the sight of blue-lit police cars roared around a bend towards Musashi and his charges. Red and white lights followed, an ambulance not far behind.

      Musashi slowed to a stop, satisfied at last with his efforts.

      Nastas looked down as if noticing the blonde, bloodied body of the girl stretched across his lap for the first time. She struggled to lift her head, and reached a hand of obviously broken fingers toward the coming crew of rescuers. “Help me,” she said weakly.

      The first officers from their vehicles clamored around the enormous granite horse, staring in shock at its cargo. “What the hell happened?” one of them asked. Another officer ran over, a brawny Arizona Trooper. “I’m gonna take her. You just hold steady,” he said to Nastas, who did not respond. Nor did Nastas react when several paramedics came to the officer’s assistance. They gently pulled the girl into their arms and laid her on a backboard. “She’s hurt pretty bad,” another officer said, leaning in to look. “Seems like someone did a number on her.” He looked accusingly at Nastas. Just then a camera flashed as a young news anchor deftly maneuvered close to the action. The spotlight on her cameraman’s equipment blazed to life. A paramedic looked up at Nastas and offered him a hand. “Can you get off on your own? Let us have a look at that arm,” he said.

      In shock, unsure of what was wanted of him, Nastas scrutinized the circling crowd for answers. A minute passed this way as tension grew across all fronts, Nastas seemingly oblivious to the helpful paramedic and his own injuries but fixated on what the paramedics were doing to the girl. A strange woman dressed entirely in a priestess’ white robes caught his eye when she beckoned to him with an open palm. Nastas couldn’t imagine a good reason for a priestess being there, unless she’d come because she knew he was going to die. He ignored her invitation to approach and at the same time wondered why she’d begun to look so familiar. The police and paramedics working around her paid her no mind.

      Musashi, who until now had been glad for their rescue, suddenly sensed danger. Nervously he turned in a tight circle as he panned the gaping faces for its source. Musashi focused on the same woman in white robes that had drawn Nastas’ attention. Her knowing smirk made Musashi’s tail twitch out of control. She waved her arm gracefully; without warning, something sounding like a gunshot ripped the air. Everyone jumped or ducked with the exception of the woman in white.

      The jarring noise shook Nastas back to reality. He wasn’t surprised when Musashi’s back and shoulders, injected with tension, sprang upwards. Nastas pressed himself to Musashi’s mane as the horse reared as high as his huge frame would take him. His two front hooves flailed several times, inches from the video camera’s lens, before crashing to the pavement. Every muscle fired simultaneously as Musashi exploded into a gallop and burst through the circle of officers. His speed piqued as he leapt a guardrail and sped into the desert like a comet falling out of the sky.

      Nastas kept himself in the traditional Navajo fashion, his midnight colored hair long to his waist and parted in the center. One side was braided, woven thick with old buffalo rawhide, from the end of which hung a small medicine bag. The other side, unbraided, swept about his face when even the gentlest of breezes blew. His skin was tough and dark, like a warrior whose battle lineage was too long to remember, a trait that intimidated even hardened men. His facial features were simple but set in iron.

      Tourists lucky enough to look up at just the right moment and see Nastas might think they’d gone back in time. “Look! Look!” one of them would say to their companions, pointing vigorously at the Indian man on horseback. With his legs hanging long without stirrups and an eagle feather in his hair, sitting perfectly still on some high bluff, Nastas looked like a “real Indian.” “No such thing,” another would contend, and both would soon forget the matter entirely.

      As a teen, Nastas had spent many years fishing through his dead father’s voluminous possessions and writings, which his mother had kept perfectly preserved in the small hogan Ahiga had built to practice his private rituals. Ahiga had been killed in his hogan, and in keeping with Navajo tradition, no one was to enter it ever again. Nastas ignored his mother’s constant pleadings to stay out. He practiced Ahiga’s rituals daily, on weekends and after school, even sleeping in the cursed dwelling until his mother was truly unnerved.

      On the day Nastas turned eighteen, his mother, a recent convert to Catholicism, begged him to take her to church, claiming that the car didn’t sound right and she was too worried to travel alone. Sleepily he agreed to take her. Because the church was twenty miles away, Nastas decided to wait for his mother while she prayed. She’d tried to appeal to his sense of duty to get him to attend services, but when he refused she produced a small cake with white icing and the inscription “Happy Birthday Nassie” in blue frosting script. Sitting at a picnic table at the rear of the church, Nastas closed his eyes and was quickly asleep, his head propped in his hands.

      “Are you going to eat that?”

      The voice belonged to a girl. Nastas heard the words without understanding them.

      “Are you going to eat that? It won’t taste as good if you leave it in the sun.”

      Nastas marveled at the blonde who was easily as tall as his six feet. Her tiny hands carefully removed the clear plastic cover from the cake.

      “Is that you? Nassie?” She adjusted the straps on her brown halter dress.

      “Nastas.” He felt himself turning a shade redder.

      “What does it mean?”

      “Mean?” His imperturbable features formed a question mark, not from her simple remark, but from her enigmatic aura of confidence.

      “Don’t Indian names have meanings?”

      Her manner was so candid that Nastas felt himself inching away.

      “It means ‘foxtail.’” In truth, the full interpretation was “Curve like foxtail grass.” Nastas had never been asked for the meaning of his