“I am happy to see you, Father.” Buckthorn rubbed sleep from his eyes. Stargleam sheathed the junipers, and he spotted an owl soaring through the darkness overhead, its wings flashing as it circled.
“Get up, my son. I must show you the secret place where the Cloud People hide their hearts.”
Buckthorn braced an elbow in the forest duff and sat up. “Do you know where it is?”
“Yes, my son. Come. I will take you there.”
Buckthorn threw back his blanket and got to his feet.
His father walked up the hill to the sage-covered crest, where the wind whipped his long hair and the hem of his white shirt. He stood tall, silhouetted against a star-sprinkled expanse of deep blue.
Carefully, Buckthorn followed, avoiding rocks and the coyote holes dug into the slope. Marked only by black spots the size of his head, they were difficult to see. He joined his father and stood with his head tipped back, studying Spider Woman. She had already crawled to the middle of the sky. The three stars that made up her body angled westward, while her legs crept out in every direction.
His father turned to Buckthorn. “Are you ready, my son?”
“I think so. What do I have to do?”
“This place we are going is very far. You cannot run the distance in a human body.”
“Then how will I get there?”
His father placed a gentle hand on Buckthorn’s shoulder. “I will help you. Get down on all fours.”
Buckthorn dropped to his hands and knees and saw his father do the same beside him. They looked very strange as four-leggeds. A tender smile curled his father’s mouth; he lifted a hand and scratched Buckthorn’s neck, as if to dislodge biting fleas.
“What are you doing, Father?” Buckthorn hunched uncomfortably. “What—”
“Now run,” his father instructed. “Down the hill. Run.”
Buckthorn scrambled forward through the sage and sand, feeling foolish. “Father, why am I doing this, I…”
A beautiful coyote with a thick glossy coat trotted up beside Buckthorn. “You are doing this,” the coyote said, “so that you may fly like the wind. Follow me now. Run!”
The coyote galloped away through the sage, veering around cactus.
“Blessed Spirits!” Buckthorn said sullenly. “You’re very fast, Father!”
He scrambled down the slope as quickly as he could. His knees tangled in his long shirt, and his palms landed in dead cactus pads that lay hidden in the darkness. When his right hand suddenly sunk into a rabbit burrow and landed hard four hands below, jamming his wrist, he screamed, “Yeowww!”
His father lifted his shining muzzle and howled, too, yipping and whining. “Come on, boy! We haven’t all night!”
Buckthorn picked himself up and tried again, crawling through the brush with his face tipped so as not to have his eyes clawed out by the twigs. Thorns shredded his shirt and tore at his arms and legs.
At the bottom of the hill, he saw his father loping far out ahead, winding down a deer trail, and Buckthorn’s own labors seemed to grow immensely easier. He trotted after his father, then broke into a lope, moving with the swiftness of a swallow, leaping upthrust stones effortlessly. He caught up with his father in no time, and ran at his side with his black-spotted pink tongue dangling from the side of his mouth.
“Father?” Buckthorn asked as they angled down toward a deeply cut drainage channel. A thread of water glinted in the bottom. “Have I always had a coyote’s soul?”
“Yes, my son. Always.”
His father leaped forward. He splashed through the trickle of water and bounded up the opposite side of the drainage, his coat glinting as though netted with fallen stars.
Buckthorn glanced down at his furry coyote body and felt warm and happy. He raced after his father. The silvered trail sped by beneath his soft paws. Freedom, like cold fire, tingled through his veins.
As he splashed through the muddy water, he threw his head back and yipped … letting his father know he followed.
When he reached the lip of the drainage and trotted out across the grassy flats, the scent of pines and water rose powerfully. His eyes widened. Where am I? What happened to the desert?
Jagged pine-whiskered mountains thrust up around him. He ran through an alpine meadow, surrounded on all sides by winter-bare aspen trees. A few old leaves clung to the white-barked branches, quaking in the cold wind. Elk grazed in the shadows. Their eyes glinted when they jerked their heads up to watch Buckthorn pass. Through the heart of the meadow, a small crystal-clear brook babbled its way down the slope.
Awe filled Buckthorn. His father trotted in the distance, his bushy tail down, his fur shimmering in the brilliant wash of moonlight. Moonlight!