Free Whispers of Old Winds by George Seaton

I’ D ONCE told Michael about the Navajo kid in my unit who believed the lore of his ancestors was true and irrefutable. The kid’s name was Joe Hill, and his eyes would sparkle and his arms and hands would speak a language of their own when he’d sit with me and retell the stories he’d been told as a child by his grandparents and the elders of his tribe. There was the Sun God, who rode from east to west each day on one of his five horses, carrying the sun with him. And Spider Woman, who sat upon Spider Rock and taught the Navajo how to weave on a loom, using the sky and the earth as materials, with lightning and sun halos to perfect the strength, vibrance, and beauty of the weave. There was the First Woman, who married the Sun God and gave birth to the Sun God’s child, and then, after resting under a cliff and being sprinkled with stream water, she gave birth to the Water God’s child. Yes, and there were the stories of creatures who were once human but became shape-shifters through witchcraft when they desired to change or when the situation called for it. Joe called these creatures skinwalkers, who could take the form of the animals of the forest, desert, and plains.
    “Did you believe the story about the skinwalkers?” Michael asked, his head resting on his arms as he lay on the rug of many colors in front of the rock-lined fireplace. The fire reflected in his brown eyes, and also the crystal glass into which I’d just poured more red wine. His hair, too, shined with the rise and fall of the flames.
    “I think he believed it. He was a good kid—a good soldier. He was from northwestern New Mexico.”
    The deadly quiet mountain night was upon us, the only illumination in the cabin coming from the fire. The rug provided its own heat, the Puebloan weavers surely having infused it with their own ancestral lore. I sat cross-legged in front of Michael and concluded that any happiness I’d ever sought in this world was at hand. I knew this simple moment would reside forever in that place in my mind where such precious things are stored for later retrieval, for the times when they’re needed the most.
    “Were there skinwalkers in Iraq? Afghanistan?” Michael asked.
    “Several incidences. Or so Joe said.”
    “But you believed him?”
    “To a point.” I paused to sip wine.
    Michael sat up, faced me, and crossed his legs like mine. “Tell me,” he said, with the expression on his face that had come to explain so much about the man that fate or dumb luck or heaven above had brought into my life when I had needed him the most. It expressed Michael’s insatiable hunger for truths that were hidden behind opaque surfaces; he yearned to get to the bottom of things.
    “One time,” I said, smiling, knowing what I told him was ambrosia, a sweetly fulfilling gift that fed his passion for knowing the unknowable. “One time,” I repeated, “we were on night patrol near a village of mud houses. There was no moon or electric lights. Some of the villagers had generators for electricity, but they’d all been turned off. It was very quiet. Joe sat down beside me. He was a small man but tightly muscled. Had the sweetest smile and the whitest teeth I’d ever seen. He’d just been promoted to PFC and was proud of that. Anyway, we had stopped on a small rise that overlooked a village we believed had been infiltrated by the Taliban. I told my men to spread out. Joe and I were looking through our NODs—night vision goggles—at the village below us when Joe said, ‘I saw an owl.’
    “‘Cool,’ I said, thinking that seeing an owl was pretty special for Joe given…. Well, given that he was an Indian.
    “Then Joe put his hand on my shoulder. ‘No. Not so cool,’ he said. ‘I think it’s a skinwalker. An owl. Somebody is gonna die.’
    “I flipped my goggles up and looked at Joe. ‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
    “‘Maybe they’re already dead,’ Joe said. ‘Look! There!’ He pointed.
    “I flipped my NODs