Free Nightfire! (The Corvette Nightfire Prequel) by Daniel Wetta

Nightfire!
     
    Slap-slap-slap-slap…the feel of this sound
resonated throughout his body. They were running on a level expanse
of rocky path high on the mountainside before the trail took yet
another descent towards the valley. Rahui took intense pride from
the sounds of his huaraches (running sandals) on the rocks and
dirt, as these played in his memory, even years later: He was ten
years old, and already he could keep up with his mother. They had
run for half a day, and he was still with her. They would be done
before dark, because the weather was clear, and the crisp spring
air refreshed them. His little brother lagged behind. Rahui and his
mother stopped from time to time, until he was in view, and then
they ran on, pausing again when they could no longer hear the boy,
two years younger than Rahui. The father was ahead of them by far.
Probably he had only a short ways to get to the village of Rahui's
cousins' family. His father was fast and had been on many winning
teams of the rarajipari races in which the males
competed with men from various villages. From past
experience, Rahui knew that by the time he, his mother and brother
arrived at his relatives' cabin, his father would already be
feeling the effects of the "tesguino" shared by Rahui's uncle: The
corn beer would have his father talking too much and looking
sleepy-eyed.
    "Watch out for chabochi," Rahui remembered
his mother telling him for the first time on this particular run.
The chabochi were the non-Indians, and since the great war had
ended three years earlier, in 1945, the chabochi seemed to be
encroaching at an alarming rate in the Copper Canyons. Rahui had
heard his parents say that all chabochi were evil. They cared only
about material things for themselves, and they did not believe in
the sharing: the kórima.
    That would be so sad , Rahui thought. Happiness only comes from the sharing.
    He remembered thinking about the chobochi a
lot on this particular run. Time and again, the chabochi had
invaded the formidable canyons of La Barranca del Cobre, the Copper
Canyon, in the state in Mexico which his mother had told him was
named "Chihuahua." The Spanish chabochi had conquered the Indians
centuries earlier and had imposed their Catholicism upon the
Rarámuri indigenous people. They had proclaimed a loving and
compassionate son of a god who would save them, apparently in
exchange for the land that the Rarámuri inhabited. The indigenous
people had adapted the new beliefs into their own cosmology. These
days, his mother had explained, the chabochi coming in were
Mexicans who were claiming the resources of their land as their
own. Some were especially bad people who were growing marijuana and
poppy in the mountains.
    "They have brought us a language that they
want us to learn. They make us use words for which we have no
letters. They are confused people. They name us in Spanish but use
our Rarámuri names for places. They do not even call our people
correctly. We are the Rarámuri, the running people, but the
Mexicans and the outside world call us the Taramuhara. They are
confusing even us. Our own people are naming their children with
Spanish names. In Spanish, your name, my son, is Día," his mother
told him.
    He had to learn how to pronounce that because
there was no letter "d" in his language. The Rarámuri had a pretty,
lazy language that rolled with many colorful "r" sounds. Día was
the word for "day." When Rahui first saw Luna, he connected the
meaning of his name to the sun. The Rarámuri believed that the
father-God was the sun. The moon represented the female-God. He was
struck by a lightning bolt of love the moment he first saw Luna. He
pointed to her when the families were arriving at the meeting place
on this particular trip and asked his mother who she was.
    "Her family is friends with your cousins,"
she answered. "The girl's name is Luna. It is a Spanish name, by
which they call her. It means, 'Moon.' She is a beautiful child.
She casts glances