Free Tribal Ways by Alex Archer

the appointed spot, a little before the agreed-upon time as was her cautious custom, she’d found the doctor already waiting for her, leaning with arms folded against a vehicle that was apparently his mobile living quarters. It looked to Annja like the front end of a Toyota pickup mated to a body, like a panel van customized into an RV. She wondered if the U.N. had shelled out to build it or if he’d found it somewhere used. It bore the markings of many miles.
    “What can you tell me about the skinwalker phenomenon, Dr. Michel,” Annja asked in English. What with one thing or another she figured the best course was to get this interview over with as quickly as possible.
    He nodded briskly. “First you must have a basic understanding of the Navajo witch. He, or she, is a follower of the Witchcraft Way. The Athabascans of the Southwest fear ghosts more than anything. Not unnaturally, they associate ghosts with corpses, of whom they consequently feel a peculiarly poignant terror. They likewise fear owls, whom they suspect to be ghosts—and also of serving as spies and servitors to witches. The basic reason for this fear is that contamination by ghosts or the dead can cause a wasting ghost sickness or corpse sickness, which can bring about decline, decrepitude, even eventual death, to the victim. And make no mistake—people have died of ghost sickness. They die of it today—they will into the future, unless the white man succeeds in finally murdering the native culture. Or the entire planet. It is a phenomenon like ‘pointing the bone’ in Haiti.”
    “A psychosomatic effect?” Annja asked.
    He sneered. His fine, mobile features, the cheeks and chin lightly stubbled in silver, lent themselves well to it, she had to admit.
    “Does it comfort you to think so? The symptoms in such cases are real. And so, as I say, are the deaths. Call that psychosomatic, if you like.
    “The most dangerous medium of the ghost sickness is corpse powder—human bodies dried and ground. The corpse powder is the very core of the witch’s power. Far from shunning contact with death or the dead, he revels in it. It is his route to his chosen supernatural power, what the Westerners used to call medicine. It is the source of magic and effective personality. Corpse powder’s most potent and coveted form is that obtained from the bodies of young children.”
    Annja set her lips against what she felt trying to rise from her stomach. She wasn’t squeamish. Nobody who’d spent time on protracted digs around the world and survived was. And she’d seen and encountered things in the gross and horrific departments since inheriting her sword that went far beyond what she’d found on her plate as an academic archaeologist.
    But if he’s trying to spook me, she thought grimly, he’s succeeding. She was dead set on not giving him the satisfaction of letting him know that.
    “Now, you may look down on all this in dismissal from your lofty perch as a Western-trained, so-called scientist. Let me assure you this matter is deadly serious. These people, who are as human as you or me, take it with literal deadly seriousness.
    “There exists today a small community, which I will not name, whose population consists entirely of Navajos believed to be witches and their descendants. They went into exile rather than face punishment. The tribe allowed them to do so, rather than face the white-eyes’ retribution for punishing them according to the ancient ways. I have gone among these exiled witches, spoken to them. When they and other Navajos encounter one another, each pretends not to recognize the other. Otherwise, there would be blood.”
    “Do they still practice witchcraft?” Annja couldn’t help herself asking.
    “Some say they do. Some say they do not. Who is to say who lies and who tells the truth?”
    “Wouldn’t they be natural suspects as the source for our killer?”
    “They have learned to survive by keeping their heads down—to fly under