Shadow Walker by Allyson James Page B

goddess mother was still sealed into the vortex, contained. Mick and I checked all the time, and so did Coyote. It couldn’t be her. I prayed it wasn’t her.
    I mulled this over as I walked the couple of blocks to my next stop, the house where my friend Jamison Kee lived with his wife and stepdaughter. Jamison’s wife, Naomi, ran the town’s plant nursery, which was closed today, due to the weather. I found Naomi at home with Jamison and her daughter, Julie, in the house behind the nursery.
    Jamison was a Navajo from Chinle and had met me one summer day in Canyon de Chelly when he’d come out to enjoy a storm. He’d found teenage me huddled, wet, and alone, crying because I couldn’t control the lightning that tried to take me over. Jamison was the first person to teach me how to start mastering my powers. Jamison was also a shape-shifter, a Changer who could become a puma. As a storyteller, he knew all kinds of history of the Diné plus that of the ancient Pueblo peoples that had populated this area. If anyone knew about petroglyphs and what they meant, it was Jamison Kee.
    Naomi’s eyes danced as she hugged me. I didn’t much like hugging, but I made an exception for Naomi. Jamison, the tall Indian who’d grown up declaring that he wished all white people would vanish from the face of the earth, had fallen madly in love with Naomi and her blue green eyes. They were insanely happy together.
    I’d drawn some of the petroglyphs I’d seen in the hole, and Jamison smoothed out the drawing on the kitchen counter. Naomi perched on a stool at the breakfast bar, and Julie, Naomi’s eleven-year-old daughter, ducked in under Jamison’s arm to look. Julie had been born with total hearing loss, though she could now speak and was a master at sign language.
    Jamison’s hands were strong, a sculptor’s hands. He traced the glyphs with his roughened fingertips, dark brows drawn in a frown.
    “This one is a comet,” he said, touching one that looked like a starburst. “This one a bright star. Did you draw them in sequence?”
    “I tried. There were so many, kind of blobbed together.”
    “I’d love to be able to see them all.”
    Jamison took on a thoughtful look, and Naomi frowned. “Jamison, no.”
    Jamison looked at Naomi in innocent surprise. “What?”
    “No, you are not climbing down into that hole to see for yourself.”
    Jamison continued with his “would I be planning that?” expression, and I broke in. “Listen to your wife. There’s something evil down there. I survived because of Mick’s light spell, and Nash survived because he’s a magical black hole. I’m pretty sure magic pulled us down there.”
    “I thought it was just a sinkhole,” Naomi said.
    “So everyone has been telling me. But why should that hole collapse at the exact moment Nash and I happened by? We were going fast—in another second or two, we’d have been clear of it. Something wanted us down there, and if Mick hadn’t come along, that something would have had us. You’re tough, Jamison, but you’re not that tough. Besides, even if you climb down there as a mountain lion, you likely wouldn’t be able to get back out.”
    “I planned to use climbing gear,” Jamison said indignantly.
    “Nash’s boys won’t let you near the place anyway. It’s unstable and dangerous.”
    “And you’re not going,” Naomi repeated, scowling at him.
    Jamison held up his hands. “All right, ladies, all right. I give up. It’s just that I could read these better if I saw them in context.”
    “When I can get out there again, I’ll take my camera and get some good photos,” I said. “In the meantime, can you tell me anything about them?”
    Jamison studied the drawings again. “These glyphs are observations of the night sky, made over time.” He touched the page. “Here are constellations, the moon in different phases. Changes. Significant changes.”
    “These were already down in the hole, not on pieces that fell from the