"We did a good job of getting Arthur to let down his guard," said Begay. 

Cern was watching the dust settle behind the departing vehicles. They were both lying spread-eagled on the desert sand, naked, staked out hand and foot with rawhide thongs.

"I was thinking maybe too good. But it was kind of him to provide an awning." A big desert camouflage net was spread above them, hiding them and Begay's truck from the possibility of an aerial search. 

Nearby was an old house trailer, and beside that a small pickup. They knew there was at least one armed guard inside the trailer.

When Arthur Littletree's attendants had approached them in the courtyard, guns not drawn but not hidden either, Begay and Cern had not resisted. They had allowed themselves to be led back out to Begay's truck, where they were told to get in the back seats while two of the men climbed in front. Begay handed over the keys without protest, and they were driven several miles deeper into the desert beyond the main house, followed by two more men in the pickup.

Arthur and the rest of the men had come a little later, in a black Hummer. Arthur had supervised the staking out, ensuring the rawhide thongs were well wetted and properly knotted on all ends. With that done he had sent the men to the trailer, waiting until they were out of earshot before he spoke.

"I want you to rest comfortably here for a few days," he had said. "Please do your best to summon all your reserves. That will make it much easier for me to draw them out of you." 

Soon after that, he and most of his men had left. The sun was already setting, and the desert heat was about to give way to desert cold.

"What game is he playing now? Does he really think these thongs can hold us?" Cern had already loosened the bindings on his hands and feet to make them less constricting.

"Quite possibly he does. Or at least believes his men will notice if we get free."

"Well, it was good of him to have played into our hands so readily."

"Yes. All we have to do now is wait for his next move."

"What is he likely to do?"

"I suppose he will want to flay us alive, drink our blood, eat our flesh, and grind our bones to powder for use in various nasty ways."

"Because that is what skinwalkers do?"

"Yes. He is a parasite. A taker. He believes there is no other way."

"How does he think he can get away with this?"

"He is a master of deception. He is accustomed to avoiding detection."

"And he thinks he can steal our power? What does that mean? I don't think that's even possible."

"Good. Hold onto that belief. It is because he is Navajo that he still thinks he can."

"But you are Navajo and you don't believe that."

"Once I might have. Once I did not know what I know now."

"What's that?" 

Begay did not respond right away. When he did, he spoke slowly.

"Now I know that each individual life is a thin thread in the fabric of reality, capturing just one strand of life experience. The life threads of many individuals are woven into a blanket that comprises a culture, like that of the Navajo. 

"These threads are the warp of the weave. The weft is the communal experience that binds the threads together. In this way any culture is like a blanket draped over a people. If the weft is strong the blanket is warm and comforting. If the weft is thin, the blanket offers less comfort. 

"It is especially good to have a comforting blanket to cling to and keep you warm when far from home and exposed to the storms of life. But the Navajo blanket has begun to wear thin. It is not as secure as it once was against the ravages of men like Arthur Littletree. He beguiles them by offering them a better blanket, all the while playing on their Navajo beliefs, pretending to restore the warmth of their own blanket. But what he offers will turn out to be a blanket made only to keep him warm, no one else."

They were both quiet for a while. Then Cern said, "Do you think we should let him try to steal our power?"

"Where's the advantage in that? But we might pretend to let him."

"What about his armed henchmen? What should we do about them?"

"I suppose they could become a nuisance."

"If we make a move to disarm them, it might give our game away to Arthur."

"Then I think we might want to call in some of those reserves Arthur mentioned."

"It was nice of him to arrange time for us to do that."

In the cold and dark, as his body protests the harsh exposure, Cern opens himself to his shaman dream. The urgency of body reactions dim, and he begins sensing the desert surroundings more intimately. He experiences the sparse and nearly dormant surface life, and the biosphere below. Within that deep domain that he has come to think of as the realm of Gaia, his awareness spreads. 

It is like Begay's blanket, every pulse of life a thread in the weave, their commonalities the weft that holds the weave together. He senses that commonality in the shared genetic makeup of all life, and he lets the comforting feel of that vast blanket spread, until it is interwoven with the familiar abundant strands of life around Chicago, and Dema. 

Through this link he shares with her the realization that, with his naked body lying stretched out on the barren desert sand, he is for the first time since the awakening of his shaman dream in a situation like that of a shaman novice on a spirit quest. It helps him see the symbiotic relationship between matter and spirit, between material possibilities and the organizing will that realizes those possibilities. 

While biological evolution creates the vehicle for spiritual development, the mutual evolution of spirit and biological entities provides the vehicle for cultural development, a further phase of evolution. The skinwalker is a cultural parasite, who like a biological parasite stands athwart the progress of evolution, of cultural growth and change. Such a parasite seeks out weaknesses and preys on them. It has a role to play in exposing these weaknesses, but the intent is to take advantage of them rather than reduce them.

Hence he and Dema, in the new role they have recognized for themselves, represent the Gaia body's immune system, its policing agency, whose job it is to trace such revealed weaknesses to their source, and limit their destructive actions.