“What the hell?!” Nicolas asked jumping up from his seat on a chair.
Katherine and Charles were right behind him, “Will?” They both asked in unison, concern apparent in both their voices.
Katherine continued, “Are you alright? What happened?”
William, steadied himself as he dropped the back pack on the floor. “Um, sorry guys. I lost the flashlight.”
“It was the Shadows, wasn’t it?” Charles asked evenly.
William nodded, “Look, we knew that eventually they would key off me using the Whyte Plain so much in the same area over and over again. It was just a matter of time.”
“So, what do we do now? It’s going to be too dangerous for you to use the Whyte Plain to explore the mountains anymore, at least for a while,” Nicolas said. “Did you find anything useful?”
The last may have been a bit harsher than William would have liked, as if the shorter man was accusing him of something. That somehow this was his fault. But that could just be him reading too much into it. “Actually, yeah I did.”
William sat down and told them everything he had seen. He described the paintings in as much detail as he could, and what he thought they meant. He told the story that he had pieced together from the paintings, the moon people, the flame haired giants, the shadows that killed, and the holy man who changed into a giant wolf under the light of the full moon.
After he finished, his pack mates sat in silence not sure what to make of the story William had just related back to them.
“It may have helped if I could see those symbols and writing that you described,” Katherine said. “It might be in a language that we may at the very least, be able to identify, if not necessarily able to translate or read. The writing could tell us who made the paintings you described or what civilization or what time era they belonged to.”
“If what you are saying is accurate, and I’m not saying that it isn’t, my friend,” Charles said thoughtfully, “the only place that I can think of offhand, that has a desert to the east of a mountain range, would be the southwest region of the United States.”
Nicolas spoke up, “New Mexico is the place that has that, um… you know? The um, those big spires out in the middle of nowhere? You know the place that is in just about every western? They come out of the ground but they’re not part of a mountain range, right?”
William looked questioningly at him, “What do you mean, ‘coming out of the ground?”
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Nicolas shot him a look, “Come on you guys, you know? The big spires that come out of the ground like big rocks, they’re hundreds of feet high? There’s a few of them out there? They’re in every western, just about?” He looked helplessly at his pack mates. He knew what he was talking about but he didn’t know what the place was called or how else to describe them.
“Do you mean Monument Valley?” Charles asked.
Nicolas looked relieved and smiled, “Yes! That’s the place out in New Mexico, right?”
Charles nodded, “yes Monument Valley is in New Mexico, and that would be a desert region, but I don’t think you can see the Sierra Nevada mountain range from there.”
“No, you can’t, but remember Charles,” Katherine said patiently, “cave paintings are just as much about symbolism as they are about how things that actually happened. Maybe they didn’t live in Monument Valley, but if they did live in the southwest region of the US, then they would have been aware of the mountains, which were many days ride from where they lived. And if we are talking about the southwest then we might also assume that whoever made those paintings were either from there or knew a great deal about the people that did. Which means, the paintings may have a very strong relation to the Native Americans who lived in that region, the Navajo and Hopi nations.”
“I aint never heard of the Hoppies,” Nicolas scoffed, “Who the hell are they?”
“I have to agree with Nic on this,” William said, “Who are they and what do they have to do with the Himalayas?”
Katherine smiled and shook her head, “You boys never studied much, did you?” she asked playfully. “Unfortunately, I don’t know much myself except for the name. I know that they, like most of the other nations have a pretty rich and very interesting mythology about a lot of things, but specifics I can’t really remember, and I doubt that we could really look up anything terribly useful about Native American tribes here in India, aside from what we can pull up online.”
She stood up and stretched a little. “As for what they have to do with the Himalayas, don’t you guys know that all Native American tribes came from a mixture of two different Asian cultures? And then they crossed the Bearing Straight when it was frozen over in an ice age to get to America in the first place?”
“Well yeah,” Nicolas replied defensively, “everyone in the US knows that. I did pay attention in school…sometimes,” he added with a goofy half smile. “Ok, so that’s all well and good. We have a couple of wall paintings that William found, which may or may not have something to do with Native Americans. So, how does that help us again?”
The pack members looked around at each other, “It means that one of us at least,” Charles said slowly, “is going to go to the American Southwest and get in touch with some of these Hopi, or Navajo tribesmen and see if they have any connections to Shape shifters at all. And if so, then try to track them down and ask if they would help us with our cause and our fight against Kenneth and his vampire House.”
Nicolas piped up with a smile, “I’ll go! Anything to get me out of this shit hole.”
William almost responded when the front door opened and Ansuya led Aceso inside the apartment. As she tightly shut the door behind her, Aceso shifted into her werewolf form and crossed her arms over her chest. She was not taking the indignity of being treated by a dog any better now then she had when Ansuya had first taken the pack outside the mountain so long ago.
Ansuya sat down calmly and looked up at the group around her. “What was Nicolas saying about this place being a ‘shit hole’? I believe is the term you used Nicolas?”