You have little time left and none of it for fuckery by Kevin Wikse

Obsidian knife felt my hand speed was not up to snuff. To fix this, he gave me one simple directive. In the space of the next five minutes, I was to touch the tip of his nose no less than ten times. 

He pointed to my hands and said, "You are an immobilizer; you latch on, rip, and shred, like your namesake (Gila Monster). You don't care if you must eventually let go or if your prey luckily wrenches free. The damage is done. You stalk it down and finish it." 

"This is fine, but I don't want you to get too firmly stuck in that modality. You may one day need to stay fluid and detached physically and emotionally; let the cut and thrust of your knife be the fangs of a snake; hide your body behind it." He lunged and nicked me on my forearm with his knife. 

"Blood makes for a great exclamation mark for the points of my teachings." 

It was a smarting pain.

The wound was topical and superficial, but the hot desert air and salt from my sweat mingling in my wound stung. Either way, I couldn't help but smile at both my mentor's words and the pain because, well, ultimately, he was right. 

"So I just tap you on the nose?" I shot my pointer finger out to whip his nose, barely missing. 

"Yes, like that, but better than that," he laughed, but through a sneer, not a smile. "I better feel it too; speed will mean nothing in this case if it doesn't hurt. 

I nodded and readied myself. 

"Oh, and as punishment for failure, I cut you. I cut you for real. Also, if you latch on to me, try to immobilize me, I put my knife into you, deep. I will open you up to new modalities, or you will die in my attempt."

He stepped into the range of my reach, and the chess match began. 

When the dust settled, and I finally landed ten stings to his nose, there was blood. A fitting exclamation mark to the lessons of the day—two stab wounds to my body. Neither was deep, but enough to cause me concern at collecting anymore. Blood trickled out of each of his nostrils. It brought memories of when another mentor and I traded wounds. The moment was bitter and sweet. 

Obsidian Knife set his eyes on me again. His gaze was softer than the minutes before but no less serious. 

"You have little time left and none of it for fuckery. It's a marvelous state to be in. The best of you comes out when you feel the knife at your throat. Danger is a motivator. Like me, you find safety in danger, and I believe, like me, you wouldn't want things to be any other way". 

With that, he got up and began to walk to his house. I stumbled onto my feet to catch up with him. 

"No! You stay there. I don't want to see you for a couple of days. You fucked up my nose, and I'm pretty pissed at you for that right now."

I spent the night in my jeep until I could barely make out the silhouette of Shiprock in the dim light of the earliest sunrise. I lay awake listening to the coyotes howl and snarl at each other for hours; I am sure they were whetting their appetites on the spilled blood of my mentor and me. 

I laughed out loud. I had joined a brotherhood of ghost dogs. I was learning to be a prowler of the dream world and a hunter in the lands of Shadow. I was seeking spiritual rebirth from the egg of Thunderbird. I had been offered the chance to enter the cave of Camazotz, joining the ranks and earning rites of Aztec vampirism, and I was hell-bent on doing it. 

Ordinary reality had ceased to mean much to me. I sought high adventure and knowledge of the arcane and the occult—the truest and oldest foundations of all human psychology and culture. I took refuge in the liminal spaces, and my shelter was in danger. 

I pointed my jeep North to Cortez, Colorado. There resided a skinwalker, and I would have words with him. 

-Kevin Wikse