Flight of the Eagle
Copyright© 2026 by Megumi Kashuahara
Chapter 2: The White Bison
Her grandfather’s name was Thomas Begay and he had been preparing her for this since she was nine years old.
Not for the vision quest specifically. For the discipline that made a vision quest possible. He had started with the body — early mornings, the cold, the long walks across country that had no trail because the Diné had never needed trails on land they knew in their blood. He had taught her to be still for long periods, which was harder than any physical effort, and to observe without immediately naming what she saw, which was harder still. He had taught her the protocols — what to eat and not eat in the days before, how to prepare the mind the way you prepare a vessel, by emptying it first.
He did not talk much about what she might receive. That was not his to say.
On the morning they left he rose before the sun and she was already up and dressed, sitting at the kitchen table with her hands folded, and he looked at her for a moment from the doorway and something moved across his face that was not quite a smile.
Rosalie pressed food into their hands at the door. She held Aiyana’s face briefly between her palms and looked at her and then let her go without a word.
They drove north in the old truck as the sky went from black to gray to the first thin line of rose along the mesa’s edge. Thomas drove the way he did everything — without waste, without commentary, fully present. The radio stayed off. The heater ticked and hummed. Outside the window the reservation moved past in the early light, familiar and immense and older than any name that had been placed on it.
Aiyana watched the land and thought about nothing, the way he had taught her.
They left the truck at the end of a dirt track and walked from there. The high country rose ahead of them, the rock faces catching the morning light in colors that had no names in English. Thomas carried the bundle he had prepared. Aiyana carried water and the small pouch her grandmother had pressed into her jacket pocket that morning without explanation.
They climbed for two hours without stopping.
At the place he had chosen Thomas set down the bundle and built the small fire that was not for warmth and prepared the space with the prayers that were not his to explain to her and not hers to question. She watched and helped where he directed. The wind moved through the high juniper and carried the smoke in the direction that meant the prayers were received.
Then he sat across from her and looked at her the way he had looked at her in the yard when she showed him the spreadsheet.
He said, you know what you are going into.
She said she did.
He said, a warrior does not fight from anger. Anger burns fast and leaves you empty. A warrior fights from something that does not burn. You know what that is.
She thought about her mother. About the woman on the phone who had spelled her name wrong. About 5,596 entries in a column that no one was required to fill.
She said, I know what it is.
He nodded. Then he said, I will be here when you come back. However long it takes I will be here.
He rose and walked to a distance that was far enough and sat down with his back to her and did not look back.
Aiyana sat with the small fire and the high country around her and let the silence come in.
The first hours were ordinary. Her mind moved through its inventory of thoughts the way it always did — the letter, the statistics, her grandmother’s hands on her face that morning, a question she had forgotten to look up about federal jurisdiction boundaries. She watched the thoughts the way Thomas had taught her, without grabbing at them, and one by one they settled and stilled.
The sun moved. The shadows changed their angles. A hawk crossed the sky once and did not return.
To read the complete story you need to be logged in:
Log In or
Register for a Free account
(Why register?)
* Allows you 3 stories to read in 24 hours.