Story by Keegan Clements-Housser

The cold was like an animal; it snapped at my fingers and gnawed on my toes, dragging me into consciousness. I curled up tighter beneath my blanket, my shield against the creature, but it was no use. The freezing nighttime air crept in anyway, expertly winding chilly tendrils past my childish defenses. It was a monster of the winter solstice, the longest night of the year, and I was at its mercy.
Worse was the realization, as I slowly peeked out from under my blanket, that I was completely alone. My mom, who had been lying next to me when we settled down for the night in a friend’s workshop in the village of Luna, New Mexico, was nowhere to be seen. I was an utterly afraid, shivering seven-year-old, surrounded by a monstrous darkness.
That is, until I heard the sound of chanting and singing drifting in the air, coming to me from somewhere across the darkness. As I listened, I started to calm down. I remembered these melodies. They were stories, stories I had heard from people who were old and wise, stories of protective medicine and powerful rituals. My elders told me these stories were special—if recited properly, they could convince the spirits to intervene on my behalf, protecting me from the frosty demons that the wintery New Mexican high desert had sent to hunt me.
Armed with this understanding, I prepared to face the monster. I filled my head with memories of the stories as they had been told to me in the past, conjuring up images of dancers moving in time with the beating of drums in the pow-wows of the White Mountain Apache Reservation where I was raised. I remembered storytellers weaving tales of the great trickster, Coyote, outsmarting evil spirits, and brave, curious Raven crafting talismans to protect his loved ones. After a few long moments of reciting  to myself, turning the familiar legends over and over in my mind like my own mental talisman, I stood up and let the blanket fall to the floor. Filled with some of Coyote and Raven’s courage, I started forward. I was still scared and cold, but now I was brave enough to face the dark.
I started walking toward the sound. When I returned to this place eight years later, I would discover that the distance I walked was no more than twenty feet, but on that night it felt like miles as I braved the lonely leagues of cold darkness toward the sounds of safety. Halfway there, I began to see people-like silhouettes sitting in a circle around a shimmer of light. They looked like spirits to me. As I drew closer, I could see by the glimmering of the candles that filled the center of the circle that they really were people: the family we were staying with, some of the wise storytellers whose tales had guided me here, and, smiling up at me, my mother.
Others smiled at me as well, beckoning me into the circle, but they didn’t stop their chanting. I sat down at my mother’s feet and surveyed the faces surrounding me. To my childish eyes, they were elders of incalculable years, their faces etched with lines of laughter and sorrow, forged in the dry air of their arid home. Each carried stories of the desert, tales and songs they had shared with me so often that I was certain the sacred stories were beginning to engrave themselves into my very bones, as I was sure had already happened to these wise ones.
Some of them had told me stories of the Great Spirit, mother of all things, the spider web of life that connected all the world together. In these stories, the other people, the animal people—the Spider people, the Raven people, the Snake people, the Bear people—showed the human people how to love and live and learn. They were the stories of the Hopi, and the Navajo, the Apache, and the peoples of the desert that stretched out around me in every direction. Other elders told me stories of another desert in a faraway place, and of a powerful spirit that had sent his only son to Earth to sacrifice himself for the sake of all humankind. Only after he had traveled the land and taught others how to forgive, cherish and care for one another.
In my later life, I would learn that it was unusual for people of such different faiths to come together in worship. But at the time, without knowing anything of the divisions of pantheons and the age-old conflicts of religions, seeing all these faces gathered around the circle made perfect sense to me. They were all people of the desert, and they had a monster to face. It was then that I began to realize the purpose of this ritual.
As the first hints of dawn began to appear in the sky, one of the elders, a wise woman, pulled out a hand drum. It was beautiful—handcrafted, with dried animal skin pulled taut over a wooden frame smelling of juniper berries. All around the rim of the drum were pictures of the animal people, Coyote and Raven and Bear and all the others.
Talismans like this had power, I felt a connection with the things they represented. The spirits of the animal people were with us too, I thought. I was happy.
The wise woman began to beat the drum in time with the chanting, the steady rhythm sounding almost like a heartbeat. As she struck the drum, the sky outside began to brighten, oranges and reds and pinks cresting at the edge of the desert vista. But in the space of a few heartbeats she stopped and said to me, “I’m too old and tired to do this. Will you take this drum and finish bringing the sun back to the world?”
I gave a serious nod and took the drum from her. At first I was uncertain, but smiling faces encircled and encouraged me. After a few stuttering moments, I took the beat up from where she had left off, and the singing continued. As I beat the drum, the sun began to creep up over the horizon ever so slowly, and with every new beat I thought I could see another ray of light appear. The monster, still lurking at the edge of the circle, retreated with the shrinking shadows.
An hour later, it was done. The sun was in the sky, and when my mom squeezed my shoulder, I stopped drumming. Around me people smiled and stood to stretch, and conversations began to spring up about breakfast. Though my understanding of their multi-faith dynamic was limited, I could tell that they had enjoyed seeing each other again, and they said it felt good to know the cold of the longest night was finally behind them. It was a symbolic moment for them, a moment of friendship and camaraderie, an ending to the isolation of winter.
For me, it was far more than that. I had vanquished a monster, like King Arthur in the books I loved to read, or like the wise and wily Coyote in the stories I never got tired of hearing. The demon was gone, and I had drummed up the sun.