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77 pages 2 hours read

Rebecca Roanhorse

Trail of Lightning

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2018

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Important Quotes

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“But I’m no hero. I’m more of a last resort, a scorched-earth policy. I’m the person you hire when the heroes have already come home in body bags.” 


(Chapter 1, Page 2)

Maggie thinks this to herself when she approaches the Lukachukai Chapter House, ready to accept another job slaying another monster. In this thought Maggie shows the extreme strength of her power, which she will display later during her actual monster hunt. However, she also shows by implication how her power separates her from other people. In comparing herself to a scorched-earth policy, Maggie equates her clan powers with the forces of nature. In calling herself the one hired after the heroes die, she elevates herself both above and separate from most normal people. This comment shows how Maggie’s abilities factor into her self-isolation and her struggle to connect with others.

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“I scream, exhilarated, obscenely euphoric. I know this high. K’aahanáanii, my clan power, a bloodlust that revels in the kill. Guilt and horror suffuse me, and I try to mentally push K’aahanáanii away, but it won’t be denied as long as I am covered in the blood of my enemy, his lifeless body at my feet. I listen as my voice echoes back to me through the trees and wait for the perversity of my killing clan power to pass.” 


(Chapter 2, Page 13)

Here Maggie shows the power and violence of one of her clan powers. This ability gives her an unparalleled skill in killing, although a side effect is the bloodlust that takes over afterwards. Although Maggie uses this clan power to do good in the world—namely by killing monsters and trying to save people—she tries her best to deter the accompanying bloodlust, which makes her feel terrible about herself. This plays into the larger problem that Maggie has throughout the novel with considering herself less than human or even monstrous. To Maggie, killing, even monsters, is something generally bad. Feeling so good about it makes her perverse, and she feels guilty at her pleasure, even though it is impossible for her to avoid.

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“I remember the first time I saw the Wall. I had expected something dull and featureless. A fifty-foot-high mountain of grey concrete, barbed wire lining the top like in some apocalyptic movie. But I had forgotten that the Diné has already suffered our apocalypse over a century before. This wasn’t our end. This was our rebirth.” 


(Chapter 4, Page 23)

This passage first describes the Wall, an important boundary for Dinétah lands. Maggie, who spent much of her childhood in the Fifth World, associates such a feat in the Sixth World with the apocalypse. However, unlike the movies she remembers, the apocalypse of the Diné was real. This apocalypse was not that of the Big Water, which affected the entire Earth. Rather, Maggie refers here to the genocide of Indigenous people in North America, including her own Diné ancestors. In comparison with such horrendous trauma, the Wall allows the Diné to flourish in the Sixth World, despite the large-scale destruction of the Big Water. This is their rebirth because within the Wall, Diné creation stories join reality, and their culture flourishes.

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“‘It is no good how you live. Alone, not connected. Diné way is to find the connections—between yourself and your relatives, yourself and the world. Diné way of life is k’é, kinship, like this’—he weaves his fingers in and out, bringing his hands together, and then he splays his palms open while keeping his fingers intertwined—’but you, your life is all separate.’ He pulls his hands apart, setting the fingers free to wiggle. ‘It’s no way to live.’ He pauses, giving me a look. ‘Even with dogs.’” 


(Chapter 4, Page 30)

In this passage, Grandpa Tah tries to explain to Maggie how bad her self-isolation is for her. To the Diné, community and kinship obligations are extremely important cultural concepts. Maggie’s desire to be physically and emotionally alone is thus even more notable, and the abandonment by Neizghání that prompted her isolation seems even crueler. Grandpa Tah, however, does not criticize Maggie’s suffering uncaringly. He genuinely wants to help his honorary granddaughter, even making a joke about the three dogs that she keeps with her for protection and company. Still, nothing can replace human connection. Tah will try to remedy this lack by bringing some human connection to Maggie shortly after this when he introduces her to Kai.

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“‘Just two hundred miles west near the western edge of the Wall. They say the refineries run day and night and tribal officials live like kings. You would think that after the Energy Wars maybe they’d do something different, you know? Spread it around to the people. Build a damn solar panel.’

‘Greed is universal,’ Kai says. His face is thoughtful, his eyes a little distant. ‘In the Burque we have water barons that are like that. They control everything. Deep wells and waterworks like you’ve never seen. Catchments and evaporators up in the mountains. Water makes them wealthy like Renaissance princes.’ He pushes his aviators up off his face, squints into the sun. ‘Seems anywhere there’s a natural resource, there’s someone willing to hoard it for themselves to make more money than they can spend.’

I think of the Protectors, the people who fought the multinationals in the Energy Wars and lost. Until Earth herself stepped up and drowned them all regardless of personal politics.

‘Water is life,’ I say.” 


(Chapter 4, Page 54)

This conversation between Kai and Maggie on their journey to Crownpoint reveals Roanhorse’s own ideas about the current abuse of natural resources. The people of the Energy Wars, who are the people of the Fifth World (our world) who fight over resources like gasoline and other sources of energy to the detriment of the planet, serve as a negative example for Kai and Maggie. In their minds, the Big Water, which is representative of rising waters due to climate change, should have taught humans how to live more harmoniously. However, human nature is greedy, and now people hoard other resources like water. Water itself has dual meaning in this passage. The water of the Big Water represents destruction and how the environment can overpower humanity. However, water also represents life in that it is a precious resource necessary for humans to survive—just one that some people currently selfishly hoard.

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“I keep the shotgun raised as we turn the corner and head into a reference room, filled with oversized books containing big maps of the earth. Maps that are now obsolete. Next to the maps are old encyclopedias holding the history of a world that no longer exists as pictured. It’s eerie, and it leaves me thinking of the places outside of Dinétah in a way I haven’t in a long time. Or maybe it’s Kai who’s got me thinking that way. I wonder if there are other places like this, other homelands where the old gods have risen, where monsters threaten the five-fingereds, where death stalks the few who still live on the land of their ancestors.” 


(Chapter 9, Page 70)

Although much of Trail of Lightning focuses on the valley of Dinétah, here Maggie reminds the reader that the Sixth World covers the planet. The Big Water flooded everywhere, and the topography of the world has changed. The library at Crownpoint, where Maggie and Kai are researching monsters, is a remnant of the old planet, which was far more interconnected. This was a world that Maggie grew up in, since the Big Water did not hit until she was a young teenager, so Maggie remembers what it was like to know about the far corners and distant history of the earth through books. However, the changes of the Sixth World necessitate insularity, not unlike Maggie’s own self-imposed isolation, and her focus is entirely upon her own people, the Diné, and their lands in Dinétah. Roanhorse here does leave open the possibility of other fantastical, mythological worlds outside the valley, although she leaves specifics up to the imagination of the reader.

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“Neizghání.

Whatever happened here to kill all these people must have drawn his attention. He’s been missing from my life for nine months, but that doesn’t mean he’s not still hunting monsters. Maybe he’s just doing it without me.

I swallow down a tic of panic. I’m not ready to face him, may never be ready, but there’s also nothing I want more than to see him again. I wipe my suddenly sweaty hands on my pants and tell myself it’ll be okay, even though I know it’s a lie.” 


(Chapter 9, Pages 73-74)

When Maggie is at Crownpoint and she realizes that the destruction of all its people must have caught Neizghání’s attention, it brings two thoughts to her mind—Neizghání has moved on in his own life after abandoning her, and, right now, Maggie is unable to face him. In the first thought, Maggie begins to think beyond her own experience of the abandonment, which has occupied much of her mind for many months. It is not only she who was abandoned, but he who did the abandoning and who has moved on with no thought of her. While this thought seems in line with the glimpses of Neizghání’s true character that have appeared so far, it certainly also contributes to Maggie’s feelings of isolation and lack of self-worth. In the second thought, Maggie realizes that the prospect of dealing with this particular trauma is too overwhelming for her at the moment. When she eventually does overcome it, it will show how far Maggie’s emotional journey has taken her.

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“My cheeks flush hot under his merciless scrutiny. I know he’s just digging for my weak spot, hoping to see me crack. It’s a coyote’s nature to be vicious, and I try not to take it personally. But he makes it very hard not to want to smash his mouth in with my fist.”


(Chapter 12, Page 93)

Ma’ii (Coyote) is the Diné trickster god. As a trickster god, Coyote is similar to tricksters in many other religions and mythologies, such as Norse Loki and Akan Anansi, in that he likes to break boundaries and norms. Here, Maggie compares Coyote’s personality to the animals who share his name because, despite Coyote’s attempts at friendliness with Maggie, he just cannot resist being cruel. Maggie tries to excuse this, holding Coyote not to human standards but to coyote ones, but the effect on her does not change. Although Maggie tries to be realistic in her approach to this association with Coyote, he consciously digs into her deepest insecurities for the sake of his own desires or fun.

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“‘I have lived many lives in many worlds,’ Ma’ii says, ‘even before Changing Woman made the five-fingered people, and in them all the worlds have come to an end in a great flood. Each time the waters rose so high on all sides that we thought the cresting waves were the tips of the snowy mountains. This last flood, the one you call the Big Water, ended the Fifth World and began the Sixth. It opened the passage for those like myself to return to the world.’” 


(Chapter 13, Page 101)

When Coyote explains the six worlds to Kai, Roanhorse has an opportunity to also introduce any unfamiliar readers to this Diné creation story. The idea of a Sixth World is a clear extension of the Diné belief in the five worlds, going from creation or the start of time to the present day. The series that Trail of Lightning begins is named the Sixth World after this extension, and a reader familiar with these beliefs would understand this backstory on their own. To any reader who is not familiar, Roanhorse, through Coyote, explains the cyclical nature of worlds and floods. As Coyote explains, the Sixth World is also a return to the ways of those worlds before the Fifth, in that he and the other Holy People now walk among the humans.

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“I am left alone to hunt the monsters by myself, both the visible kind that steal away little girls to eat their flesh, and the invisible kind that live under the skin, eating at the little girl from inside.” 


(Chapter 14, Page 111)

This quote encapsulates the core of Maggie’s insecurities. When Neizghání leaves her, she is alone in a dangerous world that she feels obligated, due to her abilities, to save. However, the monsters of Maggie’s world are not just those like the tsé naayéé’, the ones that steal and consume little girls like the one from the novel’s first chapter. Here Maggie shows some exceptional self-insight by acknowledging that another kind of monster is invisible, referring to the self-doubt and lack of self-worth that consume her. She is, metaphorically, the little girl eaten by these insecurities, just as she was when Neizghání first found her.

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“I watch the light as it moves over my skin. My fingers are brown and riddled with tiny cuts from my fight with the tsé naayéé’. The newer wounds complement the calluses and rigid white scars of my old injuries. My nails are short and blunt and most of them are covered with small white dots, evidence of smashed fingers and who knows what else kind of trauma I’ve subjected them to.

Trauma, scars. That’s what I know, what I’m good at. Vomiting ugly into the world, Longarm said. His words, fueled by the dream, come crashing back on me, and suddenly I feel ridiculous for even thinking Kai and me could be friends, more than friends. I feel myself swaying, dizzy with awful awareness as the walls close in around me.”


(Chapter 16, Page 124)

In this scene, Maggie is in her kitchen making coffee, a routine and domestic scene in comparison to where her focus lies. Although food and drinks like coffee at other points in the novel bring Maggie back to a more secure time, one with family and more safety than she experiences now, here the physical evidence of trauma on her hands brings her back to the reality of the Sixth World. This is a dangerous world, one in which Maggie has to fight to stay alive. However, the physical scars remind her that her trauma is mental and emotional, too. They remind her of the insecurities that Longarm picked at. The reminder of these traumas breaks Maggie out of what she now believes was a fantasy—being friends with anyone, let alone Kai—and her reentry into the lonely reality that she believes she must stay in makes Maggie feel weak, sick, and enclosed.

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“Daughter.

That word means something in Navajo. It means family but also responsibility. It was my responsibility to keep Tah safe, and I’ve failed spectacularly at the thing that mattered most.” 


(Chapter 19, Page 142)

Maggie’s relationship to Tah, her honorary grandfather, has roots in the Diné (Navajo) traditions of kinship ties. When Tah names Maggie an honorary daughter, he brings her into his system of kinship. In this culture, being family implies more than just association or relationship: It means a duty to help and protect others in one’s kinship group. Although earlier in the novel, when bartering with the kidnapped girl’s family, Maggie claimed not to take this cultural norm seriously, it is clear here that for her own close family, she takes her duty to heart. To fail in this duty, then, means more than just a sense of loss to Maggie. Even though Maggie was nowhere near Tse Bonito when Tah’s place caught fire, to Maggie, not protecting Tah also represents a very personal failure.

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“Kai’s looking behind me. I know what he sees. I wait for him to recoil in horror. To demand to know how I could have done such a thing. To look at me and see the monster.” 


(Chapter 20, Page 150)

Maggie thinks this shortly after killing Longarm to save Kai. Longarm was a bully, especially to Maggie, and she has certainly wanted him dead in the past. However, the idea of killing, which is wrapped up in Maggie’s clan power, still makes her feel guilty and insecure. Even though she killed Longarm to protect not herself in this case but Kai, whom she is obligated to help via her connection to Tah, Maggie still thinks that this killing proves her to be a monster. In Maggie’s inability to see how others truly view her, especially when others view her in a positive way, she cannot conceive of Kai taking these events in any way other than negative. This comment again shows the exceptional insecurity and lack of self-worth that Maggie feels throughout the novel.

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“‘I know a hurting child when I see one.’

‘I’m not a child.’

‘We’re all God’s children.’

‘And I don’t need a mother.’

‘Everyone needs a mother,’ she spits, cocking an eyebrow at me. ‘Even a hardass like you.’” 


(Chapter 22, Page 166)

In this passage, Grace Goodacre tries to give Maggie, who is considering leaving Kai to go off on her own, some advice. Maggie, however, is both unable to accept the advice and incapable of realizing what this advice implies about Grace, which is that Grace cares for Maggie. The older woman calls Maggie a “hurting child,” a comment that annoys Maggie, who, like any young adult, thinks of herself as grown up. Even though Maggie is mature and capable of taking care of herself, she is still young and in pain and, even worse, alone. Maggie reaffirms her seeming desire for loneliness when she says that she does not need a mother. She pushes away anyone who tries to get close to her, especially now that Tah is gone. However, when Grace explains that everyone, even tough people like Maggie, needs a mother, she means that all people benefit from the social connection and support that Maggie currently refuses.

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“The Goodacres turn to me too. And I realize they want me to lead them into battle. But I’m no leader. I’ve always followed Neizghání, or gone in solo. I’m not sure I can give them what they want from me.

‘You’re the monster expert,’ Kai says quietly, his voice reassuring. ‘We trust you.’

I stare another minute. Take in his placid eyes. The two pars of identical hazel eyes, not quite as trusting, but ready to listen. Willing to believe that what I say is going to keep them alive. I’m worried that it won’t. That I won’t. Just like I failed to keep Tah safe in Tse Bonito or Kai from taking a beating. I worry that Rock Springs will become another dot on my personal failures map and, if so, how big a full that map can get. But there’s no use for it now. Someone has to do something, and it looks like it’s going to be me.” 


(Chapter 23, Page 176)

After Rissa and Clive report monsters at Rock Springs, they and Maggie and Kai decide to team up. This is a much larger team than Maggie is used to—even when she was with Neizghání, she was only in a lopsided partnership. Furthermore, she has struggled with even accepting one other partner. It takes a moment for it to even occur to Maggie that not only is she teaming up with others, but the others also look to her as a leader. In Maggie’s perpetual lack of self-confidence, she feels incapable of being a leader. To anyone familiar with Maggie, however, it would be clear that she has the skills and expert training to excel in this role. Despite her reluctance, Maggie proves ever capable of stepping up to a challenge, accepting this leadership even when she worries she will fail.

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“I remember the lightning strike burns by the main camp, and a horrible suspicion starts to form. It seems outrageous, even blasphemous, but Tah said it himself. Neizghání doesn’t think like humans do. And he would have access to the kind of sacred objects it would take to make monsters. Suddenly I am cold to the bone.” 


(Chapter 24, Page 187)

This passage marks the moment when Maggie first suspects Neizghání of wrongdoing. Even though Neizghání abandoned Maggie, up until this point, she has always held him in the best light, idolizing her hero as she thought of herself in the worst way possible. This is a turning point in the development of Maggie’s relationship with her former mentor, in which she begins to see him as a person, perhaps capable of good or evil, rather than as an ideal. This is a shock to Maggie’s system, since she has conditioned herself for years to think otherwise, but the evidence has become overwhelming for her. This evidence also hints at the novel’s title, Trail of Lightning. Maggie believes that she will trace the tracks of lightning back to Neizghání, although she will be proven wrong.

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“Grace comes toward me around the coffee table and I tense up. She lifts her arms up and opens them wide, and I brace myself for the blow. But instead, she does the damnedest thing. She wraps her arms around me and gives me a hug.

I stand there, stupefied. Frozen like a deer in the headlights. It sounds pathetic, but I can’t actually remember ever being hugged. I’m sure my nalí did, but that was four years ago if it was a day. Neizghání? That thought makes me laugh. But here is Grace, she of the big talk and the little statue, holding on to me like I mean something.” 


(Chapter 25, Page 190)

After Kai and Maggie return to Grace’s, Maggie believes her short term in leadership to have been a failure. Even though she thinks, at this point, that Rissa is probably alive, she also believes that by allowing one of her team to be injured, she was a bad leader. However, Maggie’s perspective is, as ever, warped by her self-doubt. It shocks her to realize that someone like Grace, whom she previously thought of as only tough, can have such a different outlook on these events. In Grace’s view, Rissa may have been injured, but more importantly, Maggie stopped Rissa from being killed. Grace continues to show her affection for Maggie, here hugging her to thank her for her help. This is a new experience for Maggie, who has felt so alone and without family for so long that she cannot even remember being hugged before. This also marks a point at which Maggie begins to realize and accept that there are, in fact, others who care for her.

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“But it’s not the black-market shopping or the physics-defying dimensions and otherworldly atmosphere that makes me glad my guns are within reach. It’s the customers.

With Kai’s medicine on my eyes, the children of Dinétah, stripped of all illusions, become the stuff of dreams. Or nightmares.

Many of the clans I recognize. Ats’oos Dine’é, the Feather People, are easy to spot, their featured bodies covered in the grays, browns, and whites of hawks. Others have more elaborate plumage, showing reds and yellow and blues. All have a third eyelid that moves horizontally across staring eyes. By the bar sit two Big Deer People, huge three-point antlers rising from their heads. They wear wide buckskin skirts and their feet peak out from underneath, dainty black hooves. A man wearing a patchwork fur coat and rummaging through a pile of random car parts can only be Rabbit clan, the ears and oversize teeth unmistakable.”


(Chapter 28, Page 210)

Here Kai and Maggie enter the Shalimar, a magical nightclub in Tse Bonito. Despite Maggie’s familiarity with monsters and witches, encountering magic that she does not have to fight is a new and strange experience for her. For most of her time with Kai, she has taken him into her world, fighting monsters and ghosts and talking with gods. Now, Kai brings Maggie into his world, the world of magic and illusion. The concept of illusion here symbolizes the idea of true self that Maggie holds so dear. To Maggie, the essence of a person is who they are, only Maggie constantly fears that her own true self is a monster. The Shalimar allows Maggie to physically see the inner selves of others, which are inextricably linked to their clans. As a result, however, this experience will bolster Maggie’s sense of inner monstrosity, as she still believes her clan power to kill makes her bad. Ever the pessimist, Maggie focuses on the nightmarish nature of this magic, rather than looking at it as a dream.

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“Being a hero’s not about being perfect. It’s about doing the right thing, doing your best to get the people you care about home safely. You were willing to sacrifice yourself to do that. I don’t care what you say to try to negate that—I was there. I saw it.” 


(Chapter 30, Page 232)

In this passage, Kai explains his view on Maggie’s leadership at Rock Springs, which contrasts with Maggie’s view of the situation. Although Maggie focuses on the elements of failure in that experience, Kai focuses on the positives. He acknowledges that no one will ever be perfect, rather than holding Maggie up to the unrealistic standard of perfection that she does. He points out where Maggie succeeded in her mission, by bringing her team home alive and being willing to sacrifice herself to protect them. By this point Kai is well aware of Maggie’s refusal to see the good in herself, and he tries to force her to see herself in a new light. However, even Kai cannot force Maggie to save herself, and she will continue to resist.

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“One of the first lessons Grandpa taught me. Clan powers are a gift, not a curse. We may not understand them, why they only come to some of us, what their full potential is, but he was sure they were an instrument against dark times, against the coming of monsters. And like any instrument, they can be used for good or evil. A good man can use a hammer to build a house. A bad man can sue it to kill his neighbor. The hammer is the same.” 


(Chapter 30, Page 234)

Here Kai continues to provide Maggie with an alternate way of viewing the world. Whereas Maggie considers her clan powers, especially her ability to view, as essentially wrong and even monstrously tainted, Tah has taught Kai to view powers in a more neutral or even positive way. Through the comparison with the hammer, Kai explains to Maggie that clan powers can be viewed as tools with the potential for either good or bad, and that it is up to the user to decide to what ends they will use such power. Moreover, Tah focused on the positive possibilities of clan powers. Maggie certainly uses her clan powers for good by destroying monsters and protecting people; she just needs to focus on that aspect, rather than the self-perpetuated idea that they make her inherently evil.

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“He’s on his feet, eyes wide in disbelief. ‘Are you actually trying to kill me?’

‘That’s the idea.’ I know he hasn’t seen me this fast since that first time, and I’m not a desperate little girl anymore. He’s made sure of that.” 


(Chapter 31, Page 241)

This passage takes place during the fight between Maggie and Neizghání, which Mósí tricks Maggie into agreeing to. This fight represents Maggie very literally facing her own demons, or at least the man who caused them. Although earlier, at Crownpoint, Maggie felt unable to face her former mentor, she has now developed enough self-confidence and self-awareness to face him head-on. This confidence surprises Neizghání, who is not familiar with this new Maggie. To him, Maggie is merely the “desperate little girl,” the inferior human he had to rescue and train. He willingly and callously caused Maggie’s self-doubt and despair, taking advantage of her trust in him by calling her a monster before abandoning her. Maggie recognizes her personal growth when she acknowledges that she has changed and evolved. More importantly, she shows great personal growth by acknowledging that Neizghání is at fault for putting her in this situation in the first place.

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“‘You know people who love you don’t hurt you like that,’ he says, eyes steady on me. ‘Love’s not supposed to try to kill you.’”


(Chapter 33, Page 253)

When Maggie finally admits to Kai that she used to love Neizghání, Kai shows her love does not have to be toxic. Maggie’s former mentor gave her a twisted, toxic, and abusive notion of love. Neizghání, like many abusers, convinced Maggie that she was the bad one rather than him. This abuse left Maggie unable to recognize, for a long time, that the person who would make her feel so bad about herself was actually the one at fault. Before, Maggie rejected love, or at least any form of personal relationship, because she associated relationships with feeling bad about herself. Now, Kai gives her a healthier view of love. By telling Maggie that love should not destroy you, he explains that love should be a positive force, one of self-worth in which people support each other.

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“‘Look on the bright side,’ Clive says.

‘Which is…?’ I ask.

‘You’ll get to see the southern Wall.’

Hastiin gives him a nod. ‘You bet your ass. Two hundred-odd miles of solid turquoise, fifty feet high. A goddamn wonder of the Sixth World.’

And it’s everything Hastiin implied it would be. At first, it’s a glimmer of blue in the morning twilight, looking more distant ocean than anything else. But as we get closer, I can see it for what it is. The word of the Diyin Dine’é.

Hastiin raises his hand and we all pull forward and kill our engines, a consensus to stop and marvel.

‘Other side of that Wall is a damned Big Water nightmare,’ a Thirsty Boy says to his friend, loud enough for us to overhear through the open windows of the truck. ‘Makes you feel lucky to be Diné, doesn’t it?’

‘No,’ Kai says, his voice low so only I hear. ‘It makes you feel small.’” 


(Chapter 34, Pages 257-258)

This passage occurs when Maggie travels with Clive, Rissa, Kai, and the Thirsty Boys to the last battle against the tsé naayéé’. By slowing down the narrative and showing us this section of the Wall through the eyes of her characters, Roanhorse builds dramatic tension just before the last big fight in the novel. The Wall itself here is, as earlier in the book, a marvel to behold. When Maggie describes the Wall as truly a work of the Diyin Din’é, she emphasizes the divine scale of the project. The unnamed Thirsty Boy furthers this point when he asks, “Makes you feel lucky to be Diné, doesn’t it?” The Wall shows the extent to which the Diné have flourished in the Sixth World, due in part to their fortuitous construction of the Wall and in part to their strong connection to the land the Wall encapsulates. However, as Kai points out, the other aspect of the Wall is the separation it creates between Dinétah and the rest of the world. The rest of the world might be a “damned Big Water Nightmare,” and Dinétah is only one comparatively small part of the planet.

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“‘Stop this, Ma’ii. I know the tsé naayéé’ are yours. Why are you doing this?’

Coyote cocks his head. Blinks. ‘The tsé naayéé’?’

‘Don’t deny it. I know you have the fire drill. I know you made them.’

‘Oh, I don’t deny it. But you misunderstand. I didn’t just make the tsé naayéé’. I made them all. They are all my monsters, Magdalena. From the very beginning.’

‘Yes, I know. Lukachukai, and Crownpoint, and Rock—’

He tsks sharply, disapproving. ‘No, no, no. From an isolated pine ridge,’ he croons as he strokes claws through the ruffles of his shirt, ‘up above Fort Defiance.’

My blood runs cold.

‘So simple, really,’ he says softly. ‘I knew Neizghání was already hunting that witch and his creatures. All I needed to do was ensure a rendezvous. A desperate girl. An inevitable rescue. I bleeding-hearted hero. How could he not take you in?’ He shuddered theatrically. ‘Nasty business with you nalí, though. Cannibals. Such a horror.’

I can’t breathe. I’m not hearing this. I can’t. This can’t be true.

‘Regrettable. Truly. A parent can never control his children. But then look at my latest creation.’ He sweeps his arm across the battlefield below. ‘I knew I needed something sufficiently monstrous to pull you from your little sulk, and what better than what lured Neizghání to you in the first place? A little girl, beset by flesh-eating monsters.’”


(Chapter 35, Pages 265-266)

This passage marks the point at which Coyote reveals his ultimate twist. Although Maggie was certainly aware of Coyote’s trickster nature, she had not expected so great a manipulation or betrayal from him. She had thought, falsely, that by being aware of his nature, she could work around him. After suffering so long from the betrayal of another close but toxic mentor, Neizghání, this second betrayal is almost too much for Maggie to handle. Coyote digs again at what he believes to be her deepest insecurities, calling her a little girl and saying that her relationship with Neizghání was due only to his manipulations. However, Coyote does not realize in this passage that Maggie has grown beyond that little girl and that she now has greater self-worth. This new Maggie will prove more capable of defeating Coyote than he expects.

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“When I kissed you, all I tasted was death. And I think I want more than that, Neizghání. I think I want life, too. And love. A love that doesn’t try to kill me.” 


(Chapter 37, Page 281)

In this passage, Maggie faces Neizghání for the final time, reaffirming her new self-confidence and worth. Maggie’s words are heavily influenced by Kai’s explanation of love as a thing that does not try to kill. In contrast to this definition of love, to Maggie Neizghání represents death and Maggie’s old fears that her ability to kill made her bad. Here Maggie acknowledges that she can choose the better and healthier choice, leaving behind her former mentor to live for herself.

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