by Celia Roman
“This is Sunshine Walkingstick,” I said, and just to be on the safe side, tacked on a quick, “Who’s this?”
“Sunny!” The woman laughed, a low, short chuckle. “This is Libby Squirrel. I thought my husband had gone crazy when he told me you called.”
“Nope. It was me, all right.”
“I’m so glad.” She whispered something softly, off line, maybe, then said in a normal voice. “How are you?”
“Oh, I’m right dandy. You?”
“Fine, thanks. Getting ready for Thanksgiving.”
I hummed a noncommittal response. I done forgot all about turkey day. “How’s that young’un of yourn? He was a cute’un, he was.”
“Thank you. Charlie’s, well.” She laughed again. “He’s a toddler. Into everything whether he needs to be or not.”
A soft pang struck my heart. I remembered them days, remembered ‘em fondly. Henry’d been right curious, too, God rest him.
Libby murmured an aside again, and I gathered she was talking to somebody nearby.
“This a bad time?” I asked.
“No, not at all.” A man said something too low for me to hear, and Libby shushed him. “Sorry. We just got back from church.”
It was a bad time. Disappointment sank through the jubilation of actually reaching her. “This can wait.”
“Now’s fine, really. Hold on.” The noise on the other end, never loud to begin with, gradually faded. A door shut on silence, and Libby spoke again. “There. That should give us five minutes of peace.”
And in that five minutes, I might actually work up the nerve to ask her what needed asking. “Sorry for the intrusion.”
“You’re not an intrusion,” she said, gentle like. “You’re family. I know you have a reason for calling, though.”
I winced and rubbed a hand over my face. Busted. “I was wondering what you could tell me about my daddy’s family.”
A long silence filled the other end.
When I couldn’t stand another second, I blurted out, “I mean, I know you’re my cousin and all, but I got so many questions. He died before he could tell me nothing, and what with being disowned and never knowing nobody on that side of the family…”
“I understand.”
The words was so soft spoken, I near about missed ‘em. “Mama writ me a letter the other day. Said he was of the Panther clan.”
Another hesitation, then a wary, “Yes.”
I opened my mouth, closed it on air, and finally mustered a repeat. “I got so many questions.”
“Sunny.” She sighed, and when she spoke again, her voice was barely loud as a whisper. “Can I meet you? Somewhere safe. Somewhere private?”
“My trailer?”
“Ok. When?”
I thought about that real hard. Riley and me had a standing date for Sunday nights, but my curiosity was mighty high. Could I really wait another day to satisfy it?
The question twisted around in my noggin for a bare second before the answer hit me. No, I could not. After waiting all this time, I couldn’t wait no longer’n I had to now.
“This afternoon?” I said at last, and Libby agreed and got directions from me. After, I hung up, caught between hope and relief and an odd feeling that I just stepped onto a path what weren’t meant to be trod.
To be on the safe side, I put Aunt Sadie’s critter in my bedroom on my dresser and throwed a towel over the cage, then sprinted around the trailer shining what was already sparkling. Nerves, maybe, or the voice of my mama prodding me on. Who could tell what drove a woman to spritz up a place what was spritzed as it could get?
Libby pulled into my driveway at three sharp that afternoon. I stood at the window in the living room, peeping through the curtains whilst she unbuckled Charlie and pulled him outta the backseat. Just him, no husband or other kids.
Why?
The simple question pinched at me, tearing off little pieces ever time it reverberated in my mind. Them little pieces drifted off and morphed into new questions, and pretty soon, ever empty space in my noggin was full of the little boogers. Did she trust me that much? Why him? Why not another kid or her husband? What if she’d brung ‘em all? How’d I shake the truth outta her then?
And weren’t spilling the beans why she come?
Her footsteps was near about silent on the wooden steps leading to the front porch, and her knock on the door not much louder. I opened it straight off and just stood there, staring at her like the idjit I suspected I was.
“Hey,” she said. “You remember Charlie.”
I transferred my gaze to him and attempted a smile, and he stared back, solemn as a carved statue, unblinking.
“Hey, Charlie,” I finally said, and he took that as a cue to go babbling away in what I figured was Cherokee, since I understood not a word.
I stepped back, an unspoken invitation to enter, then shut the door behind ‘em.
Libby swung Charlie off her hip and set him on the carpet, and not for the first time, I was glad Mama put the fear of God in me when it come to cleaning.
“You want something to drink?” I jacked a thumb over my shoulder toward the kitchen at my back. “I got cold water in the fridge and sweet tea, and fresh made applesauce cake.”
“Water?” Libby sat down on the couch and slid a diaper bag off her shoulder, then set it down at her feet. “Maybe a slice of the cake for Charlie, if it’s not too sweet.”
“Not much so,” I assured her, and busied myself tending to my guests. “I ‘preciate you coming all this way.”
“I would’ve invited you up, but…” She placed her hands flat on her thighs and her gaze seemed to go unfocused a bit. “It’s not safe for you there.”
I half turned away from the kitchen counter. “Why not?”
She got up and picked Charlie up, and plopped him into a chair at the kitchen table. “What do you know about us? Your daddy’s family.”
“Only what I been told recent.” I slipped the mason jar of water back into the fridge, then set a full glass of water in front of Libby and a small plate of cake in front of her son. “Stay away from my grandfather ‘cause he’s a crazy, ol’ coot mixed up in something dangerous. A family feud and whatnot. Stay away from my grandmother ‘cause she’s just plain crazy. You get the drift.”
“Whoever warned you is right,” Libby said flatly, and her chocolate brown eyes glittered and bore into me. “Tell me exactly what you’ve been told, and who told you.”
I started with Johnny Walkingstick showing up on my doorstep outta the blue and the warning he give to stay outta the deep wood. Libby listened without moving, standing at the table, a silent guard beside her son. I was beginning to believe them two was carved outta the same slab of stone.
From there, I segued into Fame’s warning, then the letter Mama writ, and by the time I was done, it was a wonder I weren’t crazy from all the telling.
When my breath emptied out on the last word, Libby nodded slowly. “And that’s why you called me?”
“Old Mother,” I blurted out.
“Who?”
“A seer. Sorry.” I realized me and Libby was still standing, one on either side of young Charlie, and pulled out a chair and sat, and she did likewise. My manners needed some serious work. “She come to visit somewhere in there and warned me about ‘she of two worlds.’”
Libby hummed noncommittally. “They were right, all of them, but no one has all the pieces.”
“Not what they’re telling me nohow.” I flipped my hands over on the table, palms up, a small, helpless shrug. “What’s going on here?”
“War, cousin.” Libby leaned forward, pressing her rounded bosom into the table’s edge. “A war that’s been raging for three generations. It claimed my grandmother.”
“I’m sorry.”
Libby’s glittering brown eyes hardened. “Your grandmother, her own sister, killed her.”
I sat back, aghast at the very notion.
“To claim the leadership of the clan.
For power.” Libby shook her head and sat back, too, and some of the hard eased outta her eyes. “The two-natured are at war, Sunshine, and we need your support.”
I shook my own head hard, swinging the ends of my stick straight hair into my face. “Oh, no. I ain’t a-getting involved in all that.”
“You already are.” Her eyes drifted to Charlie sitting quiet like between us, eating his cake one pinched off bite at a time. “Your grandmother came after you.”
“What?”
“She’ll come after you again, but you may not recognize her.”
“Libby, c’mon,” I said, and blew out a sigh. “You want me to understand, you gotta be clear as day about stuff.”
“Clear as day. Ok.” She stood and pecked a kiss to the top of Charlie’s head, then stepped away from the table. “Don’t worry, Sunny. I won’t hurt you.”
“Hurt me…” I said, but before I could get much out, she pulled her shirt over her head and draped it over the chair she vacated.
I scrambled outta my own chair and held a hand out to her. “Now, hold on a dadgum minute.”
She toed off her tennis shoes and shimmied outta her jeans. “You have to see, Sunny. You have to see what we are.”
“I don’t gotta see nothing!” Her hands reached around her back toward her bra strap, and I did a one-eighty, cheeks hotter’n fire. “For pete’s sake, Libby.”
“Just a minute more.”
Her voice had changed from a smooth cadence to a hitched growl. I whipped back around, and what I saw floored me. Libby’s form was human still, but barely. Black fur sprung outta her skin and her lower face transformed into a snout. She blinked, and in the instances before and after, her eyes turned from the beautiful deep brown of the Cherokee into the bright, sparkling green of a full growed cat.
Chapter Eighteen
Charlie giggled and clapped his hands, smooshing applesauce cake against his palms. I snatched him up and held him back, and he right kindly patted my cheeks, sharing his cake with my skin.
The painter what’d been Libby sank to the ground onto four large paws, black furred paws ending in sharp claws, and a tail unfurled behind her. She stretched and yawned, and gleaming white fangs bracketed a long, pink tongue.
“Mama,” Charlie said, his tiny voice gleeful, like this was a game we was all playing.
Maybe it was a game she played with him. What did I know? Only, that was a painter curling up on my living room floor, staring at me with them strange, knowing eyes, and Charlie weren’t much more’n a babe. Weren’t no way in aitch ee double hockey sticks was I gonna set him down.
“All right, now,” I said, and my voice was shaky and reed thin, about like my heart pattering away in my chest. “Libby Squirrel, if you can hear me in there, you change right back, you hear?”
The painter yawned again, and her expression was a near laugh, I sworn. She got up on all fours real graceful and leisure like, and padded around the table toward me.
I stepped back a mite too quick and bumped into the stove, and the painter leapt into me and buried her face against my thigh.
My heart shot up into my throat, but Charlie just laughed and leaned down and patted the painter’s head like she was a pet kitty cat.
Biggest dadgum kitty I ever seen.
“Libby?” I said, and was relieved my voice come out near normal. “You in there?”
The painter rubbed her face against my thigh again, and I took that as a yes.
“How long you gonna be like that? Not that I mind or nothing.”
A flat out whopper. ‘Course, I minded. There was a big, wild critter in my trailer. It might poop on the carpet or eat me and Charlie or something.
After another five minutes of that kinda play on the painter’s part, I managed to ease my way around to my desk and pull my .380 outta its holster. The painter just looked at me, like I lost my mind or something. Maybe I had. After all, I was standing in the same room as the critter what’d stalked me in the deep wood, then scared the life outta me and BobbiJean on her wedding day.
Which, come to think on it, was kindly rude.
Another five minutes and I set the .380 on the top of my desk and Charlie down on the floor. I shook out my arms, easing the sting of muscles not used to carrying a solid weight, and kept myself close to him and my gun both.
Bless him, Charlie toddled right over and collapsed on top of the painter, and danged if she didn’t roll over onto her back like a pup and let him waller all over her.
The worry tying my innards into knots melted away and I relaxed against the side of my desk. “Ok, Libby. You can change back now.”
The painter’s head swung to me. Bit by bit, black fur disappeared and limbs twisted, and a few minutes later, Libby lay on her back on the floor, a content Charlie sprawled across her.
I snagged a blanket off the back of the couch and covered ‘em both with it. “You had your fun.”
“The first time somebody sees it,” she said, her voice still cat growl deep. She cleared her throat as her arms came around her son and held him close to her sun darkened belly. “The first time is always the most fun.”
“Maybe for you,” I grumped. “So when you said two-natured, you really meant you was of two natures.”
“Yeah, I really meant that.” She sighed and closed her eyes, brown, human eyes slanted at the corners. “I couldn’t have changed back right after even if I’d wanted to. Too much energy.”
“You need some cake?”
“Cake.” Her mouth twitched into a smile, then a deep belly laugh took ahold of her, shaking her from head to toe, and young Charlie, too. “I thought you were gonna shoot me.”
“Naw,” I said, then amended that for the sake of pure honesty. “Only if you pounced on us or something.”
“I couldn’t hurt you, wouldn’t. We need you.”
Her voice was soft and a mite strained, and there I was gawking at her. I stepped around her and Charlie and stuck my head in the fridge. “Think you need more’n cake to get your strength back.”
“Strong, stalwart Sunny,” she murmured. “No wonder your father loved you so much.”
Tears sprung into my eyes quicker’n spit. I pulled out the mayo and deli ham I kept for Riley, and clutched them to my bitty breasts. My daddy loved me. Sure, the knowledge rested bone deep in me, so deep I hardly recognized it as separate from my heart, but hearing it from a stranger was…
No, not a stranger. Family. And family stuck together, no matter what curves life throwed.
I set sandwich fixings on the counter and wiped my eyes discreet as I could, then slapped together a Riley sized sandwich. “You need help getting dressed or you want me to turn up the heat some?”
“I got it.”
I half glanced over my shoulder. “Charlie, hon. You wanna sandwich?”
He scrambled off his mama, tottered toward me, and hooked his arms around my leg whilst he babbled away. I took that as a yes and, keeping my back turned to give Libby the appearance of privacy, I fixed another sandwich and cut it in half, one part for him, t’other for me.
Libby grunted softly. Fabric rustled and a sigh wheezed outta her.
“You ok?” I asked.
“Will be.” Another sigh. “Whew. Changing back and forth so quick really takes it out of you. Good practice, though.”
That got my attention. “For what?”
“When it has to be done.” Her feet swished through the carpet, then she leaned against the counter beside me and rolled her shoulders. “Always feels odd being human again.”
“Seems like it’d feel more odd to be a cat.”
“No, that’s natural. It’s part of the process.” She shrugged, rolled her shoulders, grimaced. “The human side is rational, giving. The animal side always wants more.”
“Part of its nature.”
“Part of being a predator.” Her gaze settled on me and her expression turned shrewd. “You don’t have enough of the panther nature in you to turn, but you know
what it feels like to be a predator.”
No use denying it. Was the only thing keeping me alive when I was on the hunt, like the day I went after the pooka what killed my boy. Say what you want to, but them particular beasts can be nasty when they’s of a mind.
I scooted the plate holding Libby’s sandwich to her across the countertop, then picked Charlie up and plopped him down at the kitchen table with his half of the one we was splitting.
“Betty never liked that.”
I glanced over my shoulder at her. “Liked what?”
“That your blood wasn’t pure enough to turn.”
“I always figured it was ‘cause I weren’t pure enough Cherokee.”
“Same thing in your case.” She picked up the sandwich and took a huge bite, and chewed on it for a minute. “Good stuff. We tried to warn you.”
My noggin took a minute to pick up on the subject change. “A lotta folks been warning me about stuff here of late.”
“There’s a reason for that. Betty killed the first of the two-natured to try to reach you.”
“The first?”
“She died not far from here.”
Human eyes in a painter’s face. Could that be what Libby was talking on? “That first warning. Weren’t by any chance carried by a painter, was it?”
Libby shrugged, swallowed the bite she was eating. “Probably. Faster to travel on four feet, especially when you’re being chased.”
“You ain’t never heard of no car, then,” I said, and her lips twitched into a smile. I picked up my untouched sandwich and tore off a bite, and chewed on it a minute whilst my mind chewed over the painters. “She never come home, did she? The one what tried to warn me.”
“No.” Libby set her sandwich down and her gaze drifted to Charlie, who was poking a chubby finger into his sandwich instead of eating eat. “When she didn’t, I came instead.”
That painter what’d stalked me. “To the deep wood?”
Her gaze swung around, bright in a blank expression. “To a party. There was a big fire next to a waterfall and a man with rainbow colored hair.”
“A wedding,” I corrected. “So was that a two-natured what popped out on me in the deep wood?”