by Faith Hunter
My breathing deepened. Heart rate sped up. And my bones . . . slid. Skin rippled. Fur, tawny and gray, brown and tipped with black, sprouted. Pain, like a knife, slid between muscle and bone. My nostrils widened, drawing deep.
Jane fell away. Night was rich with wonderful scents, dancing like trout in stream, each distinct. I panted. Listened—cars, music, the sounds of humans, and the sounds of animals. Hopped from rocks. Sniffed food. Hacked. Old dead, cooked meat. Dead prey. Wanted hunt, to tear flesh from bone. But stomach burned with need. Hunger. I ate.
Belly silent, I stepped to top of rocks, broken and sharp, and leaped to top of tall fence, brick warm and high like limb in sun. Dropped down, to yard on side of house without small dog. Good eating, but Jane says no. Only opossum, deer, nutria, rabbit. Alligator. If I can catch one. Am Big Cat, but gator is big underwater.
Long time later, near sunrise, belly was full of small deer, hooves and bones and not-eat parts on the ground, my heart happy with hunt and blood. With last lick of tongue, groomed paws and face clean, and rolled over on pine needles, paws in air, staring at night sky. Was near shaman’s house. Not shaman from far away, not new shaman who was also vampire, but shaman of Jane’s people. Cherokee shaman. Aggie One Feather. Jane needed to be here. Jane needed shaman, though she did not know it.
Mind of Jane rose, curious. Why? she thought. Why do I need Aggie?
Did not answer. Sometimes Jane was foolish, like when she did not mate, though her body and soul needed a mate. Three males would mate with her. All fast and strong and healthy. But she did not. Curious.
Yawned and rolled to feet, nosed carcass. No good meat left. Satisfied, padded through trees and scrub and along path to shaman’s, careful to step on pine needles piled deep, not on mud, careful to hide tracks. Padded along path where liver-eater had once hidden, checking for his scent. Fading. Liver-eater was true-dead.
Circled sweat house. Shaman’s dogs were asleep on back stoop, snoring. Easy prey, if I was hungry. Looked at sky, dawn not far away. Time to change. Time to let Jane be alpha.
Located good place under tree with low branches. Safe, protected. Lay down on leaves and needles, their scent fresh and strong. Thought of Jane. Human. Found her snake. And shifted. Painpainpain like knives sliding on bone, cutting deep.
In the gray dark of almost dawn, I lay on a bed of pine needles, their sharp ends pricking my bare skin. “Why do I need Aggie?” I asked my other half, my voice raspy, dry, and unused. Deep in my mind, Beast rolled over and closed her eyes. I cleared my throat, said, “Big help you are,” and pushed to my knees. Unclasping the travel pack from my neck, I shook out my clothes—T-shirt, lightweight pants, and flip-flops—and dressed quickly, already smelling bacon and eggs cooking nearby.
Despite the deer Beast had brought down and gorged on, I was still ravenous, the energies used by the shift partially provided by the calories in the protein and fats of the big meal. But it was never enough and I was always hungry after. The smell of breakfast cooking made me salivate.
I pulled my long hair back and tied it in a knot as I walked toward Aggie’s house, hoping she and her mother would still be asleep or looking elsewhere when I exited the woods because I had no explanation of why I was in the park property that bordered theirs. I wasn’t so lucky. They were sitting on the screened porch in the dark of near dawn, the older woman drinking from a mug, and I felt the weight of their curiosity and speculation as I stepped onto the lawn. Aggie stood and opened the screened door. “Have you come to go to water?”
“Um . . . yes.” It seemed safest to agree, though I didn’t really remember what it meant. At the sound of my voice, dogs rose and pitched from the porch, barking. Beast hacked with amusement at the sound before going to sleep in my mind.
“Are you fasting?” Aggie asked.
“Yes. And starving.” And hoping she’d ask me to breakfast. She didn’t.
“Go wait on the front porch. You need to pray and center yourself, and I need to gather my things. Our breakfast can wait.”
I sighed. I had a feeling I wasn’t going to get nourishment any time soon. Center myself, she said. Something about that thought raised my hackles, and I didn’t know why. I was centered. I was always centered. Whatever the heck that meant.
Around front, I dropped down on the porch and waited as the sky began to brighten from the darkest blue of night to the bleak charcoal of early dawn. I was hungry and tired and sleepy. And annoyed, not that I’d let Aggie see that.
Faster than I expected, Aggie opened the front door and walked out, no lights on inside, which preserved her night vision. In the dark, she placed a small black cloth bag on the step and sat beside me with a stretch and a yawn, her manner grave, until she met my eyes. Hers took on a twinkle as if she could see the orneriness squirming beneath my skin. I pressed my lips together to keep from saying something crass and she chuckled softly. I wanted to make claws of my hands, but gripped them together around my knees instead, the knuckles white.
Aggie’s expression went from amusement to compassion, which somehow made me madder. And again, I didn’t know why. She patted my clasped hands as if to say, “Take your medicine, little girl. It won’t taste bad,” which surely was a lie. She then began to explain the ritual of going to water, offering explanations on its purpose, and instructing me in my part, as if I was really going to do this.
My aggravation grew until I was grinding my back molars. And I had no idea why I was so irritated. Angry. Whatever. When she paused I said, “So, to put it simply, we throw up, talk to God, and then go for a swim. In a bayou that’s full of all sorts of things. Snakes. Twenty-pound rats. And alligators.”
Aggie laughed, the sound like water burbling over stones, her face creased into smile wrinkles that otherwise didn’t show. “Pretty much. There are ritual prayers, but I can walk you through them.”
I was used to doing my praying in church, but somehow this felt natural too.
“Usually women don’t have to purge,” Aggie continued, “but you are a warrior woman, and my mother and I agree that you must go to water as a man would, at least this first time. After, you will be cleansed inside and out; your spirit will be open, and restored. You will be ready for battle or pain or difficulty, and you will be without the shadows of the past that darken your soul. Come. Sun’s getting ready to rise, and going to water is best done at dawn.” Aggie stood and reached back to the house, opening the door. From the darkness within, an old woman tottered out, Aggie One Feather’s mother. Maybe I was dense, but I hadn’t realized that the older woman would be joining us.
I bowed my head to her and murmured, “U ni lisi, grandmother of many children.” It was a term of greatest respect.
Her hair was braided down to her hips, the thin tresses black as a raven’s wing brightened with rare white strands. She nodded once to me and blinked into the dark, leading the way to the car parked in the yard, a little four-wheel-drive Toyota barely seen in the unlit driveway. Chattering in Cherokee, she climbed into the backseat and buckled herself in, her actions certain and determined. I looked at Aggie, but she was too busy following her ancient mother’s orders to notice my dismay. Now I had two lisi to deal with, and it was clear whose word held sway. Elder Grandmother’s.
Unable to figure out a way to avoid the ritual, and not knowing why I was feeling so stubborn, I climbed in the front passenger seat. Aggie drove us out of the cul-de-sac and down a series of shell roads, white in the dawn light. Unpaved roads in the Delta states were often covered with crushed shell, and the farther we drove, the sparser the shells on the roadway became until we were on a two-track trail, the car bouncing into and out of potholes and over washboard ruts.
She gunned the engine like a wannabe dirt-track racer, skewing around curves between ever-closer trees, the dark world bouncing in the headlights, which didn’t help the state of my nerves or the condition of my hunger. Like the woman in the backseat, who seemed familiar with Aggie’s driving, I held on with both hands w
hile my stomach growled and cramped with hunger and Beast pressed paws into my consciousness, kneading, her way of offering comfort. Why did I need comfort?
The old women laughed and chattered as Aggie drove, including me in the conversation from time to time, mostly instructions about the ritual to come, and I wasn’t certain whether I was growing happier about what we were going to do or more uncomfortable.
“The old beliefs say that a Great Creator made us,” Aggie said as she spun the car around a hundred-twenty-degree curve and back in a graceless swerve. “There was a split in beliefs generations ago, I think influenced by Christians, with some saying the Creator still was listening to us and some saying he had gone back to the Great One, or possibly somewhere creating other worlds, and had left three guardians to watch over us.”
Interesting that they had a trinity too.
“Some talk about these three guardians and some talk about the guardians of the four directions. As for actual names to call on, the major one would be Unelenehi, who is the Great One. It’s also the name for the sun, but according to my grandpa,” she said, taking her eyes from the narrowing road to give me a look that said her grandpa had been an important, knowledgeable, and wise man, “the sun was only a reflection of the Great Light behind it, which was the One. You call on this when facing east. Many people like to call on Selu, who was first woman, the corn mother. Her husband, first man, was Kenati. There was also a great female spirit. I’ve never seen her name written, but it’s pronounced like Ag is see qua.”
Aggie glanced at me, and seemed to catch my discomfort. Her mouth twisted in thought and she slowed, taking a particularly deep bump that cracked my head against the car roof. While I held on and rubbed my head, she and Lisi chatted in Cherokee for a while; then Aggie said to me, “Going to water is not a hard and firm ritual. It isn’t about calling on a specific god or a specific spirit. It is a way of recognizing our roots, our heritage, and calling on the past to lead and direct us into the future. It is as individual as the way you pray, as the god or spirits you believe in. You may adjust it according to your need, and as your god directs.”
She braked, turned off the car, and got out, helping her mother out as well, white shell dust and road dust billowing past. The two women moved into the trees, leaving me sitting there, alone, the engine pinging. We were in a small clearing about half the size of my kitchen, surrounded by thin rails of young pine trees growing so close together they would keep out most wildlife.
Wordless, I opened my door, brushing it against the scrub to the side and closing it only with difficulty. I followed the women, my flip-flops spanking the earth, along a flat trail that snaked through the trees, to the edge of a bayou where the ground became so muddy my thin shoes sucked and pulled against my toes with each step. The water in the bayou channel was brown and muddy from the recent storm, running high, overlapping its banks into the trees. It was very different from the clear streams of the Appalachians, and a sudden gust of homesickness swirled through me like a dust devil.
Chatting to her mother, Aggie hung her black cloth bag from the stub of a broken tree limb and unscrewed the lid on her Thermos. She poured the liquid inside into the plastic cup top; it was hot and black, and it smelled like boiled tree limbs and lichen and pinesap. I wrinkled my nose. Aggie gave the cup to her mother, who guzzled it down and said something that sounded unkind before moving into the trees. “Mother doesn’t like purging like the men have to do. She likes the women’s ritual better, but it must be done.”
From the woods I heard retching and my gorge rose in sympathy. I clasped my arms around my waist. I so did not want to do this.
Aggie poured a second cup and swallowed it in a single gulp before pouring another for me. “There are good reasons why we go to water,” she said, her tone gentle but not soothing me. “When we face war or trouble, or some great decision must be reached, we must be clean inside and out in order for the gods, or God, to talk to us. Drink. Then go into the woods and do what you must.” And this time it was a command. Aggie handed me a small baggie and tapped it. “Native tobacco. Use it like I told you. It’s hard to come by these days. Don’t waste it.” She hurried into the trees, leaving me alone.
. . . War or trouble, or some great decision. Yeah, that kinda spelled out my life right now. I looked at the liquid, black in the darkness.
Beast huffed deep inside. Jane needs this. Beast that is I/ we needs this.
Which is why I don’t want to do it, I thought back. My mental tone sounded stubborn. Whiny. Sorta the way my housemates sounded when I was a teenager and my housemother wanted us all to clean the bathrooms or do laundry. I sighed. That was why I was feeling so antsy. It had been a long time since I had to do something against my will because it was good for me.
I sniffed again and grimaced at the earthy stench of the herbal mixture before tossing it back. I gagged getting it down. The elixir from hell didn’t taste any better than it smelled and it wanted to come up faster than it went down. I held it in and ran deeper into the woods. Gorge rising with about-to-die nausea, I fell against a tree. I hated throwing up. It was a crazy way to start something that was supposed to be spiritual. In the children’s home the only rituals had been daily Bible study, a required theology course during my high school years, the Lord’s Supper on Sunday, and being baptized, which I’d done in a river. Oddly, that had been at dawn too.
Suddenly the emetic hit and I bent over, my empty stomach cramping. I lost liquid. I lost stomach acid. I lost bile so bitter it made my teeth hurt. It felt as if I lost everything I had eaten for the last month until I was retching only air. I was cleaned out down to my toes.
Empty, I spat, getting rid of the last of my stomach contents. This was just gross.
Hunger from the shift was riding me hard and my stomach twisted into a single vicious spasm. As quickly as it began, the spasm and nausea stopped. I stumbled to a clean spot a few feet away and held on to a thin rail of a tree until I could remember to breathe and was able to stand on my own. It had been a whole lot easier just getting baptized.
Beast rolled beneath my skin, sick and angry. Jane let human shaman give . . . She stopped, no words in her Beast vocabulary. Jane ate bad meat. Kit mistake. Foolish. Sick.
Poison. Beast was talking about poison. My skinwalker metabolism began to react again, and my body rejected the potion, this time from the other end of my digestive tract. It took forever. It was awful.
I hung against a tree, pine bark sharp and sorta crinkly under my palms, and breathed as if I had run a long race. I felt hollow and tingly, drained and bare, like an empty room, sound ringing off the barren walls of my soul. I wasn’t sure what I was feeling.
Somewhere in the last minutes, Beast had disappeared, leaving my mind vacant and lucid. I rocked, my back against the thin tree. Mosquitoes buzzed around my ankles and along my arms. I held out a hand in the dim light, my skin looking tight and drawn, desiccated. I’m going to water. My housemother at the children’s home would throw a hissy fit if she knew.
I bounced the tobacco baggie in my palm as if measuring it. This wasn’t a worship service. It was meant to be a physical and psychological cleansing. If I did it at a therapist’s office or as part of a high colonic, I wouldn’t think twice.
I opened the plastic baggie and sniffed the tobacco inside, the scent unlike most tobacco I’d smelled, being richer, more raw. It was an earthy dark brown, the leaves curled and moist, perhaps a tablespoon altogether. I was supposed to salute the four directions with it.
I faced east, the sky a pale gray there, against the cerulean backdrop of the night. The air was calm and expectant, the quiet marred only by the purl of water nearby. The quiet pressed against me, steady, almost solid.
Taking a pinch of the tobacco in my right fingers, I thought about what Aggie had said. This was supposed to be a ritual to prepare me to fight, a ritual of my own making, not hers. So maybe I could use my own words but Aggie’s grasp of the stories and the olden time
s.
I held the tobacco high, as if greeting the sun, and paused, thinking. I drew on some old Bible studies into the ancient Hebrew names of God. “I call on the Almighty, the Elohim, who are eternal.” I let the bit of tobacco fall and a cool chill brushed across me, like an unseen breeze. But nothing moved, the trees around me motionless.
I turned to my right, facing south. “I call upon my ancestors, my skinwalker grandmother, and my father. Hear me.” I dropped a bit of the tobacco. A sudden morning wind skirled through, taking the leaves away before they hit the ground, and died as fast as it rose. Cold prickles lifted across my flesh. I resisted the urge to look behind me. But I knew that I wasn’t alone. Not anymore.
I turned west, holding up a pinch of tobacco. Aggie had used the name Unelenehi, whom she referred to as the Great One. “I call upon the Great One, god who creates.” Again the breeze blew through, harder, stronger, smelling of wet and mold and the soil of the earth, and the tobacco was whipped from my fingers before I could drop it. My breath went hot and noisy in my throat, like a bellows wet with steam.
I turned right again, now facing north, pinching the tobacco in my fingers, my heart rate too fast, thumping erratically. “I call upon the trinity, the sacred number of three.” The skin on the back of my neck crawled as I spoke the words, and I hunched my shoulders as the wind swirled past. Beast growled low in my mind, the sound far away; the place where she usually hunched was vacant.
I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to complete the circle and didn’t remember the instruction from Aggie, but it felt right, so I pivoted back to the east. I gathered up the last bit of tobacco and closed my eyes, my fingertips tingling and cold. I let it fall. “I seek wisdom and strength in battle, and purity of heart and mind and soul.” In the distance an owl called, loud and long, the hooting echoing. Nearby another answered, three plaintive notes. Terror like spider legs crawled down my spine, yet there was no reason for fear.