by Faith Hunter
Rain again drenched me, black bayou mud splattering up to my knees with the force of the drops landing. My breath came fast. The mist rose around my feet and ankles, up my calves, a pearled shimmer of moisture and magic and peyote dreams, leaving me breathless but exhilarated. I traced the pentagram within me and discovered that my stomach was no longer hurting. My heart felt lighter. Cleaner. My breath blew shades of red, dispersing light from scarlet to fuchsia to palest pink. To crystal clear.
Around me, the world was bright, sharp, each raindrop distinct and glistening and full of magic light.
I gathered all the things we had brought and wove through the trees upstream in the general direction I had taken last time, the earth sucking at my bare feet, water swirling around my ankles, muddy and thick.
The trees opened out at a slow, easy curve of the bayou, a place that had once been a tight twist of water. Smoke blew across me, black and choking, kerosene to start a fire of wet wood. In the center of the tiny clearing, Aggie and her mother were sitting beneath a canvas tent top, one coated with polyvinyl chloride so that the water ran off. The tent was just a covering with no sides, held up by a metal framework. The wind caught the top and billowed it with a hollow, flapping sound.
Aggie and Uni lisi were sitting on flat stones, situated on top of what looked like garden cloth, the kind that let water through but not plants. Like me they were naked, except for small beaded bags hanging on thongs around each neck. Their clothes must have been in the bags beside them. I could see their magic, Aggie One Feather’s a deep, dark lavender, near purple. It should have appeared soft, like a flower, but it was hard and stony, like amethyst. Uni lisi’s was much darker, a purple so deep it looked nearly black, shot through with white light, and the white was crystalline and pointed, sharp, like clear quartz arrowheads. Dangerous. Deadly.
Peyote made everything weird.
The fire smoked and stank and Uni lisi called to me. “Sabina call us and so we got one them young men to set up tent and bring us kerosene and dry wood. Not too dry now but it be okay.”
I realized that I had stopped. I pushed against the earth with the soles of my feet and floated over to them. My own magics floated behind me, silver and red and black and gray in a swirling pointed star. Violent shades of stone and blood. But my breath was clear as purest water in the midday sun.
I took the third sitting stone and settled to its flat surface. Aggie jutted her chin to the green pine boughs and I scattered them in a circle around us. Aggie had called it a protective circle. Witches called it a witch circle. No matter what it was called, circles have power and the pine boughs began to glow a pliable, deep green, the color of emeralds. Aggie put several of the green branches on the fire and wet pine smoke billowed up, black and green and choking, glowing with power. Smoke gathered in the low canopy above and writhed there. Small fingers of smoke and blackness trailed from the tent covering and out into the clearing.
Aggie said, “No evil can cross the circle or enter beneath the scented shelter of smoke. We are warded here, the three of us, against malevolent spirits.”
Uni lisi stood and faced east. The last time I had seen her naked, her skin hung in folds from her arms and thighs, and her rounded belly looked like a deflated balloon. Now she looked decades younger, her power enfolding her, magic meant for battle, for the might of war. She raised her hands to the place on the horizon where the sun would have been had the clouds not eaten it. She pushed apart the clouds and a speck of blue showed through, blue sky and a lance of sunlight on the horizon. She said something in Cherokee, words I should have understood but no longer did.
I decided in that moment that when my job here was done, I would go to North Carolina and the college or university that taught Cherokee. I would learn, and perhaps I would remember.
“This is a good thing,” Uni lisi said. I realized I had spoken aloud and clamped my mouth shut.
Aggie began to speak, a chantlike pulse to her words, the cadence formal, whispered into the mist that grew up around us. The world ducked and rolled with the smoke. Last time, I had placed my palms flat on the ground for balance. This time, I began to rock slightly with the words, back and forth, as her chant rose and fell. Rose and fell like a boat rocking on slow swells of the sea. Through my body the motes coursed, the star-working inside me doing whatever it wanted to, or whatever the Almighty had told it to. If I hadn’t been drugged out of my mind, I’d have been afraid.
Sleet began to fall, beating sporadically on the canvas tent, bouncing on the wet ground, melting in seconds. I had chill bumps all over me, and yet I felt hot, feverish. The fire before me flamed and smoked and my eyes watered as magic stung them. Tears coursed down my cheeks, hot and burning, just like the last time I was here. Everything was the same this time. Except the storm, the cold, the vision of magic, and me. I was different. I was very different. My magic was changing, flowing in a pentagram. Salty, hot tears splashed on my chest. Beast, eyes glowing, moved through the darkness that was the I/we of our two souls. She stared at the pentagram of power for many lines of chanting, then padded into the front of my mind. I knew my eyes were glowing gold when Aggie One Feather faltered in the chant.
“Do not fear,” Beast said, speaking through my mouth, her voice rough, her tone stilted. “Beast will not eat you.”
“Are you a devil? A demon?” Uni lisi asked, shaking her head. “I saw no evil spirit inside of Dalonige’i Digadoli.”
“Dalonige’i Digadoli. Yellow rock, yellow eyes,” Beast said. “I am the other inside with her.”
“Ahhh . . . Like a spirit animal,” Uni lisi said happily. Her magics danced and shimmied around her with delight.
Arms high, Aggie started speaking again and her words now had magic. Green sounds and yellow sounds and the blue of the sky sounds, the peyote showing me the power of the past and the color of power. Her words, still unknown to me, floated around us, through the glowing smoke, and when her chant ended, she dropped her arms.
Rain tore from the skies, melting the fallen sleet, and I understood what the saying meant—the bottom fell out. It was beautiful, the way water cascaded down, greens and blues, a shining miracle of glory. I laughed, and my laughter was golden, dancing among the raindrops.
Lightning flashed.
The Gray Between sputtered and stumbled. The smoke stopped moving. The magic that was Aggie and her mother stopped moving. Everything around me stopped, except for me. Except for Beast, who watched through my eyes. Everything stopped. Except for our magic. The red motes still flashed through me, in the star shape, chased by my own silver motes, the geometries of energy and matter, E = mc2. Altered by time. Einstein would have been awestruck.
Beast said, Smell deer. Want to hunt. Want to hunt cow.
“You can’t hunt cow if there are only deer,” I said, reasonable and calm and wise-sounding. I reached into my chest and took the shadow mote that beat along with my heart. I pulled it out and turned it from side to side. It was still connected to me by a long silver shadow-chain that trailed through my body and into my soul home. I knew this. I knew if I cut it I would die. I also knew it was an evil. My evil. I’d have to deal with it someday. For now, I held it to the east, to the rising sun. “I accept that I wanted to kill the white man who murdered my father. I accept that I felt joy when he screamed as I cut his flesh. I accept the knowledge that I took delight in his pain and experienced ecstasy in his blood. I accept my part and participation in the experience of his death. And I . . .” I stopped, thinking carefully about my words. “I forgive myself for my part in it. I forgive myself for existing always for death, and so seldom for life. I offer this shadow of death to . . . to Adonai. If you want it. I no longer do.”
But the mote remained attached to me, to my soul, to my soul home. I pulled on it, feeling a resulting pain in my heart with each tug. I let the shadow go and it snapped back into place, thundering against my heart. It skipp
ed a beat. Time cracked and shattered, like an egg hit by a silver knife. The world moved again.
Aggie opened the beaded bag hanging around her neck. From it, she pulled a tobacco leaf, whole and wrinkled and dark brown; she held it in her left hand, and onto it she sprinkled small fists full of other dried and crushed herbs from her larger bag, calling out their names in English for me. “Sage for cleansing, sweetgrass for life and joy, a single sprig of rosemary for potency.” Aggie pulled a yellowed leaf and some roots from her bag. “Mullein, the last of the year’s fresh. Yellowdock taproot. Wild ginger.”
Uni lisi added a final herb, and just like last time, Aggie didn’t speak its name. It was a sacred part of going to water, secret. Aggie rolled the herbs all together into a fat cigarlike cylinder, though it wasn’t intended to be smoked. She tied it with hemp, creating a smudge stick. She took a burning twig from the fire and lighted the smudge stick, holding the flame until the herb tube was lit and smoking. Standing, she handed the smudge stick to Aggie, who took it, rolled to her knees, and bowed, facing east. I didn’t remember the bow from last time.
In slow, circular motions, she smudged the air around her mother. The woman looked old again, a grandmother rather than a war woman, and she was silent, her magic still, her eyes closed. She was smiling peacefully as she slowly turned, lifting each foot and placing it back down, the dance of being smudged, of allowing sacred smoke to caress and spiral and coil around her legs and back and belly, up over her face, the smoke purifying each part of her. She lifted her braids and the smoke curled around them like the snake that lived in the heart of each being. She breathed the aromatic smoke and was purified within as well. Her magic glowed brighter and brighter, the purples giving way to clear, with a flash of periwinkle blue and the gold of mica.
Aggie held the smudge stick to me and turned her back. I came to my knees and bowed to the east—and the God who didn’t want my sin—brushing the smoke up her body like the fingers of angels. She lifted her feet and held out her hands, as if to step upon the smoke or catch it and hold it. She unbraided her hair and I held the stick so the smoke passed through it, lock after lock. She turned, lifting a leg so the smoke could touch the back of her thigh and curl over her buttocks. When every part of her had been blessed, she opened her eyes and sat.
With a slow gesture, Aggie indicated her mother, and I gave the old woman the smudge stick. It was more than half gone and it smelled heavenly. I turned to the side as each of them had and closed my eyes. The smoke was warm, curling up from my ankles, fragrant and rich. I breathed it in and my heart rate sped; my body, which might have been chilled, warmed. I turned a half step, then another, lifting my arms, moving into the smoke. I lifted my hair, which was free of its usual braid and wet from the rain. I fluttered it through the smoke.
Around me the rain slowed, splattered, stopped. The fog had enclosed us, a glistening blanket of white, a magic that met the magic of the fire and the magic of the smudge stick. Together they coiled and twisted. Sleet again shushed down, a slow, irregular patter.
“Dalonige’i Digadoli,” Aggie said. I quaked with the words, with hearing them spoken properly, in the whispered syllables of the language of The People, the Cherokee. “Dalonige’i Digadoli.”
I turned and turned as Aggie’s mother smudged my body and my soul, the herbal stick rising and falling, the aromatic smoke brushing me inside and out. Even billowing around the shadow in my soul. Ah . . . Cleansing the shadow as it cleansed me. Maybe there was no way for the shadow to be given away, cut away, or taken away. Maybe it was a part of me, for always.
The last time I had gone to water, my father’s voice had called me to the ritual. Today there was nothing but the sleet that fell with that erratic shushing sound, and the sight and feel and . . . oh, the taste of magic on the air. Magic had a hint of sweetness and a hint of bitter, like dark chocolate. I liked it. The magic of the smoke wrapped around the shadow within me, as if tying itself in place.
The magic smoke loosened, as if I had been contained in a balloon, its sweet bitterness trapped, and the balloon was unknotted so the taste could escape. Not an image that actually made sense, except to the peyote dreams. But the pressure of it lessened except where it lay tightly wrapped against the shadow on my soul.
I opened my eyes. I was alone beneath the canvas tent, the green pine branches that had formed the protective circle removed and placed in a pile. Uni lisi was standing in the sleet, her back to me, her skin hanging and wrinkled, so very unlike the drugged vision of the old woman and her magic. She walked past the swirling, muddy bayou, the water so cloudy that a sixteen-foot-long alligator could be inches below the surface and I’d not have seen it. Aggie followed behind her and I followed them through the muck beside the bayou and down into a small pond. It was outside the current of moving water, and it was clear to the leaf-coated bottom. It was also free of alligators. I stepped into the pond after them. The water was warmer than the air, its bottom thick with the slime of the rotting vegetation.
I could hear the murmurs of the other two as they prayed and dipped beneath the water. I moved to the side and softly said words I hadn’t planned to say. “Creator God, I seek clarity of mind, wisdom, strength in battle.” I bent my knees and sank beneath the water. My hair caught in the current of my own movement and brushed my body. I stood, sleet peppering my head. “Adonai, I seek understanding of the scarlet motes that move throughout me, magic not of my making, but somehow merged with my soul.” I sank again beneath the water. I came back up. “El Shaddai, I seek to be enough, to do enough, to sacrifice enough, to save my friends and my family, as you are enough to succor the world.” I dropped beneath the water. Something touched me as I moved, long and linear and sharp on one end. A stick, I hoped, not the claw of some creature testing my flesh. But I didn’t look and it floated to the bottom.
“Redeemer, I seek purity of heart, purity of mind, purity of soul, and, if not freedom from the darkness that is tied to my soul, then acceptance of it.” I dropped again and rose again. And this time when I opened my mouth, I started to cry, throat tight, tears streaming down my face, so hot against the plink of sleet. “To the spirit of my own uni lisi. I seek . . .” My breath juddered in my chest, as new understanding bloomed open inside me. “To forgive you. To forgive what you made of me. To forgive that you taught me to kill. That you pushed me into the storm as we-sa and abandoned me. That at every part of my life, you neglected or abused my soul, my spirit. My own lack of forgiveness until this time has allowed the dark shadow to find a home in my heart and to have power over my spirit.” I dunked myself. I stayed deep this time, letting the water carry away the pain that I never even knew was there. The pain of betrayal and abandonment. I felt something detach from my chest and slide away. The magic had wrapped the darkness. Waiting for me to understand. Waiting for me to release it.
I hadn’t had to cut the darkness away. Or give it away. Or hope that God would wrench it from me. I just had to let it go. There was an empty place there now, a hole in my soul, waiting for me to fill it. I stood. When the black water drained away enough to speak, I said, “To Elisi.” I sobbed, choking, and had to stop until I could breathe again, this time talking to my mother, so very long ago. “I forgive myself for not being strong enough or old enough or war woman enough to stop the men who hurt you.”
I slid under the water and back up. “To the spirit of my father, Edoda. I forgive myself for the torture of your killer. For the vow I made in your blood. I was a child. But I knew what I did. I knew. And though I am fiercely”—I grated out the word—“glad of their deaths, I have carried the pain of the vengeance for all these years. And I am forgiven.” I slid beneath the water once more and stood. Opened my eyes.
The magic synesthesia was gone, the fog just fog, the water just water, my breath just breath. I felt clean and free inside as I stood in the small black-water pond. I knew the water was not really as warm as I perceived it. I was h
ypothermic. But again, I didn’t care.
I gripped the hand that appeared before my face and let Aggie One Feather pull me to the bank. She was stronger than she looked. But then her magic had shown me that about both of them, their strengths and their mighty power, and their terrible purpose.
We dressed under the tent, my flesh ashen with cold. The strange burned and scarred places were gone, as if I had never been hit by lightning. Shifting shape hadn’t healed me. But facing my own dark demons had.
We dragged the tent down and set it under the trees far above the waterline. The rain put out the fire even as we worked to gather up all our belongings, but I still used the small shovel to toss mud over the smoking coals. Together we walked back to the car and got inside. Aggie turned the heater on high and we drove away.
We were nearly back to the small house that the two women shared when Aggie One Feather said, “You must take your family and make them your own. Claim them, according to your clan, according to the Cherokee Constitution and the old ways. This will give you strength within your own heart and at your own hearth.”
I thought about the Youngers and Edmund. Bruiser. The Everhart/Truebloods. Shivers snatched me up and my teeth chattered, but I talked anyway, though the words sounded odd. “We ppppplanned to go through the adoption ppppprocess this past October, but we couldn’t ggggget to a ppppowwow. Nnnnnext October for shshshsure.”
“Do not delay beyond that,” Uni lisi said.
“Yes, mamamama’am.”
“One last thing,” Aggie One Feather said as we turned down her street through the rain. “From the words you spoke in the water, it is clear that we must speak of your lineage. When we first met, you said that your father was of Panther Clan and your mother was Blue Holly Clan. But Panther Clan is a subdivision of Blue Holly, and the tribal elders would not have allowed them to marry. Your father was Panther Clan only after he married into Blue Holly Clan and, as a skinwalker, the clan grandmothers likely gave him the secondary Panther Clan designation. The old woman you call uni lisi was Panther Clan and she had yellow eyes like you and like him, but she would not have been his mother. The clan relation was too close. Do you understand?”