by Faith Hunter
The silence stretched out, tight as a drumhead.
Aggie placed a pine bough on the fire. It caught, smoked, and blackened in the flames until its core glowed red and it fell apart.
My stomach growled. We drank more water. I had to answer the call of nature. We all slipped into the cold and came back. We drank again.
More time passed. Ayatas sighed, long and low, lifted his head, and looked at Aggie. “Yes, Lisi. In my heart I still harbored the childish jealousy of my youth.” He turned his eyes to me, and this time, I saw Ayatas FireWind, the man he was in this moment, and hints of the man he might someday become, deep in his eyes. “I am sorry, my sister. Sorry that I treated you with disrespect. Sorry that I did not show you the great value you hold in our clan. I am ashamed that I didn’t honor the Great One and the gifts of this life by coming to you the moment you were revealed to me. Your stories are still told around the fires of the old ones. But I never told your stories. I never shared them. I was weak and foolish and I did not put away foolish things when I became a man.” He took a slow breath. “I ran away from all the childhood things that challenged me in my youth. All the skills and stories and dance and ceremony that I was not successful at. All the things that were hard. And though I have been successful in all the things I have done as a man, I have never stopped running. I have never looked back and made the things of my childhood right.”
Aggie dropped her chin, indicating that she was satisfied and that we could move ahead with the mediation ceremony. From the basket, she took a small mortar and pestle, stripped some wilted herb leaves off a stem, added some dried leaves, and ground it all together. She took two wooden cups and put half of the herb mix in each and poured heated water into them. She set the decoctions aside to steep and settled herself as the Elders always did, a relaxing of the facial muscles and shoulders, knees, and hips, though her back was still tall and straight.
Aggie’s eyes were sunken. Her skin was wrinkled and desiccated from sweating. Salt crystals were white in her hairline, brightening the few silver strands interwoven in the long bob that had grown out to hang at her shoulders. Her eyes were black, skin olive and copper. Tsalagi . . . The sight of her and Ayatas together spoke of home. Of the home I had lost when I was five.
Something washed through me, a flash flood of ice and fire, of fury, a torrent that left behind only emptiness. The deluge of emotion was accompanied by an echo of wailing and grief, a sound I remembered, not a sound of imagination. It was a howling, weeping cry from my childhood. The sound of my mother and the other women wailing over the body of my father the night he was killed and my mother was raped. This memory was an inundation—longing and loneliness and the resonance of the grave. I sucked in a smoke-filled breath, blinked, and the memory was gone. But I could find it again. Would find it again. This memory of my past.
My path from the past to the present and into the future had begun with the wailing of grief.
I reached back and ran my hands along my braid. It was both wet and stiff with salt. We had been here longer than I realized.
Aggie set three lengths of sage on the coals. The leaves curled and the smell rose on the air, crisp and earthy. Ayatas, his face impassive, watched every move Aggie made. I had no idea what he was feeling, and that bothered me. Not being sure why I was bothered, bothered me even more.
CHAPTER 12
He Asked Me to Have a Three-Way with Leo
The smell of flaming sage rose on the smoke. Aggie handed us each a cup. “Drink. Then we will find a path through the things that you seek.”
Ayatas drained his cup and said, “I come for counsel about my sister, who is remembered in our clan, who was mourned. For all of my life I heard about Dalonige’ i Digadoli, Yellowrock Golden Eyes, the sister who killed the white men who murdered our father. Who wore the blood of our father, the blood of her vow, until the two men were dead. She was five years old when she made her blood vow and carried it out. Dalonige’ i Digadoli, who attacked a white man on the Trail of Tears and was banished into the snow in the form of gvhe. Bobcat.” He looked at me. “Dalonige’ i Digadoli. Golden Eyes. Our eyes are the gift of our heritage.”
“Skinwalker eyes,” I said. “Uni Lisi of Panther Clan had eyes this color, though she may not have been a grandmother by blood and birth.”
Ayatas nodded, agreeing. “This was the woman who was grandmother to me, as well.”
“There was another woman like us, here in the city a hundred years back or so,” I said. “She had gold eyes too. And she smelled like you. Floral. Sweet. There was also one u’tlun’ta. This was before I took the blood path that I walk today. U’tlun’ta was stalking Aggie and her mother and the bones of their ancestors buried out back. He was killing humans and vampires.”
“You killed it,” Ayatas said. “This is good.”
Time passed again. Aggie added a small split log to the fire and then ladled water from the bucket over the hot stones. Steam billowed and rose.
Sweat gathered and ran across me, taking the toxins out of my flesh and opening my mind. Sweat ran across Aggie’s face and darkened the fabric of her shift. Sweat ran across Ayatas’s bare upper body and down his legs. He sat cross-legged, eyes closed, waiting.
Aggie paused and motioned for me to finish my drink. It was yucky, like heated pond water, but I knocked it back and swallowed, then spat a leaf out of my mouth, into my palm, and wiped it on my shift.
Aggie smiled slightly at my ick expression and said, “The first time I brought Jane here, I told her that blood chased after her. That blood rode her. That she pounced on her enemy, like a big-cat onto prey. I told her this long before I knew her nature or her spirit. But even then I knew that she was not Callanu Ayiliski, the Raven Mocker who likes to steal hearts. Nor was she liver-eater or spear finger, u’tlun’ta.”
She stopped. Aggie had also told me that I walked a fine line between light and darkness and that I could fall into the evil of the skinwalkers, but she didn’t say that to Ayatas, not yet. It wasn’t kindness. Aggie wouldn’t keep an important warning or potential problem hidden. Being kind wasn’t the job of an Elder. So when she continued I wasn’t surprised.
“I have heard it said: ‘The skinwalkers shared the blood of The People. The liver-eaters stole it.’ You both are skinwalkers, from the stories told by the oldest among us, from the time before the white man. You are protectors. Warrior and war woman. You are from among the skinwalkers who led Tsalagi into battle. But all skinwalkers walk the line between light and darkness. It would be better for you to walk that line together.”
Ayatas looked at me from the corner of his eyes and I could tell he didn’t like that idea. So I stuck out my tongue at him. An eruption of laughter exploded from low in Ayatas’s belly, a clear and free tone of merriment, the laughter of a happy childhood. Aggie’s eyebrows went up at my deliberate childishness and Ayatas’s response.
My mouth curled up and I sounded deliberately snarly when I said, “I never got the chance to do that when we were kids.”
Ayatas’s laughter fell away and he tilted his head to study me. “I should have come to you right away.”
“Yeah. You should. Why didn’t you?” I asked. “I mean, really? The real reason.”
As if thinking, Ayatas shook his head, his long braid slinging against him. “Aggie One Feather is right. I grew up with this tale of the five-year-old war woman. The old women would sit around the fire in winter, talking about her, telling family stories of my sister who should have led her clan, who would have sat on the war councils with the chiefs and the Elders and led her people to war.”
Aggie said gently, “You wanted to wait until your jealousy passed.”
Answering Aggie, but still speaking to me, Ayatas said, “I saw the YouTube video of you walking out of a mine entrance with a massive scar across your throat and a dead police officer slung over your shoulder, one you had tried to save.
Your eyes were glowing gold. I knew you were that sister. That war woman sister.” He glanced to Aggie and back to me. “Yours were big shoes to follow, when I was young, until I found my way and my place in the world. And so I waited. I let things get in the way; I put that visit on the back burner. I ignored my heart’s urging to come see you. I’m sorry. Really, very sorry.”
I blinked against the sweat that dripped down my face, again stinging my eyes. The room had lightened with the nearness of dawn, pale gray light creeping through the small cracks of the building and along the roof system overhead. We had been here twenty-four hours. “How can you be my brother?” I asked, hearing the desperation in my voice, remembering standing with my father above a roaring river. Remembering my promise to care for the expected child. “After all this time. After all these years.”
He had said the words before, but ceremony required complete candor and understanding. “Our mother was pregnant with me when our father died. I was born on the Trail of Tears. The Great One has timing that doesn’t always make sense to us.”
Aggie asked, “Jane. Are you satisfied with Ayatas’s words?”
“Yes.”
“Ayatas, are you satisfied with Jane’s words?”
Ayatas considered me. “Where were you all those years, sister?”
“I’m sure it’s a long story, but I don’t remember much of it.” I pointed to my head. “Amnesia. The stories the newspapers told about me were real. I spent a lot of time in mountain lion form.” I didn’t mention Beast’s soul inside with me. That was black magic and I needed to know him better before I shared that. Since Aggie didn’t volunteer that information I figured she was okay with a delay. “Stick around. I’ll tell you my stories.”
“I can’t stay long enough to hear the tales of that many years,” he said, his expression oddly kind, an expression I might have seen in the eyes of the Keepers of the Secrets, the most elder of the Tsalagi. Which he was. “But when I leave I’ll be going to Asheville. Hayalasti Sixmankiller has requested my presence. Maybe you should come with me.”
Shock zinged through me like a pinball, an electric bruising. Hayalasti Sixmankiller was our grandmother. “Maybe I will.” If I live that long.
Aggie said, “It is dawn. We will close with a blessing.” She reached for the bundle at her side. I had forgotten it was there and was surprised when she lifted a rock out of its folds. Or not a rock, but a huge, clear quartz crystal. There was a central spire with a multifaceted pointed top. Two smaller spikes were on one side. The three rose together from a base of smaller crystals and a curved bottom of stone. I tensed, eyes darting, searching for trapped arcenciels. There was nothing. Just the clear crystal.
With both hands Aggie pushed aside the fire-warmed river rock that was closest to her knees and placed the crystal in the depression. She held her cupped hands over the crystal and said, “Like the quartz, we are clear of strife, clear in mind, body, spirit, and natural space. Like this small piece of Grandfather Rock, we are part of Earth, safe in Earth, protecting Earth and her plants and creatures. Great One, we offer thanks for what gifts we have, thanks to the Four Directions and the power of the universe.”
Her voice took on a chant cadence as the sweat house brightened still more. “I give thanks in a traditional prayer, altered for Jane’s spiritual path:
“To the Spirit of the Fire who is the East,
“To the Spirit of the Earth who is the South,
“To the Spirit of the Water who is the West,
“To the Spirit of the Wind who is the North.
“To the Redeemer who forgives, whose path Jane follows, who Jane worships.
“We pray and we give thanks to you, Great One.
“We pray. We give thanks for Mother Earth.
“We pray. We give thanks for Father Sky, Grandfather Sun, and Grandmother Moon. For Jane’s Redeemer. For all life, all gifts, all joy, all wisdom. And we pray that we may exist together in peace, with harmony, with balance in all our relations. Wah doh.”
As she spoke the last two words, the dawn sun passed through the small door in the eaves, the door Aggie had opened when she entered. The dawn light illuminated a path through the air, lighting the dust and residual smoke with its muted ray. Alighting on the crystal on the earth near Aggie’s knees. Brightening it, sending the dawn light out in a prism of color and a rainbow of hues. This was Aggie’s version of the traditional Blessing Way. Not exactly something I remembered from the scant years of my childhood, but it was close enough.
* * *
• • •
Ayatas waited at the fire while Aggie and I showered in the frigid water, dressed, and walked to stand beside his car. Aggie stared at her house, looking as wilted as the herbs from the mediation ceremony. “Will you ride with him or do you need to call your brothers to pick you up?”
“I’ll drive her home,” Ayatas called from behind the sweat house. Skinwalker ears.
Aggie smiled, nodded to me, and walked up the steps to her front door. She moved like an old, worn-out woman, exhausted by life. I had done that to her. I should go back and pour water on her fire pit and wood. Use enough water and she would have to let the pit dry out before she could work again.
Ayatas strode from behind the building, his eyes taking in the way I lounged against his car. “Get in. I’ll take you home,” he said. I opened the door and eased into his cop car, a gray four-door SUV. It smelled like Christmas trees and commercial cleansers and old cigarette smoke. The back was filled with cop gear, including one of the new psy-meters, the kind that measured all sorts of magical energy.
“It meet with your approval?” he asked as he executed a three-point turn in the street. I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or curious so I just shrugged. He said, “I poured the bucket of water on the fire. It’ll be at least a day before it dries up enough to take anyone to sweat.”
“She was tired,” I agreed, finding it odd that we had been thinking along the same lines, but that Ayatas had actually done something about it while I had only thought about it. “That stuff about our clan talking about me. You know it wasn’t like that at all, right?” He didn’t respond. “I mean, yes, I made a blood vow. But I didn’t know what I was doing. I was five.”
“Our stories tell of you running through the cornfields and through the woods to the clan longhouse and waking everyone. Then climbing on the back of a horse, riding with Uni Lisi as she tracked the men, then waiting as she shifted to tlvdatsi and trapped them and caught them. Brought them to a cave on clan lands.”
I blinked, remembering the power and speed of the racing horse beneath me, the smell of Uni Lisi’s body, the smoke trapped in her clothes, the acrid smell of herbs, the sickly sweetness of old blood. The memory vanished, as if I had popped a balloon with a pin. Later memories flashed in front of my mind, like flipping the pages of a gruesome picture book.
“I watched our mother and grandmother torture and kill one of the men. And I killed the other one. Uni Lisi put the blade in my hand and pushed me at him. I wanted to do it. I wanted the white man to die. But it wasn’t glory or honor. It was kidnapping and torture and murder.”
Aya nodded and made a turn, his blinker bright yellow. “Things were different back then. Society was different. More blindly, casually cruel. Despite what people call the conservative, fascist, racist, sexist world of today, people were worse in the past.”
I shrugged. “Perspective is everything, Aya.”
He grunted. It sounded like one of mine. And I realized I had used the shorter term. Aya. I stared into the dawning light. A few miles later Ayatas asked, “Are you going to tell me where the Sangre Duello is being held?”
“Asking as cop or brother?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes.”
“Then I guess you won’t be telling me anything.”
“Guess not.”
Ohhh. That was a zinger from out in left field. I could ignore the question. Or I could answer it and see how he reacted. I turned in my seat, pulling one knee up, to watch his face in the glow of the dash lights as I spoke. “We were a thing. He was undercover and was seducing a wereleopard for info. He got bit. She got executed by a grindylow. He got kidnapped by werewolves and tortured. I rescued him and killed the wolves. He turned. Became a black wereleopard, despite the amount of wolf saliva in his bites. We were still a thing. Sorta. Then he was magically seduced by a wereleopard in heat in front of dozens of people. He left with her. I should have killed her, or stopped him some other way. I didn’t protect him. I let him go because my feelings were hurt and I was embarrassed. We were no longer a thing. It’s uncomfortable and complicated.”
Aya nodded. I realized his hair was still braided and it had left a wet trail down one side of his clothes. “When you killed the wolves,” he said, “it opened a chasm that has since been filled by the Bighorn Montana Pack, with whom Leo has sworn an alliance.”
I shrugged and said nothing.
“Tell me about Rick and Kemnebi. Kemnebi attacked you?”
“Cop or brother?”
“Cop asking.” The slightest of smiles settled on his face. “This is awkward. If I had come before now, we would know one another and I wouldn’t have to be both brother and cop.”
“You screwed up.”
“Yes. And because I did, I now appear to be a top-tier jerk.”
I didn’t argue. I wasn’t going to talk to him about Kem’s demise or Rick’s elevation in status, his wives, or Clan Yellowrock. I was vamp-careful when I answered. “I’m the head of the local wereleopard clan.”
“You’re not a werecat.”
“Nope. But problems arise and have to be solved.”
“Leap of leopards,” Aya said. “Not clan.”
“Leap. I like. Anyway, Rick is now highly ranked in the leap, so he can handle things any way he wants.”