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.”