“A da nv do,” she crooned. Great Spirit . . .
“Follow the drum,” Edoda said.
I looked at the cave wall, at the shadows swaying with exhaustion. The beat of the drum filled me, slow and sonorous, echoing through my soul home.
Warmth settled onto me. Fur tickled me. On the wall of dancing shadows, I saw myself as the cat rested on me, a cured skin, with fur still on, ears pointed, tufts curling out. Pelt brushed my sides. My legs. We sa . . . bobcat. My face. The overlay of cat face, above my own.
Edoda settled a necklace of claws, bones, and fierce teeth over my head onto my shoulders. “Reach inside,” Edoda murmured. “Breathe inside. Into we sa, into the snake within.” The snake of the bobcat, the snake of my first shift, my first change. The snake of the double helix of DNA in the skin of the cat . . . Magic tingled along my sides, into my fingers as I slid down, inside the bobcat pelt. Dreaming. Floating in grayness.
For a moment, I remembered the gray place where Bruiser and the thing that was not Soul, but was like her, fought. I had seen her species playing in the black waters near Chauvin. I remembered the energies and the energy of the blade of steel, wielded by Bruiser. But before I could put it all together, I was pulled back into the memory.
Beneath the drumbeat, I saw the snake resting below the surface, encapsulated in every cell of the hunter cat, in its teeth and bones, in the dried bits of its hardened marrow. A snake, holding all that we sa was. The awareness of where the cat and I differed. Where we were the same. And how easy it would be to shift from my shape into the bobcat. So simple.
As simple as bringing steel with me into the place of the change, as Bruiser had done. This was important. I struggled to fight free of the ancient dream memory, but again it held me. Sucked me down into the past.
My first beast. My first shift. In the memory, I let go. I melted, taking the shape of bobcat. Pain, like spokes of the white man’s wheels, radiated out, cutting me. The shadows on the stone walls merged and glittered, gray and dark and light. All color bled out of the night. The shadow was a young cat with a short stubby tail.
The past and the present merged too. And I understood. If I brought white man’s steel into my cave home, I could cut the silver chain and free Beast from Leo. Freeing her, I could free myself from Leo.
I was back in the dream, the past and the old memories dissolved around me, falling like notes of the flute echoing in the distance through the cavern. In human form, I stood facing the pile of shadows. And I realized that Beast was there too. Tlvdatsi, but more than simply the form of mountain lion. This was the soul of Beast that I had pulled into my soul home when I was in we sa form, and stealing the kill of a bigger cat—when I had stolen both the living body of my attacker and her life-force to save my own life. This was darkest black magic among my people. But I could undo the evil I had done.
I could cut the silver chain. I could free myself from Leo. And I could free Beast. With the same steel blade, I could cut her out of me. Standing in my soul home, I could see how it would be done. Like cutting through the joints of prey, separating us, I could incise her from me, undoing the terrible sin that brought her soul inside with me. I could set her free forever. Forever.
I could be what nature intended—skinwalker. I could silence the second voice that clawed and tore at me, that demanded her way. I could cut her out.
In the dream Beast hissed and bared killing teeth. She said, Jane and tlvdatsi are I/we. Jane and Puma concolor are Beast. Together Jane and Beast are more than Jane or Beast alone.
I studied her, trying to read her body language, trying to understand what she was saying. Her eyes glowed yellow and fierce and her claws extruded, piercing the floor of the niche. Simultaneously, I felt them pierce my mind, painful and cutting, holding me in place like prey. Don’t you want to be free? I asked her, flinching away, only to be caught by the claws and held down.
Freedom is death now, she said, her breath hot on my face. Freedom was lost to me/us long ago. Long before last litter. Long before Jane became human again. Now I alone am no more. We have become we/us, I/we. Together.
We’ve . . . merged, I thought. Become one thing. And if I cut you free anyway?
I will die. And Jane will be killer only. She blinked at me, her eyes closing and reopening slowly. Beast . . . wants to live.
Sucking a breath, I woke. Gasping. Shuddering. And I met Aggie One Feather’s eyes across the dying embers of the fire. “Your eyes glow with pain and excitement,” she said softly. “You have learned something.”
“Yeah. I have.” My eyes burned, as if I had forgotten to blink, and they had dried out. “Yeah,” I said again, breathing as if I had run for miles. If I wanted, I could be a skinwalker only, a shape-changer with only one soul, and no Beast soul, no big-cat fighting to be in charge of my future and my life.
“Do you want to talk about this?” Aggie asked.
“I . . . I want to think about it.” I had never told Aggie about Beast, about the unintentional evil that had bound Beast’s soul with mine. It was the most foul black art, according to my memories of skinwalkers, according to the things I remember Edoda teaching me before he died.
I had been without Beast once before and it hadn’t been fun. It had been difficult, a time when she was lost or hiding somewhere inside me, in the dark places of my soul. It had been troubling and lonely; I had hated the experience of not knowing where she was. Deep within me, Beast said, as if trying to convince me, I/we are better and stronger and faster than Jane is alone. Better than Puma concolor is alone. Better than mountain lion. Better hunter. Better. I/we are more. Beast is more. Angel Hayyel made us even more than we together were before.
Yeah, I thought back. Yeah. I looked at her, at her golden eyes, so like my own. Slowly, I reached out a hand and touched her face. The hair there was smooth and dense, softer underneath, near the skin, thicker and coarser near the surface. I scratched her face, up behind her jaw, and she leaned into me, rubbing her head into my palm. I scratched the base of her ears and stroked down her side, my hand closing on her thick tail, and running its long length. The tail was warmer than I expected. Beast retracted her claws and the headache eased. She released me and I stood, looking into her eyes.
“Water?” Aggie offered, holding out a glass to me. I pulled from the dream that wasn’t a dream and looked at the glass. It looked like clear water, but with Aggie one never knew.
“More drugs?” I asked.
“No. You have sweated out the toxins of hate and troubles. You need liquid to be restored.”
I took the water and drank it down. It tasted wonderful, like mountain spring water, or glacier melt. Fresh and perfect, and I could practically feel my body soaking it up. “More?” I asked, and Aggie refilled the glass from a pitcher. “Thank you, Aggie One Feather, Egini Agayvlge i in the speech of Tsalagi. Thank you for the sweat. For the cleansing. For the memories and the wisdom you share so freely.”
“The memories are your own. Wisdom is there for any who seek.”
“Seek and you shall find?” I paraphrased the Bible.
Aggie smiled slightly. “Yes. Knock and it shall be opened to you. The gift of wisdom can be found, if one wishes to search for it, and is willing to be altered by it. It is not a gift given without cost or transformation, nor one to be used lightly.” Her eyes twinkled for a moment and when she spoke, her words sounded as though she was quoting, though I didn’t recognize it. “Stand in the crossways and look, Jane Yellowrock. Search for the old and ancient pathways. These are the good ways. Walk in them, and find peace and wisdom. This is old philosophy. Ancient teaching.” She shrugged slightly. “I changed them a little. You have done well, Dalonige’i Digadoli. But I sense you have questions.”
“Yeah. One. Earlier, you—or maybe it was your mother—used the term War Woman. And once you called me War Woman. In the history of our people, what does War Woman mean?” At her puzzled look I said, “What were their—our—duties?”
“In Tsalagi society, before the white man changed who we were and are with their God and their ways, women were of great value in the tribe. We owned all property. We farmed and were in charge of all commerce. All arts and crafts. All children. Men were for use in hunting and battle and war and husbands when the winter was cold, and for as long as they amused or satisfied us. But War Women”—I could hear the capitalization of the words, the importance of them—“War Women were more. They were Beloved. Wise. Stern. Gentle. Demanding. They sat on the council of men as equals, voted in council, fought in wars with their husbands, took their husbands’ place in battle if they fell. They were strong. Fierce.”
I nodded, her eyes holding mine. And in her words I saw the promise. The memory. The equality of women in the tribe.
“In war,” Aggie said, her voice going softer, “it was important that the losses in battle be compensated. If warriors of the tribe were killed, no matter if our people won a battle or lost, those warriors had value that had to be replaced in some way. After a battle, the Tsalagi would take the same number of prisoners, scalps, or lives that they lost.”
Aggie paused, watching my face. Even more gently, she said, “Women led in the execution of prisoners. In the torture of prisoners. In the buying and selling of prisoners as slaves to recoup the financial cost of war. In the adoption of prisoners into the tribe. Such was the right and responsibility of women. As mothers. As widows. As warriors in their own right.
“There was no one more fierce than a woman avenging her husband or son.”
I closed my eyes. Understanding. Finally understanding. I felt again the hilt of the knife as my grandmother put it into my hand, too large, hard to hold. I saw the blade, bright gray steel, the same blade Edoda had used on the fish when he gave me gall to taste. I saw my hand as I reached out and made the cut in the white man’s flesh. Watched as he bucked. Heard the strangled sounds he made as my grandmother, a woman of another age, another culture, a War Woman in every way, started to train me for my life’s work—to avenge the losses of the tribe. And then I remembered the feel of the hilt in my hand as I killed Evangelina, her blood a hot flood over me.