Cold Reign

“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 skipped 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.