My head came up. That sounded a lot like the snake in the center of all creatures—Skinwalker wisdom and knowledge—mixed with instinct.
“These messages tell him what to do and when. All the messages and memories of time are recorded there, in the body of the bear. And the bear listens.”
Time? Time is recorded in the cells? Beast crept close to the center of my mind, listening. My palms tightened on my knees and I had to force my body to relax, had to force myself to breathe slowly, and to listen with all of me, and not just my ears. And I realized that to listen with all of me was to listen in the Tsalagi way.
“The deer is the mind of the universe. The deer is sacred,” Aggie said, “a cunning animal. It sees and hears all things and we can talk to the deer. The deer listens to the messages of the mind of the universe as well as to the body of the universe.” She looked to Ayatas. “Have you conditioned your body to listen to the messages of the universe, of the Great One, to receive knowledge and wisdom, as the Sacred Deer does for Mental Healing?”
“I have traveled far, and listened to the deer and to the bear and to the jaguar. To the wolf and the mountain lion. I have listened. And sometimes the universe, the Great One, has spoken to me.”
“And have you followed the wisdom of the visions?”
Ayatas hesitated. “Not always, Lisi. I have been stubborn. I have thought my way was the better way. I have feared to follow the path before me. I have looked to the past. I have held on to the past and to those I have lost. I have been a child in the face of Grandfather Rock, many times. But now I wish again to learn. To see the right and healing way again.”
Aggie looked at me. “Your past was lost to you. Will you be deer or bear?”
Deer is prey, Beast thought. Bear is too big to be prey. Bear can kill big-cat. Beast padded closer to the forefront of my mind. Beast would be big-cat. Faster big-cat. Big-cat with sharper killing teeth and stronger claws. But Beast will not be deer or bear. Jane will not be deer or bear.
I shook my head and pulled on the most formal speech I could manage. Words and phrases and mannerisms I had learned in the children’s home. But more importantly, words and phrases and mannerisms I had learned in Leo’s household. “Grandmother. There is wisdom in both ways. The way of the mind of the universe and also the way of the body of the universe.” Because the body has time stored in its cells, I thought. “Body and mind should be—no, they are—together, one thing, one power, one energy, as even the foolish white man now knows. E equals mc squared.”
Aggie nodded slowly, hearing my words and the feelings that lay beneath.
I said, “I would choose the wisdom and the messages of the cells and the wisdom and the messages of the universe, the mind and the body combined, the wisdom and messages in both, together. I would serve my family and my clan and my tribe by leading them into war if peace was not possible. By bringing them meat to eat, including the deer and the bear. By sharing what wisdom there exists in my cells and what wisdom God would reveal to me, and that I understood. But I think I would not give my body to be eaten as a way of service. I would not choose to become prey. I am not prey.”
Beast is not prey.
Right, I thought. I/we are not prey.
Aggie seemed satisfied and disturbed at my answer in equal measure and uncertain which one to address, but finally she nodded again, as if accepting what cannot be changed. She reached into the basket, took out a fresh pine bough, and placed it on the fire. The stink of blazing pine filled the air. “We come for healing, for the right way. For reconciliation.” Aggie looked back and forth between us and said, “How may I help?”
Ayatas said nothing, so I did. Maintaining a formal tone, I said, “This man came to my house. He tried to kill me. Then he says he’s my brother, and a skinwalker, and wants me to use my connections for an introduction to Leo Pellissier.”
Ayatas recoiled, the skin of his back cringing when I spoke his secret. But Aggie knew all my secrets, and no way was I keeping Ayatas’s.
Aggie frowned. “This is a twisted path we walk, with many byways to tread. First, Ayatas, are you Jane’s brother, part of her family and clan?”
“Yes, I believe so.”
“Jane, do you believe him to be your brother?”
I didn’t want to reply, and I may have sounded sulky when I answered. “I have a partial memory of my father talking about a baby I was supposed to take care of. And the Master of the City says that beneath the skinwalker scent, he smells like my full brother.”
“For now, we agree that you are blood kin?”
Reluctantly, I nodded.
“Ayatas FireWind. You tried to kill your sister?”
“She did not wear the scent of Tsalagi, but of predator. Of magic not associated with . . . my people. I reacted on instinct. I ask forgiveness.”
“Forgiveness is a difficult thing.” Aggie looked at me. “Would your Redeemer God forgive his brother?”
I scowled at her. “I didn’t kill him when I had the chance. I helped him in his request to see Leo Pellissier. I can forgive an instinct and a reaction to magic.”
Aggie nodded slowly, considering. “Yet your anger and distrust persists.”
“Yeah. He’s known about me for some time and decided not to come visit until he could combine business and meeting me; coming now is awfully convenient. Maybe that’s some of that wisdom he says he ignored. I don’t know. But his explanation lacked full disclosure, and his apology, if there was one, was inadequate. And it may be petty, but his loincloth has a skirt in back. It’s not traditional and that bothers me.”
She ignored my last complaint. “By not making the trip to see you, and you alone, Ayatas offered insult to your relationship, which is more painful to you than your brother trying to kill you.”
Which made me sound the next best thing to psycho and Ayatas scornfully rude.
Ayatas frowned at Aggie and then at me. Eli and I had said much the same thing and Ayatas had thought nothing about it. Let a tribal Elder say something and he listens.
“Do his words and stories have the ring of truth?” Aggie asked me.
I frowned back at Ayatas. “He tells just enough to make any lie sound like the truth. He’s a cop. They’re professional liars.”
“You were in love with a cop,” Ayatas said.
“And he was a liar.”
Aggie raised her hand to stop me before I could continue what already sounded like a childish squabble. “Ayatas. How do you respond?”
“My wife was a white woman with red hair. We lived among the tribes of the West for some years. Things in my life changed because of that. I acquired new concepts, stories, and wisdom from the Paiute and the Navajo and the Apache. The extra skirt and covering made my wife happy. She was a woman of her time and she didn’t like the nakedness of the savage.
“I meant no disrespect to my sister. This woman does not smell like skinwalker or clan. She smells like predator. Yet, this woman is my sister.”
Aggie nodded. She knew why I smelled like I did. “Do you agree that she speaks the truth about your insult to her? That you should have, and yet did not, come to greet her sooner?”
Ayatas’s face went cold and unyielding, the look of a hunter facing danger. If I’d been Aggie, I’d have been squirming. Aggie simply sat there and waited. And waited. Sweat became slick trails moving slow, down my spine, between my bent knees, down my chest, across my scalp, and down my face. I blinked to keep it out of my eyes, but it stung, salty-sharp.
Ayatas took a breath and blew it out, and when he spoke, it was with the same measured formality that Aggie was using. “She speaks the truth. I put off coming. I didn’t know what to say or how to say it. I heard the messages of the universe, of Grandfather Rock, and the candor of the deer, and I did not listen with my whole self. I turned away. I have been a child in my thoughts, to run away from truth and wisdom, ignoring or following the Elders’ wisdom and the Great One’s messages as I chose. Seeking my own way.” This was a Tsalagi way of speaking and The People do not lie, even to the white man, never to an Elder. This was truth.
“I combined the trip with business in the white man way. I didn’t treat the relationship with honor. My apology was not heartfelt because I justified my actions.”