Bruiser moved into the room. I let him. Shut the door. Crossed my arms over my chest, knowing I looked defensive. Not able to care.
Bruiser sat on the end of my bed, feet planted, legs splayed, hands clasped loosely between them. He looked at me. Silence and time and a weird sensation of space built between us, though neither of us moved. “Do you want to die?” he asked. When I didn’t answer, he said, “If you want to die, I’ll get on Grégoire’s Bell Huey and leave you to your business. But if you want to live, we have options. Well, one option.”
I frowned at him. “I’m not doing chemo. My RNA and DNA are screwed up. I’ve seen how fast this stuff is growing. How aggressive it is. And I have a feeling chemomight kill what’s left of the healthy cells faster than the cancer.” The cancer was growing in a star-shaped pattern. The Vitruvian Man pattern of my magic. I pressed my middle, feeling the lower points of the star.Magic cancer. Go, me.
“Chemo isn’t on the list.”
“Onorio magic?”
“Onorio magic kills and tames. My magic can’t heal. Not you. Not anyone.”
I frowned harder. “So what’s your plan?”
He shook his head. “Do you want to live or not?”
Tears spilled over. I nodded, the motion jerky. “Yes.”
“With me?”
I nodded again.
Bruiser’s smile appeared, so full of relief and joy that tears prickled at my lids. Gently he said, “Come live with me, and be my love, / And we will some new pleasures prove, / Of golden sands, and crystal brooks, / With silken lines, and silver hooks.” When I frowned harder he laughed and shook his head. Got up and opened the door.
Outside, leaning against the wall opposite, stood Ayatas FireWind. His hair was loose, a silken wave, his body relaxed. “May I enter your house,e-igido?”
I nodded. He entered and stood before me, his feet spread, his body rooted. “Where is the box Eli gave you before you left New Orleans? The box with our father’s medicine pouch in it.”
I lifted the box from the dresser and gave it to him. I wouldn’t need it anymore. Dead people didn’t need mementoes of the past. They were, themselves, mementoes of the past.
“Do you remember the note that said there was something in it if you ever needed it?” Aya asked.
I nodded.
“Did Eli Younger not tell you to open the pouch?”
I nodded. “I didn’t.”
“And do you remember the story I told about the soldier you stabbed on the Trail of Tears?”
I nodded again.
“Uni Lisiinstructed me not to tell you this unless youneeded to know, or if you asked. You didn’t ask. I would have told you had I known you were sick.” I watched my brother, his face calm, inscrutable as an Elder of the Tsalagi. “When you stabbed the soldier, he hit you very hard. Enough to break bone. To cause you to bleed great amounts of blood.” He opened the box and removed the medicine bag, handling it so carefully that the dry-rotted edges didn’t even dust away. “Uni Lisiput this in your father’s medicine bag that day.”
Gently he pulled out a leaf-wrapped something, the leaf cracking and falling to the floor, desiccated into nothing. Inside was a short length of broken bone and three teeth, a canine, an incisor, and one molar. Whole and complete. Child’s teeth. I blinked. The memory came back to me, a vision of a fist rising to my face. Fast. Powerful. Violent. The sensation of pain exploding through me. A bone-breaking agony that tore through my jaw as the memory forced its way to the surface. My breathing sped up. Then the memory fell away, leaving a place of darkness where it had been only a moment before, bright and vivid. I didn’t speak, staring at the small bit of bone and teeth.
“When you attacked the white man on the Trail of Tears, he hit you,” Aya said. “He knocked out your teeth. Broke out part of your jaw.Uni Lisigathered it up and kept it, even after she forced you into the bobcat and sent you into the snow.” His golden eyes glinted at me. “They’re your teeth. It’s the only way she could think to convince you who you are. Who I am. She said that you’d remember. That you’d know.”
I remembered, but... I also knew the depths of revenge and treachery. Uncertainly I asked, “You’re sure? It’s mine?”
“That is what the Keeper of the Secrets of the Skinwalkers said.”
I accepted the small, fractured length of bone and teeth, holding it on my outstretched hand. Holding a memento of the before times. A piece of myself.
Bruiser asked, “Do you think there might be enough genetic material?”
When I didn’t answer, Bruiser said, “Can you use the genes in these teeth to shift into a healed you?”
I considered them. “I don’t know. I’d likely be five years old.Ifthere was enough viable genetic material to find a pattern.”
