Edoda, Tsaligi formy father, wearing a loincloth, his legs, hips, and outer buttocks bare in the traditional Cherokee style, his loincloth damp, his body muscled,long, and lean. Striding catlike through the cold water of a splashing stream, his feet in moccasins, his calves wrapped in tall cloth and deer hide sleeves to his knees as protection from sharp rocks. He had been bending and lifting stone, building a rock weir to trap fish.
I remembered.
Edodain his loincloth, as he pulled in a net full of fish, looking back at me and laughing, white teeth shining.Edodacleaning fish with the steel knife he had traded for with theyunega.Edodadipping a bucket into the stream to gather water.Edoda. My father. A vigorous man.
And then my last memory ofEdoda, dead on the floor of the cabin. His blood cooling, congealing in the weave of the cloth of his shirt, as I dipped my hand into it. The slick swipe of blood as I wiped it across my face, giving his killer a blood vow of vengeance, staring into the man’s blue eyes. That single moment of promise had set my entire life into motion, every decision since, every thought, every drop of blood spilled, every death. I had been five years old. A child full of hate and anger and willing to die so long as I took my enemies with me.
The visions were intense, vivid, shocking as the cold water of the spigot.
The loinclothEdodawore when working in the creek water had been a brightly colored, woven belt tied high on his waist and passed through his legs, covering the center part of his buttocks, with a small square skirt hanging from the belt in front.
So much like the one Ayatas wore. The same colors in the belt. The red and yellow and blue woven into a long narrow length, wrapped and tied just so, that left the body bare and unencumbered for work or sweat.
But Aya’s skirt was fringed and tasseled, and a similar small skirt hung in back. Not as traditional asEdoda’s. Why the difference?
Ayatas sat a third of the circle away, his eyes on the fire pit. Like me, he had braided his long hair and it hung over his shoulder, wet and dripping on the clay of the floor. His chest was still dripping from the shower, water beaded and reflecting the fire. A leather medicine bag hungaround his neck on a leather thong, black on one side, green on the other, stuffed full of his spirit guide items. The bag was so similar to the one I wore in my visions of my soul home that I looked away. I had no medicine bag, nothing marked the herbs and stones and bones of my passage through life. I had no medicine bag because I had no family. No history with The People. Jealousy spiked through me, so strong that my chest ached and my breath came fast.
Jane and Beast are family.She sent me a vision of kits almost two years old, hunting together in a small pack.Not pack hunters. Family,she insisted.
Tears filled my eyes.Yeah. I guess we are.
Ayatas and I didn’t speak.
A pile of split cedar logs were to the far side near where Aggie usually sat. A basket filled with bundles of fresh and dried herbs was nearby. A pitcher of water sat among the heated rocks, the clay formed, worked, dried, and fire-cooked, in the ancient Cherokee tradition. A water bucket with a ladle sat in the shadows near a roll of cloth strips and a shallow clay bowl. A narrow lap drum with a small, hide-covered drumstick were next to Aggie’s old boom box.
Outside, the water came on and went off again. Aggie entered and walked to the east wall, where she lifted a five-foot-long pole and used the tip to open a small wooden slot door, up high in the small gable. I realized that there were a series of tiny slot doors there and I had never seen them. She sat across from us, crossing her knees as I had. Moving slowly, she added a single split log to the coals and the fire flared up for a moment as the flames teased across the dry wood. Light and shadows danced on the wood walls. Cedar scent filled the sweat house, and thin smoke hung near the ceiling. The heat built as we sat in silence and sweated. Time passed, but it had little meaning here in this place. Sweat slid and pooled and dripped. The fire burned lower, hotter. Aggie added split oak. Much later, another. My mind moved deeper into the slow, meditative state of ceremony, my eyes heavy.
Aggie shifted her body slightly upright, the rustle of fabric and her indrawn breath telling me she was ready to begin. She raised one hand, palm up, over her head and slipped into the cadence of the Tsalagi Elder and healer speaking English. She said... not what I expected. “We are grateful to the Great One.” Her open palm moved in front of her. “To the East.” Her hand moved. “To the South.” Her hand moved. “To the West.” Her hand moved again, making a circle. “To the North.” Her hand returned overhead, finishing the circle. Still holding the hand high, but where we could see it, she cupped her other palm beside the first, as if pouring something into it. She leaned over the fire and dropped a few sprinkles of wild tobacco into the flame. It brightened in bits before vanishing. Reaching behind her, Aggie pulled a cloth-covered bundle out of the shadows and positioned it beside her without untying and revealing it.
“Wah doh,”she said softly. “You are here for counsel. For mediation.” She looked back and forth between us and recognition filled her eyes, a peculiar expectation. “We will begin. I amEgini Agayvlge i, Aggie One Feather. My mother isAni Waya—Wolf Clan—Eastern Cherokee, and my father wasAni Godigewi—Wild Potato Clan—Western Cherokee. My great-grandfather was Panther Clan.”
“I amAyatas Nvgitsvle, Ayatas FireWind. My mother wasAni Sahoni, Blue Holly Clan. My father was adopted into Panther Clan, part of Blue Holly Clan, when he married my mother and moved into her home.”
I said, “I’m Jane Yellowrock, rogue-vampire killer. I am alsoDalonige’ i Digadoli, Yellowrock Golden Eyes. Panther Clan, I think. But I’ve been gone too long.” I stopped sharply. When I spoke again, the words that came from my mouth were, “I am an orphan of time and place. I have no Tsalagi clan, not really. Not anymore.”
Ayatas shot me a look that might have meant most anything, a look that an Elder might have given me. And I realized that he was nearly as old as me. But he had a-hundred-seventy-some years of memories and I had less than thirty years of memories. I looked away from him.
Aggie watched my face and seemed satisfied withwhatever she saw taking place there. She said, “I will tell you of the world, through the bear and the deer. The bear, who is the body of the universe, lives its life eating and defecating and sleeping as comes naturally, with no cares for any other being, except for the messages recorded in the cells of his body.”
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 theTsalagiway.
“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.Eequalsmcsquared.”
