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 thetrip 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 womanismy 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?”
