Dark Queen (Jane Yellowrock #12)

I sat in my usual place on the clay floor, crossed my knees, adjusted the shift to cover everything important, and leaned back against the split log seat behind me. The seat was hand-carved for the Elders or the injured to use when floor seating wasn’t practical.

The coals in the pit before me threw back heat, glowing red and cracking apart, and the rocks lining it in a circle were hot to the touch. I had been here often enough that I slipped easily into a meditative state. A memory came back to me, warm and soothing, of Aggie’s soft voice speaking about circles. At some point in a previous ceremony, when I was relaxed on one of her concoctions and in a deeply meditative state, Aggie had told me the purpose of the rock and fire. In my memory, I heard her say, “Rocks in a circle are ceremonial, part of the Four Directions, the Cords of Life, and the Universal Circle. The fire center leads Tsalagi into accord with the Great One, into harmony with Nature, and into harmony of relationships with each other. It also leads to healing of self, mentally, physically, and spiritually.”

I didn’t understand what any of that meant, but this fire had burned a long time. I figured Aggie had taken someone to sweat during the night. I didn’t like it when she took two sessions back-to-back, especially since some sessions—unlike my own—lasted days. Aggie looked and acted young, but deadly dehydration was a real possibility in a woman her age. If I said that, she’d likely thunk me over the head with something.

Ayatas opened the low sweat house door and, like me, he had to duck his head to enter. He moved like a cat in the dark of the windowless space. Ayatas wasn’t wearing a shift. He was wearing a loincloth, one that was clearly his own.

Memories hit me fast.

Edoda, Tsaligi for my 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.

Edoda in his loincloth, as he pulled in a net full of fish, looking back at me and laughing, white teeth shining. Edoda cleaning fish with the steel knife he had traded for with the yunega. Edoda dipping a bucket into the stream to gather water. Edoda. My father. A vigorous man.

And then my last memory of Edoda, 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 loincloth Edoda wore 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 as Edoda’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 hung around 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 am Egini Agayvlge i, Aggie One Feather. My mother is Ani Waya—Wolf Clan—Eastern Cherokee, and my father was Ani Godigewi—Wild Potato Clan—Western Cherokee. My great-grandfather was Panther Clan.”

“I am Ayatas Nvgitsvle, Ayatas FireWind. My mother was Ani 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 also Dalonige’ 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.”