“Busted. I don’t know how bad. Jodi let me pick it and your gear up. You need to call her. But first, debrief me.”
Bitsa! some small, bereaved part of me howled. I shoved it down inside too and, concisely, I filled Eli in on the fight and how I’d spent the day—which felt weirder than anything I had ever done before. I wasn’t sure how to be honest about being in Beast form; saying the words made me feel as if I’d eaten something slimy. But Eli seemed to take it in stride, or maybe he was standing bug-eyed on the other end of the line and I just thought he was nonchalant. I ended the debrief with “I won’t be home soon. Some stuff I need to take care of.”
“Okay. Call Jodi. She has news she won’t give me. Or maybe she wants to schedule mani-pedis and facials.” He ended the call. I didn’t call Jodi. I knew there wasn’t time. And I didn’t want her to have access to this number in relation to me. Her news or spa-day plans would have to wait.
CHAPTER 17
Killer Only, Killer Only, Killer
The sweathouse was still hot. Aggie had done an all-day ritual for someone, several someones by the sweat-stink on the air. I had to wonder how much she had left inside herself, drained of the toxins, yes, but also all the minerals that allowed a heart to beat and muscles to contract and expand.
Not choosing one of the log benches, I sat on the clay floor near the circle of stones that marked the fire pit. Heat radiated from the clay and the stones and the old coals. I shivered hard once more, and started to sweat as my body reacted to the change in temp.
From the metal bucket nearby, I took tinder—dry slivers of wood—and used them to brush away the coat of ash on the coals, dropping the curls of cedar into the red heat. The room brightened as the wood caught the flame, and I added more tinder, then larger pieces—stems and twigs. The flames seemed to dance with the shadows along the walls, a dance of day and night, of good and evil, like the dance of light energy and dark energy in physics, moving to an unheard beat. Sweat pearled and trickled down my spine in the heated room. I added a split log of hickory. The flames licked into the wood.
I was surprised that Aggie had let me use her phone. Usually the elder would tell me to put the things of the earth away, to concentrate on my breathing and the emptiness inside me. So I tried to do that now. I blew out my breath, trying to find a calm center in the darkness that swirled through me like a storm.
Aggie One Feather opened the door and slipped inside so fast that the heat didn’t escape. She settled across from me and blew out a breath that sounded both tired and satisfied. “You came. You spoke truth. This is good.”
I shrugged, my drying hair sticking to my sweat-damp skin. I leaned back, my body resting against the log bench.
Aggie swiveled to her side and hit a button, turning on the old boom box. The sound of a tribal flute skirled into the room. “Close your eyes. Breathe, as I have taught you. Slowly. In and out. In . . .” We both inhaled, slowly to a beat of three. “. . . and out.” We exhaled together to a beat of three, syncing our breathing. “In . . . and out. In . . . and out.”
We went through breathing exercises, which were a lot like yoga breathing, and I began to relax. The room darkened as the wood burned down. Outside, I heard a barred owl calling, hooting over the sound of the music. The track changed to drums, soft and slow, and I felt my heart rate slow to match.
My eyes were half-closed when Aggie dropped something on the fire. Bright flame burst out, devouring dried herbs. I breathed in the scents of rosemary and harsh sage and tasted something bitter in the back of my throat. Aggie poured liquid into a wood cup. I didn’t ask what was in it. I drank it down, the bitter substance like gall.
And I remembered the first time I tasted gall. I was standing beside my father, his tall form blocking the sun. Before him were two trees, a length of rough board spanning them, the horizontal surface taller than my head.
“A tsa di,” he said, speaking the language of The People, which, in my memory, I understood as fish, “must be cut fresh, cleaned well, cooked and served quickly, or dried over a smoky fire for winter stew. In cleaning, the gall must be removed whole, not cut with the blade, or the bitter taste will pass through the entire fish and it will be no good to eat. Just as a bitter heart will poison an entire human, so the gall will poison the entire fish. Here. Taste.” He squatted and pressed a yellowish white blob to my lips. The taste spread through my mouth and I spat. Edoda, my father, laughed, the sound filled with tenderness. “As with all things, aquetsi ageyutsa, my daughter, there is both good and bad in the a tsa di.”
“Is there both good and bad with the white man, Edoda?” I asked.
Edoda’s face fell, the long lines pulling in more shadow. He held up the steel knife, the blade kept sharp with the whetstone in the cabin. “Yelasdi made of white man’s steel is good. Yunega himself is not good.”