A soft chuckle came to me through the dark. "Dalonige i Digadoli. Golden Eyes. It is a very pretty name."
I sat up. Across the sweat lodge, Aggie One Feather sat on a carved log, her legs outstretched. She was smiling but there was a shadow in her eyes, hidden and private, closed and weighted, that she didn't want me to see. Trepidation stirred in the calm center of me, like a whirlpool opening in a pond. "What?" I asked.
She stared at me, as if trying to read my soul through my eyes. "Dalonige i Digadoli, Golden Eyes, is not a traditional name for one of the People." I shrugged, not knowing what to say. "And the animals you named. So many. So strange. Your parents were Speakers of the language of the People. Both of them."
I understood what she was saying. The number of Speakers left among the People was less than a hundred, even counting both Eastern Cherokee and Western Cherokee. If my parents had been Speakers, then their names would have been known. Aggie would have heard of them and know they had lost a daughter. But she had never heard of such people, and therefore, I couldn't have Speakers as parents. Yet I had memories of them speaking the language. It wasn't possible.
But then, Aggie didn't know how old I thought I might be. That was one of the secrets I had to keep, along with my skinwalker magic. I could tell her neither truth as my safety lay in my anonymity, though I had a feeling that Aggie had guessed I hadn't been entirely honest with her.
"Do you remember their names?" Aggie One Feather asked, her voice carefully neutral.
I shook my head. "Edoda, my father, was ani gilogi, Panther Clan. Etsi, my mother, was ani sahoni, Blue Holly Clan. Elisi, my grandmother, was Panther Clan, like my father. I don't remember anything more." Liar, liar, pants on fire! Can she see the lie? "My name . . . I don't know. It was just my name." I hesitated. I didn't want to lie to this woman. The People did not lie, even to the white man, who never spoke the truth. And one never lied, not ever, to an elder, even now, when most young had so little respect for the aged. So I asked a question instead. "The animals . . . What do you think the names meant?"
Aggie stood, lithe and fluid, her body belying her age, which was somewhere past fifty, if I guessed right. "I don't know," she said. "I will ask my mother. Come. It is time to go. And it is too late for me to take you to water today."
There was something in her voice that led me to think she skirted the truth with careful words, either to keep truth from me because she feared it, or because she feared me. Or perhaps because she didn't know what she wanted to say. But she didn't look at me. Not once.
I followed her into the sunlight, which was blinding, the air after the hurricane clear, the sky almost as blue as home, in the mountains of the Appalachians, the mountains of the People.
Aggie stripped and turned on a spigot I hadn't noticed, high on the wall. Water shot out and she rinsed, her skin pebbling from the cold. I kept my head turned, and when she was done and stepped away, Aggie kept her head turned as well, each of us offering the other privacy in a very public bathing. There were no towels, and we blotted off on the sweat-soaked robes before pulling our clothes on over wet bodies. Aggie gathered up our dirty robes in a bundle under one arm and gestured to the lawn, away from the sweat lodge. I plaited my hair in a single long braid as we walked, and let it hang, wet and dripping, down my back.
Silent, we crossed the yard to Bitsa. I stopped at my bike. Aggie came around to the other side and paused, her eyes on the bike. "Lisi," I said, searching for formal words, proper words, to bring the truth from her. "Your heart is heavy. May I . . . share your burden?" That felt right.
She shook her head, eyes on the bike. "I am not burdened, daughter. I will call when I have a clearer understanding."
And I would have to be satisfied with that. "Thank you, Egini Agayvlge i. I will wait to hear your counsel."
Aggie nodded, and a slight smile crossed her face. "I wish my own children would be half so respectful." She turned and went to the small house, opened the door, and went inside, closing the door behind her.
I helmeted up and took the long road back to the house I lived in until my contract was over.