“Open your eyes,” she said, softly. “Look around you. The candle burning in this sanctuary is your soul, your life. There is no one here but you. You are alone and secure.”
“Yes,” I nodded. “Alone. Safe.” I breathed in and let my breath flow from my lungs in a long steady exhalation, feeling all the tension fade away. Drums started beating, quietly, peacefully, a four beat rhythm, hard-soft-soft-soft, hard-soft-soft-soft. In the dark, in the fluttering shadows, misty fingers and ghostly hands slid against deer skin drums, tightly stretched. Herbs burned on a fire. Wood smoke crackled, dry and aromatic. I knew this place.
I focused on the candle flame, but it was wrong. The wrong shape, the wrong size. Wrong. “Not a candle,” I murmured. My soul would never be a candle. “Fire. In a pit. Coals . . .” I saw them, glowing and hot, fed by forest deadwood, the heat in the embers moving as if alive. No, I would never be a candle, but I could be a fire, potent with possibility and restrained violence. I licked my lips. They were dry from the heat of the coals, yet, around me, a cool, wet wind moved through the darkness, breathing up from the deeps of the heart of the world. I burned and shivered, balanced between the flame’s light and warmth, and the dark, chill night.
“Turn your eyes,” a voice murmured in the darkness. “Search out the far corners of the place where you are. What do you see in the light of your soul?”
I turned slowly. Seeing the place of my soul. “The heart of the world,” I said.
“Describe it to me.”
“It is the heart of the world.” What more was there to say? A woman of the People would have understood, but the white woman . . . no. Yet, I could try to describe the vision, the image. “Walls rise up to the rounded roof.” I tried to lift my hands to show her the shape, but they were heavy, as if tied to the earth. “The roof melts down. The floor of the earth rises up. And melts again, puddling like fat, rich from an autumn bear. Dripping like your white man’s candle.”
“Caves? With stalagmites and stalactites?”
I dipped my head. “Water drips everywhere. Little splats. Like the blood of the earth falling, sacrificed. The tears of the heart of the world. A drum beats, like a heartbeat. And on the breath of the dark there is sage and mint and”—I took a slow breath and relaxed totally—“sweetgrass. They burn on the fire. Flames light the walls.” I smiled. “And there is pine and jasmine. But only a little. A hint of them, buried under the perfume that burns in the heart of the world.” I fell silent.
“There is someone there,” the soft voice said. “That person is you. Do you see her?” I nodded. “Tell me what she looks like.”
And with the command, a trace of worry curled around me, faint and wispy, like a finger of smoke, questioning. Why would Evangelina ask about my soul home? Ask about my shadow self? But the worry escaped, like smoke through a longhouse smoke hole.
“I see my shadow on the walls. I see Dalonige’i Digadoli. A girl. She is four, maybe five. Or twelve. I can’t tell. She . . . shifts and flickers.” I smiled. “And the shadow of tlvdatsi sits facing her. Staring at her in the darkness. Like two . . .” I forced up my hands, lifting them from the floor despite their extraordinary weight. I spread my fingers, turned my hands toward each other, fingertips touching. “Like this.” I let my fingers slide together, interlacing, until my palms touched and my fingers curled around, making a two-handed fist.
“Till dot si?” She mangled the word.
Beast thought at me, All yunega are foolish about spirits of animals. Foolish about spirits of Earth. I repeated the word properly, so the white woman would not insult the spirit of my Beast. “Tlvdatsi. It sounds whispered, almost. The People do not shout their words like the white man.”
“There are two of you in this heart of the world?”
“Yes. Always two of us.”
Her voice changed. Her scent changed. “No. There is only one. One of you. Look again. See the girl.”
“Two,” I said.
She paused a moment, as if uncertain, before saying, “This tlvdatsi. It is always with you? Part of you?”
“V v.” Yes, in the tongue of the People.
She spoke softly again, as if to another. “It may be some Cherokee archetype, something I don’t understand. She needs a Cherokee shaman.”
“Egini Agayvlge i,” I said. I struggled to find her white man name. “Aggie One Feather. She knows.”
“I see. She is your shaman?”
“Elder. Elder of the People. Of Tsalagi.”
“She’s seeing someone, I think, a counselor. That’s good, Jane. That’s very good. I want you to relax. There’s no need to struggle or feel worried or anxious. This heart of the world is your soul home. The place where you envision your soul to be. It’s safe and warm and all yours.”
I nodded, relaxing once again. On the cave wall, Beast’s shadow flicked an ear tab. I put out a hand and stroked her pelt along her neck, down across her shoulder. Her muscles and sinews were strong. Her breath smoothed, and she purred softly.
“Jane, tell me what you are.”
“Evie, no!”
“Shut up. Tell me what you are.”
The worry rose again, like smoke from old coals. My shadow self tilted its head, ear tabs flicking, snout wrinkling to show killing teeth, sharply pointed. “No,” I said. It came out hoarse, chuffed. A warning.
“Stop it, Evangelina.” Bruiser’s voice. “This is wrong.”
“Fine,” the woman snapped. A long moment later she spoke, her voice again calm, soothing. “Jane. I want you to remember the last time you looked into this place. I want you to compare it to now. I want you to layer one vision over the other.”
“Yes.”