“You hoped I could tell you?” she guessed. “Send you to your clan, your people?” I nodded. “I will help if I can. If you are of The People,” she said gently. “But from your eyes, I see that you are not full-blooded Cherokee. What are you?” Aggie asked.
I stood so quickly her eyes didn’t follow. She tensed. Half rose. I forced myself to stop, hands high on the jambs in the doorway of her kitchen as if hung, suspended over a fire, from deer antlers thrust through the flesh of my back. Where did that image come from?
Aggie flattened her hands on the table, her palms hugging the surface. She relaxed one joint at a time, slowly. I turned to the kitchen, hands out as if balancing, and remembered to breathe. Beast restrained herself, gathered tight, close to the surface. Claws flexed. Ready.
“Forgive me,” Aggie said, controlled, subdued, motionless as the air before winter snows. “I didn’t wish, didn’t intend, to cause you pain.”
“Why did you ask me what I am?” The words were half growled, and I saw her flinch, the reaction minuscule. Everybody was asking me that these days.
Aggie shrugged, a slight lifting of narrow shoulders. “Your eyes proclaim you are part white. And I see something in you, a shadow of something . . . old.” She pointed to my stomach, between my ribs. “There. Like two souls in one flesh. They do not battle, but live in uneasy harmony.” When I said nothing, when the moment stretched into discomfort even for a shaman, she blew out a breath and took a cookie, ate it. Visibly gathered herself and her thoughts. “To answer your first question, the liver-eater is a skinwalker.”
Breath caught in my throat, hot and burning. I don’t know what she saw on my face, but she paused again and waited as if she thought I might speak. I looked Cherokee. Had spoken a Cherokee word. In the years in the children’s home, I had read Cherokee tribal history, mostly through the old writings of James Mooney, hoping that I would find something that correlated with my splintered past, but nothing I read had sounded like what I was. I found my breath, shook my head, and gestured for her to continue.
“It is also called skinchanger. There are several tribal stories about liver-eater. In one, she is female. In her human form, she is usually a grandmother and so is respected and trusted for many years. But when she is aged, and the greed for youth and power overtake her, she seeks to replace what she has lost and temptation leads her into the practice of evil. She changes her skin for another human’s. This is the blackest of magic.
“Our stories tell us that when she gives over to evil, the skinwalker has one long fingernail that she can insert into a child and remove the liver.” When I still said nothing, Aggie went on. “Another skinwalker is Callanu Ayiliski, the Raven, Moker. He likes to steal hearts.” Her eyes studied me, missing nothing.
“The liver-eater is usually referred to as a skinwalker who has gone mad. Skinwalkers can be a nasty bunch,” she said. “However, in distant times, before the white man came, with his lusts to always have more, before the Spaniards in metal helmets came to enslave us, skinwalkers were the protectors of The People, keeping our ancestors safe from evil and evil magic. Only when they became old, and after the white man came, did many turn from protection to darker tasks and black magic.” Her voice fell silent.
Aggie watched me, her body loose, tranquil, her eyes seeing more than I wanted her to. “Some call liver-eater Spear Finger. U’tlun’ta.” She pronounced it like hut luna, which was a different pronunciation from the word in my distant memory, but it was a word I remembered from the legends in Mooney’s books. Aggie smiled. “I see that you know of Spear Finger.”
I nodded. “Is there any chance the liver-eater is a vampire instead of a skinwalker?”
“No. Vampires are foreign. They came with the Spaniards, the first white men.”
I nodded slowly, though it didn’t make much sense. Deep in the house, I heard the soft turning of fan blades, the sound of the motor driving it a steady hum. The refrigerator ticked, popped, and an automatic ice maker dumped ice cubes with a clatter. I moved back to the table and sat in the chair. “The words between an elder or shaman, and a seeker in pain, are protected, aren’t they?” I asked. “Like discussions between a psychologist and patient?”
Aggie inclined her head. “Somewhat. If you tell me you are going to kill someone, I will put the needs of The People, and even the white man, before yours. But if you come for counsel, I will help as I may, and retain your confidence.” She tilted her head, like a bird studying the ground from a tree, amusement playing at her lips. “You aren’t going to kill anyone, are you?”