Skinwalker

Aggie searched my face, her hand now fluttering down like a bird to a branch. I restrained my impatience, riding it into submission, took a deep breath, and blew it out. I waited as she studied me. It seemed a long time, though it couldn’t have been more than seconds.

 

At last, satisfied, she said, “Yes. You may hunt. But first, my mother wishes to meet with you.” She pushed the door open and stood aside.

 

“I don’t have time,” I said, my frustration breaking free. “It came by your house.”

 

“I know. My mother has had trouble sleeping since you told me about it hunting here. She was awake. Listening. She heard it. Felt its hunger. Its anger. We’ve been expecting you.” She stood aside.

 

Irritated, but not knowing what else to do, I huffed a sigh and started to walk into her house. Aggie held up a hand, stopping me. “Please. Leave your weapons at the door.”

 

I closed my eyes so she wouldn’t see the flash of fury. I did not have time for this. Then I remembered. To bring weapons into the house of an elder was to bring insult and violence, no matter if the weapons were intended for someone else. Forcing out the words through my teeth, I said curtly, “Sorry.” And though I was in a hurry, I was sorry. I didn’t intend to insult Aggie One Feather. Egini Agayvlge i. But the rogue was so close. . . .

 

I unstrapped the Benelli and set it on the front porch. If someone came by and took it, I was out a lot of money. I placed the stakes beside it, and the vamp-killers. All three of them. As I divested myself of my weapons, something began to happen to me. My motions began to slow. My frustration began to dissipate, as if seeping out through my pores along with the perspiration of the heated day, or maybe as if the frustration clung to the steel, wood, and silver and fell away from my limbs as I set the weapons aside.

 

I took off the link collar. The leather gloves. Sitting on the floor of the porch, I removed my boots. I should have taken them off the last time I came. I looked up at Aggie from my perch on the cement. “Are crosses weapons?”

 

“Do you think they are?”

 

“Yeah.” I pulled the crosses from my neck. Sock-footed, I stood and bowed my head, patient, waiting. “Gi yv ha,” she said, her voice soft. Come in. I walked into the house and Aggie closed the door, shutting out the world. I followed her through the small house to a tiny back bedroom. Sunlight spilled out, bright, from yellow walls. A double-sized bed was covered by a handmade quilt, pieces of cloth in different patterns stitched to look like a tree, roots at the foot, branches reaching high to pillows. A dresser stood in the corner near a comfortable-looking chair, where a wizened woman sat in quarter view, facing the windows.

 

She was hunched over, her black hair braided and dangling over her left shoulder. Not a hint of gray marred the tresses. Her coppery skin was crosshatched with lines, furrowed by wind and sun and time, and she turned her head when I stood in the doorway, gesturing me in. Her eyes were bright black buttons. “Gi yv ha,” she echoed her daughter, her voice the soft, whispered cadence of the very old ones, I recalled. “Gi yv ha.” She pointed to a stool near her.

 

I sat on it, the position putting my face low enough so she could see me from her bent posture. “Li si,” I said. Grandmother .

 

“My mother’s name is Ewi Tsagalili. Eva Chicalelee,” Aggie said from the door.

 

I remembered the story Aggie had told me about the little snowbird, Chickelili, whose soft voice wasn’t heard when she warned about the danger of the liver-eater. “Li si,” I said again, ducking my head.

 

“Pretty girl.” She touched my cheek with cool fingers. Traced the line of my jaw. “No. Not a girl. My eyes fail. You are . . . old,” the old woman said. My eyes flew to hers. Like her daughter, she saw too much. “Very old,” she said.

 

I stared at my hands, clasped in my lap.

 

“You carry time beneath your skin. Memories out of reach.”

 

“V v,” I said. Yes, in the language of The People. Cold seemed to blow along my bones, the ice of blizzard, of frozen winter, remembered from long ago, from the cold of the long trek, the Removal, the Trail of Tears. I shivered once, my sock-covered toes curling. Remembering. Cripes. I was there. . . .

 

She took her hand away and the memories fell with it. “You should go to water,” she said, speaking of the Cherokee healing ceremony that involved a ritual dunking in an icy stream.

 

“There is no time, Li si.”

 

The old woman puffed a breath, a half huff of negation. “When your battle is over, you will come here.” The proclamation wasn’t so much a command as a prophecy. I shivered again, my flesh cold as stone. “We will smudge you. And my daughter will take you to water. Your memories will begin to find their way back to you.”

 

“V v,” I said.

 

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