Dark Queen Read online

  Aggie shifted her body slightly upright, the rustle of fabric and her indrawn breath telling me she was ready to begin. She raised one hand, palm up, over her head and slipped into the cadence of the Tsalagi Elder and healer speaking English. She said . . . not what I expected. “We are grateful to the Great One.” Her open palm moved in front of her. “To the East.” Her hand moved. “To the South.” Her hand moved. “To the West.” Her hand moved again, making a circle. “To the North.” Her hand returned overhead, finishing the circle. Still holding the hand high, but where we could see it, she cupped her other palm beside the first, as if pouring something into it. She leaned over the fire and dropped a few sprinkles of wild tobacco into the flame. It brightened in bits before vanishing. Reaching behind her, Aggie pulled a cloth-covered bundle out of the shadows and positioned it beside her without untying and revealing it.

  “Wah doh,” she said softly. “You are here for counsel. For mediation.” She looked back and forth between us and recognition filled her eyes, a peculiar expectation. “We will begin. I am Egini Agayvlge i, Aggie One Feather. My mother is Ani Waya—Wolf Clan—Eastern Cherokee, and my father was Ani Godigewi—Wild Potato Clan—Western Cherokee. My great-grandfather was Panther Clan.”

  “I am Ayatas Nvgitsvle, Ayatas FireWind. My mother was Ani Sahoni, Blue Holly Clan. My father was adopted into Panther Clan, part of Blue Holly Clan, when he married my mother and moved into her home.”

  I said, “I’m Jane Yellowrock, rogue-vampire killer. I am also Dalonige’ i Digadoli, Yellowrock Golden Eyes. Panther Clan, I think. But I’ve been gone too long.” I stopped sharply. When I spoke again, the words that came from my mouth were, “I am an orphan of time and place. I have no Tsalagi clan, not really. Not anymore.”

  Ayatas shot me a look that might have meant most anything, a look that an Elder might have given me. And I realized that he was nearly as old as me. But he had a-hundred-seventy-some years of memories and I had less than thirty years of memories. I looked away from him.

  Aggie watched my face and seemed satisfied with whatever she saw taking place there. She said, “I will tell you of the world, through the bear and the deer. The bear, who is the body of the universe, lives its life eating and defecating and sleeping as comes naturally, with no cares for any other being, except for the messages recorded in the cells of his body.”

  My head came up. That sounded a lot like the snake in the center of all creatures—Skinwalker wisdom and knowledge—mixed with instinct.

  “These messages tell him what to do and when. All the messages and memories of time are recorded there, in the body of the bear. And the bear listens.”

  Time? Time is recorded in the cells? Beast crept close to the center of my mind, listening. My palms tightened on my knees and I had to force my body to relax, had to force myself to breathe slowly, and to listen with all of me, and not just my ears. And I realized that to listen with all of me was to listen in the Tsalagi way.

  “The deer is the mind of the universe. The deer is sacred,” Aggie said, “a cunning animal. It sees and hears all things and we can talk to the deer. The deer listens to the messages of the mind of the universe as well as to the body of the universe.” She looked to Ayatas. “Have you conditioned your body to listen to the messages of the universe, of the Great One, to receive knowledge and wisdom, as the Sacred Deer does for Mental Healing?”

  “I have traveled far, and listened to the deer and to the bear and to the jaguar. To the wolf and the mountain lion. I have listened. And sometimes the universe, the Great One, has spoken to me.”

  “And have you followed the wisdom of the visions?”

  Ayatas hesitated. “Not always, Lisi. I have been stubborn. I have thought my way was the better way. I have feared to follow the path before me. I have looked to the past. I have held on to the past and to those I have lost. I have been a child in the face of Grandfather Rock, many times. But now I wish again to learn. To see the right and healing way again.”

  Aggie looked at me. “Your past was lost to you. Will you be deer or bear?”

  Deer is prey, Beast thought. Bear is too big to be prey. Bear can kill big-cat. Beast padded closer to the forefront of my mind. Beast would be big-cat. Faster big-cat. Big-cat with sharper killing teeth and stronger claws. But Beast will not be deer or bear. Jane will not be deer or bear.

  I shook my head and pulled on the most formal speech I could manage. Words and phrases and mannerisms I had learned in the children’s home. But more importantly, words and phrases and mannerisms I had learned in Leo’s household. “Grandmother. There is wisdom in both ways. The way of the mind of the universe and also the way of the body of the universe.” Because the body has time stored in its cells, I thought. “Body and mind should be—no, they are—together, one thing, one power, one energy, as even the foolish white man now knows. E equals mc squared.”

  Aggie nodded slowly, hearing my words and the feelings that lay beneath.

  I said, “I would choose the wisdom and the messages of the cells and the wisdom and the messages of the universe, the mind and the body combined, the wisdom and messages in both, together. I would serve my family and my clan and my tribe by leading them into war if peace was not possible. By bringing them meat to eat, including the deer and the bear. By sharing what wisdom there exists in my cells and what wisdom God would reveal to me, and that I understood. But I think I would not give my body to be eaten as a way of service. I would not choose to become prey. I am not prey.”

  Beast is not prey.

  Right, I thought. I/we are not prey.

  Aggie seemed satisfied and disturbed at my answer in equal measure and uncertain which one to address, but finally she nodded again, as if accepting what cannot be changed. She reached into the basket, took out a fresh pine bough, and placed it on the fire. The stink of blazing pine filled the air. “We come for healing, for the right way. For reconciliation.” Aggie looked back and forth between us and said, “How may I help?”

  Ayatas said nothing, so I did. Maintaining a formal tone, I said, “This man came to my house. He tried to kill me. Then he says he’s my brother, and a skinwalker, and wants me to use my connections for an introduction to Leo Pellissier.”

  Ayatas recoiled, the skin of his back cringing when I spoke his secret. But Aggie knew all my secrets, and no way was I keeping Ayatas’s.

  Aggie frowned. “This is a twisted path we walk, with many byways to tread. First, Ayatas, are you Jane’s brother, part of her family and clan?”

  “Yes, I believe so.”

  “Jane, do you believe him to be your brother?”

  I didn’t want to reply, and I may have sounded sulky when I answered. “I have a partial memory of my father talking about a baby I was supposed to take care of. And the Master of the City says that beneath the skinwalker scent, he smells like my full brother.”

  “For now, we agree that you are blood kin?”

  Reluctantly, I nodded.

  “Ayatas FireWind. You tried to kill your sister?”

  “She did not wear the scent of Tsalagi, but of predator. Of magic not associated with . . . my people. I reacted on instinct. I ask forgiveness.”

  “Forgiveness is a difficult thing.” Aggie looked at me. “Would your Redeemer God forgive his brother?”

  I scowled at her. “I didn’t kill him when I had the chance. I helped him in his request to see Leo Pellissier. I can forgive an instinct and a reaction to magic.”

  Aggie nodded slowly, considering. “Yet your anger and distrust persists.”

  “Yeah. He’s known about me for some time and decided not to come visit until he could combine business and meeting me; coming now is awfully convenient. Maybe that’s some of that wisdom he says he ignored. I don’t know. But his explanation lacked full disclosure, and his apology, if there was one, was inadequate. And it may be petty, but his loincloth has a skirt in back
. It’s not traditional and that bothers me.”

  She ignored my last complaint. “By not making the trip to see you, and you alone, Ayatas offered insult to your relationship, which is more painful to you than your brother trying to kill you.”

  Which made me sound the next best thing to psycho and Ayatas scornfully rude.

  Ayatas frowned at Aggie and then at me. Eli and I had said much the same thing and Ayatas had thought nothing about it. Let a tribal Elder say something and he listens.

  “Do his words and stories have the ring of truth?” Aggie asked me.

  I frowned back at Ayatas. “He tells just enough to make any lie sound like the truth. He’s a cop. They’re professional liars.”

  “You were in love with a cop,” Ayatas said.

  “And he was a liar.”

  Aggie raised her hand to stop me before I could continue what already sounded like a childish squabble. “Ayatas. How do you respond?”

  “My wife was a white woman with red hair. We lived among the tribes of the West for some years. Things in my life changed because of that. I acquired new concepts, stories, and wisdom from the Paiute and the Navajo and the Apache. The extra skirt and covering made my wife happy. She was a woman of her time and she didn’t like the nakedness of the savage.

  “I meant no disrespect to my sister. This woman does not smell like skinwalker or clan. She smells like predator. Yet, this woman is my sister.”

  Aggie nodded. She knew why I smelled like I did. “Do you agree that she speaks the truth about your insult to her? That you should have, and yet did not, come to greet her sooner?”

  Ayatas’s face went cold and unyielding, the look of a hunter facing danger. If I’d been Aggie, I’d have been squirming. Aggie simply sat there and waited. And waited. Sweat became slick trails moving slow, down my spine, between my bent knees, down my chest, across my scalp, and down my face. I blinked to keep it out of my eyes, but it stung, salty-sharp.

  Ayatas took a breath and blew it out, and when he spoke, it was with the same measured formality that Aggie was using. “She speaks the truth. I put off coming. I didn’t know what to say or how to say it. I heard the messages of the universe, of Grandfather Rock, and the candor of the deer, and I did not listen with my whole self. I turned away. I have been a child in my thoughts, to run away from truth and wisdom, ignoring or following the Elders’ wisdom and the Great One’s messages as I chose. Seeking my own way.” This was a Tsalagi way of speaking and The People do not lie, even to the white man, never to an Elder. This was truth.

  “I combined the trip with business in the white man way. I didn’t treat the relationship with honor. My apology was not heartfelt because I justified my actions.”

  His words made me feel better, though in his place, I’d have just barged ahead, driven to NOLA, and banged on his door, letting the chips fall where they might. Maybe his way was better. Or maybe his way was cowardly. Or maybe a combo of the two.

  Aggie said gently, “You have both violated relationship. You have strayed from a good medicine path and dishonored one another.”

  I frowned at the floor, letting her words try to make sense inside me. Among tribal peoples, medicine wasn’t drugs. It was a method of right relationships: spiritual, mental, physical, and with the natural world, in terms of nature, the Earth, tribe, clan, and family. I wasn’t sure how I had violated anything, but I sure could see how my bro had violated it all.

  “Jane. Your uni lisi violated the path to harmony when she led you to kill your father’s murderers.”

  Ayatas whipped his eyes to me. Yeah. I had told her. So what? I ignored him.

  Aggie went on. “You were too young to understand the way of the war woman. Her teaching led you to believe that violence and death was the answer to all things.”

  I opened my mouth to argue and just as quickly snapped it shut, feeling the sweat in the creases around my mouth, tasting salt and smoke. Aggie was right. I frowned harder, not wanting to agree. But. I had entered the sweat house in honor, which meant I had no choice but to be led to reconciliation.

  I should have just shot Ayatas and been done with it. Dang it.

  “Yes, Lisi. If Ayatas is to be believed, I continued in the way I was taught. I violated the path of harmony when I tried to kill a white man rapist on the Trail of Tears.” I frowned harder, as an image came to me of a pale face, dark with white-man beard, lined and saggy, too thin. The knife in my hand as I stabbed him with it. The vision of his fist coming at me. Then nothing. “He was yunega. He hurt a woman. I thought . . . I thought that meant he deserved to die at my hand.”

  “You were a child, led down a path that was for a grown woman. You are now that woman, standing on a bridge over a roaring river, where you can see upstream to your past, down to your present, and downstream to your future.”

  I nodded, but instead of seeing a river, I saw a path through a dark wood, one running with blood, and with the bloody, muddy footprints of the passage of my life. My past. I looked the other way and saw a short, rock-strewn path mostly hidden in a rainstorm, lightning jagged through the sky. Thunder boomed. Rain beat the earth like a timpani of drums. The path leading into the future quickly vanished into the mist of pounding rain and lashing trees. Rain. And lightning. And time . . .

  I blinked my eyes open, surprised that they had shut. “My past is a path that runs with blood,” I said, still speaking in a formal tone.

  “Yes,” Aggie said gently, “and in your present you work for Europeans, for white men, white bloodsuckers. You take their money and kill when they say to kill. Your present is a river running with blood. Your future is unknown and you may take it in any direction, the same bloody path you now tread, or something else. Something different. Something that is not dependent on the grandmother who taught you to kill.”

  I wiped the stinging sweat from my eyes. I’d thought pretty much the same thing myself. After a little too long, I blew out a breath and said, “Yes, Lisi. I have taken a blood path. I am mired in it. My feet stand still, unmoving, not walking, submerged in the blood of my enemies and the enemies of the vampires.” I looked into Aggie’s dark eyes, eyes that saw too much, ignoring my brother’s yellow ones.

  When I spoke the next words aloud, where my brother could hear them, I gave away much of what made me tick. But this sweat was sacred, almost holy, and it seemed the time to share my own heart. “I took this path to protect my godchildren, whom I have sworn to keep safe. To protect all the witch children in the Americas. Perhaps there was a better path, one that would have accomplished the same ends without so much death.” I dropped the formal tones and speech patterns. “But I don’t see it, Aggie. I don’t see any other way I could have gone, except through the heads and hearts and blood of my enemies.”

  Aggie nodded thoughtfully and passed us pottery cups filled with cool water, smelling of mint. “Drink,” she said. “You have taken a path through blood and death. Have you done so with honor? Have you been kind and compassionate for the lives of your enemies? Have you given back to the Earth for the blood you shed? Have you treated all of Nature with honor in all of your ways? Have you taken a path with respect for the Earth?”

  “Mostly. Life of the living, human life, yes, mostly. Life of the undead? Not so much.”

  “Why should your brother, who knows only what he reads in his reports, trust one who deals in death? He does not know for a surety that you killed to protect the innocent. He does not know that you have not killed simply because the vampire requested a killing.”

  Crap. To kill or not to kill? That is the question. And that was the crux of the whole of my life. I closed my eyes and salt stung them. A time passed, marked only by the sweat that ran off my body. I looked again at the vision of my future, as it disappeared in rabbit trails through the rain and forest—in the fall of rain/time and the life of the Earth. I said, agreeing, “The path I walk is not the
only one through the forest. I may have been set on this path by the grandmother who should have taught me differently, but now I am grown. I can see clearly how the path of my future might alter.”

  And there was that bear and deer story. Holy crap. I could see the future through the messages of the body and also through time . . . “I have the right to choose how I should go forward. The path is mine to make.” I looked at Ayatas. He was sitting with his eyes closed, sweat streaking his body. His nose was shaped exactly like mine. His eyebrows exactly like mine. His irises were yellow. Exactly like mine. That was the recognition sparking in Aggie when she first entered the sweat house. She had seen the resemblance. I said, softly, “I would make peace with my brother.”

  If Ayatas heard me he didn’t give anything away. He might have been asleep for all the reaction he gave.

  “Ayatas,” Aggie said. “You knew of Jane Yellowrock. You knew she was likely your sister. Yet you chose not to come.” Gently, her words slow and kind, Aggie said, “Your path was one of jealousy and insult.”

  Ayatas’s mouth tightened.

  “Your path was based upon the tales and stories you had heard as a child, the big sister who killed her enemies, who went to war when just a child. You could not live up to her. You did not believe that you could walk her path. And so you avoided her until you had need of her. Until you might use her as a weapon. Just as did the grandmother who taught her to kill. This was your insult.”