the sweathouse. These were harsh and acerbic and stung my nose.
The longhouse was dark, lit only by a large fire. Men were moving around the fire, each with their left arm out to the flames. Dancing. It was a war dance. My father was in the circle, long legs bare, a breechclout covering his middle. His body was painted with white chalk and ocher and black ashes. His hair was braided in a complicated pattern and there were feathers in his headband, oddly, all hanging down. His bone-and-teeth necklace popped up and down with each step, his toes spread wide. He wore bone anklets and they clattered with each step.
A drum was in the hands of an old man, face lined and eyes whitened by age, his body wrapped in woven robes and a bearskin, the fur turned inward for warmth. The old man was sitting at north, tapping on the drum, a complicated six-beat rhythm, and tiny shells and hollow wood reeds rang with each beat. Rain pattered on the roof overhead. Smoke swirled on the slow air.
I was sitting with Uni lisi, her smell that of cat and owl and strong woman. Beside her was the outclan priestess of the vampires. Sabina.
Another shock of electricity zinged through me. I was back in my sweathouse. I tapped the raccoon skin top. The single thrum was sharp. The bells tinkled. Just like my memory. I was holding a war drum of the Tsalagi. I had no idea where it had come from. Or when the memory had been except that I was very young. Three? Four? Sabina had been there. With my grandmother, who smelled like an owl. I shivered and the bells shrilled with my motion. A memory of Sabina in my own distant past was alarming. Why had Sabina been allowed to be present at a war dance? Why had I? The war dance was only for the men and the beloved women—the war women.
Sabina was Mediterranean. Had her olive skin and prominent nose been enough like The People for her to be considered one of them? Had she mesmerized them? Drank them down? Left them blood-drunk?
“Crap,” I whispered.
I shook the drum. It rang, shrill and strident. New sweathouse. War drum. New memory and a weird one at that.
Maybe the memory came because I’d be breaking in a new elder soon, whenever she managed to get here, out in the boonies. Had the new elder sent a war drum to me? My new Cherokee Elder, found for me by Aggie One Feather, was from Long Hair Clan. Not my clan. Not a skinwalker. But still—an Elder of The People. I wondered what would happen if I showed up in half-form and scared the heck out of her. I might get my knuckles rapped or something.
The sweathouse door closed behind me with a bang and I jumped. War drum bells rang. Outside, a gust of wind hit the sweathouse. Feeling silly, I set down the drum and crossed my arms over my narrow waist, gripping my elbows; boney, knobby joints like river stones. And wondered how my soul home would look, with another elder leading me to healing. I figured I was going to hate it.
It was now intensely dark inside. The sweathouse was small, able to hold six people at most. I hadn’t noticed the icy air outside but somehow, in the sweathouse, with no flames in the firepit, no fire-heated rocks, no smell of smoke and ash and herbs that I was used to, the air felt colder. Sterile. Waiting. Did sweathouses need to be smudged? Probably.
I closed my eyes and thought about my soul home. The dark. The hollow echo of water dripping. My mind dropped into the place where my life force resided. The awareness of the air changed, warmed slightly.
I opened my eyes and raised them. Studied the open area of the cave-like place. Like the sweathouse, there was no fire. No flicker of flames, no warmth. No movement of air. It was as if my soul home had stopped breathing and gone cold. It felt empty. Lonely.
The wide space had a smooth floor and walls, stalactites and stalagmites hanging and rising, a few meeting in the middle in bizarre-shaped columns. No sign of Beast. A medicine bag hung on my chest. My father’s medicine bag. Here, it was no longer tattered and faded, the deer hide still smelling of tannins and dyes. I was wearing pants and a long shirt wrapped and tied