had stopped shaking and was feeling almost warm, which was a dangerous sign of hypothermia. That told me my half-form was subject to extreme temperatures. Good to know, if I survived the cold this time. Holding the feather in my right fingers, I pulled my icy but dry clothes on over my damp pelt and trudged to the sweathouse, my bare paw-feet barely lifting from the snow.
My toes caught a root. I tumbled into a drift. Face-planted. And the snow didn’t feel cold. Great. I was freezing to death. I managed to struggle upright, to my feet. Eli was laughing, a hearty chuckle on the morning air. If my hands had worked, I’d have flipped him off. As if he knew what I was thinking, he laughed harder. I held on to the feather and, feeling like a drowned rat, made my way back to the sweathouse. Opened the door. Heat boiled out, steamy and herbal, and I closed the door behind me fast, breaking out into a shiver so violent my fangs clattered.
CHAPTER 8
Pain Is a River . . . and Anger Like a Great Fire
The woman wasn’t watching me, so I set down the feather, stripped at the door, hung my damp clothes on an empty hook, and pulled on a shift from the stack on the table. Woven unbleached cotton with little nubs in the weave. I hauled it over my shoulders and tugged it down my wet body, and when I wasn’t an embarrassment to myself, I picked up the feather and dropped my body at the fire pit, letting the heat soak into me. “That s-s-s-s-sucked.”
“Mmmm. It was supposed to. I am Savannah Walkingstick of Long Hair Clan, an Elder of The People.”
“Not my c-c-c-clan,” I chattered, “not a skinwalker.”
“No. There are no skinwalkers left among the Tsalagi.”
Which meant she didn’t know about my family. Interesting. “I’m here.”
“You are a self-described monster. Skinwalkers were once the men and women who led us into battle. According to my grandfather, the last one was put down like a rabid dog in 1872, in Oklahoma, for eating the liver from the still-living body of a small child.”
She was baiting me. Deliberately. Were her words part of the ceremony? Or was she just mean? Or . . . she was afraid of me and this was a form of defense. Yeah. That.
I let her words sink in as I shivered, remembering the vision of Eli killing me when I turned into a liver-eater. Maybe there was a reason to fear me. I reached back and pulled my messy braid around to drip on the clay floor, my movement releasing the odor of wet cat. I placed the feather on the floor between my bent knees. “Why are you here? Why did Aggie One Feather pick you to lead me through ceremony and not someone like Hayalasti Sixmankiller? We’re in the same clan.” I leaned in toward the fire, though the heat was intense and my shivering increased.
Savannah sniffed. “That old woman? She may be old enough to be an Elder, but she has no wisdom or healing in her heart or hands. My father was an Elder and his father before him was a Medicine Man. I can lead you to healing of the spirit if such is possible for your kind of monster.”
Which told me that Savannah didn’t know that Sixmankiller was my grandmother. And she truly had no idea she was a skinwalker. Or how old she was. Interesting and interestinger. “And if my kind can’t be led to healing?”
“Then I will help your people take you to the top of the mountain and throw you from the heights to the rocks below.”
Well. At least she was honest.
She added shavings of wood to the fire and flame flared. The smell of cedar smoked into the room. Her eyes settled on the feather at my knees. “Where did you get the eagle feather?” she asked, though it was more a demand than a simple question.
“It was on the snow at the creek bank. I figured you put it there.”
Savannah frowned at me, her lips and jowls pulling down hard, making vertical tracks in her face. “I would never give you a primary flight feather. Mother Eagle herself gave you that feather.” Savannah snorted softly, a familiar, tribal sound, full of emotion. She clearly thought Mother Eagle had made a bad choice. “Yesterday, an eagle left me a feather. A golden eagle tail feather. That we both received a