Mercy Blade

And with the command, a trace of worry curled around me, faint and wispy, like a finger of smoke, questioning. Why would Evangelina ask about my soul home? Ask about my shadow self? But the worry escaped, like smoke through a longhouse smoke hole.



“I see my shadow on the walls. I see Dalonige’i Digadoli. A girl. She is four, maybe five. Or twelve. I can’t tell. She . . . shifts and flickers.” I smiled. “And the shadow of tlvdatsi sits facing her. Staring at her in the darkness. Like two . . .” I forced up my hands, lifting them from the floor despite their extraordinary weight. I spread my fingers, turned my hands toward each other, fingertips touching. “Like this.” I let my fingers slide together, interlacing, until my palms touched and my fingers curled around, making a two-handed fist.



“Till dot si?” She mangled the word.



Beast thought at me, All yunega are foolish about spirits of animals. Foolish about spirits of Earth. I repeated the word properly, so the white woman would not insult the spirit of my Beast. “Tlvdatsi. It sounds whispered, almost. The People do not shout their words like the white man.”



“There are two of you in this heart of the world?”



“Yes. Always two of us.”



Her voice changed. Her scent changed. “No. There is only one. One of you. Look again. See the girl.”



“Two,” I said.



She paused a moment, as if uncertain, before saying, “This tlvdatsi. It is always with you? Part of you?”



“V v.” Yes, in the tongue of the People.



She spoke softly again, as if to another. “It may be some Cherokee archetype, something I don’t understand. She needs a Cherokee shaman.”



“Egini Agayvlge i,” I said. I struggled to find her white man name. “Aggie One Feather. She knows.”



“I see. She is your shaman?”



“Elder. Elder of the People. Of Tsalagi.”



“She’s seeing someone, I think, a counselor. That’s good, Jane. That’s very good. I want you to relax. There’s no need to struggle or feel worried or anxious. This heart of the world is your soul home. The place where you envision your soul to be. It’s safe and warm and all yours.”



I nodded, relaxing once again. On the cave wall, Beast’s shadow flicked an ear tab. I put out a hand and stroked her pelt along her neck, down across her shoulder. Her muscles and sinews were strong. Her breath smoothed, and she purred softly.



“Jane, tell me what you are.”



“Evie, no!”



“Shut up. Tell me what you are.”



The worry rose again, like smoke from old coals. My shadow self tilted its head, ear tabs flicking, snout wrinkling to show killing teeth, sharply pointed. “No,” I said. It came out hoarse, chuffed. A warning.



“Stop it, Evangelina.” Bruiser’s voice. “This is wrong.”



“Fine,” the woman snapped. A long moment later she spoke, her voice again calm, soothing. “Jane. I want you to remember the last time you looked into this place. I want you to compare it to now. I want you to layer one vision over the other.”



“Yes.”



I/we are Beast. Better than Jane. Better than big-cat, Beast thought. We are more.



“Yes.” My voice dropped, a low growl of sound. My place. My den. Mine. This was the cave from before. Long before. The rounded, damp roof of stone, the walls melting like wax. The pillars reaching up and down. Light glinting through the darkness. The scent of burned herbs and wood smoke. The drums. The smell of blood and fat and earth and the sweat of the People.



“Search out the differences, Jane. Tell me what you see. Tell me what you remember.”



I stood on four legs and two. The shadows on the wall merged into one, a form with no certain shape, both cat and human, furred and skinned, four pawed and two footed. A shadow shimmering with black motes of light.



I turned slowly, walking in a circle. My breath a pant. Seeing. On one wall were circles and swirls painted in soot and fat and crushed pigments. Carved into the stone were arrows pointing to the right. Lines parallel. Lines like waves—the symbols of the People. And there were paw prints. They padded across the rounded stone roof of the world, big-cat paws in the red of old blood. Human footprints walked beside the paw prints, up and over the roof of the world. Side by side.



I reached out a hand/paw and touched them. They were cool to my touch. The paw and footprints had not been here, the last time I was here in the flesh, as a child of four or five. This was the cave of my being. Evidence of my life. There were also white man symbols, brought here since Jane had been alpha, diamonds and stars, signs and ciphers, and an image of a cross that burned.



My eyes followed the paw prints up across the walls, onto the roof, and into the far corners, where the light did not burn so brightly, where shadows crouched like spiders and hung like bats. And there I saw the hands. Hands did not belong in this place. The Cherokee did not mark rites of passage or lay claim to the caves, not as the ancient white man did. They did not make handprints on cave walls. The hands were not of Jane or of cat. They were other.



“Hands,” I whispered. “Hands on the roof of the world.” I tilted my head to see them. Blue hands in circles of white. White hands in circles of blue. Pigments, signs of ownership applied to the walls of my soul house. I growled low, pulling back lips to show killing teeth.



I could see how it had been done, how each kind of hand-print had been made. For the blue handprints, pigments had been crushed and mixed with fat or spit. The paste had been applied to the hand and the blue prints pressed against the walls. For the white handprints in circles of blue, the pigments had been crushed and sucked up into a reed. A hand had been placed on the cave wall, and the pigments had been blown over it, leaving the un-pigmented print. It was as if to say, I have been here. This is my place.



“Woad,” I said. “Woad.” And I struggled upward from the darkness as I understood. Woad. Yes. Woad. Woad was a European herb, an invasive herb that took over gardens, an herb used to make blue dye. Gee did this. Gee used woad to mark my soul house.



I fought the pull of the heart of the world. I tried to stand, but the weight of the world was great, holding me down. “He came here. He marked my place.” I growled, exposing killing teeth, my tongue finding them blunt and human. Hands fisted, blunt nails pressing into palms.



“Relax, Jane. It’s okay, Jane. You are safe in your soul room. You are safe here. And we can make him go away.”



I looked up, seeing the handprints. And beside one was a pink flower. A rose. It hadn’t been there a moment past. I tilted my head, studying the rose, considering its meaning in this place of my soul. It smelled of roses and wormwood, sweet and bitter both. And it was put there with magic—witch magic. Evangelina had set her spell on me, tracing the lines of the Mercy Blade’s magic. Beast snorted, a hacking blend of anger and amusement. “Fire,” I whispered. “I can make them both go away. With my fire. The fire in my soul home.”



“Fire is dangerous, Jane. Let’s think of another way.” She sounded fearful.



Beast is not afraid. Beast is strong. “Fire,” the word was growled.



“No, Jane,” she crooned, “I want you to step away from the place of the soul. From the place where the hands are printed on the ceiling. I want you to come back to me, to us, to yourself, here in your house.”



“House is not mine,” I said. “Cave in the heart of the world is mine. Is ours.”



“I know,” she soothed.



In the cave at the heart of the world, I/we stood, the weight of the world heavy and thick against us. Our shadows rose with us. And they merged, merged, part tlvdatsi, part Dalonige’i Digadoli, part cat, part human. Our shadow was beautiful. Fearful. Deadly. The flames in the fire pit danced and rose. Water dripped. Drums beat faster, deeper, the beating heart of the world. The I/we of Beast, we whispered. Together we are more than big-cat and Jane.



We bent to the fire.



“Jane don’t—” White woman spoke, and I/we closed her voice out. Pushed it out of the cave. We bent over the fire, the scent rich and herbal and warm, and breathed in the sage and sweetgrass. We reached to the side and chose a thick sliver of wood, pointed on one end, sawn smooth on the other, one side wild and splintered, one side shaped by man’s hand. A stake. It was dry heartwood, its cedar scent resinous and tart. Heart wood to destroy the vampires we hunt and kill. Our hand closed over it, tlvdatsi claws at the ends of human fingers. Pelt, tawny and thick rose up over the bones of our arms. We hefted it and placed the splintered, sharp end of the stake into the flame. It took light. And we rose into the shadows.



The roof at the heart of the world reached down to us. With one hand, killing claws exposed, we scraped an eye from the cold stone. It glittered, lid closed as if sleeping, on our palm. With the other hand, we held the flame to the woad-made handprints. The fire from our torch blazed up, burning the woad, burning the handprints that had taken root. And in the center of each palm, a blue eye appeared, opened, and focused on us. Gee’s eyes, shocked. I stabbed at the eye in the center of a palm and it blinked away, but not before I drew blood. It splashed down onto my hand, copper and jasmine-scented. The flames blackened the stone of the roof and the woad lit, sizzling and hot. I stepped away as the flames roared up hot and cleansing. All the handprints took flame, all but the one I had stolen with my killing claws. “Mine,” I growled. “My place.”



I crouched on the stone floor and watched as the ceiling at the heart of the world flamed and burned. And was cleansed. It took a long time. And no time at all. And when it was done, I sat at my small fire pit and fed the stake into the coals, letting it too burn away. When the smoke cleared, the ceiling was clean again, only the soot above my small fire blacking the smooth rock. I lay down, folding my body, paws beneath me. And I closed my eyes.



I breathed out, and the movement of my chest, the contracting of my ribs, woke me. As the breath left me, I lay unmoving, as if still asleep, yet cracked open my eyes, seeing through my lashes. I focused on the ceiling twelve feet above me. It was smooth and painted white; shadows crouched in the corners, unmoving and without purpose, unlike the shadows of my vision, which had seemed alive and filled with evil intent. I was lying on my back with my head on a cushion, my body on a hardwood floor. I hadn’t started out in this pose, but had been moved, positioned so I could breathe easily. My clothes were intact, so I hadn’t shifted.