Death's Rival

father’s blood, sticky. The air cool as it hit the streaks of blood on my cheeks and forehead. “And I promised to kill them. I looked them in the face, silently, but promising that they would die. I was only five. I thought I hadn’t succeeded. Until I remembered the bearded man hanging over a fire circle.” This time, Aggie sat forward, her pupils wide in the firelight, her mouth opening slightly. “He was the yunega in my memory. There was an old woman, my grandmother. She poked him with a stick. I want to remember that. All of it. I think that is part of the dark, angry place inside.”

“Anger, building and storming,” Aggie said. I nodded. “Okay.” She put on the music, a wood flute, playing a haunting melody. She lifted a heavy, earthen pitcher and dripped water over the hot rocks with a ladle. It hissed and spat. Steam rose, the air growing close and humid. My sweating increased instantly. Aggie passed me a bottle of water and I opened the top and drank. The water tasted bitter, and I stopped midswallow, watching her. “It’s got a little something in it to help you remember,” she said. I grunted and finished the bottle, draining it.

Aggie took the empty and chose a smudge stick from the basket. She lit the end. A bitter, acrid smell filled the steamy room. I breathed in. Closed my eyes. Time passed.

The room grew much lighter, as if the door was open. I turned to it, and saw an old woman enter. She was wearing a shift, coarsely woven cotton over her naked body, bony legs showing beneath, her feet bare. “The yunega is dead,” she said. “Come.”

I stood, the clay floor chilling the soles of my bare feet. I was wearing a blue dress, which I saw in glimpses as I walked out of the house, down the trail to the small clearing. I kept my eyes low as we entered the open space. In the center of it was a circle of white quartz stones, with gray rocks inside and the remains of a fire— ashes and one blackened log. Something black hung above the cold fire. It dripped once, a drop of reddish water trickling down and falling into the ashes. I let my eyes rise to the blackened stumps. They had once been feet. Now they were scorched meat, with blisters above in the scarlet flesh. The skin had split and wept. I let my eyes rise up the man’s body.

His upper thighs were red and covered with dried blood. I smelled burned hair, and saw little blackened curls of hair on his skin. His manhood was gone, leaving only a patch of raw meat. I remembered his scream when it was removed—a long ululating wail. Above the wound was a white belly, hanging and slack, like a fish belly. His chest had brown nipples and hair, like the stomach of a dog. Men of Tsalagiyi did not have so much hair on their chests. Only the yunega had hair all over their bodies, like dogs or rats. My father’s chest had been smooth when I dipped my hand into his blood.

The white man who raped my mother hung from sharpened deer antlers that had been shoved through his shoulders. His hands were tied behind his back with rope. Lank hair, the color of acorns, fell forward, half hiding his bearded face. He had had no beard, only the mustache when Uni Lisi captured him. Now his face was scruffy, like a bear, with hair. His blue eyes were open and dry, staring down at his body. His mouth was open in a silent scream. With my skinwalker nose, I could smell his blood and the stink of rot, but white men always smelled of rot and unwashed bodies. “Are you sure he is dead, Elisi?” I asked.

Elisi picked up a stick from the fire and stabbed him. “He no longer bleeds.”

“Do we eat him?”

“No. Skinwalkers do not eat the bodies of our enemies. It is forbidden. It makes us sick.”

I nodded and turned away. “Good,” I said. I looked up at the leaves in the trees. They were golden and scarlet, with patches of blue sky showing through. “And the other one?” I asked.

“He is next.”

* * *

I swam back up from the vision of fall leaves and blue sky. I was gasping and wet with sweat. The thin cloth tied above my breasts and hanging to my knees was soaked and limp as I shoved up with my elbows against the clay floor. “Elis—” I stopped, my throat so dry I couldn’t speak. Aggie handed me another bottle of water. I opened it and drank it down, and nothing had ever tasked so good.

A demon had told me recently that I had never taken vengeance on my enemies. That he had killed my grandmother in the snow, as he had killed many of the Cherokee on the Trail of Tears. The demon had lied. A laugh escaped my mouth, half hysterical with shock. The demon had lied. Fierce joy threaded through me, weaving into my soul. “Elisi killed him. My grandmother killed him.”

Aggie nodded slowly. “Your grandmother was a warrior woman, like those of old.” There was no condemnation in the tones. “Did you see it? Did she make you watch his death?”

I started to shake my head and stopped. I had a quick image of leaves, dark and thick, over my face. Beyond them was fire, a man hanging over it, screaming. Three women worked over him, mostly naked, wearing only thin shifts, their clothes draped across nearby bushes. The women were Etsa, my mother, and her sister, and Elisi. “I wasn’t supposed to see it,” I whispered. “But I hid. I watched. Until he started screaming so bad. When they cut him.”

I looked at Aggie. “I led my grandmother to him. To them. I caused their deaths.”

“And is that part of the storm inside you, child?”

I shook my head, stopped, and nodded, uncertain. “I think that there’s more. I need to remember the rest.”

Aggie looked as if she would disagree, but after a long indecisive moment, she passed me another bottle of water. “One bottle should have kept you in the dream place for many hours. No one has ever needed two.”

I stopped with the bottle halfway to my mouth, watching her.

“Did your grandmother have yellow eyes like you?” she asked

Holding her gaze, I drank the drugged water down. Recapped the bottle. Handed it back to her. “Yes. So did my father.”

“I see.” And I was afraid that she did indeed see. Before I could comment, the dreams took me again.

* * *

The yunega was in a cave up the hill beyond Elisi’s house, bound and naked. I squatted before him, bare feet on the smooth clay floor, my hands clasped between my knees. “Did you see what they did to him, to your friend?” I asked. “They will do much worse to you.” The man looked at me. He was yunega. He did not understand the speech of Tsalagiyi. He was staring at my face. It was still crusty with the traces of the blood of my father. I wouldn’t wash it until my vengeance was done. I smiled. He shrank back against the cave wall.

* * *

The night was cold and wind blew through the trees, whispering and sighing, and golden leaves swirled on the night air. But I was warm in the coat that had once belonged to the killer of my father. It had been in the saddlebags of his horse, wrapped up in brown paper and twine. It was too big, but it was warm and red, the color of blood.

The last yunega had been brought to the clearing. He was gagged. Naked. Tied. He was lying on his stomach, screaming into the dirt as Elisi pounded deer antlers through his shoulders with a huge piece of white quartz the size of a human head. I was with the women this time, sitting on a log at the fire, not hiding. The wind skirled through the clearing, setting the leaves dancing. I pulled my new coat closer and the women hauled on ropes, lifting the man into the air and over the fire circle. There was no fire tonight. Tonight the women each held knives. I too had a knife, my first blade. It felt strange in my hand, cold as the winter wind, sharp as the pain in my heart at the death of my father. We gathered close. Etsa, my mother, made the first cut.

* * *

When I woke much later, it was night, and the sweathouse was cool and empty, the fire out, Aggie One Feather gone. I was alone. And I knew why Aggie One Feather thought me angry and full of storms. I knew. Slowly I stood and went outside into the night. Winter had come in the past hours. It was cool, with a north wind blowing. I removed my cloth covering and placed it in the basket for used sweat clothes. Turning the faucet on, I washed the smoke and sweat from me, the cool well water sluicing me clean—the washing part of the ritual—a cleansing after the pain of old memories. On the narrow shelf high above the faucet, there was a scrub brush, new, still in its plastic wrap, a new bar of soap, and shampoo in a small bottle like the kind hotels leave on the counters for the forgetful patron. They were gifts from Aggie. I opened them all and applied