Raven Cursed

I pulled the go-bag over my head and positioned my gold nugget on its double gold chain, swinging free. Together, they looked like an expensive collar and tote, making Beast look like an escaped exotic pet. I leaned into the Paint Rock and scraped the gold nugget across a space unmarked with human names, depositing a thin streak of gold. The gold was like a homing beacon, among other things, a way to find my way back, if I was lost after a hunt.

Yesssss. Hunt, Beast thought at me. She was ready to scope out the territory, unfamiliar hunting ground, though it was close to Asheville and seemed like a location we might have explored. Naked, I sat on a sun-heated stone and closed my eyes, feeling the power of the world in this place, the strength of the breath of mother Earth. I shivered in the remnant heat. Holding the fetish necklace, I closed my eyes. Relaxed. Listened to the wind, the pull of the moon, rising above the horizon. I felt the beat of my own heart, and Beast’s. She rose in me, silent, predatory.

I slowed the functions of my body, let my heart rate decrease, let my muscles relax, the rock wall against my back, facing the moving water. Mind clearing, I sank deep inside, my consciousness falling away, all but the purpose of this hunt. That purpose I set into the lining of my skin, into the deepest parts of my brain, as I always did, so I wouldn’t lose it when I shifted, when I changed, because oftentimes, right after a shift, Beast had complete control, while my own spirit and mind slept. I dropped lower, deeper, into the darkness within me where old pain and memories swirled in a shadowed world fouled with blood and fear. The night wind on my skin cooled. The river whispered a susurration, leaves moved and sighed. Memories firmed, memories that, at all other times, were half forgotten, both mine and Beast’s.

As I had been taught so long ago, I sought the inner snake lying inside the bones and teeth of the necklace, the coiled, curled snake of DNA, deep in the cells, in the remains of the marrow. For my people, for skinwalkers, it had always simply been “the inner snake.”

I took up the snake that rests in the depths of all beasts and I dropped within. Like water trickling through cracked rock and down a mountain. Grayness enveloped me, sparkling and cold as winter. The world fell away. I was in the gray place of the change.

My breathing deepened. Heart rate sped. My bones . . . slid. Skin rippled. Fur, tawny and gray, brown and tipped with black, sprouted. Painpainpain, like a knife, cut between muscle and bone. My ear tabs bent and twisted, listening, and my nostrils widened, drawing deep.

She fell away. Night was fierce and bright in mountain hunting place. Crags and cliffs rose all around, with water flowing fast, earth breathing. I drew in air over tongue, a long scree of sound. Scents long remembered filled nose and mouth and mind: thick mist above river, air scented with taste of home. Smell of soil and fire. Plants strong with fall seeds. Old smell of rabbit. Blood from cow, old and cold. I panted. Listened to sounds— music from far, far away, sound of car along gravel road, not close but coming. Streams talking softly in mountain-water tongue, so different from bayou-water tongue. Familiar sound of home. Gathered limbs beneath me and padded to dead meat. I ate.

Later, moon still high, I cleaned paws and claws and groomed face and whiskers free from cold dead cow blood and hot deer blood. Yearling buck walked along road where I ate. Buck had never smelled big-cat before. Was not afraid. Stupid deer. Good meat. Fresh hot blood, good blood from easy hunt. Beast was good hunter. Full belly.

Hunt now? Jane said in back of mind. Hunt for wolves. Search for scent of grindylow.

I rose and padded away from wide river, into darker night under trees. Found trickling creek and followed it uphill, past campground, into wild country. Smelled scent of wolf. They had been here.

How long ago? Jane asked, her thoughts excited.

Two days and two nights. Have not returned.

Can you tell how they came in here? What roads did they use?

Turned and turned, sniffing wind. Small road is high in hills. Smell of gasoline and man chemicals that poison the earth.

Can we go there?

Beast is good hunter. Can go where I please. I padded through dark woods, leaping from stone to stone or high into trees, following scent on ground from high in air. Wolves had to walk on ground, and could not hunt from up high. Could not leap as Beast did. I had hunted and killed wolves long ago, wolves who had killed Beast’s prey in the hunger times. Pack hunters, I spat, hissing. Hate pack hunters. Thieves of food.

Found place where man had fouled the earth, dumping poisoned blood of machine onto ground, stink strong in air. Jane had tried to explain about machines. Not alive. Not dead. But machine has blood and hard parts like bone, and sometimes growls and is sometimes dead but not dead, like vampire. Confusing. Man is confusing. Man’s world is confusing. And dangerous. Sniffed machine blood. Old and bitter smell.

A four-by-four, off-road vehicle, Jane thought. They’re illegal in the parks. Either the wolves came in on little-used roads and the rangers didn’t catch them, or this is private land.

Trotted farther on flat place along hillside. Smooth like road but grassy under paws.

Old logging road, Jane thought.

Logging humans stole trees from land. Was reason two for hunger times. Fire that followed was three. Killed mountains for many-more-than-five years. No live prey anywhere. Man is stupid. Man is dangerous.

Jane did not respond. Soon found place where wolves changed from man to wolf. Old bloody bones scattered on ground. Cold, old chickens, wrapped in smelly plastic. Blood full of water and smelling rank. Looked back at logging road, thinking. Man-wolves came here on machine, like car but not like car. Changed. Hunted. Came back, got on machine, and left. Why? I asked Jane. I do not smell blood from hunt. They did not bring down prey.

Jane drew in air like hiss of snake. They came to make more. They came to turn humans. They entered campground on, Jane tried to count back days, but was tired and confused, maybe Friday night. Crap. They were here and they bit someone and they left. They bit a lot of people that night.

And people are gone. Full of werewolf sickness. No way to track who they bit.

Jane cursed. Some words are bad, some are not, but all are just words. Humans are confusing. I headed along wolf trail, following scent and spoor. Found two places where humans had been bitten. One was abandoned house, full of mold and roaches and rats. Human man had been sleeping there, had not bathed, had fouled his own den for days. Jane called him squatter. Wolves had bitten him and left. Man had left too, stinking of blood and fear. Outside, smelled where he had gotten in car and driven off.

Impossible to find, now, Jane thought at me. It’s like an epidemic. If he gets away, and he turns furry, he’ll try to bite humans. Crap, crap, and double freaking crap.

Moved on, following scent trail. Other place was campsite near river. Man and woman had been together. They had fought wolves. Both had died and been eaten.

No one had discovered bodies. Humans cannot smell fresh death. Humans do not see when buzzards mark place of the dead. Jane would tell humans. Snarl on face, I left and padded to river to wash old human blood from paws. Dawn was not far off. The mist of river had risen, as if trying to reach up to clouds pushing in through the sky where sun fell at night. I stepped into river and drank, letting water wash paws, cool belly. And leaped onto rock, then to another, and then a hard, strong leap to middle of river, to a boulder larger than the others, gray and brown in the night. Standing high above water, to see world. Good place to see the sun.

* * *

The sun was rising over the eastern curve of the river when I shifted back, in the middle of the river. Beast had lain down on a night-cool rock out in the open, the river rushing around the boulder, a soft, pulsing froth. She had watched the sky lighten to a dull gray, her belly still full. Happy. Ignoring my pleas to return to land. And at the last moment, before the sun’s rays slanted over the earth, she had let me shift back. And there I was, in the middle of the French Broad River. Naked and exposed. And no way back to shore without a river-swim rock-crawl. Beast thought it was funny, her hacking laughter clear in the back of my mind. I’m not sure if her sense of humor