I was War Woman. I was meant to kill.
But . . . I was never meant to enjoy it, to take pleasure in it. My uni lisi hadn’t taken pleasure in the deaths of the men who killed my father. It was a job, a responsibility, and she did it well. That was all. That was what she was trying to teach me when she put the knife into my hand. That lesson was my obligation—to see that I performed my job well, for good and for life, not for death. Weird as all that seemed.
I closed my eyes and sought my center, my core, the dark place in the midst of myself that was my soul home. Here I found a peace of a sorts, though it was far from the peace of the soul that the redeemer brought. It was a cavern, dark and damp, smelling of flames from a dancing fire. And the redeemer had never been here. There had never been that kind of peace here.
I opened my eyes to see the flames, to smell the burned, dried herbs, sharp and astringent. In the dream state, I was dressed in deer hide, tanned in the old way, the way of the Tsalagi. The leggings brushed against me as I walked, to my right, toward the shadows, my moccasins tied tightly to my feet, making my passage silent. I was carrying a blade in my right hand. A steel blade, exactly like the one Edoda carried in the memory of the fish gall and the lesson learned. It was oft honed, the cutting edge curved and sharp and promising death. I carried it to the niche in the wall, where the black big-cat slept.
The black cat—not truly a lion, but something else, something known only to my dream state—was not without defenses, even here, in daylight, should I try to hurt him. But I had no intention of hurting him. I only wanted to free myself from him. I could let my anger against him go. I could find that much peace.
With my left hand, I reached up and touched the mountain lion tooth that hung around my neck on a leather thong, and I entered the gray place of the change. There, in the gray, flashing energies of the skinwalker, I bent and took the silver chain that shackled me to Leo Pellissier and I cut it with the steel knife. In the way of dreams, the metal parted easily, falling into two pieces. They landed on the floor of the cavern with a clanking rattle.
Leo opened his lion eyes and stared at me. “Jane?” he said.
“Yes. You are free.”
And Leo thinned into a mist and smoked away, the air of his passing smelling like sweetgrass and cedar and papyrus. The smoke rose in a spiral and touched the curved ceiling of my soul home to spread slowly on the calm air.
His passing left my soul home cleansed, like the burning of aromatic and bitter herbs.
I turned slowly, knowing what I would see behind me. Whom I would see.
Beast was on a ledge, at head height, stretched out, chin on her paws, her amber eyes watching me. “I’m not a killer only,” I said to her. “And I’ve gotten used to you being here. Even if it makes me insane, I’d like you to stay.”
“I/we should be together,” she said aloud. “We are much more than Jane and Puma concolor alone.”
It was the first time I had really heard Beast’s voice. It was softer than I would have thought, and purring. Not unlike Molly’s familiar. I reached out a hand to Beast and scratched her behind her ears. The purring increased in volume. “Molly is in danger still,” Beast said. “KitKit is not enough to contain her death magics.”
“Yeah. I know. But you are.”
Beast chuffed with laughter and closed her eyes. And I woke in the church. It was still empty.
Silently, without speaking to anyone, I left the church.
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