Blood in Her Veins (Nineteen Stories From the World of Jane Yellowrock)(7)

Something white caught my eye. I stopped. Frozen. Still. Where had I seen it? What?

Rain rolled down my face to hang on my nose and jaws, to drip from the end of my braid. I was at the bottom. Too far right. I moved left, slightly uphill, my feet squishing with the wet that rolled down my ankles into my boots.

I saw the glimmer of white quartz beneath a matting of soil and decades of leaves. I raced to it, knelt, and brushed away the detritus that hid it. And saw the faint line of gold trailing through the quartz. I touched my necklace. The same gold. The same exact gold: from this place, from this rock.

I sobbed hard, a concussive explosion of trapped agony. It was real. All this time. The memories, the dreams. All real.

Unbalanced, I slid downhill, my feet unsteady on the steeply pitched hillside. Caught myself on trailing branches and an oak trunk. Trying to think. How had white man not seen dalonige’i? The yellow rock. The gold he lusted after. How had it remained hidden?

Slightly above me, the ground around the boulder gave way, carrying with it pebbles and dirt and a few fist-sized rocks. Erosion had hidden the boulder. Floods had uncovered it, hidden it, and uncovered it again. And though the trees had been raped from the earth by the white man, though they had trampled all over the chasm, they had missed it. The boulder was still here.

My feet, precariously perched in the mud, slid out from me, and I sat down hard, landing with a splat in a runnel of water. A roar of white water sounded nearby, running off Horseshoe Rock above, the runoff grown to a river in the rain. Leaves bowed down, and droplets still drummed, and creeks appeared that had been empty only moments ago. Long minutes passed. I leaned a shoulder against the white quartz stone. Lifted a hand to rest against it, my fingers splayed on the cool stone. It’s real. . . .

Rain raced over me, dribbled through my fingers onto the quartz. I’d found it. I had found the place of my dream. The only thing I had of my past. The one thing that the voice that possessed me and I agreed upon. This rock.

What had happened here? How long ago?

A shiver caught me up. I was so cold. My fingers were blue gray against the white quartz. I stood and moved uphill to a slightly more level place and stripped, tossing my wet clothes across a branch, careless even with the jacket and boots. I opened my knapsack and pulled out my sleeping bag, glad that the pierced and tattooed greenie who sold it to me had insisted that I buy the best rainproof brand. I dried off as well as I was able and climbed inside the bag, zipped it closed, and tied off the hood that protected my face. A mini-tent.

Encased, I curled into the fetal position and stared at the rock, unable to take my eyes off of it. My shivering eventually eased. The day died. As long as there was light, I stared at the white quartz boulder. With the thin vein of gold running up its side.

Dreams began the moment darkness fell, the night wet and chilly and utterly black. I was so deep in the chasm that there was no sky, no moon, no stars, not even clouds to spit out the rain. Yet rain still fell. My body vibrated, shuddering with tremors that I felt in every muscle, every nerve fiber, every cell. My flesh sparked and tingled, itching and painful, like a bad sunburn.

In my dream I untied the sleeping bag and looked down inside. At my body. If clouds were made of light instead of water vapor, they would look like this, like me, all sparkly silver, thrust through with motes of blackness that danced and whirled. The vaguely human-shaped mist coalesced, thickened, and eddied around me. Was me.

In my dream I stared as night rain beat down on the sleeping bag. I saw the snake in my body, deep in my cells, thousands of snakes, millions, each a double helix of snakes, twisted and writhing. And I saw the other snake, in my memory. The snake of the voice. The snake of the presence.

And I . . . shifted. Changed.

The grayness enveloped me. My body bent and flowed like water—or like hot wax, a viscous, glutinous liquid, full of gray light and gray shadows and black motes of power. The bones beneath my flesh popped and cracked. Pain arced through me like lightning. I heard my grunting scream, muted for lack of breath. The agony was a blade, slicing me bone from bone, nerve from nerve, fiber from fiber. Agony that went on and on. Whirling like a tornado of torture.

My breathing changed.

The light that was my body grew brighter, the dark motes within me darker.

Both began to dissipate. I slept.

Day came slowly, rain dropping with sharp splats onto the wet ground. Night bird sounds gave way to morning birds.

Hard to catch. Not enough to eat. My stomach rumbled, low growl of the hunter.

I crawled from bag, leaving behind earrings and gold necklace on wet cloth. I stepped from the sleeping bag, unsteady on four feet. Paws. With claws. I flexed my claws out, happy to see them clean and bright, slightly yellow in pale dawn. It had been long. Many years. Many moons. She was in control too long this time.

I—Beast—stepped down the slope to water, to a pool gathered in a shallow basin below the white boulder. The rock that tied us together as one. She did not remember why. But I—Beast—did. I am good hunter. I forget nothing.

I lapped at pool and then, hungry, snatched at human bag of human food. Bloodless, dead meat. But here. With strong claws, tore into bag and into other bags, scattering smoked meat across ground. Wolfed it down. Salty. Cold. Satisfied for now. Sat, grooming, above the water pool. In its reflection saw a mountain lion sitting, eyes golden, with human-shaped pupils. Puma concolor. Mountain lion. Big-cat.

Heard scurrying in leaves. I froze. Slow steps sounded from downhill. Dainty. From upwind. Four legs. Tiny hooves. Smelled deer.