"Or what, Gram?" Billy prompted.
The old woman said softly, "Or you could lose yourself in other people's pain. Several members of our family . . . lost themselves that way, and took their own lives out of despair A couple of them tried to escape their purpose in liquor and drugs. One of your uncles, a long way back, lost his mind and spent his life in an asylum. ..."
That hit him like a fist to the back of his head. Tears welled in his eyes; maybe he was already about to "lose his mind," he thought with numbed horror After all, hadn't he seen a smoke-eagle and a fire-serpent fighting right in front of him? Hadn't he seen something evil dressed up in his daddy's skin? He sobbed, and haltingly he told his grandmother and Ramona what he'd witnessed. They listened intently, and it seemed to him that his grandmother's eyes were as black as coals in her brown, seamed face.
When he was finished, Rebekah dipped her sweatband in a bucket of cool well-water she'd brought in and wiped his face. The water's chill in the stifling smokehouse heat sent a delicious shock through him, calming his feverish brain. "They're pictures in your head, Billy. There'll be more before you're through. I think everybody has some eagle and some snake in them; they fight to pull your spirit high or drag it to the ground. The question is: which one do you let win, and at what price? The second thing you saw"—a shade seemed to pass before her face, like a thundercloud before the sun—"is what I warned you to watch for. You must've shown it you weren't afraid—but it won't give up so easily. Ramona, will you pass me that jug?" She unscrewed the sealed brown bottle Ramona had brought in with her and poured into the cup a thick dark liquid that smelled of sassafras and cinnamon.
"There may come a time, Billy," Rebekah continued softly, "when evil tries to crush you out, like someone snuffing a candle. It'll try to work on your weaknesses, to turn things around in your head so up is down and inside is out. I've seen that thing too, Billy—what looks like a wild boar—and it's so loathsome you can hardly bear to look at it. It used to taunt me in the night, when I was younger than your mother, and one morning not long ago I woke up to find all of my pottery shattered on the floor in the workshed. My house has caught fire before, for no reason at all. You remember that yellow mutt I had, named Chief? I never told you what really happened to him, but I found him scattered in the woods behind the house, like something had just torn him to pieces. That was the last dog I ever had. And what I mean to say is that the thing you saw—what my father used to call the 'shape changer' because it can take on any form it pleases—has been our enemy for a long, long time. Almost everyone in our family's seen it; it's a dangerous, sly beast, Billy, and it tries to hurt us through the people and things we care for. It probes for a weakness, and that's why we have to keep ourselves strong. If we don't, it could work on our mind—or maybe physically hurt us too."
"What is it?" His voice had dropped to a frail whisper "Is it the Devil, Gram?"
"I don't know. I just know it's very old, because even the first Choctaw spirit healers used to weave stories of the 'beast with skin of smoke.' There are tales of the shape changer going back hundreds of years—and some in our family, those who weren't strong enough to resist it, were either beguiled by its lies or torn to pieces by its hatred. You never know what it's planning, but it must sense a threat in you or it wouldn't have come to take a look at you."
"Why, Gram? Why does it hate us?"
"Because it's a greedy beast that uses fear to make itself stronger. It feeds like a hog at a trough on the human emotions of despair, torment, and confusion; sometimes it traps revenants and won't let them break away from this world. It feeds on their souls, and if there's a Hell, I suppose that must be it. But when we work to free those revenants, to take their suffering into ourselves and do something constructive with it, we steal from the shape changer's dinner table. We send those poor souls onward to where the shape changer can't get at them anymore. And that's why the beast wants nothing more than to stop your Mystery Walk."
"I don't know what to do!" he whispered.
"You have to believe in yourself, and in the Giver of Breath. You have to keep pressing forward, no matter what happens, and you can't turn away from your responsibility. If you do, you make a weak hole in yourself that the shape changer might try to reach into. The beast doesn't care about your mother or me anymore, Billy, because most of our work is done; it's you, the new blood, he's watching."
"Can it hurt me, Gram?"
"I don't know," she said, and thought of Chief's carcass scattered through the brush, pieces of him hanging from low tree branches as if he'd exploded from within.
"I want you to drink this, Billy. It'll help you sleep. We can talk more about it later " She gave him the cup of liquid from the jug. Its inviting aroma drifted up to him. His head felt like a lead cannonball, his bones aching from the heat. He thought he could easily fall asleep without drinking this stuff, but he sipped at it anyway; it was pleasantly sweet, though just underneath the sugar was a musky taste, like the smell of wild mushrooms growing in a green, damp place.
"All of it," Rebekah said. Billy drank it down. She smiled. "That's very good."
He smiled in return, through a mask of running sweat. The boar-thing was fading now, as all nightmares do in time. He stared into the embers, saw all the hundred variations of color between ale orange and dark violet, and his eyelids began to droop. The last thing he remembered seeing before the darkness closed in was the ceramic owl, watching over him from its smokehouse hook.
They left him lying on his back on the clay floor, the blanket wrapped around him like a heavy shroud. Outside, Rebekah locked the door. "No need for us to look in on him again until morning." She stretched, hearing her backbone creak. "Seems to me he understood everything pretty much, but it's his confidence needs working on. We'll start again tomorrow night."
"Will he be safe?" Ramona asked as they walked to the house, following the track of Rebekah's lantern.
"I hope so. He saw his twin natures, the good and the bad at war inside him, and he looked the shape changer in the face." They reached the back door, and Ramona stopped to peer through the darkness at the smokehouse. Rebekah laid a hand on her shoulder "Billy's already being poked and prodded, picked at for a weak spot. I didn't know it would start so soon. He resisted this time, but it won't return in that form again. No, the foe will be different and stronger. But so will Billy be, different and stronger."
"Should he know about the black aura yet?"
"No. He'll grow into seeing it, just like you did. I don't want to put that on him just yet." She regarded her daughter, her head cocked to one side. "He'll sleep through the day. If you hear him cry out, you're not to go in there and wake him up. His old life is being shattered so the new one can start. Do you understand?"
"Yes," Ramona said. "It's just that . . . he's alone."
"And that's how it has to be. After these three days are over you might be at his side, but the rest of the way he has to go alone. You knew that before you brought him to me." Rebekah squeezed her daughter's shoulder gently. "I was wrong about him; his blood may be tainted, but his heart and soul are strong. He'll make you proud, girl. Now come on and I'll make us a pot of tea."
Ramona nodded and followed her mother into the house, shutting the screen door quietly.
Within the smokehouse, the boy had curled up like an infant about to emerge into light.
FIVE
Black Aura