I maneuvered out of the campground, parked out of the way, and got out to reconnoiter, leaning against the armored vehicle, the metal warm beneath my skin, wild grasses moving against my skirt and boots. I let Beast rise slowly to the surface, her senses expanding. I could discern her heartbeat, slower when at rest than mine, beating strongly beneath my own, a mystical sensation, powerful in my memory. The night, dark beneath the overhead foliage, grew perceptibly brighter as my pupils widened with Beast-sight. My lips parted and drew in air over tongue and through my nose, the way big-cats scent, though I had no scent sacs in the roof of my mouth like Beast.
Even to my human nose the night breeze was sun-heated and rich with the perfume of the earth, river-wet from the French Broad only feet from me. Fish and water plants. Warm stone and old campfires, turtles, wild undergrowth mixed with escaped garden plants, basil in flower and something spicy-bitter. But no human scent nearby. No human sound or voice carried on the air. I was alone. I started to pant in the warmth. The engine pinged softly beneath my hands.
Good night for hunt, Beast thought at me. Moon is big, like pregnant doe.
I carried my supplies to the base of the Paint Rock. The red rock cliff was jagged and broken, rising a hundred feet or more above the French Broad River. It was once covered with ancient paintings, paintings that predated the Cherokee, drawn in red pigments, but time and the elements and the stupidity of man had erased most of them. Humans had spray-painted their names and ancient-looking figures over large parts of the fractured surface. But with the breath of the river flowing across the earth, the place still had power.
I opened the steaks and dropped them on the smooth earth at the base of the massive rock, the meat still chilled from the store’s refrigeration. With the roll of paper towels, I cleaned my hands and put the wrapping and foam containers into the grocery bag and sealed them. Carried the trash back to the SUV.
I stripped in the front seat and left my clothes in a pile on the floor, hoping no one would tow my vehicle, but not really caring if they did. Grabbing up my supplies, I stepped from the SUV, barefoot and soundless, my travel pack under one arm. Opening the zipper bag containing my fetish necklace, I set the necklace of the Puma concolor over my head. It was made of the claws, teeth, and small bones of the biggest female panther I had ever seen, the cat killed in Montana during a legal hunt, the pelt and head mounted on some bigwig’s living room wall, the bones and teeth sold through a taxidermist. The mountain lion was hunted throughout the western United States and thought to be extinct in the eastern states, though some reports said they were making a comeback east of the Mississippi. One could hope. I didn’t have to use the necklace to shift into this creature—the memory of Beast’s form was always a part of me—but it was easier. I locked the SUV.
Already it felt weird walking on two legs, as Beast moved up from the deeps into my thoughts. Barefoot, the wild grasses sharp and cutting on my calves and thighs, the rough surface of the earth rocky beneath my tender soles. I returned to the Paint Rock and the stack of raw, bloody steaks on the ground.
Beast wanted to lick them. I held her still, though my stomach was rumbling. I was panting, salivating. Hungry, she thought. Because Beast is something outside my skinwalker nature—an independent entity who shares my body and, more and more often, my mind—I don’t have complete control over her. And I know, in my bones, that if other skinwalkers exist, they don’t have a Beast-soul living inside. We had ended up together through an accident, if black magic can be accidental, and thinking about it always left me feeling uneasy.
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.