I’m not much of a cook, so the pancakes weren’t the prettiest things, but they didn’t have to be. Zara seemed impressed with them just the same. I placed a stack of three in front of her and squirted on some maple syrup. She reached in with her hands and picked the whole sticky sweet stack up, biting into it like it was a sandwich. I didn’t want to fight with explaining kitchen utensils, so I left her to it, reasoning it was easier to wash her and mop up the mess. She seemed like she could use the shower anyway.
I was waiting to flip the next set of pancakes when Sal knocked at my door. I wiped my hands on my apron and went to answer it. He’d opted to wear sweats and a tight-fitting tank top, despite the cold. Functional, especially considering he’d probably shift into his wolf form if he thought we were going snake hunting.
He frowned when I held the door and blocked his entrance. “What’s up? What’d you find?”
“Actually, this is more about what found me.”
“I take it from the fact you’re not letting me inside that I’m not going to like it.” Sal crossed his arms over his chest.
I definitely didn’t notice how the action made the muscle definition in his biceps even more prominent. “Do you remember the lady Logan Creed said he was looking for?”
“What about her?”
I opened the door the rest of the way and ushered Sal into my kitchen where Zara sat licking the plate. She looked up when we entered, tongue still lapping up the syrup while more of it poured into her lap.
Sal tilted his head to the side. “This is the dangerous murderer with a bounty on her head?”
“Shhh!” I grabbed his arm and tugged him back into the living room and out of Zara’s line of sight. “She’s not exactly what you’d call normal. I don’t know what’s wrong with her, but she seems like she’s off her rocker.”
I took up the book of Native American Mythology and showed him the picture of Uktena she’d pointed out. “I think she believes she’s this thing. She told me this story about how the Uktena was created as revenge to swallow the sun, but the Thunderbirds carried her away to some place called Galunlati. She called it—”
“The place beyond the sun.” Sal finally uncrossed his arms and cast a wary glance back toward the kitchen. “It’s the Cherokee spirit world, part of their creation myth. The story says that everyone once lived there, but it got too crowded and so the Earth was created. Then, all the animals lived on Earth until man came. One by one, all the old spirits left and went to Galunlati. It’s a story about both creation and destruction, death and rebirth.”
“So it’s like heaven?”
Sal shook his head. “Not like you’re thinking. It’s a spirit world, a magic place of peace and prosperity, but also a dark world, a world without identity and individuality. In death, you don’t retain those things which made you human. They melt away and blend together to form a cohesive whole. It’s like ice cubes. Frozen, each one has its own shape and texture on the outside. But if you melt the ice—”
“You get one puddle from many,” I answered, nodding.
“Right. Now, imagine pouring that ice back into the tray and freezing it again. You get new ice made from the old. It’s death and rebirth. That’s the natural order of things.” He turned back to me, a serious look on his face. “But in Galunlati, there are some beings that don’t break down. Old gods like Uktena and Coyote and Thunderbird. They don’t die and get reborn. They are stuck there until the whole world is reborn in the end of days.”
“It’s what, then? A prison for the old gods?”
Sal shrugged. “It’s just a story, meant to explain why there aren’t any giant snakes and coyote men walking around.”
I sat down and stared at my bare feet on the carpet. “Let’s say hypothetically that it isn’t just a story, that Galunlati is a real place and Uktena really was trapped there for thousands of years, unable to be reborn. Then, one day, she suddenly escapes. What do you suppose would happen?”
“Hard to imagine, but I’d be pissed when I got out, or at least desperate to stay out.”
Both of us looked at the doorway to the kitchen this time. “She admitted to biting Valentino—which I’m still not sure is true—but when I asked her about it, she just said, ‘the bite is medicine.’ Any idea what that means?”
Sal sat down on the sofa next to me with a low grunt. “Well, medicine has a lot of meanings. Could mean it’s like an aspirin, which is probably what you think of, but medicine is also a poor translation for helping and sometimes luck. If I clean a cut with peroxide, it’s medicine. If I put a bandage on it, that’s medicine. If I hold a dying man’s hand as he passes, that’s also medicine. Taking various hallucinogens, good music, a hot bath on a cold day, giving a fatal dose of morphine to someone who can’t be saved so they feel no pain. Medicine might also mean something like finding yourself in a time of turmoil.”
I thought about it for a moment. If anyone had been through a hell of a lot over the last year, it was Valentino. Losing his brother, almost losing his son, working to hide his child from the government after their breeding permit had been denied, hearing that his alpha had incurable cancer. But how did a venomous snake bite help with any of that?
I was thinking so hard, I didn’t notice the smoke until the smoke alarm went off. “Shit!” I shouted and jumped from the couch. “The pancakes!”
Coughing, I forced my way into the kitchen and rushed to turn off the stovetop. Once that was done, I flipped on the fan and fought open the kitchen window. I heard Sal open the front door and sliding open other windows. Hunter’s feet padded down the hall in a panicked pace until Sal shouted for him to open some windows. Then, they retreated and more windows slid open.
Through all of it, Zara sat at the table, hands over her ears.
I tugged out one of the kitchen chairs and stood on it. It wobbled ever so slightly under my feet while I fought with the smoke alarm to get it to shut up.
Once the smoke finally cleared, and I dumped the charred remains of my cooking outside, I returned to the kitchen and sat down, exhausted from coughing. Sal came into the kitchen but hung near the doorway, eyeing Zara with suspicion. Meanwhile, Hunter went about getting himself a few pop tarts, which he stood in the corner eating while staring at Zara. After a few heavy looks from me and Sal, Hunter decided it would be best to retreat to his room.
I turned to Zara and put a hand on her arm. She was stiff, her eyes wide and fixed on Sal. “It’s okay, Zara. This is my friend, Sal.”
She stood and padded across the floor in bare feet to stand in front of Sal, apparently uncomfortably close. He leaned back away from her, but she didn’t get the hint. Instead, she grabbed his arm and lifted it, caressing the inside of his forearm.
“You’re like me.” She smiled up at him.
“Um...” Sal looked at me but I shook my head. This was all his to sort out.
Sal gently took her hands, pulling them from his arm and holding them. “Not quite. I’m only half Shoshone. My father was white. Can you tell me a little about where you’re from?”
Zara looked around as if she were just seeing my kitchen for the first time. “I don’t know. It’s been so dark. I only remember a little.”
Well, I thought, at least he’s getting more coherent answers out of her.
“Right. What about last night? What happened last night?”
Zara smiled sweetly and tilted her head to the side. “There’s so much sun here. I was warm for the first time in so long, a little too warm. I thought I would go for a swim in the river. As I stood in the river, braiding my hair and singing, a little boy came. I turned around to smile at him and...” She broke off, her pleasant smile fading.
The memory made her eyes widen in terror. “He came.” She pulled one hand from Sal’s grasp and raised it toward the ceiling. “A black shadow above hides the sun. Suddenly, it’s cold and there comes a great wind. He screams in the sky and his eyes flash. I’m afraid. The boy is afraid, too.” She lowered her hand and clutched it in a fist next to her heart. “I change to protect the boy from him. The sky opens and he lashes out at me. Rain, thunder, and lightning threaten to tear me apart. We fight, just as we used to when the world was new.”
She looked at Sal a moment before turning a half circle. “I turn. The water is everywhere. The boy is gone and now there is a man. No, not a man. A man-wolf. I’m even more afraid because I don’t know this man-wolf and I can’t see him anymore because of the clouds and the lightning, which hurts so badly. This man-wolf is screaming and he jumps into the water at me, so I bite the man-wolf.”
“I’d probably go after a giant snake, too, if I thought she was a risk to my child,” I said. I supposed it made sense. She had no way of knowing Valentino was Leo’s father, but something about the whole performance didn’t sit right with me.
“The man-wolf tastes of fear, pain, loss,” Zara continued. “This man-wolf is in great pain in his heart, so much that it’s destroying him.” She raised her eyes to mine. “I give him the medicine through the bite so he won’t be in pain anymore.”
I heard Sal draw in a sharp breath, but I shook my head slightly to let him know not to interrupt.
“Zara,” I said gently, “my friend and I are a little lost. We’ve never seen a woman change into a giant snake before. We’re not sure it’s really possible.”
Zara turned on Sal. “You do not believe it’s possible? You who change under the moon? How can you not believe?”
“It’s not that I don’t believe,” Sal explained. “It’s just that in my world, you’re a bedtime story. A legend. Like Santa Claus. Everyone knows the great snakes of legend aren’t real. It’s just stories.”
Zara cocked her head to the side. “Why would parents lie to their children and tell false stories?”
“Well, to get them to behave.” Sal glanced back at me, clearly looking for my input.
I stood from the table. “We use stories as a learning tool. A lot of stories and legends have a deeper meaning, a warning or an explanation for something our ancestors didn’t fully understand.”
“I see,” Zara said, but she frowned as if she didn’t. “You don’t believe me. You don’t think I can turn into a snake.”
“It is kind of hard to believe.” I shrugged. “If you could show us, that would make things easier.”
She was silent for a long time, probably thinking it over. Maybe she was trying to work out a way to lie her way out of it, which was exactly what I expected her to do if her claims weren’t true. If she showed any hesitation at all, I figured she was lying. Sal wouldn’t even need that much to know. He could smell lies.
“I will show you,” Zara conceded with a nod of her head. “But it can’t be done inside. I will need to be near the water. And if he shows up, it could turn dangerous for you all very quickly.”
“Who is he?” Sal asked.
Zara looked at him as if he were the crazy one. “He is the storm, of course.”
Sal and I exchanged glances, but it was him who spoke first. “Okay, then. The sun is up and the water’s receded a little. Let’s go see what you can do.”
Zara stood up and I cringed to see her hair matted with maple syrup. At least the water would clean that out a little.
I grabbed my coat from the hanger in the living room and an umbrella because it looked like it was threatening rain again and walked out the door with a werewolf and a snake shifter.