Soul Catcher

by Bridger, Leigh

  “Will he live?” I whispered back.

  The light kissed me inside. “For now,” it answered.

  *

  I hoped Ian would forgive me for turning him into a panther.

  I could see only a few feet beyond our shanty, into the deep mountain darkness. My knife was ready. I couldn’t risk the rustle of my deer hide skirt against the forest underbrush, so I wore only my belted muslin blouse, a loin cloth, and soft, silent moccasins. My hip-length hair was bound in a tight braid.

  Ian’s soft growl rumbled against my bare thigh. Be patient, husband. He remained ill, even in this form. His fur was damp with fever, his breathing harsh. The Talking Rock’s potion had turned him into this powerful animal because the pox couldn’t weaken a panther as much as it weakened a man.

  A log door creaked open.

  Bile rose in my throat. The panther hunched lower. We watched Liver Eater sling a dark cape around the shoulders of her dress. She headed up the path to her nightly rendezvous with the banes.

  “Now,” I whispered to Ian. We slipped forward, keeping low.

  Like most demons, she had one major weakness: she thought she was invincible. She had never suspected that I was a soul catcher. My own magic was strong enough to hide that fact.

  I attacked her before she realized it was an ambush. She only had time to pivot and throw up her hands before I sank my knife into her throat. The panther slammed her to the ground. Her blood sprayed us. She flailed and gurgled, fighting death. As Ian held her down I dropped to my heels beside her. Her furious eyes were already going blank. “Come out and let me see you,” I ordered.

  She strangled on her blood and slowly went limp.

  I stood and stepped back, stroking Ian’s panther form. Move aside, husband. Her human body is no threat to us anymore.

  The panther, his black sides heaving, slunk away. It prowled the perimeter of a circle I drew in the forest loam with my knife blade. I dropped to my knees and brushed the leaves aside, making a clear spot. My hand hovered over that spot. The cat and I waited just outside the circle as the thing that had called itself Susannah St. Johns drew its last human breath.

  The moment that body died, Liver Eater emerged.

  A vaporish green glow radiated from her, fiercely lighting our small pocket of the forest. Liver Eater was a tall, thick, mottled creature, twice the size of a bear, with long arms and short legs. Her skin was covered in black warts that oozed a pale slime. Her head was small and sharp, like a dog’s; two long fangs protruded from her upper jowls. Her eyes were large, unlidded, and entirely black. She flicked an agile, sharp-tipped tail.

  She drew back her lips in a fanged smile. “You’re no match for me and mine. If you harm me, my Other will come.” Her voice was high-pitched and crackled; it made me think of small bones snapping. “Stupid witch, you should not risk the wrath of my Other.”

  I pointed up at her. “You brought the pox to my people. To my family. To my husband. I am no ordinary conjurer, stupid or otherwise. You were foolish to bring your evil to my doorstep.” Still squatting over the cleared spot I’d made, I swirled my hand in the dirt. “I see your face. I capture your face.”

  She went very still. Suddenly she understood. I was a soul catcher.

  I made another symbolic swirl, as if painting her image into the soil. “I see your teeth. I capture your teeth.” I slashed fang marks in the dirt.

  She charged me.

  The panther broadsided her. They went down inside the circle, clawing, snarling. Her powerful hands had short, thick nails. She raked the panther’s back. It sank its teeth into her shoulder and held on. She shrieked.

  “I see your arms,” I yelled. “I capture your arms.” My hands flew over the dirt. “I see your breasts. I capture your breasts! I see your belly. I capture your belly!”

  On and on, the trapping ritual. She fought the panther wildly. His fur grew wet with blood. I hurried. “I see your sex. I capture your sex. I see your legs. I capture your legs.” And finally. “I see your feet. I capture your feet. I am done.”

  I raised my dirt-streaked hands into the weirdly lit air. She slung the panther aside and huddled, staring at me. “Grant me mercy,” she begged. “If you let me go I swear to you that I will leave this place and never return. I promise you that you and your husband and your loved ones will live long, happy lives and no demon will ever enter this town again. This place will be protected forever. Your children and your children’s children and so on forever will be safe and happy here.”

  “I don’t believe the word of a demon. There is only one sure way to keep a demon from returning.”

  “No. I swear to you. I beg you!”

  I pointed at her. “I banish you from this world forever.”

  She fell forward, writhing in pain. Demons took longer to go than banes. She howled. “Fool! Now my Other will come for you and yours! He will punish you and everyone you love for a thousand lives!”

  The sickly green light reversed its glow as if sucked down a narrow hole at the center of her forehead. She absorbed it and it absorbed her. With one last grisly crackle of bones crunching, she withered to nothing, and vanished.

  I ran to the panther. It lay on its side, breathing hard, flecking the ground with its blood. I quickly scratched some wood together and lit a fire with a spark from my flint. I knelt over the cat, flattened both bloody hands on him, and shut my eyes. “Liver Eater is gone forever,” I told him. “These wounds of hers are not real. Let them be gone, too.”

  His texture changed under my hands. Fur turned to skin. When I looked at him he was Ian again. He lay there, naked and whole, stretched out on his side, his eyes shut as if sleeping. I pushed his long black hair away from his handsome face. The seeping pox sores had already begun to heal. And there was no sign of the wounds Liver Eater had given him.

  “Ian,” I whispered hoarsely. “Ian.” I pronounced it with Cherokee inflections. E-on-a.

  His dark lashes moved. He inhaled sharply and turned onto his back. I curled my bare legs under me and sat close beside him. I held one of his big hands to my heart. I stroked my other hand down the center of his darkly haired chest. He made a sound of pleasure, low in his heart, but then frowned. His eyes opened. His throat worked. “Aw, Mary, how did I get out here?”

  He didn’t remember anything. I helped him sit up a little and cradled his head on my lap. “You wandered. The fever had hold of you. But I’ve found you now.”

  He shifted his legs and arms. “Hmmmph. The fever’s broken. I feel like a new man. Like I’ve shed my skin or something.”

  I swallowed hard but said nothing. Best to leave the truth a secret.

  He smiled up at me. “Your potions and notions are working, my girl!” His cock sprang to life. He raised his head and looked down at it. “Ay, now there’s a fine sight! Let’s take him inside and see what he does next.”

  Relieved, I curled around him and lowered my head to his thick hard-on. “I’ll give it a few kisses for good luck.”

  I closed my lips around the tip, and he sighed deep in his chest as I sucked him. I charmed him that way, while my boons removed the gore-covered body of Susannah St. Johns.

  No one in Wonaneya would ever find her body.

  Victory was sweet. Were not Ian and I more than a match for any demon?

  Like a demon, I thought we were invincible.

  Like a demon, I was wrong.

  12

  “Ay, this is the finest cabin in all these mountains,” Ian proclaimed, as we stood in our secluded yard among the rubble of wood shavings and cast-off logs. I shook dried mud off my leather skirt and nodded. He wrapped a sweaty arm around me. “Are you sure you’ll not wish we were closer to the trading post and the village?”

  They’re just a quick walk through the gap. “I like being alone here with you.”

  I had not told him that the uktena and Bird Woman counseled me to build our home here, near the sacred rock. He wouldn’t have believed me. Transforming into a pan
ther had done nothing to awaken his memories as a soul hunter.

  He looked down at me somberly. “You’ve been moping about since the pox. Missing Cera. Don’t be worrying, Mary. There’ll be no more miseries. You know, I think that St. Johns woman was bad luck somehow. Since she’s been gone, everything’s better.”

  Ian, like everyone else in Wonaneya, thought the strange white woman had just packed up and disappeared into the night. Ian went on cheerfully. “Look at my fine self.” He thumped his broad chest. “Healthy as a horse, now.” He gestured at the tent forming in his britches. “A very stiff horse.”

  I smiled up at him with tears in my eyes. “Come along, Hung-like-a horse Husband. What’s the point of having a fine bedstead and a feather mattress inside if we’re always out here in the yard?”

  He laughed, gently hoisted me and slung me over his shoulder, and carried me inside.

  We had three large rooms, connected by dog-trot hallways to let in fresh air. We had split log floors instead of dirt. There were two creek-stone fireplaces with fancy iron spits and pot hooks Ian had made at his forge. Ian’s handmade iron hinges held the heavy log doors. To the curious amazement of all who visited, sunlight poured into our cabin through a pair of glass windows on the front walls, one in each of the two front rooms. Father had given them to us. They’d traveled all the way from the Carolina coast, by ox cart.

  The forest surrounded us; we were in a small valley near the creek, and protective ridges rose all around us. In a small clearing we’d built a low log barn. We had two horses, a milk cow, and chickens.

  We were rich. We had each other. We had proven we could fight off demons together, even if soul catching remained a secret I never shared with Ian. We were safe.

  I pulled him, smiling, into our bedroom. The walls were strung with protective amulets covered in swirling symbols from the Talking Rock, symbols I’d etched on bits of wood or turtle shells. We stripped naked, then rinsed each other with water from a wash basin in one corner. I took his hard cock in my hand and rubbed the tip against my belly. His back arched; he face flushed and his eyes narrowed with pleasure.

  It worried me that we had no baby yet; we’d been married for two years by then. Soul catchers have a need to be solitary; we are peculiar and suffer obvious risks. I had never dearly wanted a husband and children until Ian made his way to my life. Some men would have commented on a wife who didn’t conceive, but Ian always said ‘The wee folk will come along when they’re good and ready,’ as if our children were outside playing chase and would not come when called.

  On the bed, among jumbled blankets and pillows, he spread my legs and burrowed his face between them. The first time he did that to me I thought a mischievous bane had possessed him. We Cherokees fucked without much shyness, but I’d never seen or heard of such a thing—licking your lover down there.

  His tongue had quickly convinced me that a wonderful boon, not a bane, had control of him.

  I stretched backwards and moaned. The world between my legs was wet and alive, soft and aching. He held my knees apart with his big hands and pressed his tongue deeper inside me. As I writhed I became aware of the light changing around us. It began to whiten and sparkle, as if a million fireflies had filled the late afternoon air. I felt it on my skin, rubbing softly. That magic light sucked my breasts, stroked my belly, and even flickered like hot rum along the curve of Ian’s tongue, making me swell even more. I realized there was some being in the room with us. That it was energized by our lust, some essence of our tenderness. I didn’t feel invaded; I felt included. We had built our home in the territory of a powerful, protective pog, and now we channeled the pog’s own passion for eternal renewals, the thrust and suck of sex.

  I orgasmed into that hot white light, groaning Ian’s name, and felt the light pulse contentedly in return. When I pulled Ian up my body and wrapped my legs around him his face was hot and damp, his slight smile the hardcore promise of a quick, rocking fuck about to happen. I gently bit the hard sinews of his neck as he slid his cock deep inside me. The sensation threw my head back. I came a second time.

  “Ay, that’s a girl,” he praised, then slipped a hand between us and squeezed one of my nipples as he rode me fast.

  The light surrounded him too, it was part of him, even if he couldn’t see it, couldn’t recognize the spirit of the Talking Rock joining us in that bawdy, loving act. When he came he pulled up from me to lever his cock deeper inside for the final thrust. I moaned as I felt the fluid white light spurt into my womb. We had given ourselves to the spirit, and the spirit had mated with us both.

  The room remained alive with the light for several hours. We nuzzled, we slept, then we fucked again, him behind me that time. I came once, twice, and Ian gasped happily as his belly slapped a wet, sodden rhythm on my ass. He spurted every last bit of his juice inside me.

  We collapsed on the bed as the sun went down. The sky outside was deep lavender. Brightly colored birds, doomed to disappear from the earth, still sang in the woods; impossibly large herds of deer and flocks of wild turkeys still scratched in the loam. Bear, panther, wolves and even a few bison lingered in the last wilderness of the undiscovered valleys and high ridges. The spirits of the huge forest, the giant oaks and chestnuts and others still living, untouched since any human could remember, chanted a mourning song for what the future showed them.

  Songs unsung, a melancholy beyond words, seeped inside me. Suddenly I was cold to the bone, despairing.

  Words came to me as if I were reading a letter.

  It is the beginning of the end for these Cherokee people and this charmed place.

  Shadows pooled in the corners of the sparse little log room. The pog glowed brighter, chasing my mood back into the light.

  Eternity is filled with hope. Look past the brief span of a single life.

  Ian, unaware of my thoughts or our visitor, cupped my back to his front, with his relaxed cock tucked contentedly into the hollow at the bottom of my hips. “My love, I declare this house fully fecking well fekked,” he whispered against my ear with an exhausted sigh.

  I laughed. We kissed and I turned on my back, wrapping my arms around him. He fell asleep with his head on my shoulder, one big, rough hand curled gently around my breast. I stroked his long, dark hair and watched the shimmering spirit that had no face and form around us.

  Will you protect him? That’s all I ask. He’s a good man. I was told we would be safe so long as we live right in this spot.

  That is true. But you won’t be able to stay here for very long.

  My blood chilled. My hand stopped moving on Ian’s hair. Why not?

  War is coming.

  War? It can’t be. We’re at peace with the Creeks and the other tribes. And at peace with the whites.

  But the whites are not at peace with each other. I will send you dreams. I will tell you all I can. But my power is here. Only here. And there are yet more demons about.

  The breath froze in my throat. Should I have traded revenge for a bargain with Liver Eater?

  No, Talking Rock answered. You are a soul catcher. You are called to protect others, not yourself.

  A pog’s coy answer. My thoughts whirled. I held Ian tighter. Did I doom us?

  The pog’s voice grew softer; the light began to fade. There is no doom. Only balance. Good must always balance evil. All the realms of the spirit must remain in balance, and sacrifices happen for the greater good. That is one of the lessons you had to learn in this life. And so it is done.

  I didn’t want to sacrifice Ian. I’ll keep Ian here. We will stay together, here, and be safe in your blessing.

  Not in this life, the voice whispered, as the last of the glorious light turned back into ordinary air.

  *

  A light winter snow covered the mountains around Wonaneya town, hiding the red pall of fate. More than two-hundred unsuspecting people gathered in the warm heart of the council house, a huge, seven-sided structure of wooden poles and mud-thatched reed walls. T
he number seven was sacred to the People because the seven walls of a town’s council house represented each of the seven clans. A sacred fire burned in the center, its smoke rising to a small round hole in the roof. The tobacco of our clay pipes rose along with it. Important women and men made up the primary circle, closest to the fire.

  I was very young to have a place of honor in that inner circle. I kept my head bowed out of respect and hugged my blanket around me. Ian and my father sat behind me, supportive. Aunt Red Bird and Uncle Turtle were nearby. I darted glances at the esteemed town leaders. The men were tattooed, pierced and plucked. Hawk and eagle feathers dangled from the mohawk pigtails of their hair. The esteemed women also wore bird feathers and beads in their long braids. Both men and women were adorned with amulets of beads, bronze, and crudely polished sapphires and rubies from the hidden mountain mines.

  The ceremonies of a council meeting were formal. Each clan was acknowledged, including mine. When they came to me our chief said, “We welcome the paint clan, in charge of sacred paints for ceremonies.”

  I nodded. “I am Mele, the daughter of Standing Snake. And I am the daughter of Snake’s husband, Hagen, known as Fire Hair.”

  “You may speak.”

  I drew deeply on my pipe. “I know there are many who do not believe me. But I tell you what my dreams show me, anyway. Our people fought the white settlers when I was a little girl. We withdrew to the mountains and gave them the land near the big waters, and made our peace with them. And so it continues. This new war, between the whites and their English king, doesn’t win either way for us. We should stay out of it.”

  A man from the deer clan said, “You are wrong. The chief of the English will win this war. We have allied with him just as we did when the English drove out the French. The great council of the People has decided it. It is done.”

  I cupped my pipe in my trembling hands. “I have seen the truth in dreams. The great chief of England will not win this time. This is not like the war with the French. The white settlers will never forgive us for taking sides against them. We will be destroyed if we side with the English this time.”