“What are you doing?”
“Determining if you, and what’s left of your clan lineage, will live or die.”
He was looking into her eyes, reading her hatred and loathing. What have I bound myself to? “I will follow orders.”
“Then do so,” she said coldly as she knelt beside him.
With a belly-twisting fear, he watched as Rides-the-Lightning handed the woman a small blade of stone: obsidian. Its glassy surface glittered in the firelight.
“Keep your arms out,” Rides-the-Lightning suggested. “This will sting, but nothing like what you’ve been through.”
“What are you doing?”
She positioned the thin sliver of obsidian in her long fingers, a slight frown of concentration lining her forehead. “How much?”
“Just a small piece from the crucial areas. Top of the head first.”
She shifted, and Fire Cat’s heart began to pound. “If you’re—”
“Be silent! If you’re this much of a coward, I’m better served to slit your throat and be done with it.” Then to herself, she added, “On your souls, husband, I am sorely tempted.”
At the disgust in her voice, Fire Cat stiffened his body, clenching his teeth. No woman called him a coward.
She fingered through his hair at the top of his head, and began softly singing. The words made no sense, but at her touch a tingle ran through his head, as if Power sparked from her long fingers. A spear of panic shot through him. Ancestors, she’s going to scalp me!
Muscles rigid, expression like a mask, his guts twisted as the sharp sting at the top of his head announced her cut.
“That’s good,” Rides-the-Lightning said.
Fire Cat tried to swallow past the fear in his throat, but she had only taken a bit of scalp smaller than a fingernail. Still singing, she studied it and the attached hair, and handed it to Rides-the-Lightning.
From a little pouch the priest removed what Fire Cat recognized as a rattlesnake fang. Singing in the same incomprehensible voice, the old man pierced the bit of scalp with the fang and dropped it into a small black ceramic pot. The vessel’s sides had been engraved with the sinuous forms of Tie Snakes.
“What are you doing?”
She ignored him while her deft fingers sliced a pinch of skin from each of his shoulders. As she continued to sing, she handed them to Rides-the-Lightning, who pierced each one with a rattlesnake fang before dropping it into the pot.
Fire Cat’s terror built, and he felt trickles of blood leaking from the small wounds. Rigid as a board, he battled the growing horror. The words of her incomprehensible song hit him like blows to his souls.
Horrified, he channeled all of his courage into the struggle to keep from flinching each time she touched him, took a pinch of skin, and sliced it away. She cut a tiny bit from the inside of his elbows, a bit from the palm of his hand. Pinching each breast above the nipples, she sliced more bits of him away. Then from his belly, thighs, and feet.
The old man continued to pull snake fangs from his pouch, carefully pressing each through the piece of skin she handed him.
Fire Cat watched with wide eyes as she reached for his penis. He trembled as she grasped and pulled his foreskin taut. With a deft and stinging slice, she removed yet another tiny bit.
He couldn’t control the whimper in his voice as he asked, “What are you doing?”
The woman leaned back, her large eyes glistening. His blood stained her fingertips as she placed her hands on her knees, and lifted her face toward the ceiling.
The old man’s singing stopped. Holding the black rattlesnake pot so that the opening faced Fire Cat’s mouth, he said, “Blow into it.”
“No!”
“I told you he was a coward,” the woman said disdainfully. “A coward and a liar.”
“I don’t understand!”
She fixed him with dark, eternal eyes that only added to his fear. “You are mine. Do as the elder orders you.”
Summoning his courage, Fire Cat blew into the pot.
“Now spit,” the old man ordered.
Mouth dry as sunbaked leather, Fire Cat managed a dry attempt at spitting into the pot, and as he did, he couldn’t help but look inside. To his dismay, only an impossible black infinity met his gaze, as if there were no bottom to the little vessel.
The old man raised the pot high, offered it to the four cardinal directions, and finally touched it to the floor. With careful fingers, the old shaman withdrew a snakeskin sack from his pouch. He pulled the sack around the little black pot and tied off the open end.
Fire Cat could see the fear in the old man’s eyes as he struggled to his feet, saying, “I will attend to it as you ordered, Lady.”
She exhaled, as if from tension, and nodded. “I thank you, old friend.”