Thunder Moon (Nightcreature 8)

“I ran across the McDaniels when I was researching my own family. You’ve been here since the beginning of time.”

“Not quite that long.” But close enough.

Legends say the Aniyvwiya, or the principal people, came from a land of sea snakes and water monsters near the place where the sun was born. In other words ... east. But we’d been in these mountains so long that no one really knew when the first Cherokee had arrived.

“What clan are you?” Walker asked.

In ancient times, the question would have been unforgivably rude. Clan membership was a secret passed down from the mother to the children in a matrilineal society. To be without a clan was to be without rights, without protection, without family. Clan membership was everything.

Very few Cherokee knew their clan affiliation these days—partly because of the extreme secrecy that had been involved and partly because people no longer cared.

I was one of the few who knew and who cared.

“Panther clan,” I answered.

“A ni sa ho ni,” he murmured. “Clan of blue.”

Each of the seven clans had worn feathers of a different color to delineate them from the others. Panther, or the wildcat clan, was the clan of blue, referring to a certain medicine they’d made for their children.

When I was little and sick, my great-grandmother had often forced a disgusting blue concoction down my throat, and it always worked. I wished again that I could read her notes and discover what she’d put in that stuff.

“I’m A ni wo di,” he said.

At my blank expression he frowned. “You don’t speak the language of our mothers?”

I bristled at his tone. “I’m more Scottish than Cherokee.”

I didn’t bother to mention the African since no one really knew that for certain. Just because the Cherokee had once kept slaves didn’t mean they broadcast the identities of the children they’d had with them. If secrecy was good enough for Thomas Jefferson, it was good enough for us.

“That’s no excuse,” he said.

“Who died and made you head of the Cherokee Nation?”

He contemplated me for several seconds, then dipped his head, the feather swinging past his ear along with the braid. “You’re right. I just thought that someone descended from Rose Scott, one of the most powerful medicine women—”

“How do you know that?”

His lips quirked. “It’s classified?”

“No.” Although it wasn’t exactly written about in the Lake Bluff Gazette, either. This guy knew an awful lot about me for someone who claimed to have been looking for his family tree.

“Your great-grandmother taught you nothing of the old ways?”

She’d tried, but my father had been adamant that there be no hocus-pocus or I’d lose my time with her. Since I’d known he was serious and that time meant the world to me, I’d balked at many of her teachings. Instead, she’d told me stories—legends of the origin of the clans, tales of the principal people being descended from animals.

As panther clan, we carried the spirit of the big cat within us. Some of us more than others.

Fascinated, I’d not only collected every stuffed and glass image of panthers that I could find, but I’d often pretended I was a panther, too. Slinking through the woods and the mountains, I’d dreamed of actually becoming one.

However, I didn’t want to talk about that, especially with him, so I flicked a finger at the feather in his hair. “You’re bird clan?”

“That would be A ni tsi s kwa,” he said. “Not A ni wo di.”

“I don’t speak the language,” I said between my teeth. He’d better not be wolf clan, or I just might rethink shooting him. At least I’d had the sense to load my gun with silver before I left home.

“I’m paint clan,” he said.

“Medicine men. How convenient.”