Sharp and sweet as the lavender, the memory slips into her consciousness:

Late at night, walking Tali into the bath with her hands over those laughing eyes, both of them naked and languorous from lovemaking, leading her down into the warm water where candles float and the scents of rose and lily of the valley mingle in the rising steam.. Tali, laughing still as they pursue each other through the water like otters, rolling and tumbling, declaring that Koda must have been Cleopatra in a past life. “If I had been,” Koda answers,, “I wouldn’t have bartered my kingdom away with men. I’d have ruled alone except for my favorite handmaiden.”

“Me?” Tali asks.

“Who else?” And she draws Tali close, pinching out the candles one by one until a lone flame casts their shadow, also single, on the wall and lights their wet skin like molten gold.

It had been a lifetime ago, in a different world. As surely as if there were an angel with a flaming sword at its gate, Koda knows she can never go back. It is not only that the world has changed. She has changed, become something new, a creature that can no longer live in the environment that gave birth to her. It is time, she tells herself wryly, to recognize that she cannot go back into the trees. Time to come out of the water and grow legs.

Figuratively, that is. This is her second soak, and she estimates that she has at least another fifteen minutes before the water begins to cool. She had taken ten minutes to shower off the dirt and blood, the acrid stench of black powder that clung to clothing and skin alike. Then she had soaked, her wet hair piled up on top of her head. When the first tub had cooled, she had run a second in defiance of all self-discipline and conservation of resources. She rubs now at the sore spot between her shoulders where she can feel the muscles still bunched. Maybe Maggie can get the knots out later. Maggie, of the long, clever hands and many skills.

Maggie had known without being told to snatch up the phone and order in a medic and a portable defibrillator when Kirsten had arrested while probing the captured droid. Koda still was not entirely sure what had happened or how, but she remembered in every cell of brain and body her horror as the self-assured—all right, be honest, the more than slightly arrogant—scientist had turned pale, her lips and eyelids going blue as she slumped over her terminal, her lungs emptying in a sigh as her chest stilled and her pulse grew silent.

Koda’s nerves and muscles had responded before her brain knew what was happening, clearing the airway, starting the regular compressions of the sternum that would keep the failed heart pumping. One-two. One-two. One-two. At some point the count had become Hey-ah, hey-ah, hey-ah, and from somewhere she had heard the deep resonance of her grandfather’s drum as it beat out the rhythm of the blood chant. Her hands and shoulders pressed down and released in perfect synch, precise as the steps of her brother Phoenix as he stamped out the figures of the grass dance, remaining steady even as she felt her own spirit gather and hurtle out of her body in pursuit of the dying woman’s soul. She had streaked down the spiraling dark after her, howling wordlessly, feeling the insubstantial spine of her spirit form coil and release like a spring as she gave chase. The way had been barred, then, by another in animal form like herself, but still Kirsten had plunged toward the pinprick of brightness that lighted the Blue Road. A woman of power, Koda could walk that path and return, but for someone untrained it led irrevocably into death. Half-panicking then, she had felt herself somehow divided, leaping forward to block Kirsten’s way, warning her back even as she kept pace alongside. Twice, she had been so split, and twice she had failed to catch the other woman’s soul.

Then a blinding light had burst on her just as someone had grabbed her roughly by the shoulders and pushed her out of the way, making room for the defibrillator and the medtechs with it. Her eyes wide and sightless, Koda’s body had reeled backward and collapsed onto the tiles. As Koda hurtled down toward it from an infinite height, she heard Maggie’s low “Damn!” distinct amid the shouts of the medics, then felt the almost physical impact as her spirit slammed back into her flesh with the shock of a meteor burying itself deep in the earth’s rock strata.

Maggie had been holding her when she came to, half in and half out of her lap. Her dark face had been ashen with fear, but she had spoken steadily enough. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Rough landing, that’s all.”

“Hmph,” Maggie had snorted. “I’ve set down easier after one of Osama’s boys tried to put a SAM up my tailpipe.

Koda had gathered her screaming muscles and sat up, only to lower her head into her hands with a groan. The drum was still with her, only this time it was pounding right behind her eyes.

“Doctor Rivers?” Maggie again, formal as always in the presence of subordinates.

“M’okay,” she had said softly, not to reinforce the thunder in her head. “Shamanism 101. Never touch a body whose proprietor is temporarily absent. Bad things can happen.”

“Thought for a moment we had two patients here.” That was the medic, wanting to check her vitals as a pair of orderlies had carried the now steadily breathing Kirsten toward the infirmary. Koda had let him take her blood pressure and her temperature simply because that would take less time than arguing with him.

Then she had headed straight for the bath and the now cooling water.

Carefully, Koda grips the handle on the soap holder and pulls herself up, reaching for the pair of heated towels on the nearby rack. She feels infinitely better, the headache receding now to a dull pain no worse than ordinary tiredness. She needs food. She needs sleep.

She needs to know why Kirsten’s near-death fills her with a terror beyond anything she has ever known.

And she needs to know why that fear is so very familiar, a rooted ache in her heart.

Mitakuye oyasin. We are all related. It is the first teaching of her people. But there is more to it than that. Somehow this woman is part of the hoop of her own life.

She does not yet know how, or why. But she will.

4

Through lowered lashes Koda gazes at the soft brown globes before her. She runs her tongue over her lips, remembering their velvet smoothness, the firm but yielding texture between her teeth. Her hand moves toward them, hesitates, withdraws. I shouldn’t . I really shouldn’t. It would be too much.

Maggie leans toward her, laughing softly. “Go ahead.”

“No, I really shouldn’t—”

Maggie laughs again, “You know you want it. Go ahead.”

Koda meets the other woman’s eyes, feeling color rising beneath her own cheeks. “Are you sure?”

“Sure I’m sure.” Maggie pushes the wicker basket with the one remaining roll across the table. “I’ve never seen you so starved. Have at it.”

Koda knows she is blushing and not for the first time is glad of the coppery skin that masks her embarrassment. But she takes the bread , breaks it in her fingers and begins to mop up the creamy sauce on her plate. From his place under the table, Asi whines pitifully, pawing at her knee. Koda pauses in her pursuit of the last streaks of gravy just long enough to deposit her chop bone in his dish. “Sorry, fella. I didn’t leave you much.”

“You certainly didn’t.” Maggie rises and begins to collect the frying pan and other utensils, scraping them into the compacter beneath the small sink. “I know I’m a decent cook, but I’m not that good. Battle agrees with you.”

There is silence for a moment. Then Koda says, “It does, you know.” Her voice is very quiet, barely audible even to her own ears.

Maggie meets her eyes across the room. “I do know. Want to talk about it once I get the dishwasher going and we can be comfortable?”

Koda hesitates, then nods. Her plate looks as if it has already been washed. Without warning, her stomach growls again.

“Dessert?” Maggie offers. “I think I still have some frozen berries.”

To hell with embarrassment. “Yes, please. I’m sorry—this isn’t the fighting. It’s being out of the body. Exaggerated hunger is a textbook response.”

Maggie stows the last of the dishes and hits the button. The motor whines, gears grating. The Colonel swears and gives it a smart kick; with a reassuring sound of water jets, it finally turns over. “Don’t know what I’ll do when this damn thing gives out now.” Returning her attention to Koda, she raises an eyebrow. “Textbook. Like the low temperature and blood pressure that had the medic wanting to put you into the hospital, too?”

“Just like that.”

“You know, I don’t think I’d have believed it if I hadn’t seen it. Hell, if I’d seen it happen to anyone else, I don’t think I’d have believed it.”

“You should have seen my grandfather conduct a yuwipi. What I did was nothing in comparison.”

“Yuwipi?” Maggie pauses with the freezer door open, a bag of small wild blueberries in her hand.

“A spirit-calling ceremony.”

“Well,” says Maggie. “I’m willing to believe what I see with my own eyes. But if you’re going to do something more flamboyant than take a little stroll in the spirit world or the astral plane or whatever, try to give me five minutes warning next time.”

Koda laughs as she accepts a bowl of berries and they move toward the living room. “Count on it. Just as long as I have a bit of warning myself.”

A quarter hour later, Koda sets her empty bowl on the low chest that serves as a coffee table between sofa and fireplace. Asimov has reclaimed his place on the hearth tiles, lying on this back with his forepaws resting on his chest. His tongue lolls out of his mouth as if in his dreams he is licking some last succulent morsel from his whiskers. His soft snoring mingles with the snap and hiss of burning pine branches. The sleep of the just, Koda notes wryly to herself. She glances at Maggie whose face, underlit by the fire, is a study in bronze and shadow, the only points of brightness the reflected flame in her eyes and the glint off the golden bobcat cuff on one ear. She might be some ancient battle goddess, Koda thinks, African or Egyptian.