Jistu's Way

Many Content Warnings.

Please Read my Afterword in the Comments.

Twenty-six stars sewn into a blue field alongside a cage of red and white hung listlessly from a guidon.

Grungy, sweat-stained, and hungover, the standard bearer leaned precariously in his saddle as he escorted a column of three hundred indigenous captives across an arid, nameless wasteland.

The sun had baked the soil to clay, trampled to dust by their passing.

Farthest to the rear, Nazshoni’s skin burned.

Her every parched breath inhaled the land of her people. She resolved to take it with her, the dust; it seeped into her blood; it became mud in her veins.

Addled by the heat, dehydration, and fatigue, Nazshoni hallucinated and felt dewy grass between her blistered soles and a cool breeze on her neck, but memories of her grandmother - rocking, weaving strips of white oak and river cane before a campfire, humming songs of remorse and sorrow - interceeded to deny all comfort.

Encumbered, Nazshoni dragged her heels, her footfalls crushing the land’s brittle surface, before her toe, trapped, pitched her forward.

“Gettup!” the soldier growled, grappling Nazshoni’s shoulders to shove her and send her sprawling.

Cold water, rinsing her hair.

“Redskin bitch,” he said before planting his boot in her gut. Her breath stolen, the land there was taken from her, too.

Her father, packing snowballs, laughing.

“Mr. Calhoun,” said a commanding voice from somewhere behind him. “You will refrain from injurin’ the woman.”

The officer’s unwanted attention only infuriated Private Calhoun further. “I said, get up!”

Sweaty, groping hands - once more taking what he hadn’t any right to - lifted Nazshoni only to thrust her forward. Weak and breathless, the weight of her pack sent her reeling. Nazshoni careened to the ground. 

Autumn, braiding her younger sister’s hair.

Beside her, Rayetayah, Nazshoni’s seventeen-year-old son, lunged to tackle Private Calhoun.

“Great Jesus,” groaned the rider from behind, spurring his horse forward.

First on his feet, Calhoun kicked at Rayetayah, who dodged to land a limp-wristed belly punch. Calhoun countered with a left hook to the young Cherokee’s jaw, forcing Rayetayah to drop his guard. Grasping the boy’s hair, Calhoun delivered a heavy right cross to break Rayetayah’s nose and spin him clockwise over his mother.

Second Lt. Marcus Thompson rode up from behind. “Mr. Calhoun-”

The sun glinted off the lake. Nursing her infant son, Nazshoni smiled at her lover, fishing.  

Enraged, Rayetayah scrambled to his legs, yelled a brave challenge, and charged.

A gunshot spewed a slurry of blood, brain, and bone, and Rayetayah stilled, fell to his knees, and collapsed, face-forward.

Wide-eyed, Nazshoni’s consciousness boiled to the surface - her blood no longer mud but ice - and deep, deep down came a withering howl, the horrific voice of every woman to witness the tragic death of a son.

Nazshoni frantically crawled over Rayetayah’s body. 

“Mr. Calhoun,” Lt. Thompson said, holstering his weapon, and reining his horse around the obstacle. “Again, you will refrain.”

“Yessir,” Private Calhoun replied. Scowling at Nazshoni in disgust, he spat to the ground and lumbered on behind his commanding officer.

They left Nazshoni sobbing, leaning over Rayetayah, in a pool of blood given in sacrifice to the dry earth.

Passing, four supply wagons and three mounted second officers ignored Nazshoni as she cradled her lifeless son in the dirt.

Alone, Nazshoni suffered for hours. She mumbled, rocked, and swayed. She wailed aside the memories of her grandmother. And as the sun fell and the daytime gave way to twilight, she whispered a sleepy lullaby to her baby boy. Holding him close, she vowed never to let him go.

Nazshoni awoke under a black sky’s blanket of stars.

Gili'uyvsgi, a ribbon of soft white and purple, arced across the clear night sky like a celestial path connecting at the horizon.

Nazshoni stirred to lift herself from Rayetayah. Her dress was soaked in blood. Her body ached; her head throbbed; her throat was dry as sand. Her breath came in wheezes.

Around her, the land appeared alien and strange. It glowed, made vivid by thread-like reeds of yellow, teal, and blue wound tightly about rocks, knitted into shrubs, and draped over desert plants. It imparted luminous definition to distant buttes. Nazshoni recognized patterns born from her grandmother’s weaves and twining.

Resting quietly in nearby weeds, Nazshoni spotted a hare. Like the land, it was painted in brushstrokes of vivid blue and teal and had black eyes of starlight. Translucent, the hare had ancient symbols written on its back. Nazshoni knew those symbols as they were drawn alongside fire stories she heard as a child.

The hare craned its neck and flared its nostrils at Nazshoni, watching her with interest. 

Nazshoni was numb. All her pain seemed wrung out of her. She no longer felt the sunburn. The blisters on her feet had fallen silent. Her dry, peeling arms and hands tremored, and, touching her bruised ribs, she could no longer feel the swelling. She felt nothing save a terrible, longing thirst.

“Follow me,” the hare said. “I will take you to water.”

“I won’t,” she rasped, clutching Rayetayah, her voice as the wind blowing over sun-bleached bone. “I know you! You are Jistu! I will not leave my boy.”

Jistu regarded the body with beady cosmic eyes. “Rayetayah has crossed Elatsoe Tsunegv. He waits for you there, beyond the great river. He is not thirsty. He wants for nothing. You are different.”

An expression of panic overcame her.

“Then I am …?”

“Yes,” the hare confirmed, twisting its head. “We are in Aniyvwiya, the spirit world.”

Nazshoni lowered her head to her son and sobbed.

Its ears erect, Jistu the hare looked at her curiously. “Why do you cry?”

“The great river!” Nazshoni wailed, flailing an arm at Jistu. “I am here, trapped, kept from my mothers, my son-”

“This is not true,” Jistu interrupted. “They are no more distant than I am from you. You are separated by will.”

Nazshoni glanced up at the hare, confused.

Jistu hopped from the weeds to smell her. “You are not ready. A desire burns in you, a need, yes … a blood vendetta. It fills you with purpose. It anchors you here.”

Nazshoni embraced the body. “Rayetayah was young! He was only protecting me! He did not deserve to die!”

“Oh, of course not,” the hare agreed, and its ears lowered; it almost smiled. Jistu gestured with its head. “Come. Drink. And I will aid your revenge.”

“Trickster, if I’m a spirit,” Nazshoni reasoned, “then why water?”

“You are in between, a visitor,” Jistu explained, its starlight eyes staring through her. “You walk Aniyvwiya yet remain mortal. Please. Let me lead you to water.”

Reluctantly lifting herself from Rayetayah to stand, Nazshoni leaned to one side, wobbled, and nearly toppled over.

“Release your burden,” the hare encouraged. “Those things are not needed here.”

She untied her shoulder straps and dropped her pack. Her center of gravity changed, Nazshoni leaned as if the earth itself was slanted. Leaving Rayetayah face-down on the road, Nazshoni followed the hare into the brush. 

“It’s not far,” Jistu said, bounding before her.

And, as Jistu’s backside runes ignited into a blinding white light, the world unraveled.

Feeling both pulled and dragged, Nazshoni stumbled into a blurred landscape. Neon-colored twine twisted and stretched, uncoiled and compressed; knots came undone; buttes along the horizon unstitched; yet the sky - the stars, the path of the Gili'uyvsgi - remained absolutely still. Nazshoni saw the rocks, cracked clay, sand, and brush pass swiftly underneath, for her every step was hundreds of yards at once. Wobbling, her arms outstretched, tangled in teal, yellow, and blue whisps of twine, she arrived at a colony of sycamore trees to collapse against the bank of a slow-moving river. All around her, the threads interlaced and tightened into a weave, and the land - from the river to the sky - assumed more familiar, static patterns.

“Drink,” Jistu insisted.

Nazshoni crawled to dunk her hands in the river. Cool water spilled between her fingers. She gulped, threatening to take all the river in. It felt good in her belly, and the water was oddly sweet, laced with honeysuckle. She splashed her face, soaked her head, and ran water across her arms.

And the blue and teal hare sat on its hind legs, waiting for her, patiently, with endless eyes.

When Nazshoni had her fill, she sat on her knees and bundled her hair to the side to wrench it free of water. She glared sullenly at the sky’s reflection on the river’s surface.

“Utsunati come, and they take and take,” Jistu muttered behind her.

Nazshoni’s shoulders slumped; her chin dipped. Exhausted, still dizzy from the walk, she fell to her hip and braced her arm against the sand.  

“White man’s greed is a hunger,” the hare whispered, slowly circling Nazshoni. “He is insatiable. He steals more than he can use. He hoards simply to deny others.”

“Utsunati are cruel,” she agreed, looking to Jistu as it circled her.

“Utsunati are pigs!” Jistu hissed, then, resting on its haunches, soothed, “Rayetayah’s murder was unjust. He was young. Inexperienced. He was not a warrior.”

“His first hunt was only the last snow,” Nazshoni whispered, wiping her hand absently over her bloodied dress.

Jistu came closer. “Your boy was brave, but he died a man.”

“Rayetayah would bring me flowers,” she remembered, gazing out over the river. “Every spring. He was kind and thoughtful. His mind was full of butterflies and color, not spears and knives.”

Jistu’s eyes narrowed, its voice licking like a serpent’s tongue. “What right did Utsunati have? To murder? For protecting his mother, no less?”

The taste of honeysuckle lingered in Nazshoni’s mouth. 

“He was my boy,” Nazshoni scowled.

“More! He was Tsalagi!” Jistu purred. “He was the blood of your mothers! He was the bravery of your fathers! He was heir to the land of many caves!”

Nazshoni wavered. Her eyes fluttered into her skull, and she repeated, “Heir to the land…”

The hare’s gaze turned to the river’s shallow waters, where a hatchet appeared. Submerged, it had a cold steel blade with a long, curved bit, a haft made of carved oak, and was decorated with beads and an owl’s feather.

Jistu crouched on all fours beside her. “Your blood was taken-”

Reaching out, Nazshoni plunged her hand to seize its haft. She withdrew it from the water. Her eyes, too, were black and filled with starlight.

“-so I will take theirs,” Nazshoni snarled, gritting her teeth.

“Yes,” encouraged Jistu the hare, hopping around Nazshoni’s backside. “Blood for blood. An eye for an eye.”

“It is our way,” Nazshoni breathed.

Jistu said, “Yes. It is our way. It is just. It is right.”

Standing, Nazshoni gripped the hatchet tightly and glared at it with intention. “It is my purpose.”

“Look there!” Jistu said, jumping along the shoreline. “Do you see? The smoke rising from Utsunati fire? They camp by the river. The white man drinks your water. He eats your food. He celebrates Rayetayah’s death.”

“Utsunati takes and takes and takes,” she sneered, pounding the neck of the hatchet in her hand in time with her words. Nazshoni took an unstable step forward. Another, then another. She let the hatchet fall limp at her side. Her front was blood-stained, and she felt the cool sand between her toes and honeysuckle sweetness on her lips. Her sight was the same as Jistu’s, seeing all of creation as faded reeds and twine woven by her ancestors.

“They are relentless-” Jistu said, turning to her.

“-unyielding,” they said in unison.

“It is my purpose,” they repeated.

The waning moon escaped from behind a cloud to bathe the valley in hazy moonlight. Nazshoni stiffly walked the river's shore, numb, step by step, led by Jistu the hare. With her every step, anger welled within, and Jistu circled her, excited for what Nazshoni’s rage might bring.

It was then Waya the wolf appeared to block their path. A spirit like Jistu, the wolf had fur of white brushstrokes and eyes of smeared yellow paint. It lowered its head and growled. “You play tricks, young fool.”

“Yes, for they are mine to play,” Jistu replied gleefully, hopping forward to greet the wolf before rearing up on its back legs. “Begone, ancient wanderer. Clear our path.”

“I will not,” the wolf said, assuming a defensive crouch. It bared its teeth.

Nazshoni paused, entranced, swaying - her eyes that of the nighttime sky - and vengeance waited, gripped in her hand.

“It is because of your tolerance the Tsalagi suffer!” Jistu accused. “Do something! You are old! Weak and useless! You are the rotting seed that gifts stunted fruit! Behold!”

Jistu’s sight traveled to see the sleeping, hungry masses of Cherokee nearby, their bodies broken and burned, worn from the day’s journey. Hungry, they slept fitfully; terrified, they clung to each other; a people, they remained connected, even in sleep.

“Acknowledge their suffering, Waya, and finally see their misery. We must end this! Nazshoni is Nûñnë'hï - she walks between! A mortal, but also an untouchable spirit, she will slaughter Utsunati soldiers and free her people. Allow her passage!”

The wolf snarled, raising his hackles. Symbols ignited on his back. “Blind rage is unproductive. You weaponize her grief. Return Nazshoni her agency, Jistu. Hers is another purpose.”

Jistu entrenched and dug into the sand.

Turning its head to Nazshoni, Jistu commanded, “Away! Avenge Rayetayah!”

Nazshoni smiled wickedly and raised her hatchet before her with both hands. She unraveled and disappeared.

Waya was the first to strike.

As a brush laden with paint, white smeared across the Aniyvwiya, slamming into the hare. With its teeth at Jistu’s neck, Waya dragged the hare across the ground and whipped it right and left.

Jistu blurred, becoming a teal streak that wrapped around Waya to rake the wolf with its claws; blotches of red splattered against the canvas of the spirit world.

Nazshoni arrived at the outskirts of the camp and marched directly toward a sentry, nodding off near a campfire. The young soldier’s rifle lay limp in his arms. Unaware of her presence, the boy snored, far away in a dream. Steady and unwavering, filled with vengeful purpose, Nazshoni clutched the hatchet’s haft and brought it to bear on her side.

“Release her!” Waya demanded.

Jistu - who was faster - raced around the wolf. Jistu’s quick, leaping movements were like bounding arcs of teal paint. “No! Nazshoni’s wrath will free the Tsalagi!”

Timing its attack, leaping, the wolf pounced to trap the hare between its paws. It crushed Jistu, forcing its body into the earth to remain still, and snarled, “You are short-sighted. The Nûñnë'hï’s actions will invite more suffering, more murder-”

“Genocide deserves no better!” Jistu screamed and viciously bit deep into Waya’s throat. Blood burst from the wolf’s white breast.

At the camp, Nazshoni slowed and murderously raised the hatchet, creeping up on the sleeping soldier. She felt nothing but the instrument of her revenge, gripped in her palms.

Waya howled and rolled to its back, bringing the hare with it. Waya snapped, ripped, and tore, peeling strings of crimson muscle and teal flesh from Jistu’s bones. It flipped to its feet and cast the hare out to flop listlessly, broken, on the river’s edge. Jistu, defeated, lay twitching, breathing rapidly.

“But I am right,” Jistu gurgled, on the verge of death.

“I agree. But you are so right, you are wrong,” Waya grumbled and turned its head toward the camp. “Nazshoni.”

Closing on the soldier, lording over him with her hatchet, poised to strike, the nighttime stars faded away, and her brown eyes returned. A streak of yellow paint appeared across Nazshoni’s eyes. Startled, she stopped to look toward the river.

“Go to your people now,” Waya said, its mouth dripping with Jistu’s blood. “Sleep, and by tomorrow’s sunset, you will discover a new purpose.”

“Purpose,” Nazshoni mumbled, lowering the weapon. It fell to the ground with a thud. Her head and shoulders slumped. Turning, she took slow, heavy steps to where the Cherokee were gathered. Sleeping, the Utsunati soldier remained unaware of the death he nearly faced. 

Near the water, Waya gripped the scruff of Jistu’s neck with its teeth to carry the hare away into the sycamore trees. “Come, young one,” the wolf said, “and we will talk of happier times.”

Nazshoni’s hatchet unraveled and disappeared.

The next day, the Cherokee were woken as cattle - with gunshots to the air and angry men on horseback - and as before, the day was hot and grueling.

In a daze induced by her trauma, Nazshoni, hallucinating, continued to remember places and people of her past, but also about Aniyvwiya and Elatsoe Tsunegv. Mumbling, she insisted she needed to meet her son, waiting for her across the great river.

A cold winter’s night, nestled with her baby and lover.

Around midday, a younger Cherokee woman collapsed from heat exhaustion and died. Her son, a boy of seven, wailed at her side. As Nazshoni wandered close, her haze lifted to see the boy as he was, there, scared and alone. In sharing his grief, Nazshoni extended her hand to his, and in taking it, they shuffled along together behind the other captive Cherokee, forced to march their Trail of Tears.

A boy who brought flowers and dreamed of butterflies.

That night, as the sun set along the horizon, the camp’s cook prepared a stew in the officer’s mess. Eating, Second Lt. Marcus Thompson seized. He fell to his knees, then collapsed, writhing, unable to breathe, gagging, hacking, and retching, clutching at his throat, until his body stilled, and his eyes locked skyward, heaven bound.

Beside him, chewing a bite of his own, another officer lazily crouched to feel Lt. Thompson’s throat, running his fingers along the windpipe.

He nodded then spit out the contents of his mouth before closing the corpse’s eyelids.

“Y’all be careful with that stew,” he grunted to the others, gesturing to the simmering pot over the fire. “Rabbit bone.”