Voice of Crow

by Jeri Smith-Ready

  He shut his mouth tight against his own theory. “What do you mean, like some of the others?”

  She shot him a sharp look, then stroked Nilik’s hair as she regarded the boy. “I wonder if this one will grow up to have a Spirit Guard.”

  Marek almost corrected her words again, but stopped himself.

  “Which one do you think he’ll have?” she asked him.

  “It’s hard to say, in one so young.” He wondered if news of the Raven prophecy had come to Leukos, if they knew what Nilik might be. “His mother’s a Rabbit.”

  “No, she’s not.”

  Marek’s heart tripped. Basha had caught him in a lie.

  “His mother’s not a Rabbit.” She smiled sweetly at Nilik, then nuzzled his forehead. “His mother’s a senator.”

  29

  Filip gazed up at the iridescent bird who stood twice his height as he knelt on the cold, sandy soil. Something told him that he shouldn’t regard this creature, that he should prostrate himself as he would before a manifestation of the sky god, Atreus. But he couldn’t look away.

  “I thought I was a Horse,” he whispered. “What Spirit are you?”

  “You are a Horse,” the bird replied in a low, feminine voice that danced through Filip’s mind. “I am Raven, the Mother of Creation, the Spirit of Spirits. Though I belong to no one, I greet all of my people at the Bestowing.”

  He looked down, at the reedy grasses under his knees. “Then I’m one of them now.” His chest ached with loss.

  “You are unique,” Raven said. “You keep one foot in each world, that of your birth and that of your future.”

  He frowned at Her word choice. “I only have one foot,” he said bitterly.

  “Exactly.” She flapped Her wings, sending sparks of color through the crisp morning air. “Listen to your Spirit and you will be blessed.”

  She darkened then, to the color a raven should be. Her wings and feet straightened, then bent, and Her feathers turned to sleek hair. Ears and mane sprouted from the new body, and Filip watched it mold itself into the blackest, most beautiful mare he’d ever seen. Her coat, tail, and mane dazzled without the benefit of the sun, and Her dark eyes gleamed at him with an inner light.

  “Good morning,” She said at last.

  “I—I—” His mind blanked. “I thought you’d be white.”

  “I am.” She faded from ink-black through slate-gray to the pure, blinding alabaster of his dream horse, of his home city. “Better?”

  He shaded his eyes. “Whichever you prefer.”

  She blushed into a rich chestnut-red, leaving a white star in the middle of Her forehead. The change in color didn’t surprise him; nothing could after the past three days.

  On the first day of his Bestowing, Filip had sat on the grassy dunes, counting the waves as they rolled into shore. His stomach began to growl near midday, then ceased its complaints by sunset, which was obscured by thick clouds. The fasting hadn’t bothered him; army life had made him scorn the seldom-met needs of the flesh.

  Something crept close at the fall of the first moonless, starless night. It watched him in the dark, and though it wasn’t an animal—he couldn’t hear its thoughts—it oozed the aura of a predator. Filip sensed he shouldn’t show fear, so he kept counting the waves, by sound alone. To keep his breath from lurching into panicky gasps, he matched it to the rhythm of the sea.

  The thing drew away at the scarlet sunrise, and only then did Filip begin to tremble, for he knew it would return.

  The second day brought heat and delirium. Animals came from the sea, the woods, the sand, speaking like humans, in a way that his gods never had. He wanted to smash the statues of every deity in the Ilion pantheon to show their falsehood. In the next moment, he wished they were here to beseech, to help him make sense of all this.

  But when night fell, the thing from the woods stole those competing urges. It stole everything. The living void seeped into his soul and expanded, squeezing out all he once thought belonged to him. For hours he balanced, unmade, on the blade-thin edge of life and death.

  Compared to all that, and to the appearance of Raven, the Horse Spirit felt comforting, familiar. Yet part of him resisted. Like a journey off a cliff, the final step was the hardest.

  “I wish to be left alone,” he told the Spirit.

  Horse sighed. “There’s wisdom in setting oneself apart, but it’s not my wisdom, and it’s not your destiny.”

  “I don’t believe in destiny. I want to make my own choices, determine my own life.”

  “When you were a soldier, did you determine your own life?”

  “No,” he admitted, “I followed orders. But it was my choice to join the army.”

  “Your choice. Living in a world where military service is the only measure of a young man. Following in the footsteps of your grandfather, your father and your brother.” Her nostrils flared. “How is this a choice?”

  “Those things are all true. It doesn’t mean I didn’t want to do it.”

  “But when you were a soldier, you were part of a body, serving something larger than your desires. Why now do you want to go your own way?”

  “When I joined the army, they beat out all sense of me as a separate person. It was necessary to maintain discipline and cohesion. But now that I can see my self again, I don’t want to lose it.” He shifted his left leg. “I’ve made enough sacrifices for the so-called greater good.”

  “And yet you’re here. Because the others expect it of you?”

  “No. It’s for me. And You.”

  “We’re both here,” She said softly. “So what are you waiting for?”

  Filip frowned. It was a fair question. He hadn’t come this far just to hide and sulk like a recalcitrant little boy. It was time to be a man.

  “Nothing.” He got to his feet. “Now what?”

  “Come and cleanse yourself.”

  They walked through the marshy grass to the center of the clearing, which was ringed with tall, whispering pines.

  Filip saw no fresh water. He turned to the Horse Spirit. “Where do I—”

  “Shh.” Her red eyelashes blinked slowly. “Look again.”

  He turned back, and nearly fell over in surprise. A pool of glowing water rippled not five paces from where he stood.

  “Get in.”

  Mesmerized by the tiny, bubbling waves, Filip took a step closer to the pool.

  Horse snorted. “Undress first.”

  Filip hesitated. No one except Zelia the Otter healer had seen him naked since his injury. At home with Tereus he had undressed in the dark, as much to hide from himself as from the Swan.

  But he was tired of being ashamed. If he couldn’t reveal himself to his Spirit, he’d never be able to show Alanka, and their love would never be whole.

  Filip peeled off his shirt, then undid his trousers. He sat on the ground to unstrap the prosthesis. It chafed his knee and the stub of his calf as it came off, for it had been left on too long. Once he’d retreated into his mind two days ago, he hadn’t thought to remove it.

  When his clothing was off, Filip edged over to the pool and dipped his right leg.

  A fiery jolt shot from his foot into his hip, and he cried out in agony.

  Horse murmured something he couldn’t hear, but Her tone filled with concern and surprise.

  “Is it supposed to hurt?” he asked the Spirit, panting through gritted teeth.

  “When you submerge, the pain should stop.”

  He yanked his leg out of the water. “Put my whole body in there? Do you think I’m crazy?”

  “The Bestowing requires a full commitment. Perhaps the water burns you because you’re not yet one of us.”

  “If it’s rejecting me, then throwing myself in seems like a stupid idea.”

  Horse took a step forward. “Who’s rejecting whom?”

  She was right. Halfway was too far, and not far enough. He launched himself face first into the pool.

  The water sliced on impact. He pushed
to the surface and drew his head out, expecting to see the pool fill with his own blood. It was as clear as ever.

  Then the pain stopped. The sudden cessation almost hurt worse than the agony itself. He drew in several deep, rasping breaths. Within a few moments, however, he calmed himself. Wiping his eyes and nose, Filip noticed that the water was caressing him, searching him, as if it had a life and hands of its own. He submerged again.

  He let his body sink, down, down. There seemed to be no end to this pool in any direction. He could swim forever, but where? Maybe the Spirits were dangling before him one last chance to leave this world. He searched for temptation within himself, and found none.

  Filip broke the surface and gazed up at Horse. Her tail swished.

  “For a moment,” She said, “I thought you were going to disappear. Climb out now. It’s time.”

  He clambered from the pool onto the grass, his skin humming. “Time for what?”

  In the vision, as in his dreams, Filip ran. Not with two legs, not on horseback, but on four legs of his own, over an endless prairie. The herd pressed around him, heaving and grunting, hooves slamming the ground like thunder against clouds.

  A few kicked and bucked and whinnied, but not Filip. He wanted only to run, to feel the solid earth beneath his feet in a steady rhythm, to clutch this feeling of connection uninterrupted by falsehood, to sense the speed.

  He edged around the right side of the herd and broke for the lead. The wind gusted into his nostrils and whipped his mane over his neck. A few threads of golden forelock danced over his right eye. Exhilaration and gratitude increased his speed until he neared the front of the herd, running on its outer right flank.

  Then he saw it, in the distance. He angled his muzzle to get a clearer view, unaccustomed to having eyes on the sides of his head. Perhaps it was an illusion created by the long, dancing grass.

  No. Close ahead, the world stopped. The prairie wasn’t endless—it was a plateau, and the herd was about to run over its edge into a wide canyon.

  His pace slowed a fraction, and he drifted to the right, ready to stop. He was the only one.

  “No!” he tried to call in a trumpeting neigh. “Stop!”

  They didn’t listen. He ran faster, urging his body to the left to steer the other horses away. There was time to turn them back if they changed course now.

  Rather than heeding his warning, the herd swept him along in a wave of legs and hooves and bodies, a wave that could no more be held back than those of the sea.

  Filip was hemmed in by another horse to his right, enveloping him inside the herd. If he stopped now, they would trample him. His legs ached, and his left hind hoof jabbed a sharp pain up through his ankle into his cannon bone.

  The cliff loomed closer. He strained his neck to search for an opening, any way to escape the herd.

  A small gap opened to his right. He swerved in that direction, his front hoof clipping the heel of the horse in front of him. They stumbled, and one of Filip’s knees brushed the ground before he regained his feet.

  With his last fragment of strength, Filip leaped aside, far enough to let the herd pass. He skidded to a stop, sending a skewer of pain through his left hind leg.

  Chest and flanks heaving too hard to give one last warning, he watched the herd barrel toward the cliff and over the edge. He turned away and waited for the screams.

  Which never came. After a few moments, he looked back at the empty edge of the plateau. Nothing but dust moved there.

  He hobbled to the cliff and peered over. The other horses were gone. Not piled in a bloody heap at the bottom of the gorge. Gone.

  He thought perhaps the vision had ended, then realized he still had four legs, one of which was beginning to heat and swell. His sweat-soaked hide shivered.

  The silence broke with the pounding of a hundred hooves. Filip stared across the canyon to see the horses reappear on the other side. They plunged forward as before, in a swirl of grass and dust, tails streaming behind them like soldiers’ flags.

  He looked down at the edge of the cliff, then ahead at the horses again. He put one hoof, tentatively, into the air above the gorge. It felt like air—insubstantial and mundane. It wouldn’t hold him, wouldn’t transport him into another realm from which he could reappear at will. He would fall.

  He watched what had once been his herd fade into the distance.

  Filip came back to himself, on his hands and knees. His limbs gave way, and he collapsed. The loneliness bore down on him; he drew up his legs and covered his head with his arms, as if such a feeble action could ward off the feeling of absolute abandonment.

  A soft muzzle tickled his ear. “Would you still prefer to be alone?”

  “What if I say yes?” Filip whispered. “Will you go away and send another Spirit? Or better yet, send no Spirit at all and let me go back to the way I was before I came to this godsforsaken land?”

  Horse hesitated. “Yes.”

  He moved his arm to see if She was teasing. The dark eyes held only sadness.

  “I will not only leave you Spiritless—I can restore your body to its original shape.”

  Filip sat up. “You can give me back my leg?”

  “Your leg is gone, buried with all the others. But I could alter your false one in such a way that your people wouldn’t notice the difference. You could return to Leukos with honor.”

  “Why would you do that for me?”

  “To show you the mercy of the Spirits. Even if you reject us, even if you return to what you call home, you will remember how we didn’t force you, that we let it be your choice.”

  “It’s never felt like my choice,” Filip said, then reconsidered. “Until now.”

  “You were the first among your people to find your way back to us, even though you weren’t looking.” She flicked one red ear. “Perhaps we put too many hopes into you.”

  “What kind of hopes?”

  “Of reconciling all the people again, with us and with each other. When your ancestors rejected our ways, we may have been too hasty in taking away their magic. It left them with no choice but to build and conquer.” Her flank shimmered as She drew a deep breath. “We will offer another chance, if it’s not too late.”

  “You’ll give my people magic?”

  “Not all of them, not yet. They would only use it to rule others. Besides, the powers of the wilder Spirits are weakened in your city. Our strength comes from things of the earth, not things built by humans.”

  Filip contemplated how the Asermons had no temples for their rituals, how Bolan had told him that man-made structures separated them from the Spirits. It was so different from his people, who built elaborate temples to the deities.

  His stomach sank, and he looked up at Horse. “Do our gods exist?”

  “They exist.” Horse swung Her head toward the south. “They exist because you created them.”

  “That’s not what I mean.” He put his head in his hands. “But they must exist, outside of our minds. They’ve answered my prayers. I prayed for speed to beat my brother in the Ilion Games, and it worked. During the drought I prayed for rain—we all did—and it worked.”

  “That’s how you measure your gods’ strength? By how often they do your bidding? What about all the times they didn’t answer your prayers?”

  “I hadn’t made a large enough sacrifice,” he said, “or I’d said the words in the wrong order. Or maybe it was just their will.”

  “Why do you make excuses for them? If they are true gods, they don’t need your apologies.”

  Filip felt the last of his old faith fade within him, yet nothing settled in its place. “I can’t worship you.”

  Horse snorted. “I don’t want your worship. I want your honor and your respect. I want you to give that to every person and every creature you meet, but especially to me. I want you to hold my wisdom close to your heart, or your head, or whatever you use to make decisions, so that you can find it when you need it.” She stepped back. “That’s all. If
you can accept that, if you can accept me as your Guardian Spirit, then rise.”

  Filip dug his fingers into the sandy soil, one last attempt at resistance.

  But he wanted to cross the chasm, not stand on its edge and peer across, or gaze with longing at its rocky depths. Without his Spirit, he was alone. Without Alanka, he was lost.

  He planted his hands on the ground and heaved his weight onto his foot. Then he stood, arms spread—for balance and to receive whatever entered them. “I’m ready.”

  “Close your eyes,” Horse said softly.

  Filip obeyed, then felt himself waver. He stretched his arms wider to keep his balance, but did it too quickly. His body wobbled and fell forward.

  A soft, warm form caught him in time. He wrapped his arms around Horse’s neck and curled his hands around the long, coarse hair of Her mane. He sobbed without tears over his lost home, his inability to turn back time.

  When his breath came deep and even again, Horse spoke.

  “Filip, the Spirits have given you a place of honor in their hopes. We expect much from you. In return I give you the power to live inside the minds of other creatures, to feel the ground beneath their feet, the wind through their feathers, the waves over their scales. With this power you shall connect to the land, the air, the water, as few others have.” She grumbled. “I daresay, no one needs this power more than you.”

  A sudden warmth flowed through Filip, stealing his breath. His blood sang with freedom and power, cleansing him with every heartbeat.

  “We will always be with you,” She whispered. “Never forget that.”

  She was gone. Filip sank onto the grass and rolled on his back. He stared at the blue sky, his mind drifting with the clouds.

  A vulture soared overhead, black-and-white wings catching the breeze like a sail. Filip closed his eyes and opened his awareness to the creature.

  It was hot and bright up here, and silent except for the wind’s low whistle. The vulture was hungry but not starving. The feathers at her wingtips rippled, letting her anticipate the slightest change in draft. The world below was tiny and passive, like a war map empty of soldiers.