Spiritwalk

by Charles de Lint

  “Without music...”

  “Your heart is silent?”

  He thought before answering. “No,” he said finally. “But without a channel, the fire burns dim. Half of any creative gift is in how it communicates to others.”

  “There are musics you can make with only one hand,” she said. “You should ask Blue about synthesizers.”

  He gave her a puzzled look.

  “Never mind. I’ll show you what I mean when I get back.”

  He nodded. “You mean to walk the Middle Kingdom?”

  “I wish I was. I know it better than the spirit realms of this land.”

  “It’s all the same realm,” Taran said. “That’s what the trees taught us.”

  “But the dwellers change.”

  “Or perhaps it’s just how we see them.” He smiled. “I’ve missed this sort of talk. I speak with the rath—with Jamie—but it’s not the same as speech with flesh and blood. Barriers lie like hidden reefs in the written word.”

  “Voices lie, too—sometimes it’s easier to follow what’s written down.”

  “This is true.” He glanced at the bag she carried, obviously sensing some resonance emanating from it. “You travel well prepared.”

  “I’m going to look for Emma—Blue’s friend. Do you know her?”

  He nodded. “I was a part of those who did her ill. Though she doesn’t remember, I can’t forget.”

  “You also saved her life,” Esmeralda said.

  Taran shifted uncomfortably at that.

  “It’s true,” she added. “I was there—at the end.”

  “I remember... a wind...” He gave her a sad smile. “I’ll leave you to your business, Lady, and wish you the moon’s own luck.”

  “We’ll speak again,” Esmeralda said. “When I return.”

  “I would be honored, Lady.”

  “Call me Esmeralda.”

  He shook his head. “Gaoth an Iar,” he named her. Wind of the West.

  He walked away, vanishing into the woods with his catlike quickness and silence, before she could reply.

  “We’ll speak of names again,” she said softly, then turned once more to the business at hand.

  Her taw was easier to reach this time, cloaking her with its quiet strength in moments. She attuned herself like a divining rod to Emma’s spirit and the Autumn Heart that lay inside her lost friend. Memories of the Weirdin she’d drawn rose up in her. The Acorn. The Forest. The Eagle. She bound them to her seeking with threads of thought, then let the winds arise.

  They gusted around her feet, rising and circling about her, carrying the scents of the garden with them, filling her with a spinning array of perceptions. Blossom scent. Moonlight. The call of a stag on a distant hill. The sweet taste of wild strawberries. Feathery touches on her skin.

  Her hair whipped loosely about her head. Errant leaves, dried and escaped from last autumn, whirled in a dance around her. She rose from her seat at the edge of the fountain, bag clasped against her stomach, and took a step. Another. The third step she took was out of the garden, out of its world, following the ribbon of light that connected her to Emma’s Autumn Heart.

  Behind her, by the fountain, leaves drifted down to settle on the stones where she’d been sitting. The moonlight looked down through the trees, but if it looked for her, it was disappointed, for she was gone.

  2

  They sat in Judy’s garage in Sandy Hill while they waited for Hacker and Ernie Collins, another friend of theirs, to show. The garage was filled with motorcycles in various states of repair, the air heavy with the metallic smells of grease and machine oil. Judy lounged on a bench tinkering with a Harley carb and watching Blue reassemble the shotgun that he’d taken apart to fit in his saddlebags for the bike ride over.

  “How come you’re riding Esmeralda so hard?” she asked finally.

  Blue shrugged. “I don’t know. She pisses me off for some reason.”

  “Because she’s so self-possessed?”

  “Seems more cold to me.”

  “C’mon, Blue. Don’t shit a shitter. What’s really the problem?”

  He snapped the last piece into place and looked up from the shotgun. “What’s she doing here?” he asked.

  “Helping Emma—just like us.”

  “Yeah, but why now? Why didn’t she show up before Emma ended up in the hospital? Why wasn’t she here last year when all that weird shit was going down? Instead she sends this cryptic message that you’d have to be somebody like Tal or Sara to figure out.”

  “Are you always there when people need you?”

  “I try to be.”

  “Well, maybe that’s what she’s doing now. Christ, Blue. She lives in England. She flew all the way over here to help.”

  “I know, I know.”

  Judy sighed. “Has it got something to do with how close they used to be?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, like were they an item or something?”

  Blue didn’t take offense at that. Unlike a lot of his contemporaries he had nothing against gays. If Emma’d been into that before she’d met him, that was her business.

  “They had more of a... I don’t know, platonic kind of a thing going,” he said finally. “Emma never really wanted to talk about her much.”

  “Something happened between them?”

  “Not so’s I can figure. They just drifted apart. They had a weird kind of a relationship anyway—both of them living in the same city and just writing letters instead of hanging out with each other. I think it bugs Emma, talking about Esmeralda now. It was like Esmeralda reminds her of all the stuff that Emma wants to forget.”

  “Like the deal with Chance.”

  “More like with Chance’s witch—Glamorgana.”

  Blue began to load the shotgun, inserting shells in the loading gate, one after the other. Each one made a sharp click as it entered the breech.

  “That stuff really went down, huh?” Judy asked after a few moments.

  Blue nodded. “You’ve been in the House—you’ve seen the kinds of stuff that can go on.”

  “Yeah, things can get a little spooky. But witches and Faerie...”

  “I’ve seen weirder.”

  Judy leaned back, putting the carb aside. “Really makes you wonder sometimes, doesn’t it? I mean, you read about some wacko spotting little green Martians, or getting taken away by a UFO, and you’ve just got to laugh. But what we’ve got here isn’t a whole lot different. Not really.”

  “Except it’s real. I don’t know shit about space invaders, Judy, but this stuff’s for real. If you don’t take it seriously, it can kill you.”

  “Oh, I know something’s going down,” Judy said. “I just don’t know what the hell it is, and I’m wondering out loud—that’s all. But I’m in for the duration.”

  Blue loaded the last couple of shells that the shotgun would take, then dumped the remainder in the pocket of his jacket. He gave Judy a long, considering look.

  “Why?” he said finally.

  “Why what?”

  “You don’t really believe in this shit, so why’re you coming along?”

  “I believe in you, Blue.”

  Ernie Collins’s Ford Bronco pulled into Judy’s driveway then, with Ernie and Hacker in the front seat, and the two of them rose to meet the newcomers. Ernie was a little guy with big shoulders who had the same slicked-back hairstyle he’d worn back when the Big Bopper was making records. Beside him, Hacker looked immense—a mountain man, all beard and hair and bulk, squeezed into a pair of Levis and a faded blue workshirt. Hacker’s gaze drifted to the shotgun Blue was holding.

  “Aw, shit,” he said. “Are we going to need that?”

  “Probably.”

  Hacker tugged at his beard—a motion so habitual that he wasn’t even aware of doing it. “Judy didn’t say much—just that your girl got herself nabbed again. You ought to keep an eye on her, Blue. Good-looking woman like that—too bad she’s got this bad habit of a
ttracting the wrong kind of interest.”

  “Hell,” Ernie said. “She hangs out with Blue, doesn’t she, so what do you expect?”

  Something flickered in Blue’s eyes. “If you don’t want to—”

  “Lighten up,” Judy said from beside him, giving him a poke in the ribs.

  “Yeah,” Hacker said. “We’re here, aren’t we?”

  Blue rubbed his face then nodded slowly. “Yeah. Thanks for coming. I’m just so wired up right now....”

  “Let’s just go,” Judy said, leading the way to the Bronco. “Save that shit for your analyst.”

  She turned and gave Blue a grin. He nodded, but couldn’t find a smile to give her back. Working the tension out of his muscles with a rolling motion of his shoulders, he passed her the shotgun, then climbed into the backseat with her.

  “Same place?” Hacker asked as he got in.

  Blue thought of something Sara’s bard Taliesin had told him once, that everything is a part of a wheel. Things move in a circular pattern. You’ve been there once, you’ll be there again, even if it all looks different. Everything fits on some wheel. The trick was to figure out which one. Well, if they were on a wheel now, then it was carrying them back into some familiar territory.

  How many times did you have to do something before you got to move onto a new wheel?

  “Blue?” Hacker tried again.

  Blue looked up and nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “Same place.”

  The wheel turns, he thought, but when tonight was over he planned to find them a new one. Who needed any more of this kind of shit?

  “Lac la Pêche, James,” Hacker told Ernie in the front seat, mangling a hoity-toity accent. “And be so good as to step on it, would you?”

  3

  Following the trail of Emma’s spirit, Esmeralda stepped from one night into another, from garden to glade. A shadowed forest loomed all around her. The clear dark sky above held stars that were crystal sharp, a moon full and rounded. The glowing ribbon connecting her to Emma had led her into a spirit realm—a Middle Kingdom of North America’s Native People.

  Her night-wise gaze settled on the small curious structure standing nearby. Four poles thrust into the ground, connected by supporting branches. She took in the deerskin flaps, the pine bough on the west pole, the string of braided leather with its cowrie shells. Then her gaze traveled west, up a slope to where honeysuckles grew thick, and she saw the old man, a shadow lying on his shoulders like a cloak, his soul standing beside him.

  The old man came slowly down the slope, his slow movements due not to age, but caution. His soul preceded him, passed her by, as did he. Esmeralda stood quietly, waiting, then turned.

  She’d heard of this belief among some of the Native People. When you met a man, you shouldn’t address him until you had passed him by. This let your souls continue on while only your bodies and shadows conversed. She knew of the belief, but didn’t know why it was held.

  When the old man turned, she called a greeting to him, but he shook his head. When he spoke, his words meant as little to her. Closing her eyes, she tried to remember what little she’d learned of sign language while briefly staying with a Plains medicine woman out west. Esmeralda had a gift for language, and the movements came back quickly.

  She raised both hands, palms facing outward. Then, lowering them slightly, she directed them toward the old man.

  Bless you, her signing said.

  The old man smiled. He extended both of his open hands in a forward direction, palms down, then lowered them until his arms were perpendicular to his body. His right hand rose to his forehead, palm turned inward, middle and index fingers spread out and pointing up, the other fingers closed. The hand rose higher and made a clockwise circular motion. Then he held both hands horizontally in front of his chest, palms down, fingers together and pointing forward, and made a shaking motion.

  Esmeralda concentrated, then nodded as she understood.

  Thank you, manitou of the wind was what he had said.

  She thought a moment, then began to sign again. I seek the spirit of a friend.

  Her signing wasn’t as quick and smooth as it once had been, but it was enough to get her meaning across. His own signing told her that this wasn’t his usual form of communication either.

  There was a manitou, his hands said. She walked west with your brothers.

  Esmeralda looked in that direction. She closed her eyes, seeking that ribboned thread of light that connected her with Emma’s spirit, but the thread ended here. In this place. What did he mean, walked west with her brothers? Emma was an only child, while Esmeralda herself had no siblings.

  I don’t understand, she signed.

  The spirit guides of the west, he replied. Grandmother Toad took her in their company.

  Grandmother Toad? Again she signed her confusion.

  He made a new sign, thumb and index finger of his left hand extended with the other fingers closed, palm facing her. He added the sign for night and pointed up to the moon. “Nokomis,” he said aloud while his hands shaped the signs for grandmother and toad again.

  The Moon Mother, Esmeralda realized. Brigit. She had taken Emma... where? West. But the thread ended here. What lay west? And then she knew. The Land of Souls. Did that mean that Blue had been too late? Had Emma died and her soul now fled to the land of the dead?

  The old man watched her, waiting. Peering over his shoulder, like the hood of a cloak given life, she could see the head of his shadow, watching too. Behind him his soul stood, looking eastward, into the forest.

  Can we call her? she signed.

  The old man made a sign of questioning. It was plain what he meant. Call who? The errant spirit or the moon?

  Esmeralda stood quietly, letting the silence inside her rise up to clear her mind. Then she reached into her shoulder bag and took out the tobacco pouch that she’d borrowed from a Belgian student in the House. She rolled a cigarette, fingers awkward. It had been years since she’d smoked. When she had made the cigarette, she lit it with a lighter, also borrowed, and drew the acrid smoke inside. Careful not to cough, for all that it teared her eyes and made her throat feel raw, she offered the cigarette to the old man.

  4

  The being with which Migizi conversed was unlike any he had heard of before. She was like a flame, the light of her medicine shining strong inside her. Her skin was so pale, her hair a waterfall of glimmering gold in the moonlight, her clothing so strange. But he knew her for what she was when he first looked down the slope to see her standing beside his jessakan.

  When she offered him the sacred smoke, he hesitated at first, surprised that she used no spirit pipe, more surprised still at how she woke fire from her fingers. But she was a manitou, and the ways of manitou were different from those of men.

  The sign language they were using to speak to each other he had learned from a baun of the Sinebaun, the Stone Medicine Men, who in turn had learned it from the tribes who dwelled on the distant western plains. By this, he knew her to be a manitou of the windmaker Nibanegishik, her charge being the winds of the west.

  So he accepted her smoke. “Saemauh k’weekaunaehnaun,” he said, and repeated the words in sign language. Tobacco is our friend.

  She signed back, Tobacco makes us friends.

  “Waussae/iaukonae k’weeyow,” he replied. “K’okomissinaunik k’gah ondinimowaunaunih.” He repeated it with signs. Bright with flame is your body. A mystery derived from our grandmother.

  I would meet with her, she signed back. To seek my lost sister.

  Ah, Migizi thought. So that strange lost manitou now walking the meekunnaug was her kin. No wonder she had seemed so different to him. But this one—she was not lost. She walked unfamiliar roads, perhaps, but she was not lost.

  Listen, he signed.

  She cocked her head and heard now what his soul had heard long before either of them. Spirit drums talking. Small thunders in the night.

  She comes now, he signed. Returning from the spir
it land in the west.

  The new manitou turned and a wind started up at her feet as Nokomis stepped from the Path of Souls to walk among the honeysuckles, descending the slope to stand before them. Migizi touched the wind manitou’s shoulder.

  Speak with her, he signed when she turned to look at him. Grandmother Toad knows the path your sister has taken. She can take you to her.

  The new manitou nodded her thanks and turned again to where the moon stood, gleaming with her inner light.

  5

  Esmeralda had never seen a woman as beautiful as the one who stood before her now—nor a spirit that shone with such strength. Light gleamed from her, an inner light that lent a fire to her coppery skin. Her hair was the pure white of moonlight, her body slender under a white doeskin dress. She appeared as young as a woman in her early twenties, yet by her eyes Esmeralda knew she had looked upon the world while it was still being formed.

  Grandmother Toad. What a name for a being such as this. The Weirdin named the toad as a wielder of evil power, as did the Native beliefs of many of the Eastern woodlands tribes. She knew that much. But she saw now that this was in fact the greatest aspect of the Moon’s power. Swallowing evil and transforming it into light.

  “Welcome, daughter,” the woman said. “I have watched you from afar for many years.”

  Esmeralda wasn’t sure what language Grandmother Toad spoke—all she knew was that she understood it.

  “You... know me?”

  The woman smiled. “Of course I know you. Did you think I was only grandmother to the Djibwe? I am whatever I am needed to be. To the Djibwe I am Nokomis—Grandmother Toad who lives in the moon. To you I am Brigit. To those who wish to believe in nothing... I am nothing for them.”

  “I always knew that,” Esmeralda said, realizing the truth of what she said only as she spoke it. “I just never stopped to think about it....”

  “Your spirit grows,” Grandmother Toad said. “You have studied long.”

  “One can always learn.”

  “True. But there comes a time for lessons to be put aside and for one to do.”

  The voice of her conscience given flesh and blood, Esmeralda thought as Grandmother Toad’s word echoed the realizations she had come to while sitting in the Silkwater Kitchen, leafing through her poetry journal.