by Hilari Bell
Jase’s hands tightened on the spear . . .
. . . tightened on the steering wheel as the car lurched and slithered down the track to the beach. The Tesla’s wide tires were good on sand, but the low-slung body scraped over every rock. Part of Jase winced at each grating scratch, but the rest of him was focused on his goal. Most of him was missing, but the part that was here knew what it had to do.
Jase summoned all his courage and took a step toward the Olmaat. It opened its mouth and roared like an avalanche, and he leaped back.
Laughter came from the sidelines, where Otter Woman and her cohorts waited, and Bear gave an amused grunt.
Heat flooded Jase’s face, but that animal roar had startled him, shocked him.
Then the monster charged and Jase leaped away again, swinging the spear wildly to fend it off.
The Olmaat wasn’t as fast as he’d feared. He could stay ahead of it, darting first to one side then the other, swiping with his spear to make the monster keep its distance. If it ever hooked those claws in him, he would die.
Jase knew he hadn’t turned, but the car was heading for the surf again. He swore and wrenched the wheel around, feeling how sluggish the Tesla was on sand, driving once more in the direction of the Olmaat rock. Half of him, half of the part of him that was there, thought he was crazy. The rest of him focused on two things: the great dark rock that was his target, and the glowing number on the control panel that tracked his speed.
45 miles per hour. The Tesla’s engineers guaranteed a driver could walk away from any crash at 45 or less. But 45 mph was more than fast enough to shred carbon fiber and bend the light steel alloy, to crack a wooden staff and shatter a stone . . . Jase shook his head, shook off the alien thought. He was driving toward the bluff now. Was he going in circles? He corrected the car’s course once more.
The Olmaat was driving him in circles.
Sweat ran down Jase’s body, stinging in the cuts on his scalp and arms. Those cuts proclaimed the cost of getting within reach of the monster’s claws, but he couldn’t kill it from a distance. The mad thought of throwing the spear had occurred to him several times, but he’d never thrown a spear in his life. If he missed—and he’d almost certainly miss—he’d lose his spear, and the Olmaat could close and finish him.
If it kept running him around the beach, simple exhaustion would finish him.
To kill it, he would have to get close. Close enough for the claws at the end of those whipping arms to reach him.
Close enough to use the spear.
Jase gritted his teeth against a burst of panic, and started toward the Olmaat.
The rock appeared before him. This time, when Jase punched the accelerator, that view wasn’t replaced by rolling waves or the low bluff. Steady, steady. He glanced at the speedometer: 45 miles per hour.
The Olmaat wasn’t surprised by the change in his tactics. It kept darting away, trying to keep out of the spear’s reach. And it was doing better at that than Jase was at dodging its claws. One swift swipe left his shirtsleeve in tatters. Another opened three shallow gashes above his knee.
The Olmaat’s arms were too long for Jase’s spear to reach its torso, and those arms moved too quickly for him to hit them. But its feet were slower.
He ignored the clothing that shredded on his body, the stinging pain, and the drip of blood above his knee. 45 miles an hour. 45. 45.
The rock was nearer.
Jase leaped in, changing the spear’s direction at the last moment to thrust down at a furred, stationary foot.
The sweeping claws barely missed his head, and the spear was almost pulled from his hand as the monster jerked back, bellowing with rage and pain.
It limped back, blood staining the sand, and then stopped, waiting for him.
No more easy shots. No more running.
He took a breath and closed his hands around the spear. One step forward. Two. He darted to the right, dodged left, and lunged . . .
. . . the rock was in front of him, filling the windshield. Finally. Now. Jase punched the accelerator.
Four long gashes opened across his chest in a brilliant flash of pain, but Jase threw himself forward and thrust the spear into the Olmaat’s body. Its anguished shriek shook the shaft in his hands, shook his world. For a horrible moment Jase thought he’d failed. Then the spear exploded, splinters raking his face and hands, and the world exploded with it.
Chapter 14
“Mr. Mintok? Mr. Mintok, our instruments show severe damage to your vehicle. Are you all right? Should I send medical assistance?”
Jase opened his eyes and found himself in the driver’s seat of his car. What was left of his car. The windshield’s safety glass had disintegrated, giving him a horribly clear view of the smashed hood.
“Mr. Mintok, I’m alerting Whittier Emergency Services now. If you can hear—”
“Don’t!” The air bags were still deflating, so he couldn’t see the control panel, but Jase knew he was talking to Travelnet. “Don’t send anyone. I’m all right.”
He thought it was true, though his face felt bruised where the air bag had slammed it. The Tesla’s engineers had made good on their promise—he would walk away from this crash. And there was nothing in the Tesla, even smashed, that could explain the four long gashes across his chest to a medic.
“I’m OK,” he told the dispatcher. “Really.”
“If you don’t want medical assistance, that’s your choice,” she said dubiously. “You appear to be conscious and coherent. But our diagnostics show severe damage to your vehicle. Are you certain you don’t want medics? And if you don’t want medical services, do you need us to send a tow truck?”
He would need a tow truck. And it would be expensive.
Not as expensive as crashing the Tesla.
“Not yet,” Jase told the dispatcher. “I’d rather set that up myself. I want to take a look at the damage first.”
“That’s up to you, sir,” the dispatcher said. “Do you have any further need of our services?”
“No, thank—wait! I can’t find my com pod. It’s probably around here somewhere.” Jase was looking for it as he spoke. “But I don’t see it. Would you call my home com unit and leave a message for my parents? Tell them the Tesla’s . . .” Wrecked. “ . . . out of commission,” Jase finished, though his throat was almost too tight to speak. “And that I can’t find my com pod, but I’m going on to Gramps’ anyway. I’ll contact them from his house. Got that?”
“This conversation is being recorded,” the dispatcher said. “I’ll play it for them verbatim.”
“Good,” said Jase. “Thanks. That’s all I need.”
“If you’re sure.” The dispatcher sounded dubious.
“I’m sure,” said Jase firmly. “I’m leaving now. I want to check the damage to my car.”
And to check on something else that had caught his eye—a strand of brown leather dangling from a crack in the rock.
He went for the medicine pouch first, because he’d earned it, because it was easier than looking at his car.
It lay in a deep crevice in the rock that had opened when the car hit it. The pouch was dry and whole—how had they gotten it into the rock?
Clutching the medicine bag in his hand, Jase turned to face the rest of it.
The Tesla’s hood was smashed back almost three feet; the carbon fiber skin had ripped, its jagged edges fringed with fine white filaments. That might have been repairable. Or replaceable. The one good thing about his expensive insurance was that everything about the Tesla was fully covered. But looking at the impossible tilt of the tires, Jase was pretty sure the aluminum-alloy frame was sprung as well.
That too could be repaired, along with the broken fans, and the shattered pipes of the battery-cooling system from which coolant dripped like blood into the sand.
But if he replaced every component in it, it would no long-er be his car. He might as well try to track down another Mark 14—and even if he could find one, it wouldn’
t be the same.
The Tesla was gone, and Jase’s heart ached for the loss. But as much as that loss hurt, Gima’s death would have hurt much worse.
No matter how much he’d loved it, it was only a car. And its destruction had saved much more.
Was this what they meant by dying with honor? If so . . . it sucked.
Jase made his way slowly up the bluff. He’d paid the price; he might as well get the benefit. Now, before anything else went wrong.
The sun hadn’t risen. Without his com pod—which really had vanished—Jase had no idea what time it was, but the misty overcast was clearing off. The sky over the sea shimmered with luminous grays and blues, like the inside of a pearl.
When he reached the top, Jase looked out over the bay at the tidy lines of breakers and the dark slopes of the low hills.
He could hear the breeze in the trees behind him, feel it ruffling his hair—the parts that weren’t matted with dried blood.
Every inch of his body ached and stung, particularly where the bees had got him, and the cuts on his chest still bled. But he put that aside, and let his mind reach out to the ocean of air around him. This thin skin of atmosphere that circled the world gave life to everything that breathed. Jase drew it into his own lungs and gave himself up to it.
When he was certain he had the sense of it, he opened the pouch and pulled out a generous pinch of Atahalne’s dust.
He understood more about magic now, and didn’t bother with words. But as he cast the dust into the air he let the pain of breaking the Tesla into his heart, and willed for everything that was broken to mend, and heal, and be whole.
He was ready for the power surge, though this time it felt as if it was filling, inflating, lifting him up—so much that for a moment he thought his feet had left the ground.
But when Jase opened his eyes he was standing right where he’d been before . . . and northern lights danced in the sky above him.
You almost never saw them in the summer; conditions were wrong and the sky was too bright, even in the middle of the short summer “night.”
These weren’t the brilliant neon curtains that lit the winter darkness, but green and gold wisps that flickered across the gray vault . . . and then winked out.
Jase thought of Frog People and Goose Woman sensing a surge of ley power running all the way to the node, and his heart lightened. He thought of Otter Woman and the football squad’s fury and grinned outright.
He thought of Gima’s spirit, fleeing home through the dawn, and knew that no matter how high the price, it was worth it.
He turned, and almost ran into Raven.
Her glossy hair was tumbled, her stretchie rumpled and grubby, and her slender feet still bare. But she probably looked better than he did. Jase put up a hand to cover his shredded shirt, then let it drop because even a light touch hurt. He’d have to do something about those gashes eventually, but he preferred to put it off.
“I’m a mess.”
“You were glorious.” Her eyes were brighter than the northern lights. She stepped forward and reached up to touch his bruised face, then, very gently, pressed her lips to his.
After a moment Jase forgot about his cuts and bruises, and everything else. When he finally had to lift his mouth, in order to breathe, his arms were around her and she was pressed against his chest. He didn’t even notice the pain till she stepped back, and blood-sticky fabric pulled at the cuts.
“Ow. No, wait. I didn’t mean that. I—”
“I’m not going to sleep with you,” Raven said. “You deserve, you’ve earned more respect than that. I won’t treat you as a toy.”
“Why not? This isn’t like . . . I don’t . . . Uh, what do you mean, respect?”
“You know what respect means.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean you can’t sleep with me! The reason I objected so much the first time was because you didn’t respect me. You’re supposed to respect the people you sleep with. It would be all right, now.”
She was laughing.
“Right for you, maybe,” she said. “But for me . . . No human ever fought for me before. No one ever saved me. And I like you, too. That’s not something I’m used to with a human. I’m going to have to think about it.”
“Which means you can’t sleep with me?” Jase didn’t see the logic of that at all.
“For now,” said Raven firmly. “Besides, you really are a mess. You wouldn’t enjoy it nearly as much as you think you would, particularly after you get over the joy of that healing and your aches set in.”
They were beginning to set in now, though Jase thought he could ignore them given some encouragement. But despite that incredible kiss, Raven didn’t seem to feel encouraging.
“I’m lucky they hid the dust in that particular Olmaat rock,” he said, trying to sound suave and modest. “Or I’d be running all over Alaska looking for it.”
Raven shook her head. “Jase, that pouch would have been in whatever rock you broke to kill the Olmaat. It was in all of them, and none, until you killed it.”
“No!” Jase protested. “I’m not up for your weird physics. The ley is healed, right?”
“Flowing like crazy,” Raven told him. “Down and through Denali, and out elsewhere. This will give me a great start on the next healing.”
The next healing.
“You’re leaving,” Jase whispered. “You’re going to leave right now.”
“I don’t have to leave right now,” she admitted. “I’ve won, so Bear and the others will keep Otter Woman out of my way. But I do have to go. Since you’re all right under the mess, it might as well be now.”
He’d always known he wouldn’t be able to hold her for long, but . . . “Will I see you again? Someday? When the leys are healed?”
Maybe she wouldn’t respect him quite so much by then.
“Oh, you’ll see me again,” said Raven. “In your dreams.”
She stepped forward once more. This time her kiss was softer, more a matter of promise than passion.
He could feel her growing lighter, less substantial in his arms. When he opened his eyes she was gone.
“Hey, before you go, where’s my com pod?”
The only sound was the whispering wind.
Jase was halfway down the bluff before he realized that the medicine bag had vanished with her.
***
He hiked back into Whittier. He’d looked around the car again for his com pod, but it wasn’t there. It was going to be interesting telling his parents that he hadn’t lost it, it had turned into a beetle and flown away. If he didn’t want to go through a lot of testing for a concussion he didn’t have, he’d better claim he lost it.
His injuries weren’t as bad as he’d originally thought, though the night clerk at the flash charge center stared when he came in. He found all the first aid supplies he needed on its shelves, and added a cheap stretchie to the growing pile, because the bloody rents left by the Olmaat’s claws were a bit too obvious.
“Do you need some help, son?” the clerk asked as Jase swiped his charge card. “There’s a med-tech down at the harbor. He won’t mind waking up if he’s needed.”
“I can handle it,” said Jase. “Thanks.”
He’d bandaged and treated his accumulated cuts, stings and bruises, and eaten breakfast before the ferry arrived.
Jase took the ferry down the coast to Cordova, watching the sun creep over the mountains to the northeast, which told him it was around four in the morning. He missed his pod—but he was beginning to understand why some passengers stood at the rail and watched the view.
After some discussion with the ticket clerk, he hitched a ride on a mail boat that was headed for the resort and points south. In the early morning, he walked down the main street of the village his father had struggled so hard to leave behind. People were setting out for their boats or the resort. A few of them smiled or said hi as he passed, and even those who glared showed only their normal annoyance at seeing him.
&
nbsp; They’d have to get used to that, Jase thought. They’d be seeing more of him.
On this sunny morning the front windows were open. Turning up the path to the house, Jase could hear his grandfather saying something about getting checked out anyway, and Gima’s firm voice proclaiming, “I’m fine, you stubborn old coot! And you might as well stop pestering me. I’ve already said I’ll tell you all about it when my witness gets here. And not a moment before. Not even you would believe this story without someone to back me up.”
Jase would have hesitated to tell the story if she hadn’t been willing to back him up, too. The thought of his grandfather’s probable reaction made him grin, though his smile faded as he knocked on the familiar wooden panel.
His grandfather opened the door and stood, blocking the way. The lines on his face were deeper, harsher, but something about his expression looked softer than before.
“Father wasn’t right,” Jase said, before the old man could speak. “But he wasn’t wrong, either. He took his own path, and he tried to build a bridge for anyone who wanted to follow him.”
His grandfather’s gaze swept over him, catching on the rent and bloodstained knee of his jeans.
“But he was wrong to try to blow up the bridge for people who didn’t want to take that path,” Jase went on. “I know that, now. I think the bridge needs to be made wider, so people can go both ways.”