by Misty Evans
Pulling an animal bladder bag from his belt, Enann considered the idea that his magic would change tonight’s history for all time, with or without the sacred knife.
As another clap of thunder reverberated through the forest, his gut stirred with satisfaction. Opening a black pouch, he withdrew a pinch of the contents between his fingers and sprinkled it into the water the bladder bag held. Checking his time against the moon, he crossed to the man still held against the tree by his mind and forced some of the water into his mouth.
“Stay here,” Enann told him. The simple command would ensure the man could not be able to leave the tree while Enann was away.
The man coughed and tried to spit out the water, but he’d already ingested enough to begin the poisoning process. “Where are you going?”
“To round up the Moon Water family so I can kill them if Keva does not bow to me.”
“Bastard.”
“You forget. You are the bastard.” He began walking away, but couldn’t resist turning back and smiling in the man’s face. “When I return, you will beg me to kill you.”
“Never,” the man ground out between clenched teeth. Was the poison already taking effect?
“It would give me great pleasure to kill you, Kai, but again, it will be Keva’s job to do so.”
The man coughed once more and squirmed, trying to break the magic bonds. “Don’t touch her.”
He was strong, but magic wasn’t about physical strength. “Touch her?” Enann laughed softly to himself. “I will do to her all the things I watched you do to her, only I will make her cry in pain instead of pleasure.”
As Enann walked away, he carried the image of Kai’s fear in the front of his mind. Revenge was sweet on his tongue.
Chapter Nineteen
Still in the present, Keva struggled to build a small fire on the slippery, craggy stones of Starved Rock as clouds skimmed across the full moon. Thunder rumbled in the distance, the sound mixing with the splash of waves slamming the shoreline below.
Her heart answered the demanding waves, her anxiety high. So many years had passed since she’d performed a sacred ritual, fear danced in her trembling fingers. What if she couldn’t remember the ancient ways? What if she forgot the right words and messed things up even more?
As the fire crackled to life, eating oxygen and birthing energy, her intuition did as well. The old ways still existed deep inside her, the songs of her mother and grandmother welled up in her chest. She began to hum as she extracted a bunch of herbs from her backpack and laid them on the flames. At once, the fire consumed them, popping and sizzling, releasing the smell of hawthorn, mint and wild sage in a plume of gray smoke.
Continuing to hum, she picked up a long stick and drew a circle in the rocky ground surrounding the fire area. Stepping outside the circle, she drew a second concentric circle around the first, and then a third. Standing inside the bull’s-eye she’d created, she tossed the stick on the fire and sat down to wait for Chee.
How Enann had been able to find her in the present bugged her. It was one thing to be able to travel back to the past, where your mind and body had left an energy imprint which acted as a beacon. It was an entirely different thing to travel into the future. Enann had obviously harnessed the power of the Moon Water knife, but how had he transported himself to the exact time and place where he could find Keva in the future? Had the knife provided a link to her? Had Starved Rock? Or was it Kai’s energy in Rife, combined with hers, that had sent out the right beacon for Enann to follow?
Just as a break in the clouds allowed the moon to shine down fully, Keva felt a fat drop of rain splatter on her cheek and roll down. Great. Just what she needed, Mother Nature working against her on this crucial night.
Grabbing a handful of brush she’d placed nearby, she fed the fire with it. As the flames danced and reached toward the moon, she mentally rehearsed the words Enann had said out loud when he’d snatched Rife. Waka tuik kawa lummi amlekat…
The sound of the syllables rang true, but the words were not familiar to her. They made no sense. It wasn’t that she’d forgotten her native language or the magical language of the Great Shamans. The words simply did not exist in her lexicon.
Yet something about the cadence, the tone, did seem familiar. Keva closed her eyes and continued to repeat them in her head, looking for the thread that would help her unravel the puzzle. Great Mother, show me the meaning of this spell. Let me understand the words of the ghost man Enann.
Thunder, closer this time, cracked and echoed around her, causing her to start. She opened her eyes and watched lightning zigzag over the ocean. Rain began to fall in solemn drops. Her forehead dripped water onto her nose and a cool breeze slipped under the windbreaker she was wearing.
Winter’s coming.
Winter. The word sat in her brain like a weight. It was still August, why was she thinking about winter?
Summer, winter, fall and spring. The song of her ancestors calling the seasons to change rang in her mind as Enann’s words dripped in her ears like the falling rain. Waka tuik kawa lummi amlekat…
He’d called on Sister Earth to help him with his spell and used the song of the seasons. Only, he’d recited most of the words backward. Reversing the order of the seasons?
Keva rearranged Enann’s spell to confirm his ability to reverse time. Akaw kiut awak lummi takelma. Yes, these words, the names of the seasons, were familiar. He’d reversed the order to spin time counterclockwise.
“What, no black cauldron? No broomstick?”
Chee’s voice came from behind her. Disappointed at the interruption, she was nevertheless glad he’d made it and looked over her shoulder at him.
He was out of breath from climbing the rock outcropping, and like her, soaking wet from the rain. Holding up two evidence bags, one with her family knife and the other with the doll, he smiled in the light of the fire. “I got ’em.”
Finally something was going right.
As Chee started toward her, Keva warned him, “Don’t cross the circle until I’m gone.”
He stopped on the edge of the third ring, looked down at it and then sent a nervous glance behind him. “Why?”
“You’ll screw up my energy imprint.” She stood, wiping rain from her face. It didn’t do much good. The rain was falling insistently now. “Just toss the bags to me.”
Chee tossed the knife carefully. “Is Coyote following me or something?”
Coyote, to many Native Americans, was a Trickster—an anthropomorphic animal who played tricks on unsuspecting humans. He was associated with negative, selfish qualities and bad energy, causing rifts between people and misunderstandings. He liked to meddle with magic.
Keva shook her head and set the bag with the knife down next to the fire. “No Coyote. Just your energy.”
“Good or bad?”
“Both,” she explained as he tossed the doll and she caught it. “Energy is energy. We choose what to do with it, but in the end, we’re only human. We carry both positive and negative energy with us all the time.”
Chee nodded in understanding. “So what’s your plan?”
“I’m going to tap into another energy plane of existence, just like I’ve done many times in my Pathwalks, and try to find Rife. I’ve never time traveled, but I think the principle is similar. Once I find him, I’ll attempt to send him back to this spot. When I leave, I want you to sit here.” Using her foot, she marked the ground with an X. “Feed the fire and keep a picture of Rife in your mind. Call his name, replay memories of him as a boy in your mind. Whatever you have to do to keep focused on him.”
Chee’s gaze traced around the circles before focusing on the fire. “You’ve created a target, a bull’s-eye to throw your dart at.”
“Exactly. Sending myself back in time will be the easy part I think. Sending Rife forward will be harder, especially if I don’t come with him, and I don’t think I’ll have the energy to send both of us through. This bull’s-eye gives me something to shoo
t for and your energy calling to him will be like a lighthouse beacon to guide him back. That’s why you have to stay focused on him while I’m gone.”
“How long will it take?”
The question of the hour. “I have no idea. Time in this century runs differently than the time I grew up in.”
When Chee frowned, Keva tried to explain. “A thousand years ago, wolves sang us to sleep at night and ravens were our alarm clocks. We believed we were part of Sister Earth, not master over her. Time was less linear and more malleable.”
“Won’t you miss this time? All the inventions since then?”
Keva considered the questions for a long moment, watching clouds darken the face of the moon again. “Movies, chocolate, high heels.”
“Typical woman.”
She shared a smile with him. “There is much to admire in a typical woman. I’d give anything to be one again.”
Turning her back on him, she sat by the fire and removed the doll from the plastic evidence bag. She’d made it herself, imbued it with magic, and it hummed under her fingers as if it understood what was about to happen. Instinctively, she sent a blanket of light over it before tucking it under her jacket, next to her heart. It was time to put the doll to rest along with her past.
Keva had experienced many out of body experiences as a shaman. Her Pathwalks and other ceremonies had revealed worlds most people, past and present, had never dreamed of, much less experienced. While those trips left her body behind, this time, her body would travel with her.
If she did everything right.
If she screwed up, her soul might detach from her body and live forever in limbo. Worse than that, however, was the fact that if she failed, Rife would never return to the present. While she had great faith in his abilities to survive in the past, he was still at a disadvantage. A disadvantage Enann would use to kill him.
She picked up the Moon Water knife, welcoming the familiar weight in her hands as she closed her eyes. Like all magical objects, its innate power was neither good nor evil—it all depended on what it was used for. In her mind’s eye, she pictured the past and Starved Rock, the point in time she figured Enann had taken Rife to, based on his last statement. His challenge to her.
Little had actually changed in this spot over the past millennium, which was a good thing. It made it that much easier to remember the past. Breathing deeply, she opened all her senses, including her shamanic ones, to the world around her. The sound of the waves driving themselves into the rocks below and the crack of thunder overhead, a lingering rumble making the Moon Water knife vibrate in her hands.
The smell of salt and the burning fire and her own excitement. The feel of the hard stone ground under her butt.
Time bent as Keva’s meditation took her deeper into the natural world. Her energy reached out to Rife, calling to him across the centuries. A song began in her mind and soon flowed from her lips. The sound rose and fell with the sizzling of rain drops landing in the fire. A wind rose, picking up the ends of her hair and whipping them around her face. The Moon Water knife grew warm and Keva felt its magical energy spread into her hands and run up her arms. The energy whirled and climbed up the back of her neck, down into her shoulders, encasing her spine. Soon it was circling like an electrical current seeking ground as it looped through her body.
Waka tuik kawa lummi amlekat…
Over and over again, Keva repeated the words she’d heard Enann chant, keeping the past time and place centered in her mind.
A flash of lightning, hot and crushing, exploded inside her. Thunderbird’s giant wings crashed inside her head and she couldn’t breathe.
Rife, her mind screamed as, a second later, her body imploded.
Chapter Twenty
Rife’s body was on fire. His guts felt like he’d impaled himself on a white-hot poker. Not once, but a hundred times. He could bend over in his agony and sit down but he couldn’t walk so much as a foot away from the tree. Enann’s magic still held him captive.
The pain was familiar. He’d been in this situation before, only as Kai. If his past self was where Rife thought he was, Kai was in High Chieftess Keva’s lodge, writhing in agony as well. Sweat beaded on his skin along with the rain. The poison Enann had fed him would kill him soon. If only he’d told Keva the truth, that he realized who he was in the shower, even though it freaked him out. If only he’d believed her right from the start.
If only he hadn’t let Enann, the bastard, sucker him in the yard. Now the present day Keva was going to die and the High Chieftess Keva was going to be subjected to a lifetime of abuse and manipulation.
I have to save her. Rife pushed his fear for Keva, both her past and present self, to the back of his mind and worked instead on egging on his anger. He was strong and in the first vision he’d seen, he’d broken through powerful physical bonds. Nothing magical could hold him if he put his mind to it. He had to break free from Enann’s magical jail cell and only by focusing on the injustice of the situation and the pain coursing through him, could he overcome the poison’s debilitating effects.
But even as he tried to talk himself into a rage, his intestines knotted into another cramp and he curled on the ground in agony. Rocking himself, he pulled in a ragged breath and held it until the worst passed. He stared up at the midnight blue sky, and listened to an animal scurrying across the wet forest floor off to his left. I can’t die without telling Keva she was right. She’s waited all these years for Kai. I have to let her know he came back. I came back.
Rife heard the animal hiss and turned his head to see a plump, dark blob lumbering to a nearby tree. Raccoon, probably. A heavier rustling noise behind his head let him know that something was pursuing the raccoon.
With his luck, it was a bear or a cougar. Could an animal cross the threshold of his jail cell? Could it break the magic binding him to the tree?
Rife heard the raccoon’s nails clawing up bark as it climbed the nearby tree. Forcing himself up on one elbow, he caught the shadow of a long, sleek animal darting behind a cache of ferns. Rife knew the profile—not cat and not bear.
Wolf.
A wolf would pick a helpless man over a grouchy raccoon for its midnight snack any day. And wolves traveled in packs.
Sure enough, the wolf behind the tree raised his snout and gave a long howl. It echoed through the trees, a sad, lonely sound. Goose flesh rippled up and down Rife’s chilled body. If he was going to die by poison instead of by wolf, he had to think and he had to think fast.
As the rest of the pack joined the leader, they emerged from the forest of trees into the mottled moonlight in unison. Their eyes shone a bit too bright, making Rife’s nerves tighten.
Was this more of Enann’s magic? Had he possessed them or was it another facet of mind control.
Enann, you shittin’ freak, he thought.
A soft, but threatening, chorus of growls rose and fell on the air. The burning in his belly a distant nagging now, Rife backed up against the tree. He heard the raccoon hiss again, high above him.
Up, that was the answer. Glancing at the branches right above his head, Rife caught sight of the lunar eclipse. The moon had been halved by the Earth’s shadow. Sensing the wolves’ approach, he dropped his gaze back to them as he eased his body up. Even though half the moon was covered, the remaining light lit the animals’ eyes and spotlighted their barred white canine teeth.
The pack leader lunged, his teeth gnashing at Rife’s legs and breaking the skin. Reaching up, Rife grabbed two branches and used what was left of his strength to pull himself up. The wolf’s teeth snagged his pant leg, ripping it.
He kicked at the animal’s head with his free leg just as another wolf lunged at him. The pack leader broke off with a high-pitched yelp, but the second wolf clamped onto Rife’s leg, making Rife echo the wolf’s cry.
The weakened muscles in his arms burned as he held himself and the sixty-pound wolf off the ground. As he struggled to shake the animal loose, he felt his will to live slip,
just as his fingers slipped on the branches.
But then Rife heard Keva’s voice singing a song. He scanned the clearing and the dark shadows of the forest looking for her.
Nothing. Yet, he could hear her voice as clear as day.
“I’m here,” he called to her in his mind. “Stuck in this damn tree.”
But even as the thought rippled through his mind, he remembered Enann’s plan. The evil bastard had set a trap for Keva and was using Rife as the bait.
Digging for superhuman strength, Rife kicked with his free leg again, nailing the dangling wolf in the ribcage. The animal let go and fell to the ground with a loud thump. At that moment, Rife saw a bright light in the western sky. A sharp crack of thunder vibrated the forest, scaring the pack of wolves. Hunched over, tails between their legs, they disappeared into the woods.
As Rife held onto the tree, his head pounding, his guts cramping and his leg bleeding, his mind followed the notes of Keva’s voice.
She’s coming for me.
The thought filled him with relief and dread at the same time.
Using all his energy, he focused his thoughts. “Go back,” he mentally yelled at her. “It’s a trap.”
Chapter Twenty-one
Keva had experienced the pleasant floating sensation in her Pathwalks. There was no drug that mimicked the weightless, sheer joy of being free of a body. Like her death experiences, her soul was free of the body’s confines and flying to other worlds where time and space fused.
In some ways, it was similar to the heavenly moment during sex when her brain turned to mush and only her body felt anything. All her senses tuned in to the electrical impulses zinging to her nerve endings. Everything heightened to an agonizingly wonderful sensation.