The students laughed at this, and the tension lessened some.
"There's others, but what's known about them is anecdotal. Shape-shifting, Protean change, the Greenkeeper, and the chant-shaper all have stories, but no hard evidence. Questions?" she asked.
"What about telekinesis?" Katia asked.
Unexpected question, Jaguar thought. "The ability to move an object without touching it," she filled in. "That's a little different than the others. Everyone is born with some capacity for telepathy or empathy, and skill beyond that is a matter of practice. Telekinesis is inborn."
Glen chewed on his lip. "That sounds kind of cool. How far away can they work? And how precise can they be?"
"Depends on the Telekine. How much they practice. They can make great surgeons, though." She didn't tell them that she knew a Telekine, a woman who could probe the inside of neural matter as if her fingers were lasers. She was one of the few people who knew why she was so good at her job. Jaquar had also had a prisoner who was a Telekine, with a slight gift for empathy as well. He'd chosen to give up his gift because he didn't trust himself. Jaguar was the only Teacher who knew how to help him do that.
She put her chalk down, brushed her hands off.
Steve leaned forward and raised a hand. "Dr. Addams? You leaving something out."
"What?" she said, looking to him.
"Mind fucking," he replied, dropping the words into the classroom like a gauntlet on the floor.
She picked it up. "Actually, that comes under a different heading."
"Yeah? What?"
"Advertising," she said.
The class hooted, and Steve's face flushed over with red.
"Or," she added, "education. Or even religion. We've all got something we're trying to sell. And it's up to you to figure out what you want to buy."
They nodded appreciatively.
Enough, she thought. That was enough, and she hoped it wouldn't get her in more trouble than she was already. So far she wasn't doing very well at keeping the hell out of it.
"Had enough lecture for one night?" she asked. "Steve?"
He glowered at her and shook his head. "You have a right to your opinion."
"And you have a right to yours," she agreed. "Let's talk about something less frightening."
"Like what?" Jesse asked. . "Ghosts. Vampires. The undead."
"What?" Selica inquired.
"Halloween's coming up," she noted. "Who knows where the ritual started, and more importantly, what're you all gonna be?"
Talk turned to familiar ground, and everyone relaxed except Steve, who stayed sullen; and Katia, who stayed watchful; and Jaguar, who found that Halloween carried its own set of unexpected memories and tensions for her.
Tonight was the harvest moon. She couldn't help but wonder what Alex was doing without her.
Planetoid Three, Toronto Replica
Alex didn't have to go far to speak to his ancestors.
Lakeshore was good enough, as long as he was willing to be chilly, feel the wind and damp around him, and watch the harvest moon rise and set. Tonight was set aside for honoring the ancestors.
He'd done this ritual with Jaguar since the year after she arrived and they realized that they could share their knowledge of the arts with each other. In fact, they'd done all the seasonal rituals together. Solstice and equinox, harvest and planting—even though they rode a sky island that was only partly composed of earth, the ceremonies still needed to be performed.
As he lit a small fire and began the song of welcome and thanks, he felt anger rising in him.
She should be here. And dammit, she would be here if she wasn't always getting herself in trouble, wasn't so wild and insistently raw.
He groaned to himself. This was not the right mood to start with. He needed gratitude and an open heart if he was to listen to the ancestors, hear what they needed from him. He moved closer to his small fire, and focused. Breathed. Felt the play of space opening around him.
His ancestors—people who trekked cold northern countries in search of sun. People who crossed the land masses that formed an ancient bridge, seeking sun. Going south.
Seeking war. Seeking stories. Seeking sun. Always, seeking light and sun and heat and fire.
They were here tonight, the many lives it took to make his.
He could hear them nearby. And they were all laughing at him.
Laughing at him.
He turned his face from the fire he'd made, to the sky, where the stars burned hot and the moon, that grandmother, did her job of pulling at water and earth without visible force.
"What did I do?" he asked plaintively.
But he already knew the answer to that.
If he didn't get at the truth in himself, he wouldn't find any visions, because all his energy would be focused on maintaining an illusion. That was just the way it worked, or didn't work, as the case might be. Even when he was a teenager, and first started having visions, he knew that.
He was thirteen the first time he'd seen a vision. He was playing a game with a Ouija board when the room disappeared and he was walking in a place he'd never been, talking to creatures he didn't even know how to name at the time. He remembered how it frightened his friends when he kicked the board across the room and wouldn't tell them what happened. They looked at him a little differently after that. He looked at himself differently, too.
For a while he thought he was going mad. Unlike Jaguar, he had very little cultural context to understand and explore what was happening when he fell into Adept space, or found himself in the mind of a friend, or felt knowledge pass directly from an object into his hands. He stumbled through on his own, learning what he could from reading books and watching shows on TV. And he learned to hide. In fact, one of the earliest capacities he realized he had was the ability to block knowledge of his presence from other people's minds.
He could, for brief periods of time, be invisible. Handy tool, that.
In college, he studied psychology, the nervous system, physics, and non-Western religions, practicing on his own with a polyglot of traditions as his guide. By the time he was in the army, he knew how to utilize most of his gifts, including the Adept space, though he didn't know the names for them yet. Then, in Manhattan, he'd met Sophie, a woman left on the streets in the upheaval. He'd found her shelter, and she'd recognized the empath in him, took him on as a student. He learned a lot in very little time. Continued study and meditation taught him more.
Then there was Jaguar. She was nineteen the first time he saw her, and already profoundly capable in the empathic arts. He could still feel the shock of her presence the first time they met, as if his oldest vision had suddenly appeared in the flesh and sat calmly across the desk from him, asking how to get work on the Planetoids.
She had to go back to school, get a degree first, and another nine years passed before she came to work in his zone. But the feeling was the same. The shock of recognition. The shock of the known, always known.
He didn't know her so much as he remembered her.
She was part of the first vision he'd ever seen, at the age of thirteen, while playing with a Ouija board.
He stood in a rain forest. Steamy, rain forest all around with the call of insects and night birds. Click and buzz of wings close to his ear. Heat swathing him like a second skin, and he walked toward a river that uncoiled itself through the land like a serpent eating earth and moving on. The texture of it was part of him in the same way his blood was—there, beating in his arteries and providing knowledge, unremarked by words or conscious volition. It was a blood texture, thick and wet and warm.
At the bank of the river he stopped and considered how to cross. A log floated by and he hopped onto it. It carried him downstream and across the wide water to the middle, where he saw a golden-spotted jaguar swimming the serpentine currents.
When his log drew parallel to her, her eyes called him like moonlight and he fell into them.
I choose you. I choose you.
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Eyes pulling at him. Choosing him. Asking for his eyes.
He said yes.
At thirteen, he said yes easily, with no effort, because he didn't know any better. He didn't understand the danger. He only knew the pleasure of that complete union.
How could he choose the same now, or say yes to that wild union, consent to the force that was drawing him into her, allow himself to fall into her eyes?
How could he choose something so wild and avoid either domesticating it, or being eaten by it?
How could he?
The fiery eyes tugged at him, and he felt the warmth, the pleasure in going there. Felt his terror at letting himself fall into that.
He kicked sand at the fire and listened to it hiss. "I can't," he insisted. "I can't. I can't."
A sigh of disappointment. Small laughter. Knowing laughter. He stood by a dying fire, staring into a moon that was falling away from him, into the darkness of space, over the horizon and gone.
He stood and rubbed at his legs, which were cramped from squatting for—for however long he'd been there.
This was all he'd get from his ancestors tonight.
As he walked home, he wondered if Jaguar was faring any better than he was on this day of the dead.
IT WOKE HER FROM A SOUND SLEEP, AND tossed her into terror.
She was asleep.
She was awake.
Something was happening to her body. Something like what happened in her office, only worse much worse. Convulsing it with pleasure and pain, pain and pleasure, waves sweeping her from dreams into waking.
Sleep. Was she sleeping? Bands of pressure wrapped her head, then stopped. Something like fire spread through her legs and into her groin.
"No," she gasped, watching her body as if it might be on fire as if she might be dying or making love and she couldn't tell which it was.
She tried to lift her hands to press at her belly, her breasts, her vagina to feel the source and intent of the fire, but her hands were glued at her side. Tried to call out for help, as if anyone else in the house would hear or respond except if she yelled fire. Fire. Fire.
Fire. Woman of Fire.
Fire, choking her, moving through her swift as lightning, like lightning searing her to pleasure and pain and she couldn't breathe, felt strangling at her throat.
Hecate, I was sleeping. Just sleeping. Not open not doing anything.
She'd chosen not to engage in ritual tonight. It was too dangerous, with something ready to slip into her whenever she dropped her guard. Let Alex take care of the ancestors. She'd come home from class, crawled out of her clothes and into bed, to sleep.
Sleeping is open enough. Open to dreaming. Open to be who you are in the place where you can't hide who you are.
Can't hide, Jaguar. Nowhere to hide. Nowhere to go. Nobody to help.
She lay glued to the floor. How did she get on the floor? She was on the floor, naked, body on fire with pain that became pleasure just as excruciating because she didn't ask for it had no control over it as it moved from breast to clitoris, nipple to lips, thighs to breasts.
Close down, she told herself. Cut off contact.
But she couldn't because she didn't know the source or intent who or why or how and it had gotten into her gotten into her.
Need help, Jaguar? Call him. Call him you want him call him.
No. No contact, she told herself. That would make it worse. No contact. No Alex.
Call Alex.
Help. She needed help. Couldn't close. Couldn't close. Hands like lightning grabbed her, sliced at her brain. Hands like lightning held her and the charge coursed up and down her veins, stunning her with an ecstasy of pain. She struggled, the charge coursing through her.
No. Struggling was no good. Panic was no good. Stop fighting. Can't close, then open. Can't make it better, then make it worse.
She gasped for breath, feeling the absence of air in her lungs, and let go of struggling. Let go of fighting pleasure pain anything let it wash over her as her thoughts turned to one place left only sacred space left to her sacred and safe safe safe in the most dangerous of ways.
She opened, and called to what she knew best.
Aiweeo. Aiweeo. Gaiwato. Gaiwato.
The words had no translation. They were the sounds of her heart and would work for nobody else.
Aiweeo. Aiweeo. Gaiwato. Gaiwato.
Then she felt it. Unmistakable.
Old friend. Shadow creature. Stalking the curled edges of time and space. Growing out of the preverbal beginnings of her people, of herself. Self and not self. Spirit and not spirit. Dream and not dream. Matter and immaterial. It had been with her from the start. From the moment her grandfather chose her name.
She was being called into her power. Into a chant-shape.
She knew how to do this.
She let her body roll onto itself, curved herself over and over into the shape required, sleek and inaccessible, falling into the earth, the darkness, the silence.
I myself, spirit in flesh, speak.
As space opened around her, she felt the whispering of motion. Attention turned to her, waiting to see what she would do next.
I myself, spirit in flesh, sing to you.
Thought disappeared from words into being, and she felt her body go limp. Her impulse was to struggle, keep her strength. She resisted the impulse, and let herself fall into being. Attention focused on her more keenly as she fell.
I myself, spirit in flesh, say yes. My people, come to me.
The skin of the night stretched out around her, into the shape of what she had always been, the one she shared soul with. Those eyes, a golden holocaust, met hers, welcoming her home.
The skin of the night took her back to that place she had issued from and she felt her birth with those eyes, that skin around her. Felt her birth in fire and singing. Knew the places she had sailed the air and earth and all the skimming laughter of those journeys. She understood the language of this wordless song.
Knew the origin of her clearest eyes, her abundant voice, her killing hand.
We are here, the Old one said. You have need of this.
Yes, she said. Yes.
Old friend, sending her knowledge wordless and direct. Something so old it had never been named. Speaking in the language of fur rippling along a spine. The language of scent and moon song, telling her things. The oldest friend she had poured through her and she poured through it, into the realm of spirit where she would walk now.
She would know the scent of the moon. The knowledge of trees. The heart of the earth. Grace falling like stars into her and into her and into her. Body brought back to spirit. Spirit in flesh, flesh in spirit, walking in her power. Walking in beauty. Walking in a word that had no translation, but meant beauty and power and they were the same.
You will walk here, the Old one said.
Yes, she replied. Yes. I will.
Wordless agreement seeped into her. The night folded back on itself, returned her to normal space and time, to normal body and thought, and she lay naked on the bedroom floor, with the light of the moon shining on her face, and the new skin she wore invisible, even to her.
She lay still a moment, feeling the cellular tingling of ecstasy. This art was an ecstatic one. It would give her a joy almost as dangerous as love—the kind that made her forget all need for safety or self-protection. But unlike love, it would protect her while she wasn't looking. Still, her body would take a beating from it. Tomorrow she would ache all over.
"Hecate," she murmured, and she sat up. She turned her wrists and ankles, felt at her joints, and pressed her hands against her organs. Everything seemed to be working. And she was Jaguar again. Not hiding. Not holding back. Not needing to. From here on in, she'd be led. The chant-shape would stay folded around her, and whenever it was right, she would walk within it. The only trouble was, she didn't necessarily get to decide when that occurred.
This gift was yours only if you relinquished control. That was the par
adox of chant-shaping. You let go of the need to do and know, in return for the chance to be.
And how, she wondered, could she do that in this unsacred space?
This art was reserved for the most contained of ritual settings, and never sustained for more than a few days. It was about a world of spirits, about needing to jump the track from normal to liminal space and let the spirits take you for a ride. Jaguar took that world for granted as a normal part of life. Once a year at Thirteen Streams, Jaguar assumed the chant shape and wandered the realm of spirit to gather visions and bring them back to the people of that village. But here at the University, she wouldn't have the safety of the village, or Jake and One Bird's presence to help her if she fell in too far and couldn't find her way back. It was an ecstatic art, but it wasn't an easy one to practice. She'd never done so alone.
In chant-shape, she had to breathe in energies the human body wasn't built to sustain or contain. She would relinquish conscious control for that power, which would be directed only by the deepest workings of the truth. That power could batter the body that carried it. And acting only according to the truth of the heart was a dangerous way to live. Especially here. She had no idea if she'd be able to carry on her normal tasks. Could she continue teaching? Would the spirit she shared soul with let her? Or would she start taking bites out of the bloodless legs of the academy, end up arrested or disgraced or dead?
And, she said to herself, what are your options?
She stood, found her legs steady enough, and went to the window, pressed her hand against the cool glass. No matter what happened in the chant-shape, it would be better than what was happening without it. She would welcome the spirits. Thank them.
They were here to save her life.
She breathed deeply, in and out, making room for what would become. As she felt the hum of energy rising around and within her, she let her voice rise and fall in the twining and spiraling chant of her people.
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