by C. E. Murphy
Seven, and they still kept coming.
Two more, and his duty weapon was empty, and they still kept coming. He tucked it into the holster and began with the shotgun, but they still kept coming.
I was a moron.
I’d assumed it was just the five wights that had come back with Aidan, but that was a stupid, stupid assumption. They’d had days to drain the dead and create more of themselves. The more of them there were, the more food was funneled to a hungry Master, and the faster a crisis point built. We didn’t just have to get Aidan out of here. We had to wipe out dozens, maybe hundreds, of living dead, or the time we went home to would be a ghost world.
Our time wasn’t a ghost world, so that meant we would succeed. I promised myself that and tried very hard to ignore the fact that I felt nothing, nothing, in this time and place that meant time couldn’t be changed here. I’d run up against a wall of magic when I’d tried to save Lugh, in Ireland. Someone had already changed the timeline close to when he died, and it had refused to alter anymore. There was no such wall here. It implied that, despite my insistence that the timeline was pretty fixed and didn’t care to be mucked with, that this was a time and place in which it might be muckable.
For one desperate moment I wondered if that meant I really could have changed the whole future if I’d tried hard enough. If I could have saved the aboriginal Americans, and taken the price from the future I knew. Then Morrison said, “Walker,” again, this time with a note of warning, and coulda-woulda-shouldas faded. We needed to survive here and now, and the timeline needed to continue as unchanged as it could be, because this was what built the world we knew. Some other me in some other adventure could try the other road, and maybe my dreams would tell me how that turned out.
For now I ground my teeth, fixed the idea of the net around Aidan as hard as I could, and latched it in my mind instead of in my hands. Then I took Morrison’s pistol and reloaded it with the spare clip from my own duty weapon, which I hadn’t had time to give up after quitting the police force. It had been in Petite’s trunk along with the shotgun, which I also took and reloaded when it emptied. Then for good measure I loaded my duty weapon and tucked it into Morrison’s belt.
In the twenty seconds that took, my net frayed. When I turned back to Aidan, he lurched at me with his hands clawed, cold fingers latching around my throat. Black magic pulsed out, strangling me, and exultation gleamed in his discolored eyes.
I whispered, “Wrong approach, kiddo,” and grabbed his pinkies, wrenching them back. His fingers loosened and his triumph turned to churlish outrage. Black magic roared and spat around me, struggling to find a chink in my armor. There were none, not this time. He could pour all his magic out trying to break through, and I would come out aces.
He realized it at the same time I did, and the outpouring ceased. He collapsed in my arms, his eyes and skin returning to normal, though his hair remained half-bleached. I caught his weight and he tipped his chin up, all exhausted little boy, and whispered, “Mommy?”
I burst out laughing. Honest-to-God belly laughs, the kind that brought tears of mirth to my eyes. I whooped and wheezed, patted his cheek, and spoke to who or whatever was trying to sucker punch me from inside him. “You might’ve gotten me with ‘Mom,’ but you pushed that one way too far, buddy. This kid’s mommy is somebody else entirely.” My laughter faded into cold fury. “Now let him go, you son of a bitch. He’s not your vessel, and don’t think he means so little to me that I would let that happen.”
The words had a familiar ring. Cernunnos had said something very similar just a few days ago, when I was the one boiling over with dark magic. He would have crushed my windpipe to make sure I didn’t become the Master’s doxy. I wasn’t certain I had the nerve to do the same to Aidan, but there were no other ends to which I was not willing to go. This particular battle could go on for the rest of my life, if necessary, and I was okay with that.
“Walker,” Morrison said a third time, and we were out of bullets, out of choices and out of time.
* * *
Aidan’s face split in an ugly grin. The black came back into his eyes, gold flecks warning that he was reaching for magic again. His skin paled, becoming even more wightlike than before, and I braced myself for the inevitable blow.
My father said, “Now,” and clean healing power smashed my shields down from the inside.
* * *
I’d forgotten about him. I really had. Between Morrison and Aidan, I’d just forgotten about my father, and about what I’d told him to do.
He’d done it in spades. He’d done what the valley shaman had done: reinforced a power circle by going over it again in reverse, except he’d used the bubble of my shields as the base for his power circle. The entire bubble, every surface, top, bottom, sides, where it intersected with the ground, everything. He’d lined it with his own magic, with the pure, deep healing power that he’d developed and honed over a decade and more of traveling America’s wounded places. I had no idea if he’d called on any gods. Not any I knew, anyway, and not any I could see, which made me think that he hadn’t.
Which meant the magic that battered mine down was all my father’s, and that I knew nothing of healing, if this was what a Walkingstick could do.
My father’s briefly glimpsed aura was green and gray, protective, resolute colors. The magic that burst outward was white, blazing white, a color I’d only ever seen come from the amalgamation of many magic practitioners working together. As it slammed into my shields, it took their power, drained all the magic I was throwing out to keep us safe, to keep Aidan in my grip. It flashed even brighter with that addition, purifying to an even greater degree, but I wasn’t kidding myself: Dad’s unleashed magic was the most hugely positive power I had ever encountered. He didn’t need me for this. My presence only added some shine to a knowledge that ran deep into the earth.
It rolled over the battlefield as quickly as the time bubble had overrun the Appalachian valley, and left roses in its wake.
Some of them were literal: the bodies of the dead changed, softening, becoming things of beauty instead of victims of violence. The wounded staggered to their feet fully healed. Rose petals stuck to their skin instead of blood, and they brushed them away in bewilderment. Wights fell, disintegrating into sweet-smelling dust. The rage in the air gentled. It didn’t end: roses, after all, had thorns, but it was mitigated, and the worst of the battle broke apart.
It wouldn’t last. There would still be wars fought between Native tribes, between Indians and Europeans, between settlers and the people who had lived on these lands for millennia. But for the moment, at least, the poison was broken apart, and the weight of darkness was lifted.
A handful of wights remained, still spread across the battlefield at the points that had most strongly fed the black lightning. I felt their panic erupt as their power fell away. Then they rallied, coming toward us in a flash, dark magic gathering in a whirlpool as they approached.
A heartbeat too late, I spun toward Aidan.
One slash of light illuminated the dark vortex as it enveloped him, and then he winked out, swallowed whole by time.
* * *
“We need to go.” My father’s voice was completely different, deeper and more determined than I’d ever heard it. I whipped back toward him and squinted, even with the Sight turned off. He blazed with power, spirit animals standing tall and strong on his shoulders. A walking stick on his left, above his heart, and the others were fainter, less easy for me to recognize. Renee appeared on my own shoulder, brought to life and visibility by the magic Dad was working.
That was as clear a statement as I needed, but I still hesitated. “Where did he go?”
“We have to go find out. Come on, Joanne. I can’t hold this for long.”
I could, but there was no point in saying so. I reached for Morrison’s hand. He looked between me and my father,
put the guns away, and laced his fingers through mine.
“We were here when you were eight,” Joseph Walkingstick said in a strained voice. “That’s when I laid down power here. That’s when I’m connecting to. I’m twenty years off target, Joanne. You’re going to have to get us the rest of the way home.”
“Okay.” If Dad could haul us through three or four centuries, there was no reason Renee and I couldn’t do the fine-tuning. I expressed the thought to her and she hummed, an unexpectedly sweet sound that I took as agreement. I wrapped us all in another shield, feeling it tremble. Dad had taken a lot of power out of me when he’d cleansed the valley. I didn’t begrudge what he’d done, but if I’d known it was coming I’d have protected myself better. And Aidan.
I put that thought aside. It wasn’t going to do any good. Instead I thought about—well, not quite home. I thought about Petite, parked there on the mountain pull-out. Thought about her solid steel presence there, a new presence: she hadn’t been in the Carolina mountains in thirteen years. She was an equally fixed and mobile point, which seemed appropriate for a time-travel focus. I breathed, “Okay,” again, and time spun out around us.
At first we stayed where we were, the valley subtly changing shape around us. Then it began changing more rapidly, and then I had the rushing sensation of great speed, like we were tearing down long highways with Petite’s windows rolled down and Jim Steinman’s “Nowhere Fast” blasting on the radio. The idea of that road pulled us south, carrying us back through the mountains until we were in the right place, closing in on the right time. Petite was a ghost in my mind, not there yet, but strengthening.
Time stuttered, stopped, and spat us onto my grandmother’s front lawn.
Chapter Twenty
The lawn was scraggly with bluegrass, and the house it fronted needed some TLC. Ranch-style and too small to boast many rooms, it did have a big inviting front porch and a long porch swing with faded lemon-yellow cushions. Hills rose up about forty feet behind the place, the back door obviously opening up into the mountains. A hard-packed dirt driveway boasted a huge old powder-blue Pontiac.
A little girl toddled out of the house and climbed into the porch swing. Hairs rose on my arms and nape as the familiar squeak made the child smile and swing more enthusiastically. Then she tumbled out and jumped down the steps one at a time, counting and providing sound effects as she went, “One! Bang. Two! Bang. Three! Bang.” At the bottom she said, “Bang!” one more time for good measure, then ran across the lawn, through my legs, and skidded to a stop a few feet beyond me. I wobbled, feeling like someone had walked on my grave. She turned around, eyed me, or certainly appeared to, then turned away again and picked up a bug from the grass. “Hello, ladybug. Hello. I’m Joanie. Hello, ladybug. I love you!”
Morrison said, “Walker?” incredulously. It was amazing how much meaning he could invest one word with. I swallowed and didn’t answer.
A woman I didn’t actively remember came onto the porch and leaned against a rail, smiling at the mini-me expressing fondness to a ladybug. The woman wore bell-bottom jeans over bare feet, and a homemade cotton tunic with an embroidered slash at the collar. She was tall and striking, if not exactly pretty, and she wore her black hair in twin braids. Dad whispered, “Ma,” and with heart-sinking dread I knew when we were.
My father, twenty-five years younger and shockingly handsome, came out behind my grandmother and leaned against another porch rail, watching three-year-old Joanne with the same fondness my grandmother showed. He was eating cookies. I looked back at my small self. She had chocolate smears on her hands and mouth, and an ant working its way up her leg in search of the sugar.
“The Jones house has been empty a few years,” my grandmother said. We all looked at her again. Dad-the-younger hitched himself onto the rail, one leg dangling, the other bare foot planted on the soft old wood. My mother had said he was beautiful when he was young. I, blinkered by a child’s blinders, had had no idea how right she was. His long hair was loose and he was wearing jeans and a cut-up T-shirt that showed off smooth brown arms. If catalogs had featured Native models in that era, he would have been world-famous. No wonder Mom had fallen for him.
At the moment he looked mildly amused. “You don’t want us underfoot here?”
My grandmother’s eyebrows rose. “You left when you were seventeen, Joe. I didn’t think you were in any hurry to be back under my roof.”
That was the same age I’d left the Qualla. I hadn’t known Dad had left early, too. I glanced at the now-him, but he was watching his mother with open pain on his still-handsome features.
“You’re both welcome here as much as you like, of course,” Grandmother said, and Dad flashed a bright grin.
“Nah, you’re right, Ma. We’d be better off in the Jones’s place. How much work does it need?”
“As much as anything that’s been empty awhile. Won’t cost much, though. There’s not much good growing soil around them. Too much tobacco sucking up the nutrients. You’re really thinking of staying, then?” She kept it under wraps, but there was a bright note of hope in her voice. “She has so much potential, Joe. We could teach her so much if you stayed here.”
“No, Ma. I told you before. Shell left her with me to keep her out of sight. Teaching her is too risky, no matter how much potential she’s got. I’m supposed to be keeping her safe, not putting her in the line of fire.”
My grandmother clucked her tongue. “That’s nonsense. I know that Irish girl turned your head, but there are no monsters in the dark, Joe. Sorcerers are stories to frighten children with. No one is hunting Joanie.”
“Maybe you’re right, but I promised Shell I’d keep her safe, and this is the best way I can see to do it. If she’s right, then if Joanie hasn’t been initiated as a shaman there’s no reason for anything to come after her.”
I closed my eyes, impotent anger throbbing in my temples. I was sure Dad had meant well, but surely anybody who’d seen Star Wars knew that hiding the truth never turned out well for anyone. My entire life might have been different if he’d listened to my grandmother.
She, with the patience of a woman who figured she was in the first skirmishes of a protracted war, let it go. “Well, tell you what. I’ve got to go see Carrie this morning, but you and Joanie can stay here and eat all the cookies, and I’ll get the keys to the Jones place from the real-estate agent while I’m in town. I’ll pick you up after lunch and we can go take a look at it, see what you think.”
Dad, my Dad, the now-Dad standing next to me on the lawn, whispered, “No, Ma. Stay home,” but the one on the porch smiled and nodded. “Sounds fine, Ma. Tell Carrie hello.”
“She wants you and Joanie to come see her.”
“She wants Joanie to come see her,” Dad corrected cheerfully enough. “Nobody cares about me now.”
My grandmother smiled. “That’s what happens when you have kids.”
“Tell her we’ll come down in a couple days. I want to get the mountains back under my skin for a while.”
Grandmother hesitated on the steps, looking back at Dad when he said that. “I’ll never understand why you left, Joe, not if the mountains call you back so strongly.”
Dad put his fist just beneath his breastbone. “Had to, Ma. It was pulling me.”
My heart missed a beat at the familiarity of that gesture, and of that feeling. The same sensation had been dragging me through magical mishaps for the past fifteen months. I’d had no idea Dad had felt it, too. There was so damned much I didn’t know.
Grandmother nodded and left, the Pontiac’s massive engine roaring down the mountains. I guessed my father and I had come by our love of classic cars honestly. Dad turned, watching her go long after the car was out of sight, then gave me a hard look. “What are we doing here, Joanne?”
“Hell if I know. I was aiming for home. I don’t know why we
hiccuped. This is... I mean, this is...”
“Yeah, it is. About half an hour from now she’ll be dead.”
“What?” Morrison, who had been watching the younger me with fascination, came around at that. Little Joanie, undisturbed by any of our discussion, kept playing with bugs.
“She died in a car wreck,” I said when Dad’s silence drew out. “Right after Dad and I came to visit when I was about three. We left after the funeral and never came back until I was a teenager.”
Dad said, “I didn’t think you remembered that,” in an accusing tone.
I sighed. “I didn’t. I don’t. Exactly. I just...I got reminded a couple of weeks ago. It’s been a rough couple weeks.” I said that a lot. I hoped someday it would stop being true.
“I’m going to go stop her.” Dad walked away, his footsteps bending the patchy grass underfoot. I didn’t know how that worked, except this was real to us, even if we were ghostlike to our other selves. They couldn’t see us, but maybe we could affect them. Morrison and I both stared after Dad, not quite believing he really did intend to go stop my grandmother until he disappeared down the road. Only then did Morrison turn to me in concern. “Can he?”
“No. I don’t think so. Probably not.” I thought about the sensation I’d had on the battlefield, the idea that the timeline in that particular place was still malleable, and worried at my lower lip. “Maybe.”
“What happens if he does?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are we going to stop him?”
“I don’t know.” My younger self was industriously digging a hole in Grandmother’s lawn. Her fingers were filthy, nails caked with dirt, and she looked as happy as a pig in mud. I had no memories of doing that kind of thing. I remembered playing cowboys and Indians at Little Bighorn, rolling down small steep hills and scrambling breathlessly up the other side, alternating between being a cowboy and being an Indian. “Bang bang bang!” as I finger-gun shot up one side, and fwipping imaginary arrows down the other. I remembered sticking my fingers into the scars bullets had left in those hilltops. I remembered kicking sand and dust up in Nevada, never knowing I was disturbing the remains of nuclear test sites. I remembered a lot of things, but none of them seemed to have the childish simplicity of digging a hole to China, which appeared to be my small self’s goal in life.