by CE Murphy
Annie spat, “Though wise men at their end know dark is right,” and I stood up after all an’ said, “Do not go gentle, Annie. You wanna try the Lower World journey first, fine, we do that, I ain’t arguing. And I know you’d never forgive yourself, or me, if we did something that got other people hurt or sick, so all right, maybe we don’t try the Upper World journey. But I’m never giving up, you hear me? Though lovers be lost, Annie. I’ll do whatever it takes.”
All the fight went outta her and she put her hand against my chest. “No, Gary. You won’t. Some things we can’t change. Death does have dominion, in the end.”
“Maybe death does, sweetheart, but evil don’t, and this thing that’s coming at us is evil. I ain’t lying down for it.”
“Even if something truly terrible happens because we fight?”
“Awful things happen all the time, Annie. How’re we s’posed to know if our fight makes ‘em happen? How’re—” Somethin’ sick and cold rose up in me fast, making ice sweat stand out on my skin even though it was a hundred and five degrees in there.
There was something God-awful brewing just a couple weeks from now, something so bad it was gonna rock the whole world. I’d watched it on TV the way most folks had, and I remembered thinkin’ at least Annie ain’t here to see it. She’d died three days before, on our wedding anniversary, and even through the pain of losin’ her, it had hit me like a wall.
Feeling hollow and not talking to Annie or Hester at all, I said, “It happened anyway,” like somebody else might be listening. I sure as hell hadn’t saved her, and it had happened anyway. That had to mean it wasn’t black magic getting into souls just soon enough to make a few crazies fly airplanes into buildings. It couldn’t be something we’d done, even if I did somehow save her, ‘cause that kinda thing took time and planning.
‘cept I was standing there outta time myself, carrying memories of the future and not remembering a whole lotta mojo that had spilled through the whole of my life. Something had gone wrong, something had changed in my life, to make me forget all of this, when the whole idea of Horns dropping me in was to try making one big change at the last minute.
An’ I knew from experience, from watching and working with Joanne, that you only got one shot at changing a big event. Time mostly wanted to go the way it already had gone.
There was no goddamned way I was gonna stop September 11th. An’ there was no goddamned way I could know if saving Annie might be the one thing giving the Master a chance to snatch back the dark magic eating up her lungs, and twist it backward in time a little to find the susceptible hearts and souls who could do something unthinkable.
I said, “But it already happened,” again, an’ sat down again with my face in my hands. It already happened, and I didn’t see a way outta this. If I tried saving Annie an’ the towers fell, I couldn’t ever know if I’d helped make that happen. If I didn’t and they fell anyway, I was wasting my one chance. And if I didn’t an’ they didn’t fall, then my future memories were wrong too, an’ I couldn’t trust any of this at all.
Joanne had been real reluctant to take up her healing powers, to become a shaman, back in the beginning. She hadn’t wanted to be a hero. For the first time ever, I started wondering if the girl hadn’t had a point. Being a hero had a down side darker an’ harder than I’d appreciated until just now.
“We do the Lower World,” I finally said, feeling dull an’ thick as a board. “Guess we can’t risk more’n that.”
“Gary?” Annie knelt when I sat, frowning up at me. “What’s wrong?”
“One of them future flashes,” I said, still talking into my hands. I’d seen Jo do that a hundred times over the last year. Never thought I’d be doing it myself. “Something ugly that I’d hate to learn was cause and effect working here.”
“We see patterns where there are none,” Hester said, all unexpected. She still sounded sharp as pins, but she sounded like she was tryin’ ta be sympathetic, too. Annie and me both looked at her and she said, “Humans. We see patterns where none exist. It’s a survival technique. I realize I’ve just warned you about potential ramifications, but you should also understand that because you see a pattern or a connection doesn’t mean there is one. We would all be forever unable to act if we knew what butterfly effect our every activity might cause.”
“Or our every inaction,” Annie said. “Gary, you look worse than you did this morning when the doctor said I was sick. What’s wrong? What did you see?”
“Nothin’ anybody’s gonna be able to stop.”
Hester’s eyebrows wrinkled together. “You’re precognitive?”
“It’s just a passing phase.”
For about half a minute Hes just sat there, looking between me and Annie like we were something she never imagined showing up on her doorstep. Then, like she was pulling all the pieces of her curiosity back and putting ‘em in line where they belonged, she said, “Shall we perform the Lower World journey?”
“Will Gary be with me?”
Hester’s mouth flattened. “I don’t think I could keep him out.”
“All right, then.” Annie finally settled back down with me, curling up in the blanket even though it was plenty warm in there. Hester went back to beating the drum, and after a minute started singing something about gates and doors and passageways. I started getting fussed about that not being the way Jo did things, then let it go. It didn’t take long for the sauna to start fading in and out, an’ then for a pathway to open up through one of the walls. Annie shifted, looking from it to Hes, then got up and walked into the Lower World.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I knew what to expect ‘cause Joanne had told me about the Lower World more than once, but seeing a red sun hanging low in the sky like it wasn’t ever gonna get higher was a whole lot different from knowing that’s what was there. A lotta the earth was red, too. The horizons were too close and lousy with mountains. Blue clouds lingered around ‘em, though above us was clear except for being a shade of yellow I’d only ever seen in Jersey. Mosta the plant life had a purple tinge, an’ it was all rainforest-big, though the air wasn’t that humid.
Annie stood on an orange pathway in the middle of all that, staring around in wonder. The path didn’t go anywhere but backward, but I didn’t guess it had to. Hester stepped past me and looked around with a click that sounded satisfied. “This will do. Are you comfortable there, Mrs. Muldoon?”
“What? Yes, I’m fine. This is…this is astonishing. You said it’s called the Lower World?”
“In the shamanic spirituality I’ve studied, yes. It has other names and other faces in different cultures. Here the animistic nature of all things can take on an aspect we can more easily communicate with. That’s why we can fight your illness here in a way Western medicine wouldn’t understand.” Hester stomped a circle around Annie while she was talking, stopping four times to make some kinda little gesture. “Mr. Muldoon, I understand you want to help your wife through this, but this fight has to largely be her own. I’d like to put you in a separate protective circle. I can link them together, if you prefer, but you may not cross from one to the other.”
“That sounds like a rotten plan.”
“Don’t be difficult, Gary.”
“All right, all right. Hey, wait!” I’d been carting Jo’s rapier around for a slow ride through forever, but I’d stopped carrying it when Horns had dropped me into my own story. I reckoned that shouldn’t matter, especially in the Lower World, and especially since I’d seen Jo draw it outta nowhere any number of times. I concentrated on the feel of the thing, the heavy silver an’ the complicated guard, and let myself think, just real quick, about the quiet misty homeland Cernunnos had brought me to for a while. A shiver ran down my spine an’ back up again, resonating across a couple worlds, but the god-blessed sword glimmered an’ came to life in my hands. I clutched the hilt like I was hugging it, then handed it over to Annie while trying not to see how she an’ Hester were both gaping.
�
�This used to belong to Horns. The fella who tackled you outta the way of the car back when you were a kid. I figure he’s got your back, so maybe this thing’ll do you some good.”
I could see her working her way past a hundred questions, tryin’ ta focus on the most important thing: “Gary, I can’t use this, it’s too…big…”
We were all watching when it happened. The silver kinda shriveled and shrank, melting in on itself inside of a blink, until the whole sword was about fifteen inches shorter than it’d been. My jaw flapped open. It’d never done that before, not that I could remember. A’course, Jo and Cernunnos were pretty close to the same size, an’ I wasn’t that much bigger, so we could all use the same-length blade. Annie hefted it a couple times now, searched for something to say, and came up with, “That’s better.”
Hester’s eyes were near to falling out of her head. “Who are you?”
“Sorry, sweetheart, I’m just a guy. Do your thing, doll. Build me a circle. I’ll stay put.”
Hes ground her teeth together, but she nodded an’ stomped away. Annie and me exchanged a smile, and I was looking right into her eyes when a monster burst outta her chest and attacked her.
I swore she knew it was coming. There was nothing of my surprise in her eyes. I was still gathering breath to yell and she was already falling into guard, slapping a mass of ugly away like it wasn’t much more than a fruit fly. I wondered if she’d had a hint it was coming, some kinda pain inside her, but I guessed it didn’t matter, at that. She and it were circling each other, keeping to the edges of the power circle, an’ Hester and me were standing outside in horror. I swallowed my yell, not wanting to distract Annie. Hester vibrated with indecision, twitching forward like she’d jump in, then flinching back like she didn’t wanna distract Annie either.
The thing she was fighting didn’t look like any kinda monster you could name out of a book. It looked like sickness oughta: a black writhing mass of nastiness, fulla teeth an’ hateful eyes and tar lashes. It looked like a bad cold felt, something heavy and ugly weighing down your chest, sucking away your ability to breath. It looked like a heart attack felt, pain running up and down your arm and pressing down on you ‘til stars came into your eyes. An’ all I could think, watching Annie circling around and watching it, was that at least right now it was out of her, an’ that might give her a fighting chance.
I couldn’t see which moved first, her or it. They were just in the middle of the power circle together all at once, blue sparks flying from Annie’s sword an’ bits of blackness sticking to her skin where the sickness caught hold. Even from outside of Annie’s circle there was rage and hate coming off the stuff, but it kept not slowing my girl down. She just kept taking it, and fighting back, and holding her ground until the damned stuff started to falter.
Hester stepped in then, one quick smooth move that looked like they’d been planning it all along. I was used to seeing Jo’s blue healing magic at work, an’ it surprised the hell outta me to see Hester’s hands shine bright clear yellow when she raised ‘em up. The stuff faltered under that light, an’ for a couple breaths I thought everything was gonna be all right. The sickness shrank, getting less dangerous-looking and somehow more scared as Annie’s fighting skills and Hester’s healing magic came together.
I leaned forward, not breathing, just clenching my hands and teeth and praying, when the stuff gathered itself into an arrow and punched right outta the top of the power circle.
Hester dropped like somebody’d cut her strings. Annie staggered but stayed up, an’ then because she was the biggest-hearted woman in the world, she forgot about the turn-tail monster an’ knelt to tend to Hester. Me, I watched the stuff head skyward until it went invisible from distance. When I looked back at the women, Hester was sitting up and holding her head. Annie was clucking and making soothing noises, and Hes looked more prune-faced than before. I guessed she didn’t like that kinda fuss. “What happened there?”
“Backlash from it breaking my power circle. I think I’m lucky Mrs. Muldoon had weakened it. Where did it go?”
I pointed up. Annie and Hes both looked that way, and Hester’s face got tighter still. “We’ve released it. Damn.”
“There’s gotta be some way to catch it.” I didn’t know who I was trying to convince, but I wasn’t doing much good making myself believe it. Then I forgot about it for something more important: “Annie, how you doing?”
“Breathless!” She put a hand over her chest, smiling. “But breathless from exertion, not coughing. I feel younger here. Is that usual?”
“The spirit worlds reflect our perceptions of ourselves.” Hes was still frowning at the sky. “We need to return. I have to do what I can to mitigate this creature’s escape.”
A beanstalk curled up outta the ground and stretched for the yellow sky.
All three of us stood there staring at it a minute. Annie rocked back on her heels to get a better look as it shot up toward through blue clouds an’ reached toward the low red sun. It wasn’t green itself, kinda yellowish an’ ugly, but nothing had the right colors down here anyway, and it looked healthy other than being the wrong color. When we couldn’t hardly see the top anymore, Annie said, “Am I right in believing that this journey is essentially…well, all about me?”
Hes, gaping like a fish outta water, snapped her mouth shut and nodded, but her gaze went right back to the beanstalk.
Annie, all business-like, dusted her hands together, said, “Well, then, I believe this should be taken as a hint,” and started climbing the beanstalk. Hes and me scrambled after her. The ground fell away faster than it shoulda, partly ‘cause the beanstalk was still growing and partly ‘cause the world and distances were all stretched outta proportion. Then we broke through the sky and for half a second I got a glimpse of our world, but we were just passing through. We busted through that sky, too, straight into a place where the air was thinner an’ the sky a lighter shade of blue.
Cold wind wanted to knock us off the beanstalk, but Annie kept climbing, even when we shot past mountaintops. After what felt like about a day, we got to the top of the stalk, where it curled up and under an’ all around, with broad leaves big enough to hold us all. When Hes and me caught up, Annie was already sitting on one, knees tucked up and arms around ‘em as she looked out over the whole wide forever.
I guessed if the Lower World’s horizons were too close, the Upper World’s were too far away. It all bent out around us like we were on some other planet, somewhere bigger’n Earth and twice as old. The beanstalk had outgrown the mountains, an’ the mountains were taller than sense could make ‘em. There wasn’t much besides mountains poking up through thin clouds. There was blue below us, way below, but it looked like sky, not like water. Light didn’t bounce off it, just got softer the further away it fell. In some places the mountains just stopped, falling away into cliffs that disappeared into mist, too, and no matter which way I looked the sky was cool thin blue.
Way off in the distance there were things riding the updrafts. Birds, I guessed, though I couldn’t figure the size of ‘em if they were visible from so far away in a world this big. Joanne had seen a thunderbird here, even brought it back to the Middle World with her, but I’d been in the hospital and hadn’t seen the damned thing. She’d said it was big, though. Big enough to throw her around, and she wasn’t no featherweight.
A rush of bugs came up the beanstalk, about a thousand walking sticks that took my mind right off the birds. If they were hungry the beanstalk was gonna fall to ‘em, but they didn’t look interested. Instead they scrambled over Annie, who insteada shrieking like I expected, put her arms out and let ‘em run over her. They just about buried her, lining up side by side on her arms and in her hair, all of ‘em trying to get a look into her eyes. She just waited, until finally I got the idea they didn’t find what they were looking for, and left her alone.
Surprising thing was, they came to me. Did the same thing, too, climbed all over and stared at me until I started shiver
ing. Then they all left but one, and it sat on my shoulder. Took me a minute to realize maybe that made sense, ‘cause Jo’s last name, her real last name, the one she didn’t use, was Walkingstick, not Walker. I shoved my hands in my pockets to keep from knocking the bug away, and took a look at Hester. She was big-eyed and looking as sweet as I’d seen her yet, like maybe there was some little bit of kid at Christmas left in her after all. I wanted to know what the devil was happening, but I was kinda afraid to ask.
The wind started taking on shapes, like clouds blowing in and making figures in the sky. I caught glimpses the same way I had in Annie’s spirit quest: a whole herd of horses came running at us, parting around Annie and thundering on across the sky. They scared up a flock of fat birds ‘bout the size of chickens, their wings clattering as they flew off. Some other critters were more distant, harder to name, but I saw the one that finally came to her clear as day. A big fella, a white-tailed stag that walked outta the sky as just a few wisps of cloud an’ walked right into Annie and never came out again. Took me that long to figure out we were on another spirit quest after all. I shot a look at my shoulder. The walking stick was gone.
“All right.” Annie’s voice was real loud and clear, a shock after hearing nothin but the wind for so long. She got up, the beanstalk leaf bobbing with her weight, and she flung her arms wide. “Come and get me, you son of a bitch.”
The goddamned sickness, the first dark thing I’d seen up there in the Upper World, came outta nowhere and slammed back into Annie’s chest.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
We woke up in the sauna, Annie coughing and unable to get a breath of the hot air. I picked her up and took her out in a couple long steps, crouching outside in the cool air and never letting go while she coughed herself ragged. Hester came out behind us, so worried I could feel it rattling off her. The sky had turned to twilight while we were inside, an’ the last light slipped away before Annie could breathe again. She turned her face against my chest an’ said, real quiet, “If you could come back tomorrow, Miss Jones? I’m very tired now, and I suppose we still have to try to find who set this illness on me.”