by C. E. Murphy
“No.” Coyote sounded like he’d like to say a lot more, and yet like he knew absolutely none of it was of any use.
I nodded. Snow creaked under my head. “Interesting.”
“It’s not—”
“No,” I said, “really. It’s interesting. I’m not mad.” I considered that, then decided it was true. “You’re a teacher. You’re a healer. A guide. Right after this all started I was told I was on a warrior’s path. I’m guessing nobody ever said that to you.”
He said, “No,” again, and then, “People usually don’t, to shamans. It’s sort of anathema to the purpose.”
“Yeah, no, I get that. It’s cool. It’s okay.” I stared at the sky for another little while, making a half-hearted effort to formulate a plan, or an opinion about me being a fighter when my mentor wasn’t, or in fact to do anything besides lie there in the snow. I was pretty content with lying there, really, except, “My butt is freezing.”
Coyote let out a sharp, barklike laugh. “Mine, too.”
I sat up, hunching my shoulders against snow falling down my spine. “I vote we regroup back at the hotel with hot soup and carbs and a boiling-temperature bath.”
“Yeah.” Coyote sat up, too. “All except those last three things. We’ve got some work to do first.”
I whimpered, and we got up and went back to the hotel.
———
Gary was sitting by the fireplace in the hotel lobby with an enormous cup of tea in his hands and the twenty-five-year-old FBI agent perched on his knee. He spilled both in his haste to get up when we came in, but instead of looking abashed he gave me a broad wink and a wicked smile. I had to look away to keep from giggling, and when he got close enough I whispered, “You Lothario, you.”
“Keeps me young, darlin’. Keeps me young. What happened after I left?” He waved goodbye to his FBI agent as we headed for the room, filling in details as we went. “You left ‘em up there with no protection?”
I spread my hands, defenseless and helpless alike. “I think it’s gone for now, and there are other things we need to do. You were the only one who even laid a hand on it out there, much less—” We got to the room and I stopped to gaze up at the old cabbie while Coyote unlocked the door. “I don’t think I said it before, Gary. You were fantastic out there. You were amazing.”
Red curdled along his cheeks and he all but dug a toe into the floor. “Wasn’t me, mostly. It was that tortoise you found for me, Jo. I never felt him like that before. The way I figure it, you did all the heavy lifting. I was just the vehicle.”
“No.” We stepped into the room and I turned to give him a hard hug. “That was you, Gary. It was all you. You kicked ass, took names, and saved a lot of lives.”
“You can thank your protector during our spirit journey,” Coyote said. “He’ll hear you. Jo, when was the last time you slept?”
I gave him a look. Gary peered between us all bright-eyed and curious. Coyote had the grace to blush, which warmed his already-warm skin tones attractively. “Right. It’d be better if we hadn’t—”
I gave him another look, this one explaining how he was going to die unpleasantly if he came anywhere near suggesting the phrase this was a mistake. “If we hadn’t slept,“ he said firmly. Gary brightened up even more, his low-brow suspicions apparently confirmed. I averted my eyes so I wouldn’t revert to grinning like an idiot, and grinned like an idiot anyway. Coyote, in his best superior teacher tone, said, “You should know by now that spirit journeys are easier when you’re sleep deprived.”
“Oh.” Heh. I did know that. My stupid grin fell away in embarrassment, and I stared at nothing for a moment. “We could get high instead.”
There was a little silence while we sat there, none of us quite believing I’d said that. First, as far as I knew, we had nothing to get high on except the overpriced alcohol in the hotel bar. Second, and far more importantly—
“That’d go over great with the random drug tests at work,” Gary said. “You lost your mind, Jo?”
“I’m beginning to think so, yes.”
“We did bring your drum,” Coyote said tartly. “Unless that’s not recreational enough for you.”
“Oh, bite me. I don’t know why I said that. It just popped out.” I was a stick in the mud when it came to drug use, and had been long before I became a cop. I just flat-out didn’t get why anybody would risk the high when there was always the very real possibility that the low would include sudden and permanent death. That, obscurely, reminded me that I couldn’t remember the last time I’d snitched a cigarette, which somehow made me feel like I had the moral high ground. Satisfied, I got up to unwrap my drum and hand it over to Gary.
Coyote intercepted me halfway, his palms turned up and his expression unexpectedly shy. “May I? I’ve never seen it, and I remember how excited you were when you got it.”
I almost tripped over my own feet fighting off the urge to cling to the instrument. It had been in my bedroom the night before, but we hadn’t exactly stopped to admire it. I’d never imagined it might be an object of interest to my mentor, and I wasn’t in the habit of letting people besides Gary handle it. Morrison had, a couple of times, and the first time he’d picked it up I’d felt it from across the room. I thought I would have felt it from across the world. Given that history, handing it to Coyote was a lesson in anticipation.
Magic spilled through me as he took it. Not like what I’d felt with Morrison: that had been warmth bordering on sensuality. With Coyote it was the heat and clarity of the desert, like the colors of his aura were pouring into me in short, intense bursts. Hairs stood up on my arms and his gaze, gone gold, jerked to mine. The wendigo—in fact, the entire world—faded from relevance, and I took a half step toward him.
Gary, very politely, cleared his throat. I jumped backward, cheeks flaming with teen-level angsty guilt. Coyote flinched, stared at Gary like he’d appeared from the ether, then hastily transferred his attention back to me. “What—?”
“The drum, it has, I guess it has—” Opinions. I couldn’t quite bring myself to say that, and instead started whistling the Matchmaker song from Fiddler on the Roof. Coyote’s eyebrows went up and I stopped whistling to rub my face. I wondered if Morrison had felt anything when he’d picked up my drum. I wondered what would have happened if I’d let Thor handle it. I wondered if I really wanted to know in either case. “Look, just nevermind, okay? Can we just get on with it?”
Coyote’s eyebrows remained elevated, which left me to imagine all sorts of things we might get on with, none of which were hunting down a wendigo. Gary, who had as dirty a mind as I did, gave an indiscreet snort that probably masked a much less discreet guffaw. I cast an exasperated glance skyward, then put my hand out for the drum. “Come on, Ro.”
He put his eyebrows back down where they belonged and otherwise ignored me, concern creasing lines into his forehead as he examined the drumhead. “What happened?”
“The wolf—the—” I gave up and sat on the end of Gary’s bed. “I always thought it was a wolf there. A wolf and a rattlesnake under the raven’s wings.” They were painted beautifully, raven wings following the drumhead’s curves, and the colors were gorgeous, as bright as they’d been the day I received the drum. But the wolf was smeared, like it had gotten wet and was fading away. “But it started changing after you—died—and so I’ve been wondering for months if maybe it was a coyote, not a wolf at all. I don’t know what it means, especially since you’re not dead.”
“If it was a coyote, maybe it means I have less influence over your future than I used to.” Coyote gave the drum a gentle shake, rattling its beads, then offered it to Gary. “Or maybe it just means the elders who gave it to you saw wrong, and it’s changing itself so it’s more in tune with your needs.”
“It’s an inanimate object, Coyote, it can’t…” Logic held sway in the completion of that sentence, but like it or lump it, my life encompassed a great deal more than just logic these days. “Yeah, okay, maybe. Ca
n we get started?”
He gave me an odd little smile. “That’s the third time you’ve said that. What happened to the woman who didn’t want anything to do with magic?”
“She nearly got her mentor killed, and a lot of other people did die. Come on, Coyote. What are we doing here? Guide me.”
His smile fell away into apology. “Right. Okay, so I’ve seen your—” he broke off, eyed Gary, and euphemized what he’d been about to say “—your spirit animal, so I—”
“My raven,” I interrupted petulantly. The idea of excluding Gary from the small circle of people who knew what my spirit guide was seemed all wrong. I resented Coyote’s attempt, even though the smarter part of me knew he was trying to protect me. Spirit animals, like true names, were not to be taken lightly.
Coyote gave me a brief, steady look, then corrected himself. “Your raven. So I know you’ve managed at least one successful spirit quest, which is heartening.”
“You don’t have to sound so surprised.”
For some reason he ignored me. “You need a second for this, Joanne. The kind of soul retrieval we’re looking at doing here is significant. The raven is a very good guide, but I want you to have something whose purpose is to protect you, as well.”
Worry began to loose worms in my tummy. “I thought any spirit guide protected you in the astral realm.”
“They do, so maybe you see my point. I don’t think one’s enough. I wish you had three, but this kind of quest usually only brings them one at a time.”
“There were—” I swallowed, heat suddenly burning my face. Three spirit animals had turned up when I’d done a quest with Judy Morningstar, but that entire situation had gone to hell in a handbasket. Odds weren’t good that any of them had been real, even if a raven had legitimately chosen me later, as it had seemed to then. “Okay. One quest, one guide. Is that going to be—” I was having a hard time getting through sentences. That one was supposed to finish enough? but Coyote’s tense-jawed expression made me swallow it.
He was afraid. My mentor, my golden-eyed, laughing Coyote, who had saved my life and taught me most of what I knew about shamanic magic, was scared of the monster in the woods. It was a bigger bad than he was accustomed to dealing with, and he’d only just woken up from a special kind of hell that had a lot in common with what the wendigo was doing to people. I’d been staggering along for months, desperate for reassurance, and now the guy I’d expected to provide it wasn’t in any shape to do so.
“It’ll be enough.” I hardly recognized my own voice, though there was something vaguely familiar in the tone. “One guide, one shield, and besides, I’ve got these.” I touched the silver necklace at my throat, garnering a smile from Gary and a look of incomprehension from Coyote. “Talismans of faith. They’ll help. Trust me.”
Coyote’s shoulders relaxed a little and, bemused, I recognized the tone I’d taken. It was exactly the same one he’d used to convince the paramedics to let us help Mandy Tiller: utterly reasonable and calm and certain, even if the words themselves were preposterous. He gathered himself, then nodded, equilibrium regained. “This is dangerous, Jo. The wendigo is hunting in two worlds, so during a spirit quest you’re going to be particularly vulnerable. For this journey, I’ll be your protector as much as the raven.”
God. No wonder he was freaked out. Hunting monsters was scary enough, but hanging around waiting for them to attack had a particular kind of nerve-wrackingness to it. “I’ll try to hurry.”
“It’s not the kind of thing you can rush.” He slid to the floor, making himself, by all appearances, less comfortable, and I reluctantly joined him. I didn’t see why I couldn’t sack out on the bed and do my spirit quest in comparative luxury, but I bet he’d argue that comfort invited complacency. Even I didn’t want to invite complacency in the face of a soul-eating demon.
He said, “We should wake up naturally,” to Gary, who nodded, lifted the drum, and began the familiar heartbeat cadence.
For the first time ever, I had instantaneous company in my journey to the other worlds.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Coyote was at my side, trotting along in his animal form. The sky above lingered between Middle World blue and Lower World red, shading to warm purple before we fully entered the Lower World.
I had no recollection of following a path, the other times I’d come here. It wasn’t man-made, but more like some ancient streambed, rocks smoothed over until they were cobbles, patch-worked together by nature’s hand. That was Coyote’s presence, stabilizing my generally awkward entrance to other realms. I wondered if I’d ever be as competent.
We followed the streambed up a low mountainside, Coyote’s tongue lolling as it got hotter. I said, “You could always switch out of the fur suit,” idly, and he managed to slam his entire body weight into my knee without arresting his forward motion at all.
“Four feet are easier than two on this kind of surface. Besides, I’m a better hunter and protector in this form. You could try it.”
“Being a coyote?”
“Or a raven.”
I liked how he said that. Like it was not only within the bounds of reason, but in fact utterly reasonable. “I can’t shape-shift.”
“Not with that attitude you can’t.”
“I meant people can’t shape-shift.” This despite the obvious evidence to the contrary. But we were in the Lower World, where rules didn’t hold true quite the same way they did in our world. “Or are you going to tell me you can do that at home, too?”
“I wouldn’t dare.” We crested the mountain and the Lower World spread out before us, a multicolored valley of forests and meadows. Mist took the distance even though the low sun burned steadily in the sky, but I doubted little things like terrestrial weather patterns meant anything here. Coyote sat, wagging his tail, and snapped at a seed dancing on the air. “Does anywhere call to you?”
“Just the local telephone exchange.”
He snapped at me that time, and I raised my hands placatingly while I studied the view.
I honestly wanted somewhere to jump out at me, for some small hollow or meadow to brighten in invitation. I wanted to feel like I belonged somewhere here, that some place in this strange odd-colored world welcomed me. Nothing did. Yellow rivers cut their paths across orange-and-purple earth, blue trees stretched toward red skies, all of them disproportionately close to one another, but none of them said c’mere, Jo, this is a safe place for your spirit quest. I sighed and gestured a little ways down the mountain. “Nowhere, really. We might as well just use one of the hollers.”
“One of the what?”
“The hollers, the…” I stumbled over the explanation, having never imagined needing to give it. “The mountain hollers. One of the little valleys down there. You know, if you holler it echoes? It’s a…it’s a holler.”
Coyote turned his face toward me to give me the direct upward look that made such effective puppy-dog eyes, except there was no soulful hope in his expression. It looked a lot more like “What the hell are you on about?”
The phrase I shrank in on myself was more literal in the Lower World than at home. I curved my shoulders defensively, becoming physically smaller with unhappiness. “It’s what my dad calls them. I thought everybody did. Maybe it’s just a North Carolina thing.”
I didn’t know why Coyote’s disdain made me feel so bad. I just hadn’t expected to be called out over a regionalism. He looked awfully big now, compared to me, and his furry eyebrows bunched together in the worried way that dogs had. He poked his head toward me, long tongue wrapping around my wrist, and although it should’ve been impossible for him to speak that way, he said, “I’m not a dog,” very gently. “Sorry. I just never heard the phrase before. Mountain hollers.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Still hunchy, I turned down the mountain, but Coyote tangled himself in my legs and wouldn’t let me move.
“It does matter. This is supposed to be a spiritual journey, a peaceful one, not another tit f
or tat one-man-upmanship. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make fun of you.”
“Yeah, you did.” I wasn’t trying to be childish. I just figured if he was going to apologize it should be for the right things, or it didn’t mean diddly-squat. He looked up at me for a moment and then his big pointy ears flopped over.
“Okay, you’re right. I did. I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry.”
That sounded more sincere somehow, and I sat down to bash my head against his and hug him. “Okay.”
“You’ve been doing a good job, Jo. I don’t know if I said so. You’ve been doing all right without me.”
“I’ve been a huge flailing mess without you.” I got up again, feeling much better about the world, and we slipped and climbed our way down into the nearest holler, where I threw my head back and, well, hollered. “Halloo the reverberate hills!”
Echoes bounced back all around me, and Coyote, after throwing me a startled glance, tilted his sharp nose to the sky and howled. I joined him, shouting nonsense and howling myself, until we were both breathless and our ears rang with the shadows of our voices. Then, smiling and yet feeling strangely formal amidst all the noise, I oriented myself toward the north, where I bowed extravagantly. The other three directions got equal acknowledgment before I sat in the center of a power circle inscribed by echoes.
“All I’ve brought,” I said to no one in particular, “is the song of our hearts. I’m sorry I haven’t got any other gifts today, but liveliness and fun ought to count for something.” It certainly did with my raven friend, who could be outright silly. I closed my eyes and, a little more solemnly, added, “I seek a second guide today, another spirit to protect me on the warrior’s path. I’m grateful to anyone who considers me, and I’ll do my best to honor one who might choose to walk with me. I’m pretty bad at that,” I admitted, because it seemed like I ought to be honest, “but I’m getting a little better, and Raven means a lot to me even if I’m an ingrate.”