Thunderbird Falls

by C. E. Murphy

  I retained a vague sense of awareness of the world around me. Duane’s hand in mine had a little weight to it; the popping fire lit the insides of my eyelids to strange reversed colors. Distressingly, my garden didn’t appear around me. I wasn’t used to doing this when I couldn’t fully reach at least some level of the astral realm.

  I wrapped Duane in my image of a damaged vehicle: a blue minivan, with thin white racing stripes and a baby rattle hanging from the rearview mirror. I couldn’t tell if it was my own concoction or if Duane had a secret inner minivan, which didn’t seem inappropriate, given his role as the Father.

  The left front wheel well had been keyed, a deep scored mark that cut through paint and into the metal. I ran my thumb over Duane’s palm without quite touching the bandages, and, behind my eyelids, ran my hand over the mark on his car. The scoring ran deep, almost through to the other side. It would take heat to fix it, a soldering iron that would let the metal reach viscosity again so filaments could blur back together. That was how it worked in my mind’s eye; I understood on some level that a more practiced shaman should be able to just see the damage as whole, and through that strength of vision, make it happen. I wasn’t that good.

  And I didn’t want to leave Duane with burns where I’d just cleaned up a cut. I reached out my damaged hand toward the fire. Pulling heat from the image of the minivan I was fixing while continuing to solder the injury was more difficult than I expected. I wanted the heat to bleed off through my outstretched fingers, but it stayed in me, my own blood heating up. I wondered just how hot I could get before I caused some sort of irreversible damage. I tried to stop worrying about it, and concentrated instead on Duane’s injury.

  Gray metal melted and merged back together, overlaying the idea of the cut on his hand. I could feel, if not quite see, the flesh knitting back together, wholeness working its way up from the bottom of the slice. It should have been easy, but the core of power inside me didn’t want to respond. It was as if it, too, was oppressed by the weather, unwilling to do anything.

  Duane believed, though, and I thought that might be the only thing getting us through the healing process. I was able to put the idea of the soldering iron away after a few minutes, replacing it with a noisy airbrush. The heat within me didn’t fade. By the time I had the image of smooth, unblemished blue paint in my mind, I felt parboiled. Sweat rolled down the bridge of my nose and through my eyelashes. I didn’t want to open my eyes and feel its sting. “There.” My voice was croaky from heat bubbling inside me. I wiped my arm across my forehead before blinking my eyes open. “You should be okay now.”

  Duane lifted his eyebrows a little and began unwrapping the bandages from his hand. A handful of the coven surrounded us, watching him curiously. “I’ll be damned.” He turned his palm up, unblemished, and stared at me in pleased astonishment.

  For an instant my vision crashed back to normal. His skin looked healthy and whole in the mix of firelight and dappling sun. I could see the unscarred lifeline wrinkling across his palm. I smiled and it made me dizzy.

  The image of a windshield, sun-baked and spider-webbed with age, slammed into my line of sight. I recognized it with a catch of my breath, although I hadn’t seen it in months. Coyote would say it was my soul, and right now I wouldn’t have enough in me to argue. As I watched, a handful of the spiderweb lines along the outer edges of the windshield crackled and hissed, melding together again. Healing.

  My vision smashed back into reverse. The windshield fled to black. Silver-clear splinters of spiderwebs glowed an unhealthy throbbing white against it. The fractures that had just healed split apart again, reaching all the way to the edges of the windshield. My windshield. The car, if my vision drew back far enough, would be Petite. My heart and soul. Poor damned Petite. My head hurt. I blinked, and the vision of the windshield was gone.

  Someone touched my shoulder. Dull white pain curdled through me at the touch.

  “Joanne, are you all right? You’re all red.”

  I looked down at my own hands. My below-the-skin sunburn had surfaced, flushing my skin to dark reddish pink in the failing light. I might tan, from this burn. Sometimes I did, when a bad sunburn peeled away. It was the only time my Cherokee heritage showed up in my coloring, and it made my green eyes look weird and bright in contrast with suddenly darker skin.

  Now that I was aware of the burn, my skin ached and itched. I was still sweating, the heat inside me pushing moisture out. I climbed to my feet, trying not to touch myself. I couldn’t bend my arm enough to cradle my left hand against my chest like I wanted to. I felt tears burgeoning, but they would sting my face, so I didn’t let them fall.

  “Come on.” My voice sounded hollow in my ears, like it was echoing through an empty cavern. I wondered if my brain had boiled away. I wondered if I’d notice. “Let’s finish this thing up.” I couldn’t take my eyes off the fire, black-tipped wings licking at the air. My hand throbbed in time to the pops and crackles of the embers. I felt like I was putting off more heat than the fire was.

  Everyone else apparently felt like I was, too. No one stood near me. Several of them wouldn’t look directly at me. I wondered if I hurt to look at. I thought I probably did, because it certainly hurt to be me.

  I didn’t know what Marcia and the others had done with the blood. I wasn’t sure I cared. All I could feel was the cut on my hand and the heat in my body. Everything was starting to make sense, in the heady, rushy way that came with heat exhaustion. There needed to be a sacrifice to initiate the change we were after. That was the real reason I was there: to apply what I’d learned from Judy. I was pretty sure I knew the sacrifice that needed to be made. I just hadn’t quite talked myself into doing it yet.

  The coven took up their places around the fire. Marcia hesitated, then left me where I was. I was facing the wrong direction, or at least, I was facing a different direction than I had the night before, but I thought it was probably wiser to rearrange everyone around me. I wasn’t sure I could walk, for one thing, and for another, I was quite sure I didn’t want anyone touching me to guide me into place. It seemed reasonably certain that I was going to spontaneously combust at any moment.

  Which thought distracted me while the coven began a chant, a different, deeper song than the night before. Did people who spontaneously combusted do something like I had? Draw heat off something and then be unable to release it? My vision swirled down to pinpoints while I struggled to follow that idea through. I was missing something there. There was something about this heat that was clear and obvious and…gone. My mind was too overcooked to hold on to the thought.

  I closed my eyes, swaying on my feet. Maybe if I could direct all the heat to my head I would be able to lift off and fly away, like a hot air balloon. I concentrated on that for a few minutes. I succeeded in giving myself tiny fits of giggles that made the other coven members cast stern looks at me. I could feel the frowns even with my eyes closed, their irritation like cool points of pressure against my skin. Possibly if I annoyed them enough they would scowl hard enough that their cool anger would bleed off all the extra heat in me. I started a hopeful little dance, shuffling my feet around and waggling my hips back and forth. I lifted my hands above my head, squeaking in pain as my tank top shifted against my skin. More of them scowled at me, but it wasn’t enough to cool me down. I usually thought of anger as being hot. I wondered if they were actually coolly annoyed, or if I was just so hot that anger felt cold against my burning skin.

  I giggled again, not because it was funny, but because it was a choice between laughter and panicked tears. The disapproval was stronger this time, hitting my skin in cool waves. I thought I could hear the hiss as it hit me and turned to steam, but I didn’t want to open my eyes to see if vapor was coming off my skin. It seemed like the precursor to the whole combustion thing, and I was pretty sure I didn’t want to have my eyes open when that happened.

  I could feel things starting, a low rumble from the belly of the earth. I thought my soles
were shaking, though judging from the unbroken chanting around me, it was probably just my imagination. No one else seemed bothered by it. Still, I thought the ground might split open beneath my feet and spew out the bodies we were trying to call forth. I wondered if they would erupt upward in solid form, lions and tigers and bears, oh my! and then come crashing back down onto us. It would be an ignominious death, squashed by zoo animals. I wondered what the epitaphs would say. Morrison would probably write mine, and it would probably say, “Thank God.”

  The earth groaned and stretched. I stumbled to the side, crashing into Sam. He caught me, a hand wrapped around my forearm. I made a high-pitched sound of pain, a squeal without enough air behind it. He let go as fast as he’d caught me, staring at his hand. To my eyes, his palm turned white, blood rushing up where I’d burned him. On my arm, where he’d caught me, there was a bleached black hand-print against the sunburn. The earth grumbled and I lost my balance again. This time Sam yanked his hands away, making sure not to touch me. I couldn’t blame him. I didn’t want to touch me, but I couldn’t get away from myself. I broke out of the circle, moving toward the fire.

  “Can’t you feel it?” I didn’t know if anyone else could hear me. I wasn’t sure I was speaking out loud, or if my voice was making it through the tight heat that clenched in my throat. “Can’t you feel it coming?” I didn’t know how they could miss the pressure building, the impatience buried beneath the land.

  No one answered. I spun in a reckless circle, coming too close to the fire. It ripped my breath away, leaving my lungs empty and burning, too. Faye, across the circle, met my eyes. Her eyes were back to normal, but her gaze was sharp and intense, like it could flay the burning flesh from my bones. “You feel it,” I panted at her. She tensed and looked away, gaze skittering to the fire. I couldn’t tell if it was denial or encouragement. I swung to face the fire myself, and shrugged. My tank top scraped my skin and I found myself savoring the rough, painful feeling. It was the last time I’d ever feel it. I knew what the demanding earth beneath my feet wanted. I knew what the burning in my skin wanted. And really, I didn’t think I could hurt anymore than I did already. It might even be peaceful. I was ridiculously glad I’d met Judy and had learned enough in a few short days to understand what was going on, and what I needed to do.

  I took one last look around at the coven and shrugged again. “Hell with it.” My voice was breathy and light, like flame itself.

  I walked into the fire and let it burn.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Exultation boiled through me, peeling the skin from my flesh. The fire gobbled its way inside me, meeting up with the heat I’d taken into myself. Together they tangled and tore me apart from the cellular level out, exploding my bones and my brain and leaving me in a floating haze of pain and delight. Breathing didn’t seem to hurt anymore. I had a vague sense of wrongness about that, like there ought to be pain in not breathing, but it swept over me like a runner’s high. The fire had forced me over a threshold: pain was good. Agony was a decadent ending to the build of heat inside me. It ached through my fingertips and curled my feet, and I tried to breathe it in more deeply, grateful for it.

  I couldn’t hear the coven anymore; even the popping fire had faded into a song that rang high and sweet against my eardrums. It sounded like freedom, like bells calling everyone home. The stinging purity brought tears to my eyes, like liquid goose bumps, involuntary and a little startling. They heralded change and acknowledged me as the conduit. I tilted my head back, lifting my arms to embrace the old world and the ancient creatures that had roamed it. I invited them through me, the Mother, bound by blood and fire to the earth.

  It was the utter opposite of the thunderbird. Wolves and bears, wild-eyed things I’d never dreamed of in my nightmares and gentle monsters with the light of hope in their souls fed themselves to me a hundred at a time. Some were malignant and dark, tasting of ash and tar. They came hand in wing with lighthearted, benign creatures that left the scent of clean air and roses in my throat. Some were tricky, and stuck like molasses, only to be washed down by the cool water and straight-forward dedication of their counterparts. I couldn’t name most of them even if I’d wanted to, but they fed me and grew fat on me, and through me were born out into the world.

  I tore apart with the birth of a thousand creatures, feeling the earth tear with me. I didn’t think I cried out loud, but I didn’t need to: the earth itself shrieked and rumbled with the influx of things from the otherworld. I burned, no longer inside my skin, but in my core, spinning eternally, creating life. Time stretched and snapped and twisted until it was meaningless. I had no sense of age, no sense of purpose; I simply was, and would be until I ended. Nothing could change me, not the life I brought forth nor the death that inevitably cycled with it. I drifted in that complacency, warmed by my core and no longer worried about anything. The world went on. It always would. Birthing pains faded away. I felt nothing, no conscious thought or fear to disrupt me. I spun, bound to my own heat and nothing more.

  Something tickled inside my ear.

  I ignored it, then swatted at it, writhing with irritation. The tickle turned into a stab of pain and I clawed at it, feeling like I was trying to scrape a needle from my eardrum. The pain grew, wriggling and pricking and poking, until it became a fierce, furious shriek, like a raptor’s call. Raptors don’t hunt at night, I thought peevishly. The idea bounced through me, shocking in that it was made of words and images. I clutched my head, an ache pounding through my temples and reminding me of myself. Reminding me of consciousness and of choice, rather than the act of simply being.

  Faye’s voice cut through the screeching birdcall in my head, whispering to me. I could feel the power of the coven behind her, lending her the strength necessary to work through the layers of earth that held me away from them. “Joanne, don’t forget us. Remember our purpose. We can’t lose you. Without you we’ll fail and the world will die with us.” Her voice was deeper than usual, older than I remembered it sounding, like it carried the weight of more than one speaker. It reverberated through the earth, making my skin itch and shudder as if I were a horse trying to dislodge a fly.

  Remember. I struggled after Faye’s words, trying to make sense of them. Remember what? Remember—

  Remember Gary. Colin. Coyote. Remember the heat wave burning Seattle, spreading out to the world. Remember who I am (Joanne Walker), a back part of my mind said. A part further back, noisily, said, Remember the Alamo! and beneath that whispered another name to me, so hidden and soft that I couldn’t let myself even think it, but I knew what it was. Who it was. Who I was.

  I uncurled with a gasp, struggling back to my feet, grasping at an awareness of things like up and down and hot and cold. The earth shouted, ripping apart, as if protesting my actions and my free will.

  The fire fell away from around my feet. I hung suspended in the air, my bones shaking and twisting and roaring disapproval. The coven disappeared, out of my inverted sight and out of my ability to sense them, leaving me alone with nothing except stars in the night sky and the treetops I was surrounded by.

  A tremendous release of power hit me in the gut with the intensity of a waterfall. It knocked me ass over teakettle, endless roaring filling my ears. I slammed upside-down into one of the trees, crunching into branches with enough force to break them. I tumbled down, catching my shoulder on another branch and flipping right-side up again in time for a solid Y in the tree to catch me in the crotch and hold me. Disorientation smashed over me, leaving my mind blank of anything except an appreciation for excruciating pain. I hadn’t done that since I was a kid, and I didn’t miss it one bit at all. Poor men. Getting caught in the crotch made me wheeze and want to vomit. I couldn’t and didn’t much want to imagine what getting kicked in the nuts felt like.

  Then a giant ripped the tree I was in out of the ground and flung it to the earth with a resounding, wet crash, and I stopped caring about anything for a while.

  * * * *

 
; Tuesday, June 21, 5:45 a.m.

  I was cold. Goose bumps were all over my skin, and my tank top was clammy and sticky against my back. I kept shivering.

  After the last couple of days of heat, and the episode with the fire, I was surprised I could even be cold anymore. I lay there thinking about it, and wondering if I was broken anywhere or if I was just cold. There seemed to be a tree lying partly on top of me, which overall struck me as somewhat peculiar. I remembered being in the tree, but without opening my eyes—which I didn’t much want to do—it felt like I was now lying in mud.

  I moved my right hand very slightly, prodding at my resting place. Yes. Yes, it was mud. It schlucked and gooed and generally behaved like mud. Which was all wrong, because last time I was conscious it not only wasn’t muddy, but hadn’t rained in several weeks. Mud was very unusual. I wondered where exactly I was. There was a sound like thunder somewhere nearby, confusingly alien to the whisper of wind through trees that I last remembered. Well, that I last remembered in a world that made sense. There were dark places in my memory that I was reluctant to prod at yet. The mud and the thunder were enough for the moment.

  My hand explored a little more, apparently content to do this without me opening my eyes. I was grateful. Perhaps I could get my hand something nice later on, when I’d gotten up again. A manicure, perhaps, or a ring. No, not a ring. A ring would get all nasty with oil and grease. Didn’t matter if I was a cop with a beat these days. I still thought of myself as a mechanic. I could start wearing the copper bracelet my father’d given me. It would look nice on my wrist, close to my hand. I thought my hand would like that. It seemed like a good idea, and I was satisfied.

  There were branches and twigs in the mud, and then a puddle. The puddle surprised me enough that I opened my eyes.

  It didn’t help. Not that I couldn’t see: I could. It was more that what I saw made no sense. Tree roots stuck up in the air, globs of dark earth hanging from them. Broken branches were strewn in every direction over a shattered landscape. There were huge humps of earth standing with their sides sheered away, looking precarious and wobbly without the support they used to have. One of them had a tree still standing on it, perfectly serene and unbothered by the changed world around it. Its roots stuck out of the sides of its earth pillar, reaching down for ground that had fallen away around it.