I sit back on my heels and rub my eyes. I can feel Bran watching me. Hope radiates from him. But what if I can’t fix his father? I couldn’t help Saul.
“Cass?” Helen says. “What do you need?”
“Nothing,” I say. “I’m going to have to cross over.”
Helen bites her lip. Bran clenches his jaw and drops his gaze. Cedar sits back in the shadows so I can’t see him at all.
I try not to think about any of them. There’s a man beside me who’s really hurt, so hurt that I can’t let myself think of last time. My gaze drifts out of focus as I look for where his totem should be, but it’s gone. He had one once, though. I know because I can feel it, and I can also feel the wound left behind, a raw, gaping hole in his being, a wound that must be stanched before it bleeds him dry.
I draw a deep breath and force my gaze back into focus. Delaying isn’t going to make this any easier. “Bran,” I say. “What happened to your father? Do you know?”
He won’t look at me.
“Bran, please,” I say. I want to touch him so badly, but he draws away from me. “I need to know what I’m dealing with.”
Bran drops his head. He’s on the verge of tears again.
In the shadows, Cedar groans.
“Shut up,” I snap at him. “Just shut up.” I slide closer to Bran. “I need to know what I’m looking for when I cross.”
He raises his gaze to mine. His expression is blank, but in his eyes, I see the shadow of fear. “There’s a man. The leader of the sea wolves.” His voice is weak and hoarse. He’s fighting for every word.
“Go on,” I say, giving him a smile.
He clears his throat, making way for his voice. “They’ve broken away from the Bix’iula. They live on their own, somewhere up north, along the coast.”
“Okay,” I say, trying to be patient. I’m not sure what this has to do with his father. “Just take your time.”
He coughs again, and I start to worry. The cough is heavy and thick. I want to check him out, but I force myself to sit there like a rock and wait for him to speak.
“They came for us when we were patrolling the boundary,” Bran finally says. “Put us in the hold of a ship. Beat us, but the beating wasn’t as bad as what came later. That’s when the man came.” He draws his knees into his chest. “We stopped somewhere, I don’t know where. There weren’t any windows in the hold. That’s when he took our men out one by one, and when he brought them back … they didn’t talk anymore. They didn’t even look like men—more like … shells. Like their life was burned out of them.” His gaze shifts to his father. “Paul said the man was taking their souls. Paul … he spoke with … ghosts, and that’s what they told him. That’s what they had done to my father. That’s what they were going to do to us. I don’t know what they do with the souls, Cass, but our men … we should have killed them. I should have. Put them out of their misery.” He finally looks at me, eyes so full of agony that I have to force myself not to look away. “Except I didn’t have the courage.”
“Oh.” The urge to curl into myself is overwhelming. I know the depth of failure he feels, the knowledge that life will never be the same again because every time you close your eyes, the people you failed are there, staring straight at you—not with accusation, but with sadness, with regret that they chose the wrong one. But I won’t give in—not without a fight. I sit up straight, put on a mask that says I’m fine, I can handle this, that I’m not scared to the pit of my stomach. That I’m not terrified for my brother. That I’m not torn between raging at Bran for leaving Paul behind and wrapping him in my arms and rocking him until his tears fade away and never come back.
Bran grimaces and looks up to the sky. He can’t stop crying, no matter how hard he tries.
“What a pussy,” Cedar mutters.
And then, just like that, Bran launches himself at Cedar. Helen screams as they roll toward her, kicking and biting and fighting like bears. I yell at them to stop, but they don’t hear me. Battle-frenzy has taken them. Cedar lands a good, hard punch to Bran’s kidneys, but Bran doesn’t even seem to feel it. A growl rises from his throat. He twists, pinning Cedar in the dirt, and then his hands are around Cedar’s throat, choking the life right out of him.
I grab Bran’s shoulders and try to pull him away, but he shakes me off. Cedar is gagging and wheezing as he claws at Bran’s hands.
“Stop it!” I scream. “You’re going to kill him! Stop it!”
Bran ignores me. Cedar’s face turns purple as he tries to punch Bran, but each punch is weaker than the last. His eyes bulge in his head. He opens his mouth, gasping for air.
“Bran,” I say, crouching beside him. “You’ve got to stop. That’s Cedar you’re killing. Listen to me. Come back. Bran, please come back.” I set my forehead against his shoulder and whisper to him. “Please. Come back. You have to come back.”
I feel him shudder, and when I look up, he’s watching me as if seeing me for the first time. Slowly he releases his grasp on Cedar’s neck, leaving brilliant red welts that mark the outline of his fingers. Cedar wheezes and spits as he tries to breathe.
“He deserves to die,” Bran says. “I saw what he did to my father. I know what he’ll do to Paul.” His voice sounds like the wind.
“But it’s just Cedar, Bran. Not the man who hurt you.” I take one of his hands and hold it in mine. “It’s just Cedar.”
Cedar lies there on the ground, staring at us. He doesn’t move. “Yeah, it’s just me, man,” he croaks. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
Bran drops his chin to his chest, panting. I close my eyes and see things swirling around him, things I’ve never seen before. His kingfisher is barely attached to him and there are other things now—sea wolves, for one, but not the healthy black-and-white orcas we saw in the ocean. These are depraved creatures, bloody and mutilated— monsters. And I must get them away from Bran before they take him, too.
My hand finds one of the strings at my neck and I pull my pouch, the one holding the sisiutl’s pearls, over my head. “Wear this,” I say, closing his fingers around it. “I want to give you a little sisiutl medicine, just for a while, just until you’ve found yours again.”
Bran just stares at the pouch, so I take it and string it around his neck. “There,” I say, patting it against his chest. “They can’t come for you, and if they do, sisiutl will eat them.” I smile, hoping he will too, and I’m rewarded with a quiet chuckle.
“Thanks,” Bran says as he gets to his feet. I’m not sure he believes me.
Cedar pushes himself away and creeps back to his seat in the shadows.
“I’m so sorry, Cass,” Bran says. I’ve never seen him look so lost, so uncertain.
“Apologize to Cedar,” I say. “He’s the one you attacked.”
Bran shakes his head, as if what I’ve said isn’t true, but he goes to where Cedar sits, crouches, and offers him his hand. “I’m sorry, man. So sorry.”
Cedar grunts something I can’t hear and after a tense moment, I see a hand extend from the shadows to take Bran’s. They sit there, hand in hand, until Bran nods and releases Cedar’s grasp. “Thanks, man,” he says.
He waits a second, takes a deep breath, and then moves back to sit beside his father. “They took my father’s totem,” he says. “He was a bear. Now he’s not. That’s what they did with all the men, except Paul and me. They were saving us for the man who fragments souls—that’s what they called it—and when Paul came back, he told me about the exchange. He gave up his totem, Cass— gave it to my father so he could come back to this world. The others? They’re all lost. That’s what Paul said. Lost.”
“They took Paul’s shade?” I whisper.
“No,” Bran says as his eyes change to storm clouds. “I don’t know what that man said to him, but Paul gave his totem up. Willingly. He came back afterward to tell me to tell you. He said he didn’t need it anymore, so he was giving his to my father to replace the one he lost. He said to tell you not to
look for him. Not to try. He said he’s beyond help now. Beyond hope.”
I edge closer to the fire, hoping its warmth will ease the chill that’s seeping into my heart. Paul chose to stay. What could this man have said to make him want to stay?
Solace, I think. That’s the one thing Paul’s never had. Solace. Peace.
But I can’t think about that now. Something’s changed with Bran’s father. His breath is coming in short, shallow gasps, as if our words have unleashed something from the spirit world and it’s begun to steal him away.
I take sage from my medicine kit, but before I set it on the fire, I look at Helen, and then Bran. “This isn’t going to be easy,” I say. “I’ll need you guys to watch over me while I’m gone.”
Helen creeps closer and sets a hand on my back. “We can do that, Cass. Don’t you worry.” She smiles. “We’ll be your anchors.”
Bran nods. “I know you can do it.”
I try to smile, but my lips quiver and all I can manage is to clench my teeth together. I hope they’re right, because if I can’t find Bran’s father, I might not come back either.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
The wind throws itself against the longhouse. Rain drives down from the sky. We sit in our corner, staring at the clouds, as our fire fights for life.
Every bit of me has been scraped thin. I can’t cross into spirit like this. I’ll be fodder for whatever’s hunting me, for now I realize that’s what’s going on—the wolves I’ve seen in the spirit world are tied to the man who has taken Paul. I’m going to face him down, that man—there’s no doubt about that, but I’ll do it on my terms, not his.
Helen looks up as I stand and dust my hands on my filthy pants. “Where are you going?” she asks, wide-eyed with fear.
“Out.” I duck out into the slanting downpour before she can stop me. Rain soaks me to the skin in an instant, but I don’t care. I open my arms wide and run, run as fast as I can down toward the crabbed pine forest where the burial ground sleeps, where platforms with old bones watch the sky. I have no idea where I’m going. All I know is that I must run, and the faster I run, the faster I will find myself because that’s what I’ve been looking for all along. That’s the one thing I need before I cross into spirit to find Bran’s father.
I run until my pulse screams in my ears and my lungs cry out for breath. I run until my legs ache and sand blisters my soles. I run until sky and earth become one and until the storm blows through me and past me and over me. And then I drop to my knees, turn my face to the sky, and let the rain wash me clean.
Above me, the clouds shift back and forth, rubbing together, and a low rumble comes from the east. A flash of light, and an answering rumble, and another flash. The skies are alive. When I was very little, my father would say the gods were bowling whenever I was frightened by a thunderstorm, but now, what I know is this: The gods don’t bowl. They dance. They writhe and twist and meld together until positive and negative become something more, something without a name, something that gives birth to lightning and her sister, thunder, and that’s when I know what I have to do.
I rise and run back to the longhouse. This time, I won’t fail.
• • •
Helen dashes to my side the moment I step into the long-house, draping a blanket around my shoulders, leading me to the fire. “You need to get warm,” she says.
“No,” I say, though I draw the blanket close with a shiver. “What I need is to get started.”
Bran’s face is pale with worry, but whether it’s for me or his father, I don’t know. It probably doesn’t matter. I’m no longer the Cassandra he once knew. I don’t know who I am, but I know what I need to accomplish and that’s all that’s important right now.
I drop more sage into the fire, sit down, and as soon as I close my eyes, I’m gone. When I open them again, the twilight lake is before me, and in its center is the sisiutl. It nods. I nod in return. We are two halves of a whole, two sides of a coin, and it will help me do what I need to do.
I scan the sky for the raven, but it’s not there, nor did I really expect it to be. The raven I’m looking for is injured, and injured animals hide. The place that’s darkest in this world and therefore the best for hiding? The lake.
I step into the water, wading deeper and deeper until the lake fills my mouth, my nose, my ears, enveloping me. I am the sisiutl. I can fly through the sky and swim through water, and nothing will harm me, save my second head at the end of my tail.
I walk to the center of the lake and look up to the sky. Stars wink at me, so I reach up and pluck one, cupping it in my palm. It shall be my beacon in this underwater world, for the brightest stars cast the deepest shadows, and the deepest shadow is exactly what I’m looking for.
The bottom of the lake is littered with bones. Some I recognize: skulls, knuckles, rib cages, but some have come from creatures I’ve never seen, for they’ve never existed except in this place where all things are possible. I walk through the boneyard, looking for a raven, star glowing in my hand, until the star’s light catches on something cowering behind a pile of pelvises. I creep forward, and there it is: a raven, plucked bare, its wing broken. It looks up at me and tries to hop away, but it’s too sick and all it can manage is a feeble croak.
“Don’t fight,” I say as I pick it up. “I’ll help you.”
It fights anyhow, pecking at me as I tuck it under my arm and retrace my steps. I set the star back in the sky and walk ashore, carrying the raven that bleats like a lamb. It struggles against me with each step I take, but no matter how hard it tries, I won’t let it go.
Another raven is waiting for us on the beach, this one the large raven I’ve spoken with before.
He cocks his head. I see you’ve caught my little brother. What are you going to do with him? Cook him up? Make a little raven soup? His caws sound like laughter.
“Nope,” I say as I raise the little raven above my head and close my eyes. “Watch and see.”
Oh-ho, the raven says. A show!
I smile, but in my mind, I call wind and rain and clouds and all the power the sky can muster. Thunder rumbles across the twilight lake and I know it’s working—I’m going to make a storm. The rain hits me next, blowing in on a wind so strong I can feel its fury pierce my skin, letting blood, and why not? This requires a sacrifice, and what better one can I give than the most valuable thing I possess—my blood.
I take the plucked raven in my arms. “Hold on, little one,” I whisper to it. “This is going to hurt.” And with that, I scream to the skies and call the heavens down on me. They answer with sheets of light that strike me asunder.
I am lying in the sand. My head hurts. I reach up to touch my hair, but there is none. All I feel is skin.
A face swims before me and when my vision steadies, I can just make out Bran’s worried gray eyes.
“Did I do it?” I ask.
Bran helps me sit up. His father is beside me, asleep. At his shoulder, cast in the strange light of spirit, is the raven, battered and mewling, but there. I did it. I brought his totem back.
Bran eases me back down. “Now you,” he says, “are going to sleep.”
I try to answer, but I can’t. I’m already gone.
They let me sleep for two days before we set off toward home. They feed me clams and seaweed, the ocean’s bounty, when I wake, as if this is its way of making amends. The lightning singed most of my hair off. A small part of me hates to think what I look like, but when I run my hand over my head, I can feel fine stubble there already. Bran says he thinks I look beautiful like this, like an Egyptian goddess. I want to ask him how he knows what an Egyptian goddess looks like, but I don’t. For now, a goddess is what I choose to be, and I don’t really feel like breaking that spell.
Bran’s father sits next to Cedar, watching me. He’s stopped saying thank you now, but his eyes speak for him. After all, he was marked by the lightning too. His hair was once dark brown. Now it’s white.
We’re both lucky
to be alive.
No one else has spoken of what happened. There will be another time for that. Right now, we’re just glad to be going home.
Before we dock in the estuary, we can tell there’s going to be trouble. Two armed men patrol the wharf, and as we approach, they load their weapons.
“Put them down,” Art, as he’s asked us to call him, says.
They gape at him until Bran stands beside his father. “Yeah,” he says. “He’s back.”
“I found them,” Cedar quickly adds.
None of us contradict him. If Cedar wants to lay claim to finding Arthur Eagleson’s body, that’s fine. We all know we did this together—all of us.
We’re driven into town and soon, word spreads. Someone thinks to fetch Grace, and I fade into the background as she throws herself into the arms of her husband and her son. I have my own family to see to.
The walk home feels longer than before. My legs are heavy. I can barely lift them. Long ago, the day we left the Corridor, I remember thinking that my father looked as if he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. I now understand what that must have felt like, because the news I carry now? It has left me feeling the same way.
My father finds me halfway back and when I tell him what’s happened, his knees buckle. We sit there in the dust as the shadows stretch across the road. We can’t cry. We can’t move. There is no measure of our grief. My brother, our Paul, is lost to us, and I have no idea how to get him back.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
We keep close to our house at the lake and spend days sitting on the sundeck, thinking of Paul. There are so many things we should be doing—the list is endless—but neither of us can figure out how to start without Paul. The ship Bran was on was a large ocean-going vessel. There’s no way we could follow a ship like that, a ship that can cross waters our little skiffs aren’t built to weather.
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