Intent.
“No,” he said finally, without sounding as if he cared. “What have I done?”
“You,” she fumed, struggling to keep the silky smooth edge of her voice. “You and your disappearing village. You’ve changed everything for me. For all of us!”
“Anjhela,” he said, lifting his manacled wrists in meaningful gesture—those, at least, remained raw and weeping. “It wasn’t mine to do. Even without these.”
“Don’t pretend to be stupid.” Her fist clenched, trapping the mendihar with a technique she’d considered outgrown years earlier. “Don’t insult me that way. You or that little sklarr friend you never dared tell me about—it’s all the same thing. It has been, for years.”
His faint shrug stirred the k’thai braids hidden in the mass of his hair. “He isn’t mine to command, Anjhela. I released him when your half-bloods came for me.”
He said it as if he wasn’t quite one of them any longer. As if he wasn’t as half-blood as any of them. Anjhela’s supple scales turned rigid in her rising fury. “He is behind this! You are behind it! You will be the undoing of me!”
“That,” he said, unaffected by her anger, “would only be right. Given how much of me went into the making of you.”
Anjhela closed the distance between them in two swift strides, her freehand lashing out to slap him with all her considerable strength. “You DARE!”
His head rocked back, hitting stone with audible impact. His lip bled; his eye trickled an involuntary tear. But she’d only dazed that spark, not extinguished it. He met her gaze evenly enough. “It may be a truth not before spoken,” he said. “But it is still a truth.”
She whirled from him, so incapacitated by emotion as to be without rational thought. She had no tools for being in this state; no one ever drove her to this state. No one had ever had the means.
Except Trevarr. Always Trevarr. And until now, he had never employed them.
But he was still the one in chains, and the one bound by silver and glyphs. He was still the one so recently injured unto death...as little as it sat upon him now.
Anjhela turned back to him, eyes narrowed—seeing again not just the details of his person, but the overall impression of him. She said flatly, “He’s been here. He’s helped you.”
Trevarr lifted one shoulder. “He is free, nortreya.”
Once beloved. Anjhela stiffened at that blow, even knowing how much it revealed. Her response instantly stripped her bare of the distance she’d put between them, and of the power she’d since assumed.
Trevarr had mercy at that. He pretended not to notice. “The sklarr can no more get in than I can get out. You know the truth of that.”
Anjhela’s spinal scales rippled with a cold grue; a premonition. She regathered herself with effort, forcing her clenched hand to relax—opening it without losing control to the mendihar. “When it comes to you,” she said, her shoulders still stiff, “I’m not sure we’ve ever known anything at all.”
~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 15
Doesn’t Taste Like Chicken at All
Rhonda Rose
“What made you, Rhonda Rose?”
Lisa pretended, as ever, that this query was the first of its nature instead of one of many.
In truth, my continued prevarication was self-serving. I simply wasn’t prepared for her epiphany that some matters do indeed baffle me as well as they do her.
“Focus on the task at hand,” I said firmly, settling beside her at the water feature of the idyllic little back yard and its idiosyncratic adobe walls. It was an Old Town home, a single story structure with wandering rooms and alcoves and curved entryways, the bosque cottonwoods and elms arching overhead...remarkably peaceful and remarkably private.
Remarkably well-suited to nurture a girl who spoke to entities no one else could see.
She’d grown into the early stages of adolescence over the most recent winter—her frame as petite and wiry as ever while her legs gained coltishness and the structure of her face started to peek through. She would never be a classic beauty, my Lisa, in the way touted by the magazines of the day. But she would be striking. She would draw gazes with her intensity, her gamine features, and her presence.
She would draw entities.
She caught my distraction and her brown eyes sparked with humor. “Focus on the task at hand, Rhonda Rose.”
Well, then. She deserved such moments, did she not? So I pretended not to notice her appropriation of my words, which was capitulation enough, and started her lesson of the day. “A reckoner,” I said, “does more than respond to matters of the ethereal world as they arise. She anticipates, and she prevents.”
Lisa frowned. “Are we all she?”
This, I could not say. Reckoners of Lisa’s nature were not so thick on the ground that I had ever seen another. “You are she and I am she, and we are working together. So it satisfies me to use the female pronoun.”
Lisa crossed her legs and propped her chin in her hand. I had given up correcting this posture, but I made a point of arranging my skirts neatly around my legs and caught the faintest roll of her eye in response.
Yes, indeed, she was growing up. In more ways than she understood. “It’s time,” I said, “that you learned about aerial sweeps.”
She gave me an openly suspicious look. “Don’t even tell me I can fly, Rhonda Rose.”
“You can do no such thing.” But I was forced to amend my statement. “At least, not while your essence still resides within your body.”
Suspicion turned into open skepticism, along with a dramatic expression to match.
I said, “The valley is yours, Lisa. The mountains are yours. In order to protect them from what is to come, you will inspect them from a new perspective.”
No doubt she thought what is to come referred to the vagaries of any given future. She didn’t yet understand that this area would always be full of ethereal unrest and intrusions—or that she would be the cause. Nor was I yet prepared to tell her.
She gave me the narrow-eyed squint that promised a less than tractable moment to follow. “It sounds like my essence is going to end up somewhere else besides my body. That doesn’t sound very safe, Rhonda Rose.”
“We shall progress slowly.” I spoke most matter-of-factly, as if that resolved the matter. But I didn’t say what perhaps I should have—if not then, some other time.
Safe? Of course it’s not safe. Nothing about your life will be safe, Lisa McGarrity.
~~~~~
Lions and Tigers and Nothing Like Bears
The mountain range unfolded around Garrie in steep crests and slashing canyons, all thickly studded with pines. Blue skies arched overhead, the hot sun stabbing through the trees to blaze across the Cienega Trail. It was a tricky business, this threading her rented mountain bike through jumbled stones and the often precarious winding track, sudden twisty turns gone narrow with the mountain falling away on one side and looming up on the other.
All far too perfectly normal to truly comprehend the presence of the dark, damaged entity that clung here, especially one that tasted oddly of Trevarr.
“This is crazy.” She said it out loud—a dare of sorts. A distraction from the lurch in her heart at the thought of him.
But the mountains said nothing in return. Just the quiet of the ruggedly beautiful terrain, the occasional spurt of adrenaline when the trail grew challenging, the utter absence of disturbance in the ethereal breezes...
Then suddenly she wasn’t alone at all, and in the least desirable way.
“Gear down,” said the Bob named Dana, indicating her handlebar controls as she stopped the bike and clipped off the trickling tube of Secret Recipe. “You won’t work as hard.”
Garrie shot him a quick scowl. “When I want help, I’ll ask for it.”
“Maybe you should.” Today his injuries were gone, his body whole...but the startling colors of his biking outfit overran the bold lines meant to define them.
“
Last night you were all about the threats. Today you want to help?” In fact, Sklayne might come in handy right about now. But Garrie hadn’t seen him since his harried in-and-out passage of the previous evening.
Dissatisfaction flickered across Dana-Bob’s face. “Don’t get me wrong,” he said, and his colors vibrated in a disconcerting way. “I’m still pissed. I still blame you, too. But I took a better look at this thing of yours and I don’t like it.”
Garrie looked aside from those vibrating colors to the more soothing greens of pine and fir. Trusting any Bob would be a foolish thing. Trusting this one in particular, with the entitled attitude carried through from his life, his post-living grudges and his unusually realized presence, would be even more of a foolish thing.
“How did you even find me?” She glanced down at herself with an ethereal eye-she was as hidden as she ever got. As hidden as she’d learned to be under Ghehera’s searching eye.
Dana-Bob laughed softly. “Lisa,” he said, and let it sink in. “You’ll never be able to hide from me.”
Oh. Great.
The walkie-talkie crackled in an unintelligible version of Quinn’s concerned voice. She sent Dana-Bob a slantwise gaze and unclipped the little hand-held from her backpack strap. “Sorry, I lost track of time. I’m fine. No sign of attachments yet—I’ll make the turn in fifteen minutes or so.”
Quinn offered a staticky acknowledgment, a few words of reassurance that all was otherwise well with Operation Secret Recipe, and the handset fell silent.
Dana-Bob quite suddenly stood in front of her. Close.
Personal-space close.
“That’ll get old after a while,” she informed him, privately relieved that he hadn’t come with a smell.
“Maybe.” His expression indicated he thought not. “The spot you’re looking for is just ahead.”
“Stop it. I’m not going to owe you for something I would have found myself in a matter of moments.”
He shrugged. “Sure.” He made way for her in the most efficient fashion, walking himself and his bike right into the side of the mountain.
Garrie checked the Secret Recipe sip tube, releasing the clamp and mounting the bike to pedal onward. This section of the trail ran wider than most, and she made steady progress for another quarter mile. There the trail deviated from its steady rise into a hairpin turn down a steeply inviting runway, where it bottomed out to boomerang back up again. Garrie released her brakes, crouching happily into the acceleration.
And then she thought of the satisfaction in Dana-Bob’s eye.
She juggled herself into a quick Garrie-view and holy farking shit! Danger, danger!
Her hands closed around the brakes so hard that the bike shuddered in protest, bucking up behind. She wrestled it, felt herself losing, and leaped off in a superhero dismount to stick the landing, the bike stopped and teetering on the trail edge.
Danger, danger...
Angry ethereal energies pulsed at the inside of the curve to form a roiling stalk, an umbilical tether that spread upward into a veil of malignancy to cover the mountain like a mad and sentient cloud. Buried deeply within it but still entirely recognizable were the ethereal imprints of a deer, several rabbits, and one hawk still in mid-flight.
Not to mention the distinct imprint of one fit-looking man, his expression of surprise still perfectly evident.
“Fark,” she said, managing no more than a whisper.
Dana-Bob stood at the top of the hairpin turn, his arms crossed and his expression smug. “You’re welcome.”
~~~~~
Garrie called in her find to her crew—not just a massive danger danger danger spot, but one so close to the trail that it posed a risk to everyone who came through. And she had no idea if the stalk was truly rooted, or if it might migrate right onto the trail.
Not that any of the rangers would see it. Or anyone else who came through here. There was nothing left to do but go for a lame plan. Hastily concocted over the sputtering walkie-talkies, it relied on far too much luck and frantic effort, and just a little bit on absurdity.
But it was the only plan they had.
The missing hikers meant plenty of official presence, and it wasn’t hard to flag down a ranger at the trailhead cluster parking lot.
“Bear!” Garrie said, gesturing widely at the trail as she left her bike leaning on a sign post beside the tiny parking lot. “Bear! It chased me!”
The ranger was of middling height, with a fit build and a spring in his walk that belied the weariness on his handsome Hispanic features, and Garrie almost felt bad for the lie.
Almost.
He said, “Huh. We don’t know of any bears in that area right now.” He rested his hands on his impressive ranger utility belt, looking up the short feeder trail to where Cienega headed boldly for the crest.
“You do now!” It wasn’t hard to show real fear—Garrie had plenty of it at hand after saturating the ground around the roiling pedestal with Secret Recipe, her personal presence set to you can’t see me oh my God please don’t see me. A faint trail of darkened earth and little bones indicated the pedestal’s movement—once it had been off the trail; now it squatted on the edge of it. Oh, yeah—Garrie had fear aplenty.
The ranger still looked puzzled. “You’re sure it was—”
“Yes,” Garrie said, feeling her patience fray. Even now, another hiker pulled into the lower parking lot. “I don’t even want to think about what could happen if someone else goes back there. You know, like a search volunteer?”
The man frowned, putting a hand on his radio without quite making the decision. With perfect timing, Drew crashed out of the woods and windmilled down toward them, a caricature of fearful awkwardness. “Bear!” he cried, upon spotting them. “Don’t go out there—there’s a bear and it’s crazy mad!”
He lurched to a stop beside them, and the ranger steadied him. “Cienega?”
Drew gulped for air, his face flushed a convincing shade, his hand stabbing emphatically toward the trail. “Not far from Faulty,” he said. “Big! Big—!”
The ranger’s face set into grim lines, and Garrie felt a twinge of guilt. But how else to get the trails closed?
“Lisa!” Lucia ran up from the lower parking area, her expression flustered but her cute sport sandals, striped capris pants, and bright top just as tidy as ever beneath the daypack over her shoulder. “Caray! Lisa, are you all right?”
“Well,” Garrie said, unable to suppress her natural sensibility, “if the bear had gotten me, it would be obvious.”
Lucia cast her an annoyed look at the script deviation. “When I got your phone call, I—” Then she saw the ranger and fell completely out of her assigned role. “Oh,” she said. “I didn’t...see you there.”
The ranger looked down at himself as if to indicate he was in fact visible, but when he looked back at Lucia, he stuttered to a visible stop. “Enrique Soto,” he said. “Rick, I mean. I was just...your friend said—”
“Bear,” Garrie said firmly. “Teeth.”
“Teeth!” Drew agreed emphatically, jabbing a finger at the trail.
Lucia seemed to remember what they were about. “Gar—Lisa,” she said, a near-miss from putting Garrie’s more distinctive nickname right out there, “are you sure you’re all right?”
“Just really scared,” Garrie admitted, which was only the truth.
And then, completely without permission, her mouth emitted a garble of words that meant nothing to anyone. She clapped her hand over them, meeting Lucia’s astonishment with her own.
“I think you should sit down, miss,” Enrique Soto told her, his ranger voice back in full.
“I’m okay,” she told him, and then meant to say that she’d just had a shock, but instead said...
No one would ever know what. Harsh words, not quite like Klingon in nature but leaning in that direction. More precise, less guttural...not coming quite so much from the lower throat.
Lucia frowned. “Chicalet, sit. The picnic tabl
e is right here.”
The ranger was more commanding. “My vehicle is down in the lower lot. I’ll bring it up.”
“No, please,” Garrie said, forming her words with exacting care. “I’ll just sit a moment.” She sent Lucia a warning glance. This hastily concocted plan of theirs wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny, and she had no intention of getting in anyone’s official vehicle.
“Look, dude, I gotta get to work,” Drew said, shifting easily into his erstwhile slacker mode. “I’m heading out. Just, you know...maybe you guys oughta put a warning up. Or close the trail. Or something.”
Right on cue, Quinn ambled out one of the informal little feeder trails—also without his bike, his hand-held hidden away in his daypack, and looking, as ever, totally in command of himself and his situation.
“Oh, hey,” he said, upon seeing the ranger. “You here about the bear?”
“You saw a bear?” The ranger’s jaw settled into a resigned line.
“I saw something,” Quinn said. “Heard it more than anything else, grunting around in the trees. Figured I wouldn’t push my luck and came back out the shortcut.” He gestured at the illicit little path. “Sorry about that. But I was thinking about—”
“Dude!” said Drew. “Those two missing hikers!” He shook his head, hitching his own daypack back into place.
Garrie saw the sudden flaw in their plan—identical daypacks—and widened her eyes at him, cutting a glance at his daypack and then hers.
Drew got it well enough. “Gotta go or I’ll be late to work. Good luck with the bear.” He went striding down toward the lower parking lot, a convincing hurry in his steps, no chance or reason for the ranger to stop him.
Lucia must have seen the daypack thing as well; she gently released hers to rest on the ground behind a brittle clump of yellow-headed chamisa.
“Yeah,” Quinn said. “Hope you can get those trails closed.” He shook his head, already turning for the lower lot.
His departure left Garrie sitting on the picnic table trying her best to look normal, and the ranger looking back at her as if he wanted to believe she was, his hand on his radio.
Lucia said, “She gets migraines. This word thing...it’s part of the aura. I’ll take her home. She has a prescription for it.”
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