by C. E. Murphy
The table crashed over sideways as we rolled into its legs with enough force to knock it down. The smash made us both freeze for an instant, as if we expected a parent to come storming downstairs to find out what was going on.
I recovered first, probably because I had no siblings to wrestle with, and therefore less expectation of getting in trouble for wrecking the house. The table no longer hindering me, I grabbed a fistful of Barb’s shirt and hauled her to her feet so I could hit her. This time I let go when the punch landed and she staggered back into the window.
Which shattered, and she went head over heels through it with a shriek.
I stood there a couple seconds, completely unprepared for that. My first thought, I admit, was, hah! but it was followed by the somewhat more alarming, Christ, she could be dead. Glass was still shimmering and trembling as I took the couple steps to the window and put my hands on the sill gingerly, looking out.
Barb popped to her feet and hit me in the face with a pair of plastic-wrapped pruning shears.
CHAPTER 27
It had been a while since being hit on the head had knocked me into the realm of Other. Overall, I liked it better when I was sliding in and out of psychic realms on my own cognizance, though I had to say there was something for waking up in my garden without my head hurting. It was a big fat psychological fib, because I knew perfectly well that out there in the real world I was going to need a nose job. Fortunately, my self-perception didn’t include a mashed-in face, and in my garden, imagination trumped reality.
“Joanne.” The thin, weary voice seemed to come from all around me and nowhere at the same time. It made my heart lurch, one part panic at my garden being invaded and two parts hope: I knew that voice. “Jo,” it repeated, and I whispered, “Coyote?”
I could almost sense him. His presence was more a wish than a fact, as if he’d been mixed up with oxygen and smeared liberally through the atmosphere: I couldn’t see it, but I knew it was there. My heart pounded so hard it made my stomach hurt, and for some reason there was a film over my eyes, blurring my vision. “Coyote?” My hands had gotten all cold and shaky and my cheeks burned hot, until I felt like I might fall apart from conflicting temperatures in such a small space. “Coyote, are you okay? Where are you?”
A breath of a chuckle came through the air, but that was all. No more words, nothing reassuring, no explanation as to how I might go about stopping Barb from sucking my friends’ life forces. “Coyote, I need you.” I sounded young and so tremulous I’d moved beyond pathetic into outright fear.
He didn’t say anything else. The garden seemed to shift and sigh, like it was waiting for something, and I put my face in my hands with a hoarse laugh. “Imagination trumps reality. Please, oh, God, please help me get this right.”
I reached for my power, still whispering pleas into my fingers. It spilled upward, delicate as a filigree net, pouring through me until I could see my garden the way the younger me had, some fifteen years ago. Life infused it, though not as thoroughly as it had then. Here, it simmered below the surface, instead of bursting free and full of laughter. My waterfall, always off to my right, was as I remembered it, sheeting down a wall of granite, rather than thundering so hard and fast it made mist, but at least it held the promise of more. Everything felt that way, as if it waited to come to a boil again. I was absurdly grateful it thought it still could.
I dropped my hands from my face and reached out, casting my net of power as if I would be able to draw Coyote in. It shimmered blue, ocean-colored, and rode the air like feathers on the water. I had no car analogy to suit this, but nets had worked for me in the past, and the one I wove now was so fine it might catch raindrops and cradle them between its threads. I clung to the idea of my spirit guide, trying to gather him in so he could become cohesive and whole again, instead of just a voice in the ether.
A pulse ran through the net, silver power that rippled and overwhelmed the blue that was predominant. It caught me in the belly and pulled me forward with unexpected strength. Panic seized me and I resisted, for which trouble I earned a snort I knew all too well, and a distinct sensation of dismissal.
I couldn’t tell if it was surprise or dismay that caught me out, but it didn’t matter. I faltered for just an instant, a hiccup of concentration lost. Silver swept my net, wrapped around me, and hauled me through space and time like so much flotsam.
Joanne was tall at—more than thirteen, now. I’d had one disastrous flirtation with perms as a teenager, the summer after my freshman year. The ends of her short hair were still curled, so she’d been fifteen for a few months, and if I remembered my own haircuts correctly, that meant in another six or eight weeks she’d be pregnant. My stomach cramped up and I knotted my hands into fists, staring down at the younger me. I was less than two inches taller than she was, and by the end of her sophomore year she’d be able to look me in the eye. Right now, height was the only thing I had on her at all.
I could see the cohesion of her power, riding under her skin and sparking through her aura. The net I’d woven was gone, replaced by a silver cord that thrummed back and forth between us, twisting and writhing in the air like it had life of its own. I wanted to bat at it and make it lie down. Joanne ignored it, looking over me like I made a bad taste in her mouth.
“Jeez,” she said, “you don’t know anything at all. What the hell happened to you?”
“Wow.” I startled out of staring at the cord and stared at Joanne instead. “You really were a little shit, weren’t you? Anybody ever tell you that you catch more flies with honey?” Wow. I wasn’t going to like me at all. From either side of this conversation. Joanne’s eyes narrowed and her sneer settled into place. I wanted to reach across and smack it off her. “I need to talk to Coyote.”
Joanne tossed her head, which would’ve been more effective if her hair was long enough to swish. “Too bad.”
My hands were still fisted at my sides. I took a moment to explain to them that I did not approve of giving my younger self a knuckle sandwich, no matter how much she deserved it, and deliberately unknotted them and put them in my pockets so they couldn’t act on their own.
“Seriously,” she said. “What happened to you? You’re a total mess.”
I actually felt her reach into my head and draw out my own private image, the shattered windshield that reflected the state of my soul. It superimposed itself across the whole of my garden, which was Joanne’s version of the garden, verdant and lush and full of life until my cracks and seams sucked some of the health from it.
“I mean, look at that,” she said, somewhere between admiring and horrified. “You’ve got a bullet hole right through the middle of you. What happened?” A note of urgency threaded through her voice with the third repetition of the question, and to my surprise I felt sorry for her.
“It doesn’t matter, Jo. Just—”
Her hackles went up. “Don’t call me that.”
A muscle cramped in my shoulderblade and I reached around with my left hand to massage it, startled. “Sorry. I forgot.” Dad called me Jo, like he wanted a boy if he wanted a kid at all, and I’d hated it. Sometime in the past six or seven months I’d gotten used to Gary using the nickname, and it’d worked its way into being a name I used for myself. The younger me stared.
“You forgot? I hate being called Jo.”
“I know. You get over it.”
Outraged disbelief settled on Joanne’s features. She wasn’t unattractive, I thought rather clinically, although the sneer and the chip on her shoulder made her much less pretty than she could be. I wondered how much of that I still carried with me, and glanced around the shadow-stained garden. Probably more than I wanted to admit to. “I would never get over it,” Joanne announced with furious dignity. I shrugged.
“I know. That’s why I’m not going to tell you what happens.”
Her lip curled again, this time with incomprehension. It was good, I thought, that I could at least consistently and properly read my own expr
essions. “Look, if I try to warn you, you’ll say, ’That’ll never happen to me,’ and go charging along on your predestined path, and if I don’t, you will, anyway, so there’s no point in telling you what happens. It happened. It’s done.”
A narrow breach appeared in the tightness of her face, a place where fear could enter. “But I don’t want to end up like that.” She waved a hand, encompassing my shattered soul. I managed a faint smile.
“I don’t want you to, either. Sorry, Joanie.”
“You’re not either sorry. You don’t care at all.”
“Wouldn’t it be a lot easier of that was true. Look, Joanne, I don’t really have time to hang out and argue with you. I really do need to talk to Coyote.”
“No.”
I abruptly recognized the tone, as if I could hear the rest of her words echoing in my mind: he’s my friend. You don’t get to take him away from me.
I thought, oh, crap, and let the lead weight that suddenly filled my stomach pull me to my knees. I felt my hands cover my face, a fingertip bumping over the thin scar on my cheek, and all I could think was, crap, no, crap, shit, no, don’t do this. I could feel Joanne’s distress rolling off her in waves as I put my hands forward in the earth of the garden and brought my forehead down to it, clutching grass and fighting against misery. I could see, could see the path opening up in front of me, in front of Joanne, and I didn’t see a way to get off it.
“Please.” Hotness dripped from my eyes, staining the grass with sizzling spots, salt burning away the green. “Please don’t do this.” Even as I spoke I reached for my power, the ball of energy that seemed to lie behind my breastbone, separate but part of me.
And Joanne’s answered, pure amalgamated strength that was as much a part of her as her eyes or fingers. The river Coyote’d pulled me from swept around me, time shifting and flexing as I borrowed what was mine thirteen years earlier. I didn’t drain my younger self, no more than she could drain me, but I did take her control, whispering, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Joanie, I’m so sorry,” as I did so.
“No!” Rage and pain and fear split her voice in a shriek, and she jumped at me. I reared back onto my heels and caught her in a hug, my arms over hers. In the garden that we shared, neither of us had the psychic advantage, but I was an adult woman, physically powerful from years of working on cars, and I held her easily as she twisted and sobbed against my chest.
“I’m not taking him,” I whispered, knowing it was completely useless. “I’m not even taking your ability to talk to him, Jo. I just need to be able to do it myself in my time, and I need your power. Your skill. Your training. I am so sorry, Joanie. Don’t let it ruin you. Coyote’s not gone. You’re not alone, sweetheart. You’re not alone.”
“What do you know about it!” Her voice was a hoarse scream, making my own throat ache. “You’re a grown-up, you don’t understand! You don’t know anything!”
“I was there, Jo. I do know. I lived it. I do know. You don’t have to let it drive your choices. You’re going to be okay, Joanie. You really are.” I sounded so soft and confident that even I believed me for a moment.
But I did know. I had been there. I knew that the fifteen-year-old girl I held wouldn’t remember her dreams about Coyote, or my visitation, when she woke up. She’d only remember that she felt more outcast and abandoned than ever, because she thought I’d taken her one friend away.
And that loneliness would drive her choices, just as if I’d deliberately wiped away every other path she might have taken. The beautiful skin drum lying on her dresser would go unused. The power she had such control over would be shut away, left to fester, its only release the creation of impenetrable shields and a stubbornness so profound it might well have been born of magic. She would take desperate actions to try to fit in during her sophomore year of high school, and she would pay for what I had done here for the next thirteen years. Just as I’d made my mother a woman who could will herself to death, I’d made myself into the ragingly lonely, angry young woman I was in high school, and the ill-adjusted, reluctant shaman I’d grown up to be. It was a closed circle, endless, flawless.
I lied, “You’ll be okay,” into Joanne’s hair, and let her go.
Time pulled me back to where I belonged.
The net I’d cast out shone with a power I’d never seen before, not without help from my friends. It felt as if I’d been breathing without one lung for half a year and simply hadn’t realized it. I still had a sense of centering, the healing magic resting behind my breastbone, but it wasn’t any more separate from me than my heart was. I didn’t need to blink or concentrate to bring auras into focus, the young Joanne’s training fully accessible to me. I should have been glad.
Instead, every heartbeat felt heavy, regret weighing it down. There had to have been a better way, and the closed loop of time and paradox told me even if there was, it was too late for me, too late for Joanne. We’d traveled the path we needed to in order to arrive here and now, and without starting completely anew, I saw no way around it. I hoped Grandfather Sky was happy with what he’d wrought, and wondered if I’d ever be what the Makers of the world had intended for me to be.
I drew my net in with the skill of an ancient mariner, fistful after fistful of shimmering blue and silver light, waiting to see what I’d caught. Weight burdened it as I pulled it in closer, thin air coalescing into familiar shape. When I’d gathered all the particles spread through the atmosphere together, they became Coyote, translucent and tired in the mist of my waterfall. We looked at each other awhile, both silent and weary, his eyes gold and mine green, for all I couldn’t see them. Magic in the outside world might make them gold, but my idea of myself had hazel eyes, and I would not relinquish that to the power.
When I finally spoke, it wasn’t what I expected to say. “When are you?” came out, as if it made perfect sense.
“I’m not sure.” He lifted a hand to examine it, turning his fingers this way and that. I could just see his face through his fingers, and from his glance, he could just see me through them, too. Disconcertingly, the coyote form mixed with the man, bones and paws and heads twisted to work together until I couldn’t quite tell which was which. Joanne had seen him this way, and I wondered if I always would now, or if he’d be able to hold to one form in my eyes when he was at full strength. “I don’t remember this,” he said, “but it doesn’t mean I’m now.” He lowered his hand, turning his golden focus on me. “So now you know.”
“You didn’t warn me.” I couldn’t bring heat or accusation to the words, much as I wanted to. “Couldn’t you have done something to change how it happened?”
“I tried. I tried, Joanne. I did try.”
Dreams filled my mind, seeing myself from the outside as a raven fell down from the sky to sweep me up. Then Big Coyote, settling himself between two paths, the raven down one and a comprehensible future down another. The sweat lodge, and my grandfather, a man that Joanne didn’t know, but Coyote did. The path I’d taken in dreams, following the raven in hopes of somehow guiding the black-haired little girl who had stared at me from beside her father’s Oldsmobile, twenty years earlier. I stared through the dream images at Coyote’s thin form and shook my head, eyes wide with incomprehension. “What are you?”
He smiled, tired and sad. “A shaman. A guide. Your guide.”
“But—” I shook myself, trying to clear my mind. “But…you’re…” Certainty filled me, washing away an abstract concept: the grandfather who’d guided me in Coyote’s dreams was not the Maker Grandfather Sky, but Coyote’s own grandfather, a kind wise man of flesh and blood.
“Human?” His smile came again, brief and brighter this time. “You never asked, Jo.”
“I asked if you were a spirit guide!”
His smile crinkled a third time. “I am.”
“But—but—you’re—!” I wasn’t doing well with clearing my mind, much less getting a coherent thought out. “But I thought you were magic! Not real!”
/> He lifted one eyebrow. “After all this, you still think there’s a difference between real and magic?”
“Coyote!” Frustration burst through my voice and he laughed, gentle sound beneath the rumble of waterfalls.
“I wondered for a long time why you never asked my name. You always called me Coyote. Even when you were a girl. I finally realized you thought I was something else. A power animal. No wonder you kept thinking I was a dog.”
“Coyotes aren’t dogs,” I said, so automatically I surprised myself. Coyote’s eyes widened and he threw his head back in another laugh.
“After all this time, you’ve finally learned that. There may be hope for you yet, Siobhán Walkingstick.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” My voice rose and broke like a kid’s. “You tricked me!”
Coyote flashed into his animal form, lolling a cheerful tongue at me. “I am a coyote.”
Spluttering outrage stopped my throat while he cocked his head, tail wagging in admonishment. “There isn’t a lot of time, Jo. You’re coming into your own now. I don’t know what’s going on around you, so tell me. What do you need me for?”
All the burgeoning betrayal fled, leaving me on my knees in the garden clutching at grass again. “The usual,” I heard myself say in a small voice. “Save the prince, fight the dragon, be home in time for dinner. I’m all alone, Coyote. You…” I didn’t want to tell this Coyote, whenever he was from, that in my time he was dead. His golden burst of power, whatever he’d done to stave off the butterfly darkness and free me, suddenly made more sense. It hadn’t been a spirit creature at all, and it felt like me because he was like me. Human. Only human. I didn’t see how he could have survived. “You can’t answer me,” I said to the grass. It was longer than I remembered, halfway up my forearms as I knotted my fingers in it. “I set something loose, something that was sleeping and is awake now, and it’s got you. It’s getting everybody. I don’t know how to stop it.” I laughed, thin little sound, and shook my head. “And I haven’t slept in days, except for these magically induced comas that I dream and dream during. I’m tired. I’m tired and I don’t know what to do.”