by C. E. Murphy
Right after I took some names and kicked some godly butt.
I smashed my sword and shield together again, letting out a yell. “Hey! C’mon! You’re going to have to do this the hard way, Begochidi! I’m not going to stand here and spoon-feed you power. You want me, come and get me!” I liked shouting things like that. It made me feel all studly and stuff.
Unfortunately, it also got the god’s attention. He hadn’t been hanging around in the dark waiting for me to lure him out with power, after all. He’d been off stage for a costume change, and nobody’d told me whether I got to have one or not.
On the positive side, he no longer looked like Mark. All the sandiness was gone from his hair, leaving it bright and golden as sunlight, so shadows seemed to slip away from it unnoticed. His eyes were cornflower blue, so mild as to be intense, and his features were strong and regular and handsome, like Aztec paintings had been modeled after him. He was bare-chested and wore a cloak of emerald and violet and sapphire, butterfly patterns woven into the vivid colors so beautifully that when he moved it looked like the cloak flowed with life. He wore leggings with a loincloth over them, and his feet were bare. He carried a massive feathered spear in his left hand. The entire ensemble looked as if it were meant to impress and intimidate.
It worked.
I looked down at myself. Jeans. A button-down shirt with three-quarters length sleeves. Tennies. Impressive I was not. On the other hand, I felt my singular lack of impressiveness gave me license to skip the posturing that he appeared to be going through—he’d stopped and stood there impassively to let me admire his glory—so when I looked up again, it was with a lunge that brought my rapier point a hair from his belly. I actually saw the inhalation that kept me from drawing blood, and an instant later when I met his eyes there was a mixture of outrage and astonishment in his expression. Come to think of it, Cernunnos had looked a lot like that when I’d fought him, too. Gods were apparently not accustomed to mere mortals taking the fight to them.
I stopped having any time to continue my entertaining internal commentary right about then, and started trying to keep myself alive.
Begochidi, unlike the last god I’d fought, didn’t have any inclination toward seducing me, or persuading me in any manner. Or, I thought, given the dreams and visions I’d had, he’d tried and failed, so killing me was just fine, no holds barred. He slapped the spear up so the length of it followed his arm, and swept it around with massive grace. I skittered backward, holding my own breath to keep from being sliced in half. My shirt ripped silently under the spear’s point, giving me an idea of just how sharp the metal head was, and just how much I didn’t want it to touch me. Surprise flashed across Begochidi’s handsome features, as if he’d expected me to hold still and be skewered.
I lunged forward again, six months of fencing classes overriding my brain. It was just as well: muscle memory observed how he’d exposed himself without my mind consciously registering it. I brought my shield up to ward off his spear as he drew it back to strike again, a forward attack instead of a sweeping one. He’d taken the haft in both hands now, as if I’d moved up a notch from easy kill to respectable opponent. I parried, tangling our swords together, surprised to find that move actually worked in battle. Then I swung the shield around and clobbered him in his pretty face.
He howled with outrage, which would have been satisfying if a heavy wash of black-and-crimson butterflies had not erupted from his mouth, beating at the air so heavily I suddenly couldn’t breathe. Panic swept in and I staggered, releasing his spear as I gagged on soft feathered wings and honey-sweet thickness all around me. It felt hideously like a dream, being too far underwater and unable to claw my way to the surface for air. I’d lost sight of Begochidi entirely, scraping and flailing at butterflies instead. I wanted to run, but my feet were thick and slow and I couldn’t get my legs to move fast enough. I knew there was something horrible behind me, something that would tear me to shreds if it caught me, but I was stuck, and there was nobody there to save me.
White terror closed my throat. I sent out an instinctive thread of power, searching for the help I’d had all the other times I’d faced something awful. The coven had helped me; the thunderbird had. Billy’d nearly given his life to keep me on my feet with the banshee, and my coworkers had banded together, even not knowing what was going on, to help me capture a god with a net woven from our energy. Coyote’d been there to guide me, however cryptically, and Gary’s solid presence had anchored me when I felt most adrift. The whole of Seattle had given me what I needed when I first tuned into the shamanic world.
It was all gone now. There was me in the dark, drowning in butterflies, and nothing else. The only thing responding to the signal for help I’d reached out with was the god I had to defeat, and the butterflies around me grew heavier and stronger as I kept that desperate plea open.
“Idiot,” I heard my own voice say, bitterly. Butterflies erupted in a shower of brightly colored confetti, and I discovered I was on my knees, choking until tears came to my eyes. I looked up to find myself, fifteen and angry, staring down at the me who couldn’t breathe.
“Idiot,” she said again. “You took all that power from me, and you still don’t get it. What’d they tell you, Joanne?” A cord of power thrummed between us, not giving or taking, just linking. Shadows reformed around its brightness like it was food, delicate wings moving in the dark. Joanne-the-younger batted at them, silver-blue light surging, and for an instant they retreated, leaving us alone in a ball of light. “That the only way to win was to fight?”
“Yeah.” My voice scraped. That was the path the dead shamans had set me on: the warrior’s path. I’d tried talking to Begochidi already. I didn’t know what else to do. My younger self sneered.
“Coyote told me that the whole idea was to get somebody to change his perceptions, even just for a second. So you can get inside. So you can heal.”
“He’s a god!” I yelled. “How the hell am I supposed to heal a god? I can’t even tell what’s wrong with him!”
She stared down at me disdainfully. “Who says it’s him you’re supposed to heal?”
A golf club to the stomach couldn’t have been more effective. The air went out of my lungs and I stared back at her wordlessly. “You’re supposed to be your own hero, Joanne. How can you be anybody else’s if you’re not?”
“When’d you get so smart?” I whispered.
“Somebody’s gotta be,” she retorted. “You’re doing a crappy job of it. Get up and figure out a way to live. I don’t want to die this way.”
I could think of a number of ways I’d like her to die. Throttling her was top on the list. I swear I didn’t remember being that much of a shit at her age. “You don’t like me very much, do you?”
“Why should I?” she asked. “You don’t.” Then she was gone, all the demons and darkness she’d been holding back swarming in on me again to take the air away. Great. I was having oxygen-deprivation-induced illusions of my own temperamental teenage self. Just how I wanted to go out, scolded by a bratty me.
Well, she didn’t want me to go out this way any more than I did. At least we had something in common. I climbed to my feet as I spoke, pushing at the darkness with my mind. It felt rather like wrapping myself in bent light, only now I was using that light to send sleeping night into retreat. I held my sword and shield like I was used to them, competent with them. Like I was ready to face the darkness and do battle.
My younger self had told me not to fight. Of all the people in the world, my fifteen year old punk-ass attitude-ridden self…
…had told me not to fight.
I lowered my sword, swaying in the ball of light I’d made in the heart of darkness, trying, for the first time I could remember, to really look at myself.
I couldn’t remember a time when I wasn’t willing to pick a fight. There’d been a chip on my shoulder as long as I’d been able to put two thoughts together. First it was being a gypsy in a comparatively stable worl
d, then being a girl who was into cars. Being a stranger in a strange land when we went back to North Carolina, and God help anybody who’d gotten in my face when my pregnancy started to show. All the way through college, all the way through my job at the department, epitomized by my relationship with Morrison.
Mark had refused to fight with me.
I crouched, carefully, and put down my sword and shield, ending with my face in my hands, my stomach twisting. I wasn’t accustomed to facing anything without a weapon of some kind in hand. In hand didn’t even have to be in hand: it could be my tongue or my fist or my power. It didn’t matter. It was all something to fight with.
I could see where that reckless confrontation could look like the forerunner of doom, especially when coupled with the sign that the Navajo people had been told to watch for. I wondered if the men and women who’d fallen asleep and awakened again to prepare for the end of the world could ever forgive me for being such a mess.
I wondered, sharply, if Coyote had been one of those people, and knew that he would’ve forgiven me.
That, of all things, was what gave me the strength to put my hands on my thighs and push myself upward. I’d blown it badly enough. My heart was sick in my throat, but my younger self’s distaste and dislike weighed even more heavily than fear. I could do one thing right by her at this late date, and I wasn’t going to screw that up. Not now. Not when it was the only way I could say thank you to the girl whose childhood I’d managed to take away.
“I’m not the bad guy, Begochidi.” My voice broke, nothing more than a little laugh. “I’m just a rank beginner. I’m not the rainbow that lasts all day. I’m a healer. Maybe not a very good one, but it’s what I’m supposed to do. And I’m not going to fight you.” The laugh came back, more self-deprecating. “I hope you won’t take advantage of that by sticking a spear through my head.” There wasn’t any answer to my brief laugh. Damn. I curled my hands into loose fists, then relaxed them again. “Go back to sleep, Maker. It’s not time for you to be here yet. There’s gonna be a real rainbow that lasts all day sometime down the line, and your people are going to need you then.” I passed my hand over my eyes. “If you don’t think it’s arrogant of me, I’ll do what I can to keep an eye on things until then. I really am trying to do the right thing,” I added more quietly.
I was about to give it up as a lost cause when white light flashed and left me blinking and blinded in the dark.
CHAPTER 35
Saturday, July 9, 9:39 a.m.
Voices, low and good-natured, mumbled around me in the careful pitch used for sick rooms and hospitals. Once in a while someone broke out of that, a laugh climbing up, or a discussion rising out of polite tones. There were other sounds, too: buzzes and beeps that went on rhythmically. Not the kind of thing I expected to hear in my apartment. It was all muffled, like somebody’d wrapped six or eight scarves around my head. Perhaps they had. That would explain why I didn’t seem to be able to open my eyes, either.
Instead of opening them, I yawned so hard tears leaked through my eyelashes. I couldn’t quite get a groan out, even though I felt the situation warranted one. I was sure it was too early to be up. The blankets were heavy and my head was weighed down. I yawned again and rolled over, dragging my pillow down to bury my face in it.
I tried, anyway. My wrist ran into something cold and metal. I did groan that time, and pulled my eyelids half open to see what the problem was. The noise around me stopped.
There was a metal railing about ten inches from my nose. Beyond it was a fuzzy green curtain, though the fuzziness was probably due to my lack of contacts. Between the railing and the curtain was somebody’s burly arm. The arm was attached to a hand gripping the railing. The hand was in focus, and had pale pink polish on the nails. I chuckled, or croaked, depending on how you wanted to look at it, and said, “Billy?”
The sound came back much louder than before, a cacophony of cheers and yells and general glee while a surprising number of people shoved around the bed and bent over to hug me. Gary appeared, trying to look gruff, and I hung on to his hand. “You saved me in there,” I whispered. “You and your crazy totems.”
“Weren’t nothin’,” he said, but his eyes were suspiciously bright and he held on hard when he hugged me. “You been out two days, kid.”
“Really.” I couldn’t rub my eyes and hang on to Gary at the same time, so I only squinted blearily, trying to see past him. Billy and Mel were hovering side by side, Robert poking his head over Mel’s shoulder. “I dunno, Billy.” He took a step forward, worried, and I shook my head. “You’re thinner, but going into a coma for days on end seems like a kind of drastic weight loss plan to me. Maybe you should just avoid The Missing O and all those doughnuts.”
He laughed and Mel put an arm around his ribs, hugging him. She looked better, her color back to normal and her dress cut to disguise four months of pregnancy. I could see glimmers of buttercup yellow around her, even without trying. The same kinds of shadings fell away from everyone in my line of sight, in fact, from Gary to Robert to other people from the department. Bruce was there, thin face lit up with happiness as he spoke into his cell phone, telling Elise I’d woken up. “Ask her if I can have some tamales, Bruce.” His smile widened and he nodded. I flopped back into the bed, yawning until my eyes teared again. I couldn’t be as tired as I felt. I’d just slept for two days. “Everybody’s okay?”
A wave of solemness came over the room. “Yeah, pretty much,” Billy answered after a moment.
I closed my eyes, tears suddenly having nothing to do with yawning. “Pretty much?”
Billy hesitated too long and my stomach clenched. “Who, Bill?” I sat up, knotting my fingers in the covers. I’d severed Begochidi’s link with Morrison. It couldn’t be him. Unless Barbara, in the waking world, had reached him somehow. “Billy. Please.”
“Mark Bragg still hasn’t woken up. I’m sorry, Joanie.”
A horrible combination of relief and dismay chilled me right through the gut, color draining from my skin. “What about Barb?”
“Nobody’s seen her.” Billy said quietly. “They’ve got an APB out. The captain’s been out looking for her himself.”
My heart tightened and I nodded, trying to sound indifferent as I asked, “He’s okay?”
Half a dozen people said, “He’s fine.” I got the idea my nonchalance ploy hadn’t worked. I nodded again. “Where’s Mark?”
“Down the hall,” Gary said. “Doctors don’t think he’s gonna wake up.”
I fumbled the bed railing down while he spoke and pulled the oxygen sensor off my finger. “Bring me to him.”
The same half dozen people said some variation on “Joanne,” and I swung my legs off the bed, wishing I was wearing something more dignified than a hospital gown. Mel, as if on command, dropped a robe around my shoulders, and I looked at Gary. “Yeah,” he said after a moment. “Arright. C’mon, sweetheart.”
The herd of them—I was touched at how many people were sitting vigil at my bedside—left me outside Mark’s room. I went in barefoot and cold to find him alone with the sounds of a hospital room. I wondered what had happened to Barb, if she’d suffered the same unexpected coma Mark had. I didn’t think so. I wondered if there was a way for me to find her. The same cool certainty that said she hadn’t collapsed in a coma told me I wouldn’t be able to find her, either. It wouldn’t stop me from looking, but my gut wasn’t on my conscience’s side this time.
The glimmerings of Sight that were with me when I woke deepened as I sat down at Mark’s side. His aura no longer shone with half a spectrum’s colors, but lay quiet against his skin, the rusty brown I’d seen before. I had a pretty good idea already of what had happened, but I put my fingers on his shoulder and slipped out of my body to do a diagnostic. It was only later I realized how easy it was to do that, even without the drum bringing me under.
Mark’s soul lay unguarded, a desert oasis full of blooming cactus and clear sun-warmed water. But no wind blew, t
he water lay still and lifeless in its pools, and the sun’s warmth faded a little even as I stood there. All around me, the blooms seemed in stasis, not yet dying, but no more living than a shadow. I’d cut off too much, when I’d pulled Begochidi’s power from the gentler side of his human host. The bond Mark held on his own soul was fragile now, barely there.
My vehicle metaphors came back to me with a sense of the ridiculous. The easiest way to fix a lot of problems was with duct tape. I just needed to bind his soul and his body together again, wrapping them tight with tape until they grew strong together again.
The power that flowed through me was far less half-assed than tape would’ve been, though. It had permanence and strength, sticky silver glue binding life to body. I had no sense of how much time it took, but when the ghost of a breeze whispered over me, I knew I’d succeeded. With a small sad smile, I left Mark’s desert garden and stepped into another one, a place between souls in the astral realm. It only took a moment to settle down into a coyote-sized hollow in the rocks, though I fit into it no better than I had before. “Coyote?” The word was hardly a whisper, and the second one even fainter: “Cyrano?” I said nothing else, only sat beneath the violent blue sky and stretched my senses, pouring myself out in hopes of a response.
In time, the wind turned acid with sand, heat intensifying by degrees until the sky was white with it, and the horizons bled with rising, burning waves. The sun settled closer to me, hard and merciless, and I felt the stones I lay curled into shift around me. Rock became sand, gritty and white as salt, baking under the light. I knew without looking up that what I leaned on now was a single bleached tree in the midst of desert, as lonely a thing as ever I’d known. Breath ached in my chest, air so hot it felt too thin to keep life in my body. When tears swam in my eyes against the heat, I opened my mouth and said, very softly into the weight of sun, “I honor you, Trickster. You may as well show yourself. I know you’re here.”