by C. E. Murphy
“Can you feel him? Separately from you?”
She shook her head and I put my arm around her shoulder for a hug. “Then all that’s going to fill you up again is you, honey. What we did there was as close to making the Master human as we could, and humans heal. You’re going to be fine. And I,” I said firmly, setting her back from me with my hands on her shoulders, so I could meet her gaze, “I am going to keep a close eye on you to make sure nothing at all goes wrong.”
Gratitude filled Suzy’s green eyes. “Okay.” She hugged me again before slipping away, back to Kiseko and Robert, whose parents were watching them with interested amusement. I thought Robert might never stop blushing. Smiling, I looked to see who else had arrived while I’d been speaking with Suzy.
Sonata Smith had, along with a number of people I half recognized from the murder scene a few mornings ago. They were the people I’d charged with going home and keeping the city safe, and there were pools of relative calm and order where they’d done their work. It was as they arrived that I began to realize the memorial wasn’t just about or for Coyote, but for Seattle and for everything the city and its people had been through recently.
Somebody said, “Hey,” behind me, and I turned to find my fencing instructor, Phoebe, standing there uncomfortably. I’d freaked her out with my magic and we hadn’t parted on the very best of terms, so I was completely taken aback to see her, and swooped in for a hug before I thought better of it.
She made a surprised sound and returned both the hug and the status quo, smiling in shy embarrassment as she backed away again. Things were going to be all right there. I could feel it.
I wasn’t looking at a clock or the sun, but I heard my voice lift unexpectedly, drawing attention to myself. “Thank you for coming.” As I spoke, church bells from somewhere nearby rang out the hour, which backed up my call for attention. Dozens—maybe even hundreds—of people turned my way, and I realized slightly too late that I really had no idea what to say. There I was, wearing my ridiculous white leather coat, bright enough in the noontime sun to be absolutely certain no one would mistake at whom they should be looking, and I hadn’t prepared a speech.
“A lot’s changed recently.” Hah. Mistress of understatement, I. “A lot of us have lost friends and family in the past few days, and Seattle’s a mess. There’s a god wandering the earth now, you might have seen him.”
A ripple went through the crowd, one part uncomfortable and one part thrilled. Some of them—the Sight came on, telling me this—some of them were true believers. Others were reluctant believers, and others still wanted to believe but couldn’t. Plenty just flat-out didn’t, of course, any more than people believed in other kinds of magic, but that was okay. “We’re here to say goodbye to the ones who have died, and maybe to greet the things that are rising in their wake. I’m not... I don’t have a big plan here. I’d just like everybody to hold hands, maybe, and make a circle and...fill it up with what we’ve been through. Put some thought and hope into the shape of things to come, because I really believe—now—that we get out of the world what we put into it. A friend taught me that—”
That was when I realized I hadn’t seen the Muldoons. My hands froze and my heart turned lumpy as I looked around for Gary’s shock of pure white hair.
“Right here, doll.” He came up on my left side and put his hand in mine, squeezing. A relieved breath rushed out of me and I gave him a suddenly watery smile that turned to slow astonishment.
He looked different without the tortoise. A little less...solid, in spiritual terms. No more armored shell offering protection against the world, no more slow steady strength shoring up a long life. Instead, the white raven sat on one shoulder, preening and proud of itself. It was all warrior spirit somehow, confident and strong.
On his other shoulder sat a walking stick. As long as my whole arm, its front legs folded in his hair, it met my gaping gaze with perfect equanimity. I squeezed Gary’s hand back in a kind of involuntary reaction, but my heart was stuttering with disbelief.
I mean, one walking stick spirit looked pretty much like another. But I knew, right down to my bones, I knew that it was Renee. That my spirit guide hadn’t bowed out of my life entirely, but had found a better place to reside. Somewhere she could do some good, because never mind the time traveling, walking sticks were symbols of eternity. She’d taken something away from Gary when we had fought in the Upper World, and now she was returning it. She would be the link to strength and long life that she’d helped destroy.
Turned out I had it in me to forgive her, after all.
I’d stopped breathing when I saw her. I started again in a gasp of tears, lifting my hand, fingers entwined with Gary’s, to dash them away. The white raven hopped over to my knuckles and peered at them, then tipped his head to examine me with one bright black eye. I gave him a watery smile and he stepped even closer, tasting one of the tears right off my cheek before spitting it out. Quoth the raven, “Nevermore,” and for a silly, heartening instant I thought he meant I’d never have to cry again. Then he stuck his head against my chin and pushed, making me turn my head.
The world faded out as I did, waterfalls and lakeshore bleeding into nearly infinite blackness. Nearly: it had the faintest curve to it, just enough to give me a sense of perspective and feel incomprehensibly small. It felt like it had been a long time since I’d been here, in the silence of the Dead Zone, though in a lot of ways my adventures had started in this place. I’d met Seattle’s dead shamans here, and lost Coyote for the first time here, and...and too many other things to count, really.
Seeing it made me realize that somewhere, subconsciously, I’d never expected to come back here again. Raven was my guide in this territory, and he was gone. Intellectually I guessed that didn’t make sense, because traversing the Dead Zone was part of my job description, but still. I hadn’t expected to come back. I exhaled and turned my face away, finding Gary’s raven still there, perched on my lifted hand. I started to say, Let’s go, but his attention was a million miles away, intent on the nearly invisible horizon.
Well, I hadn’t come this far down this road to ignore a spirit animal, even if it wasn’t mine. I sighed and looked where he was looking, wondering if maybe Seattle’s long-dead shamans were going to put in a final appearance. A benediction, maybe. I hoped. It’d be disappointing to get my hands slapped now. After a minute or two, I had to admit I was even kind of grateful for the silence. There was a lot going on out there in the Middle World, but it would be waiting for me when I came back, and the truth was, I hadn’t had a lot of really quiet personal time in the past several weeks.
It was probably a bad sign when hanging out in the no-man’s-land between life and death counted as quality personal time, but I would take what I was given. I stood and I waited and I wondered, and finally, after what felt like the short end of forever, I saw movement.
It was so far away, and so feeble, that it could have been my eyelashes fluttering. The only reason I knew it wasn’t was that Gary’s raven became even more alert, sticking his head out and rustling his wings like he’d take flight. When I didn’t move, he gave me a sharp look, then a sharper peck to the temple, like he was saying, Get on with it already. I flinched, then twitched into motion, muttering an apology. He was right. Of course he was right. No matter who or what was out here, if it was on the edge of the Dead Zone and trying to come back, then I had to go help it.
If I’d been asked, I’d have said it wasn’t possible to reach the edge of the Dead Zone. Not for me, anyway. Not for somebody still corporeal. But we ran and after a while we leaped and then we flew, great distances eaten up under my strides and the raven’s wings, and suddenly we were there: an abrupt cessation of one place and the equally abrupt start of another. It reminded me of the Upper World, only not: there it was all spirits and guides. Here it was the difference between a hope of life and death itself.
And there was a raven on the wrong side, battering at that wall.
He
was a creature of light and lines and laughter, and of great determination. I couldn’t hear his raven calls, not from the wrong side of that horrible wall, but I could imagine the impatient kloks and warbling quarks, and found myself trying to echo those sounds from a throat too tight to make noise. Gary’s raven bit my cheek, then jumped forward to strike the wall with white claws. I put my hand out, pressed it against an inestimable coldness, then had to strike away the tears that ran freely down my face. The second time I touched the wall, that warm salt water fizzled against it, softening the barrier. I laugh-sobbed again, my heart breaking with hope. I felt on fire, healing magic turning my tears to something more. Despite every part of me knowing it was probably stupid, I leaned face-first into the coldness, letting tears scald its surface and praying.
It shouldn’t have opened. I knew it shouldn’t have, but I was trying so hard, and Raven was trying so hard, and maybe once, just once, the universe was willing to cut me a break, because suddenly there was a hole, and my raven fell through it into my arms.
He was so ragged, so light and thin, like he was made up of nothing more than a wish. I collapsed to my knees, cradling his delicate weight. I was numb all over, not from grief, but from relief and gratitude so overwhelming I couldn’t feel anything else, not even my body. After a long time I realized I was whispering. “It’s okay, baby. It’s okay now, Raven. It’s going to be okay. You’re safe. You’re with me. We’ll be okay now, sweetheart. It’s okay.”
I didn’t really notice when Gary’s raven carefully swept us up, got me on my feet and started me walking home again. I didn’t notice much of anything except Raven’s eyes fixed on mine, and his awful fragility reminded me of my own state as I’d knelt by Coyote’s bier after the battle. There had been nothing left of me, and there was even less than that of Raven. All I wanted to do was make him better.
The Middle World, when I emerged into it, was dreadfully bright and loud. I still held Gary’s hand, but my arms were tucked against my torso now, Raven’s insubstantial form nestled against my chest. I was at an absolute loss for what was happening, whatever thoughts I’d had completely undone. I could hardly bear to take my eyes from Raven, afraid if I stopped looking at him he would disappear.
Morrison stepped up on my right, concern creasing his brow. I whispered, “See?” helplessly, and to my astonishment, his eyes flooded gold and he Saw. Saw Raven in my arms, and understood.
He didn’t try unfolding my hold on the frail bird. Instead, he folded his left hand into my right and smiled. “We’re here, Walker. All of us. It’s going to be okay.”
Just beyond him, just beyond Gary, through the film of my tears, I watched the Hollidays take up on either side of us, Billy holding Annie’s hand just to Gary’s left, Melinda and the kids on my right. All of my friends, my father, Grandfather Coyote, they joined hands as close to me as they could, offering solidarity and love as they stepped into place, and I remembered what I’d been going to say.
I squeezed Gary’s hand again, giving him one brief adoring look even as tears ran down my face. “This friend. This man taught me to believe, and I know I wouldn’t have made it this far without him.”
I looked back at my exhausted Raven, making sure he was still with me, and spoke, uncertain if anybody would even hear me. “So whatever you’re bringing here today, I’m just asking you to share it. With words, with song, with silence, if that’s what works for you. Just hold hands for a few minutes and offer what you’ve got toward making this world a better place. We’ve had a hell of a time of it, and we could all use a little of that kind of positive thought.”
All over the place, people were taking one another’s hands, which kind of surprised me. I’d have thought it was a kind of hokey request, and maybe it was. But maybe I was right, too, and it was something we all needed.
As the last hands joined, energy crashed into the circle—the meandering, looping, lopsided circle—that they formed, and a pulse of magic swept me. Went right through me and sluiced into Raven, though I tamped it down, afraid that too much at once would blow him away. The lines of him strengthened just a little and I caught my breath on another sob, gathering him close to nuzzle his soft feathers. He pressed his head against my chin and made the softest sound I’d ever heard from him, a quark that was mostly my imagination, it was so quiet. But it was real, and it was him, and the tears that spilled over my cheeks were exhausted and joyful and so, so thankful.
It was only as I snuffled into Raven’s feathers that I realized I’d forgotten to ask Mel to take the lead with the circle. Oh, well. There was so much strength here, so much goodwill and hope and sorrow, tinged with faint embarrassment at participating in this, or delight at participating in this, that I would have to be really trying to screw it up. And at this particular moment in time, for the first time ever, I was absolutely certain I wasn’t going to screw anything up, because I’d gotten Raven back, and I wouldn’t do anything to risk him.
There were stains in the earth, blood-brown and black from the murder that had been done here. I Saw them running deep, like they were trying to escape the gathering magic here, and I smiled. Change. It was so simple and so hard, all at once. Just change.
The stains never stood a chance. White magic poured through them, sizzling, burning them away, and in less than a blink the land surrounding the falls was clean. I sent pure white magic deeper still, offering it to the strained earth, and felt its sigh of thanks. I sent it back into the people gathered here, healing touch to lessen their strain, and felt that ease, too. With each pulse of power, Raven got stronger, returning to form, until he finally gave a happy, familiar klok! and hopped from my arms to my shoulder, where he pushed his face into my hair and bit my ear as if to prove he was really there.
That was my future. Not the chaos of the past year, not the dreadful, exhausting knowledge that I was going to have to face something way out of my weight class, not all the predestiny and tangled time that had driven me forward whether I liked it or not. Healing people, healing places, making the world a better place: that was what I wanted to do now. I wanted Raven to help me, as if there was any chance he wouldn’t. I wanted to do it with Morrison at my side, and with Gary and Annie guiding me. I wanted to improve my relationship with my father, and get to know my son. I wanted to watch Billy and Melinda’s kids grow up, and see what kind of person Suzanne Quinley was going to become, and where her choices would lead her. I wanted all of that and more, and for the first time, all those dreams seemed within reach. Gary really had taught me the thing that mattered the most. All I had to do was...
...believe.
* * * * *
Acknowledgments
My grandfather, for making writing seem a natural occupation.
Mom and Dad, for telling me I could do anything.
Ted, for looking out the window in the first place.
Trip, for illuminating the world-structure error in the early drafts of Urban Shaman.
Trent, for being the first reader for every. single. manuscript.
Bev and Gary, for being forgiving when I wrote during family vacations.
The War Room en masse and Laura Anne, Mikaela, Michelle and Chrysoula in particular, for being there at all sorts of stupid hours when I needed a kick in the pants.
Jennifer, for ten great years.
Matrice, for taking a chance.
My readers, for carrying this story through all the way to the end.
Thank you all so, so much.
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ISBN-13: 9781460330173
SHAMAN RISES
Copyright © 2014 by C.E. Murphy
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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