By Dusk

by T Thorn Coyle

  Shaggy inhaled deeply, shook out her hands and legs again, and rolled her head on her neck. Then she exhaled. Okay? Okay.

  “Lead the way.”

  Terra and another woman stepped forward.

  “No matter what happens,” Terra said, “I want you to remember that we’ve got you. The harness can hold people twice your weight, it’s clipped to solid steel, and both Sam and I are trained as anchors. Okay?”

  Shaggy wiped damp palms down her fleece jacket and nodded. She felt an urgent need to pee and hoped it was just nerves, and not anything real, because it was way too late for a bathroom break.

  No turning back.

  She squeezed Phoebe’s hand, gave Terra a thumbs-up, and climbed onto the green metal railing, then over the other side. She drew the blue silks around her hands and in between her thighs, tugged backward on the harness, and felt the rope give her slack, then stabilize.

  She looked up at the gothic towers of the bridge and sent up a quick prayer.

  Let everyone be safe. She didn’t know whom she prayed to, but it felt good to do it, all the same.

  Then, bracing her feet against the edge of the bridge, she pushed outward, felt the rope release, and dropped down over the river, the tail ends of the blue silk billowing in the wind.

  37

  Moss

  “Brother, you saw the light!” Alejandro threw out his arms and rushed toward Moss as if to engulf him in a giant hug.

  Moss jerked back and winced, holding up his hands. “Don’t slam me, bro.”

  Alejandro pulled up short. “Sorry. Right.”

  The rest of the coven, minus Cassiel and Brenda, had arrived by that point. Raquel looked at him with concern in her brown eyes. She looked ready for battle, the long coils of her dreads tied back in a purple wrap. She also had boots on her feet, wore jeans and a hoodie, and had a bandana ready around her neck in case of police-issued pepper spray. Moss felt a little sad to see that. Raquel had always been badass, but she’d never been this kind of warrior before white supremacists had beaten the shit out of her son and firebombed her boyfriend’s shop.

  Everybody had some turning point when they decided that not only were they not going to take shit anymore, they were willing to deal out actual harm if necessary.

  “Did something else happen?” Raquel asked. “Besides the accident? Something else happened. Damn it. When were you were going to tell us about this one?”

  “It seemed better to tell you in person,” Moss replied, “rather than freak you out in advance.”

  “Besides which,” Tempest replied, “you knew that several of us would have told you to go home.” Her short, white-blond hair spiked out around her head, and her tattooed arms were covered by a black hoodie. Skinny black jeans tucked into bright purple Doc Martin boots completed the outfit.

  “It’s not that bad,” Moss said. “Can we drop the subject now? We have work to do.”

  “You can’t fake out a healer,” Tempest said. “It’s worse than you’re saying.”

  She jerked her head toward their coven mate Tobias––whose floppy, dark brown hair and goatee both needed trimming. He’d stopped to tie the laces on his sneakers.

  Tobias looked up, shook a lock of hair from his eyes, and replied, “Tempest and I saw it in your body the minute we stepped into the park.” He stood. “You’re holding yourself like you’re in pain. Will you let Tempest and I do some work on you before we start?”

  “No time. Shit’s already going down. Can’t you feel it?”

  He certainly could. He felt his comrades locking down on the bridge above, he felt Shaggy pushing off the bridge. And he really wanted to see that but didn’t know if he’d make it. He felt the boats on the water, and the elders still singing out their prayers. From across the park, the drums sounded again. Tempest huffed impatiently. “Do I at least have permission to send you some energy while we work?”

  Moss nodded.

  Raquel sniffed the air, and he saw her eyes change. The hairs stood up on his arms and he pulled his cowl closer around his neck, suddenly chilled.

  Raquel nodded. “You’re right,” she said. “Shit is certainly going down. And some bad shit is on its way.”

  He could feel that, too. And he didn’t like it.

  Be like water… The Willamette whispered in his veins.

  “Let’s do this,” he said.

  38

  Shaggy

  She pushed away from the bridge, felt the harness jerk again, and then she was free. Anchored, yes, but free all the same. Wind caught the silks and blew them straight out from where they wrapped around her thighs. She struggled to right herself as another gust shoved her toward Phoebe and the green silks that whipped and snarled around her teacher’s legs. Breath catching in panic, her head swiveled just as Phoebe gave her a brilliant smile.

  “You’re okay,” Phoebe mouthed. Shaggy struggled to breathe normally and decided that whether not she was actually okay, she would decide to just be okay.

  She rolled herself down the blue silks, getting used to the way the harness held her hips, before arching backwards. Gotta just trust this, Shaggy, she thought, and slowly freed the death grip her left hand had on the silk. Exhaling, she moved again, fingertips describing an arc outward, then tracing a pathway down toward the river.

  Here goes. She inhaled. Held the breath. Exhaled. Then, closing her eyes, she let her body turn and turn and turn again, the silks grabbing her thighs and calves at each turning. Shaggy turned in the wind until she dangled upside down above the river, cradled by the harness, Terra and the ropes anchoring her above, the soft silks, and the buoyant wind itself.

  Wind and water, silk and rope, these were her allies in the dance. She felt enormous, as if her body and soul had tripled in size. As though she could face anything in the world. Opening her eyes, she gasped again, this time in wonder. For down below her on the water was a phalanx of kayakers and sailboats, flags and bright banners rippling in the breeze. Those boats on that river, and the green and blue silk that billowed around her, and the people on the shore dancing and waving…taken all together it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. The most beautiful thing she’d ever felt. And Shaggy knew then that this was part of her destiny.

  Doing something that mattered, and adding to the beauty of the world. She could do that. She would do that.

  It wasn’t her father’s legacy, or Bianca’s. This was going to be Shaggy’s own.

  She felt the spark of life quickening inside of her, and in that moment—that brave, beautiful, ecstatic moment—she knew with equal certainty that a child was not her destiny. At least not right now. Once this was done, she’d make an appointment. Have an abortion. Set free whatever spirit might have attached itself to her.

  And she felt nothing from that thought but a detached peace. And then that thought was gone along with every other thought, and she was simply in her body, winding and unwinding, arcing and swaying, dangling above the vast, powerful river, fighting for something bigger than herself.

  Shaggy felt as luminous as the sun. Catching Phoebe’s eyes, she smiled, and then laughed until the wind stole her breath away.

  39

  Moss

  Raquel raced off toward the crowd, Tobias and Lucy frantically trailing after. Their hair and skin shone in the early autumn sun, and if Moss squinted slightly, he could see the further spark of light and movement around Raquel’s partially wrapped head. Her Goddess, Yemọja. Good.

  But Moss had no time to think of that. His feet itched to move, and the taste of brackish water licked at the base of his tongue.

  “Let’s walk toward the water. I need to get a sense of things. Just keep me from getting trapped in the crowd, okay?”

  Tempest and Alejandro fell into step beside him and slightly behind. The river rose inside him. He felt the fishes and vegetation beneath the surface, and the flying insects and birds of prey that skimmed the surfaces. And the boats. Small craft. Kayaks and sailboats. He felt th
e breeze from the water. Saw the colors.

  All of this was superimposed on top of his physical senses. Sight, sound, scent, the way the grass gave beneath his feet, the way the sun felt on his skin. The burning white sage. The beat of drums. The quick flash of billowing blue and green silk that flowed like quicksilver down toward the water…all of this was present. All of it mattered. But all of it paled beneath the steady rise of river water. The sense of life, teeming, moving, breathing.

  The closer his body got to the river, the stronger the sense of dis-ease grew. The more the watery taste in his mouth burned with poison. Oil and chemicals. Waste and the scent of an imminent die out of plants, and fish, and birds, and animals only recently revived.

  And he smelled her then. Patricia Sloane. And the egregore. Moss staggered. The threat was real. Here. Now.

  “Faster!” he shouted to his friends, and took off running, muscles screaming in pain, left wrist throbbing with heat, pulled by a force so great there was no resisting it.

  “Shift left, man.” Alejandro’s voice penetrated the urgency. Moss veered, and some dim part of his brain just hoped he’d chosen the correct direction. He stumbled and felt Tempest’s hand steady him. Catching his footing again, he pounded toward the river as quickly as he could.

  Toward the ribbon of water, guided by the autumn sun. Toward the edges of the people, the bright colors and pockets of black. Toward Raquel, shining like a beacon, head on fire with the power of her Goddess. Running toward the source of the poison. He could see her now—Patricia Sloane—with her seal dark hair falling around her shoulders. And the man next to her. And the group of reporters, starting to cluster around. Squinting his eyes, he saw the sickness that surrounded them, rooting its way into their souls. The man was filled with it. Patricia Sloane? The egregore surrounded her like a veil, and he could feel the tendrils of it reaching, seeking, just penetrating the ætheric body that sheathed her skin.

  It was an egregore of collective greed. A magical being built by every executive in the company, fed with the demands of every shareholder who never questioned exactly what making all that money cost. Hammered into shape by the will of Patricia Sloane. Maybe she didn’t know it, at least not consciously. But she was very, very good at wielding the power of it all the same. Her subconscious was completely taken over by the sense of belonging to the egregore. Directing it gave her life a purpose. It gave her meaning, and a place to belong.

  A sense of purpose was a powerful thing.

  “Maybe there’s a chance,” he said, boots pounding on the grass, jeans swishing around his legs. “Maybe there’s a chance.” The words repeated themselves, over and over, matching the cadence of his running and weaving with the rhythm of the drums. His body screamed its agony, but Moss couldn’t stop. “Maybe there’s a chance.”

  His pain was nothing to the pain of the Willamette. His pain was nothing to that of the fish and the trees. His pain was nothing to the neighborhoods of Cathedral Hill and St. John’s. His pain was…

  “Maybe there’s a chance.”

  The river rose inside him, all life, and light, and poisoned water. The spirit of the river spoke his name.

  It knew him. And he knew the river. He ran past Raquel, aware of her, reaching for the egregore. But he couldn’t pause to stop. To think. To understand. He ran down to the small wooden pier, toward the glimmering water dotted with flower petals. He climbed over the metal railing, and dove in.

  And Moss and the kami of the river were one.

  The water held him as if he were a drop of water, submerged within the larger family of droplets, all heading, someday, toward the ocean all water on earth belonged to. He was alive. The river was alive.

  He felt oil slick his skin, and felt the chemicals that laced the water. Manifestations of the egregore, meeting the kami of the river. No wonder Patricia Sloane knew the river. She was part of that which poisoned its body. They were intimately entwined.

  Moss surfaced.

  His eyes took in the boats behind him, and Shaggy, her pale, red-blond hair caught by the sun, silks billowing, dancing with Phoebe, suspended up above his head. Turning, he scanned the crowd on shore, allowing his vision to double again, an old priestess trick of seeing the visible and the ætheric at the same time. He saw the dancing, jostling crowd, the drummers, and the small phalanx of GranCo flunkies surrounded by the press that should have been covering the celebration turned rally….

  And, smiling, he knew just what he needed to do. He paddled back toward the wooden pier where Tempest and Alejandro were gathered with a few others, gesturing him to reach up. He did. Tempest and Alejandro pulled him over. He flopped, wet and panting on the weathered wooden slats, stinking of river.

  “I need to get up to the top of the bridge.”

  “What? We just got you out of the river!” Tempest said. “You’re in no condition, Moss! Can you even walk a quarter mile uphill right now? Because that’s how far it is.”

  “She’s right, brother. Don’t be an idiot,” Alejandro said. Someone wrapped a blanket around his shoulders, but he felt as if he could burn the water right off his own skin, boiling it into steam. Moss was on fire.

  “The press! They’re listening to Patricia and…” And the egregore. “They’re not covering the lockdown! We need to get up top! All the people…they need to get up top. If the dancers can’t capture their attention, maybe the lockdown will.” The adrenaline that flooded his system made him shake. The taste of brackish water and oil was joined by the taste of spit and copper. The river filled him. All the creatures of the river filled him. He wanted to run. To swim. To fly.

  “Now!”

  “Okay then,” Alejandro said. “Okay. It’s going to take a while to get there, though.”

  “What?” Moss’s head swiveled, looking for a way out, a way through. The air was filled with brightness and sound. Confusion. He couldn’t…

  “We have to get all the way back to Philadelphia Street,” Alejandro was saying. “To the pedestrian walkway. And no matter what your spirit is telling you, your body is still injured, Moss.”

  Moss looked up at the billowing blue and green silks that shimmered above the banners and flags of the kayaks and the boats on the water. He saw Shaggy arch her back and tumble, end over end, before catching herself again. Phoebe followed, spinning and tumbling, green silk to Shaggy’s blue. His heart leapt at the sight of it. This was the moment. This.

  He could feel the prayers that hovered over the surface of the water, blessing everything their sound had touched. The prayers surrounded him, touching him where the water wet his clothes and skin. He just hadn’t felt them before.

  GranCo’s egregore was strong, but not as strong as this. Moss was sure of it.

  GranCo didn’t matter. They would crumble into dust, worn down like stone beneath the steady pressure of water. They would crumble beneath the force of the river and the will of the people that the waters run clean.

  The salmon and the cormorants would always have a home.

  “We will tell the city, now, in public. Raquel will speak. I will speak. Kiyiya will tell the truth about who these people are, and what they are.” The words tumbled across Moss’s lips as though he were in a trance. “But we must speak from the top of the bridge. Lure the press away from GranCo. Let the rest of the city know what’s really going on.”

  As above, so below.

  “Let me call Tobias. Get word to Raquel and…what was the other name?” Tempest asked.

  “Kiyiya.”

  “What should I tell them?”

  “That the shitheads from GranCo are here and we need to tell the city to break the goddamn contract. People need to jam the phone lines, send emails, whatever…. But I gotta go. Now.”

  The egregore had something planned. Moss didn’t know what it was but he could feel it in his aching bones and on his damp skin. It was more than making nice with politicians and the press, though Patrician Sloane did that job very well. The egregore had been built sim
ply to make money, but had morphed into something even worse. Poisoning the river fed its power. Doing things the right way slowed it down. It was determined to pick up speed. Destruction fed profits. Profits fed the joy of the shareholders. Their joy fed the egregore’s oil-slicked belly.

  Moss flung the blanket from his body and stumbled as he tried to rise. Alejandro wrapped one strong arm around him and helped him upright until they were both standing again.

  His body trembled. Adrenaline and the cold shock of the water had flushed out the pain—at least temporarily. He needed to keep moving. To follow the course the water whispered in his blood. To fulfill his sacred task.

  “I’ll go with him,” Alejandro was saying to Tempest. “You follow us as soon as you get ahold of Tobias or Raquel. We’ll meet you up there.”

  And then Moss was running. He heard Alejandro curse, then follow. Moss’s socks squished inside wet boots, the grass parted beneath his feet. The crowd moved like an elegant serpent, shifting out of their way. Breath screamed hot into his tortured lungs as he wound through people, grass, and trees. Alejandro passed him, clearing the way, running toward the sidewalk that would take them to the top of the bridge.

  Moss had never run so fast in his life. His bones jarred at the sudden switch from grass to concrete. He heard Alejandro, breath as even as his gait. Horns honked from stopped cars. Wheezing, he crested the bridge and saw Tariq’s truck up ahead, and the other cars in the convoy, blocking the lanes. As he got closer to the obstruction he saw his comrades, two of them chained by the waist, locked to either side of the great expanse, chained to the line of black clad people sitting on tarmac, arms chained inside long white tubes. He saw his friends passing out fliers to the cars with open windows, explaining what was going on. He saw an arc of white spit hit a dark cheek, and a red handkerchief wipe away the moisture, before his comrade walked away. Further down the sidewalk, he saw Terra and her cohort anchoring the harnesses holding Shaggy and Phoebe.