Ash pulled on his jeans and slipped into the lace-up boots he wore yesterday. Then he headed outside. Cooper snickered behind him. “You’ll freeze, Ash. Here, have you parka, for heaven’s sake!”
Except Ash didn’t want his parka. The snow was water, and cold water never bothered him in his changed state. Which wasn’t right now, granted, but some of the benefits of his wintertime river walking carried over to being nicely hardened off.
His single-layer cotton Henley would do just fine.
“Show the way, then tell me where people take their snow baths,” he said.
ASH HAD HIS change of clothes bundled up in his big beach towel, since a beach towel was the only kind that seemed appropriate to what he had thought would be ‘rugged camping.’ It’s bright aqua and lime green fish pattern now was incongruously tropical under the snowy canopy of the mixed forest.
“Most of the people snow-bathe by the lake, and some dip in the water in the bay. There’s a hole dug in the ice over there,” Nikko told him. “Wear your shoes, the frozen ice chop on the beach is sharp on the feet.”
The pull of the lake was strong. It wanted him, and he yearned to water-walk, yet... yet he didn’t know these waters. Sudden fear gripped Ash. Fear of the unfamiliar, of the awesome and awful that some people still bowed to as a superior spirit with a real impact upon their daily lives.
“Nikko...” he started hesitantly. He had never addressed Cooper’s father by his first name.
Nikko turned and cocked his head, waiting for the inevitable question.
“Would you water-walk with me? You know this water, and I do not.”
Nikko Anneveinen gave an approving nod. “So you’re not as reckless as I had thought you to be. That’s a relief.” He patted his shoulder. “Don’t worry. You’ll be in good hands. I cannot water-walk. I never could. However, my cousin has been waiting to meet you even since the word spread about your and Cooper’s adventures down in Pittsburgh.”
“Can he water-walk the Lake Superior? I can feel it.” At Nikko’s expectant nod, Ash continued. “I feel like it’s pulling me, and... and I wouldn’t want to put anyone at risk. If anyone comes with me, it has to be a person a lot stronger than I am.”
Ash knew he wouldn’t go alone. If he went water-walking and the spirit of the lake called him hard enough, he’d be compelled to follow. He’d hover between the ice above and the muddy bottom deep below, walking and walking, until his powers gave out.
With sudden clarity, he knew he wouldn’t drown. If he clung to his last erg of spiritual power in an effort to survive, though, he would dematerialize.
Become one with the lake.
“I think I know what happened to Jared now,” he blurted out.
“Yes, child,” Nikko said, pulling him into a one-arm hug. “I think I do too. But do not fear the lake. Here comes my cousin Greg, he’ll take care of you.”
Greg was Nikko’s age, taller, but tanner in complexion. The raven darkness of his ponytail was shot with threads of silver, and his high cheekbones and straight nose proclaimed his Native American heritage.
So did his clothes of beaded deer hide, down to his rabbit-fur padded moccasins.
He carried a pipe in one hand, and a long staff festooned with colorful bird feathers in the other.
“Greg, this is my son’s partner Ash. You’ve heard of him.”
“So I have.” Greg turned to Ash. He switched his staff into the crook of his other arm and offered his hand, which Ash shook with relief. He wasn’t sure of the manners here anymore, and didn’t know what applied.
“Glad to meet you, sir,” he said instead of using Greg’s given name.
Greg only nodded. “You may call me Uncle Greg. Everybody does. I am Gregory Nightwind, and I’m an Ojibway shaman.” Greg gave Ash a searching look, as though he expected a reaction of some sort.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Uncle Greg,” Ash reiterated. “And if you would be so kind to guide me in a water walk, I would appreciate it. I don’t think I’d return if I went alone.”
“You wouldn’t,” Greg said bluntly. “The lake always demands a blood price. What waters do you walk now?”
“Old Man Allegheny,” Ash said. They still stood on the bank, open to the whistling wind that never seemed to cease. That cold wind was cutting through him now, and he tried very much not to care. He hadn’t even had that hot coffee that had sounded so good before.
But the shaman was here, and the shaman knew things.
“What offering do you give the river?” Greg asked with a thoughtful, indirect look.
“I don’t, not really. I walk on a regular basis, and I talk to the water. To the fish.” Ash wavered, not sure whether revealing all he did was wise. The shaman hummed impatiently, which helped Ash make up his mind. “I scan for the levels of various pollutants,” he admitted in a quiet voice, as though he didn’t want people to know. As though it was too outlandish, too untraditional for a place such as this one. “And when I find a new source, or an old site that’s been contaminated, I do what I can to fix it.”
Only now did Greg look up and meet his eyes for the briefest moment. “Yet you say you offer nothing, Healer of Rivers.”
“Healer of Rivers?”
Greg only smiled. “Not all offering need to be of blood, or material in nature. But the one to this lake does. This lake doesn’t know you yet. If you wish to water-walk and return, you will allow me to cut you.”
CHAPTER 5
JARED
Fluffy clouds began to mass in the sky and provide welcome shade for Jared, for his eyes grew tired of the glare outside. White cloud became gray, and a breeze picked up, cooling the sweat in the back of his neck. The Old Woman looked up. “Interesting. I think it might rain.”
Jared set his calligraphy brush down and examined his nascent effort. The circles looked like squished eggs and the straight, thick lines of black ink that were supposed to line the paper wavered uncertainly. He’d been running out of ink, and that alone confused him. There was no ink well to dip his brush into, only the Old Woman’s spare brush that marked his paper just so.
Yet when she used it, its bristles glistened with lush ink, and just the perfect amount, too. Not a drop more, and not a drop less.
He either made sloppy drops, or he ran out.
“Patience,” she said as she knelt across the table from him. “Release your elbow. You’re all tense, and you need to learn to move with it. Like this.” Once again, she demonstrated.
Once again, Jared drew a line. This time, he made sure his elbow floated free, but his line was even less straight than before.
“It’s no good,” he sighed.
“It’s better,” she said with a squint of her experienced eye. “It has more flow. More energy. Look at it with your second sight, and you’ll see.”
He did as she said, and to his surprise and delight, the crooked line glowed the slightest bit. The hump in it even looked interesting. Not pretty, but... it looked like something other than brush practice.
Rain drops against the ceramic roof tile broke the silence.
Jared looked up and around, soaking in the welcome sound. “But how?”
“I took your advice,” she said. “I talked to him and gave him a chance. Apparently, he feels terrible about the ruination of the sword.” She paused. “He said your actions had saved a large portion of the city. He said you worked as a team.”
“I’ve been trying to tell you all that,” Jared said.
“I know that now,” she said in a way that fell way short of contrite, but owning the misunderstanding with grace. “None of that made a lot of sense until I got to touch his mind and see it for myself.”
“I didn’t know you can do that.” Indignant possessiveness shot through him. Who did she think she was anyway?
“I can do it only because of your connection to him,” she said. Then, in a few lines that expressed so much, she created a face of a man.
Jared froze. It was impossib
le.
“I see you recognize him,” she said. “Who is he?”
He stared at the smooth, efficient strokes that formed the face he knew so well. He had known him since before they knew how to talk, actually. “That is the Wielder.” He knew not to say his name. There was power in names.
“Cooper, the Wielder.” She smiled as she tasted the words on her tongue. “He brought us to an interesting place, a place of great power. I rather like it here.”
ASH AND COOPER
Cooper hugged his mom again. “It’s so good to see you too. I better go run off now and see if Ash is okay.”
“Ash is with your father,” she said with a placid smile. “Of course he’ll be just fine. How does he take his coffee? What will he want to eat, do you think?”
It’s not that Cooper didn’t want to catch up with his mother. He did. He also wanted to grill Grandma Olga, who slipped away after the briefest of hugs, and with a mysterious smile on her face.
She knew something, and it had to be about them. He just knew it, the same as he knew that the cold knot forming in the pit of his stomach wasn’t just his imagination. Cold, like a rock from the depth of the frozen lake. Heavy like the limbs of a drowned man, and as pale. Not quite white, but shot with veins of blue –
“I can’t, Mom. Sorry. I’ll be back.”
He ran off, leaving his coffee behind. His winter boots crunched through the snowy village of round tents and oblong lodges, past a pyre built for their New Year fire, past the last tikki torch that marked the path through the other side of the camp.
There, gleaming white with a too-bright winter sun, was the frozen surface of the lake.
The lake that Ash had felt so keenly before.
The lake he was near, with a towel and the intent to snow-bathe, and with Cooper’s father, who liked him only a little.
Who didn’t respect him.
Who would probably see it fit to set him a trial of courage of some sort and see whether Ash was a man of enough strength and integrity to spend time in Cooper’s company.
Whether he lived or died.
“No!” he yelled as he burst from the cover of a single row of snow-laden trees, skittering to a stop on a frozen beach.
Out there, on the iced-over bay, a swimming hole the size of their living room was dug into the ice. He saw a wooden ladder sticking up even from where he stood on the beach. His father stooped over the rectangular swimming hole dug into the ice. Next to him stood Ash, vulnerable and white in his nakedness except for the hair loosened from his ponytail whipping in the wind.
Cooper picked his way over the choppy ice, careful not to step wrong and slip.
Terrified of falling through.
That was water down there, and water didn’t like him much.
“Ash! No!” He waved.
Ash looked down at someone in the water already, bent over as though they were talking.
“No! Don’t!” Was that a red gash on his arm?
Ash looked at him and waved back. Then he jumped and disappeared in the hole in the ice.
COLD.
Cold and freezing.
Ash wasn’t used to relying on having to hold his breath while underwater, but the sudden onslaught of bone-numbing temperature froze his mind in place and threatened to drive every last molecule of oxygen out of his lungs.
He had to transform to his water form.
Had to.
Somewhere in the back of his mind he realized that this time, the danger was for real. This time, it really was a do-or-die. Fear wrestled with his sense of self-control, and fear led to panic.
Panic kills.
Slowly, as though his mind waded through molasses, he blocked out the primal terror that came with icy water so naturally. As experience won, he forced his focus to that whirling sphere of energy in the pit of his belly. It spun fast, its little dynamo fully charged after a good night’s sleep – and something else, too. Something special, something unexpected, as though sleeping under a gher in the snow had made him stronger.
Ash let the rest of air he had been hoarding out of his mouth, his nose, at last relishing the slow pop of the bubbles he always experienced with his transformation.
So loud in the stillness of the frozen lake.
He was letting the air out of his lungs, sinking. When he opened his eyes, Greg Nightwind was right next to him, nodding with a small, encouraging smile that barely turned the corners of his mouth.
[: Good, I think you got it. Relax now, and embrace the cold. You won’t feel anything but cold until you become one with it. :]
The shaman’s hair was loose, just as his. He wore only the leather thong necklace strung with shells and water-worn glass, and one solitary raven claw. It’s talons bobbed in the water with gentle buoyancy, letting Ash know that this was no metal and glass replica. No, this was the real thing.
And now the talons reached toward him. Toward the bleeding gash on top of his left forearm.
Ash raised his sacrificial wound to have a better look. Blood still flowed in a thin, diaphanous red veil that dissipated into the waters of Lake Superior.
[: It doesn’t hurt. :] He knew the cold made it so, and so did the shaman, whose nod sent his hair flying in a cloud of black and emerald-gray.
The claw stretched longer, toward that red blood trace, and the talons closed around the tinted waters.
[: My guardian spirit wishes to know you, :] the shaman said in lieu of explanation. [: How long can you last? :]
Ash thought a bit. [: At home, maybe an hour. Here, I don’t know. :]
[: Probably longer, :] Greg thought in his direction. [: Cold water diminishes your need for oxygen. It contains more oxygen for your skin to absorb, plus you’re in a Place of Power. We’ll ride out of the bay, then walk around a bit. You’ll be able to come up and breathe if you need to. The lake’s not frozen farther out. :]
Ash nodded, and slowly water-walked in Greg’s wake. Soon, two dark shapes appeared from the depths up ahead. They were easily twice the length of Ash’s body, dark, and didn’t looked nothing like the friendly catfish of the Allegheny River at all.
He felt Greg’s chuckle in his mind. [: Greet our guides, :] he said as glee and excitement colored his mind’s voice. [: And hold on tight. They go fast. :]
Ash composed himself, then extended his injured arm toward the fish closer to him. [: I am Ash Ravenna, Healer of Rivers and the waterman of the Allegheny River in Pittsburgh. I freely offer you this sacrifice. :]
He expected the huge fish to sniff him the way a dog would, but the fish came all the way up and touched its nose to his. Gently. With outmost control. [: Do not fear me. :]
Stunned, Ash nodded. The fish turned, and when Greg mounted his unexpected and unusual lake steed, Ash also floated over to his sturgeon and straddled it, holding onto its dorsal fin.
[: Lean forward and reach down to my pectoral fins. Yes, like that. Hold them close to my body. :]
The spiny dorsal fin was now folded flat under Ash’s bare chest, and he lay prone on top of a huge fish under the surface of a frozen lake. Yet it said not to fear him, and the shaman had said that they were in a place of power.
Slowly, carefully, Ash let his shields down, and extended his senses.
The knowledge of the lake stretched ahead of him like a three-dimensional map, too vast to comprehend in just one tasting. Energy poured inside him faster than he expended it, and the fish beneath him was as one with the lake as the last drop of water, as the smallest pebble on Lake Superior’s many rocky beaches.
[: When will we meet the Spirit of Lake Superior? :] Ash thought in Greg’s direction.
Greg’s amused bellow of mental laughter was his reply. [: You’re riding it! :]
COOPER’S FOOTING ON the ice was no worse than on snow-covered land due to a two-inch cover of partially frozen snow that the wind never managed to blow off. He broke into a careful jog.
His only solace, his only hope was knowing that his father did not app
ear alarmed in the slightest. Cooper’s concern for Ash overshadowed his fear of the ice cracking, of the element that swallowed and wore down his own rock to the sand on the bottom. The emptiness of his life without Ash overshadowed the vastness of the waters that stretched past the horizon.
“Cooper, slow down, boy.” His father’s voice was as though from years ago, when he was a youth. His hand was steady and comforting on his shoulder even though Nikko Anneveinen now had to reach up to him, not down. “You cannot follow him where he is going, but he will return. All will be well.”
Only now that his mad rush to the gaping maw in ice surface had come to a halt did Cooper realize he was only a man’s length away from open water.
Near it.
On top of it.
His breath came quick and short as though he had sprinted a whole mile. “Yeah?” he gasped.
“Yes. Now slow down. Ground and center. You’re panicking for no good reason.”
“But Ash jumped –”
“Ash is out there with Greg, and Greg knows the spirits.” His father said it as though the meaning of his statement of was obvious.
Cooper shook his head. “But he was scared of this lake before, Dad. I’ve never seen him like that before, never when it came to water! He said the lake was calling him.”
“He’s wise to be scared, but he is also in good company. Greg –”
“Dad.” Cooper shrugged in a useless effort to shed his father’s arm and reclaim some dignity. “Dad, you keep talking about Uncle Greg as though I should know something. And I don’t. Remember, I never came to these shindigs when I was a kid.” He frowned. “I had no talent. I had no talent and zero power signature, and nobody would tell me anything or teach me anything, and now I’m supposed to trust my partner to an eccentric uncle from Canada just because he happens to be an Ojibway shaman?”
Nikko let go of him, and as he did so, the wind off the lake cut through Cooper’s inadequate clothes with a bitter bite. “No,” he said. “Not because he’s an Ojibway shaman. He was born Ojibway, but that’s not why he is important. He is an important elder of this clan because he is an expert water-walker, Cooper. He is better and more experienced than even Ash, who has considerable talent and skill of his own.”
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