Gabriel's Road

by Laura Anne Gilman

  He was not a man to take offense easily, but it was almost as though the Territory itself had decided to make his self-imposed isolation as difficult as possible.

  "You're still with me, though, right Steady? Not upset with me that we left everyone behind?"

  The gelding snorted, ears flicking back and then forward as he kept walking. They'd been riding at a slow but steady pace, stopping only when the light became too faint to see, and rising to begin again once light reappeared, less out of any sense of urgency than the fact that Gabriel had no reason to linger in any one place.

  His sense of the Road had returned once they left the hollow where he’d woken, as though it had been blurred with his memories, but every sinew in his body told him to stay on the faint path that led him further into the empty desert.

  And still, every time he reached to find a source of water, no matter how small, he could hear the faintest echo of Grandmother River's call. He had not gone far enough away yet.

  4

  It took fourteen days for the echo to fade entirely. On the fifteenth day, Gabriel found himself, having made camp, staring up at the sky with no inclination to move. The moon was waxing again, casting the stars into its shadow. He was reminded of a story he'd heard once, although he could not remember from what tribe, that said the stars were shards of the moon's brightness, and they were afraid of being gathered within his embrace once again and so only came out most clearly when he was at his weakest.

  He knew that wasn't true. Back in the States he’d listened to lecturers argue about the birthing of planets in terms of science, not magic, but there was a comfort in thinking that the stars were in the same predicament he was, and yet managed to endure.

  He also suspected that he was running a fever, to be thinking such things.

  "You can all take a... a long leap off a high cliff," he told the stars, or maybe it was the moon-silvered wren that was sitting on a charred, prickly stump by the smoldering fire, staring at him when it should still have been sleeping. "I've not left the Territory"—though he was skirting painfully close to the border, if his sense of where they were could still be trusted—"and I'm not spouting any wounds to get infected, so there's no reason for me to be ill, at all."

  The last time he'd fallen sick, it had been after the ghost-cat had raked him with her claws. Isobel had been there to make camp for them and scold him until he rested. It had been nice, after so long traveling alone, to have someone to care for him. Someone else to care for.

  He frowned, rubbing at his too-flushed face. Who would do that for her now, if she fell ill? Auntie, maybe. Or the marshal and his daughter. But when she left Red Stick, when she once again traveled the Dust Roads, doing the devil's work? Isobel was too easily caught up in her duties, too certain it all rested on her...

  "You're really worrying about her instead of yourself?"

  He turned his head, somehow unsurprised to see the great shaggy bulk sitting cross-legged next to him, although the rational part of his thoughts knew that Graciendo was weeks distant even by fast horse, tucked away in his mountain isolation.

  His mouth felt too dry to move, but he managed a half-smile. "Hello, Old Bear."

  The salutation did not soften the other's growl. "It would serve you right if you died out here, of sheer foolishness. Did you learn nothing from what I taught you?"

  "Um." His tongue felt thick and slow; his throat dry as sand. "You told me to stay away from people, and," and he tried to wave an arm at the emptiness around them, but his elbow wouldn't lift, "here I am."

  Graciendo growled at him. "I told you to keep your distance from civilization, to stay free of entanglements, not to dig yourself a hole and die in it. Although I see you've shed yourself of the devil's tool."

  "Her name's Isabel," and he had trouble shaping her name, the es sound turning into a zee. "And I didn't mean to leave her. It just... happened."

  The River had wiped her from his thoughts, and he still didn’t understand why.

  "Hrmph." The old bear's paw rested lightly on his forehead, the pinprick of massive black claws only a suggestion against his skin. "Foolish boy. Always foolish. You need water."

  He didn’t want water. That was the point. Gabriel tried to sneer, but his lips were suddenly too dry and cracked to draw back, and he wondered when that had happened. How long had they been talking? How long had he been here?

  His gaze flicked upward, trying to find the moon again, but the sky was too filled with stars now, a dizzying splay glittering like water over rocks, ice draped from bare tree branches, and somewhere in there, eyes peered down at him, blinking golden-yellow.

  "I warned you about this. You never listen."

  "Blah, blah blah." Gabriel’s tongue felt thick, and hard to move in his mouth.

  One of Graciendo's paws moved down the side of his face, the tip of the smallest claw dipping into Gabriel's mouth, pulling the lower lip down. The faintest wet drop touched his flesh, and he tasted salt and iron. A reminder that Graciendo, for all that he'd chosen to care for Gabriel in his own way, was still creature of the Territory; as dangerous as any magician and twice as unpredictable for never having been human even to start.

  "Don't," he said, trying to spit it out. He'd no idea what that blood might do to him, no desire to find out.

  The claw dug deeper, another drop hitting his tongue.

  "Not even wolves can live on dry bones," Graciendo said. "What were you thinking, riding into the driest of dry lands? That's no place for you."

  Gabriel had no logical answer, so he only glared.

  There was a pause, then a heavy sigh, musty and fish-scented, gusted across his skin. "Dying's no terrible thing, but dying stupid?"

  The bloody moisture was enough to make his tongue work again. "Not gonna die."

  "Yes, you will. But not today."

  The claw shifted away from his mouth, but the paw remained, the rough leather of his palm cool against Gabriel's cheek. Not a threat, not a promise, simply a touch. Graciendo might grumble and fuss, but he would not force anything on him. Not even force him to live.

  Gabriel had first stumbled into the seemingly-abandoned cabin on the flanks of the Mother's Knife, young, stupid, and half-mad, still running from Old Woman Who Never Dies and her words of warning, her sealing his fate.

  The shifter was old. Older than the devil even, Gabriel suspected, and even now, decades later, Gabriel still did not know why the shifter had taken him in rather than rending him limb from limb. But he had, giving him space and –time—and advice—until Gabriel came back to his senses.

  If you don’t let it take you, it can’t have you, Old Bear had said. It can’t do anything without your say-so. Keep saying no and mean it, and the Territory can’t claim you.

  Gabriel, young, foolish, and half-mad, had thought that would be simple.

  "He said I'd be done. When I was done." Even in his own thoughts that hadn't made much sense, but Graciendo just nodded, coarse black hair falling in disarray over his face before being swiped back with a muttered growl so familiar Gabriel felt himself smile, cracked lips be damned. The old bear had growled around him like that for weeks before speaking a single word.

  "There's done, and then there's done," the shifter said now. "You’re not that boy any longer. The fear, the terror that gnawed on you then, you starved it. Beat it down. You’re not healed, not whole by a far call, but closer than you were. Closer than I thought you could be. So, tell me, Gabriel. Are you ready to be done? Or do you just think you should be?"

  Gabriel narrowed his eyes at the shifter. "You told me—"

  "I told you what you needed to know then. Now I’m telling you what you need to know now. What you do with it, that’s always been your call, no-one else’s. The River’s not going to do it for you."

  The words made no sense, making his head buzz like a hive had set up residence inside.

  "Leave me alone." Gabriel turned his head away, scowling up at the sky.

  There was
another deep, musty sigh, and when Gabriel turned back a second later to apologize for his churlishness, he was alone.

  The old bear may have been a hallucination, but the fever was not. Gabriel was reasonable certain the sun had risen and set any number of times since he’d made camp, but he couldn't swear to it. The landscape wavered around him, and the sky was filled with colors, and when the sweats came, he was too warm, then the chills came and he tried to get up, to find a blanket or fire, but couldn't move his body off the bedroll.

  If Graciendo had left him here to die, he was well on his way to it.

  At some point he knew that Steady had laid down next to him, the familiar smell of warm horse-sweat and leather almost enough to keep him from shivering, but when he woke again, the moon a bare crescent in the black-blue sky, the horse was nowhere to be found.

  Panic hit him then: if something had happened to Steady, he would never forgive himself. He was struggling to untangle himself from his blanket when a faint shhhhing noise sounded near his head, and he froze.

  "Relax, little cousssssssin," the snake told him, but it sounded irritated rather than amused, and an irritated snake did not make him feel reassured. "The horsssssssse isssss fine, only ssssssssleeeeping."

  Riding with Isobel had made spirit animal visitations a more common if always unnerving occurrence; he did not welcome their return. He was not, however, fool enough to say so.

  The snake moved forward, its body gliding across the dry dirt with only the faintest of sounds, and Gabriel tried not to react as its heavy, red-and-gold striped weight slid up onto his body, weaving its length until the bulk of it rested on his torso, the head raised so it could look down into Gabriel's face.

  Snake eyes should be black, beady. These, set deep in the narrow scaled face, were the color of the moon overhead.

  "You again?" Gabriel asked, although he could not have said if this was the same snake that had spoken to him before or another, or if all spirit animals were in fact the same. "You gonna scold me, too?"

  "You are a fool, and the bear thrice a fool," the snake told him, in a voice that allowed for no argument, and then darted forward, its fangs visible only long enough for Gabriel to panic again before they struck, digging deep into his face, into the flesh of his cheek just below the bone.

  It hurt like hell.

  When Gabriel woke again, the sky overhead was thick with dark blue clouds, Steady was grazing peacefully a few feet from his head, and he was covered in a thick blanket woven in a bright red and yellow pattern he did not recognize. The fever seemed to have broken overnight. He moved his arm—and he was pleased to see that it raised without protest—sliding out from under the blanket to touch his cheek, testing the warmth of his skin. Sweaty, but cool. He pressed with his fingers and winced at the unexpected twinge of soreness. He remembered...

  Snake.

  He sat upright, the blanket falling off him, and pressed his hand again against the skin where the dream-snake had bitten him, uncertain as to why the flesh there was not torn open, why he was not dead, the flesh of his cheek not filled with venom, but rather plumped with water.

  Graciendo had left him to choose death, but the snake…

  The snake had taken that choice from him. Once again, the Territory moved him, manipulated him like a chess piece. Worse, like a chess piece without a board, played for some purpose he could not understand.

  What reason was there in keeping him alive? He had served his purpose for Isobel; the spirit world should have no further need of him.

  He plucked at the blanket, frowning at the unfamiliar weave of browns and greens. It wasn’t his. He would have woken had anyone come within the circle of salt, and Steady certainly would have alerted him if anyone had come close enough to drape a blanket over him; the horse was as good as a sentry in that regard.

  And yet.

  He looked around nonetheless, and then looked up, and up again, into the branches of a tree that had not been there when he'd laid down the night before.

  Now full-awake, he blinked, barely daring to breathe. But not even closing his eyes and pinching the back of his hand made the vision disappear.

  It was without doubt a tree, growing at the foot of his bedroll and reaching ten feet or more into the sky, limbs bare and trunk smooth-green and entirely impossible, because it had not been there the night—days? before.

  It was not the strangest thing Gabriel had seen, but not even the past few years could make him think it ordinary.

  Gabriel looked around again more carefully, noting the intact salt circle, the angled rock he’d placed his boots on before crawling into his bedroll, the line of slow-greening tumbleweed and clusters of sunwork flowers he’d noted when making camp. Nothing had moved, nothing had changed. Nothing save that there was now a tree where there had been none before.

  "Well then." When faced with unknown medicine of an unknown source, a wise Rider was above all polite. "Hello."

  The tree did not respond. Gabriel almost felt hurt.

  In addition to the tree, and the blanket he did not recognize, there was a pack resting against the trunk that also had not been there before. He crawled forward enough to grab it by a strap, bringing it closer with caution, as though the tree might bend down to catch at him with those long bare limbs. But nothing stirred, nothing sprung out to attack, nor did the tree, as he'd half-feared, shift shape into anything else.

  Whatever games the Territory was playing on him, it did not seem to be a violent one.

  The brown leather of the pack was cracked and worn, but the seams looked to be water-tight, and under the buckled flap were a sack bag of dried beans, another of dried corn, and a cloth bag of tortillas, then another smaller bag of what smelled like a medicinal tea, and a battered tin plate on top of a leather canteen that, when unstoppered, proved to be filled with fresh, cool water. No meat, but he supposed that was too much to ask of his benefactors.

  He had told the old bear that he was not going to die. It appeared that the Territory was determined to keep him from becoming a liar.

  What he did with it, Graciendo had said, was up to him.

  "My thanks, Cousin Snake," he said out loud, and replaced the stopper in the canteen. "And you too, Old Bear, if this is any of your doing." It seemed unlikely—the shifter to have called for such a thing, and the spirit-snake to heed him—but the other choice, that a spirit-snake was keeping close-enough watch on him, that a spirit-snake cared enough to watch him, was twice as unnerving and Gabriel wanted no part of it. He did not want to be important. He wanted to be left alone.

  Did he want to be done?

  Desperately. Desperately, he wanted to be done. But not today.

  Replacing everything into the pack, he sat up, crosslegged, and again considered the tree in front of him. Without leaves he could not easily identify it, but the shape seemed familiar somehow. He let his knowledge of the Territory's plant life run through his memory, but nothing matched. Standing up, he walked, unsteadily, over to it. His fingers itched to touch the bark, but he kept his hands shoved into his pockets and merely looked. From a distance it had looked smooth-trunked, but up close, even under the dim daylight, he could see where there were striations along the surface, bits of thin bark peeling away, as though the tree were shedding its skin like a snake.

  Snakes again.

  He shook his head and looked up at the branches reaching into the sky, their tips forming an almost perfect arc.

  His breath caught as he realized where he had seen that silhouette before, time and again: in the sigil of the Road Marshals. The world-tree, the joining of bone and wind, constrained within the silver loop.

  "Jordan wash me clean." He had traveled with the Devil's Hand, had seen the brand on her palm glow with power, had seen... had seen more than most liars would dare to claim. He should not have been capable of awe any more.

  And yet. And yet.

  "It's just a tree," he said out loud, and the dryness in his throat made him back up, reachi
ng for the canteen. The first sip made him want to gulp more, but he forced himself to take it slow, letting a single mouthful roll around in his mouth before letting himself swallow, feeling his throat constrict around the wetness as though reluctant to let go. The fever still rested in him, although lessened enough that he could think without the weight of a fog, and after four careful swallows, he poured a small amount into his cupped hands.

  "Hey, boy," he called to the gelding. "No creek nearby, I'm sorry."

  Steady's head lifted and his nostrils flared, clearly catching the scent of fresh water. He walked over and lowered his head to the offering, ruffling softly at it before taking the water up, spilling a little onto the blanket as he did so.

  "Easy there," Gabriel said, reaching up to stroke the muscular neck with a damp hand. "More where that came, from, but not so much we can be foolish."

  The horse's hide was cool and smooth, with no sign of having been neglected or thirsty. He suspected, if he looked carefully, he would find tiny fang marks somewhere on the horse's legs, too.

  "Thank you," Gabriel said out loud. "For this, and for all else you have done."

  He had no idea what the tree growing out of nowhere meant, what lesson he was supposed to take from its sudden appearance, if there was in fact any lesson at all. But he had been fool enough to ride into the desert without supplies; he would not worsen his foolishness by being disrespectful of the gift, no matter what price he would, eventually, inevitably, pay for it.

  And he would pay, he knew that. He had thrown the gauntlet into the Mudwater, and he’d thought she’d thrown it back. But now…

  What he did with it was up to him.

  He looked around at the desolate campsite, down at the blanket and pack, then up again at the tree, the rising sunlight shimmering around the branches.

  "Whatever your purpose," he told it, "I want no part. Do you understand?"