Spirit Dances

by C. E. Murphy

  He had a shamrock pinned to his lapel. I touched it with a fingertip. “I think that’s cheating. You’re supposed to wear green, not be nominally adorned by it.”

  “Are you going to pinch me?”

  “Would I get fired?”

  Morrison laughed aloud, which I didn’t think I’d ever heard him do before. While I gaped, he offered me his elbow. “Don’t risk it. You clean up good, Walker.”

  “You’re not half bad yourself, sir.” I tucked my hand into his elbow and, unable to resist, added, “Except unusually short.”

  “You didn’t warn me you were wearing platform heels.”

  “If I was wearing platform heels your nose would be in my clea—” I cleared my throat, and Morrison, God bless him, slid a glance at the half-mentioned décolletage. We were exactly the same height, he and I, and in police-issue shoes neither of us ever had the height advantage. Back when we were still pissing in each other’s cereal for the crime of existing, I’d been known to wear extra-stompy thick-soled boots for the sheer glee of looking down on him. In retrospect, which I was only applying right now at this very moment, it had never seemed to bother him at all. “Right. Rented tux?”

  “Will it damage your perception of me if I say I own it?” Morrison guided me to the theater doors, where I handed over the tickets, and then he walked me down the long aisle as though he had a great deal of practice at it. I, who wore heels seldomly, clung to him like an ingénue and couldn’t answer the question until he had me safely seated.

  Then I couldn’t answer it anyway, because I was too busy gazing around the theater. We were twelve rows from center stage, just where the seating’s rake started to pick up speed. “Holy crap, these seats are fabulous. I’m going to have to go down to Solid Ground and thank Rita again. Wow.”

  Morrison agreed, “Not bad,” and settled down to glance through the program, which gave me a few seconds to examine him surreptitiously. I always thought he looked like an aging superhero with his silvering hair and blue eyes and strong build, but in the tux, man, there was no aging about him. He just looked like a superhero. Not that most of them wore tuxedos, but that wasn’t the point. When he glanced at me, an eyebrow elevated—I wasn’t all that surreptitious, apparently—I blurted, “It doesn’t. Damage my perception of you. Owning a tux, I mean. You probably do this kind of thing all the time. Isn’t a lot of being a captain political?”

  Morrison looked at me long enough that I began to feel like maybe my scattering of freckles had turned green to match the dress. All he said, though, was, “Enough to warrant a tuxedo, yes.” Then he smiled, which was about as accustomed an expression as his laugh earlier had been. It looked good on him. It looked very good on him. Brightened up his blue eyes and made him seem younger than his silvering hair suggested he was. “And you? What about the dress? I didn’t know your legs were that long, Walker.”

  That was patently untrue. I had worn a much shorter skirt to the Halloween party I’d thrown, and Morrison had definitely seen me that night. He’d even danced with me. I opened my mouth to say that, and for once realized ahead of time that it was a completely inappropriate response to what amounted to a compliment from my boss. I managed to say, “Thanks,” without strangling on my tongue, then brushed my palm over the velvet’s nape. “Ha. No. I mean, it’s not rented, but it’s a very expensive dress to hang in the back of my closet for the rest of my life. If I’m lucky, Phoebe will get married or something before I’m too old to wear it so it’ll get taken out a second time.” God, I was talking and I couldn’t shut up. I seized the program from Morrison, willing to start gnawing on it to give my mouth something else to do.

  “I never really thought that was fair. Men rent tuxedos, but women have to buy their formal wear. It’s like haircuts. Your hair isn’t that much longer than mine, but I bet you pay three times as much to get it cut.”

  “Actually I go to a barber who cuts it for seven-fifty.” I grinned as Morrison shot me a look comprised equal parts of astonishment and impressed-ness. “What? I’ve been going to him since college. I’m not going to pay fifty dollars for a haircut, and if he screws up, which he never has, hair’s not like a leg. It grows back.”

  “So it does.” He took the program back from me—at least I was only bending it, not chewing on it—and flipped through it without really looking. “Know anything about this group?”

  “Just what I read on their website. Native American group on tour, doing a kind of ghost dance. Supposed to be pretty uplifting.”

  “You, ah…” Morrison, who had been doing so well at the casual conversation thing I’d mostly forgotten to be an idiot, lost his cool with a cautious glance toward me.

  All of a sudden I wondered how much of how he was acting was just that—an act—to give me a comparatively stable evening after a bad day. It was a depressing thought, and I seized on his failure to finish a sentence a little desperately, just to keep the conversation going. “Me ah what?”

  “Is the ghost dance something you’re familiar with?”

  Half a dozen answers, ranging from amused to annoyed, vied for a chance to answer that. I went with dry academia, mostly because I didn’t think Morrison expected it. “The ghost dance was invented in the late 1880s by a spiritual leader who’d had a vision. It caught on and spread around the western U.S. for a while. It’s supposed to help assure worldly happiness and make the time until you see your dearly departed again seem less awful.”

  Morrison’s eyes widened in respect, at which point I couldn’t keep a straight face anymore. “Sorry. I only know any of this because they had an article about it on their website this afternoon. It’s not automagic shamanistic mojo knowledge.”

  “Automagic?”

  “Matic. Automatic. Anyway,” I said a little too loudly, particularly in view of the fact that the lights were dimming and everybody was settling into their seats and into silence to await the performance. A few people looked around at me and I covered my face with one hand, mumbling, “Anyway, it’s just research, nothing strange,” into my palm.

  Morrison murmured, “Just as well,” and pulled my hand down so I was watching when the lights slammed up and movement exploded across the stage.

  A woman garbed in gold literally flew on. Her costume trailed glittering feathers from the arms, her body arched forward like a bird facing the wind. There were no wires, though the height and length of her leap said there had to be: I couldn’t imagine how anyone might have thrown her so far. She was caught by two men who appeared from the wings at the last possible moment, eliciting a gasp from the audience. With no recovery time at all, they flung her skyward again, back across the stage, and the theater’s silence was filled with an eagle’s call.

  Every hair on my body stood up and I shuddered violently, thrown viscerally into memory. She was the thunderbird, the giant golden eagle, enemy of the serpent and an archetypical character of Native American mythology. I had, months ago, been briefly claimed by a thunderbird. This woman’s dance, her freedom of spirit and her raw unadulterated strength, her utter confidence in herself and in the men—four, now—who threw her across the stage and captured her safely again, embodied the power and certainty the mythical beast had imbued me with.

  There was no music, even as the dance progressed, only the eagle’s cry and a sometimes lonely howl of wind that matched her fall or rise as her partners gave her wings. A fifth man came onstage, sinuous, winding, dangerous. Panic struck me through the heart, knowing what would come next. They fought, the thunderbird and the serpent, and in the end died together, tangled in eternity. I was on the edge of my seat by then, fingers digging into the seat-back in front of me, and when the drums began for the next piece, I was lost.

  None of the dances were entirely traditional Native American. They all incorporated Western dance styles, throws and leaps and lifts mixed with atonal harmonies and storytelling hands, but it resonated. The drums themselves could have carried me to another world—I had one myself, which had
been given to me with the express purpose of doing just that—but the dancers brought it to another level, generating so much energy I could feel it buzzing against my skin. I kept my vision resolutely in this world. I could easily have watched their auras, watched the auditorium fill with the power they were dancing up, but I wanted to see them, to revel in the beauty of humanity in motion. I could get tickets to another performance and watch them on a mystical level then, if I wanted to.

  A wonderful formality came over them as they began the last dance. They came out of the wings in costumes unlike any they’d worn yet, five of them painted and dressed as totem poles, with another five in black and the final five wearing ferocious animal face paint and wigs. Bear, raven, coyote, rabbit, whale, dancing and weaving together with foot-stomping excitement. My heart raced like I was up there myself, putting everything I had into the performance as I watched them dance the story of a single man who came into the spirit world and learned the ways of the beasts. The rabbit taught him speed, the bear, strength. The coyote taught him cleverness and the raven taught him joy, and the smiling whale oversaw wisdom. He took it all into him self, and the totems grew taller, the masked dancers astride the shoulders of their black-clad partners, and the totems in front of them to make the illusion of height and continuity. Energy poured from them, virtually lighting the theater even without the benefit of my second Sight turned on.

  Then the solitary dancer went to each of the totems, and was blessed by them, taking on their aspect. I couldn’t explain how he did it, but he became the bear when the bear totem touched his head: he filled with strength and size and danced a bear dance across the stage, catching salmon and eating berries and slumbering through winter before the raven touched him, and he became a creature of sky and scavenging and sledding on snow. He—they—were astonishing, transforming with each touch, and in doing so giving honor to the world that man had come from, and so often ignored. My chest ached with breathless tears, with admiration for their skill and with joy for the strength they offered to the audience. It seemed impossible that anyone should watch their performance and be unmoved.

  And I was right, because as the lights came down, the audience surged to its feet, shouting, clapping, whistling, stomping their feet. Everyone around me except Morrison and myself, because he caught my shoulder as I started to stand, and kept me in my seat with an urgently whispered, “Walker!”

  Bewildered, I turned to him with a protest forming, but he caught my wrist and yanked my hand up, putting it in my line of vision.

  Putting a clearly defined coyote’s paw in my line of vision.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  My yelp was drowned beneath the cheering and applause from those around us. Just as well: it sounded suspiciously like a coyote’s cry. I yanked my hand from Morrison’s grip to press it against my throat.

  It felt like my hand. It felt perfectly normal, aside from the residual power of the dance still playing my skin. Morrison, wearing the most stricken expression I’d ever seen, shrugged out of his tuxedo jacket and draped it around my shoulders, hiding my entire torso. Hiding my paws. I thrust a foot out to stare at it, but my legs were unaltered. Just ordinary human feet in expensive sandals.

  I wasn’t one who typically cared for being manhandled, but I was just as glad when Morrison caught my elbow and levered me to my feet and down the aisle, muttering apologies to the still-applauding patrons upon whose toes we trod.

  My shoes, the cause of so much caution earlier, didn’t stymie me at all now that I needed to run for the doors. Here I’d always thought women in the movies who ran in their heels were just managing a lucky take. Turned out it could be done, if necessary.

  To my dismay, the ushers held the theater doors open behind us. In terms of fire code that was no doubt the right thing to do, but in terms of getting me away from the roiling energy the dancers had called up, it was no good at all. I whispered, “Out, out, out, get me out of the building, just get me out,” like it was a mantra to keep me safe, and Morrison did so, hustling me ahead of the breaking-up crowd.

  The crisp March night air knocked away the sensation of power crawling over my skin. I sagged, willing to stop right there, but Morrison tugged me farther down the street, well away from the smokers who filed out after us. Half a block from the theater he sat me down on a short wall and crouched in front of me, working hard to watch my eyes instead of my hands. “You all right, Walker?”

  I shivered my hands out from inside his jacket. They still felt normal, but they were tawny gold and fur-ruffed, pads where my palms belonged and black claws where I was meant to have fingernails. All the times I’d changed shape when scrambling to my garden—into the private center part of me that reflected my soul—I’d known my psychic shape had changed, but it had always felt the same. I’d also known it was only my psychic self changing, not my physical form.

  This was definitely physical. And of all the people in the world to lose control in front of, I’d chosen my boss. I had half a dozen friends who would take it in stride, but no, I had to go all magic-freaky on the one guy who was about as enthusiastic about my esoteric skills as I’d once been.

  The paws were wavering, my fingers starting to show through as fur faded. It wasn’t me undoing the magic; in fact, given how hard I was focusing on the horrible fact that I was turning into a dog, it was a miracle the magic was letting loose at all. But I was outside the dancers’ sphere of influence, away from the power of their dance and reverting back to normal. There was no pain or discomfort, just a gradual slip back to normality, though when my fingers had returned, I still had the distinct, uncomfortable feeling that it would only take a moment’s concentration to bring the paws back.

  My skin didn’t tingle with the dancers’ energy anymore, but the core of magic inside me felt replenished. Or, if not replenished, at least a whole lot more willing to play ball than it had been since that morning. It felt like my reserves had been topped up and were bursting the dam, ready for use and impatient for me to do so.

  Morrison’s shoulders dropped about four inches when my ordinary hands peeked out from his jacket. He closed his eyes for a full five seconds, breathing carefully through his nostrils, then looked at me again. “What the hell was that?”

  I laughed, a high trill of unhappy sound, and pulled the jacket up around my head to hide in it. It smelled good, like Morrison. Just a hint of old-fashioned cologne, nothing trendy or high-priced. I breathed it in for a few moments, trying to regain my equilibrium and trying not to think about Morrison or his cologne being aspects which could allow me to regain it. After what seemed like forever, but probably wasn’t, I whispered, “Coyote’s been telling me all along that shapeshifting was something I could do in the real world.”

  “Sha…” Something about the way Morrison said half a syllable tidily filled in everything that might have followed it. It went something like this: “Shapeshifting? Are you insane, Walker? People don’t shapeshift!” followed hard by except she was just shifting shape in front of me, and I’m not stupid enough to disbelieve that after everything I’ve seen her do the last year, all of which I heard clearly enough that I actually said, “You’re not stupid at all,” in response, and made myself meet his gaze.

  For a man who’d just hauled his date out of the theater because she was changing form, he looked remarkably calm. Slightly amused, even, though he said, “Thanks,” with perfect solemnity. “What happened in there?”

  “Couldn’t you feel it? The energy they were putting out?”

  He shook his head, though his mouth said, “Sure, performers do that. I’ve never seen anybody…”

  “Get hairy?” I volunteered weakly. His lips twitched and a tremulous smile of my own shook some of my nerves loose. “It was more than just a performance, boss. They were channeling real power. They were…making magic.” I’d never thought about where the magic came from, not clearly, but I’d experienced similar rushes of power on much smaller scales. My drum could fill me up that way,
but never until I overflowed so strongly that it started manifesting in physical changes. The dancers had created something new and strong that hadn’t been there before, something powerful enough to affect me. “You really didn’t feel anything? Nothing like…like your skin was going to come flying apart? You must have. Everybody did. The way the audience came to its feet…”

  “I saw a hell of a performance, Walker. The kind that makes you want to cheer, sure, but something bigger happened to you, or we’d all be running around howling by now.”

  I blinked at him, then laughed. “You’d make a pretty werewolf, boss. With your silver hair and blue eyes? The girl wolves would be, I don’t know, whatever girl wolves do. Panting after you.” Morrison snorted, and I didn’t want to tell him “panting after you” was a damned sight better than suggesting they’d be sniffing around his hindquarters, which had been the first thing that came to mind.

  Somehow, though, his pragmatism made me feel better. I got to my feet and he straightened out of his crouch, looking like he wasn’t sure if he should offer support again. “I’m okay. Boss, somebody in there, the choreographer, one of the dancers, maybe a bunch of them, but somebody in there is like me. That dance, the last one, the shapeshifter’s dance… that had intent in it. I don’t know if it was just the storytelling or if they’ve got something else going on in there, but they were working so much power with so much discipline that it affected me. I’ve got to talk to them.” I’d started walking back to the theater without noticing. Morrison caught up and touched my arm, slowing me enough to notice his expression of concern.