by C. E. Murphy
“Your bro...” The sensation of draining blood, the wash of sudden cold, was so abrupt and real I looked at my feet, expecting to see a seeping red puddle expanding around them. There wasn’t one, but no warmth returned to my body as I wrenched my gaze back to the Master’s. “Cernunn... Oh, my god. Oh, my God. You’re... No, shut up, shut up!” I pinched my fingers together as Gary drew breath to speak again, like I could squish his lips shut with the gesture.
Surprise shot his bushy eyebrows upward and he said nothing, which astonished the part of my brain given over to thinking about details like that. Most of me, though, was trying to scramble through the jigsaw pieces and put them together at top speed. “You’re two-spirited,” I said in pure bogglement. “Like Billy and Caroline, or Aidan and Ayita. I mean, aren’t you? Pretty much? Except what, what, you’re—”
I was actually pacing, talking faster and faster, while my mortal enemy stood there watching me and looking increasingly amused. I didn’t think this was any kind of reprieve. I was pretty certain he wanted very much for me to put all the pieces together so I could understand just how badly I was screwed before he got busy with obliterating me. It would be more fun that way. More painful that way, and he thrived on pain.
It came together with an audible click in my ears, stopping me in my tracks. I wasn’t even looking at him, only staring blankly at the whispering mist as I spelled it out. “He’s an agent of order. I always knew that. He rides to collect souls, to bring them back into the circle of reincarnation and birth and death. Nobody’s ever going to convince me death is a good thing, but I get what he does and how he fits in. And you’re the other side of it. You’re the chaos aspect. You’re the reveling in pain and killing for the sake of it, no order or sense, just agony. And the thing is that you’re inseparable, aren’t you. I never thought about it, but you don’t just get one without the other, no matter how hard we might try. But, what?”
I turned to him, to Gary, to the Master, whose face was contorted with the hatred of comprehension. “Two spirits, one body. I know what that does in a human, I’ve seen the kind of power, the depth of magic, the resonance and the understanding it creates. Only, what, when you’re god-level magic, there’s only enough room in a body for one spirit? And he won it, back at the beginning of time?”
The question woke a battle in the mist, two vast amorphous creatures locked in a struggle that had the sense of eternity to it. Life sprang into being in Tir na nOg while they fought, and the idea of physical presence drifted into their awareness. They sought form from the world itself, and the world would only give up a certain amount of itself to them. Moons, oceans, continents, living things and dying bodies: they were shaped and shaved and made smaller, the intensity of eternal existence binding itself into a comprehensible form over an impossible amount of time. Pieces were shorn off, aspects that one or the other desired or rejected as they strove to fit into a body too small to contain all of eternity. In the end Cernunnos rose from the battle, so massive that his footsteps left lakes, kicked up mountains, felled species. But each step he took reduced him, not in power but in size, until his form bled with it, until he was more than an archetype. Until he was a god, a thing that could walk among men and awe them with his presence. He was all of the things that he had chosen in his making, all of the things that his other half had rejected: he was an acceptance of life’s circle, a thing that prided itself on smoothing that circle, on offering a kind of raw comfort in the face of oblivion.
He left the Master behind, nameless, formless, enraged and not, in the end, without power. The Master faded into the mist, becoming part of it, carrying hatred and pain into it until those things were invasive, easy to breathe in, impossible to separate from the body when inhaled, able to influence but never able to possess. For time immemorial he had struggled to become in the way that Cernunnos had, and for as long he had been denied.
Until now. Until today, when my best friends and I had brought him into the world.
“Oh, my god,” I said again, much more softly this time, and for the second time I was speaking to someone specific when I said the words. “When we first met, Cernunnos wanted me to ride with him. He almost said it in as many words, that he wanted me to be the other half of his soul. We’d be unstoppable, he’d said. Because if we were one, he’d be complete. There’d be no room left for you. All of this might have been averted. So many people might still be alive.” Frustrated rage suddenly spun me away from the Master, erupting in a useless bellow at the mist, as if Cernunnos would hear it: “You could have fucking mentioned some of this!”
“Have you no pity for me?”
Had he spoken in Gary’s voice, it might have worked. It almost did anyway. I turned back from my flash of fury to gape at the youthful lie that was my friend. He was not only strong and handsome, then. He was alone, hideously alone, a thing that had been abandoned in its making and had never found a place of safety in the world. Shaped into human form, in that moment he looked nearly broken, shoulders sagged and face averted. Anyone could pity something that pathetic.
But then like a misbehaving child, he glanced at me to see if the pose was working. To see if I was buying it. Any pity I had evaporated. “No. I don’t. Death, maybe death is inevitable, but you’re strife. You’re conflict and pain and hatred and cruelty, and you’ve pretty well chosen to be that, so no.”
“He took everything else from me!”
“I saw it, buddy. I watched your fight with Cernunnos. I just saw you both shed everything you didn’t like and keep what you thought would make you strongest. Trouble is, he was right, you were wrong. And now it’s over.”
Gary’s mouth peeled back in a vicious smile. “It ain’t over until your heart’s broken and your body’s mine, sweetheart. Let’s dance.”
He came at me, and the world shattered around us.
Chapter Twenty-Three
We were supposed to snap back to the Middle World. I could feel it in Gary’s intent, in his hunger for Coyote and Annie, and especially for Morrison, who was my heart. I assumed he had some kind of plan for me during the time that he was torturing and eating them, since it wasn’t like I would hang out and applaud his efforts without interfering, but that wasn’t foremost in his mind just then. He wanted to get us back to the Middle World.
Thwarting that was, for the moment, sufficient for me. I held the image of the Lower World in my mind as hard as I could, envisioning the yellow road that Coyote often walked along to get there. But it was mist-shrouded, just like Tir na nOg, too airy and breezy to hold on to. Gary’s nasty grin split again, and since I was right there, face-to-face with him, both of us tumbling through the ether, I took a page from a long-ago fight with Cernunnos and kneed the Master in the crotch.
It worked just as well on him as it had on Cernunnos. Outraged shock and pain wiped every other expression from his face and for a heartbeat I was able to take control of our headlong tumble through the ethereal planes. I was definitely putting that one in the handbook of fighting gods: groin shots were totally fair. I didn’t even feel guilty about it technically being Gary’s body, because if there was any chance of getting him back, it would be worth tenderized huevos.
I tore apart the mist, wrenching us toward the Lower World. The dispersing mist cooled, turning whiter, and the sky lightened until it finally tinted toward pale blue. The air chilled until I saw my breath on it, none of which was right for the Lower World. Despair shot through me and, like I’d offered him delicacies on a silver platter, the pain washed out of Gary’s face and turned to triumphant glee. My stomach clenched and I held on to him harder, desperate to reach the Lower World instead of crashing back into Seattle. We fell, picking up speed, until I was pretty certain terminal velocity would smear us both across the restaurant floor when we hit.
Mist became clouds and we broke through their bottom, falling past the edge of the world.
For a little while we were both too surprised to kill each other. The edge of the world zipped by, waterfalls cascading off it into fog and clouds. Stubborn greenery clung to the sides here and there, softening the wall of rock. Clouds receded, and after not very long at all, the bottom of the world, as flat and sharp-sided as the top, flew past. I looked for elephants carrying the whole disk on their backs.
There weren’t any, but below us there was a whole lot of nothing. Blue and clouds went on pretty nearly forever, and where they faded, they did so into the glimmer of stars. The only real sound was the wind screaming past our ears.
“Hah.” The sound tore away like the soft breath it was. I’d missed hitting the Lower World, but the Master hadn’t gotten us to the Middle World, either. We were in the Upper World, and I thought that might be just a smidge more in my favor than his. Either way, Morrison and the others weren’t here, which made it a place I was happy to be.
I didn’t, of course, have any particular idea how to conduct a fight while falling at top speed through an endless world of sky, but I still felt this was a better situation than I’d been in a few minutes ago.
Now, Renee said, and my body burst apart.
It came together again in a heartbeat, taking on a shape that was becoming familiar: the thunderbird. Rattler’s golden color cast itself over Raven’s vast wings; speed became second nature, a breathless, comfortable part of my being. Dangerous claws flexed and clenched: I had Gary’s body in their grip. My eyesight was agonizingly sharp, showing me all the stars into which we fell, but I had no more fear. I had wings, and with them flew, pulsing higher into the endless sky. Sooner or later I would reach the top of the world, and from there I could dash my prey against the ground and destroy it.
Gary twisted in my claws. I clenched them tighter, but he slithered and wiggled, more than just the shape of a man struggling to escape. I dropped him and dove after him, taking the moment of freedom to see what he fought to do.
Wings erupted from his body as easily as they’d been born from mine, but his were white in their moment of creation, and stained black in the endless sun an instant later. I remembered too late that he now had a raven spirit animal as well as the tortoise.
They came together as Raven and Rattler had, making a creature greater than the sum of its parts. Black feathers shellacked with thin tortoiseshell, their patterns perfectly reminiscent of Native Alaskan paintings. The bird’s neck extended, vulturelike, beak sharper and more deadly than a tortoise’s and stronger in its snap than a raven’s. Its legs shriveled, becoming thinner and more birdlike than a tortoise’s, but still four of them remained on its sleek long birdlike belly. Its tail elongated, thinning, whipping the sky with audible cracks, and the very, very human part of me buried in the thunderbird’s brain said, That’s a motherfucking dragon, guys. I got no dissent from the varied parts of me that were the spirit animals, even though I really, really wanted them to disagree. Still in the back of my brain, I said, Fuck, and slammed into the thing at hundreds of miles an hour.
It should have been broken into a thousand pieces beneath my force. Instead its tortoiseshell absorbed the impact, ripples of power shuddering through the broad wings and long spine. Or ripples of pain that it converted into power: this was a place of spirits, and where the flesh was weak, the spirit, in this case, was more than willing to work with that. We broke apart in a thunder of sound, its wings clattering like wooden wind chimes. It didn’t fly as easily as I did: it was weightier, clumsier, either with lack of practice or because tortoises were not known for their aerial skills. Neither, of course, were rattlesnakes, but at least snakes were lithe and quick, whereas tortoises tended to be more ponderous. Still, it flew, and until I could capture it and tear it back into its component parts, I wouldn’t be able to smash it against the earth and end it.
A spike of distress rolled through me, more poignant than the panic of naming my opponent a dragon. The thunderbird was murderously practical; it had no objection to destroying Gary’s body in order to kill the Master. I knew it was right, and that I shouldn’t, either, but it was an archetype, an idea of cold passions and no humanity. I was still very much human, and Gary was my best friend. Part of me knew what I might have to do, but I wasn’t yet ready to take it as writ.
The truth was, I would never be ready, even if that meant the end of the world.
I didn’t even have time to roll with that, to try to figure out what it meant for this whole fight, before the reshaped Master slammed into me with claws as deadly as my own. More deadly, maybe: heat blossomed where they struck me. A skree! broke loose from my throat and I tucked my wings, spinning in the air to dislodge the monster on my back. It shook free and I flung my wings wide again, stopping myself just long enough to get him below me. Healing magic spilled through me, cooling the fire within as I dived, plummeting at top speed to bash into him again.
His beak slashed me, making another line of fire across my shoulder. I bit into him as hard, coming back with a mouthful of flame, and spat it at him. It clung to his shell-covered feathers, but didn’t burn through. Of course not. Pain was his weapon. Mine was healing. I poured gunmetal-blue magic into his wound and he screamed.
He also healed, which was not at all what I’d hoped would happen. Swearing under my breath—it turned out a bird did that kind of muttered angry sound very well—I released him and backwinged to gain space to dive again, hoping to break him apart if I couldn’t rip him without damaging myself. When I hit again, he rolled and seized me with his claws. We bashed each other with our wings, slashing and clawing, never fearing to hit the world below as we fought like earthbound creatures tumbling through the sky.
Trouble was, hitting the earth was starting to sound necessary. The heat pouring through me from his attacks was incredible, my healing magic barely mitigating it. That had happened once before, too, back on the day we’d created Thunderbird Falls. The fire of wrongness that I’d experienced then had stunted my ability to heal. This felt like that, only vastly increased. His taint was heat, stronger than me, but then, he was a god, and I, for all my power, was only human. A very impressive human, with a newborn soul and all the attendant power boost that came with it, but in the end, I was human, and he was a disembodied god.
Well, now he was an embodied god, actually, which didn’t help at all. Gary’s spirit animals were strong enough to take a lot of abuse, and that was exactly what the Master wanted to mete out. I had to figure out how to separate them, to get the Master out of Gary without killing Gary. Thinking rationally while spinning through the air was not my strong suit.
Especially with the fire sluicing through me. Forget separating Gary from the Master: I was burning up, heat from the dragon’s strikes killing my guides and me. The fire felt like it came from the core of me, and pretty soon nothing I could do would hold the Raven-Rattler-Joanne compound together. I folded my wings, becoming a dead weight on the dragon, and after a few seconds it released me to escape and achieve a better angle of attack. I crashed my wings open, gaining height and trying to think of an escape route.
Rattler and Raven tightened their grip on each other, intensifying their presence as the thunderbird. I slipped, even though that was impossible. I was the body. They were the spirits. There was no way they could retain physicality without me in the mix.
Renee whispered, Wrong, and the thunderbird broke away from me.
Together, still bound as one, a creature of pure spirit, Raven and Rattler struck the dragon with claw and beak, and tore from it Gary’s spirit tortoise.
For an instant, a heartbeat, an eyeblink, I thought it was going to work. That they would rip the tortoise away, weaken the Master and come back to me. The tortoise pulled away, its link to Gary stretching and weakening and finally snapping. Gary fell, his raven wings faded to nothing: one spirit animal was not enough to hold the spirit-shaped dragon form. Inside that heartbeat, triumph spiked throu
gh me so strongly I felt faint from it. We were going to win.
The next heartbeat lasted forever, a gut-wrenching contraction as I realized that coming back to me had never been Raven and Rattler’s plan. They kept flying, tortoise spirit in their thunderbird talons. Kept climbing higher, receding fast as the Master and I fell away at speed. I saw, or maybe just imagined, my entwined spirit animals looking back at me once, and felt a whisper of a touch inside my mind: Goodbye, ssshaman.
Far, far away, in the distant reaches of the Upper World’s endless sky, thunderbird became phoenix, and immolated with the tortoise in its claws.
Gary hit the floor of the spire restaurant so hard it reverberated. I didn’t. I sank, slipping through like I was a ghost. A spirit. Like I was nothing, like I no longer existed, and I couldn’t stop myself from falling.
I am sorry, said Renee, and time unwound itself just a little.
A moment later, I hit the floor, too, my bones bending with the force of impact. I snapped upward, returning to my body from where my spirit had been sinking through the floor. My head bounced off rubble, and in the stars I saw Renee knitting then and now together.
Then was a heartbeat ago in the Upper World, two of my spirit animals given physical form by the third, who stole it from now to lend to then. She had taken my body away from the moment of impact and lent it to Rattler and Raven, giving them the ability to rip Gary’s tortoise away while releasing Gary and me back to the Middle World. He’d come all at once, part and parcel, but I’d been split spirit from body, and my spirit had landed first, falling through the floor. My body had come after, catching up after its physical presence was no longer needed in the Upper World.
Then and now became one, a time-slip of only a few seconds smoothing itself out without effort, but I lay where I’d hit, unable to even blink. I knew what would happen if I did, and I couldn’t let tears fall.
