by Hilari Bell
All the passenger had to do was pick a destination and the bubblehead would take you there. And if you picked a destination that was dangerous, in restricted waters, or in the middle of dry land, the boat politely told you it couldn’t go there and explained why.
Jase rented a two-seater, since he had no need for anything larger and even this small boat cost a full car payment. He climbed over the high side and into a bucket seat not unlike the Tesla’s. Since it was raining, he ordered the plastic canopy up.
“Would you like to input a Destination?” the mechanized voice asked. “Or if you wish to describe what you’re looking for, I can suggest Options?”
“Options,” Jase told it. “I’m looking for . . .” Ley wouldn’t be on the list of words it was programmed to recognize. “Ocean. Scenery. Beauty. Shore. Picnic.”
After he’d healed the ley, he’d need to get to shore as quickly as possible. He thought it would take them a while to get here, but he wanted to be well concealed by the time they did.
A map screen extruded from the control panel in front of him, and two dozen red dots began to blink, showing the locations that matched his criteria.
There was a lot of beautiful scenery on the Alaskan coast. If he hadn’t added a need to picnic on the shore the whole map would probably be alight. As it was . . .
Jase almost chose the nearest dot that was out of the bay and in the Sound itself, but that was a major boat lane. He needed someplace less crowded—if nothing else, knowing that people in other boats were wondering what he was doing would make him too self-conscious to heal.
That took anyplace near the glacier out of the running—too many tourists.
He finally chose a dot somewhat distant from the others, though it was farther than he’d prefer. But the coastline near it looked accessible, and it was out of the main tourist and shipping routes.
“Excellent choice!” the boat enthused when Jase punched the dot for his destination. “Under current wind and tidal conditions we should reach that point in one hour and twenty-two minutes.”
It whirred out of the slip as it spoke, and turned toward the bay’s mouth. Jase settled back and prepared to exercise patience. The only complaint tourists had about the bubblehead was that if you told it to go faster it said Yes sir, and hummed right along at the same speed it was going before. The boats chose their speed with safety as the first priority, and the fact that most of them were rented by the hour as the second.
They were safe, smart, and reliable—but they didn’t go fast.
Besides, Jase figured he could use the extra time to work on the weakest part of his plan—healing the sea.
Raven might have said that he was healing the ley through the sea, but that was too abstract for Jase. And working with dust that hadn’t been bound to him or his car, he needed all the reality he could get.
This dust still held the magic that old shaman, Atahalne, had created. It should be able to heal . . . if Jase could do his part.
No Raven to talk him through it this time. No empathy with the sea at all. Most of the tourists on the ferries Jase had taken went out onto the deck to breathe the air, and look at waves and things. Jase had always joined the seasoned commuters, who sat in the center of the cabin and worked or read or watched something on their pods.
The sea was just water as far as he was concerned—water that sometimes heaved up and down, till his inner ear twisted his stomach into heaving chaos.
At least the chop, even after he’d emerged from the bay, was light today. And another thing bubbleheads were good at was adjusting their angle to the waves, to decrease the motion as much as possible. Though it was still beginning to go up and . . . Don’t think about that!
Sea person he wasn’t—but he wasn’t a forest person either, and he’d healed the taiga. Could he find that sense of life, of energy, that he’d felt in the taiga here in the sea?
But the trees in the taiga, everything in that icy bog, had been passionately alive. The sea wasn’t. Was it?
He’d never find out sitting in a bubble.
They were out of the bay now, running down the coast. Rain still pattered on the plastic shield, but the temp gauge told him it wasn’t too cold outside. And it wasn’t as if his boat was moving fast enough to generate much wind.
“Top down,” Jase ordered, and the shell slid smoothly into the hull.
The rain was cold, but after the stuffy heat of the bubble the air was amazingly fresh. No doubt he had to experience the sea in order to heal it, so Jase shrugged deeper into his jacket and prepared to endure.
After the first few minutes it wasn’t that bad. Yes, his face got wet and he had to keep wiping water out of his eyes, but without the rain-streaked plastic blurring his vision, trees and rocks loomed through the mist that shrouded the shore like a high-priced Asian watercolor.
The boat’s electric motor was so quiet Jase could hear the silence—an active absence of sound that showcased the gurgle of the waves and the screeching cry of a gull. Eventually his course took him behind the spur of land at the west end of the bay, and the chop eased.
He passed a raft of sea otters—they hung around most of the coastline looking cute for the tourists. With Otter Woman in mind, Jase didn’t find them all that cute. But they gazed back at him with a sober curiosity that didn’t seem unfriendly.
Even this far from the glacier, he passed bits of sea ice, their jagged edges sculpted into sharp points and smooth curves by sun and water. He could see the green-white curves beneath the surface as well, because the sea was clear as glass.
A soft ripple welled in front of the bow, and flowed into a long V behind the boat. Jase pulled down his hood and let the drizzle soak into his hair—wet, like the sea. He stretched down to dip his hand in the water and found it colder than the rain.
When he touched his fingers to his tongue he tasted salt, but not as intensely as he’d expected.
What he was experiencing now wasn’t the sea—this was the air above the sea. But if he had to immerse himself in the sea in order to heal it, his plan was in trouble. Water that cold could kill in minutes. No way was he—
“Destination reached.” The bubblehead came to a stop.
The shore was farther than it had looked on the map, but the beach was broad and sandy, and the tree-clad hills were low enough not to trap him in the open. Being at sea was the point, after all. Jase was beginning to get a sense of it too. Not alive, not like the taiga had been, but it held a subtle energy that was utterly different. Clear and cold and empty, though Jase knew it held all kinds of life. Its currents swept the globe, charging the climate and the atmosphere, as much a part of the world as the rock plates he lived on.
Was this enough? This clean sweep of energy that felt so tenuous he wasn’t even sure if he was sensing something, or just imagining it. And what did you say to heal the sea?
He wasn’t really here to heal the sea, anyway, and he had a feeling magic wouldn’t work with lies.
I hope this works was no longer in his heart.
What was?
Gima. He was here to heal, not the sea, but his grandmother, and the injury to her that was tearing his family apart. He wanted to heal all the people he loved. Why not throw the sea into that mix?
Jase pulled the vial from his pocket.
“I want to heal,” he said. Truth welled like blood into the words. “I want to heal Gima, and my father and grandfather, and everything that hurts, that isn’t right like it should be. I want you to be well. Be well,” he whispered, to his grandmother, and the sea, and all the world—to anything that hurt wherever these waters might reach.
He took a pinch of dust and cast it into the sea.
He was braced this time for the cold sweep of power, so it didn’t knock him off his seat. Jase had just released his grip on the side of the boat when the water surged beneath it, heaving the bubblehead up like an express elevator.
“Whoa!”
The bubblehead slithered down the si
de of the swell, so steeply tilted that for a moment Jase thought it would overturn.
The bubblehead evidently thought so too. The plastic top shot out, bruising his fingers before it closed over his head—which Jase regretted, as the boat bobbed queasily in the choppy aftermath.
The wave that had thrown him skyward was rolling toward shore—there’d better not be any houses on that beach, or they’d be swamped!
But even as he watched, the swell slumped and flattened. By the time it reached the beach it was just a slightly taller breaker, tumbling up the sand.
“Overturning the craft is not recommended,” the boat’s computer told him sternly.
“I hear you! Top down,” Jase added. “And take me to the shore. Quickly.”
It didn’t move quickly, but it wasn’t long before the incoming waves seized the bubblehead and started pushing it toward the shore. The receding waves tried to pull it back, but the motor fought them, and within moments Jase heard sand grate under the hull.
He climbed out, ignoring the cold water sloshing into his shoes, grateful to be on land again. All this motion was affecting his stomach.
The bubblehead was heavier than he’d expected, but Jase put his back into it and dragged the small craft up the beach well past the tide line.
He typed a message on the com screen, and set it to blinking so they couldn’t miss it. Then he scrambled up the small bluff and into the trees.
The hills that had looked so low and gentle from out at sea were a lot rougher when he tried to climb them, but the thick tangle of spruce and scrub suited his purpose.
Jase found a thicket so dense he didn’t think he could be seen from the beach or the sky, not even by something looking through an eagle’s eyes, and settled in to wait. And wait.
Almost twenty minutes later, when his butt was growing cold and numb from the hard ground, an eagle swooped out of the hills and began to circle over the sea where Jase had healed it.
Jase froze, trying not even to breathe as it looped a few more times, then flew to the beach and perched on the bubblehead’s side.
A hunter must watch with his eyes alone, his grandfather had told him, long ago. Don’t turn your head to follow its movement. Ease your breathing. And stop wiggling!
Now Jase was old enough to take that advice. Only his eyes moved to track the sleek brown shape that trundled out of the surf and up the beach.
She changed as she came, the short legs lengthening, the furry body bulging and broadening as the otter’s torso lifted upright. It was an old woman who walked the last few steps to the bubblehead, giving it the barest glance before she lifted her gaze to the hillside.
Looking for him.
Jase didn’t even dare to close his eyes. Otter Woman hadn’t been able to sense the pouch when she’d been in his bedroom, and the tiny bit of dust he had now was much less than that. Still, Jase had to suppress a gasp of relief when her gaze passed over his hiding place.
She turned to the eagle and said something Jase couldn’t hear, and the bird hopped down and began to shift.
A swarm of brown dots flew out of the woods to the west and buzzed around the boat—bees, Jase thought, though he was too far off to be certain. The dots circled into a whirling column, tighter and tighter, till the buzzing mob merged into the shape of a man.
As the two faces solidified, the hair on the back of Jase’s neck rose. They looked about ten years older than they had when they’d caught Jase in the parking lot, but the eagle was the wide receiver and the bees were the linebacker. He was also the man Jase had thought might be an undercover cop, though he’d looked older then than he did now. Of course, a shapeshifter could probably be any age he chose. Was he also the swarm of bees that had attacked Jase’s car on the way home?
Otter Woman had ignored these riveting metamorphoses and was reading Jase’s note. It didn’t take her long.
If you kill her, I’ll heal the air and finish it.
Jase didn’t think it was all that complicated, but the three shifters discussed it for a long time. He could tell they were arguing, but not what it was about. Otter Woman did seem to be in charge, but sometimes she listened to the eagle man. They didn’t look like high school football players now.
And it was just as well Jase had chosen a beach away from the tourist routes—Alaska wasn’t a popular choice for nudists, and a boat captain who depended on family business might have complained to the authorities. The transmitter on the boat, rented on his charge account, would tell them exactly who had been on that beach at this time.
Jase was beginning to get impatient when Otter Woman made a sharp gesture, evidently settling something, and then turned and walked down the beach into the sea. She started to change shortly after she reached the waves, but Jase kept his eyes on the man who was melting and morphing back into an eagle.
He’d never be able to keep track of an otter in the ocean, but he could see the direction an eagle flew.
The man obliged him by taking off in a straight line, west and a bit north.
Jase wished he dared take out his com pod, but the bee man lingered, running his gaze over the tree-clad hillside.
If you hold still you’ll be invisible. He could all but hear his grandfather’s voice. Animals see motion more easily than anything else.
Eventually the man stopped looking, and his shape fragmented into bees once more. But instead of flying off, the swarm spread out and settled around the bubblehead. Jase had read that insects didn’t have much distance vision, so he allowed himself to grin.
He knew Otter Woman didn’t think much of human intelligence—in fact, he was counting on that. But this trap was so blatant it was almost insulting.
And none of the shifters he’d met had struck him as patient people, either.
Jase settled in to wait him out. The drizzle had stopped, and his rain gear was keeping him warm. Time to draw on his heritage, and channel his inner hunter. Because he knew what he was hunting, and the man on the beach didn’t. Bee man would give up before he did.
Jase hung on to that thought and channeled his inner hunter for the better part of an hour, while his butt began to ache and his legs went numb. If he moved around he was sure to be seen, so he hung on to his heritage and waited some more.
After most of another hour had passed Jase was cursing his heritage, and Raven, who’d gotten him into this, and his own stupid half-assed plan. Only the memory of Gima, lying against the hospital pillows with her eyes sealed shut, kept him there.
The sun was breaking through the overcast when the swarm finally lifted, coalesced, and flew off in the same direction the eagle had taken.
It occurred to Jase that Bee Man might have left a few bits of himself, to keep watch and sound an alarm, but Jase had to move now. He stretched out his legs, swearing as cramped muscles screamed, and crawled out of the thicket. Then he pulled out his com pod, centered the GPS app on north, and drew a line across the screen in the direction his enemies had gone. Once he had the line locked, he brought up a map beneath it.
One name leaped out at him, but Alaska Natives had settled all over the state. Just because there was a town there now didn’t mean that was the place he was looking for.
There was an easy way to find out. Jase opened a new window and switched the function to call.
“Gramps? Is there one of those rock piles that opens to the Spirit World somewhere along this line?” He dragged the map to the place he wanted it to appear on his grandfather’s screen as he spoke.
“What?” Jase had never seen his grandfather look so startled. “Why do you—”
“Just humor me,” Jase said. “Are any of those rock-pile spirit places on this line?”
His grandfather looked down. “Yes, in fact. There’s a spirit portal west of Whittier, just past the ruins. There’s an Olmaat rock on the beach below it, too. A very sacred site.”
“What’s an Olmaat rock?”
“Why do you care? Aren’t you going to ask how your grand
mother is?”
“If she’d waked up, Mom would have contacted me,” Jase said. The furious grief in the old man’s eyes was unbearable. “How is she?”
“Gone,” said his grandfather.
Jase’s heart froze, then began to beat harder. “You don’t mean . . .”
“No, she’s not dead, but her spirit’s still gone off somewhere. And I don’t understand why she’s not coming back.”
Jase had never heard his grandfather admit there was anything he didn’t understand.
“I don’t know what else to do.” The old man’s controlled expression began to crack. “I swear, if she doesn’t wake soon I’ll have to try your father’s way. But with her spirit wandering, I’m afraid that might do her more harm than good, and I don’t know . . .” His grandfather’s voice husked into silence, and he cleared his throat.
Jase’s own throat was too tight for speech.
“Why are you asking about the sacred sites?” the old man went on. “There’s nothing I could do for her there that I can’t do here.”
“I . . .” He could hardly tell his grandfather he was wrong about that. “Thanks, Gramps. I’ll talk to you later. Keep Gima safe. Keep watch on her.”
His grandfather frowned, and was opening his mouth to ask another question when Jase cut the com. He had no answers, and it would be too cruel to raise his grandfather’s hopes and then fail.
He couldn’t fail.
Chapter 12
It was just after four when the bubblehead returned Jase to the boat dock, and a five-hour drive from Seward to Whittier. Jase thought about checking in at home, but there was too much risk that his parents would try to keep him there. Instead he stopped at a restaurant in Anchorage for dinner, and then commed home and left a message that he’d decided to stay with Gramps for a while, and see if he could help him out.
His mother would find out Gramps hadn’t agreed to that the next time she called for an update on Gima’s condition, but she and his grandfather would both think that Jase had decided to show up at the door and then talk his way in.
