by Hilari Bell
By the time they realized he hadn’t arrived, Jase hoped to be finished. And after they commed to tell him Gima was awake, it wouldn’t matter where he went.
Jase drove straight from Anchorage, through the tunnel and down into Whittier.
He’d never learned why some fool had constructed the huge apartment buildings to the west of town, or why they’d been abandoned. Perhaps they’d been damaged in one of the earthquakes that periodically shook the coast. Perhaps it was simply that no one wanted to live in Whittier.
The small town held only a cannery, and the harbor where the glacier cruises and the ferry docked. The basic setup wasn’t so different from many coastal towns, but in Whittier the mountains loomed over the harbor, and the ruins of the great apartment complex shadowed everything with an air of grim decay.
It was, of course, drizzling.
There were still roads out to the empty apartments and Jase drove there, parking the Tesla as far from the crumbling buildings as he could. He pulled his rain jacket out of the trunk, and after a moment’s hesitation strapped a canteen and belt over it. His grandfather had said there was an Olmaat rock on the beach below the spirit gate, so Jase set off walking along the shoreline, planning to find the Olmaat rock and then hike up. His grandfather’s version of “just past the ruins” could be anything up to a mile, in Jase’s experience, but the wet sand was firm under his gel-soles—easy walking. It was past ten now, and the low sun peeked under the cloud cover in scattered patches.
Jase hoped he’d recognize the Olmaat rock when he saw it. He hoped the spirit portal wouldn’t be hidden too deeply in the trees. He hoped that at least one of his ideas for using it would work—if he couldn’t enter the Spirit World, sooner or later his grandmother’s body would die.
And maybe his world if Raven was right about the tree plague, but that was a battle for the future, for other people to fight. Jase’s job was to get his grandmother back. After that, if he could, he’d finish healing the ley and be done with it. Before other people he loved got hurt, because of him.
He needn’t have worried about recognizing the Olmaat rock. Less than a quarter mile from the ruins, it stood out starkly against the chalky bluff, a misplaced chunk of dark gray stone that had probably been dumped by some ancient glacier. There was no other rock of that color, no other large rocks nearby. Jase could see why the first people who’d lived and fished off this shore had noticed it, and carved their symbols onto its surface.
But as he drew near, something about the rock began to tickle that other sense, the new one that had touched the life in the taiga and the cold clear energy of the sea.
There was a wrongness about the Olmaat rock, a darkness that made the back of Jase’s neck prickle—which was absurd. It was nothing but a big chunk of stone.
Jase couldn’t even read ancient Ananut symbols, and this had been some other tribe’s territory—but he’d bet those enigmatic lines and curves were signs of warning.
Keeping an eye on the dark rock—ridiculous! What did he think it was going to do?—Jase looked for a way up the bluff. It was only thirty or forty feet high, but it was too steep to climb and looked slippery.
A handful of yards beyond the rock Jase found a path up the bluff. It was only a narrow rim of beaten earth winding up the slope, but that was all the ancient people would have needed. Their modern descendants, at least the kind who regularly visited sacred sites, would probably make a fetish of using the ancient paths too.
“You could at least have put up a railing,” Jase grumbled as he started up the track. It wasn’t as bad as he’d expected. The drizzle was beginning to lift, the packed earth was sticky under his shoes, not slippery, and the path was wider than it looked from below.
As long as he didn’t look down.
When he neared the top, the trail turned into a cleft in the bluff that took him up the rest of the way. From the cliff’s edge Jase looked out over the bay. More open, far more inviting than Whittier itself, the bay was rimmed by the same kind of tree-clad slopes that rose behind him. Glaciers threaded through some of the gaps between those hills, flowing down to the quiet water.
The clouds were still too low for Jase to see the top of the higher mountains, but what he could see was beautiful.
Jase turned and took the path inland. The portal, when he reached it, was almost as unmistakable as the Olmaat rock: a pile of small boulders more than twice Jase’s height.
The stones that formed it were much the same color as the Olmaat rock, but they didn’t feel the same. Reaching out clumsily with that tenuous, other sense, Jase didn’t pick up anything except a hint of . . . other? travel? difference?
Whatever it was, it didn’t bother him the way the Olmaat rock did. Jase followed the path around the piled stones, in case there was an actual opening you could walk through and find yourself in the Spirit World.
There wasn’t.
That didn’t surprise him, but he’d have felt really stupid if he’d spent half the night trying other ways and then walked to the other side and found a door.
Now for the hard way.
The rain had stopped while he explored the rock pile, leaving the air so fresh it almost hurt to breathe. Jase pulled out his print of the death path and studied the complex stripes and swirls. This might be easier with a mirror, but he didn’t have one. And he had a hunch that magic worked more off the intent of the user than precise artwork, anyway.
He stripped off his rain jacket, then his shirt, flinching as cold air met warm skin. He pulled out the black marker and started with the deep V under the hollow between his collarbones, which seemed to center the whole design. After a while his hand grew more confident, and he began to pick up on patterns, as he sometimes did in the curving body of a well-designed car. The slanting lines over the ribs drew down to the center, not up and out. And that spiral down the middle of his torso, ending at his navel, was supposed to pull him not only down, but in.
In and down. Every black mark on his body confirmed that theme. By the time Jase was finished drawing he was almost sure his next idea wouldn’t work either, but it would be both faster and easier if it did.
He waited a few minutes for the marks to dry, then put his shirt and jacket back on. He found a flat face on the rock pile, where he’d have put an invisible door if he’d been designing it, took a deep breath and closed his eyes.
“I believe I can walk through,” he said firmly. “I believe I can walk right through these rocks and into the Spirit World. I believe.”
Mustering all the conviction he could—and having his eyes shut helped, when it came to not believing in solid rock—Jase walked forward as if the stone pile wasn’t even there.
He bruised his toe, his knee, and his knuckles when he threw out a hand to catch himself.
“Carp.” One of the knuckles bled. Jase licked it, and resigned himself to entering the Spirit World the hard way.
The design on his chest spelled out the answer. Down, and in, and darkness.
Jase found a place where he could sit with his back against the rocks and pulled out the sleeping pills. He was so tired, if he’d been in a warm bed, he probably wouldn’t have needed them. Leaning on a rain-wet pile of rocks, he took three.
Remembering what had happened before, he pulled off his belt and strapped his ankles together. If his real-world body should happen to start moving without his direction, he didn’t want it to go stumbling off a cliff. Hopefully the belt would prevent that.
Jase closed his eyes and tried to get comfortable. Eventually a mild dizziness swept over him, his muscles relaxed, and the darkness pulled him down.
Jase opened his eyes in the Spirit World.
It was the first time he’d had a chance to examine the place, without being distracted by arguing with Otter Woman or running for his life. It looked much like the real world, though the rock pile was more luminous than it should be in the Arctic twilight, and the rain that had happened so recently in his world . . . hadn’t.
At least this world was warmer. Jase set off, walking away from the bluffs. He couldn’t feel his real body now. If he didn’t try to connect with it, it should stay where he’d left it. And if he was right about how things worked in dreams, it didn’t matter what direction he went.
He concentrated on Gima, on his need to find her, to see her again. He passed through glades and meadows thinking about his grandmother. Jase was concentrating so hard that he’d walked past the pond before he realized that the frogs weren’t making their usual kid’s-horn honk, but instead croaking, “Hey boy. Heeey boy.”
Frog People was one of Raven’s allies. Raven’s enemies could assume any shape they chose. On the other hand, Jase needed all the help he could get. He turned and waded through the long grass to the edge of the pond. He didn’t have to wait long.
Frogs swam from every corner of the marsh; their heads emerged to make rippling circles in the water for a moment, before they ducked below the surface once more. They climbed on top of each other, in a squirming pile of green-brown skin and thrashing legs, and then began to melt and merge, not into human form, but into a giant frog. A human face emerged, like a mask pasted onto a wide, neckless head.
The bulging eyes opened and looked Jase over, and an expression of purely human skepticism brought the face to life.
“So you’re Raven’s boy. You don’t look like much.”
Jase didn’t care what he looked like.
“How do I know you’re not one of Raven’s enemies, assuming a frog shape?”
Frog People considered this. “You don’t. And I gotta say, there’s more chance of that now than there was at first. Used to be, everyone laughed when Raven said she could get humans to heal the ley. Now that ley’s flowing clear and clean and bright, almost to the node! One more healing would do it!”
The frog wiggled with enthusiasm, settling its feet and narrow rump deeper into the mud. “I tell you, the neutrals are looking at this different now. They’re saying if humans can fix the problem, why not let ’em? And some of the others, they’re beginning to drift into the neutral camp. ’Course, that only makes the enemies who’re left more stubborn. More desperate too. The girl was bad enough, but when that pouch was passed to you they said that was the end of it. That you could never use it, and Raven had failed, and we could all forget the matter. You proved ’em wrong. Made fools of them. They won’t forget.”
“Great,” said Jase. Unforgiving, humiliated enemies were just what he needed. “How do I get my grandmother out of here? I can’t go back to healing the ley until I do.”
Frog People’s shoulders weren’t designed to shrug, but they slid forward and back. “I don’t know how you get her out, but I know how they’re keeping her here. When Raven bound the catalyst to you, she also, inadvertent like, bound the people you’re linked to into that magic. That link, to magic they control, is what Otter Woman and the others are using to hold her.”
Dark green patches began to bloom on the skin of the human face, and Jase realized he didn’t have much time.
“How do I break that link?”
“Can’t.” The bulbous eyes blinked, and for a moment Jase thought he saw compassion in them. “You carry bits of her in every cell of your body. Even if you didn’t, and you could stop loving her, you can’t keep her from loving you. With the pouch in their control, that’s enough for them to bind her spirit.”
A small frog pulled itself out of the giant frog’s back as if extracting itself from a sticky mold. It wiggled the last webbed foot free and plopped into the water.
Jase couldn’t afford to be distracted. “What if I get the pouch back? If I control the dust, can I free her then?”
“Sure. Get that pouch into your hands, she’ll go scooting right out of here.”
More frogs were peeling away. He was running out of time.
“Where’s the pouch?” Jase asked urgently. “How do I get it?”
“No idea. Otter Woman and her frien’s hid it, and if they’re telling anyone where it is, they’re not tellin’ me.”
Frog People settled deeper into the pond as he disintegrated. “But it’s hiddun in your worl’. You’ll likely haffa free its magic here to fin’ it there. I wisssh oo . . .”
His face dissolved into a writhing mass of frogs before he finished, and Jase suppressed a grimace as he stepped away.
If that had been one of Raven’s enemies, disguising himself as Frog People, wouldn’t he have given Jase more “helpful” information than that? Something that would help him right off a cliff, instead of setting him to wander in circles.
Whether that was Frog People or not, one thing he’d said was true. Otter Woman had hidden the pouch, so she’d know where it was. And Otter Woman held Gima, so she’d know where his grandmother was and how to free her. Which meant the next logical step was for Jase to find Otter Woman, and see if he could learn anything from her.
He set off walking again, concentrating on Otter Woman and his grandmother. Though after what felt like hours of aimless wandering, he began to doubt that his finding-people-in-dreams-by-thinking-about-them theory was working as well as he’d hoped.
Jase pulled the canteen off his belt—which was still holding up his pants, here in this world—drank, then took out his com pod to check the time. When he thumbed it on, it turned into a giant beetle that wiggled its long antennae and bit his hand.
“Ow!” Jase shook it off, and watched it buzz away into the distance. This wasn’t his world. He’d do well to remember that. In fact, looking more closely, he saw that the filaments he’d taken for natural fiber in the center of the flowers to the right of his path were really a nest of fishhooks. The kind that had stuck in his fingers, and once hooked painfully through the top of his ear when his grandfather tried to teach him to fish.
Well, that was one direction he wouldn’t be go—
Jase stopped and stared at the hook-flowers. All of them grew on one side of the path, forming a barrier that herded him in the direction they wanted him to go. Just like the bramble patch had turned him onto this path. And that rock fall had kept him from climbing the slope, when he’d wanted to go up and look at the terrain.
Jase turned and walked directly into the flowers. He had to move slowly to keep the hooks from digging into his clothing, and despite his care, his fingers were pricked raw with extracting them by the time he came out of the flowers . . . and plunged into woods that grew so thickly he had to wade through them as if he were swimming.
Jase wasn’t even surprised when he came out of the woods and saw the glacier blocking his path—not the snow-capped sheets of ice they showed on d-vid, but its receding edge. The barren, plowed-up earth and jagged boulders looked like a bomb had been dropped there. He picked his way through the muddy rubble and climbed onto the ice. The places that weren’t studded with gravel were as slippery as he’d expected.
He walked across the glacier for a long time, crawling when the footing was too treacherous, with meltwater soaking the knees of his jeans. He prayed no sudden crevasse would open up to swallow him, but the forest on the other side of the massive ice field grew nearer, and nearer. When he slithered down, a clear path awaited him.
Jase didn’t even try the path, plunging into the thickest tangle of scrub he could see. When he finally struggled out, rubbing his scratched face and hands, he emerged into a glade. Otter Woman stood at the other side with the two men he’d seen at the beach beside her. At least this time they were clothed. The men’s faces were hard, but Jase thought he saw a cruel pleasure in the Bee Man’s dark eyes. How could he ever have believed they were kids his own age?
Behind the three of them was a raven in a cage, and Jase’s grandmother.
She was smiling widely and Jase started to run forward, but the raven squawked and flapped frantically. The bars were so close it couldn’t spread its wings, and when one of them brushed the cage it cringed. But it didn’t take its eyes off him, or quit shrieking, until Jase stopped running
and approached more cautiously.
He’d never seen his grandmother wearing makeup before. The ancient Ananut painted their bodies only for ceremony. Jase had heard modern Ananut girls joke that they were dedicating themselves to the hunt when they put on lipstick, but he’d never seen it on his grandmother.
“You surprise me, boy,” said Otter Woman. “I didn’t think you could come here without help.”
“I didn’t think you’d break your word,” said Jase. “So I guess we’re both stupid.”
Her lips tightened. “Would a human keep his word to a dog? That’s all you are to us. That’s all you are to Raven, no matter how sweetly she pleasures you.”
“Pleasures? We don’t . . . I mean, we haven’t . . .”
Jase dragged his mind from this conversational track with some difficulty. The last thing he wanted to discuss with Otter Woman was his sex life.
“OK, maybe we aren’t worth keeping your word to, but we don’t abuse our dogs. We don’t keep them prisoner while their bodies weaken, and their families suffer.”
Gima nodded, but she said nothing. Looking closely at her bright-colored lips, Jase saw that the smile had been painted on. Under the paint . . . were those stitches, holding her lips shut?
