by T. G. Ayer
And oddly, I felt somewhat bereft as a sense of coolness settled into my flesh, as though I'd been wearing a warm shawl which had just now been swept away into the black night, taking with it the comfort and the inexplicable sense of security.
With the cat having departed, I focused on the wide entrance to the caves, trying to ignore the green lawns around me, blinking away the vision that seemed to overlay my sight, as though determined to make me remember the funeral.
Not so long ago, and not long enough to relegate the day to a faded memory, white folding-chairs had been scattered across the grass while a priestess had presided over the gathering, sweeping gestures and words that performed a whirling, intertwining dance designed to comfort, to envelop, to support. Perhaps the tradition had helped lend me a calm I hadn't felt at the time, or perhaps it hadn't—I couldn't recall all that well.
What I felt now was a lilt of pain, a hot river of shared grief as I thought of the woman who now stood in the Odel mausoleum, the salt of whose tears I could scent with a twitch of my nose and a light huff of the mountain air. I reached the threshold, wary, swiping aside my thoughts as I approached the entranceway. The main door was closed, but a red light blinked on the security panel to the left of the threshold, and confirmed the presence of someone who lurked deep within the caves.
My panther nose had already identified the visitor, a rush of warmth and familiarity filling my heart as I punched in my personal code and waited the panel gave a soft beep—the perimeter alert confirmed the surroundings clear of intruders, ensuring the comings and goings of any visitor to the burial grounds didn't endanger the security of the place of rest of so many skinwalkers dead.
Only then did the panel beep a third time and the door clicked, letting out a soft hiss as the seal released and it swung open. I didn't wait for it to widen, just slid through the narrow opening and hit the button to shut the door behind me.
Chapter 20
The door shut behind me with a soft hiss, as though it too wanted to preserve the peace and serenity of the burial place. Many of the ancestors of the Walker community, going back at least three hundred years, were entombed within the heart of the mountain.
All those centuries ago, the first walkers made the trip to the Americas only to find that a small group of their brethren had arrived some decades before them, finding the cave system and setting down roots in the surrounding area. From the annals of the Chicago walker history, we knew that the walkers themselves had formed strong bonds with the tribes of the area, trading, and hunting alongside them. The elders surmised that perhaps it was the firm belief within the tribes in the existence of skinwalkers, humans who turned into spirit animals.
Though there were inherent differences between the stories of the tribes and the truth of the walkers' nature, both groups found a common ground on which to live while sharing the myths—or realities—with a deep mutual respect.
And from that bond rose the name by which many walkers went, more especially on the American continent, the name of SkinWalker, a nod to the ancient tribal beliefs. In fact, with the extent of intermarriage through the years, the lines between the ancient stories and the clans realities had tended to blur with the children of those marriages often revered as they manifested the natures of their parents thus increasing the prevalence of the skinwalkers within the tribes—though these new children were of a different nature, and perhaps even of a different species than that of the skinwalkers within the native tribes. I'd often discussed that history with my father and Grams, each of us adding opinion and question to a growing pot. The current belief was that modern history had relegated much of the tribal reality to a more censored version, a more palatable reality for the colonizers as they forged their way through the continent.
I understood the political need; would settlers have come had they been faced with a hard truth that the natives also comprised of paranormal creatures who shifted into dangerous animals, that the cougars and wolves and bears most likely to cross their paths were truly humans in animal form? Probably best not to highlight such dangers, especially not when the divide been the strongly spiritual and the native pagans was a yawning void filled with darkness, distrust, and judgment.
As a community though, our story was woven irrevocably with that of the local ancient tribes. A fact reflected strongly on the walls of the central passage of the cave system where one painting after the other depicted the evolution of the walker history from before their arrival on this land until most recently.
The painted scenes of the two first waves of the walker arrivals still evoked a depth of emotion every time I saw it. The first to step on the shores, of what is now known as Boston, was a small shipload of Norsemen, a mismatched company of traders, farmers, and warriors lost on the black oceans in their search of the northern reaches of the British Isles.
The stories of their arrival and settlement were ones filled with a curious blend of disappointment, expectation, fear, and discovery. Emotions which had managed to filter down through the ages. Or perhaps those were inherent in the nature of exploration that could be applied to everything new a person experienced in their lifetime.
The soles of my bare feet made no sound on the cool stone of the cave floor, though I was confident Mom would be well aware that a new visitor had entered—a fact which would not have been a concern as many walkers came and went daily.
I followed the corridor until it curved slightly left and reached the entrance to the Odel cave. As an alpha family with roots reaching back at least two centuries, the family had been granted a section of their own. In fact, I was pretty confident there were other caves within the mountain which were even larger that belonged to non-alphas—likely having been granted to those with larger families.
Guess it paid to procreate.
I hovered at the entrance, eyes scanning the shadowed interior, and it didn't take much to spot Mom, her spine slightly curved as she sat, hands clasped and resting on her knees, fingers threaded together, the grip white-knuckled and almost gnarled. There was a long and pain-filled tale in the cruel braid of her fingers, perhaps a chord of guilt too that would have strengthened whatever other emotion intertwined within it.
The scratch of my heel on the stone brought Mom's head up, eyes snapping to me, filled first with annoyance, then surprise and relief. Guilt buzzed through me at the awareness that perhaps Mom had wanted to be alone to say her words to Greer, but I suspected she'd been here a few times anyway, given she'd returned home a few weeks ago already. This visit though seemed to mean something more.
And when I saw where she sat, I understood immediately.
She smiled and patted the stone beside her, and I weaved between the sarcophagi whispering blessings to the long-dead as I went. The cave was an irregular rectangular shape, the uneven rock faces of the walls having remained as untouched as possible, the only change being the seating.
Along the walls were six- to ten-foot lengths of hollows gouged out of the stubborn rock, narrow and shallow, only as wide as your average chair, only as high as needed to accommodate a seven-foot male. The seats had been smoothed down so as to glimmer with an unusually shimmery shine, an effect a result of the tiny particles of silver and gold that streaked the rock which had blended together during the smoothing process to form a shallow translucent layer on the stone's surface.
Bracketing each of the seating spots were white carved statues of the gods of the ages, each representing the various shifter gods that belonged to the cultures of the world through the ages. From Ailuros, Roman goddess of the Cat, to the Egyptian Bast and Anubis, to Asgard's Fenrir, Buddhist and Hindu Narasimha and Hanuman, to Chinese Huxian, the walls of the Odel crypt, like the rest of the caves around us, made obeisance to every shifter god with even the most fragile connection to the family's history.
I moved closer, the white fabric of my toga-dress whispering as I walked to Mom's side and reached for a candle from a narrow recess carved into the bottom of the seat ne
arest the wall. I selected two fat green candles and then two ruby pillars that looked a lot like blood in a solid column, and proceeded to place them before each of the statues, and then before two sarcophagi, Greer's and a broader darker one which seemed to exude strength and power even in the absence of the spirit of its occupant.
I placed one green candle before Greer and the other within the open palms of Ailuros, beside a dark purple candle that flickered in a slight breeze. This for Greer, I lit and raised my face to Ailuros, asking her to keep Greer's spirit safe, to hold my sister within her arms in ways Greer had never been held in her lifetime.
Then, blood-red candles in hand, I walked silently over to the rugged coffin and knelt to settle one on the floor, beside a squat white one—no doubt offered by Mom. The movements silent and soft and reverent, I turned and walked over to the left side of the seat occupied by Mom, to a tall statue of the god Fenrir whose part-benevolent part-vicious face was tilted down as though ready to hear our prayers.
Fenrir had been the god which Grandpa Mason had raised his palms to—being a walker of both species: panther and wolf. He'd shared his respect with both Fenrir and Ailuros—in her Bast form as did many of the older generation. Candles lit and flickering beside Mom's, I went to her side and sank down next to her. She reached an arm out and wrapped it around my shoulders, drawing me toward her, offering me her comfort, her protection.
It was hard to ignore the fact that Greer had experienced so little of that love, and had lived her life as though she believed that nobody truly loved her, despite the assurances of those around her.
I sighed and stared at my sister's sarcophagus a few feet away, the sound earning a brief squeeze from Mom. She leaned her head toward me. "Do not bear her burdens on your shoulders, honey. Greer's load was her own, in choosing and in shouldering."
I shook my head, images of my sister in the Greylands flickering in front of my eyes. "You know what was funny?” I asked with a dry laugh—a question that hadn't needed an answer. I swallowed the twist of pain in my throat as I said, "She was probably the best sister I could have ever wished for...."
Mom glanced up startled, and I gave her a rueful smile. "In the last few minutes of her transition through the Graylands, before she entered the light...she was...I think she was at peace. She seemed to have accepted how she'd behaved, maybe even understood how her anger and fear had colored her perceptions of the people around her."
Mom moved her hand and ran it up and down my back, offering me comfort even within the web of her own grief and pain. "What did she say?" Mom asked, even though we’d both touched on this before, when Mom had first been returned to us after Greer’s death.
I swallowed and replied, "She said death removes the barriers to truth, that when you die you see clearly all the things you've done that were wrong and right. And she regretted so very much.
“That she pushed me away, that she'd spent time hating instead of loving. And she was so sorry. Even her last words were the apology to you, that she was so sorry she didn't allow you to explain because she was so consumed by anger."
My voice drifted away, and I glanced up at Mom, surprised to see her eyes dry and bright. She shook her head, the movement so small I'd almost missed it. "And how do you feel about her words, how she was in the end?" I squinted at her. The question seemed so odd in the face of my understanding of Greer's feelings. I exhaled slowly. "Angry? I guess I wished she'd seen it all before she'd taken the paths that had ultimately led her to her death. Disappointed that I'd only had a loving older sister for a few minutes before her death when I'd had contempt and anger for every other day of our lives. Sad that she'd never had the opportunity to sit among our family and be enveloped with the kind of crazy we'd just shared at dinner, the teasing and the laughter and the love." I fell silent, my throat tight.
A long moment went by, the silence thick and dark, and then Mom said, "I'm angry too. I'm not sure if it's anger at Greer or myself, but it's intertwined. I'd left her in charge of you, the older sister to take care of and protect the younger, and she failed at her task. So simple, so easy, and she'd failed. And worse, she hated instead of loved, she hurt instead of protected. I'm finding it hard to come to terms with that." Mom fell silent, and I swiveled slightly to look up at her.
Staring into her green eyes now, I was achingly aware that I saw three people: Mom, the woman who left me alone, and Celeste the Hunter, the woman who fought for her children, and now Celeste the human, the woman struggling with her emotions, struggling the way I myself did. She was no longer just a mother, because as I studied her face, I saw her clearly—more clearly than I'd ever seen her before.
She was a fragile being, filled with strength and weakness, hope and regret, fear, indecision, doubt, love, passion, sacrifice. She was strong and weak all at the same time, indomitable and fragile.
And she was the best representation of a mother I could have hoped for. Despite all those years of anger at her abandoning me, rage that she never returned, never called, loneliness and self-blame wondering if it had somehow been my fault because she’d left after I was born, not Iain and not Greer.
Now I stared at her and saw that all those years didn't mean anything, those years and the pain they held faded away, replaced by this deep understanding that Mom was a fragile and as real as I was.
And there was an intense power to this feeling, this emotional connection with my mother, the bond that encompassed mother and daughter but had expanded to be filled with sister and friend.
And in that moment, all the anger and blame I'd harbored against her fractured into a million pieces, leaving me filled with a peace and an understanding that I'd never before experienced.
And filled with an immense understanding of the true meaning of daughterhood.
Chapter 21
Logan tried to keep a straight face as he swallowed a groan. He wore a dull gray cloak, the deep folds of the hood shielding his face, as he watched the proceedings below him.
Lyra had provided Logan with the cloak, and he’d drawn it over his shoulders, somewhat confused. With nobody to question, he’d dressed and waited for Sienna to arrive, which she did, also dressed in a dull cloak, though hers was a dirty coral.
She’d explained that they were to attend a public forum in disguise as a means of understanding their subjects at a grass root level.
Now Logan listened as the members of the Fathers argued their case against Logan and Sienna taking their rightful places on the throne. The crowd buzzed, many shaking their heads, staring in disbelief at the speakers.
The crowd appeared reticent, which Logan counted in his and Sienna’s favour. Something he’d noticed about many of the people he’d encountered on his seeing of the sights the previous day. Vyrian had often pointed out that meeting the citizens eye to eye was what would win their hearts. Not ruling from a palace on the mountain and throwing down decree after decree.
The meeting soon disbanded and Sienna nudged Logan, urging him to follow as she led them out into the warm sunlight and down a stone street to what appeared to be a bar. Inside, he and his sister took seats in a far corner, where they sat enveloped by shadows.
Various groups of customers made rowdy conversation, subjects ranging from the rains and the bad harvest, to the dangerous word the Fathers were spreading, to the secret behind why the twins were taken.
One visit to a public watering hole was enough to convince Logan that those responsible for rising up against him and Sienna did not have a strong support base. Which didn’t negate the danger the two factions posed. The latter Logan could find a way to deal with, but the Fathers and their awful cultish ways would have none of Logan’s support.
Seems like this lot actually might like their rulers.
Not everyone is going to oppose us, replied Sienna.
Thankfully, the Fathers don’t appear to have the entire citizenry supporting them.
Small mercies, Sienna. We have no idea what we’ve stepped into. Not unti
l we are ruling the place. Until then we can only guess as to support and outcomes.
Sienna snorted. I’ve been here long before you brother. I know the people well enough. The Fathers may not garner support from the layman, but the Equals might. Two decades without formal rule has made Dracys vulnerable to attacks from inside and beyond the realms borders.
Was Aunt Lyra such a tyrant? asked Logan, knowing the answer even before Sienna replied.
It had nothing to do with her. It was just a reason for the people to express their worries. Concerns Lyra had no power to address. Not until the true heirs took their positions.
Which brings me back to my initial question, replied Logan. Who killed our mother and stole us from our home? And why? What were they after, and could any of it have to do with the Fathers or the Equals?
Sienna nodded as she sipped from her beer mug. Exactly what I was thinking. But let’s just get through the ceremony and the blessing. Then we can begin our own investigation.
Sienna was right and Logan agreed to bide his time.
But if there was anything he was going to do first, it would be to hold the murderers of his Mother responsible.
Chapter 22
The rest of the time I'd spent with my mother in the tomb had been filled with memories of Grandpa Mason, who, to me, was a large man, in both memory and spirit. That he'd died protecting Mom--though I was still yet to hear the specifics of those circumstances--had made him seem even larger than life.
I'd left her there, assured that she would not be attempting to return home by foot as Dad was meant to come up to fetch her. Entering the treeline, I removed my dress and bundled it up, then tossed it into the crook of a nearby tree bearing the requisite markings.
