by C. E. Murphy
“We’ll just have to, won’t we?”
“How?”
“We took out the Executioner. We can manage Raven Mocker. Trust me, Aidan. You’re gonna be fine. Nothing’s going to happen to you as long as I’m still alive.” I rolled a bit more power into my shields, knowing they would help guard the still-recovering garden that lay close to mine.
Aidan’s eyebrows drew down. “You mean that, don’t you? How come? You don’t even know me. Is it ’cause you’re my birth mom?”
“Partly. Mostly, maybe, but really, what kind of asshole would I be if I let monsters tromp around in kids’ heads if I could stop it?”
His eyes popped and he laughed. “You’re not supposed to say things like that. Mom would yell at you.”
“This,” I said dryly, “is one of many reasons why she’s a good mom and I’d probably be a terrible one. Look, Aidan, you know your strength comes from being two-spirited, right? Some of it, anyway.”
He rolled his eyes. “Yeah. Some of the kids at school wanna know if that means I’m gonna start dressing in girls’ clothes.” The eye-rolling turned to a sudden wicked sparkle. “I oughta do it, huh? That’d freak ’em out.”
I grinned. “You probably should. Don’t take me wrong, but you’d make a pretty good girl, at least until your voice changes. You’ve got great cheekbones. Anyway, listen, not the point. The point is you’ve got reserves to draw on. I know the Executioner’s got his claws in you deep, out there. But we’ve loosened his grip in here, and sweetheart, you burn bright. You and Ayita together, honey, I don’t think much of anything can stop you. Just hold on to that, okay? Hold on to Ayita and you’re going to be fine. All I need to work with out there is that spark, and I can get you free of the rest of this.”
“You don’t sound scared.”
“I was scared when your garden was falling apart. Now I know it’s going to be okay.” Even I believed me, more or less. “You ready to go back out there?”
Aidan took a deep breath. “No.”
I laughed. “Yeah, I can’t blame you. Look, just hang on a few minutes, kiddo, and this will all be over. I promise. Okay?”
He took another deep breath, then put his hand in mine and nodded. “Yeah. Okay.”
I said, “Okay,” one more time, and we walked out of the gardens back into a battle zone.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The last couple minutes in the garden had been so calm that returning to the Middle World was a violent shock. Aidan, despite having just had a reassuring conversation with me, was in fact still twenty feet in the air: the black magic had caught him, kept him from falling when the Red Man had shot a bone arrow into him. The Red Man, the Purple Man, and my father had all taken up points around the circle, each of them at one of the stakes Dad had driven into the ground. Sara and Les appeared to be arguing over which of them should go to the fourth, and while they argued, Morrison ran for it.
With four of them in place, they began hauling the vortex closer to the ground. It was no longer spinning: it was simply a hole ripped in the sky and pierced by the Red Man’s arrows. There were no stars beyond it, and the arrows seemed to be just stuck in the black, which bothered me on a profound level. But there were ropes, or threads, or roots, falling from the arrows, and that was what the men hauled on, dragging the vortex down. Dragging Aidan down, too.
I barked, “Sara!” and she stood straight upright, startled out of her argument. I didn’t think the distraction was her fault: the encroaching magic made me want to fight, too. “Come here, both of you. You need to hold the power circle in place.”
“What? I can’t—”
“You certainly can.” Ada Monroe sounded just like a mother as she stomped over to join us. The poor military guy followed her with the expression of someone who had no idea what shit he’s stepped in but was willing to follow any solid leadership available. Ada said, “Just focus your energy as positively as you can and I’ll do the rest,” to him, then sent him to stand at a quarter-point in the circle. He went meekly. I felt sorry for him.
Les and Sara both radiated disbelief as Ada pointed them toward other quarter-points, too. Apparently so did I, because her chin came up a little as she met my eyes. “I told you, my family had medicine men once.”
“Ada, you are positively amazing. Go!” That was at Sara and Les, who scampered away like kids. I did the same kind of transference that Dad had done with me: palms up, warm magic dancing on them. Ada pressed her hands against mine, taking the weight of the circle, and went a little ashy. For an instant I saw fear in her eyes, the certainty she couldn’t handle it, but I was startlingly confident as I said, “You’ve got it. You’re fine.”
She nodded once, then backed away, taking up the final eight-point around the circle. Energy flared from the four of them, making a softer white shell inside the vast magic Dad was working. That accounted for everybody but Danny, who was still sniveling about his rebroken shoulder. I left him where he was and turned to wait on Aidan’s descent.
He had wings. My heart clenched. Sooty, fiery raven wings, spread wide and beating the air with outrageous determination. Raven Mocker wings, struggling to bring the boy and his power back under their control. I flexed my hands uselessly, afraid to draw magic and refuel the thing trying to eat Aidan’s soul.
Except there was power flying like crazy around here and the wights were all dead. They were the conduits, the things that fed power to the Executioner and ultimately the Master or Raven Mocker or whatever the hell I wanted to call him. The Executioner had been defeated. Which might mean this was the one shot we had at a full-frontal attack, and it would be a terrible mistake for me to miss it.
I whispered, “Screw it,” and reached for the sky.
Power poured out of me, silver and blue winding together in a rush. I didn’t think I could defeat the oncoming Raven Mocker. I just wanted to shore up Aidan’s reserves, give the kid’s bright spirit a chance to fight back on its own. The rip in the sky came closer, Dad and Morrison and the magic men pulling it down. It had stopped expanding and was beginning to tear, like their efforts were pulling it beyond its ability to stretch.
My magic washed over Aidan, and for an instant his wings turned white.
Black rushed in again, swallowing the gain, but the vortex didn’t widen any: we had cut its power sources. If it couldn’t keep Aidan, it would lose all its strength. It might take a while, because it was still feeding on centuries of pain, but if we could wrest Aidan back, the darkness would burn itself out. Hope caught me in the teeth and made me grin, fierce and resolved. I extended another rolling wave of magic.
It left me woozy. My vision went black and starry, then faded back in, but I felt my power failing within me. There were two circles surrounding me that I could draw on, Dad’s internal smoke circle and the larger one Ada was holding. Dad and Morrison had the vortex within ten feet of the ground now, and it was shredding. I didn’t want to risk setting it loose again. Ada’s exterior circle was fragile. Borrowing power on the level I’d been using it at would knock all four of them off their feet. That would do us exactly no good. And there was nobody to bang my drum, to help my stuttering power refill again, because everybody was busy trying not to let any of us get killed.
I swore. One more. I could probably manage one more healing wave into Aidan before my eyes rolled back. It would have to be enough.
He was closer now, at least. I ran toward him, dodging the massive sooty wings as they swept the air, and wrapped my arms around him, breathing, “Now would be good, kid.”
To my astonishment, Renee came to bright dramatic life and leapt from me to Aidan as I unleashed one last splash of healing magic. Aidan snapped a hand up, catching her. A second walking stick appeared in his other hand. Then Dad’s joined them, balancing on Aidan’s chest. They blended into one another and faded, not into Aidan, not
into the vortex, just...disappeared. It seemed like a bad sign.
My knees cut out, whatever magical strength I’d had utterly depleted. I was never ever ever flying a car again. Aidan fell with me, landing on my chest hard enough to crunch my back. I wheezed, trying to focus beyond Aidan’s still-white hair in my face. His head lolled to the side, and panic spurted through me. Me collapsing was one thing. Aidan going unconscious was something else. I rolled him off me and got to my knees, hands shaking with fear.
The Raven Mocker wings remained in the air, the empty space where Aidan had been now filling with the last ragged pieces of the vortex. I cast a frantic look at my father, but he didn’t look distressed by the congealing vortex. The Red Man drew another arrow and fired, a smooth perfect shot that should have pierced the very heart of the spirit monster. Raven Mocker tore in two, the arrow passing harmlessly through empty air as the winged vortex shot forward and into Danny’s chest.
I realized, quite clearly and suddenly, that we’d lost.
* * *
Aidan would have been a wonderful prize, with all the power rife in his youthful spirit. But it seemed blindingly obvious, after the fact, that he was just one more conduit. The last of them, a source of life essence to allow Raven Mocker entrance to this plane of existence. Aidan was, at heart, a good kid.
Raven Mocker didn’t want a good kid. He wanted someone he could use and control. Someone who was already angry at the world. He wanted someone emotionally damaged, easy to manipulate and willing to strike out. He wanted Danny Little Turtle, or someone like him.
It struck me that I had very narrowly avoided being the perfect host for Raven Mocker, and my gratitude ran so deep it raised shivers on my arms. Without Mom, without Morrison, without Gary and Billy and all the lessons I’d learned over the past year, it could’ve been bitter angry me, chock full of potential power, who offered a host body to the Master. I owed my friends more than I could ever repay them. I’d known that all along, but watching Danny get to his feet, awkward with pain and then resplendent with that pain fading, I knew it all the more deeply, and promised to thank them yet again.
Daniel Raven Mocker smiled, folded his wings around himself, and leapt straight up, smashing through the power circles and disappearing into the night.
The circles shattered, magic ringing like gongs. Fragments of power exploded everywhere like a grenade going off. The bits that hit me settled into my skin, absorbing, renewing my strength, but when they hit the nonadepts in the group, they knocked them silly. The entire inner circle, and Morrison, were flattened. The Red and Purple men disappeared, no longer bound by the circle and magic to this place. Dad clutched a tree to stay upright, his gaze betrayed and astonished as he looked skyward.
I looked too, blank with confusion. Danny couldn’t be gone. I hung up on that thought, even though it was blatantly wrong. He had to be up there somewhere, soaring on raven wings. I croaked, “Raven?” and my spirit animal appeared, looking like he’d gone three rounds with Mike Tyson. I shut my mouth on asking him to go after Danny. Wiping myself out always seemed bad enough, but wiping my spirit animals out was guilt-inducing. Raven croaked in return, then went back inside my head where it was nominally safe. I couldn’t blame him.
Dad, faintly, said, “He shouldn’t have been able to do that,” which made me laugh. Not a happy laugh, but a laugh. Dad tried glaring at me, but didn’t have enough oomph left for it to carry any weight. “That ritual is meant to kill a Raven Mocker, Joanne, and there were two power circles. He shouldn’t have been able to break through.”
“Most Raven Mockers aren’t packing a few genocides worth of life force, Dad. Or death power. Whatever. We...” I didn’t want to say it aloud, certainly not while meeting his eyes, so I looked up again, trying to find the shape of wings against the stars. “We lost.”
“Nah.” Aidan spoke from beside me, sounding exhausted but certain. I squeaked and turned toward him, hands pressed over my mouth. His skin had returned to normal, except tired bruises beneath his eyes, but his hair was still bone white. I didn’t need the Sight to catch a glimpse of his aura, a kernel of power burning bright within him. He put a hand on my shoulder and shoved himself to his feet, wobbling a little before dropping his chin to his chest and whispering, “Nah. Not yet.”
Eyes closed, he extended his hands, arms crossing at the wrists, like he was holding himself in the loosest hug possible. Like he was gathering someone else close: gathering Ayita, maybe, and when I thought it, I could nearly See it, his other half, the shared spirit that gave him so much strength. A slim girl, taller than Aidan but looking very like him, with the same cheekbones and jaw, but with a nose that was a little more like mine. I Saw her resolve, the same strength of character that she shared with her grandmother, the resolve that had let her face death in a time and way of her choosing. That, I thought, was the spark that the Executioner hadn’t been able to defeat: that was the chance Aidan had been given, that would allow him to survive. He hugged Ayita more tightly, and she stepped within him, their auras igniting into brilliance.
Renee and Dad’s walking stick appeared on Aidan’s arms, coming up from the bones. The third, Aidan’s own, rose up from his hands, balancing itself delicately on his extended fingers. Power dropped through them, magic so heavy it seemed to lower the floor of the valley. I was glad to be kneeling, for fear otherwise I would have been flattened. Dad did drop, kneeling, as well, and nobody else had gotten further than sitting anyway. Aidan was the only one left standing.
The earth beneath us frosted, white magic creeping over leaves, over branches, over the wrecked helicopter and beyond. My breath turned to fog, though my skin didn’t feel cold. Magic carried silence with it, washing away the memory of battle sounds and making the valley serene. Aidan gathered his arms a little closer to his chest, embracing the walking sticks, then lifted his arms.
Soft white magic heaved upward, the ice-like frost rushing to treetops and to the distant sky beyond. I saw Raven Mocker then, a far-off shadow against the spreading brilliance. His wings cut the air, loud enough to be heard now that silence held sway everywhere else. He didn’t want to fight. He wanted to escape, so he could wreak havoc in the world beyond. He wanted to escape so I would have to hunt him, and so my attention would be split in a dozen directions. I gathered the idea of a net, knowing I didn’t have enough strength to pull him back even if I managed to catch him, but hating not to try.
Before I even tried to cast it, Aidan’s auras became blinding, lighting the whole of the valley, and an echo ran through the mountains. Power reverberated, awakening a touch I knew. Barely knew, but I recognized it. After a moment I placed it, too, and, stunned, looked to the hills.
My whole life I had wanted to be rescued by the cavalry. That scene always got me in the movies, even when I knew it was coming. Especially when I knew it was coming. The moment where the hero is desperately outnumbered, about to die, but he smiles and looks up, and that makes the bad guys look, too. The sheer cliffs are always empty in the first moment, but then they begin to appear. The ferocious chief on a painted horse. The resentful, respectful warrior whose life the hero saved at the beginning of the film. They’re the first to appear, and maybe it’s just that they’re there to stand witness to a hero’s death.
But no: then the others come. Dozens, hundreds, sometimes thousands, all lining the cliffs, all surrounding the gulley where the hero isn’t about to die after all, because if he does, the bad guys will die with him. I’d stayed up until all hours of the night watching old Westerns I’d seen time and time again, just to watch that scene again. I loved it beyond reason, and I had always wanted to be part of it.
They were ghosts, this cavalry. They didn’t ride, but stood. Stepped out of the trees as light and silver, as faces and names from the past. Aidan, focused by the three walking-stick spirits, called them, guided them, and welcomed them into the present. They were so many
, and so old, that the valley chilled with their presence. A power circle came to life beneath their insubstantial feet, burning more brightly and gaining speed as it passed beneath each ghost. The entire horizon came alight, every dip of the valley peopled by the serene dead, and when it reached the place it had begun, an old woman stepped forward.
I knew her. I’d had no idea we were in that same valley, my sense of the hills far too limited to notice that. But of course we were: of course, because it was a place where Cherokee had lived once, and it was sympathetic to the youth coming to find a way back toward tradition. There were no coincidences, and just this once I was glad for it. A laugh broke in my chest, bringing tears to my eyes. I whispered, “Greetings, old one,” and the ancient shaman smiled at me from the distance.
“This pain is ours,” she said. “This pain is old, and it is ours. We have waited, Walkingstick. You gave us what knowledge you could, and we have waited to repay that gift. We have stayed long past our time to rest, to take this pain back to the time it was born of. We will not let it poison our children after they have rebuilt from so little. This pain is ours, and we will die from it, but you will live. Live well, and do not forget us.”
My father didn’t know where I drew my power from, but I had nothing on the magic the old shaman threw down. She rebuilt the power circle, sending magic widdershins, redoubling its strength as the Cherokee ghosts began to sing their death songs.
Far above the valley’s hills, Raven Mocker’s wings began to shed their sooty feathers, his strength being drawn into the ghosts. Soot and ashes fell faster, breaking away. Danny careened toward the earth, trying to control his fall. He was too far to hear if he cried, or maybe he was brave enough not to, while pieces of his wings fell to the earth like melting wax, as the ghosts called home their pain.
Chapter Thirty
I looked away when Danny fell, not, in the end, as brave as he was. I still saw the impact from the corner of my eye, a flare of white where he hit. We would have to find the body later, but for now the despair and anger riding us all began to fade. There were hundreds of people in the forest now, the modern Cherokee who had come up ready to fight the military and now who stood silent and stunned in the wash of magic and in the presence of their ancestors.
