by Jenna Kernan
She struggled now, fighting for her life as he held her safe from the whirlwind.
Hurry, he thought. Hurry or she will die.
About him the wind raged, stronger than he had ever felt, so fierce that he fought for each breath in the icy air. He drew it in, warming it in his great lungs, and then opened his jaws, covering her nose and mouth with his, and exhaled. Did she receive the breath warmed by his body?
He tried again, growing dizzy with the effort. His last thought was to lock his great arms around Michaela, protecting her even in death.
Chapter 17
T he winds had ceased. Michaela drew a ragged breath and then another. The tingling gradually disappeared from her fingers and toes as oxygen flowed through her bloodstream.
The air was icy, but she pressed against something warm. She tried to lift her head, but her body would not respond to her mind’s command. She felt woozy and weak, as if she had been drugged. It took great effort to open her eyes. Finally, she managed this small act of consciousness.
Hair brushed her cheek. She blinked, taking in the ice frosting the dark brown fur that blew in the bitter wind. She stared at the massive body and then turned her head, noticing the grizzly’s forearms wrapped around her. He sheltered her from the cold by holding her up against his body. She craned her neck.
The sun hung low and pale on the flat horizon. What she noticed next was not what was, but what was not. There were no trees or hills or mountains to obstruct the view, only blue ice as far as she could see.
It had been night when they left, hadn’t it? How long had she been lying on the ice? How long had they been traveling?
What was this place?
“Sebastian?”
No response. She tried a tentative shove but got no reaction. What if he were dead? She pressed her ear to his chest. The reassuring rhythm of his steady heartbeat removed the lump of panic from her throat and she sagged with relief.
He had come back to her, saved her from Nagi once more.
But now he needed her help. She wiggled and pushed, managing to drag herself from beneath the weight of his huge forearm. Immediately she was sorry. Her wet clothes were no protection in this hostile environment.
Why had he brought her here?
“Sebastian.” She rocked his shoulder, but he did not rouse.
Would he know her, as a bear? She burrowed next to him, weeping. He must know her, he must.
He lay immobile on the icy ground, exhaling in great, steady puffs of frost. Here he was—her Skinwalker.
She stroked his face. “Oh, Sebastian.”
He was not a man at all. Yet she trusted him. No, this was more than trust. Knowing the truth of what he was did not change that.
She rested her cheek upon his thick neck, drawing warmth and comfort from him.
“Why won’t you wake up?”
“Because he used all his strength to carry you through that storm.” The voice was harsh as cracking ice, but with a melodic cadence that reminded her of a chanted prayer.
Michaela turned to see the round face of a woman wrapped from forehead to heel in white furs. She looked Inuit with a moon face that glowed with an unnatural translucency as if carved of ivory. The parka hood fringed her face with the grayish-white fur of a timber wolf. The long soft hairs radiated out from her head like the rays of a sun. She was stooped, making her look like a hunchback, and she wore shapeless fur pants and high sealskin boots, with fluffy white pom-poms at the laces. She braced both hands on an elaborately carved white ivory cane that resembled a totem pole, with one Arctic animal stacked upon the next.
“I am Kanka. Sebastian brought you to me. Come in, child.”
In? Michaela glanced past her, seeing for the first time the large pile of bones. She recognized the jaws of whales all around the perimeter. How did they get here?
Michaela crawled to her feet, then stopped. “What about Sebastian?”
Kanka laughed. “Can you carry him?”
Michaela shook her head.
“Best leave him, then.”
Michaela hesitated.
“He’s a bear, honey. Cold won’t do him no harm.” She motioned with a hand sheathed in a heavy gauntlet-style glove. “He’ll be along by and by.”
Michaela cast her worried gaze on him. “Are you certain?”
“Land sakes, child, is he protecting you or are you protecting him? Come now, or you’ll freeze solid. It’s forty below out here.” Without waiting, Kanka turned to go.
Michaela noted the frost stiffening her jeans and the ice crystals coating her hair like dripping wax.
Kanka paused. “Cold up here all the time. Best follow me now.”
Michaela did, glancing back twice to see that Sebastian had not moved.
Kanka walked spryly to her abode, stabbing the point of her stick in the ice as she went. She reached a huge walrus skin hung across the entrance and tossed it back as she entered, as if it weighed no more than a down sleeping bag.
“Flip that back once you’re in,” she called, and disappeared into the dark.
Michaela followed, then struggled to lower the hide back into place only to find herself in total blackness for an instant, until Kanka lifted another skin at the opposite end of a short tunnel, allowing a glimpse of a light.
“Let’s get you out of those things.”
Kanka set out a tan dress and chocolate-colored fur mukluks, each adorned with a beaded star. Michaela hesitated only for as long as it took to begin to shiver and then stripped out of her stiff attire and slipped into the soft sleeveless hide dress.
“I’ve never worn buckskin before.”
Kanka smiled, draping Michaela’s shoulders with a quilt made of different fur pelts. “And I’m sure you’d look lovely in it, but this is sealskin. We don’t have many bucks this far north, ’less you count caribou, and they don’t come this far up, generally. Long trip to find them and I prefer to stay here. Seal, walrus, whale and sometimes a bear.” She glanced toward the entrance. “They suit me. No reason to go tromping over the ice.”
Michaela wondered how a lone woman caught a whale and then recalled all the bones Kanka used to construct her home. Something inside Michaela tensed—misgivings mixed with a healthy dose of alarm.
Michaela slid into the soft fur-lined boots and had to stifle a groan of pleasure. They felt so extravagant and warm to her icy feet.
The distraction of being out of her frozen clothing kept Michaela from immediately noting that Kanka’s fire was not orange as it should be, but glowed a pale blue-green, like seawater aflame. The bleached wood she thought she saw upon entering, she now recognized was not wood at all, but the long bones of some animal.
Michaela cast her hostess a worried look.
“What kind of fire is that?”
Kanka laughed, showing long white teeth, filed to menacing points. Michaela drew back, feeling queasy. These were the teeth of a predator, not human—no, not nearly human.
Michaela’s disquiet grew as the sorceress removed her parka, revealing waist-length hair that was not white or gray, but silver as polished sterling. Her eyes were wrong as well, gray with the dull metallic shine of pewter. This discovery made Michaela glance toward the door for Sebastian.
“He’ll be along. He’s waking now. In the meantime, let me see that wound.”
“How did you know?”
“Oh, I can sense it, child. That tear in your flesh is pulling your soul from your body. You feel it. That’s what makes you all woozy and remote.”
She had felt it. The icy dread broke in a cold sweat across her brow. This injury threatened her existence; she knew it but did not know how.
Kanka drew back the quilt she had offered and then removed the bandage. Green glowing pus once more oozed from the gap in the black wound, but now the skin from her shoulder to her wrist looked gray, like the flesh of a corpse.
A flutter of panic stirred in her belly and she bit her lip to keep it from trembling.
“N
agi’s mark.”
“Can you help me?”
“Always can help, but I can’t bring everything back like it was, like you’re hoping. Things change all the time. They’re changing fast in you.” Kanka turned away and began rummaging in leather pouches, drawing out bits of bone, metal containers and folded leather parcels. “You wondering why this is all happening, that right?”
The strange pewter eyes stared at her, alive, yet not alive. Michaela tried to cease her trembling, failing even to keep her voice steady when she spoke.
“I had an accident.”
“You died, child, twice. Started along the Spirit Road. Not too far, but far enough for Nagi to get a real good look.” Kanka took a bit of what looked like charcoal and crushed it into her palm with the thumb of her opposite hand. “This here is charred raven bone. Helps you remember things.” She lifted her open hand and blew the black dust into Michaela’s face just as Michaela inhaled.
She choked as the powder burned her throat and made her eyes water.
“Think back, child. Now you can remember.”
Michaela clasped her head as lightning flashes exploded behind her eyes. What was happening?
“You see that trail in your mind’s eye?”
She did, a path of stars stretched out before her in a familiar track, and she felt as if she were going home. Her father, she sensed him, and her mother. But that was wrong; her mother had still been alive then.
Kanka’s voice intruded. “Stop all that thinking. Just remember.”
Then the shadow fell across the trail. Nagi coming for her, trying to take her where she did not belong. She had turned and run down the trail, back to her body and back to the pain.
“That’s right. Now you see. Your daddy, he protected you, shielded you when you were just a baby, so Nagi, he never knowed about you. Think back now, to the last time you seen your daddy.”
Michaela felt dizzy with the rush of visions. She was young, not yet three, when her father had abandoned them.
“You’re thinking again. Look around, child.”
She closed her eyes and felt herself perched on her mother’s hip looking at her father as he chanted. Her mother’s grip tightened and her voice came from behind Michaela.
“Is it done?”
Her father nodded. “I’ve seen to it. She won’t feel her powers for two decades.”
“But what about you?”
She heard the anguish in her mother’s voice, but did not understand.
“He’s seen me and he’ll come. I can’t hide. All I can do is lead him away and hope I’m strong enough to survive.”
Mother was crying now and so Michaela cried with her.
Her father stroked her cheek. “Keep her safe, and if anything happens to me, do what you promised.”
He pressed in to hug them, and Michaela recognized the familiar scent of him, recognizing it instantly after all this time.
Michaela stared at Kanka in shock.
“He didn’t abandon us. He left to protect me.”
Kanka leaned forward, so the flames cast her in a strange green glow. “You have the gifts of your father—the power to see ghosts.”
Michaela shook her head in denial. “Only since the accident.”
“No, child, always. Your daddy, he just veiled your powers, so you wouldn’t think to use them. He knew this force runs both ways. You see them. They see you.”
“You mean I’m some kind of psychic?”
“No, you can’t read minds or see the future. You’re a Seer of the Soul—any kind of soul once it leaves the body.”
“The good ones all go to the Spirit World. I only see the evil ones.”
“That’s not so. You’ll see all kinds. There are four. First is the ones still connected by love. They been torn from someone, someone they just can’t be parted from. So they wait. No harm in that. This kind of ghost watches over those they love, keeping them safe until their time comes, so they can walk the Spirit Road together. The second kind is confused. They don’t know they has passed because they was torn from their body unexpected like. So they goes around looking for that life and pretending they is still a part of things. Then there’s the wronged ones, ones that has been murdered. Some move on, but others stay to haunt them that stole that life. These ghosts wait to see their killers pushed from the Spirit Road after they pass. That’s their right. Last one is the kind you been seeing—the bad ones. They done wrong. Bad wrong and they knows they is already destined to walk the Circle.”
“But why are they here?”
“They’s hiding. Least, they used to be hiding, and Nagi, he come by periodically and collect them. But Nagi, he ain’t doing his job. He’s not collecting them no more. What we’s got to figure is why. These souls, they be desperate to stay on earth, to taste the life they lost. Now, if Nagi, hisself, has given his blessing, standing by while they take possession of animals and folks, who’s gonna stop them?”
She didn’t even hesitate. “Sebastian.”
Kanka shook her head. “He can smell them some, but can’t force them out without nearly killing the possessed. No, child, he can’t stop this.” Kanka stared at her. “Don’t you see it child? It’s you.”
“Me?”
“You can see them before they take a body and you can send them to the Circle. You must be awful powerful, ’cause Nagi wants you real bad.”
Michaela spoke with a voice ringing with incredulity. “Me?”
“Yes, you.”
“But I don’t know how to do that.”
“Yet.” She smiled. “Your father knew and you got all his gifts. No choice about that. He must have known Nagi would be wanting you, ’cause he hid you as best he could, blocking your powers and telling your mama to hide you if he went missing, which he did. Hard for her to leave you, but she done it like she promised. Saved your life, she did. ’Cause when Nagi found her she never told about you. So Nagi, he never known you existed till you come traipsing along the Spirit Road, right by his Circle. Now he’s coming after you.”
“But my mother didn’t leave me. She only died a few months ago.”
“That weren’t your birth mother, but your aunt. When her man went missing, she left you with her sister, like she promised, told her, ‘Teach this one the old ways.’”
Michaela sat back on her heels as everything she believed was ripped out from under her in some bad imitation of a magician’s trick with the tablecloth. Her whole world tilted dangerously.
“But…”
“Think back. They’re in there.”
Michaela recalled a face, her mother’s, similar to her aunt’s, but her eyes were green and her hair blunt-cut. She saw them both now, her mother and father, and knew it was true—all of it.
“Ah, you see them?”
“But this makes no sense. I don’t have any powers and I’m certainly no threat to Nagi.”
“You like a baby killer whale. Don’t know how fast she can swim or how hard she can bite. You don’t know ’cause you never been schooled. Your kind is trained from birth to use their gifts. But not you. It’s the sacrifice your father made to keep you safe. Good choice, ’cause you still breathing. He veiled your gifts until you turned twenty-three.”
“But I’m only twenty-one.”
Kanka touched the place where Michaela had split open her skull. “He never figured on you walking the Ghost Trail and then coming back.”
“My accident…it opened the connection.”
“Now they see you and Nagi, he sees you as a threat.”
“A threat to what?”
“I don’t know. But he’s up to something, leaving his Circle and keeping those monsters in this world. Ask me, they had no right to walk the earth the first time, let alone get another go-round.”
“Kanka, what am I?”
“You’re the child of human mother and father, who was descended from the Spirit God, Niyan. You are a Spirit Child, half-human, half-Niyan. They calls themselves Niyanoka, and all
have gifts, not all the same gifts, you understand.”
She absorbed the enormity of this, feeling as if the world had suddenly fallen squarely on her shoulders.
“Does Sebastian know what I am?”
She shook her head. “He thinks you’re human—his human. Marked you good and proper, didn’t he?”
Michaela blushed.
“He did right bringing you to me. But he won’t keep you if Nagi has his way.”
Michaela flinched as if Kanka had punched her in the solar plexus.
The woman’s nearly invisible eyebrows rose. “But you don’t go down quiet. Hear? You’re powerful, else Nagi wouldn’t pay you no mind.”
“But I’m not trained. You said I should have learned since childhood.”
“Didn’t say it would be a fair fight.” She lifted her strange mercury eyes to Michaela. “Nagi wants to send you to the Spirit World.” She stirred her fire absently, staring down at the glowing coals. “You the only one with the power to stop him.”
Michaela pointed to the green embers. “Can you see him there?”
“No child. It’s not my gift. I see pieces of life working as a whole, past, present, future. I see Nagi threatens the balance. That’s why I’m gonna help you all I can.”
Cold air blew all around her, and she turned to see Sebastian drawing back the hide curtain and stepping into the room. His height prevented him from standing upright, and still his presence filled the space.
He wore his heavy fur coat that she now knew was made of his own skin, high sealskin boots, black formfitting trousers, a thick brown sweater and gloves.
“Sebastian.” She breathed the word like an answered prayer.
His gaze scanned her from head to toe, and then he exhaled his breath. His eyes pinned her, regarding her with a cautious expression, as if trying to judge her mood. He came no closer.
She did not make him wait. Yes, she had seen him transform, but more important, he had snatched her from Nagi. She felt his benevolence and understood that he would not hurt her. Now she realized why he lived alone, kept to himself and struggled so hard with the decision to help her. He was different from humans, just as she was.
