“What kind of demons are you?” a growling voice called out loudly. “You’ve got no business here, digging in this sacred ground, claiming the dead’s memories for your own. Drop your disguises, demons.”
“We’re not demons. We’re . . . Mele and E-o-nah.”
My claim raised a loud murmur of astonishment from the watchers. But the growling voice accused, “Lies. Mele and E-o-nah were banished by the Pig-Faced demon. They can never return.”
Ian snorted. “Did I hear that whisper right? The little fecker’s callin’ us liars? Banished, were we?” Without waiting for me to confirm it, he shook his ax at the assembly. “There was no banishin’ done of me nor Mary that day or any t’other! You’ve been fed a bowl of gumption by the connivin’ banes!”
“Oh?” the voice retorted. “If Mele and E-o-nah weren’t banished, why did they not return before now, to help us reclaim this territory? Mele and E-o-nah would never desert us. So, the only answer is that they were banished somehow.”
I held up a hand. “Listen, please. I’ve been . . . in hiding. And E-o-nah has been searching for me.”
Another round of astonished murmurs, this time sounding even more distrustful. “Mele the Soul Catcher would never hide!” the growling voice roared. A massive paw with long, gleaming claws appeared in the air. It swiped at us in warning. “Prepare to fight us, you lying demons!”
Ian raised his axe higher. I clamped a hand over his. “I won’t fight them. They have a right to be distrustful. I’ve lost their respect.”
This brought more muttering from the throng, and I sensed a little softening. “Look at the demon’s arm,” a squeaky voice called out. “It has the Soul Catcher’s symbols on it.”
I quickly held my arm high, so all could view the tattooed symbols on my wrist.
That brought lots more twitters and rumbles.
“It could be a trick,” the growling voice said.
“I, for one, am won over,” a new voice countered.
“I as well,” another added.
A large gray fox stepped into view. Larger than any real fox, and more silver than gray. Above him, on the branch of a maple tree, sat a tiny owl. The owl was pure white, with green eyes. Welcome home, Soul Catcher, the owl said in a feminine voice. Whatever your reasons for hiding, we will give you a chance to prove yourself.
Welcome, the fox added. Yes.
Behind them, the other boons gasped and grumbled.
“Thank you, Fox, thank you, Owl. I have a request. Will you show us where the barn stood?”
Ian scowled at me. “No, no. Don’t let the sadness get all over you again. Let’s move on from this spot, Mary-Livia. Let’s not stand here mourning what’s done and gone.”
But I couldn’t help myself. My skin crawled. I looked at Owl and Fox. “Show me where the barn was. Where I . . . where Mele died. Where Ian came back as the redcoat and killed French Stick.”
“Aw, feck, no,” Ian groaned. “Let’s not wallow in it.”
I turned to him. “That’s where the banes celebrate. That’s their power point.”
Owl and Fox traded dark looks. It’s a cursed spot, Fox said.
Ian looked around grimly. “Mary-Livia, if there are banes about, then we’re not going looking for them.”
“Do you want them to own the site where we suffered? Do you want their fucking monument to the destruction of Wonaneya to go unchallenged? Do you want these boons to always feel disenfranchised because we didn’t confront the banes here?”
He stared at me with his chin up. “Now you’re fecking with my pride.”
My stomach churned as we trailed Fox and Owl through the forest, with dozens of suspicious boons following closely. Ian carried his ax in one hand, his grip tight. A slithering chill began to run up my spine as we got closer to the site of the barn. I began to feel naked and helpless, terrified and ruined. The scent of my own blood—and the image of Ian’s desecrated body laying next to mine—began to fog my brain.
This is the place, Fox said sadly, halting in a small clearing where the trees wouldn’t grow.
Owl perched in a nearby tree. If you scrape away the leaves, the soil is gray. Dead. When banes love a spot, they ruin even the earth there.
I stumbled. Ian caught me by one arm. His face was pale, but mine must have been worse. “Got your wits about you?” he asked gently.
I nodded shakily. A low, evil cackle began to fill my ears. I jumped. “Do you hear that?”
“Afraid so, Mary-Livia.”
Leave this spot, Fox said. There are banes here right now.
Ian stepped in front of me, his ax raised. In front of us, on the dead soil at the center of the barn where I had died, where Ian’s corpse had been thrown down next to me, and where Pig Face had emerged after the redcoat hacked French Stick’s head off, misty forms began to grow.
Nahjee, who had been silent since we left Asheville, suddenly spoke. Remember who you are. Not what you were.
Slowly, to my horror, two human images formed. Bloody, mutilated, naked. Intestines hung from the one who’d been gutted. The skinned sections of the other’s breasts and stomach dripped watery red fluid. Their eyes opened wide, staring and begging. They held out their hands to us.
Mary. And Ian.
Us.
“Help us,” Mary groaned, her hand clawing at me, missing several fingers. “Come back with us and change the past for us and the future for yourselves. You can earn forgiveness for your mistakes.”
The gutted and emasculated male corpse stretched the fingerless stump of his fist toward Ian. “’Tis true,” the thing rasped in a perfect imitation of Ian’s voice. “Do no’ condemn us to this fate. Do not put me through what they did to me with my legs spread, I’m beggin’ you.”
Ian, the living one, gagged. I dragged him by one arm and he staggered back from those hands, our spectral hands. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t form words. Ian trembled, and so did I.
Don’t be persuaded! They are banes, Nahjee whispered. Do not be fooled by your horror and sympathy for the faces they wear.
But we were hypnotized.
Tabby, the far quieter of my two amulets, curled her glass form against my throat. If you let them come closer they’ll claw you. They want to shed your blood on the ground where you died in another life. If you let them do that, this place will remain cursed forever.
“If you try to draw blood,” I told the ghostly corpses, “I’ll banish you.”
“How could you betray us this way!” Mary cried. Tears slid down her bloody face. One hand drifted sadly to her raw head, where French Stick had scalped off the long, black hair. “Don’t let this happen to me again, Livia. You can step back through time and change it. Please, Livia. I’m not a bane. I’m you. Just like Amabeth in the mirror. Only this time, you can stop what’s happening. You can save me—and Ian—from being tortured like this.”
I was ripped apart by the fucking helpless wish to do that, to step back through time and alter everything that had condemned me and Ian to horrible deaths then—and lifetimes of being stalked by Pig Face ever since.
This is a test, Sister, a voice said. And you won’t fail it. I have never lost faith in you.
I looked around wildly. Alex? Speaking to me, after all these years?
My baby brother said nothing else. He sounded far away, as if speaking through thick walls.
Ian looked at me over one shoulder, his face, Lindholm’s face, carved in agony. “I can’t say what’s best to do, Mary-Livia.” His voice broke. “Are they banes or boons? Or are they the ghosts of ourselves?”
The two spectral forms stepped closer, hands still out. “Have mercy, love,” Ian’s mutilated corpse said to me. “Trust me. Believe in me. I’m not a bane. I’m begging you for forgiveness.”
“Ian, save me,” the female corpse begged.
Ian drew his ax back. “Mary-Livia, the thought of sinking this ax into the body of your body as I ken it, is near more than I can manage.”
I
an’s corpse looked at me with blue eyes that tore my heart out. “Livia,” it said tenderly. “I’d give my life again to have you trust me. Don’t kill me once more.”
“Don’t hurt me,” Mary cried, her disfigured hands grasping at Ian’s upraised ax. In another second her bloody fingers would claw his forearm.
I shuddered. Nahjee and Tabitha curled furiously on my skin.
Suddenly I knew the truth.
Ian is standing beside me. Not there. Here. If I don’t believe in the here and now, I can’t believe in the future. And I can’t let these monsters harm him.
“You fucking liars,” I said to the corpses.
The dead Ian and dead Mary staggered back from us, shrieking.
“I see you. I damn you, you stinking banes” I yelled hoarsely. “I banish you.”
They writhed. They oozed from their human forms into the nasty, furred, scaled, stinking forms of two banes. They hissed at us in abject defiance.
Then they exploded in inky tendrils of dark, fetid energy.
My legs collapsed. Ian caught me by one arm and helped me sit down. He squatted beside me, his jaw working, his teeth clamped, tears in his eyes. We huddled there, clutching each other, for a long time.
“How could you be so sure they were banes?” he asked.
“She begged you not to hurt her.” My throat worked. “If she were really me, she’d never say that. She’d know you could never hurt her.”
He bent his head to mine.
Fox settled next to us. Owl perched on his silver back.
Fox raised his majestic silver head to the watching boons.
The Soul Catcher and the Soul Hunter have returned.
Silence. Would the boons accept the decree?
We have seen the evidence, Owl proclaimed.
The growling voice of the spirit bear said solemnly. It is proven. All hail them.
As Ian and I held each other, the souls around us cheered.
*
I sensed the white light even before it surrounded us. We had followed Fox and Owl through old-growth forest, the huge trees towering over our heads, to the home of the Talking Rock, the site of the cabin we’d built with our own hands.
“The color of the air is changing,” I said to Ian. “She’s here. The Talking Rock. The white light.”
He halted, stopping me with an outstretched arm. “I can no’ see her as you can. Are you sure she’s the one?”
“Yes.”
Mother, Nahjee whispered happily. The uktena who lives here with the Rock, she is my mother in spirit. Mine and Tabitha’s. The serpent spirit is one of the most ancient.
My pendants curled together in shared happiness.
The light grew stronger, brightening the trees, glowing, pulsing, sparkling. There was a soothing quality, like lotion. “Can you feel her on your skin?” I asked Ian, turning my face up. “She’s warm.”
“She’s all about the touching and the feeling, ay,” he said, too tired to sound pleased about a groping light. He scrutinized the silver-white mist closing around us.
“You still don’t believe in her.”
“I’m not sure I ken to her reasons for doing what she does. Seems a mite suited to her own whims. ” The light swirled around his legs and mine, massaged our thighs, gave a quick kiss to the in-betweens and moved up our bodies. “She’s putting us under a spell, Mary-Livia.”
I couldn’t deny that. The light nuzzled me through my bra and t-shirt. My knees nearly buckled.
“She’s licking my neck,” Ian said.
Fox, with Owl perching on his head, sat down by our feet. Don’t worry. You’re safe with her. There’s nothing to fear when you’re inside her light. She’s always provided a sanctuary here for you and—
She’s part of what you are, Owl put in. You’ve come back to the Talking Rock many times in many lives when you needed to rest. Soul catchers and soul hunters have so few refuges.
I was going to tell them all that myself, Fox said, annoyed.
Owl bent forward and tweaked his silver fur with her tiny, hooked beak. I know, darling. Sorry.
“Are you an old married couple?” Ian asked them.
Oh, yes, Owl answered. We’ve been soul mates for ages. We bicker because we care.
Like the two of you, Fox added, looking up at us solemnly.
The mist stroked our faces, entered our lungs, ballooned our veins. The Talking Rock puffed a sweet high through our bodies, stretching out the coiled muscles, dropping a veil between us and the horrors we’d seen in our journey back to her. The images were still there, but they hurt less than before. Ian’s shoulders relaxed. He let the ax rest by his leg.
Her soft, crooning, female voice spoke in our minds. I’m so glad you’ve come home. So glad you’re ready to be together again.
Are we ready? I asked her, swaying a little. Can you promise us we’ll survive this time?
You always survive.
Talking Rock, you know what I mean.
I promise you this: If you learn the right lesson this time, if you understand what’s truly important, your souls will never fight these battles separately again.
“Could you be more specific, mum?” Ian said aloud, frowning. “I’d just as soon not see Mary-Livia nor myself lose any tender parts again.”
Laughter. She had the softest yet heartiest laugh. It faded gently to a low, happy sigh. I’ve missed seeing you together. You bring out the best in each other, believe it or not. Come along now.
The forest transformed around us. Now we stood on a new path looking downhill into a creek glen. The scent and sound of trickling water filled my brain.
Ian followed me down the path. I felt as if I were floating. Maybe everything would start to make sense. The light shimmered around us, rubbing like a cat, sending a slow, throbbing heat through my body but also warming my mind, whispering, Rest. Rest, now.
We reached the same large fallen log I’d climbed over in my dream, butting up against the side of boulder that towered above our heads. I stopped and Ian stopped close behind me. I could feel the heat and the shimmer connecting us.
“Mary-Livia,” he said gruffly. “Will you at least give me a look?”
“This is happening too fast.”
“Do you not ken?” Ian went on. “Madam Rock wants us to make a grab for one another. She’s trying to give us back the gift we once held dear. But you’ve naught to fear. That’s all I’m telling you. I’ll n’er lay a hand on you if you’re feared of me.”
She’s not afraid of you, the light answered. She’s afraid of herself. Afraid of losing you again. Of being alone again.
I climbed over the downed tree with Ian close behind me. We dropped to our feet on a wide shelf of rock. Water bubbled from a deep spring into the wide, dark pool at the rock’s base. A tiny creek drained it over rounded rocks covered in dark green moss, just like in my vision. “I’ve always loved this place,” I whispered. “I know that much.”
Ian took a deep breath. “A bit of paradise. So this was where you always came on your rambles.” The despair in his voice swiveled my attention to him. “When I was courting you, Mary-Livia, I used to wonder where you went for so long at times. You said you were just needing to wander free. I wish you could’ve told me about this place. And I wish I could’ve opened my eyes and understood.” His expression fell. “Because there I was, praying that you didn’t have another man.”
She had no other man, the light reported. She was always here, asking advice about you and you alone. Uktena and Bird Woman counseled her not to marry you but she couldn’t resist. They didn’t realize you were a soul hunter because you weren’t ready to admit it to yourself in that life. So they underestimated your devotion.
Ian looked at me with a mix of new warmth and annoyance. I conceded with a duck of my head. “Okay. She knows the skinny. It must be true.”
Each soul is responsible for its own deeds, good or bad. Each soul chooses its path, its lessons, its sacrifices. But demons are the
essence of every destructive impulse, and the dark side of human nature is influenced by them, just as the bright side is encouraged by the angels of our better nature. Demons absorb power with each victory. They relish destruction. The demon who stalks you, the one you call Pig Face, has beenabout in the world for a long, long time, and he has provoked terror and misery far and wide. If you don’t stop him soon, he will become too powerful to be conquered by you at all. Wars, plagues, massacres—those are the consequences when demons gain so much strength.
Ian shook his head. “I mean no disrespect, mum, but the fecker wasn’t even powerful enough to keep me from taking this body from him.”
You have the strength of your love for Livia on your side. The bond between you two makes you far stronger than either of you alone. Your demon knows that. He has always feared the time when you would find each other again, a time when Livia would remember you, finally, and accept the fate you have together.
I shivered. “How can we save the world from Pig Face if we can’t even keep each other alive?”
You don’t have to be alive to be together. Never confuse the eternal soul with the temporary body.
The rock’s broad, granite face began filling with symbols.
Lines of symbols. The pictograph writing—the same as the symbols tattooed on me, and that had appeared on Ian’s ax heads. They covered the rock, not so much carved as embossed on it, their color like fire, rising and shifting, moving, as if the secret language they spoke was alive in the rock. Most of the lines only glimmered for a second then disappeared. I squinted. It was as if my eyes weren’t trained to see them yet.
Slowly, all but three short lines disappeared. Those three glowed a soft gold against the silver stone.
The first is knowledge you had as Mary, the Talking Rock said. That line faded and vanished. The second is the knowledge you’ve gained in all the lives since then. This is where you are in your wisdom right now.
I raised my trembling arm. “Those are the symbols I wear.”
Yes. The second line disappeared. Only one line was left. This is what you and Ian are learning and are about to learn. But in order to progress, you must accept who you are. You must be together, fully and completely. You must merge.
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