by Gemma Files
“You have already done harm!” Songbird raged. “You came here to die in battle, like a warrior. I came against my will, vowing not to leave without my full power restored, and not to die at all.”
Yiska sighed. “And yet earlier you mocked at Sophronia Love, for fearing to be touched by magic? You must set aside your own fear, which keeps you small. I will swear with you myself, if that will ease your mind.”
“No,” Grandma declared. “You are no Hataalii, not fully, with your weapons-love and your lack of study! That would be as useless as to swear with the dead-speaker — ”
“Do you say my word is worthless, Spinner?” Yiska asked, not looking away from Songbird — and her voice, though calm, was dangerous.
“I say only that if we are to attempt this at all, it must be done between true Hataalii, not with medicine workers, or dead-speakers.” With a groaning sound she rose to full height, towering over Songbird, so high Sophy somewhat fought down the urge to cringe back herself. “If you will not do this, ghost girl, seeing the child cannot, then we must risk the working unbound, and deal with what happens as it happens.”
“’Scuse me, ladies.”
Sophy had to admit she found an odd pleasure in the others’ startlement, for though confounding expectations might win you no trust, it did at least command attention. But then again, truth could be its own compulsion — and God had put something in her head just now, plain as day. She couldn’t fail to act on it.
“Was my understanding that if we can’t retrieve Chess Pargeter’s soul from its current limbo,” she began, therefore, “our chances of thwarting Mister and ‘Missus’ Rook are much reduced — and that if they’re not stopped, the whole land, the whole world, will be ruined or destroyed. That correct?” A nod from Yiska. “Then if Miz Songbird won’t bond with you, Spinner . . .” For all her effort, here Sophy’s voice broke, but she forced herself on. “. . . you can bond with Gabriel, through me. With Missus Kloves here to tutor, I’ll show him what has to be done, and the Oath’ll be made.” She glanced back at Yancey, who had closed her mouth, grey eyes wide. “Why else was I bound to Gabe, if not for that?”
Given it was impossible to read Grandma’s face or voice, Sophy had to wonder if the sympathy she thought she heard in the creature’s next words — dim though it might ring — was nothing but her own imagination.
“Salt-man’s wife,” she rumbled, “your own beliefs say that to do this will damn your son’s soul — and if your heart shares this opinion still, he will know it. Such things cannot be hidden, when a sharing reaches such depths. Being a baby, he will not understand — will feel only your doubt and fear and make it his own, perhaps even strike back at you, seeing it as a betrayal. Knowing all this, do you truly feel Gai-bree-ell — ” Startling to hear one English name, however mangled, amidst all the transposed Indian. “ — will be better off, for putting him to such risk?”
Sophy took a shivering breath, fighting for calm, and replied, slowly: “Seeing how I was always taught that merely to possess hexation at all was damnation irrevocable, then . . . if that’s true, Gabe . . .”
. . . is damned already.
But no. She didn’t believe that, and couldn’t say it.
Instead — picking her way from word to word carefully — she said, “. . . at any rate, nothing we’ve talked of can do him any more harm. And if it’s not true — if hexation is just a force like lightning, or bodily vitality — then all that matters is how it’s used, not whether, and only the things one chooses to do with it can constitute resistance of Grace. For since all mortal men are born equally depraved, Gabe’s best hope is to be with those who can most aptly teach him . . . ’specially if he can be made safe from their unholy hungers, as well as his own.”
Cuddling him close, she watched him sleep for a moment. “So even if you are all damned,” she added, voice kept low, “this makes you the ones best suited to teach us how Gabriel might escape that same fate — and if you are not, then Gabriel need not be, either. But whichever the case, there is no profit in fleeing the tests God demands of us.”
A long silence passed, broken only by the crackling of the conjure-circle’s fire, the faint susurrus of a wind smelling of smoke, ice, and chaparral. And when Grandma finally spoke again, it was in the quietest — most human — tone Sophy had ever heard from her, as yet.
“Almost, Sophronia Love,” she said, “you persuade me to think better of bilagaana. Perhaps you can learn.”
Sophy didn’t know if she was meant to be complimented, or insulted.
“If this constitutes agreement, then let’s about it,” was all she said, in reply. And strode briskly into the circle, snapping over her shoulder, to Yancey, “Missus Kloves, you’d best oversee this procedure. Sooner it’s complete, the sooner we can send you on your seeking-journey, and see what ensues.”
“Wait, gods damn you! Wait!”
It was Songbird, chasing after Sophy now with the clumsiness of one unaccustomed to running; when she caught up, she was gasping, as though she’d never quite adjusted to no longer being able to levitate her way through life.
“If you are so set on gambling with your son’s life — his ch’i, his soul — then do not bind him to her . . . to what she is now.” She jabbed a finger angrily at Grandma, already a-trudge into the circle behind her, with Yiska and Yancey flanking. “She is a ghost with no flesh, a violation of wu hsing, an aberration of all Five Forces clinging to existence by will alone; there is nothing in her which may not come unravelled tomorrow, or the next day. And what then of any soul bound to hers?”
“Miss Yu, I really don’t have time — ”
Spasmodically quick, Songbird grabbed for Sophy’s arm, startling her still; was this really the first time Sophy could ever recall the girl voluntarily touching anyone? It seemed entirely unpremeditated — even Grandma paused mid-step, possibly exhaling, though her state made that hard to reckon.
One way or the other, they all seemed equally surprised by what Songbird had to say next.
“If you must do this, then . . . it should be with me.”
Not letting go of Sophy, she looked to Grandma, shoulders braced as if against imminent impact. But it was Yiska who answered, telling her mentor: “She is not wrong, Spinner.”
The firelight showed a certain warmth dancing in her eyes, deeper than mere congratulation over Songbird’s unselfishness; the Chinese hex flushed to see it, reaction painfully visible on her bleached skin. Behind them, Yancey coughed and covered her mouth, not quite able to hide a smirk whose implications Sophy — suddenly a bit red herself — found she did not quite wish to guess at.
“No. She is not.” There was no anger in Grandma’s reply, only a vast weariness. “And so, as Sophronia Love has said — let us begin with you, dead-speaker.”
Yancey bowed, joining Songbird and Sophy by the fire, without protest.
“Ma’am,” she said.
Taking Songbird’s hand, she laid her other palm on Sophy’s, cradling Gabe’s head, and nodded at her. “You should wake him,” she murmured. Nodding back, Sophy shifted Gabe’s weight, planning to gently jostle him out of slumber — then paused.
Probing the new connections ’tween her mind and his, she gradually increased the intensity of her focus on Gabe, in no manner she could easily describe: As if her intention were a Dietz lamp, turning its oil-soaked wick steadily up until its bright blaze cut through all shadows. In her arms, Gabe yawned and blinked his eyes open, awareness quickening in reflex echo of hers. He smiled toothlessly, love pouring back into her, leavened a moment later by hunger — it had been some hours since he’d fed, she realized. Soon, she promised.
The promise was met by an imperious impatience that, in spite of everything, made her want to laugh. Gabe answered the thought with his own jolt of pleasure, gurgling.
Abruptly, two new presences intruded on their shared perception. Yancey’s mind she recognized, its inner strength clear water over forged steel, while the other’s . .
. Sophy felt Gabe recoiling, and reached out to steady him, even as she forced herself not to retreat. The image that came fastest to mind was of a damaged locomotive, once mighty, now battered and leaking steam, limping along near the end of its fuel. Behind it dragged a carriage-train of memories, grindingly heavy for the shortness of Yu Ming-ch’in’s life — a culture older than the Saviour Himself, calcified in pride and rigidity; a role laid out one hundred generations earlier, dooming her to be bred and born to be bought and sold. A fate-path once thought immoveable, now crazed with fractures like some frost-cracked granite block, and the helpless terror of not knowing what would replace it.
The moment all these things passed through Sophy’s head, a spark of fury flared up — Songbird’s reflexive rejection of any attempt at pity, striking Sophy like a slap. Thrust back between her and Gabriel, Sophy took the blow without flinching, already feeling the strain as their separate magics roused to mutual, instinctive awareness. Now, she tried to send, a raw surge of urgency, nowhere so coherent as a word.
Must’ve been plain enough, though, for Yancey confirmed it by spinning a new thought-strand out toward Grandma, the ghost-hex only a squatting, shadowy bulk on the edge of this shared thought-space. Connection vibrated and pulsed in five directions at once, a harp-strung telegraph cable which sung high, almost painful, then broke.
There is fire between you, and it is by your choice that two fires shall become one which is both, where before, one would only have endured in the other’s ash. Though obviously prompted by Grandma (Sophy could “hear” the Indian . . . Diné . . . words, lurking under the English equivalents their minds supplied), Yancey’s part in this choir invisible wrapped them all, heavy with invocation. You choose now to share a single fire, trust and understanding, a way of life. This fire will give you heat, warmth, food, and happiness. The new fire represents a new beginning, a new life. Let the fire endure for life, until Tódilhil, the Black Water Lake, separates you.
Death do us part, Sophy thought. Lord Almighty . . . this is like marriage.
Do you choose to share your fire, and forever after forsake burning alone?
From Gabriel, only bewilderment: (Share?) Songbird too stayed still, body and mind unmoving, as if paralyzed.
After a moment, Yancey repeated the question. Do you choose to share your fire, and forsake the solitary flame?
Nothing. Nothing. And then —
Yes. A sharp, jagged burst, its meaning nonetheless clear, while something else — some long splash of force, searing to look upon — reached out from Songbird toward Gabe, then stopped bare inches from his face, trembling with effort. Make him understand, Sophronia Love; you are his mother, he yearns to obey you. I cannot hold back for long. Make him answer, before I do as my nature urges.
Now Sophy was the one frozen. For deep in Gabe’s thoughts, tangled with hers, she could feel his mind start on a horrifying slide from fear and confusion to outright hunger, a deep, greedy, brutish appetite wholly unlike anything any infant should be able to feel. He began to struggle, reaching out for Songbird’s power with his own, a crackling white tendril that burned icily, stabbing Sophy from breast to gut. If Gabriel touched Songbird’s power in hunger, they were lost, she knew — simply knew — and knew, as well, that there was no real way to explain, not in any way Gabriel could comprehend.
Blindly, instinctively, she seized him, gripping his inchoate voracity the same way she’d grab his wrist to stop him trying to touch a candle: No! Not safe. Hurt. And then, though it tore her soul in two to do it: Like this.
Sent pain in a burst, all her own worst memories distilled, and “heard” — felt — him howl, at the touch of it. Then flooded him with urgent love just a second later, until he yielded, unable even to imagine resisting Mama on something she wanted so; swerved him straight into Songbird’s grip with his mind wide open, a friendship-clutching hand rather than a bite-poised mouth. Thinking back, at the same time, as though his skull were her very own puppet-head: Yes, we agree, to everything. We swear to share the fire.
(Yes.)
Light burst over Tse Diyil, turning night briefly into day. The detonation of commingling power knocked Sophy backward out of mind-bond; she struck the ground with a horrified gasp. Christ’s name, she’d let go of Gabriel, dropped him! Furiously excoriating herself, she struggled back to her feet — to find Gabriel floating in mid-air, five feet off the ground, staring with wide eyes and a delighted grin at Songbird, as if she was the most wonderful toy he had ever seen.
Songbird hovered likewise, airborne, opposite him; her blanket had fallen to the ground, revealing the tatters of the red silk gown she’d arrived in. But that gown was mending itself even as Sophy watched, spinning itself busily back into wholeness. She, too, wore a stunned smile, so unlike what Sophy knew as “her” that for a dazed moment, she wondered if this could really be the same girl. Some other albino Celestial, no doubt, come to take her place, and turn this whole affair into one giant jest.
A sphere of blazing golden-green radiance surrounded she and Gabe, pouring a spring morning’s heat and light out onto the winter air. The conjure-fire had been blown apart, scattered to ash.
Gabriel laughed, and flew at Songbird; she caught him with perfect grace, naturally as Sophy herself, and let him sling his legs ’round her monkey-style. Not sure if this was dream or nightmare, Sophy saw that Songbird’s fingertips were once more adorned in their former golden, talon-like sheaths, and that the power which glowed in her eyes was matched, hue for hue and force for force, in Gabriel’s. Petulant girl; sweet, harmless infant; both were gone, for the nonce. The twinned thing before her was something alien, and hideously strong. . . .
As if sensing his mother’s terror, however, Gabriel abruptly wriggled, turning in Songbird’s arms ’til he saw where she stood, aghast — then leaped free, hurtling through the air to thud neatly into Sophy’s arms. They closed ’round him automatically, trained to respond to his weight, and he giggled, squirming against her. Might’ve been any given night when his cries woke her, with him lying there infuriatingly happy, cheered by sight of her dragging herself half-asleep to his cradle.
“He is your son.” Even Songbird’s voice was different — calmer, more generous. She had drifted back down to ground a diplomatic few yards distant, hair eddying loose about silk-clad shoulders. “Though I cannot sense his mind as you do, the bond conveys — impressions, and this I know: he will never not be your son, Sophronia. He is simply . . . more than that, now.”
At the sound of Songbird’s voice, Gabe wriggled about again, grinning at his new friend; Songbird smiled back. Beyond her, Yancey stirred with a groan from the heap she’d been knocked into, pushing herself up on her elbows.
“It worked, then.” Coming as it did in the union’s wake, Yiska’s voice sounded discordant, almost unfamiliar; Sophy winced, then wished she hadn’t. But Songbird’s smile didn’t falter — instead, she revolved in place as on a spinning pedestal, arms spread, to show off the marvel of her restoration, and grinned yet wider when Yiska could not keep from gaping.
“Ohé!” She said, at last, admiringly. “You are a sight, in your glory — better than ever, to my mind. I rejoice, to see you like this again.”
Once more, Sophy watched a blush tint Songbird’s too-pale cheeks, bright and blotchy. “There are others to thank, for that,” she replied, at last. “And I . . . will endeavour to do so.”
Yiska grinned her approval. “Now you are learning, White Shell Girl.”
That same spark, leaping between them, might’ve lead to something more, if not for what next intruded: a huge black thing which breached the darkness beyond the circle, hurtling itself at Yiska’s back — glassy spike-ruff bristling, wolf jaws agape in a soundless snarl, and taloned ape-hands spread out to seize, rip, tear and gut. Wolf? Bear? Shock and disbelief slowed Sophy’s heartbeat to agonized hammer blows. She saw Yiska twist, bringing up her spear even as Grandma heaved up a gout of power, but both were too slow, caught unprepared
, too late.
Then: green-gold force lanced through the beast’s ribcage, pinning it in mid-air. The thing writhed and flailed, shrieks so harsh and high they near dissolved into a buzz, like some mad, dying wasp. Yiska reeled back, leaned on her own spear-shaft, panting. Grandma’s half-shaped hexing broke apart in her hands and dribbled, sizzling, all down her front, leaving smoking black tracks in its wake, though she appeared not to notice.
Numb, Sophy followed the line of power back to its source and saw Songbird, aloft once more with hand outstretched, holding the beast transfixed with a single pointing finger. She seemed as surprised as anyone else.
The green-gold aura surrounding her stretched to Gabe, wailing in Sophy’s arms with rage and fright; abruptly, as this rose to one single angry shriek, the light flared and the beast exploded in a thunder-crack of shards that sifted the ground like coal-coloured snow. Startled, Songbird thudded down and turned to blink at Gabriel, who buried his face in Sophy’s breast, still bawling. The green-gold light faded, leaving them all in the dark.
It hit Sophy how close they had all just come to dying. Her knees buckled; she was just barely able to turn the collapse into a clumsy seat-taking, Yancey Kloves’ hand suddenly wedged ’neath one armpit to lever her down safely, though the cold ground’s impact still rattled her spine. She gulped, shivering, hugging Gabe hard as felt safe to. It’d just been so fast — only now did she see Yiska’s braves lunge into the circle, weapons drawn far too late, and useless, while shouted questions from the others skirled up too, as they came sprinting. Yiska’s answers were curt, and sounded disappointed.
“Must’ve come through right at the moment the Oath took,” Yancey managed, voice raw, staring into the dark. “Might even be the Oath itself brought it through — that the burst of power widened the Crack, or something like.” Looking up, to Grandma: “We were all so ritual-took we’d have missed the Last Trump, probably . . . but I can’t think how else it got by you.”
