by C. E. Murphy
“Walker.” Morrison headed off any vocalization of that idea with the seriousness of his tone. I straightened up, gut clenched against the worst. He looked me straight in the eye, like a cop ought to when delivering bad news, and said, “Your friend in the motor pool. Thor. I’m sorry, Jo. He’s in the hospital. It’s serious.”
Chapter Thirty-One
In the end, I was smart enough not to drive. Morrison did, while I stared out the window at a city I could barely see. Whole miles of the streets were dirt, concrete having been swallowed up by Cernunnos’s passage. There seemed to be an incongruous number of trees, plenty of which had been chainsawed to pieces and dragged to the sidewalks, but an awful lot of which were new and young and strong-looking. I noticed those things because the road was bumpy and enormous fallen trees were hard to miss, but the details were all a blur.
Morrison, who couldn’t bring himself to double-park even in an emergency, left me at the hospital’s front doors. I went in and identified myself as family to the receptionist who told me where Ed Johnson was. In the critical-care burn unit, which had spilled out over half a floor. There was an air of palpable tension in the whole hospital, of crisis waiting to turn to chaos. I made my way upstairs to the burn unit, half relieved my eyes were constantly blurred with tears. I didn’t want to see the pain and injury done to so many people, and I particularly didn’t want to see what had happened to Thor. He was so damned beautiful.
Somebody said, “You can’t be in here,” as I drifted by, but I didn’t listen. I could disappear right out from under their noses if I had to. I probably should have on the way in, since they were right: burn units were not places for casual observers.
Gasoline burns, Morrison had said. During the chaos, a fire had caught in the station’s motor pool. Almost everybody had gotten out. Not Nick, though. Not my onetime boss who had been unable to look me in the eye after my magic had awakened, and who would never be able to again. He’d fallen, and Thor had been hurt, badly hurt, trying to get him out.
I found Thor mostly with the Sight, rather than sight. His aura was still lightning and storms, but tamped down and foggy under so much pain medication I was surprised his automatic nervous system remembered how to breathe. I knelt beside him, and I thought very, very carefully about bubbling paint and scored metal on his massive monster truck—The Truck—instead of letting myself think about bubbled flesh and burned bone.
I’d never met a paint job that needed this much work, but I clung to the metaphor. Rusted-out body beneath the paint. Rusted-out frame. So much to rebuild, and even if I could nominally See it correctly and lay that right down over the damage, fixing it instantaneously—and Thor wasn’t in any position to disbelieve that I could—I was still basically taking universe juice and turning it into human flesh. It was not an especially fast process.
More, there was no way I was going to heal Thor and leave everybody else here to suffer. At some point I became aware of Morrison standing over me with a badge and a solid presence that silenced, if didn’t reassure, the doctors and nurses who were supposed to be here. I stayed where I was, letting threads of healing magic spread past Thor and throughout the unit.
Throughout the hospital, eventually, because again, I wasn’t going to patch a few people up and leave the rest. I did stick to critical or otherwise desperate damage, because it was much, much harder than it had been the day before. I was too tired, and I didn’t have Cernunnos boosting me. There was a lot of raw energy in the hospital, prayers and grief and hope, that I was able to draw on, but it had been, to put it mildly, a rough few weeks. I’d left the bottom of the barrel behind some time ago. But I stuck it out, long past when I knew Thor’s injuries were healed, long past when good sense would have sent me home to sleep for another week.
And it was worth it, because after a terribly long time, my ex-boyfriend opened his eyes, smiled faintly when he saw me and whispered, “I knew you’d have my back,” before sinking into a soft painless sleep.
The breath rushed out of me as my chin dropped to my chest. I’d known he was okay, but knowing and knowing were two different things. Seeing his smile, however briefly, helped a little bit with having failed Coyote. It didn’t make up for it. Nothing ever would. But it helped a little, and it allowed me to let the magic go.
It turned out that without the magic, I couldn’t even sit up on my own anymore. Morrison caught me as I tipped over, then put an arm around my waist and helped me from the burn unit. I was faintly aware that people stared at me, hushed with awe, horror, confusion or a combination thereof. I hoped I’d had the presence of mind to not give my name at reception on the way in. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life as the prize display in a faith healer’s tent.
Not until we were out of the hospital, back in Petite and on our way off the grounds did Morrison say, “You okay, Walker?” I nodded, which was apparently insufficient, because he said, “You look like hell. I’m bringing you to my place. You need another shaman to look after you.”
I swung my head around to look at him bleakly. “Coyote is dead.”
“Your dad and Coyote’s grandfather are at my place, Walker.”
Oh. Right. I’d forgotten that. I’d forgotten that I knew any other shamans, or knew of them. Thank goodness Morrison was on hand to think for me, because I clearly wasn’t doing a good job of it myself. I closed my eyes and didn’t open them again until he said, “Wake up, Jo. We’re home,” and opened Petite’s door for me. He helped me out of the car, too, and half carried me inside.
I didn’t think of him as a vain man, but for the first time I noticed a mirror in his front hall. I’d have been just as happy not to notice, because I looked hollow, like I hadn’t eaten or drunk anything in at least a week. My hair was dull and unhealthy and my skin was an awful color under a tan that had no business being there. I stared at it for a few seconds, then remembered the blazing sun of Big Coyote’s desert. It had tanned me once before, too. But even that color didn’t help make me look even slightly healthy. I said, “Wow,” out loud to the glimpsed reflection, and Morrison’s gaze met mine in the mirror.
He winced. “I told you.”
“I know, I just didn’t...” I stopped the explanation halfway through, because it was too much effort to say the obvious: I just hadn’t thought I looked that bad. Morrison winced again and pretty much carried me into the living room, where my father and an older man I’d never met both came to their feet in obvious concern.
Dad looked tired, although not nearly as bad as me. His long hair was tied back, temples showing the first threads of white, which I was pretty sure hadn’t been there when I’d left the Qualla just a few days earlier.
The other man’s long hair was iron-gray and fell loose around his shoulders. Other than that, and the lines of age and sorrow marking his face, he was clearly the die from which Coyote had been cast. I could see his youthful beauty in aging features, and though his aura was dark with loss, it even had the same desert dune and sky tones to it. My eyes welled up and I put a hand out toward Coyote’s grandfather.
He took it, and the world fell away.
I opened my eyes in the Lower World. How I knew it was the Lower World was anybody’s guess, because I lay not under a yellow sky or red sun, but under a wattle-and-daub dome so dark I couldn’t tell its color. The air inside was thick and wet with heat, clogging my chest when I drew breath. I coughed, but even that was difficult. I wondered about the feasibility of not breathing at all while in the Lower World.
The heat came from a fire pit not all that far from my face. Not all that far from any of me: I was curled in front of it like a dog, head pillowed on my arms. I thought about rolling away, but I was pretty sure the dome wasn’t big enough for me to escape the fire’s intensity no matter where I went in it. For such heat, it didn’t put off very much light. Burning embers, probably. Now that I thought about it, there was a heavy scent of cedar in the air. It was used to cleanse away bad spirits and maybe in transportati
ve magics, I wasn’t sure.
Oh, yeah. Of course. I was in a sweat lodge. That had taken an embarrassingly long time to conclude.
As soon as I realized it, the shadows moved. For a couple of wild heartbeats I went cold with panic, which turned my skin nastily cold and clammy in the heat. But before I could even unlock my muscles and try to run, Grandfather Coyote appeared in my line of vision. A moment later, so did my father.
They were both painted with demon faces, terrible black-and-white streaks, huge blackened eyes, wide angry mouths. Red cut across their cheeks and dribbled down like blood, and their hair was stiff and wild with white woad. They both wore what I thought of as traditional garb, leather and feathers and bare feet, and my father had my drum in hand.
The first bang of that drum made my teeth vibrate and my skin hurt. I’d had enough pain lately, and wasn’t one bit brave about it. I whimpered and folded my arms over my head.
Amazingly, that made the thick wet air even hotter. I couldn’t breathe at all, and Lower World or not, I wasn’t comfortable not breathing. I unfolded my arms and sent a truly pathetic look at my father. “Please don’t do that.”
He paused, obviously surprised, and glanced at Grandpa Coyote. The old man was less of a soft touch, glowering in return. Dad’s expression turned guilty and he banged the drum again. A billion jillion needles pricked my skin all at once. “Stop. Stop. Stop it!”
Grandfather Coyote sounded surprised. “She resists it even now?”
“Oh, fuck that shit, brother.” The words popped out before I even thought about them. “I’m not going oh-my-god-no, not-shamanism! anymore. I’m just tired and in pain and the drum hurts my skin. So give me a break.”
It was not the most respectful speech I could have given an elder, particularly an elder whose grandson had just died and who was presumably trying to help me. Dad stopped banging the drum, though, as he and Grandpa Coyote’s eyes met in a long and silent exchange. Eventually Dad said, “I did tell you she wasn’t traditional,” in an apologetic tone.
“How can we help her if she refuses the very foundations of our magic?”
“We’re in a sweat lodge,” I said, and if I’d dared hide my face again, I’d have said it into the safety and comfort of my arms. “I’m sure we don’t also need a drum, do we? Really? Because I’m going to get hallucinogenic from the heat any minute now. Or puke. And I ate a lot of breakfast. You don’t want me to puke.” This was not going well. Even I could tell it wasn’t going well. Much more quietly, I said, “Please just stop,” and, heat or not, put my arms over my head again. I was too tired. Too tired to argue, too tired to deal with pain, too tired for much of anything. And the fact that I was in a Lower World sweat lodge heavily implied that there was a boatload of something coming down the line at me, which meant I was going to have to deal.
But Dad didn’t start pounding the drum again, and after a moment I heard the two men murmuring to each other. When they stopped speaking, a moment’s silence filled the lodge, then was broken by song.
A lot of the native music I knew was high-pitched and tonal, and right then would probably take the skin right off me. Grandpa Coyote brought it down a few octaves, which sanded the edges off, and Dad started a countermelody that sounded a lot like gospel. I was so grateful I sagged into the dirt, which took some doing. Without the drumbeat piercing my skin I was able to listen to, absorb, embrace, inhabit, yeah, inhabit, the music and the heat. Or it was able to inhabit me. I couldn’t tell which way it was worming its way inside me, the music on the heat or the heat in the music, but they both worked inside my skin, into muscle and bone and into my marrow, where together they began to break up the leaden exhaustion within me like it was dirt in a fuel line.
I chuckled at the ground, wondering if my car analogies would infect Dad and Grandfather Coyote, or if they had their own imagery that they were overlaying onto my healing. It didn’t matter. Mostly it was just nice to feel the clogs and lumps loosening. The music definitely lifted all that muck out, uplifting the way the best music does, and leaving heat penetrating my bones until they felt like melting butter. Even if I was lying on a dirt bed, I was more comfortable than I could remember being in weeks. I drifted into that fugue state of dreaming without quite being asleep: I could hear Dad and Grandfather Coyote’s song, and feel the heat and mugginess, but it was all wonderfully distant and slightly surreal. Sometimes it all faded out before snapping back into focus, though even those snaps didn’t bring me close to waking.
Gradually a visual component added itself to my half sleep. First the sun, taking up a mantle as the source of heat. That was another thing I liked about this stage of wakefulness: the dream state seemed slightly more logical, as if there was just enough waking mind to feel things needed an explanation. The sun’s gently pounding heat didn’t explain the wet air, though, so I wasn’t entirely surprised when I started to hear water gurgling, like a waterfall had grown up nearby. Bit by bit so did other things that didn’t make quite so much sense, although the undulating wind was obviously representative of the voices singing in the background. Artistic, I complimented my brain, and in response it finished building my garden.
At least, I thought it was my garden. Lush growth spread from just beyond the top of my nose as far as my heavy-lidded eyes could see. Aidan and I had torn the garden’s containing walls down just a few days ago, but I hadn’t expected this from my next visit. The air smelled good, fresh and rich and clean. So did the dirt, which I discovered by trying to take a really deep appreciative breath with my face half buried in it. I coughed and rolled over, unwilling and possibly unable to get to my feet.
Thunderbird Falls poured down a cliff face just a few feet away from me. Or maybe Thunderbird Falls’ older, larger and highly metaphysical brother, because even from the view at ground level, it was clear there was no lake just a few yards below us. Through the warm misty air, it looked fairly possible that I was lying at the very edge of the world.
That inspired me to scootch forward on my belly so I could peer over the cliff’s edge. There was world down there, quite a ways down, but definitely there. A lake pooled at the falls’ foot, and a river cut away into land that became foggy with distance long before logic dictated it should. That implied I had a lot of personal exploring to do. That seemed fair enough. I scooted back from the cliff’s edge and rolled over again, contemplating whether sitting up was worth the effort.
Big Coyote trotted across the rich green landscape. Water droplets beaded on his metallic fur, scattering rainbow fragments across gold and silver and copper as he dipped his head to touch a cold black nose against mine.
For a heartbeat I wanted to scream at him. I wanted to rail and hit and lash out, wanted to demand why he hadn’t saved Coyote, why he hadn’t made him hold on until I could get back to save him. Then a surprisingly warm and wet pink tongue dragged across my face and all I could do was grab the beast’s glittering fur, drag him down and sob into it.
He wasn’t a dog. He wasn’t even a coyote. He was an idea, an enormously large idea, but he was an idea put into familiar shape and form, and in that form, he behaved as a mourning dog might. Soft yips and whines met my tears, and Big Coyote, archetype trickster, twisted around in my desperate grip until he could lick my face again and butt his head against my shoulder, my ribs, whatever part he could reach. Ideas couldn’t love things, but in our shared sorrow, I thought Big Coyote had loved my Coyote anyway, and was as distraught over his death as I was. I slept for a while, when the tears were done, slept with my head pillowed in Big Coyote’s ribs. I dreamed of deserts, and when I woke up, it was to meet the depthless stars in Big Coyote’s eyes.
They told me a necessary truth. I hadn’t had the strength to reshape the Master without the grief and anger of Coyote’s death driving me. I had sown a monster’s new shape in love and rage, in despair and punishment and hope, and nobody, not even me, went that deep or that far without paying for it. I would never have let Coyote pay for it, even i
f I’d known to the core of my being that it was necessary. I wasn’t that ruthless.
In the end, it seemed that Coyote had been.
I put my forehead against Big Coyote’s and my arms around his skinny coyote shoulders, wrung out but no longer devastated. Accepting, maybe.
When I sat back again, a coyote still sat beside me, but it wasn’t Big Coyote anymore. This one was more like my Coyote, with golden eyes and normal, if gray-grizzled, fur. He did his best to look as alien and remote as Big Coyote, and I laughed at his complete inability to do so. “Grandfather?”
“Is it so easy to tell?” Even if I’d had any doubts, that put them to rest. Big Coyote never talked. He typically just smashed me in the head with his own and then went along on his business. I smiled and nodded, and Grandfather Coyote heaved a sigh very like the ones I’d seen his grandson offer. “Are you ready to come back now?”
“No.”
Grandfather Coyote flicked an ear and looked at me sideways, but I was—for a rarity—absolutely certain of myself. “No, there’s something I need to do first.” I drew a circle around me in the dirt as I spoke, leaning awkwardly to include the coyote in it. “Renee?” Less hopefully, I also said, “Rattler? Raven?” but the only one I expected was Renee.
She was the only one I got, too, her quiet presence awakening not in my mind, but in front of me, manifesting as her physical form here in the Lower World. We stared at each other a long time, Renee waiting with the calm patience of one of her species, me trying to keep myself from reaching out and breaking her long thin legs and spine into pieces. Maybe that wasn’t fair, but it wasn’t fair that the spirit guide who had survived was the one I liked the least, either.
I finally started talking, because somebody had to, and it wasn’t going to be the walking stick. “This wasn’t what I wanted. You weren’t what I wanted. I mean, in the beginning, none of this was, but things have changed. Raven, Rattler...” I crushed my eyes shut, pretending I could see them: Raven’s feathers gleamed blue and red with blackness, and Rattler glowed gold and brown in my mind’s eye.
