The Shadows and Sorcery Collection

by Heather Marie Adkins

  The cabin in question appeared empty as I approached. Dark windows gaped like eyes beneath a hot desert sun. That sun was my biggest problem—I’d lose clarity of sight the moment I left daylight for the dim interior.

  Gun drawn, I pushed open the door.

  I blinked away the spots in my vision. The cabin held a small, wood-framed bed and a crooked table with only one chair.

  A woman rose from the chair and leveled her gun at me.

  But the woman’s identity stymied my immediate reaction to fire: Councilwoman Meade. The gray-haired crone who’d been on our side during the council meeting. I squinted through my distorted vision, sure I was mistaken.

  I let the nose of my gun lower. “What are you doing here?”

  Councilwoman Meade cried out, an anguished sound. Her gray eyebrows arched in surprise, before she squeezed her eyes shut and fired.

  I whipped my gun up and returned fire, confused as fuck why this was happening. Two bullets tore into my abdomen in the split second between her shots and mine. My bullet barreled between her shocked eyes.

  As she fell, a third shot burst from her gun on reflex.

  Hot fire ripped through my neck.

  I stumbled back a step. Sensation vanished from my hands, and I heard the distant clatter of my gun hitting the floor. I reached for my neck. My fingers came away soaked in blood.

  Shock warred with pain. I collapsed into darkness.

  Hushed voices pierced death’s veil.

  “Can’t we just throw her in a shallow grave, or something?” an unfamiliar voice asked. “She’s going to die anyway.”

  “You heard the boss. Transport her to Headquarters. His rules, not mine.”

  “I’ve never even used one of these fucking things.”

  Through a haze of numbness, I felt the clasp of cold metal on my wrist.

  “It’s supposed to be easy.” The distinctive beep preceding a Com dispatch rang through my thoughts. “FT23 to radio. One for transport.”

  I tried to move, but I’d lost all ability to feel my limbs. The dusty ground had turned to a muck of blood and dirt beneath my face, and it was all I could sense other than the cold metal on my wrist.

  I wanted to rip it off. I willed myself to rip it off before they could transport me to Headquarters.

  Just let me die in peace.

  The dispatcher’s tinny voice came back. “Uh, FT23, we don’t have you on a run. Can you advise?”

  A different voice keyed up. “Radio, he is on an errand for me. Please initiate transport.”

  Her startled voice returned, “Yes, Rein. Of course.”

  Magick flooded me, and I gave in to unconsciousness.

  I awoke one more time.

  Fire burned in every part of my body. Fire, this time. Pain, instead of numb. I didn’t know whether to be thankful I was still alive, or to cry because I hurt too much to survive.

  The pitch black around me was absolute. Cold stone beneath me. I reached out, hissing at the way my wounds sharpened. My hands hit stone all around me.

  Can’t we just throw her in a shallow grave?

  You heard the boss. Transport her to Headquarters.

  The cuff still clutched my wrist. I ripped at it, crying out as the sharp edges tore into my fingertips. I got it off, thankful for the clatter of metal on stone.

  Everett’s voice. On an errand for me.

  Everett set me up.

  The realization brought a fresh wave of wooziness, followed by the kind of anger that could burn entire cities. That asshole. He sent me to the encampment to execute me.

  But why Meade?

  She had closed her eyes when she shot. As if she didn’t want to.

  As if something had made her.

  He knew I’d return fire and kill her, too.

  Two birds. One stone.

  Crafty mother fucker. He wanted me gone. When I hadn’t died right away, he’d had me transported to Headquarters.

  I was ninety percent certain he’d sealed me into Senka’s repaired tomb, where no one would ever find my body.

  Shit. Senka. Was she in danger? If I was sealed in her tomb, he obviously had no intentions of returning her here.

  My head whirled. Blood trickled down my neck. How was there any left in me? I pictured my body a mummified husk. Someone would open the tomb in a hundred years and wonder who I was. Put me on display in a museum.

  My mother would worry.

  I’d never see Mai again.

  My tribe.

  Shana.

  Lila.

  Warren.

  I probably could have fallen in love with him one day.

  The whirling intensified. Blood dripped.

  I closed my eyes to a different kind of darkness.

  26

  I’d always assumed death would be an eternal nothingness. That my soul would join the universe, and I’d cease to be anything that once resembled Maurelle Nez. I’d become a star, burning bright until the void consumed me, and I winked out of existence.

  Instead, death was a small island on an infinite sea. I sat beneath a lone pine tree. The sharp scent of pine needles cleared the fog from my mind. The tree stretched so far into the black sky above that I couldn’t see the peak, and the sky stretched so deep into the horizon, I couldn’t tell where the sky ended and the black water began.

  I tested my limbs and found them in working order. My bloody jeans and tank top had been replaced by a short dress of leather and beads, almost identical to the one my mother had worn the night before for our circle. My bullet wounds had vanished. I traced my fingers over the smooth skin of my throat.

  I stood unsteadily on my bare feet to find the grass softer than any cotton. I dodged low-hanging branches and stepped out into the afterlife, feeling as if it were a little anti-climactic.

  Slowly, I circled. To the left and right, nothing but rocky beach and listless black waves. Ahead of me, the island stretched into the distance. Two enormous clouds hung in the sky, one black as the night around it, and the other as white as snow. Beneath the place where the clouds met, something flickered.

  Fire. Small and contained. White smoke curled into the sky, mingling with the clouds.

  Someone was here.

  As I made my way down the island, sound returned. The buzz of cicadas. A chorus of crickets. The waves lapping at the shore. And somewhere far away, the distant beating of drums. A disorienting feeling of coming home washed over me.

  I stepped into the firelight.

  “You have traveled far, sitsi’,” a male voice rumbled from beyond the flames. My daughter. “Please sit.”

  I obeyed, kneeling on the soft grass. I strained to see into the shadows on the other side of the fire and smoke, to see who had spoken. But the person seemed nothing but shadow and smoke himself: formless, the hint of a smile, mist for eyes.

  One long shadow reached through the flames. An arm, half-finished as if the sculptor had yet to complete the project. Clasped between ill-conceived fingers, an ear of corn.

  “Shuck, sitsi’.”

  “Yes, hastiin.” Yes, elder. I tugged on the husk to reveal a beautiful cob of yellow corn beneath. As I worked, I asked, “Am I dead, hastiin?”

  The figure wavered behind the flames. “Do you feel so?”

  “No, hastiin.”

  “Then you are not.”

  “Where am I?”

  A pause. I thought I glimpsed eyes in the mist. “Look deep into your past, sitsi’. Remember your ancestors.”

  “Nihodilhil.” The word came from a place so deep inside me, I’d forgotten it existed. A place where my father’s voice told the stories of our people and a young girl and her twin listened with starry eyes. “The First World. Where life began.”

  “You have not forgotten.”

  For a moment, his rumbling voice struck a chord in me. I paused before I pulled off the final bit of husk and silky thread from the ear. I stared hard into the flames. I wanted to make sense of the mist and shadow, make a man of
the unfinished speaker.

  I wanted it to be my father.

  “What am I doing here, hastiin?”

  “You seek answers. I do not have them. Shuck the corn.”

  I removed the last of the husk and corn silk.

  The shadow arm appeared again through the fire, seemingly unbothered by the heat. I placed the corn atop the waiting hand.

  Another arm appeared, this one more mist than shadow and missing half its substance. With two fingers, this hand plucked a kernel from the ear and offered it to me. I opened my palm.

  The arms and the ear of corn disappeared once more. I stared down at the single golden kernel in my hand.

  “What is that you hold, sitsi’?”

  “Um. A kernel of corn?”

  The flames danced as if the misshapen figure had sighed, the weight of his irritation blowing like the wind.

  Pain blossomed in my arm. I cried out, closing my hand around the kernel as I flipped my elbow to see a wasp hanging from my skin. I brushed it away. The point of contact on my skin burned like hell.

  “Try again, sitsi’.”

  I glared into the smoke and flames, ninety percent certain the figure had sent the wasp to sting me. “It is maize. It is the lifeblood of our people.”

  “Ah, yes. Good. That kernel holds all the potential of life inside it.” Eyes flickered between the flames. “Tell me why, sitsi’, and I shall give you the guidance you seek.”

  I opened my palm, ignoring the protest of my stinging arm. Like any good wasp sting, it would hurt more before it began to heal.

  I remembered long days in my childhood, running barefoot among the corn. Watching my grandmother’s lined hands pinching seeds into the ground. Sitting beside her outside her hogan, corn silk stuck between my fingers.

  “Corn is life,” I said, my gaze on the kernel. “You plant a kernel. It grows to feed a dozen people. It grows to shed and plant more kernels, which in turn each feed a dozen people. It is an endless cycle. Birth, death, rebirth.”

  The shadowy man smiled beatifically and there — my father, his face so like Rice’s, hidden deep within the mist.

  “Well done, sitsi’. Take your kernel. Cross the island into the land of sunset. There, you shall find the answers you seek.”

  In the place of sunset, beneath Blue Cloud and Yellow Cloud, First Woman waited for me.

  Where First Man had formed of mist and shadow, First Woman had birthed of light and fog. Her willowy form wavered behind an identical fire, a person made of sunlight. In my youth, listening to my father’s stories, I’d never envisioned her as such a beautiful being of light. First Woman represented darkness and death. She’d frightened me.

  I settled across from her, more awed than frightened.

  Eyes shimmered in the swirls of her light. “Tell me, shich'é'é. What is turquoise?”

  The snarky part of me that generally guided answers to questions like this wanted to say, “A rock.” But after my encounter with the First Man, I knew full well that wasn’t the answer she sought. I didn’t fancy being stung by another wasp.

  “Turquoise is a stone of protection, wisdom, power, and luck,” I said dutifully. “It is believed that to wear turquoise is to become one with the universe.”

  First Woman nodded. “Well done, though you forgot to mention immortality and its use in guarding burial sites.”

  “Nothing is immortal.” The words slipped out before I even knew they’d taken up arms in the conversation.

  “Ah, but you are wrong, shich'é'é. Everything is immortal. It simply depends on which side of death you stand.” She motioned. “Give me your neck.”

  I complied, holding my breath at the proximity of her brilliant arms. But no heat emanated from the sunlight-made-living. Her glow bathed me as she fastened a heavy necklace around my neck. First Woman smelled of campfire smoke and the spicy scent of my mother’s hominy.

  She pulled away, and I felt her departure deeply. “Did you know turquoise is influenced by its owner?”

  I fingered the cool stones against my bare collar bone. “How do you mean, shimá?”

  “When its owner is sick or sad, the stone grows pale. When the owner dies, it shall lose all color. But in the hand of a new owner, the stone will regain its true hue. Remember that.”

  The sun had begun to set behind the old woman, casting her form into shadow. Darkness fell soft upon the island, more comforting than frightening.

  “Remember, too, shich'é'é: the dark does not last forever. The sun will always rise in the east. An endless cycle.”

  I smiled, my fingers tracing the edge of every imperfect turquoise stone dancing on my skin. “Everything is a cycle, shimá. Like everything is immortal?”

  First Woman gave me a toothless grin cast of sunlight. “Yes, child. Everything.”

  27

  I wasn’t given entirely clear instruction on where to go from here, now that I’d held state by the fire with the mother and father of my people. But any good daughter of Haseya and Bidziil Nez knew her myths. First Man and First Woman escaped the first world via the infinitely tall pine tree on the center of the island.

  So that’s where I headed.

  Centuries could have passed in the time it took me to climb. New generations could have birthed, lived, died, been reborn, over and over, as I crawled ever upwards, branch by branch. Pine needles rained upon me, and limbs scratched my skin. I welcomed the pain, because it made me feel... well, not dead.

  Below me, First World became nothing more than a disappearing speck of colors. Then it was gone, and I was alone in the thin place between: one foot behind me and one ahead.

  Lightning began on the last few feet of my journey, and the wind blew fiercely. I clung to the tree with all my strength as I fought against the brewing storm to reach the top.

  A vicious gust bowed the tree and toppled me. I fell from the branches. Before I could scream, or even consider that I might plummet back to First World, I landed hard on my side in the dirt.

  Considering I was dead, the pain was real. I sat up with a groan and rubbed away the sting in my elbow. All limbs appeared to be in working order, if a little sore from the impact.

  I looked around as the wind whipped my hair. This world was as dark and lonesome as the last. The sky hung heavy with thick, black clouds. Lightning danced and sang, marrying sky to earth in a dazzling spectacle.

  I pushed against the wind and began to walk. In the myth of Ni’hodootli’izh—Second World—First Man and First Woman escaped via footprints painted on a prayer stick. I was smart enough to assume my journey now would be to find the prayer stick; I wasn’t dumb enough to assume it would be easy in this weather.

  I could see little of my surroundings until the lightning illuminated the sky, so I don’t know how long the wolf walked beside me before I noticed it.

  When the wolves went extinct, the Navajo wept. I’d only ever seen images of wolves, and those lovingly painted pictures and aged photographs couldn’t have prepared me for the majesty.

  She trotted beside me, her long legs moving with such grace, she appeared to float. Her head came nearly to my rib cage and was as big around as a basketball. The wind flattened and wove through her long, thick white fur.

  Finally, she looked at me with huge, yellow eyes. “You do not always have to walk alone.”

  My steps faltered. I blinked at her. “You talk.”

  “You don’t,” she said pointedly. “The lightning is dangerous. Keep moving.”

  “What do you mean I ‘don’t talk’?”

  “Being a lone wolf is a weakness, Maurelle Nez. Not a strength.”

  “I’m not a lone wolf.”

  She huffed, a wolfly sort of laughter, I guessed. “You are. You detach yourself from others. You refuse help and you work alone.”

  “I like it that way.”

  “That way leads to hubris and death.”

  I stopped walking again. “I’m not prideful.”

  “You are. Keep walk
ing. What did I say about the lightning?”

  “There is a million-in-one chance for someone to get hit by lightning.”

  “The more lightning, the more your chances rise. Remember that. And keep walking.”

  My own personal Yoda in the shape of an extinct dog. And she was lecturing me for being myself.

  “I am not a dog. And you are not true to yourself.”

  “You can read my mind now?”

  Her pink tongue lolled from between her pointy teeth in a goofy grin. “I can talk. I can read your mind. I could fly, if I wanted to. But I won’t. I know my limits. As you know yours.”

  We fell into silence for a time. I’d stopped cringing at the sharp crack of constant lightning, and I’d come to welcome the wind as my companion. A second wolf appeared on my other side: big, brown, panting as he trotted along with us.

  “You are a wolf, Maurelle Nez. You are a creature of habit and pack mentality. As are all people, all fae, all beings with consciousness.” The white wolf moved closer as she spoke, until her fur brushed my fingertips.

  On my other side, the brown wolf moved closer so that he, too, brushed against me.

  For a time, we remained silent. If my climb up the pine tree had seemed to go on forever, we walked now into eternity.

  Each brilliant flash from the sky revealed a new wolf joining our trek. Four, then five, ten, twelve—they surrounded me, gently urging me forward as my steps faltered with weariness.

  I became used to their silent guiding: teeth gentle on my arms to prompt me left or right. Brief nudges on my legs, or the lap of a warm tongue on my fingers. After a while, I forgot my humanity, and began to see my own silhouette in the storm as an ebony wolf.

  Lightning cracked, and the electricity of the impact raised the tiny hairs on my body. Someone in the pack urged us to run, and we did, catapulting through the darkness as if we could outrun the sky.

  When the fear and chaos ebbed, the pack came to a halt. I let my fingers tangle in fur, and warm, furry bodies pressed against my legs. I felt safe with them, even as fire continued illuminating the sky.