Ahead of me, the pack of wolves parted, and the white-furred alpha approached with something long clutched in her teeth. She dropped an ornate prayer stick on the ground before me. I could just make out footprints painted on the wood.
“Remember to trust your pack,” the alpha said. “Open to those who wish to help you. You are stronger as a whole than you are as an individual.” The white wolf bowed her head and stepped away. “Good luck, Maurelle Nez.”
I touched her soft, thick fur, then stepped on to the prayer stick for my ride to the next world.
Nihaltsoh—Third World. Where the two rivers converge as male and female, equal halves of one whole. The crossing of the waters beneath a squadron of mountains.
This world lacked the dark pregnant clouds, vicious wind, and lightning. But even with something closer to daylight, the sky still hung dreary, casting the landscape into dim relief.
I surveyed the mountains standing guard at each of the four corners. A mesa in the middle, so similar to the old cave dwellings, beside a cone-shaped mountain. The unbelievable vastness of the scene made my breath catch in my throat. The mesa looked as if the greatest artist in the hereafter had dipped a brush into the universe to paint the story of the world on rock.
I stood in the shallows of the river delta. The dichotomous currents of the male river and female river tugged at my legs: one river pulling me back, the other pushing me forward.
When the rain began to fall, I recalled the tale of the Third World. First Man and First Woman were caught in a heavy downpour that made the rivers rise. They had nowhere to run as the waters overtook them.
“How did they escape?”
I whirled on the voice, my fists coming up in reflex. A man stood on the riverbank behind me: tall, muscular, with the hide of a coyote draped over him. His face was hidden in the shadows beneath the coyote’s lifeless eyes. His rough leather pants hung past his knees over dirty bare feet. A white hint of smile appeared beneath the coyote’s head, and I dropped my hands.
Rice?
“How did First Man and First Woman escape the flood waters?” the man asked again. I couldn’t hear Rice in the sound of the man’s distorted voice, but something about him felt like my brother.
I took a step forward. “Is it really you?”
Coyote took a step back. “Answer the question, Maurelle.”
I laughed at the annoyance in his voice. I was only “Maurelle” when I annoyed him.
The river continued to tug at me. Push. Pull. The water was over my hips, now. “A female reed.”
Coyote nodded. “Tell me the whole story.”
“First Man planted a cedar tree, but it remained shorter than the water. Then he planted a pine tree, but it was also too short. He planted a male reed, but it did not grow high enough, either. Then he planted the female reed, which shot into the sky. They escaped by climbing the reed into the Fourth World. Our current world.”
Coyote nodded. He pointed with two fingers behind me.
I turned, difficult in the water that had now reached my navel.
Senka.
An eternity had passed since my death. Hundreds of years, gone in moments as I journeyed through the worlds of my ancestors. Senka’s face seemed foreign here, in this time and place. Moonshine skin and haunted eyes. The rain didn’t seem to touch her, though the river lapped at her waist, as real as it did me.
She held a reed tightly in one hand. Wordless, she offered it to me.
I reached to take it but stopped. Senka’s face was so sad. So... lonely.
I thought of one hundred years in the dark. No one to touch, to hug, to love, to share stories and laughs and songs. One hundred years of solitude and silence. It sounded like hell.
Senka sacrificed her life for the Hollow. The story was legend; everyone knew it. But... did we? Did Senka have a choice? Or like my own mother pushing me to be someone I’m not, did Rasha force Senka into being a savior?
The thought brought tears to my eyes. Something told me Senka wasn’t given the choice.
But I had a choice.
I took the reed and snapped it in half. I let the two pieces fall into the rising waters now lapping at my breasts. “I want you to be happy, princess.”
Senka watched the broken reed float away on the currents.
I trudged through the heavy waters, my dress weighed down but my heart surprisingly light. As Senka had floundered beneath the desert by herself, overpowered by Acura’s dark legacy, I had never stopped loving her.
I wrapped my arms around her pale, cold shoulders and embraced her.
“You and me,” I whispered in her ear.
Senka returned my hug with a fierce, affectionate embrace of her own. Beneath my arms, her skin warmed. Her soft black hair blew against my face on the breeze.
The water rose. But I felt nothing but peace. I’d traveled the worlds to be here with my princess.
As the river lapped at our chins, currents dragging at us, I clung to her and closed my eyes. “I’ll stay with you, Senka. I’m not afraid of the dark.”
We didn’t let go as the water closed over our heads.
28
I blinked into brilliant sunlight.
I lay on a pad of furs, an arc of sunlight dancing across the floor and into my face. High above, a circle of sky was visible out the peak of the teepee.
I sat up, a woven blanket falling away. I still wore my white dress, but the soft leather was dry and supple, as if it had never gotten wet.
Senka appeared in the open doorway. She smiled. “You are awake. I had begun to believe you would sleep forever.”
I almost didn’t recognize her. She looked softer here—her long dark hair wild and free, her skin tanned by the sun, the same bronze shade as mine. Instead of the Dark purple dress she’d been buried in, she wore a gorgeous leather dress decorated by beads. Her voice was no longer the raspy, halting sound I’d come to know; instead, she sounded musical, like the delicate notes of a flute. And her eyes were the most delicate shade of lavender I’d ever seen.
“Where are we?” I asked sleepily.
“My home. Come.” She held out a hand.
Her palm was soft and warm in mine as we stepped out into a beautiful day. A small fire burned nearby, a pot of spiced hominy roasting. Senka’s teepee rested on a mesa, high above a tremendous view of mountains and desert and the distant green of a forest.
“This is beautiful.”
“This is where I am when I am sleeping. When I am buried,” Senka said softly. “It is not a terrible place to spend my life.”
I settled before the fire where she indicated. “But you’re not buried. I’m alone in your tomb. I mean, my body is alone.”
Senka nodded. “I am asleep. I came to find you.”
She took a kettle from the ring over the fire and poured a steaming copper cup of something translucent and spicy. “The best tea you will ever taste,” she told me with a grin as she handed over the cup. “I’ve perfected the recipe.”
The concoction smelled of cinnamon and clove. I took a tentative sip and closed my eyes at the burst of flavor. “Delicious,” I agreed. “The rein hasn’t hurt you?”
“No. His intentions are quite clear, even in my half-state of understanding.” Senka knelt beside the pot of hominy, her long legs folding elegantly beneath her. Her wild black hair swung forward, a curtain around her body as she peeked into the pot and stirred. “He will use me for his own end, and then he will destroy me.”
“Why?”
“Because I am the only thing standing between him and the darkness.”
I shivered. “He wants Acura’s darkness?”
She nodded, tapping her spoon on the edge of the pot before she placed it on a ceramic dish. “Another thing he can use for his own end.”
“I knew he was bad news.”
Senka inclined her head in agreement. I reveled in the clarity of her preternatural lavender eyes. Acura’s darkness couldn’t touch her here.
�
�You look beautiful,” I told her.
“As do you.” She looked back into the hominy as she continued to speak. “The current world has taken the wildness from her people. Technology beget ignorance beget ambivalence. The world is so broken, I often wonder how irrevocable we have become. It makes me prefer this hidden utopia, no matter how lonely.”
“Is this place heaven?”
Senka tinkled with laughter. “Heaven doesn’t exist, Relle. It’s a manmade construct to help people come to terms with the thought of death. This is a place of in-between. Here, we are not quite of the living, yet we are not quite of the dead, either. Here, we are the perfection of humanity. Unforged clay, ready for the next world.”
“Reincarnation, you mean?”
Senka scooped out a heaping ladle of hominy. “Of course. Like the corn.”
“An endless cycle of life, death, and rebirth,” I parroted.
“Always.”
We ate in companionable silence. Distant birdsong and the calming music of the forest around us lulled me. I ate slowly. I moved slowly. I felt no hurry to be anywhere, to do anything, to be anyone but this perfect in-between version of me.
Senka’s hominy was even better than my mother’s, which I would never have admitted to Haseya Nez. The thought of Mama made my heart ache. My life had been nothing but a disappointment to her. Now, she’d never know what happened to me.
“Your mother is proud of you,” Senka interrupted my thoughts.
I almost dropped my bowl. “What?”
“There are no secrets here. I know you’re thinking of your mother. She is proud of you. As chieftess, she wants to see her daughter take her place in the tribe. But as your mother, she’s proud of how strong and selfless you are in the path you chose.”
“Selfless. Yeah.” I set the bowl down, having lost my appetite. “My entire career has been founded on a lie.”
Senka followed suit, laying her bowl in the grass beside her. “How so?”
“I always believed anyone shadow touched was the enemy. Until I met Warren.”
“Yes. The mixed blood.”
“You know?”
“I know everything, Relle.” She chuckled. “Acura’s darkness is impenetrable. But it is not forever. Hundreds of years will pass, and the darkness will fade. What you’re seeing with Warren is an evolution. Nature’s way of correcting the imbalance. Those born of one untouched parent and one touched parent will be immune to the darkness. That is not to say leaving the safety of the Hollow would be a good idea,” she warned, “but the shadow touched will soon become nothing more than a page in the history of humanity.”
“But the Hollow is no longer safe. Is it?”
Senka reached over and grasped my hand. “It will be. Will you do something for me?”
“Anything.”
Senka pulled a small knife from the belt at her waist. She sliced a thin line into her right palm, and then looked expectedly at me.
I didn’t hesitate. I offered her my right hand, palm up, and winced as the blade opened my skin.
Brilliant red blood welled and spilled over the wound.
“My blood is your blood, Maurelle.” She gently wrapped her bleeding palm around mine. “You carry Rasha in your veins.”
“I do?”
“Distantly. But it is there.” She let go of my hand and placed her bloody palm directly over my heart on my bare skin. When she pulled away, a perfect imprint of her hand remained behind in our blood. “Your kindness to me during a difficult and trying time will never be forgotten, Relle. Your presence during my rising saved the Hollow. You found me inside that empty form.”
Without prompting, I mimicked her, leaving the print of my own palm over her heart.
“I didn’t need to find you, princess. I knew you were there.”
“We will empower each other from the different realms,” Senka said softly. “We will shoulder the burden together and keep the Hollow safe until nature rights itself.”
“What happens now? You wake up, and I stay here in your place?”
“No, my love. You wake up. I will be waiting for you.”
29
Intense light filled my universe.
I couldn’t sense my body or my surroundings, but the light was everywhere. Inside me, outside me, so much a part of me that there was no clear delineation where the light ended and I began.
A strangled cry, followed by rough hands on my arms, ripped me from the light.
Warren lifted me bodily from the tomb into a harsh, bright world. He clutched me to his chest and sank to the ground.
“Oh, fuck. Thank Senka, you’re alive.” He kissed my eyes, my cheeks, my neck, then captured my lips with a desperation that seemed so strange in the wake of what amounted to a very calming dream for me.
I returned the kiss—because, yeah, I had kinda hated the thought of never seeing Warren again and he smelled pretty good.
When the kiss broke, he pressed his forehead to mine and closed his eyes. As if in prayer.
“I don’t understand...” I glanced into the tomb. “I was dead. I was going to stay for Senka.”
“Obviously she had other plans.” He tilted his chin, indicating behind me. “She brought me to you.”
I glanced over my shoulder. Senka stood primly on the spotless cavern floor. Not the Senka from my dream, but the dark-eyed, moon-skinned princess I’d come to adore.
I disentangled myself from Warren’s arms and ran to her. Her warm embrace reminded me of campfire smoke and spicy tea and family.
“Was it really you?” I murmured in her ear, her black hair tickling my face.
“It was really me.”
“Why didn’t you let me stay?”
Senka pulled away. She took both my hands in hers. “We all have our burdens to bear, Relle. Mine is not yours to carry.”
Warren joined us. He touched the weight at my neck. “What’s this?”
My fingertips skimmed cool stone. Confused, I unclasped it and pulled it off.
The turquoise First Woman had given me.
“It was real.” I stared at the necklace draped over my palm, flabbergasted. “It was all real. First Man and the corn. First woman. The pine tree. The wolves. The flood.” I held it out to Senka. “It wasn’t a dream.”
She shook her head.
“What are you talking about?” Warren asked.
“Nothing.” I didn’t want to share it. Dream or not, it had been my journey. As I gazed upon the necklace that had traveled the worlds with me, I realized what had been the plan all along. From the moment I woke up in the First World, I’d been playing a part.
Hot tears stung my eyes. I squared my shoulders and caught Senka’s calm gaze. “This is meant for you.”
Senka gently touched the pale white stones around her own neck. “Yes.”
“‘Turquoise is influenced by its owner,’” I parroted First Woman’s words. “‘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.’” I cradled the necklace in my palms. “‘Remember that,’ she told me.”
I gently removed Senka’s colorless turquoise necklace and replaced it with the vibrant piece I’d carried through the worlds. The effect was instantaneous. Pale bronze flooded Senka’s skin. Our gazes met, and I watched in awe as the darkness in her eyes pulled away, revealing beautiful chestnut irises.
I gently removed Senka’s old necklace from her fingers.
“I’ll keep this safe,” I told her as I clasped it around my neck, remembering how she’d told me her mother had given it to her. “And when the stones are healed, I’ll bring it back to you.”
She smiled sadly. “You did well.”
“I’ll stay with you, Senka. No questions asked. We can go right now, together, into that tomb. If you want me, I’m yours.”
She touched my face. “I’ll always want you, Maurelle. We’re sisters now.” She lay a palm over my heart.
Why did it feel like such a lifetime ago when she did the same with our blood on her hand?
“Sisters,” I agreed, tears burning my eyes as I placed my hand over hers.
“I don’t want this for you, sister. This is my fate to bear. You are meant for so much more. The Hollow needs you above as much as it needs me below. You still have work to do.”
“But...” I trailed off. I knew she was right. Of course she was right. The rein of Senka Hollow had tried to have me killed. Something was rotten in Denmark.
My job had always been to protect the Hollow from evil. Evil had many forms, and right now, the evil had nothing to do with the shadow touched.
Senka took my hand and squeezed it. “You saved me, Relle. Not just this,” she touched her new necklace, “but here, too.” She touched her chest. “That is enough.”
“I’ll miss you.”
She smiled. A real smile, like I’d seen in the other realm, where Senka knelt barefoot before her fire, stirring hominy that smelled of home. “You know where to find me. Find me by the campfire, singing the songs of our people. I’ll have tea waiting for you and stories to tell.”
Senka’s hand fell away. She turned and descended into her tomb. With a wave of her hand, the stones sealed behind her.
“Still mad at me?” I asked Warren in the silence after her departure.
Thankfully, he didn’t comment on the tears pouring from me. He slipped his hand into mine and squeezed. “Nah.”
We stood for a minute longer, staring at the silent grave.
“She’s so selfless,” I finally said.
“Pot meet kettle.”
I punched him in the arm. He grabbed my offending arm and pulled me against him with a chuckle. “Some people—like you, like Senka—are wired to always do what’s right, even if it hurts. So tell me. What’s the right move now?”
“Everett tried to have me kill—” I broke off. My bullet wounds. My blood was all over Senka’s tomb. That had been real. I lifted my shirt.
“Is this really the time and place for that?” Warren joked.
“Oh shut up.” I laughed, thankful for his goofy sense of humor. He kept me afloat, kept me from falling apart under the weight of dying, living, and losing Senka. Two raw scars glared red from my stomach. I found another puckered scar on the side of my neck beneath my hair.
The Shadows and Sorcery Collection Page 16
