Coyote Dreams

CHAPTER 23

The sun had set when I became aware of it again. I didn’t know why no one had disturbed me, the scene-causing woman standing mindlessly still in the middle of the restaurant’s sidewalk, but then, I didn’t know why nobody’d awakened me when I was sleeping beneath Petite a couple of days earlier, either. I had the sensation of being veiled, as if I were sleepwalking, or maybe as if everyone around me was. I’d have thought Morrison would see through the veil, and the idea made my stomach clench. Me being cosmically attuned to him in some way hardly meant the reverse was true.

I remembered, now. I remembered Coyote dreams so clearly I could barely fathom why I’d forgotten them for so long. I remembered his patience in teaching me how to draw my powers out, how to heal, starting with the most superficial of wounds and working toward the most profound. I remembered that even as a kid I’d had a hard time with the idea of simply seeing something as whole and it being that way. I had never quite achieved that to Coyote’s satisfaction, and I remembered that back then, I’d used the same tire-patching and car-fixing analogies to rebuild bone and sinew as I did now.

I remembered the tricks I’d shown him: the way I’d learned to bend light around me so I was invisible, the idea taken from some comic book I’d read. I remembered a night when it’d been pouring rain in my garden and I’d changed the rain to flowers, daisies and sunflowers and dandelions spilling out of the sky, and I’d realized then that I could do that in the waking world, too. I remembered touching on a river so deep and fast I’d almost drowned in it before Coyote put his teeth into my belt and tugged me back. I remembered learning to create things from my will alone, and I remembered that the basic rule of magic was the same one a coven had taught me a couple of weeks earlier: do what thou wilt, and it harm none. Neither the coven nor I had done so well with that, but it was still the immutable rule.

What I did not remember was walking through school every day, cocky and proud of my knowledge and power. I didn’t remember using it to make myself popular or stronger or better, to push myself into the place I’d always wanted to be: belonging. I turned my palm up, creating a silver-shot ball of blue energy there. It swam around my fingers, darting and dancing like it had life of its own, and I wished it was sheer moral superiority that had kept me from making a place for myself in Qualla Boundary. That was what my fictional Chinese heroine would’ve done, kept her gifts quiet and worked silently in the background to the betterment of the people around her.

I was nowhere near that good a person. I hadn’t eked out a position for myself using my power because in the waking world, I didn’t even know about it. I could just about see it now, a thin line across my psyche that Coyote had drawn, keeping my awareness of burgeoning power apart from the often bitter, sullen teenager I was in day-to-day life. On one side of that line lay the memories of dreams, and on the other was what I’d been meant to remember until I’d grown beyond the emotional maturity of a turnip. On that side, I remembered Coyote visiting a handful of times, always waking me up immediately, until the day he’d stopped visiting at all.

I thought I should be bubbling over with resentment at my spirit guide, for all the trouble he’d put me through by walling up my power until I was grown-up enough to use it. It was arrogant, high-handed and officious, assuming I wouldn’t have been able to handle the responsibilities he was offering me.

It was unquestionably the right move.

I walked back to Petite, my body stiff from standing motionless on concrete, and crawled into my car. I wanted to stay there, small and hidden, and sleep until I understood everything that had ever happened to me. Dreaming would help sort it all out. That was what dreams were for.

Only lately, they seemed heavy and dangerous, too, and I didn’t think this was a good time to risk letting my subconscious do all the work. I put my hands on the steering wheel and let intellect unfold creases of memory I was too drained to deny.

The advantage of being a new soul, Coyote’d told me not that long ago, was I didn’t have the burdens of past lives to weigh me down. The disadvantage was I didn’t have the experiences, either. I had thirteen short years of existence behind me when we first met, and in all that time I’d never really belonged anywhere. Maybe someone with a little more history would have felt the weight of smart choices and understood that shamanic gifts weren’t for personal gain. I’d known that on an intellectual level at thirteen, but I wouldn’t have given a rat’s ass, and Coyote knew it.

The bitch of the thing was there wasn’t much choice about whether I’d have those powers or not. I’d been built that way by a Maker I wasn’t quite convinced existed, but Grandfather Sky and Mother Earth didn’t care if I believed in them or not. They believed in me. That was all that mattered. So Coyote’d been stuck teaching a kid who’d use her powers in all the wrong ways if she’d known she had them. In his position, I’d have kept me in the dark, too.

I’d like to think I’d have grown into learning the truth. In retrospect it was clear other people did—the drum that lay at home on my dresser was proof of that. It’d been a gift when I turned fifteen. Maybe it’d been a sign that the elders saw that I was finally coming into myself.

But then I met Lucas, and everything went to hell.

I leaned forward, putting my forehead on Petite’s steering wheel, my eyes closed. I didn’t let myself think of him by name, not since he’d hightailed it back to his mother’s people in Canada when I told him I was pregnant. The First Boy. That was how I thought of him. It was safer that way, as if he was a symbol more than a person. School had just started and he was new, newer than even me, visiting his father and cousins in North Carolina. Even now, almost thirteen years later, when he came to mind I still thought he was beautiful, with broad cheekbones and a white smile. I’d hoped going to bed with him would make him like me, or make me fit in better. It hadn’t worked, though it’d lost me the only best friend I’d ever had.

I wasn’t dumb enough to pretend not to know what a missed period meant, under the circumstances. Lucas had left at Christmastime, maybe as he’d always intended. It certainly gave him a legitimate excuse to be far away from Qualla Boundary before it became obvious I was pregnant. It didn’t really matter: I hadn’t told anybody but him and my friend Sara, and still haven’t. The father’s name is left unknown on the birth certificate, and that was probably as much the reason for Morrison’s concern as my lousy phrasing yesterday morning. Part of me wanted to get out of the car and go find Morrison and tell him right then that it hadn’t been rape, just a stupid mistake, but I knew I’d never do that. I hadn’t even told my father I was pregnant, just let it become obvious as time went on. He never asked.

Other people did, but I’d learned that stiff-spined solitude by then, and didn’t answer. The only two people I’d ever admitted my pregnancy to out loud were Lucas and Sara, and I’d lost them both. I didn’t know how to break that silence anymore, even if I wanted to.

I’d thought Coyote’d stopped visiting my dreams around then. Sitting there in Petite, the steering wheel making a dent in my forehead, it was finally clear he hadn’t stopped visiting. I’d stopped answering. He’d taught me shields back then, just like he’d had to teach me all over again, and that was a lesson I’d learned by God well. I’d kept them up so well for more than twelve years it’d taken almost dying in order to bring them down again. By then I was so set against the whole idea of a mystical world I don’t think he stood a chance. Getting back inside my head, or helping me to, in order to access the dreamworld training he’d given me more than a decade earlier would have required at least a smidgen of willingness on my part. I’d been about as willing to listen as a man might be eager to walk to the gallows. And, frankly, if I’d been my spirit guide at that point, I’d have been tempted to throw in the towel and let me figure it out by my own damned self. Coyote was a better person, so to speak, than I was.

Some of it had made it through, anyway. Healing came naturally to me, even as I fought it. I’d pulled out gimmicks that felt instinctive, and now could remember they’d been learned and figured out. I was torn between relief and disappointment. Being able to do what I did on instinct really seemed like it meant I was supposed to be doing those things. There was nothing like a little predestination to make a girl feel like she’s got a place in the world. On the other hand, having studied with Coyote, in however esoteric a fashion, made sense in a way that I was much happier with. Being able to do something because I’d studied it fit much more nicely into my rational world than the uncomfortable idea I’d become part of a massive sportswear campaign and could Just Do It.

I spread my fingers and thunked the heel of my hands against Petite’s steering wheel. Part of my mind was demanding, so why didn’t he tell me? Why didn’t he at least try? Blaming Coyote for my shortcomings was much easier than taking responsibility for them myself. The truth was, I just couldn’t imagine me listening six months ago. I couldn’t fathom a better way to get me to dig my heels in and refuse any of what was happening to me than saying, “Hey, you liked it when you were fifteen.” I was nothing if not contrary. Even the slightest hint that we’d been there, done that, would’ve slammed me back into my shell. I wasn’t sure even the gods could’ve pulled me out of that one, and they’d been running rampant around Seattle at the time. Better to treat me like the sulky, snotty rank beginner I’d grown up into than try to pick up where we’d left off.

I wished I could tell Coyote I was sorry, and that I remembered now, and even that I understood.

Instead I whispered a promise to him that I’d do my best, and let Petite take me to Northwest Hospital.

Wednesday, July 6, 10:29 p.m.

It was well after visiting hours when I got to the hospital. Odds were good that I could slip in under the forgiveness is easier to get than permission axiom, which had worked for me in the past. On the other hand, seven months earlier, I’d wrapped light around myself until it bounced away and pretended I wasn’t there. People who’d been looking straight at me frowned in confusion, then slowly walked away. I hadn’t known then how I’d done it. I remembered now, and part of me wanted to see if I could replicate it.

Part of me also thought, a bit grimly, that it would be a good way to find out if the sleep demon was triggering to any external magic I did, or just attempts at healing. I wasn’t strictly sure the light trick was external, but it was far more external than visiting my garden and the realms accessible from there to find Coyote.

My heart spasmed again and I got out of the car, hoping that moving and taking deliberate deep breaths would help me get through the impulse to burst into tears.

My reflection, highlighted by a streetlamp in a night-dark window, caught my eye before I got to the main entrance. Light bounced around me, warping and weaving in smooth glass, like I’d been stretched out of shape. I stopped, watching my distorted self. Disappearing had come from far within me back in January, anger and desperation pushing me to use my power for something other than healing. Choosing to use it in a different way.

Choice. My reflection’s lips parted with the word, though I didn’t say it out loud. I felt out of focus, staring at a corner of glass, listening to a running patter that went on in the back of my mind: c’mon, baby, you can do it. This is what the magic’s there for, right? Shamanism’s about choosing different paths, so you just have to choose to embrace it, Joanne. Choose to use it. You know you can do it. I knew the cajoling rhythm: it was what I used with Petite when I needed just a little more out of her. I honestly couldn’t remember ever using it on myself to encourage a little more out of the gifts I’d been granted, much less encouraging the power itself. I’d paid for that, too, and so had others. Without really thinking about it, I walked forward to put my fingertips against my reflection’s, looking at myself without seeing.

For two weeks I’d been running helter-skelter, looking for answers and quick fixes and a crash course in using the powers that had grown up inside me. I’d drummed and gone in and out of my body until it was halfway natural, and I’d faced up to being stuck with magical talent. All of a sudden I wasn’t sure that facing up was the same as accepting.

An evil spirit had told me that I might very well have to struggle every single day to accept what I was and what I could do. I’d let myself forget about that, because, hey, evil spirits. Standing there staring through my reflection in the dark, I wondered if the message had been right, even if the bearer had used it to confound me. I could not imagine there’d come a day when I was happy or comfortable being a shaman. The idea that my natural skepticism would eventually give up the fight seemed ludicrous.

It also seemed inevitable. How long could I keep not quite believing in my own gifts? How long was I going to wince when somebody like Mark wanted to know about them? I wasn’t even letting him judge for himself whether I was nuts or not. I was doing the job for him, putting it out there so he couldn’t reject me first.

That was uncomfortably like another one of those introspective thoughts I never enjoyed having. I finally focused on my reflection, my eyes dark in the overhead lights. Like it or not, this was who and what I was. I said, “Shit,” under my breath, very quietly, and the black-haired woman in the window looked about as unhappy as I felt.

Conviction, a grim dark feeling of knowing I could pull this off, was right there, waiting for me to sink into it again. I’d done it before, more than once, pulling belief around me like a cloak to be shed when the crisis had passed. I didn’t exactly feel guilty about dropping it when the moment was gone, but I was getting tired of it. I just didn’t know how to stop. I closed my eyes, prickles of weariness stinging the inside of my nose like a warning of tears. The power behind my sternum waited, so calm and patient it felt like mockery. For the first time I could remember I just stood there, paying attention to what it felt like. It was cool and still, mostly centered in my diaphragm, but if I concentrated I felt it welling up higher, running through my veins like blood, as if it was a part of me. If I called up the second sight and looked at my skin, I thought I’d be able to see it, silver and blue and flowing inside me. It wasn’t conscious, but I could be subsumed by it, giving myself over to its strange and scary potential.

The idea terrified me. I wanted to be in control, rational and intelligent and logical, not at the mercy of a healing magic sufficiently greater than myself that I couldn’t even recognize what to do with it half the time.

I also wanted to go in and visit Billy. I opened my eyes again and whispered, “Okay. I’m trying this your way,” to my reflection. “You can do it. It’s who you are. You taught Coyote, remember? Just let yourself…go.”

Feather-soft warmth enveloped me. For an instant I thought I saw a white ghost of wings in the reflection, making a shelter that fell around my shoulders. Inside that hollow place of safety, I felt as though I slid inside myself, a cool drink of water sliding down my insides. It brought the Sight with it, the world visible in two realities for a few seconds, one ordinary and night-dark, the other neon brilliant and vibrating with life. Then the second one settled out, leaving me with whispers of encouragement reverberating through my mind and echoing in the power centered within me. I did my best to formulate a please without making the word, afraid something as mundane as language would screw my attempts up for good, and magic responded.

It burgeoned out of me, pushing out in bubbles and bursts of pleasure at being used, and slithered over my skin like a coat of thick paint. It started with my chest and ran downward, distorting even my own vision so that light bent and I seemed to be looking through myself. It ran over my fingertips and touched the glass, then splashed back up my arm to my throat and face. The last thing I saw was my eyes, oddly gold in the darkness, and then my reflection wasn’t there at all.

Absolute sheer panic erupted in my stomach, cramping it and making cold sweat stand out all over my body as I stared at where I ought to be reflected. I clenched my teeth and breathed in and out like a Lamaze mother, half convinced that if I couldn’t see my reflection, I wasn’t there. I wondered if vampires felt that way, then had to remind myself severely that there was no such thing.

God on high, how I hoped there was no such thing.

The thought seemed to be a source of amusement to the power hiding me from myself. I ground my teeth and willed myself to take a few steps backward, seeing if the magic would hold. To my complete fascination, moving made me visible, but only just: if I didn’t know where to look, I wouldn’t see me. I’d seen news stories about technology that did what I seemed to be doing, projecting images of what was around me over where I was. The tech I’d read about only worked from one direction, but as I peered over my own shoulder, it appeared that magic was a more effective invisibility cloak than technology. A very tiny pop of glee burst through me. There was no actual crisis and I’d talked myself into doing something pretty dramatic with my power. I actually whispered “Thank you” to myself, and headed for the hospital doors.

It was then that it occurred to me to wonder if the hospital’s sliding glass doors were triggered by weight or motion. The question kept me paralyzed for several long seconds as I stared at the doors a few yards ahead. Then someone exited and I made a mad dash inside, never knowing which it might’ve been.

A noseful of sharp sweet hospital smell made me sneeze so explosively I staggered to the lobby chairs, leaning on one while tears ran down my face and I sneezed again. More people than I’d hoped were about at that hour. Every single one of them stared around in confusion at the sneezes evidently coming out of nowhere. I got myself under control and snuffled my way to the elevators, still wiping at my eyes and nose. I couldn’t remember Harry Potter ever having this sort of problem while he was running around in his invisibility cloak. I was going to have to speak to the management.

The elevators and halls upstairs were bustling with exhausted-looking doctors and nurses and the buzz of worried confusion. More and more people were being admitted with the sleeping sickness, and nobody’d woken up yet. I flinched my way around gurneys and frustrated medical personnel, whispering promises to make it better as I slipped into Billy’s room and sank against the door, eyes closed for a few seconds as I muttered another internal thanks to my gifts and let the bubble of invisibility slide off me. Then I shoved away from the door and took two steps before jolting to a halt in complete dismay.

Bradley Holliday was conked out in a chair by Billy’s bed.