Mountain Echoes

Chapter Twenty

The lawn was scraggly with bluegrass, and the house it fronted needed some TLC. Ranch-style and too small to boast many rooms, it did have a big inviting front porch and a long porch swing with faded lemon-yellow cushions. Hills rose up about forty feet behind the place, the back door obviously opening up into the mountains. A hard-packed dirt driveway boasted a huge old powder-blue Pontiac.

A little girl toddled out of the house and climbed into the porch swing. Hairs rose on my arms and nape as the familiar squeak made the child smile and swing more enthusiastically. Then she tumbled out and jumped down the steps one at a time, counting and providing sound effects as she went, “One! Bang. Two! Bang. Three! Bang.” At the bottom she said, “Bang!” one more time for good measure, then ran across the lawn, through my legs, and skidded to a stop a few feet beyond me. I wobbled, feeling like someone had walked on my grave. She turned around, eyed me, or certainly appeared to, then turned away again and picked up a bug from the grass. “Hello, ladybug. Hello. I’m Joanie. Hello, ladybug. I love you!”

Morrison said, “Walker?” incredulously. It was amazing how much meaning he could invest one word with. I swallowed and didn’t answer.

A woman I didn’t actively remember came onto the porch and leaned against a rail, smiling at the mini-me expressing fondness to a ladybug. The woman wore bell-bottom jeans over bare feet, and a homemade cotton tunic with an embroidered slash at the collar. She was tall and striking, if not exactly pretty, and she wore her black hair in twin braids. Dad whispered, “Ma,” and with heart-sinking dread I knew when we were.

My father, twenty-five years younger and shockingly handsome, came out behind my grandmother and leaned against another porch rail, watching three-year-old Joanne with the same fondness my grandmother showed. He was eating cookies. I looked back at my small self. She had chocolate smears on her hands and mouth, and an ant working its way up her leg in search of the sugar.

“The Jones house has been empty a few years,” my grandmother said. We all looked at her again. Dad-the-younger hitched himself onto the rail, one leg dangling, the other bare foot planted on the soft old wood. My mother had said he was beautiful when he was young. I, blinkered by a child’s blinders, had had no idea how right she was. His long hair was loose and he was wearing jeans and a cut-up T-shirt that showed off smooth brown arms. If catalogs had featured Native models in that era, he would have been world-famous. No wonder Mom had fallen for him.

At the moment he looked mildly amused. “You don’t want us underfoot here?”

My grandmother’s eyebrows rose. “You left when you were seventeen, Joe. I didn’t think you were in any hurry to be back under my roof.”

That was the same age I’d left the Qualla. I hadn’t known Dad had left early, too. I glanced at the now-him, but he was watching his mother with open pain on his still-handsome features.

“You’re both welcome here as much as you like, of course,” Grandmother said, and Dad flashed a bright grin.

“Nah, you’re right, Ma. We’d be better off in the Jones’s place. How much work does it need?”

“As much as anything that’s been empty awhile. Won’t cost much, though. There’s not much good growing soil around them. Too much tobacco sucking up the nutrients. You’re really thinking of staying, then?” She kept it under wraps, but there was a bright note of hope in her voice. “She has so much potential, Joe. We could teach her so much if you stayed here.”

“No, Ma. I told you before. Shell left her with me to keep her out of sight. Teaching her is too risky, no matter how much potential she’s got. I’m supposed to be keeping her safe, not putting her in the line of fire.”

My grandmother clucked her tongue. “That’s nonsense. I know that Irish girl turned your head, but there are no monsters in the dark, Joe. Sorcerers are stories to frighten children with. No one is hunting Joanie.”

“Maybe you’re right, but I promised Shell I’d keep her safe, and this is the best way I can see to do it. If she’s right, then if Joanie hasn’t been initiated as a shaman there’s no reason for anything to come after her.”

I closed my eyes, impotent anger throbbing in my temples. I was sure Dad had meant well, but surely anybody who’d seen Star Wars knew that hiding the truth never turned out well for anyone. My entire life might have been different if he’d listened to my grandmother.

She, with the patience of a woman who figured she was in the first skirmishes of a protracted war, let it go. “Well, tell you what. I’ve got to go see Carrie this morning, but you and Joanie can stay here and eat all the cookies, and I’ll get the keys to the Jones place from the real-estate agent while I’m in town. I’ll pick you up after lunch and we can go take a look at it, see what you think.”

Dad, my Dad, the now-Dad standing next to me on the lawn, whispered, “No, Ma. Stay home,” but the one on the porch smiled and nodded. “Sounds fine, Ma. Tell Carrie hello.”

“She wants you and Joanie to come see her.”

“She wants Joanie to come see her,” Dad corrected cheerfully enough. “Nobody cares about me now.”

My grandmother smiled. “That’s what happens when you have kids.”

“Tell her we’ll come down in a couple days. I want to get the mountains back under my skin for a while.”

Grandmother hesitated on the steps, looking back at Dad when he said that. “I’ll never understand why you left, Joe, not if the mountains call you back so strongly.”

Dad put his fist just beneath his breastbone. “Had to, Ma. It was pulling me.”

My heart missed a beat at the familiarity of that gesture, and of that feeling. The same sensation had been dragging me through magical mishaps for the past fifteen months. I’d had no idea Dad had felt it, too. There was so damned much I didn’t know.

Grandmother nodded and left, the Pontiac’s massive engine roaring down the mountains. I guessed my father and I had come by our love of classic cars honestly. Dad turned, watching her go long after the car was out of sight, then gave me a hard look. “What are we doing here, Joanne?”

“Hell if I know. I was aiming for home. I don’t know why we hiccuped. This is... I mean, this is...”

“Yeah, it is. About half an hour from now she’ll be dead.”

“What?” Morrison, who had been watching the younger me with fascination, came around at that. Little Joanie, undisturbed by any of our discussion, kept playing with bugs.

“She died in a car wreck,” I said when Dad’s silence drew out. “Right after Dad and I came to visit when I was about three. We left after the funeral and never came back until I was a teenager.”

Dad said, “I didn’t think you remembered that,” in an accusing tone.

I sighed. “I didn’t. I don’t. Exactly. I just...I got reminded a couple of weeks ago. It’s been a rough couple weeks.” I said that a lot. I hoped someday it would stop being true.

“I’m going to go stop her.” Dad walked away, his footsteps bending the patchy grass underfoot. I didn’t know how that worked, except this was real to us, even if we were ghostlike to our other selves. They couldn’t see us, but maybe we could affect them. Morrison and I both stared after Dad, not quite believing he really did intend to go stop my grandmother until he disappeared down the road. Only then did Morrison turn to me in concern. “Can he?”

“No. I don’t think so. Probably not.” I thought about the sensation I’d had on the battlefield, the idea that the timeline in that particular place was still malleable, and worried at my lower lip. “Maybe.”

“What happens if he does?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are we going to stop him?”

“I don’t know.” My younger self was industriously digging a hole in Grandmother’s lawn. Her fingers were filthy, nails caked with dirt, and she looked as happy as a pig in mud. I had no memories of doing that kind of thing. I remembered playing cowboys and Indians at Little Bighorn, rolling down small steep hills and scrambling breathlessly up the other side, alternating between being a cowboy and being an Indian. “Bang bang bang!” as I finger-gun shot up one side, and fwipping imaginary arrows down the other. I remembered sticking my fingers into the scars bullets had left in those hilltops. I remembered kicking sand and dust up in Nevada, never knowing I was disturbing the remains of nuclear test sites. I remembered a lot of things, but none of them seemed to have the childish simplicity of digging a hole to China, which appeared to be my small self’s goal in life.

I would be a completely different person if I’d grown up on the Qualla. I was sure if we’d stayed here, my grandmother would have eventually worn Dad down, and I’d have begun shamanic studies at a much younger age. I might never have crossed paths with Coyote, and I almost certainly would never have met Morrison.

But it was my grandmother, my father’s mother, and it obviously still tore him apart that she’d died. Maybe he wouldn’t have stayed, anyway. Maybe the promise to my mother—to Shell, I’d never imagined Sheila MacNamarra with a nickname—maybe that would have kept him moving, especially if he thought he would lose the argument about my training. Maybe nothing would have changed, except my grandmother would still be alive. I said, “I don’t know,” again, and sat down in the grass with my hands covering my face.

After a moment a light touch brushed my arm. I spread my fingers to see little Joanne peeking at me. “Are you my momma? You look like me. We both has fweckles.”

“Have freckles,” I corrected automatically, then closed my eyes, because I couldn’t stand looking into my own interested baby face. “No, sweetheart. I’m not your momma, even if we both have freckles.”

“Are you sad? Is that why you hiding you face?”

I made a soft sound. “I’m a little bit sad, yes.”

She patted my arm. “Don’t be sad. I has a ladybug. Hewe.” She offered me the bug on a dirty fingertip.

I unfolded my hand to stroke its ghostly back. I couldn’t feel it, and wasn’t sure why she could pat me when she’d run through me once already. I suspected it had something to do becoming aware of me after she’d dashed through me, and let it go at that. “Thank you for sharing your ladybug. It’s very nice.”

“Is you happy now?”

I couldn’t help smiling. “Yeah. Yeah, I am. Thank you, Joanie.”

“You welcome!” She scampered off again, revealing Morrison watching me—us, I supposed—with an expression of wonder.

“You think I take things in stride, Walker?”

“It’s not the first time I’ve had a conversation with my younger self. This one was nicer than most. Usually I excoriate myself. Of course, I also usually learn something.”

“What’d you learn this time?”

“That she’s a nice little girl and probably deserves to grow up into somebody less messed up than I am. Maybe I should go help Dad try to save my grandmother.”

Morrison’s voice got very quiet. “Don’t.” I blinked up at him and he met my gaze, concern rising in his blue eyes. “You do that, Walker, and everything changes, right?”

“Maybe. Probably. I don’t know. I’ve never really changed anything. I don’t know what happens, but it seems most likely.”

“Don’t make me miss out on you.” He spoke so softly he sounded like a different man. “Don’t change our future before we get a chance at finding out what it is, Walker. We’ve come this far. I want to find out where this road goes.”

The part of me that didn’t know when to shut up almost pointed out he wouldn’t know any better, if everything did change. The part of me that occasionally said the right thing got there first, and said, “So do I.”

Morrison’s shoulders dropped about six inches, and I had the dizzying realization he’d actually been afraid. I got up and wrapped my arms around his waist. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what to do, Morrison. It’s my grandmother. I don’t even remember her, but I can’t blame Dad for wanting to try.”

“He must know better.” Morrison sounded shaken, which made me hug him harder.

“He does. He’s just not thinking. Or he knows more than we do. We’ll go ask. We’ll find out. Come on.” I moved half a step and bumped into something.

I looked down to find Joanie gazing up at Morrison with starry-eyed adoration. She tugged my pant leg and pronounced, “He vewy handsome,” in a stage whisper that would’ve been audible in the rafters.

I laughed out loud and said, “Yeah, he is,” as Morrison crouched and grinned at mini-me. “And you’re very pretty,” he informed her, which made me laugh again. Joanie skipped off, pink and happy as could be. I offered a half-hearted kick at Morrison’s shin as he stood. “Imprinting yourself on me young, are you?”

He looked horrified, then slightly uncomfortable. “She’s a cute kid, Walker. She— You— Ah, hell. I wasn’t thinking about her being you. I was imagining her being—” He stopped abruptly and his ears flushed red.

My eyebrows went up. “As being what?”

He said, “Nothing,” so hastily that I followed his train of thought and turned as pink as Joanie had.

“Oh. Um. Okay. Um. Let’s, um. Let’s go find Dad and tell him he can’t do this.”

Still hastily, Morrison said, “Good idea,” and we skittered off my grandmother’s lawn like a couple of guilty kids.

Dad hadn’t gotten all that far, really. He was about half a mile down the road, at what I suspected was the crash site. The road and sky were both clear, no standing water to make the old boat of a Pontiac slip or to create glare that might have blinded my grandmother as she drove. There were no fallen trees, no lurking deer, nothing to drive her off the road. I went up to him, hands in my pockets, and said, “Maybe she was just driving too fast.”

He shook his head once. “That’s all you, Joanne. Your grandmother never broke the speed limit in her life. I don’t know where you got the daredevil streak.”

“You’re telling me you never sped on all those trips across the country?”

He slid a perplexed glance at me. “With my daughter in the car? No. There was never any hurry great enough to risk you.”

And the hits just kept on coming. I tipped my chin up and stared at the sky, absorbing that. Then I reversed my gaze, sighing at the view again. “You know you can’t save her, Dad.”

“I know I shouldn’t. It could change everything. But don’t tell me you’re happy with the way things turned out, Joanne. You’ve hated me since you were a teenager.”

Air whuffed out of me. “Hated you. No. I just couldn’t figure out what the fuck I had to do to make you love me. Your daughter, so disappointing you decided to call her by a boy’s name.”

“Is that what you think?”

“Come on, Dad. I mean, it was pretty clear you didn’t want to be saddled with me in the first place, but the point kind of got driven home when Aidan said you were teaching him. Sorry I wasn’t born with a penis, Dad. So glad you got a grandkid who was.”

“Joanne, I was trying to protect you—”

“Yeah. By keeping us moving all the time. By not telling me about my heritage. By letting me get so fucked in the head that I did the stupidest things possible to try to get attention. From you, from anybody, whatever the hell. Good job, Dad. Banner job.”

Dad, through his teeth, said, “I started teaching Aidan because I’d realized how badly I’d done by you. I thought I was protecting you, Joanne, and for the love of God, I didn’t call you Jo because I wanted a boy. I thought it made it you and me against the world, Big Joe and Little Jo—”

“That’s what I thought until you started looking at me like I was a stranger!”

“You were growin’ up and no matter what I did you kept recognizin’ more and more about the shamanism I was practicin’! If I was lookin’ at you like you were a stranger it was cause I was tryin’ ta figure out how to keep you out of it!”

Having grown up with it, I almost never actually heard my father’s North Carolina accent, but when his temper got up, it got thicker, until he was almost indecipherable. The same thing happened to me if I got pissed enough, and I was fast approaching that level of anger now. “Like I said, banner goddamned job, Dad! You—”

“And then you said we were comin’ back here, hell or high water, back to where your grandmother died, and I knew I’d lost you—”

“I was thirteen years old, Dad, you don’t lose somebody when they’re thirteen years old unless you goddamned well give up on them!”

The rest of the argument was shattered by the Pontiac screaming around the corner, a fallen angel in pursuit.

All the what-ifs fell away. I didn’t think, I just reacted. I threw a wall of magic up between the Pontiac and the angel—it could not be an angel, fallen or otherwise, but it sure as hell looked like one, with black-soot wings spread wider than the road and a beautiful face scored by misery and despair—I threw magic, and the angel smacked against it at full speed.

Smacked against and burst through, almost all at once. The strength I was so proud of was utterly meaningless by comparison to its. Dad gasped, “Kolona Ayeliski,” and the Cherokee language Renee had revived translated it—Raven Mocker.

Even I knew about Raven Mocker. He was one of those legends I’d sarcastically dismissed as a teen determined to turn her back on all things Cherokee. He was a demon, a monster, a fallen angel, sure. Something from the Lower World that disguised himself as a creature from the Upper, pretending to provide spiritual guidance and safety while sucking the soul out of his victims. Raven Mocker was the specific thing that vigil-keepers were keeping vigil against, when they watched over the bodies of the dead.

He was not a daylight monster, and there was no way in hell he should be chasing my grandmother down the road at deadly speeds. I gathered strength again to throw another wall up, or to catch him with a net, anything to at least slow him down so the Pontiac could slow down, too. I waited for a straight stretch, a place where Grandmother would have time to apply the brakes without going flying off the mountainside, and I dug deep, getting ready to throw everything I had between her and the Raven Mocker.

Shields as strong as my own wrapped me, muffling my power, and rebounding it back into me when I let it go. An echo banged around my head, magic left with nowhere else to go, and I staggered a few inches. Dad caught my shoulders, steadying me, and I recognized the steady, implacable touch of his magic as what was shielding me. “What the hell!”

“Who do you think Kolona Ayeliski is, Joanne? Who do you think your mother was trying to protect you from when she brought you to me? He must have been waiting here for some sign we’d returned. We just gave it to him. We stepped through time and landed where we weren’t supposed to be. If I had agreed to go into town with your grandmother....”

Any hold I had on my magic dissipated. “She obviously knew he was chasing her,” I said dully. “And he must not have known we weren’t—I wasn’t—in the car. She...”

She leaned on the gas pedal, the Pontiac picking up incredible speed on the straight stretch. There was another curve up ahead, a hairpin bend.

Grandmother never hit the brakes as she approached the bend. Dad closed his eyes, unable to watch as the car soared went off the narrow road, briefly and beautifully unbowing to gravity’s call. It sailed farther than I imagined possible. I stood in Dad’s grip, unable to take my own gaze away until it fell from my line of sight and the first scream of metal sounded. Then my own eyes closed, and Morrison was there to hold both of us up.

We skipped forward through time.