Raven Calls

Chapter Seventeen

I had met gods, demigods, semi-gods or whatever the grandchildren of gods should be called, archetypes, demons, elves and avatars. There were magnitudes of difference in the power each category blazed with, and I had not one single teeny tiny doubt that I was finally—finally!—in the presence of a genuine goddess. The utterly irreverent part of me thought it was about damned time. The rest of me tried not to fall down on my knees in gibbering worship.

Cernunnos had that effect on me, too, but their similarities mostly ended there. He was a creature of order, for all that I thought of death and its attending miseries to be chaotic. But he helped maintain the flow of life into death, while she was the chaos of new life. Power boiled off her incandescent skin, curls of magic licking life into existence with each molecule of air they touched. Chance exploded at every instance, random and frantic exploration of mutations pursuing survival. Happenstance and hope guided all the permutations, fractals of magic struggling to create sustainable life in a world already filled with it. My eyes burned from watching her for barely the space of an indrawn breath. Then I howled and clapped my hands over my face, shutting down the Sight.

It faded slowly instead of its usual on-off switch, the goddess’s afterimage burning my retinas for a shockingly long time. When I finally dared open my eyes again, she was merely unbelievably, inhumanly, immortally beautiful instead of eye-searingly powerful. Like Cernunnos—who had also nearly burned my eyes out when I looked at him with the Sight—her hair was scattered with light, though hers was molten sunlight instead of his starlight. Also like him, her features were chiseled, delicate, remote, flawless: high round cheekbones, large eyes, a small chin, all like she was just verging on womanhood instead of bearing a godhead.

Unlike Cernunnos, however, she was naked.

I had seen a lot more naked women the past few days than I was accustomed to. I scratched my ear, tried to find somewhere safer to look and discovered Caitríona gaping at either me or our new naked friend. It was hard to tell. I sighed, shrugged my leather coat off and offered it to the goddess. She took it curiously. After a minute I took it back and put it on her, which earned me a lightning-bolt smile of pure delight. She snuggled into it and I decided not to explain about the dead lambs whose skin it was. “Hi. I’m…” There was really only one name that would do here. “Siobhán. Siobhán Walkingstick. Is there a name we would know you by?”

“Áine,” she said, and it sounded like goddamned silver bells chiming.

It also meant nothing to me. I glanced at Méabh and Caitríona, both of whom looked impressed. I took it as writ that Áine was somebody important in Irish cosmology, and smiled at the little goddess. She was little, now that she wasn’t blasting my eyes out: she couldn’t have been more than five feet tall. Even Melinda was taller than that.

Melinda, who had a personal relationship with a goddess. I blurted, “Do you know my friend Melinda?”

Áine looked amused. I ducked my head, muttering, “Yeah, right, no reason you’d be her goddess, right, sorry. Hey. Wait. Did you know my mother?”

Ineffable sorrow came into her eyes. I couldn’t tell what color they were. Not white, because that would be creepy, but they shifted from gray to blue to green and back to gray with the passing of clouds and the ripple of wind. It made her seem that much more elemental, and she really didn’t need any help in that department. I got hold of myself, trying to focus on her expression rather than her inhuman gaze. “You did know her. Is that why you came? We’re trying to lay her to rest. If you want to help, we’d be…”

Words sort of didn’t encompass it. I settled on “Grateful,” trusting she’d get the idea despite its utter inadequacy, then cleared my throat and tried again. “I can’t, um. I can heal and I can fight, but I guess I can’t set things on fire with my mind. Would you…do the honors?”

Áine pursed her lips and wandered from me to Caitríona, who she studied for a long time before putting her hands on Cat’s shoulders and drawing her close to kiss her forehead. An imprint of lips shone there for a moment, and Caitríona looked starstruck as Áine wandered away. At Mother’s bones, she knelt with an air of regret, and although I couldn’t See it, when she lifted her cupped hands, I was sure it was to hold and comfort the ancient spirit raven. She put the raven on her shoulder, then, much more purposefully, went to Méabh, at whom she smiled. Méabh’s expression remained solemn, and Áine smiled even more broadly, reaching up—way, way up—to pat the warrior queen’s cheek before she came back to me.

“You’re Brigid’s goddess, aren’t you?” I said when she got to me. “The one who elevated her the way the Master elevated the Morrígan. What is he? He must be something more than a god, because he just about wiped Cernunnos out, and I’d think they’d be on a pretty level playing field if they were both gods. If you were all gods. Whatever. So what is he? Is he like Coyote? Big Coyote, I mean, the archetypical Trickster, not my Coyote. Cyrano. My teacher. Is he, like, I don’t know, the archetype of death?” God. I was talking and I couldn’t shut up. Still, I really wanted to know what I was up against, and Cernunnos hadn’t been inclined to talk about it.

Of course, Áine didn’t much seem inclined to talk at all, even when I finally managed to shut up. Which lasted only a few seconds, since no answers were forthcoming. “And if he’s on a different level from you guys, how come you were able to uplift Brigid the way he did the Morrígan? And why is she the Morrígan instead of just Morrígan? Never mind, that doesn’t matter. Or maybe you couldn’t. Maybe that’s why Brigid needed a link with the time the cauldron was destroyed in order to bind it. Maybe she’s not as high on the avatar echelon as the Morrígan is. Oh, God, please, somebody make me stop talking.”

Áine laughed. It was like a baby’s laughter, a sound I wanted to get her to make again. I didn’t, however, want to start babbling again, so I pressed my lips together and smiled hopefully.

Instead of speaking, she turned her palms up and stood there patiently. After a handful of uncertain seconds, I put my palms down, against hers.

The werewolf bite on my forearm turned venomous.

Shining, blistering red-hot pain rocketed through it, so fierce I went dizzy before I could even take a breath. The blast of gorgeous, ice-cool healing power that followed was even more dizzifying. Little Coyote, my Coyote, had healed me of some bumps and bruises once, but it had been nothing like Áine’s power coursing through me. Her magic was elemental, sensual, sexual, profound. I could bask in it for days, like a lizard under the hot sun. It was absolute reassurance that all would be right with the world, and it was the most comforting, loving embrace I’d ever encountered. It felt like someone giving me a good scrubbing from the DNA on up. I’d just been more or less rewritten from the DNA on up, but that had been a much less pleasant experience.

Or it had been up until Áine’s power slammed into the magic that actually was trying to rewrite me from the DNA on up, because then things got down to some serious pain. Intellectually I knew there’d probably been barely a second between the first intense burst of agony from the bite when Áine touched me, the cushioning effect of her magic rushing through me and the infection’s response, but the moment of respite had seemed wonderfully drawn-out.

At least, it seemed drawn-out in comparison to the railroad spikes now being driven through my arm. I pried one eye open to make sure that wasn’t really happening. It wasn’t. That was good enough for me. I closed my eyes again and tried not to snivel.

My own power had been going great guns holding the infection in place. I kind of thought Áine’s should just smack it aside like a pesky bug, but I could feel her crashing against it, waves against the shore, neither giving way to the other. I didn’t dare trigger the Sight, not with a goddess using her power full tilt. I’d go blind, or possibly burn my brain out. Neither would be any fun. So I just held on, teeth gritted against relentless surges of magic battling it out under my skin, until Áine suddenly released me and stepped back.

The bite still hurt like blue blazes, and I didn’t really need to look to know it wasn’t one bit more healed than it had been. I looked anyway.

It wasn’t one bit more healed than it had been. Some of the inflammation that had erupted when Áine touched me was already fading, but the bite itself was just as dark, infected and nasty as it had been since I’d received it. All I could think was, holy crap, the Master was powerful. Or the werewolves were powerful. Somebody, anyway, was powerful, because if a goddess was stymied by the shapechanging magic running through my bloodstream, then I was infected with something so absurdly far out of my league I didn’t even know where to begin. I’d thought Méabh had had power in spades when I’d seen her bind the werewolves to the lunar cycle. But she’d just told me that had taken a lifetime of preparation, so while it had been an astounding performance, it didn’t seem to be something she was in a position to repeat.

I took a moment—just a moment—to really hate being the go-to girl who could pull out the repeat performances, and then I got over myself, because Áine looked genuinely dismayed that my arm still shone with red, superheated infection. Offhand, I guessed she’d never run into something she couldn’t heal, either. That was considerably more of a come-uppance for a goddess than it was for snot-nosed little me. “It’s okay. I’m gonna figure it out. And I know it means I bear his mark and all, but don’t let that stop you from helping my mother, okay? Please? I’ll bow out of the circle if I need to, so there’s no taint, but man, she really doesn’t deserve this.”

Áine got an expression I suspected had crossed my own face more than once in the past several months. Petulance was not an emotion I would typically expect to ascribe to a goddess, but if there was a better word for the pouty lower lip, the set jaw and the slightly drawn-down eyebrows, I didn’t know what it was. She did something peculiar: scooped her hands at her shoulder, then spread them palms-down over mine in a kind of splashing, throwaway gesture, then whipped away from me. Dramatically, with all that white leather swooping around, even if the coat was much too large for her—and raised her hands like the world’s tiniest conductor calling an orchestra to attention.

I’d regret for the rest of my life that I only dared see, and not See, what she did next.

There was a fair amount of magic already flying around the mountaintop. Méabh and I had plenty of power to unleash individually, and together it made for an impressive show, especially when Raven was throwing his whole black-winged little soul into helping out. Sight or no Sight, I heard him shrieking in utter delight, and bet a bird’s-eye view of Áine’s antics was a delight to see.

I felt her bring my power into line with hers while at the same time excising my heart. Excising the part of me closest to the werewolf bite, and, to be fair, probably the least important part of my power in terms of saving my mother went. I had barely known the woman. I hadn’t much liked her, much less loved her. I had learned enough now to regret all three of those things, but it was a little late now. So my intellectual good intent went into Áine’s weaving, if not my heart-wrenching loss and sorrow, and I was okay with that.

I felt her gathering up Méabh’s magic, too, both the connection to the earth that the aos sís’ long lives offered, and, as I’d thought was important, the connection of past and present. Not that a goddess didn’t encompass all that time frame herself, but despite Áine coming to lend a hand, this was still a working of power of and for mortals. Méabh might barely qualify as mortal, but elves could and did die, so in my book, that counted.

I knew without having to See that Caitríona lent the heart I lacked. I wanted very badly to view the conjuring she’d dreamed up of who and what my mother had been, but even if this succeeded and we broke the bond of bones and spirit, we still had to hunt down Sheila-the-banshee and rescue her, whatever that took. I couldn’t afford to be blinded or burned out no matter how much I wanted to See what was going on. It was a crying shame, because Cat had loved my mother, and it would’ve been nice to see the woman through those eyes. Still, I felt the surge of emotion build up and become part of Áine’s working, and that was something.

Then, unexpectedly, I felt one more addition to the circle. Áine reached back to all the days my mother had spent on Croagh Patrick working toward healing it, and wrenched all those years of power forward. I knew that was what she was doing: I had mucked with time enough myself, both today and over the past year, to recognize the sensation. Two things became obvious. One, the mountain was so parched because Áine had pulled forty or fifty years of magic away from it so it could be invested here, today, all at once. Yet another closed time loop. I hated them, but they were probably better than open ones.

Two—not that I hadn’t already known this, but still—my mother’s willpower was staggering. Literally. I staggered as Áine yanked all that magic forward, its weight pressing down on me as heavily as if Mother was there herself, guiding a lifetime’s worth of power into a healing ritual meant to change the landscape forever. No adept would stand to have her home overlooked by a shadowed magic, not if she could help it, and my mom could by God help it.

It no longer mattered that I wasn’t using the Sight. As occasionally happened, the power had taken on real-world visibility, white magic sheeting down around us in waves of extraordinary beauty. I bet half of Ireland could see the mountaintop glowing, and I started thinking we’d better get the show on the road before people came bounding up to find out what was going on. Not that right now I could have the slightest effect on whether the show got on the road or not, so I decided I’d better stand back and enjoy it.

I could almost see my mother stepping through the curtains of magic. Kneeling here and there—always somewhere different—to invest the mountain with magic. Covering so much ground over the decades, so many times a year, that she became multiples of herself, crouched side by side by side, until she had knelt and touched virtually the whole of the mountaintop. There were spaces between handprints—finger-width spaces—but they touched the curve of a different year’s thumb or hand, heel or fingertips, so there was a continuous net of power built up, glimmering with her distinctive magic. It sank into the earth in her time, and burst upward in mine.

Áine caught all that magic, more focused will than I thought any human could handle at once, and gave it right back to the Reek. She pushed it down, deeper and deeper, until it went below the mountain’s foot. Until it rooted out the blood that had once stained the holy place, and scrubbed it clean.

Pure triumph erupted from the cool green earth as the last of ancient blood faded away. Everywhere for miles, tens of miles, flared with joy. With life exultant, with the thrill of victory after so many eons of defeat. Hot tears sliced trails down my cheeks, and I didn’t even have much of a horse in this race, not as far as an abiding love of the countryside went. But this, once more, was what I could be good for: making things a little better. At the end of the day I wasn’t sure anything else really mattered.

Áine gave a happy trill, bringing all the newly awakened power to high alert. It wanted to dance for her, wanted to celebrate its survival, and if there was anything more suited to the tiny goddess than that jubilant emotion, I couldn’t imagine what it was. She brought her hands together, heels touching and fingertips dancing like flames.

Every ounce of celebratory power in the West shot to her, and, guided by her desire, became the fire that burned my mother’s bones.

It took no time at all for them to become dust. Áine, with an air of total satisfaction, discarded my leather coat, did a twelve-step dance—I counted—around it, then gave me a blinding smile and disappeared.

This once I didn’t hold it against the disappearee. I was okay with gods doing things like that. Disappearing mysteriously should, in fact, be high up in a god’s repertoire. Besides, I was too agape to be upset. Áine had taken the power circle down with her when she went, and I sat with a thump, gawking across its remnants at my mother’s smoldering remains.

“What… I mean, what the… Who’s Áine? Really, seriously, did you see that?” Of course they had. They’d been right there, just like me. They’d been right there while a goddess dropped by to immolate a dead woman’s bones and sink so much fresh life magic into a mountaintop I was expecting it to spontaneously erupt in flowers. Or possibly in song. Or both. At any moment Julie Andrews would appear, and it would all be over. I wondered if I would rate that kind of exit performance when it was my turn to go.

Caitríona stalked over and hit my shoulder with a solid fist, which put paid to any self-aggrandizing ideas of shuffling off my mortal coil. I clutched my shoulder in astonished injury as she yelled, “‘Can’t set things on fire with me mind?’ Jaysus, the lip on ye! Can’t set—!” She stalked off again, but only as far as Méabh, to whom she also said, “Can’t set things on fire with her mind so! Sure and it’s a pity, isn’t it? It’s every day I get up and say to meself, no, not today, Cat, today ye can’t set things on fire with yer mind, but tomorrow so, tomorrow will be grand and you’ll just set things on fire with your mind.”

The chapel roof exploded into flames.