Thunderbird Falls

CHAPTER 19

I went into my garden still pissing vinegar. In the greater scheme of things, Faye’d done the right thing, moving Petite away from University Row and the out-of-control frat houses in the area. That, however, was reason, and I was in no mood to listen to it.

My garden reflected that, wind howling through it and whipping up low, heavy clouds into a boil. I stomped around, kicking at the edge of my pond and swearing when wind-induced waves splashed over my feet. In response, the skies opened up and deluged me with cold, pelting rain that stung my skin.

“It’s summertime!” I bellowed at the clouds. “It’s not supposed to rain in Seattle in the summer!”

The rain intensified. Thunder rumbled beneath the clouds, ominous and low. I tilted my face up, eyes closed against the stinging drops, and watched the garden flash bright with the crack of lightning. My clothes were drenched through, stuck to my body. The wind changed into lonely frustrated sobs that struggled to rip the tiny leaves from the branches of my trees. I felt them clinging stubbornly, refusing against all good sense to give up purchase. The ground beneath me softened and began to drink down the water that pounded against it. The grass needed it. Maybe the concrete garden walls needed it, too, a hard strike of rain to work away the mortar that held them in place. I remembered Gary’s untamed garden, wondering if it had walls at all.

I stood there in the rain, pretending it was that, and not tears, running down my face.

By the time Judy showed up it’d stopped raining. I sat on a bench with my head on my knees, arms wrapped around my shins. The air smelled fresh and clean, and with my eyes closed I could feel the grass growing, thankful for the rainfall.

For the first time, I felt her arrival. It was subtle, like slipping between shadows. I thought of the snake and said, “Hello,” without lifting my head. “I don’t think I’ve said thanks for putting up with me, so thanks.”

A little silence answered me before Judy said, “You’re welcome,” in a mild voice meant to disguise startlement. “How is your friend Colin?”

I shook my head against my knees. “I haven’t had time to go see him yet.”

I felt, rather than saw, Judy’s nod. “You took part in a great magic last night.”

“Ah yes. Always an excuse.” I lifted my head and rubbed my eyes. My vision was bizarre again, even inside my own garden. The edges of everything were faded just badly enough to be a distraction. I spent a few seconds trying to straighten it out, like I was clearing dust away from a windshield, but nothing happened and I gave up. If my own maintenance was this poor, how did anybody expect me to make the world a better place? “Accept,” I said to myself.

“Hmm?”

I shook my head. “Nothing. Just reminding myself of something.” Judy studied me for a moment, her eyes bright and black as the raven’s. Then she nodded, striking her hands together sharply.

“Are you ready?”

“I doubt it, but let’s go anyway. What’s the deal today? Can I talk to Virissong again?”

She went still. “No. He’s begun his journey between worlds. Contacting him would require more energy than you have available.”

“You mean it’d kill me.”

“Yes.”

My eyebrows went up and I pursed my lips. “Right. Didn’t want to talk to him anyway.” Judy went into motion again, smiling, and I gave her a half smile in return. I didn’t know what I’d say even if I could talk to him. It wasn’t as if he’d say no if I asked,Is this all really a good idea?

Judy came to sit down on my bench, took in my expression, and chose the one opposite me instead. I relaxed a little. “Today,” she said, “I want to explore the nature of sacrifice.”

“Sacrifice?” That didn’t sound good. Amusement curved Judy’s mouth.

“I’ve never been able to think of a better way to describe it. Think about it, Joanne. What is change but sacrificing the old way to the new? Isn’t that the nature of what you are?”

I rolled back on my sit-bones, absorbing the questions and the concept with genuine surprise. “I guess so,” I said after a minute of honest consideration. “I’m incrediblybad at it, but yeah, I guess so.” Wow. What an idea. Somehow it gave me a little more of a grasp on what I’d become.

Why sacrifice was an easier concept to come to terms with than healing, I neither knew nor much wanted to know. I was still taking baby steps as far as gut-level acceptance was concerned, even when the world was pushing me to take giant leaps for the good of mankind. Healing was hard.Let’s go shopping! I thought irreverently, then snorted laughter. Judy’s eyebrows lifted curiously and I waved my hand, dismissing my humor as I settled in to have a think about sacrifice.

Healingwas hard. It fell outside the realm of logic and sense that I preferred to deal with. Not entirely: I did expect paper cuts and broken bones to heal up, given time, and for worse ailments to at least have a chance at being beaten back. But the wholesale version I was supposed to embrace—the entire precept ofchange upon which shamanism was built—was pretty much beyond my ken, and was entirely beyond what I was comfortable with. People and things didn’t heal because they wanted to. They healed because nature dictated it, and in more drastic cases, because of the right use of medication and care. I thought of chemotherapy patients, and could acknowledge without flinching that very often, people made dramatic sacrifices in order to achieve the end result of health.

Somewhere very deep inside me, where I didn’t think Judy could catch it, I thought of a tiny baby girl sacrificing herself for her brother’s strength, and a scared teenager sacrificing her own confused love for the boy’s future.

“Yeah,” I said out loud, my voice rough in my own ears. “I get sacrifice. You’re on to something. I never thought of it that way.”

Judy curved a smile that darkened her eyes, taking the light out of them until they were like the snake’s. I rubbed my own eyes, then my sternum, wishing my vision would stop misbehaving. “Are you all right?” Judy asked solicitously.

“Yeah.” I sat on my hands to make them stop rubbing. Maybe there was something I could sacrifice to fix my vision. I’d think about it when my lesson was over. “So do I get a lesson, or what? Or is this just a ‘make Joanne think’ day?”

“Your energy is low,” Judy said. “Are you up for more than thinking?”

My energy was lower than a snake’s belly. I chuckled, more of a shoulder roll than a sound. “I don’t know. I could use about a week’s worth of sleep.”

“Not with Virissong coming in two days time.” Judy’s voice deepened, becoming stern. I put my head against my knees and made an mmph sound.

“I have other things to do, too. Besides help a godling back into the world. He is one of the good guys, right?” I looked over the arch of my knees. Judy lifted her eyebrows.

“What does your heart tell you?”

My heart, upon consultation, told me thud-thud, thud-thud, which was reassuring if not particularly helpful. My mind, which I trusted more as a vehicle for telling me things, was still conflicted.

“Stop thinking so much,” Judy said sharply. “You must learn to trust your feelings, Joanne Walker.”

I exhaled noisily through my nose, pressed my eyes shut, and tried to stop thinking.

All kinds of thoughts immediately filled my mind. Whether or not my black shoes, the ones that went best with my dress uniform, were polished, and if I was going to have time to polish them before the funeral. Why exactly it was called a parkway when you drove on it and a driveway when you parked on it. Whether all of this was real or a manifestation of my overactive imagination, in which case, couldn’t I at least have Keanu Reeves or Carrie Anne Moss as company?

Gradually all that noise faded away, although I kept an eye out for Keanu showing up. Less likely things had happened.

A quiet part of me acknowledged that the basic problem was I thought the members of the coven were, in general, nuts. Virissong, with his semi-godlike powers and his ambition to make the world a better place, didn’t sound half-bad. If he were a little more concrete—like, oh, say, Ted Turner, with his billion-dollar gift to the United Nations—I’d be right there waving a little “Go Viri!” flag. It wasn’t that hard to see the world needed some help. In my good moments, I even thought I could step up to the plate and offer a little myself.

An even quieter part of me admitted the really basic problem wasn’t the coven at all. It was my own skepticism. The coven, at least, believed. They were willing to take action and risks to make the world a better place.

I was supposed to be dedicated to that sort of thing myself. Instead I was sitting on the benches, pissed at the coach for making me turn out for the team.

Maybe it was better if I stuck to car analogies. The point was, I didn’t want to believe, and my recalcitrance kept me stymied. And that was exactly what my spirit animals had told me would be my hardest battle. Accepting.

“Yeah,” I finally said out loud. “Okay. I get it. I donno how long it’ll last, but I get it.” It never lasted long, in my experience.

“Why do you fight so hard?” Judy asked. Hairs stood up on my arms and I shivered, envisioning shields rolling up around me like car windows. I didn’t want to answer her question, not out loud and not to myself. All I wanted to do was sit and struggle with acceptance. I didn’t need an audience for that.

“Fade to black,” I said, and everything did.

The fade stayed with me even after I opened my eyes, back in my own body. I wasn’t even sure Ihad opened my eyes, until I lifted a hand and poked myself in the pupil. Sparks flew through my vision and my eyes watered, darkness fading back into light. I turned to look at the VCR clock, where blinking green numbers told me it was six-thirty.

Six-thirty meant I could get a two-hour nap in before getting ready to meet Morrison for Cassandra’s funeral. It also meant I could grab a shower and dash over to see how Colin was doing. I was still thinking that sounded like a good idea when the alarm woke me up again.

Morrison was early. I don’t know who was more surprised I was ready, him or me. He knocked on the door at nine-twenty, and I went to open it, holding my shoes in my hand.

I saw the same curious expression cross his face that I felt cross mine. With me barefoot and him shod, he had a good two inches height on me. It felt extremely peculiar to be looking up at my captain, and judging from his drawn-down eyebrows, it felt just as peculiar to be looking down at me. He looked down at my feet. I dropped my shoes and stepped into them, putting myself at a half-inch advantage. “Better?”

He rolled his shoulders back, filling my doorway considerably more than he had a moment before. “Yeah.” He sounded growly. I didn’t blame him. Finding myself on unequal footing—literally—with him made me uncomfortable, too, especially since when it normally happened, it was because I was deliberately wearing heels so I’d be taller.

I stepped backward so I could see him better, my wretched vision notwithstanding. In dress uniform he didn’t look like a superhero going to seed. He just looked heroic, broad-shouldered and strong-jawed and capable. He had his cap tucked under his arm with military precision. I wondered if he’d ever been in the military, or if he just had clear ideas about how a police captain should present himself.

“You look good, Captain.” Could I get sued for saying something like that? We were both off-duty. Well, I was off-duty. I thought Morrison was, but sometimes me and thinking didn’t get on so good. At any rate, whether he could sue me or not, it was true. In the hall light, my inverted vision wasn’t so bad, and his shoulders had sort of a silver glow where his shadow should’ve been. It didn’t quite make him look like an angel—that would’ve been too much for me to stay polite about—but it gave him an aura of confidence and strength that made me sentimental again about working for him.

“Thank you,” he said gruffly. “You ready?”

“Yeah.” I crooked a smile at my feet and shooed Morrison out of the way so I could step out and lock my door. There wasn’t any real reason for the little sting of disappointment that the compliment hadn’t been returned, other than me being a fickle, fickle beast.

The ride to the cemetery was a quiet one. I had enough sense to not suggest we take Petite. Morrison drove an unmarked police-issue Ford, the sort that isn’t fooling anybody about being a cop car, and I rode shotgun, silently watching the streets slide by. We drove into Crown Hill Cemetery and parked, walking over tired green grass toward a gathering crowd. We couldn’t have been more in sync if we’d tried, our paces matching exactly. Morrison pretended not to notice.

Nerves and guilt bubbled in my stomach and I tried to chase them away with a quiet question. “No service?”

Morrison said, “Only the graveside service,” and volunteered nothing else, leaving me to my churning stomach. I’d never gone to one of these, not for a victim, not in an official capacity. I felt like I should’ve done more, like I should’ve been there in time to save Cassandra Tucker. I wondered if he felt the same way, as if he’d failed the girl whose funeral we were about to attend. I wondered if any police officer couldnot feel that way, doing this.

I hadn’t anticipated seeing anyone I knew, but the coven members were all there, pale with grief Faye stood with her arm around the waist of an older black woman whose face was veiled under the black hat she wore. She was leaning heavily on the girl. Morrison turned his head and murmured, “Ruby Tucker, Cassandra’s mother. The girl with her is Faye Kirkland, Cassandra’s best friend.”

“Yeah. She’s the one who accosted me.” That sounded better thandreamed about me, somehow. I glanced over the little group surrounding Ruby Tucker, then asked, as quietly, “Her father?”

Morrison shook his head. “He died a few years ago. Mrs. Tucker’s had a hard time of it.” He kept his voice so neutral I could hear the ache he was hiding. I reached out and touched the back of his hand with my fingertips. He looked down, then at me with his eyebrows lifted, and I let my hand fall without saying anything.

My inverted sight seemed to have settled down. The edges of things were still dim, but it was a vast improvement, allowing me to watch people as they arrived and paused to offer their condolences to Mrs. Tucker. She stopped letting Faye support her and stood straight and tall, taller than I expected. Through the shadows of her veil I could see traces of Cassandra’s youthful prettiness, and her determination to conduct herself with dignity. She did not look at me or Morrison, although other people did, some with sympathy and a few with anger. It wasn’t that we were white in a predominantly black crowd. What made them angry was the same thing that made me guilty: we were cops, and we hadn’t been there to save Cassandra Tucker. What good were we, if we couldn’t save one young woman’s life? Their anger and frustration was as misplaced as my own, but I couldn’t blame them for it. I held my hands still, fighting against the urge to make unhappy supplication to the men and women who had been Cassandra’s friends.

A church bell rang, counting off the hour at ten o’clock, and the crowd fell back, making an open path to the grave. Planes droned overhead, and I could hear the distant sounds of traffic, engines revving and horns honking. Closer to me, people sniffled and cleared their throats and lifted their chins, but the silence, for a city morning, was nearly complete. Almost as one, heads turned to watch the six men who carried Cassandra’s coffin approach her grave. The young man at the right front held his jaw so tightly set that mine ached in sympathy.

A bewildered little girl wailed and flung herself at the men who walked by, solemnly carrying a coffin on their shoulders.

Deja vu hit me so hard I clutched at Morrison’s sleeve to keep myself upright. I’d been here before, not all that long ago. Only then it’d been in the desert of my mind, with the big coyote, not real.

The girl’s cry cut through the silence, sharp as knives. The young man in the lead flinched, eyes darting down to the little girl before he yanked his gaze forward again. Morrison murmured, “Siobhàn.”

“What?” My fingers refused to unwrap from Morrison’s sleeve as I stared up at him, the funeral forgotten. It was all I could do to keep my voice down. “What? How do you know that name?” It wasn’t anywhere on my paperwork, and the only person who’d ever used it was dead.

Morrison frowned at me. “The little girl. Cassandra’s daughter. Shevaun Tucker.”

Faye darted forward to scoop the girl up. Shevaun buried her face against Faye’s shoulder, sobbing with misery and confusion.

I stared across the grave at the little girl who shared my name, and wondered if the universe could get any less subtle.