Thunderbird Falls

CHAPTER 6

“The hell you are.” Guilt mixed with incredulity in my voice. Coyote’d just finished telling me I needed a teacher, and I hated to admit he might be right. “Get out of my head. I’m doing just fine on my own.” Ah, yes. The petulant, spoiled child tone. That always went over well.

Judy sat down with irritating grace, as if she’d had it drilled into her by a dance instructor when she was too small to protest. “You’ve regressed from what your abilities six months ago were,” she disagreed. “Even three months ago. You haven’t accepted your power or the responsibility that comes with it.”

“What the hell are you talking about? I stopped Cernunnos, didn’t I? I fought the banshee. That all took power.”

“Oh yes.” She nodded. “In the moment of crisis, you did what had to be done, with the tools at hand. You used enormous power, but without regard for the consequences.”

A thin trickle of apprehension dribbled down my spine. “I was careful. The hospitals and the airport, all the power stayed on so people would be okay.” Chills swept over my arms regardless of the heat, oppressive even here in my own garden. I tried rubbing the goose bumps away without success.

“Consequences aren’t always so easily seen as that, Joanne. You know there’s something wrong, yet you ignore it.”

The discolored streets and life-lights I’d seen with my second sight flashed through my memory, streaky vision of wrongness. “I saw it,” I said reluctantly. “I don’t know what it is, though.”

“It’s you,” Judy said. “The power you used six months ago disrupted weather systems all over the world, and worst of all in Seattle. How long did it take the snow to melt, Joanne?”

Seattle, not notorious for snow, had seen a storm that began the week after I gained shamanic powers and hadn’t stopped worth mentioning until April. When spring hit, it did so overnight, temperatures soaring into the seventies. There’d been flooding for weeks, and since then it’d been drier than bones. I wrapped my arms around myself, shaking my head. Denial: it wasn’t just a river in Egypt. The worst part was the uncomfortable, shoulder-hunching suspicion that she was telling God’s own truth. I knew something was wrong, and I hadn’t been able to find its center. I also hadn’t looked at myself. Dammit.

“You’ve left a mess to clean up, Joanne. You used tremendous power once or twice, and what have you done since then?”

My shoulders hunched again, without my permission. I hated body language. Most of it didn’t pass through my brain for a spot-check on what I wanted to give away.

It wasn’t that I’d donenothing with the gifts that had been catalyzed in me. I’d done detail work, fixing up chips in peoples’ paint, so to speak. My coworker Bruce got a hairline fracture on his ankle and the doctors had been astounded at how quickly he healed. Not quite overnight, but within a few days he was running again, without discomfort. I took a perverse pleasure in smoothing over hangnails and papercuts when I shook hands. One of the books I’d read said those who needed healing had to believe the healing could be done. I’d discovered that for small physical injuries, being unaware that healing was taking place was just about as good.

But none of it was earth-shattering, world-saving stuff, and the truth was, most of it made no long-term difference to the people I’d helped.

My shoulders inched farther toward my ears. “Look, I promise I’ll do better, okay? Go away.”

“I can’t do that, Joanne. I’m committing myself to teaching you, and unlike you, I take that responsibility seriously.”

Anger flared in my belly, sending blood up to stain my cheeks and make my ears hot. “It’s not that I don’t take it seriously. I just never asked for this in the first place—”

“But you accepted it.” There was a note of smugness in her voice, almost as unlikable as my whining. “Do you accept me as your teacher, Joanne Walker?”

I scowled at the pond. Coyote wanted me to have a teacher. “Did Coyote send you?”

“I beg your pardon?” Genuine surprise filled her voice. “You called out for help twice today. Traditionally it takes three cries, but I thought you might not want to wait. You expected someone as powerful as Coyote to send you a teacher?”

My shoulders couldn’t hunch any farther, so I tightened my arms around my ribs. “It seemed likely. Anyway, I didn’t know I was yelling for help.”

Judy pursed her mouth. “I’m sorry,” she said after a moment. “If you’re on casual terms with Coyote, maybe I misinterpreted your need for help.” She got to her feet as smoothly as she’d sat, bowing her head toward me. “I hope I’ll see you again, Joanne.” She began to fade, again not like Coyote, but as if she were a ghost.

I gritted my teeth and dug my fingers into my ribs. “Wait.”

The fade stopped and she lifted her head again, one eyebrow raised in question. I clenched my jaw a couple of times before asking, “Who are you? I mean, how do I know you’re qualified to teach me? Do you even exist outside here?” I swept the fingers of one hand in a circle, more meaning to encompass the astral realm than my garden.

Judy gave me a very brief, wry smile. “You mean, would I answer if you dropped me an e-mail message? Not usually. I’m terrible about checking it. As for qualified…” She spread her hands and lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “I’ve practiced magic for most of my existence. We could try a handful of lessons and you could decide if I’m the teacher for you.”

“Most of your existence?” I thought that was a weird word to choose, and it showed in my voice. Judy’s smile went less wry and more open.

“You, of all people, should know thatlife is too limited a term for those who walk in other realms.”

I remembered, quite vividly, a sour-faced shaman who was irritated at her untimely death because she was young in the practice of shamanism, and others who had been tolerant of her because they had far more experience, even though some of them looked much younger in years. I rubbed my hand over my eyes. “Yeah. I guess so. All right.” I pressed my lips together and looked at her again. “All right, fine. We’ll see how it goes for, like, three lessons, okay? And then I get to reevaluate.” The crystal wall I’d built had dimmed during our conversation, a physical sign that I was relenting mentally.

Judy smiled and ducked her head in another semi-bow. “Wonderful. We’ll meet here tomorrow at six to begin.”

“Six? In themorning?”

“The mind is clearer and less burdened after dreaming.”

I groaned. “Okay. Six. God.”

Judy grinned, took one step backward, and disappeared.

“Out of sight, out of mind,” I muttered. I wished I thought I’d accomplished ridding myself of her, but it was painfully clear that she’d opted to leave on her own. I curled a lip grouchily and cast out my consciousness, calling for Coyote.

There was no answer.

I opened my eyes again, watching the clock mark away seconds in clicks that hadn’t seemed loud when I went under. I had fifteen seconds of lunch break left, and a sour lump of doughnut in my belly.

The second hand swept to the top. I got to my feet and walked out of the office, saying, “Hey,” unbidden when Thor accidentally met my eyes. He jerked his head in a nod, a startled, “Hey,” following me up the stairs.

Another “Hey,” caught my attention as I headed for the front doors, Billy swinging around a corner to grin beefily down at me. “Joanie. There you are. Snakes are good juju. Thought you’d like to know.”

I stared at him for a couple of seconds, then shook myself. “Could’ve fooled me. What do you mean?”

“Looked ‘em up on the Net, but I really should’ve known it before. I mean, think about it. The Hippocratic symbol—”

“—a staff with the snakes twined around it. Duh.”

Billy grinned. “Yep. Duh. So, yeah, basically, good vibes. They’re symbols of healing and renewal and change.”

I thought of Judy, shifting from snake to woman in my garden, and tried to smile. “Great. Good. I could use some.”

Billy’s eyebrows drew down. “You okay, Joanie? You look like you lost your best friend.”

Memory hit me in the sternum, so real and immediate that my breath stopped. I lifted my hand, pressing the heel against my breastbone, trying to clear the tightness. My heart pounded in fast, thick pulses that brought the doughnut back up to the gagging point, making me swallow heavily. Color burned my cheeks, and I resented my fair skin all over again.

“Joanie? Are you okay?” Billy caught my shoulders, concern wrinkling his forehead. My vision was cloudy, a haze settling down between us. For a few seconds all I could do was remember.

I was fifteen and my father and I had been living in North Carolina for over a year, by far the longest time I’d ever lived in one place in my life. I’d never been anywhere long enough to make good friends; that pretty, petite Sara Buchanan had chosen me as a best friend was a source of regular amazement and pleasure to me. But in memory, her eyebrows were drawn down over angry hazel eyes, and the golden-brown skin that I envied so much was suffused with furious red.

She’d said she didn’t like him. I was already terrified by what I’d done in trying to fit in, trying to make a boy like me. I hadn’t meant for things to go as far as they did, and I only wanted someone to tell me it’d be okay. She’d said she didn’t like him, and when I’d whispered that, confused and frightened, she’d barked derisive laughter at me.I lied! God, what was I supposed to say, yeah, I like him? How obvious is that? God, Joanne, don’t you know anything?

“No.” I whispered it now, just like I’d done then. No, I didn’t know anything. I’d grown up solitary enough, with my father rather than girls for company, that I’d honestly had no idea that her hair-tossing denial had been a front.

Tiny black spots of panic swam at the corners of my vision, etching around the memory of Sara until she stood out, full of vibrant color, against an inky background. There was fear in my stomach, more potent than what I’d felt with the boy. The First Boy; even in memory I didn’t let myself think his name. Panic edged through me, so I could feel the flow of blood fluttering through my heart, little missed murmurs that I couldn’t catch my breath to banish. Like the tide coming in, sound thrummed against my eardrums, blocking out Sara’s words, although I could see them in the shape of her mouth.

I’m never speaking to you again.

And she didn’t.

She watched me with cool disdain that turned into hate when I began to show a few months later. The First Boy went back to his mother’s people in Canada, and none of us, not me, not Sara, certainly not the Boy, ever told anyone he was the father. When the twins were born and the little girl died, I tried to ask Sara to speak for her. She looked through me as if I wasn’t there. I’d lost my best friend.

And even now, almost thirteen years later, tears stung my eyes as I shook off Billy’s hands. “I’m all right.”

I didn’t sound all right, my voice thick and stuffy and coming through my nose. I was afraid to blink, for fear those tears would roll down my cheeks. Billy’s whole face turned down like an unhappy Muppet and he put his arm around my shoulders.

“Come on. A cold washcloth will help.” He walked me down the hall, blocking me from the other officers’ view with his body, and ushered me into the men’s bathroom. I let out a stressy little giggle.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been in a boy’s bathroom before. I thought they were supposed to be all dirty and gross.” The words spilled out in a too-high, too-fast voice, but it was better than bursting into tears. Billy smiled, pulling paper towels out of the dispenser and running water over them.

“Here you go. You really think Morrison’d let us keep the bathroom all dirty and gross?”

I buried my face in the cold towels, pressing the wet paper against my eyes. “No,” I admitted hoarsely. My shoulders dropped as the coolness pulled some of the burning from my eyes and cheeks. I snuffled, lowering the papers to find Billy leaning against a sink, arms folded over his chest as he frowned at me.

“You okay, Joanie? You want to tell me what that was all about?”

I wiped my nose on my wrist and snuffled again, looking away. “I’m just being stupid.” I was suddenly tired, the price of sudden and high emotion. And maybe the price of using a power that I’d been doing my best to ignore for several months. I’d been uncharacteristically emotional the day I became a shaman, too, now that I thought about it. “It’s been one of those days. I’ve been up and down and all over the place.”

“That girl this morning a friend of yours?”

“What?” I looked at him, then dropped my shoulders, relieved for an excuse to hang my behavior on. “No. No. I guess I’m just a little more freaked out about it than I thought.” It was as good an excuse as any.

“Happens to the best of us,” Billy said. “You need a drink.”

My eyes bugged. “I’m on duty.”

“Hot chocolate with mint,” he said, still firmly. “Wash your face again and I’ll buy you one.”

A little bubble of happiness burst through my misery. I shuffled forward to turn the cold water on again, splashing it over my face, and reached blindly for a dry paper towel, which Billy put into my hand. “You’re a good friend,” I said into the towel.

“I just know your comfort food hot buttons,” he said, pleased with himself. “Come on, Joanie. It’ll be okay.”

Billy was right. Just going outside did me some good, even if it was ninety-three degrees and about equal humidity. I felt sorry for the protesters down at the Seattle Center, and wondered how the little girl was doing.

I ended up with an Italian soda, because it was way too warm out for hot chocolate, but the very normal act of getting a drink and getting back on my beat did a lot to restore my equilibrium. I had a tentative teacher, which would make Coyote happy, and snakes were good juju. The Internet said so, and if you couldn’t believe the Internet, who could you believe?

The rest of the day was blessedly normal, except I was so grungy and sticky with sweat by the time work was over I called Gary and told him not to have dinner until eight. He said, “Aw, damn, and me with the microwave heatin’ up already,” which kept a grin on my face until I arrived on his doorstep, newly showered and wearing as little as humanly possible. For me, that meant a strappy tank top with one of those built-in bra thingies and a pair of shorts that I considered to be cut daringly short, although I had nothing on Daisy Duke. Gary arched an eyebrow and gave me a grin that was better than words, even if he was seventy-three years old. I momentarily wished I had long hair so I could fluff it. Then reality kicked in: if I’d had long hair, I’d have cut it off by now in an attempt to cool down, so it didn’t really matter.

The house didn’t smell like he’d been cooking. I kicked my sandals off and padded through the living room into the kitchen, where cold cuts and crackers and fruit and a pasta salad were arranged rather elegantly on a platter. I stole a piece of ham, wrapped it around some cheese, and nibbled. “You do this yourself or you buy it?”

I could all but hear the old man’s offended look as he came in behind me. “Did it myself. Donno about you, but I think it’s too hot to cook or eat hot food. I got salmon in the freezer, but you’re gonna have to wait till the heat breaks.”

I grinned over my shoulder at him and picked up the platter to bring it out to the living room. There were picture windows that went all the way up to a vaulted ceiling overlooking an expansive front yard full of lilacs and other flowering things I couldn’t identify. There was enough actual lawn that the kids next door tended to spill out onto it, having water balloon fights as they hid behind the hedges. Gary and Annie had owned the place since about 1965, though he’d been living in an apartment, having the place modernized and refurbished when I met him. Between that and the endlessly climbing real estate value in Seattle, I couldn’t imagine what the market value of the place was now. Gary could probably retire rich, if he wanted to move out. Or retire.

“Lemonade or water?” Gary asked from the kitchen. My mouth puckered up at the very idea of lemonade, so I requested it happily as I put the food platter on the coffee table. The furniture was leather, but there were hand-sewn quilts thrown over everything, so a person could sit down in the armchair without sticking to it. I did, and Gary came out of the kitchen with a jug, two glasses, and a finger pointed at me accusingly. “Get outta my chair, kid.”

I laughed like a guilty five-year-old and squirmed out of Gary’s chair to kick back on the couch. “I had to try.”

He snorted and sat down, pouring juice into glasses that clinked with just a couple of ice cubes. “You always try. Arright, Jo, so what’s going on now? I go away for a few weeks and miss all the good stuff?”

“Only you would think it’s the good stuff.” I squished farther into the couch and, between bites of crackers and meat, told him about my day. Six months ago Gary’d thought I was a hundred percent insane when I climbed in his cab in search of a woman I’d seen from an airplane. By the end of that same morning I’d come back from the dead and he was determined to stick with me on the logic that I was the most interesting thing that’d happened to him in years. Things I could barely handle, like the very idea of the power that’d awakened inside me, he took in stride, shrugging off improbability with easy axioms about old dogs needing to learn new tricks, or they’d just up and die. By that standard, I suspected I’d been dead for half my life already.

“You think she’s right?” Gary asked, bushy eyebrows elevated as I finished. “About the heat wave being somethin’ you did?”

“Gary, if I thought I could affect global weather patterns, I would go home and hide under the bed for the rest of my life.” I stared gloomily at the pasta salad, my appetite suddenly gone. Gary noticed and harrumphed.

“So you think she’s right.”

I sighed and sank a few inches farther into the couch. The quilt slid down over my shoulder, blocking most of my view of Gary. I felt like a Kilroy, peeking over it at him. “So what do I do?”

Gary gave me an incredulous look that made me want to pull the quilt all the way up so it covered me entirely. “You fix it, Jo. You go listen to this dame and you learn what you gotta do to fix it.”

I pushed the quilt back up over the arm of the couch and reached for my salad again, picking at it without enthusiasm. “I hate it when you’re right.”

Gary beamed. “You got a lotta hate going on, then, darlin’. No point in bein’ an old dog if you can’t be right.”

A wheeze of a laugh erupted up through my throat, quick jolts that were more like a cough than laughter, but a grin spread across my face. “Yeah, yeah yeah. All right, fine. Be that way. I’ll show you.”

“You will?”

“Yeah.” I got up from the couch, heading for the kitchen again. “I’m going to eat all your ice cream. So there.”

“What makes you think I’ve got any?”

“You’ve always got ice cream.” I pulled open the freezer and took out a carton. “Gary! It’s rocky road. You know I don’t like rocky road!”

I heard him kick the footrest up on his chair, and when I looked over my shoulder he had his arms folded behind his head, expression smug as a cat’s. “Now who showed who? Get me a bowl, wouldya? And if you dump it on my head like you’re thinkin’ about,” he added a minute later as I came out with his bowl of ice cream, “I won’t tell you where that raspberry-chocolate stuff you like is hidden.”

I stopped with the bowl tilted at a precarious angle and stared down at him. He grinned up at me genially. “Youth and good looks are no match for old age and treachery, doll. Who wins?”

“You do, you old goat.”

Gary’s grin expanded exponentially. “Garage freezer.”

I went out, trying not to laugh as I grumbled dire imprecations loudly enough for him to hear me. Gary’s chortles followed me all the way into the garage.