Urban Shaman

CHAPTER 23

I hit the front steps at a run. My shoes, which had no traction for snow, slid, leaving three feet of skid marks before I reached the edge and went flying at a horizontal angle, feet leading. For one very brief moment in the midst of panic I enjoyed the sensation of being unanswerable to gravity.

Then gravity called me home with a vengeance.

By dint of my head being nearer to the top step than my hips were to the lower ones, I hit it first. I can only surmise that my shoulders, small of my back and tailbone subsequently and sequentially hit the top edges of the next several steps down. I was out cold.

I was getting used to states of unconsciousness bringing about states of altered reality. Bright, exploding balls of pain like silver and red fireworks were a new twist, though. I couldn’t say I cared for it at all. I was pretty sure I hadn’t killed myself, so I didn’t know why it seemed to hurt more than having been stabbed did, but it did. It hurt a lot.

“Because you hit your head,” Coyote said, distracted. “It’s where you perceive your self as being held.”

I tried opening my eyes. Stabbing daggers of green light jabbed into my brain. I didn’t like it. I closed my eyes again. “Hnnng.”

“Kind of an impressive wipeout,” he added. “Did you actually need me for something?”

“Hnnng,” I said again, and tried to shake my head. Someone drove an icepick into my skull behind my left ear.

“Good.” He left me alone with the explosions of pain. Spirit guides, I decided, around shards of shrapnel slicing through my skull, were a pain in the ass.

I’d been through all this before. A little visualization, and I’d heal right up. Just a little concentration.

Too bad I couldn’t concentrate with Paul Bunyan hammering my head in. Brilliant spots of light burst into being and faded out again in random patterns, whether I had my eyes opened or closed. They slid by like a star scape, while I wondered if I was going somewhere or if I’d damaged my occipital lobe somehow. I’d hit the back of my head, so it didn’t seem likely, but stranger things have happened. A lot of stranger things had happened recently, in fact, so who was I to dismiss the theory out of hand?

One of the spots faded in and slid closer, growing progressively larger and resolving slowly into a more solid image. “And behold Death, who comes on a pale horse,” I mumbled. The rider drew to a stop before me, smiling his wicked, devastating smile.

“I have always liked that,” he admitted. Stars kept flooding by, but a dais of blackness formed under us, supporting us in the journey through the cosmos.

“You look better.” I closed my eyes. Interestingly, Cernunnos’s image didn’t disappear. Thwarted, I opened my eyes again. It was less disconcerting that way.

“You’re not so easily rid of me as all of that,” he chided. I didn’t want to, but I smiled.

“I should be so lucky. Where are we?”

“Your world.” Cernunnos lifted one hand to make a loose fist of it. “And mine.” He made a fist of his other hand, and placed one above the other so they brushed occasionally with the small motion of his breathing. He expanded that distance a little, so I could see it was there, and said, “We are here.”

“Just a hunch,” I said, and pointed at the fist he’d called my world, “but don’t I want to be there?”

“We both do,” the ancient god replied. He swung down off the liquid silver stallion and walked to the edge of the ebony dais.

“Why? I mean, I know why I want to be there. Why do you?” I watched him crouch and trail his fingers off the side of the dais. Ripples spilled back, sending wavers through the rushing stars. “Am I dead?” I asked, suddenly curious. “This looks kind of like where I met the shamans.”

“You are not dead yet.” Cernunnos hit the surface of space with the palm of his hand. Another shock of waves splattered the dais with a few drops of midnight. “Nor do I think that you are at the moment dying, though certainly your mortal body is injured.”

“You know, I wasn’t a reckless kid,” I said. “This really isn’t like me. Getting hurt all the time.”

“Hurt is not something only the physical body feels, little shaman. There is a darkness within you. You hide it well, but it was torn open in our first encounter. Even now I see its mark on you.” The god flickered his fingers, a casual gesture.

The spiderweb I’d imposed on myself as a shattered windshield flared into physical lines, a hole that ran all the way through my belly. It felt like a gunshot wound with a concussion of broken glass around it. It was worst around the hole, fogged lines held together by false plasticity. They spread out, down through my groin and into my thighs and shins, to the bottoms of my feet, and up through my breasts and shoulders and out my fingertips. I was glad I couldn’t see the dark striations on my face.

It was the only thing at all that I was glad for. Pain lanced through me, memories creeping through the outlets he’d colored into my body.

I was only fifteen, and very, very naive. Fifteen and convinced it couldn’t happen to me. Just like every other girl thinks. Just like every girl who was ever wrong.

First Boy. That’s how I thought of him, with capital letters. The First Boy who’d noticed me. The First Boy I ever fell in love with. The First Boy, who split for his mother’s people in Canada when I got pregnant.

The babies came four weeks early. The little girl, who was so very tiny, was born second. She held on to her brother’s hand with all her dying strength for the few minutes that she lived.

First death.

I called her Ayita, which meant “first to dance” in Cherokee, and named the boy Aidan even though I knew his adoptive parents would probably change his name. He was almost twelve years old now and I had never seen him beyond those first few minutes. It was better that way, but it didn’t stop me from wondering, sometimes, somewhere deep and private in myself where I didn’t let other people get close.

I was never, ever going to make a mistake like that again.

Cernunnos tipped his head to the side, like a bird studying a worm. “I can take that pain away, little shaman.” He smiled and stepped closer, until I could see nothing but his deep eyes and the wealth of power he could drown me in. He promised peace, and escape from the aching emptiness that boiled cold through my blood.

I took it.

* * *

They say drowning is an easy death. Not the panic, but the last moments, as your lungs fill with water and you stop struggling in face of the inevitable. That it’s not so bad, then. That it’s warm and comforting, as from water we are born, and so in drowning we return to water in death.

I’d like to know how the hell they know that.

Still, the warmth of Cernunnos’s power was as great a refuge as I’d ever known. Green god, horned god, my god. I rode beside him, neither queen nor consort, but Rider of the Wild Hunt. The purpose of chaos sang in my blood, a raw sound that heeded no boundaries. I was wrapped in it, and gave myself up to it.

“Little shaman,” Cernunnos said. I smiled at the name he’d always called me by, endless years of memory coloring the words with affection. “Whither wilt thou lead us?”

“To Babylon and back again, by candlelight.” The nursery rhyme popped to my lips unexpectedly.

One elegant pale eyebrow arched. “Then lead us to this land of Babyl, little shaman, and together we shall see if this curse that holds us might be undone.”

Curse? a very faint part of my mind asked, but the mare leaped under me, and ran with a purpose unlike anything I’d ever known. I crouched low over her neck, shouting out the glee of speed into the whipping wind. I barely guided her, my hands buried in her mane and my touch on the reins incidental. The slightest movement of my body, leaning to the left or right, sent her into long graceful curves. Behind us the Hunt ran, with Cernunnos himself at my left flank.

Is this not as it is meant to be? he demanded, silent, the question echoing in the bones of my skull. Tell me of your pain now, little shaman.

My pain. I remembered it, distantly. I reached for it, and found the warm green of Cernunnos’s power instead. It reacted to my touch like it was the caress of a lover, filling me, pure and raw and hungry. I forgot old pain in pursuit of new pleasure. Cernunnos chuckled, low and approving, a sound that somehow carried through the chilly blackness of the star field. I threw a brilliant smile back over my shoulder, and urged the mare on, leading the Hunt.

Something was important about where I rode. The thought was fleeting, and Cernunnos curled around it. Of course it is important, little shaman, he murmured reassuringly. You guide us in our eternal duty.

“Is that it?” I asked. The task seemed ever so slightly alien, but I couldn’t understand why. My thoughts felt thick and slow: it was the inability to speak to Cernunnos’s mind. Had I known the trick of mind-speech? Had I forgotten it?

Only will it, and it will be so, Cernunnos said. His power flowed around me, a safety net. I glanced over my shoulder. The rest of the host leaned into their horses, keeping pace. To a man they watched me, dusky eyes drinking me down.

Only will it, one or many of them whispered. Once more something struck me as odd in the multitoned encouragement. I grasped for the something, and it darted just out of reach, a bright flicker like candlelight racing beyond the mare.

Only will it, I agreed. I wondered how I’d forgotten the ease and intimacy of speaking mind to mind.

Yours is a hard road to travel. The touch of Cernunnos’s mind was comforting. For time unending it has been, little shaman. Very soon, though, that will change, and your task will be no more than the rest of us bear. The pleasure in his sending was a flare of warmth, and I responded without meaning to.

I’ll be glad to carry a lighter load, my lord master of the Hunt, I replied. For an instant, I felt a tug through my belly, like a claw hooking my spine and dragging it forward. Images of a misty world ran through the claw and directly into my senses: a gray sky and trees of muted greens, glimpsed through swirling fog. It smelled rich and peaty, like good earth just tilled, and the wind that shook the leaves was cool and crisp with the scent of salt water. There was laughter, crystalline musical sound that cut through the fog. Everything inside me screamed home!

The mare’s breakneck pace slowed a little.

Not jet. All the vast power of the god came to bear upon me, inside a breath. The misty, shadowy image that cried home shattered under his will. New pain, as deep as the old, erupted inside me.

Give it back! I screamed, but Cernunnos’s power locked me away from it, solid as iron chains.

Bring us to your Babylon, he ordered, and I flung myself straight in the saddle, throwing my hands high.

“We are here!”

The stars stopped around me with earth-shaking suddenness. I closed my hands, drawing down the star scape like it was a curtain. From behind it emerged a city, growing up around me as if it had always been there.

Structured of stone, it sprawled out with a decadent elegance, broad streets spreading in all directions from where we stood in the center of a square. Towering, twisting spires rose high into the sky, like Joshua Trees reaching a thousand feet tall, gnarled and intricate and as old as time. They stood out, bright white against a blue-gray sky, with branches knotted together to form looping walkways in the air.

Hanging jungles grew from those walkways, thick vines and wild flowers so potent I could smell their rich scent from hundreds of feet below. They writhed with more than the wind, as if they rather bordered on sentience. Leaves and branches wove in and out of one another, creating hammocks and nests as if the trees themselves enjoyed the intimacy of touch. I watched a child fling himself off the walkway with a piercing shriek of joy. The gardens caught him and built a ladder so he could climb back to the pathway above.

Men and women of all ethnicities and colors walked the pathways with no hurry at all, stopping to speak with one another. Their voices rose in a babble, over the sound of wind. If I listened with my ears I heard every tongue imaginable, but when I listened with my mind, I understood every word that was spoken.

Not one of them took notice of the Hunt’s arrival like it was anything untoward, though a number of passersby nodded and smiled or called their greetings. I watched curiously as a man and woman met and walked together to the base of one of the Joshua Tree spires, where the man lowered his head to kiss the woman’s throat.

Nor was theirs the only such display. Littered here and there, sometimes half-hidden in shadows, but as often not, couples tangled together without the slightest regard for who might be watching.

“What is this place?” Cernunnos asked, fascinated. “What is this Babylon of yours, little shaman?” He dismounted, and with a flick of his fingers sent the host down a dozen different streetways, then offered me a hand as I dismounted as well.

“A land of excess,” I said slowly. Remembering was hard; there was a fog in my mind, and it wanted me to remember the passion of the Hunt, not ancient legends from the world I’d once called home. “Where all men could speak to one another, where gluttony and lust held sway over intellect and reason. They say God was angered by the excess and destroyed the city, so that men could no longer speak to each other and instead were made to fight over misunderstandings. They say that to return to Babylon is to embrace corruption.” I looked around, listening to the rise and fall of voices and laughter. “It feels to me like…peace.”

Cernunnos placed two fingers over my breastbone, where his sword had punched through me a few days earlier. The sudden memory made me blink and shiver before it faded again. “And tell me, little shaman,” he said, “are you at peace now?”

A warning note twinged inside me. There was something I was forgetting, a reason not to be at peace. But Cernunnos smiled, shockingly green eyes inviting, and I forgot it again. “I am, my lord master of the Hunt.”

“I am so very glad.” He curled his fingers under my chin. His hands were cool, even through the leather gloves he wore. I shivered a little. “Don’t be afraid,” he murmured, and kissed me.

Fleetingly, the thought went through my mind: This is not right, and was followed hard by, when was the last time someone kissed me? Cernunnos’s power closed around me then, no longer a safe blanket of comfort, but tendrils of penetration, enticing passion from deep within me. I made an uncertain sound, closing my eyes against the pleasure in Cernunnos’s gaze. Green fire filtered through me, swirling up through my groin and into my breasts, sweet and hungry. His kiss was a taste of freedom, unlike anything I remembered since childhood. It was sanctuary.

“What a child we will make together, little shaman,” Cernunnos whispered. “What power, what passion he shall have.”

My eyes flew open, reality crashing back into my bones with a gut-wrenching jolt. “No!” I shoved him away as hard as I could. The god stumbled back, his green eyes alight with outraged astonishment. “No,” I panted again. “No, and no, and no, Cernunnos, I am not yours, and I will not make that mistake again.”

Passion ignited into rage in his eyes. “Think on your choices, shaman,” he snarled. “Choose me and I’ll grant you eternity, riding at my side. You will guide me as I guide the Hunt. Choose otherwise, and you and this place end now.” He threw his head back and let out a bellow like a wounded hind, a deep throbbing sound that sent tremors through the Joshua Tree spires. Around us the host faded back into being, unconstrained by observing niceties like traveling through physical space or linear time.

I stared at Cernunnos, far too aware of the heat still in my blood and the taste of his power, almost visible as he stood before me. At least the fog in my brain seemed to have burned away. “You need a thirteenth.” I’d figured that much out. Damn, I’d been right. Go team go. But I’d thought he needed Marie specifically. “You need someone to ride in the child’s place so you can ride. It can be anybody? You’re offering that to me?”

“Not anyone,” Cernunnos said through gritted teeth. “Someone with power. Someone who can bear the weight of my touch without shuddering. Someone who can bear a child to replace the one that is lost.”

Tears burned hot in my eyes, an unexpected pang of shared loss lighting the air between the ancient god and myself. For a few seconds I could hardly breathe, my throat tight with memory and loss. The fire in Cernunnos’s eyes burned dark with frustrated rage and sorrow. I shivered and wrapped my arms around myself, holding myself still to prevent myself from going to him and trying to ease his pain.

“Choose,” Cernunnos demanded. He closed his fist around the stallion’s reins and mounted the animal in a single graceful motion. He looked terribly tall, fury stretching the elegant features gaunt, his power lending breadth to the slender form. He didn’t move, but I thought that if he turned his head I would see faint mists of green fire drift away, trails left by the anger in his eyes.

I remembered the sudden longing the silver misty world had woken in me, and took a startled breath. “She’s your daughter. The last Rider, the one who’s missing. And she’s strong enough to call you home. But me, I’m not from that world. I can resist that call. But I’m not—” I shivered again, staring up at him. “I’m not like Marie, my magic doesn’t work like hers. That’s why you need me to make a—” I couldn’t say the last word, not out loud, not to the primal god on his horse before me. “My magic would overrule the power of that world, the one the Rider calls home. You could use our—” I still couldn’t say it. “You could stay in my world. Led by a child with shamanic magic.”

“A child would be best,” Cernunnos whispered. “Blood of my blood is bound to me whether we like it or not. Blood of your blood would bear much stronger ties to your world than any child I’ve sired before. Blood of our blood would be rich with power.” He lifted his stallion’s reins in a clenched fist. “But you, little shaman, you will do. Choose!”

“Just as long as you keep me drugged.” I touched my temple, remembering the green fog of his power. “No. No!”

A feral grin slipped over Cernunnos’s mouth. “Do you know what this place is, gwjld, that you have brought me to? Neither your world nor mine. There is no binding here.”

A sick feeling knotted my stomach. Cernunnos grinned again, sharp canines curving over his lower lip a moment. “A land of peace, shaman. They are traveling souls, without defenses, and we are beyond worlds.” He threw his head back again, ash-colored hair flinging back over his shoulders, and let out another spire-shaking bellow, this one more like a hunter’s horn than the wounded stag. When he lifted his head again, his brilliant eyes were narrow slits, full of smug anger. The crown of horn lost its subtlety, sweeping back from his skull in elegant, heavy whorls. His neck and shoulders thickened as I watched, body changing to support the greater weight of the full crown. “You have chosen,” he snarled. His smile was wicked, so sharp it made me cold. “We ride.”

Morrison waved smelling salts under my nose and I came awake with a shock.