Spiritwalk (17 page)

“Never,” Esmeralda told it.

She turned her face away and looked forward over the bow of the canoe, dipping her paddle with hard sure strokes so that her craft shot forward, out of the rushes and onto the open water of the river. In her mind her inner clock counted the moments that were slipping by all too rapidly and she paddled harder. The mists came drifting in again, but she called up her wind to blow them away. She couldn’t risk losing her sense of direction now. Time was too precious.

She could sense other canoes on the water with her. The spirits of the dead. Like her, they were still traveling west. To what lay on the far banks—Epanggishimuk, the Land of Souls.

As the shore approached, she studied it carefully. Birch woods marched back into a thicker forest of cedar and maple, elm and pine. Close by the rushes, willows grew in deep thickets. She aimed her craft to where a meadow lay against the riverbank, landing the canoe on a tiny beach of mud and clay. She pulled the canoe up onto the shore, stowing the paddle inside it, then stood up to study the new land she was in.

With time slipping away, moment by inexorable moment, she had fretted about where to even begin to start looking, but she needn’t have worried. Emma stood on the bank above her, smiling down at her.

“Oh, Esmeralda,” she said. “What are
you
doing here?”

8

Spirits were talking.
Animiki
grumbling their drum talk in the sky.

Migizi had dismantled his conjuring lodge, rolling the poles in his deerskins, tying the bundle with the leather thongs that had bound the cedar branches to the birch. As he worked, his thoughts turned from the naming ceremony he would perform tomorrow to what the voices of the thunders were saying. He listened to them gossip about a living being who walked the Path of Souls and how she would remain there.

It was a future they saw.

Migizi could still taste the wind manitou’s smoke in his lungs and he sat now, facing west, looking where Nokomis had taken her. The bundled lodge lay beside him, his water drum by his knee. He thought of the manitou and looked for other futures for her and her sister.

Most he saw were what the
animiki
drummed.

His shadow pressed close against his shoulders. His soul reminded him that he and the wind manitou had shared smoke.

Saemauh k’weekaunissimikonaun
, she had signed to him. Tobacco makes us friends.

Bringing his water drum to hand, Migizi let his fingers walk upon its skin to speak his own message to the spirit world.

Three

1

“I’ve come for you,” Esmeralda told Emma. “To take you home.”

They sat on the riverbank, looking out across the water through the mists. The thick grass was like a cushion underneath them. Wildflowers deepened the air with their rich scents. By the shore something splashed. A frog. Perhaps a fish, surfacing for an insect. Across the water, the loon called again.

“But I don’t want to go back,” Emma said.

Esmeralda sighed. She turned from the view to take Emma’s hand. Their gazes met.

“Why not?” Esmeralda asked.

Emma disengaged their hands. “I don’t fit back there. All this weirdness... It was fun when we were kids. That sense of magic, Autumn Lady and Westlin Wind, my drawings and your poetry. I’d never want to have missed any of that. But I never really thought it was real. Special, yes. Magical. Wonderful. But not real.”

“Is it such a bad thing?”

“It’s not a question of good or bad—it’s a question of my not being equipped to deal with it. If it’s not just a game, if it
is
real... then it’s too dangerous. For me, at least.”

“If you learned to use your gift...”

Emma turned sharply. “Learn? Where do you learn about this kind of thing, Esmeralda? I stand in line at the supermarket and read all that crap on the tabloids and I think, That’s what I want to be? Some flake that gets written up in
The Enquirer
? Am I supposed to get a subscription to one of them and learn from that?”

“Your knowing so little is my fault,” Esmeralda said. “I went on—I didn’t wait for you. I thought you were going to follow.”

“Follow you where?”

“Into the mysteries. You have a gift—”

“A gift! To talk to trees?”

“Remember last year?” Esmeralda asked gently. “When your two halves were joined again? My winds were there. I felt you use your gift through them. You eased the bard’s pain. You understood the workings of the spirit world. You saw how it could be.”

“I remember.” Emma’s voice was a soft whisper.

“With your gift you can ease the aging hearts of people before they enter the winter of their lives,” Esmeralda went on. “You can give them the hope they need to carry on. You and I—people with our gifts—we’re here to speak of the mysteries, Emma.

“When people are born, they’re still at one with the world, but they lose that harmony as they grow older. They shut their eyes, their hearts, their minds to everything that’s around them. We’re here to show them the way back. I speak the language of the wind; yours is that of the trees—the old bardic mysteries.”

“It’s
all
a mystery to me,” Emma said. “Don’t you see, Esmeralda? It’s all clear and laid out for you, but it doesn’t work that way for me. God—just look at you coming here after me. That’s the kind of person I am. When I get in deep, I need help. I can’t do things on my own. I need you. I need the Blues of the world.”

“We all need each other’s help—that’s what we’re here for. To preserve the harmony.”

“I need more help than anybody’s got a right to ask for.”

“Is that why you turned away from what happened last year?” Esmeralda asked. “Why you stilled the gift when it woke again?”

“It felt like a gift at the time. For a day or so. But then it just seemed to fray. I started remembering it like a dream. It just... faded on me.”

“I won’t go away this time,” Esmeralda said. “This time I’ll stay, Emma. I promise you that.”

Emma shook her head. “I can’t go back. How could I face anybody? Can you imagine what Blue’d think if I came to him with this kind of a story? ’Well, you see, Blue, I’m really here in this world to talk to the trees and use their wisdom to help everybody get along better.’ “

“I think Blue understands it better than you do.”

“It’s no good. I can’t go back. Everything’s too jumbled and confused back there. Not the real world. I can handle my job and people and all that kind of thing. It’s the weirdness—this gift stuff. Winds and trees. Being here’s the first time I’ve felt sane in months.”

“You’ll just be postponing the inevitable,” Esmeralda said.

“What do you mean by that?”

“You’ll come back, be born again on the same wheel, and have to deal with it all then. The gift’s not going to go away. What we are doesn’t change, Emma—it doesn’t matter what shape we wear.”

“I... I can’t do it,” Emma said. “I’m sorry, Esmeralda. Maybe next time around I’ll be better equipped to handle it, but not this time.”

Esmeralda said nothing of what Grandmother Toad had told her, how she would have to remain here with Emma if she couldn’t convince Emma to return. She could feel the time ticking away inside her, the seconds draining away, being used up, one after the other, never to be repeated. No calling them back.

“I never thought you’d take the easy route out,” she said finally.

“What do you mean?”

“Suicide.”

“I’m not killing myself.”

“Oh, no? Your body’s still alive back in the Outer World. If you don’t get back to it soon, that’s it. You’ve killed yourself.”

Emma shook her head. “I just went away. I just came here, that’s all.”

“Euphemisms don’t change the truth. Your spirit left your body and your body went into a coma. That witch’s creatures kidnapped your body—Blue and some of his friends are trying to get it back right now—but that doesn’t change the fact that none of this would have happened if you hadn’t made the choice you did.”

“Witch’s creatures?”

“The same one who got you the last time.”

“But Glamorgana’s dead.”

“Apparently. But her creatures aren’t, and they’ve gone after you.”

“And Blue’s gone after them?”

Esmeralda nodded.

Emma pushed her hands against her face. “Why doesn’t it stop?” she demanded. “Why does this just go on and on and on?”

“Because it takes you to stop it.”

Emma stood up and walked a few paces away from the river to stare into the forest.

“Please, Emma. Things can be good again.”

Emma didn’t turn around. “Why do you even care about me?” she asked. “I’m so weak....”

Esmeralda rose to join her. “Because you’re like a sister to me. My other half. I love you—that’s why. And you’re not weak. You’re just in over your head. Needing help and accepting it doesn’t make you weak. Turning your back on what you are, giving up—that’s weakness. That’s the easy way out.”

“You’ll really stay and help?”

“I promise. I’ll have my things sent from England. Jamie’s kept my room in the tower for me all these years. It’ll be like I never left.”

Emma turned to look at her. “Is this what
you
want, Esmeralda? You’re not just doing it for me?”

“I’m doing it partly for you—but I’m doing it for myself as well. I’ve taken the easy road, too, Emma—not the one you took, but the end result’s somewhat the same. I let the acquiring of knowledge overpower the help
I
should have been giving. Not just to you, but to everything under my charge. I only helped when it was convenient to my schedule, or when someone was so desperate that there was no one else they could turn to. But our gifts are a constant thing—not something we can turn on and off like a faucet.”

Emma looked at her for a long moment. Esmeralda couldn’t tell what she was thinking. All she knew was that time was running out....

“All right,” Emma said finally. “I’ll come back with you.”

She gave Esmeralda a quick hug, then led the way down to where the canoe was still pulled up to the shore. She turned back when she reached the water’s edge.

“Aren’t you coming?” she asked when she saw Esmeralda just standing in the meadow, a bleak look in her eyes.

Inside Esmeralda the ticking clock had finally run its course. She could feel the moon set in the Outer World, Grandmother Toad’s protection fading.

“We’re too late,” she said.

The road home was closed to them now.

2

Even when she stood on Blue’s shoulders, the lowest branch of the pine was too high for Judy to reach.

“Stand on my hands,” Blue told her.

Holding the tree for balance, Judy lifted one foot, then the other, while Blue slipped his hands under her feet. Grunting with the effort, he straight-armed her up until she could reach the branch.

“Got it,” she called down.

She hoisted herself onto the branch, straddling it while she caught her breath. She had her baseball bat stuck in her belt behind her, the knob caught in the belt to keep it from slipping out. Checking to make sure it was still in place, she stood up on the branch and began to edge her way outward, her fingers just brushing the next branch up to keep her balance.

Watching her go, Blue held his breath. “Come on,” he muttered. “Just a few steps more.”

Then she was above the barrier and moving past it.

“You did it!” he called up.

Now all she had to do was get down to the ground and see if the phosphorescent ribbon that was the barrier’s source could be erased from the inside. He watched her edge along the branch toward its end, her weight making it dip. It was still a long jump. Then he glanced toward the stone and saw that the creature had become aware of what they were doing.

“Heads up!” he called to her, pointing toward the creature when Judy looked down.

She nodded and kept on moving. But now the creature was heading in their direction. Cursing, Blue laid his shotgun on the ground. He took a few steps back and then ran at the tree. He leapt up, got a grip on the fat bole, and began to shimmy his way to the branch, his hands getting gummy with pine resin.

The branch had dipped low enough for Judy to try jumping. She dropped her bat to the ground, then got a grip on the branch with her hands and let herself down. She swung for a moment or two, then dropped, knees bent to take the impact. She rolled when she hit the ground, hardly shaken at all, and scrambled for the bat. By the time she had it in hand, the creature was only a half-dozen yards away. Too late to try the barrier now, she realized.

It had left behind both its knife and staff. Spitting on its hands, it came at her, arms outspread, saliva glistening on its palms with the same glow as the phosphorescent ribbon from which the barrier grew.

Judy stood her ground, pulse doubling as adrenaline surged through her system. The creature wasn’t all that much taller than her, but if it ever got those paws on her... She waited until just before it came into range; then she swung the bat, ducking in low under its arms and aiming for one of its legs. If she could cripple it, they might have a better chance at taking it down. But the creature was faster than she’d believed possible.

It caught the bat in midblow—the hardwood smoking where the saliva on its palms touched the wood. Ripping it from her hands, it tossed the bat aside. Blue was just getting onto the branch that had let Judy into the glade—too far away to help. Hacker and Ernie weren’t in sight. She was on her own.

She thought of that saliva on the creature’s palms, burning her skin like acid, never mind that the sucker looked tough enough to tear her in two without working up a sweat. She took a stumbling step backward.

I’m going to die, she realized numbly.

3

“Too late?” Emma said. “What do you mean we’re too late?”

“I didn’t get here on my own,” Esmeralda said. “Grandmother Toad helped me.” At Emma’s blank look she explained. “That’s how she’s known in these spirit realms. She’s an aspect of the moon—Brigit, Galata, Albion, Metra, Mary, Maya... whatever name you want to give her, they all describe the same mystery. She showed me how to find the Path of Souls that brought me here, but there was a time limit on her help. We had until the moon set in the Outer World.”