The Parting Glass (Caitlin Ross Book 4) (24 page)

No one spoke. This part was up to me. I opened my satchel and proceeded to distribute its contents.

“North.” I handed Marilyn a tiny white felt buffalo with crystal eyes and another stitched to its back, strung on a leather cord. She placed it around her neck. I tapped her on the shoulder and pointed; without haste, she moved to the edge of the circle and took her position.

“East.” To Sage I passed a necklace bearing a creature that I hoped resembled a golden eagle, at least enough to be getting on with. It was trimmed with chips of amber. She donned it; I tapped her shoulder and pointed, and she took her place.

“South.” Gina got a garnet-decked coyote. I had an instinctive dislike of that one. In the tradition of the Medicine Wheel, South was the direction of water, and I didn’t consider coyotes watery creatures. I would have preferred some kind of fish. But, in this instance, I had no choice. I had to work with what I was given.

Gina put her necklace on. I tapped and pointed for a third time, and she went where I directed her.

“West.” Around my own neck I placed the last fetish I had made the previous afternoon, the bear with the turquoise beads. I tapped my own shoulder and pointed to my own, empty, spot. And, although I could not yet take my place, I felt the energy of my intention complete the circle. Something like a wind rushed around and through the four quarters, and the pressure in the center increased.

I turned to Zee, beckoning for him to bend his head. Around his neck, I placed a tiny bag crocheted in rainbow stripes, with a minute, beaded drawstring. The bag contained a mixture of basil, coriander, and bay leaf, as well as a piece of hematite. A matching macramé bracelet went around Zee’s right wrist.

“Above.”

I gestured to Timber. He bent his head and, trying hard to keep my touch impersonal, I hung another crocheted medicine bag around it. This one was in dark shades, black and purple and deep blue, and it held skullcap, vervain and wormwood, along with a chunk of obsidian. A matching bracelet went around Timber’s left wrist.

“Below.”

We nodded to each other, Priest to Priestess. I went to my place in the circle and stretched my senses out, to Marilyn on my left and to Gina on my right, and through each of them to Sage, directly across from me. Though none of us moved, it felt as if we had all clasped hands all around the circle and, at the same time, linked those same hands through its center. The Quarters marked, the ring of energy tightened. I gathered in the threads connecting us, yanked them still tauter, and anchored them in the ground at my feet. As long as I held my position, that circle wasn’t going anywhere.

Timber sat once again on the ground, picking up his drum. Six times he struck it, slow and sonorous. As the sixth stroke died away, the rim of a huge red sun lifted over the edge of the world. One bright ray sliced across the altar stone and landed in the exact center of the circle like a spotlight. Right on John Stonefeather.

Timber began to drum a little faster. The energy in the circle gathered, and moved.

It had begun.

Chapter Nineteen

S
tonefeather raised his head. One side of his face had been painted stark black; the other had not been painted at all. His white hair lay loose over the shoulders of a beautiful buckskin shirt with two bison facing each other depicted on the yoke—the ceremonial garment Zee had gone for, I guessed. A feather of some kind with a beaded shaft dangled over his left ear.

The old man raised his arms in invocation, fringe dangling from his sleeves.

“
Hé-hé! Hé-hé! Hé-hé! Hé-hé!
” he cried in a strong voice.

“I am sitting in a sacred manner!

I am sitting in a sacred manner!

All you Spirits see me sitting!

All you Spirits see me sitting!

All you Spirits hear my voice!

All you Spirits hear my voice!”

The ground shuddered, and the dome of the sky seemed to crack open. I got a sense of many large Presences gazing down at us through the crack. Stonefeather had caught the attention of something, I hoped the thing, or things, he wanted. The thought flashed through my mind like a fish surfacing for a split second after a fly, and vanished.

Bending once more, Stonefeather took up the pipe and the bag of herbs. He filled the bowl, kindled a stick from the embers of the fire, and used it to light the herbs, taking a few puffs to make sure they were going well. Then he got to his feet with a suppleness that belied his apparent age and advanced toward Marilyn, chanting as he went.

“I am walking in a sacred manner,

I am walking in a sacred manner!

All you Spirits see me walking,

All you Spirits see me walking!

I walk in Beauty!

I walk in Beauty!”

Reaching the North point of the circle, he handed Marilyn the pipe. While she smoked, the old man began a new invocation.

“I offer the pipe to the North,

To the North I offer the sacred herbs,

I offer the sacred herbs to the North,

To the North I offer them!”

Reclaiming the pipe, Stonefeather made his way around the circle to the place where Sage stood in the East. As she smoked, he repeated the invocation and offering, substituting “East” for “North.” Then he did the same with Gina in the South. And then he came to me.

“I offer the pipe to the West!

To the West I offer the sacred herbs!

I offer the sacred herbs to the West!

To the West I offer them!”

I drew in a lungful of smoke, and another. It tasted odd. There was tobacco in there, and sage. Red willow, of course. Some other things. Maybe a sprinkle of lavender.

I passed the pipe back to Stonefeather, and something strange happened. My eyes clouded, and I blinked. When I could see again, everything had changed. The circle had filled with light, more light than the rising sun could account for, light of a different color. White light, with streaks of blue. I glanced left. Where Marilyn had been in the North, a White Buffalo Calf stood, pawing the ground with one cloven hoof. Across from me, in Sage’s place, a Golden Eagle perched in a burning tree. It spread its wings and gave a harsh scream. On my right, Gina had been replaced by a smiling Coyote, tail wrapped primly around its feet. I glanced down at my own body, unsurprised to find I had the coarse-haired body and immense clawed paws of a Grizzly Bear.

The beat of Timber’s drum thundered through the air, the stampeding hooves of something monstrous punishing the ground.

Well, that worked,
I thought.

Stonefeather had become a sylph, a being of small substance and great Power, almost a Spirit Person himself. Trailing visible wind, he approached Zee with the pipe. He had no shadow.

“I offer the pipe to the Spirits Above!

To the Grandfathers I offer the sacred herbs!

I offer sacred herbs to the Spirits Above!

To the Grandfathers I offer them!”

Zee took the pipe, and smoked, and became a Giant, a Warrior clad in the Rainbow. Stonefeather held the pipe to Timber’s lips, aiding him to smoke without pausing in his drumming.

“I offer the pipe to the Spirits Below!

To the Ancestors and the Shadows I offer the sacred herbs!

I offer sacred herbs to the Spirits Below!

To the Ancestors and Shadows I offer them!”

Timber changed. Darkness poured out of him, surrounded him, huge and palpable. Without shape. Without form. I couldn’t look. I remembered how Zee had been searching for kinnikinnick, and that people often used it in pipe mixtures, and that it had hallucinogenic properties. It didn’t help.

Stonefeather returned to his place in the center of the circle, and sat. Taking the coup stick in one hand and the rattle in the other, he raised his arms to his sides.

“I have been a Warrior!

I have been a Man of Power!

I have ridden the Road of War!

I have walked the Path of Spirit!

All this I offer!

All this I offer!

All that I have been, I offer in Beauty!

See me sitting; my face is visible!

All that I am I offer in Beauty!”

The massive Presences watching through the crack in the sky leaned nearer. Stonefeather thrust the coup stick and the rattle into the embers of the fire. Something flashed; I couldn’t tell whether material fire leapt up, or psychic energy. I couldn’t tell whether or not the offerings were consumed. But the Presences closed ranks with a sigh, and I knew they had accepted.

Now Stonefeather crossed his arms across his chest, right hand on left shoulder, left hand on right. He sat very straight. The feather in his hair became a crow. It launched itself off his head, circled once, and returned, cackling. Then, it was a feather once more.

“You see me, half a person!

Without a Shadow, you see me!

A whole man, I am becoming!

What I cast off, I am reclaiming!

A whole man, I am becoming!

I am taking back what is mine!

It is a good day to die.”

He inclined his head, signifying readiness, a consenting sacrifice to his own pride. I remembered the reading I had done for Timber, only a few days ago, although it seemed like an eternity had passed since then. The appearance of the Hanged Man as the possibilities inherent in the situation. We’d thought it indicated something Timber would have to surrender. Control, isolation, indecision. But that card hadn’t been about Timber at all. It had been John all along. Because without his willing participation, Timber would never have been able to do what needed to be done.

The drumming stopped, its last pulse swelling until it filled the circle before dying away. The Spirits of Below rose up, amorphous and incomprehensibly vast. They stretched out an arm… I guessed it was an arm; I didn’t know what else to call it. They stretched out an arm, laid a dark, hand-shaped extremity on Stonefeather’s head. Another reached for its own center.

In part of my mind, I knew what was happening in the place where all our bodies still existed, uninvolved with the Powers that rode them. As I clicked into objective reality, my sight doubled. Timber stood next to Stonefeather, one hand on the old man’s head, the other grasping the Soul Catcher in which the Shadow resided. In another minute, he would raise the hollow bone implement to his lips, bend down, and blow its contents back into Stonefeather’s head. The Shadow would go back where it belonged. And John Stonefeather would die.

That’s what was supposed to happen.

I don’t know to this day what went wrong. Maybe Timber hesitated, still sickened in some part of himself at what he had to do. Maybe in the moment he steeled himself to act, he took his attention off containing the Shadow; he’d said it struggled constantly, after all. Maybe he’d just grown too tired. Maybe the Shadow had grown too strong.

Timber took the Soul Catcher into his hand. And the Soul Catcher exploded. The blast knocked Timber off his feet, and he fell backward with a startled oath, his right hand and his face bleeding where shards of bone had been driven in.

“Fuck!”

Darkness, enormous, violent, and nauseating, boiled up from the place where Timber had stood a second before. With it came madness. The Shadow had been without a host, without a body, for mere days, but it might as well have been millennia. It had lost whatever piece of John Stonefeather had once given it the semblance of something human. Now, it knew only bitterness, agony, hatred and terror. And a need to escape those things by any means possible.

The world turned upside down. My stomach roiled.

The Shadow flew around the circle, testing its limits, seeking a way out. I knew at once what it would find. Gina. The weak link.

“Brace!” I yelled, as a black tide rushed straight at her.

I
reached
right. At the same time, Sage
reached
left. Our energies met behind Gina’s back in an image of locked wrists. The Shadow hit Gina with the force of a cannonball fired at close range, square in the chest. She staggered backward.

A Coyote yelped. An Eagle screamed. A Bear roared.

We caught her. The circle gave, and held. Snapped back into place, flinging the Shadow straight across at Marilyn. The White Buffalo stamped its foot, and something vast and woman-shaped, blazing white, rose up, taller than a tree. It flicked a finger at the Darkness headed its way, and the Darkness backed off.

The Shadow paused and gathered itself in, considering its position, its mad mind moving in demented rings. It had found no escape here; it couldn’t get out. The only option remaining it was to go in. Into the circle’s center, into someone. To go where it belonged? I watched it hover, thinking it over.

I didn’t know how I understood it. Maybe the single moment of empathy I had felt when Stonefeather had described it, naked and alone, rejected from birth, had opened me to it. Maybe it was just my gift for seeing what others couldn’t see.

It contemplated Stonefeather, its original host. The old man had space for it, but the vacuum in him didn’t draw it as it should have. Stonefeather, as I had seen, cast no shadow; he had no resonance for the Darkness anymore. Too, Stonefeather was dying, and the Shadow craved life. It passed him by.

Zee, it didn’t even give a second glance. The Shadow had no chance against the Rainbow Warrior; the Spirits Above were simply too strong.

But Timber. Timber was young, and strong, and off balance. Vulnerable. He had carried the Shadow a long time, from its perspective; it knew him. And he bore an inner darkness of his own, made many times stronger by the welcoming influence of the Spirits Below.
Something in it called to something in me,
Timber had told me after his Journey from Stonefeather’s studio. For the Shadow’s purposes, Timber was perfect.

It settled on him like a cloak of fog, smothering the light out of him. I watched it press my lover into the ground, and I couldn’t act. I couldn’t move. My own life force anchored the circle. If I took one step out of my position, the whole thing would collapse, and the Shadow would get free. It might leave, or it might not. Either way, Timber would fail.

“Timber!” The scream erupted from my throat, tearing something. I tasted blood and didn’t care.

He’d told me no power on earth could change him. I’d known then that he’d have to face this. I’d trusted him anyway. I still did. But my trust didn’t matter. Not now.

We’d had so little time.

Scarcely a minute had passed since the Soul Catcher had detonated.

John Stonefeather stood up, lifting his hands to the sky in a plea.

“Spirits Above, I call you!” he cried.

“Spirits Above, I call you!”

“Take up the thing that was given to you!

“In a loud voice I ask it!”

Zee moved, or the Power riding his body moved him. With one graceful stride, he swooped down on the fire pit and swept up the coup stick. In his hand, in the Rainbow Warrior’s hand, it became a war club, heavy and gnarled, with a crippling ball and a wicked spike at one end. Rushing toward Timber, he swung the club at the Shadow, knocking it aside. The Shadow gathered itself for another attack; I fancied I could hear it snarl. Zee swung the club again, and a third time, hammering the black threat away from my lover. Pounding it into submission.