Shaman Rises. C.E. Murphy
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I di—” Gary sat bolt upright, looking like himself for the first time since we’d arrived. “What’re you sayin’, Jo? Did Horns lie to me?”
“I think he might’ve gone a long way to avoid lying to you, actually. Gary, her aura, it’s blazing green, like his. Not as bright. I can look at it without going blind, but it’s the same color. It’s like Suzanne’s, not quite human. I don’t think she died, Gary. I think he took her to Tir na nOg to rest until he could get her to me.”
“Jo, give it to me straight. What’re you sayin’?”
“I’m saying that if I’m right, this really is Annie. And I can heal her.”
Morrison’s gaze went flat. It took everything I had not to make pleading eyes at him, and instead to keep my attention on Gary. I knew, I knew I shouldn’t have said that aloud, and if I was wrong I was never going to forgive myself. Morrison wasn’t ever going to forgive me, either.
The complete stillness in Gary’s face, the utter cessation of expectation, of hope, of fear, of anything, somehow said that he would forgive me if I was wrong, and that was almost worse than the alternative. I tried to keep my voice steady. “I could be wrong, Gary. I might be wrong. But Cernunnos wouldn’t have brought her to me if he didn’t think there was a chance. And that means either...” I swallowed. “Either it’s her and I’ve got a chance, or Cernunnos is corrupt and we’re all screwed and have been since the beginning. I choose not to believe that. Gary, with your permission...I’ll try.”
“No way I could say no, doll. Whaddaya need us to do?”
“Just keep the doctors off my back. I don’t know how long this is going to take. Morrison...” I gave him a pained, apologetic look, and some of his anger faded. “Will you drum me under? And do you think we can move Annie’s bed far enough away from the wall that I can build a power circle around her?”
“That’s not going to go over well.” Whether he meant moving the bed or drumming up a power circle in a hospital room, I wasn’t sure, but between the three of us we did edge Annie’s bed several inches away from the wall, then rotated it about thirty degrees so it aligned east-west. I squeezed between the wall and the bed, for once not self-conscious about greeting the cardinal directions aloud and asking them to be the points of my power circle. I guessed that meant I was getting better about ritual.
Not that much better, though, because what I really ended up with was a power diamond, with Annie sort of squeezed in the middle. It couldn’t be helped: the room wasn’t big enough and the medical equipment wasn’t mobile enough for anything else, but it emphasized the awareness that my whole shamanic approach seemed to be that rules were made to be broken. I sat beside Annie again and gave Morrison a hopeful look. He got my drum from the corner I’d tucked it in, and he and Gary sat across from me.
Gary did a double-take at the drum, which was fair enough. When he’d first seen it, its broad round surface had been painted with a wolf, a rattlesnake and a raven. Or I’d always assumed it was a wolf, anyway, until the painting had faded and disappeared. Only then did I start to think maybe it had been a coyote, representing my spiritual guide and mentor, whose influence on me had begun to wane. In the past few days I’d found a new spirit animal, a walking stick bug, and a new image had come in strong on the drum, obliterating the coyote: a praying mantis, its sticklike legs folded in its best-known pose. The rest of the drum remained unchanged: crossbars inside it to hold on to, beads and feathers dangling here and there from the four-inch-deep sides and a drumstick padded with raspberry-red-dyed rabbit fur. Morrison spun the drumstick in his fingers with unexpected grace, then, at my nod, began a steady beat.
Energy burst forth, a visible ripple, like sound waves had been given color so ordinary eyes might see them. Not that my eyes were ordinary: I was using the Sight, calling on magic, but the shock of power seemed so natural I was surprised I couldn’t always see it. It leaped from one point of the diamond to the next with each beat of the drum, passing through each of us as it closed the circle. It picked up all our colors—Gary’s solid silver, my gunmetal-blue, Morrison’s blue and purple—and it came together as a soft white wall of magic. That was what white magic really was: additive, the power of many working together. Black magic was subtractive, sucking life away from one or many in order to feed itself.
And that was what was going on inside of Annie Muldoon. The sickness that had been put inside her was eating away at her life and strength for its own benefit, and to the eventual detriment of the world. That wasn’t just about Annie. That was simply how the Master worked. Every spark of love and life he was able to extinguish gave him an incrementally larger hold on humanity. Annie was the poster girl for demonstrative purposes today, but it wasn’t like the entire battle lived or died with her. There would always be other hills to take. Right now, though, taking this particular hill would be enough. I exhaled quietly and let myself slip out of my body, searching for a way through the darkness to heal Annie Muldoon’s body and soul.
An unexpectedly familiar vista came into focus around me as I left my body behind. The first several times I’d spirit-walked, I’d been unable to control it, and had dug my way through to the different metaphysical planes I needed to reach. Literally dug: I’d usually end up in loamy, life-filled earth, my sense of myself turning badger or vole or wormlike as I churned my way through the soil in search of my destination. I was back there again, working through dirt chunked with vast rocks and water-filled drainage points. Back in the day, the impediments probably would have stopped me cold. These days, not so much.
For one thing, back in the day I’d have assumed there was only one path to get to where I was going, and that it lay straight ahead. I smiled faintly at my slightly younger self, then extended my hands upward. I supposed I shouldn’t really have been able to: I was packed into dirt and stone, but I’d always been able to move through it while in an astral realm, and at the moment it made me think of swimming. I wasn’t the world’s strongest swimmer, but I wouldn’t drown in a pool, which was enough. For an instant the dirt surrounding me was pool water, and I was on the bottom of the pool. I bent my knees, pushed off all the way through my toes, and burst upward into the heart of Annie Muldoon’s inner sanctum, into the garden that represented the state of her soul.
Dirt splashed away from me like water, rolling off my skin and streaming from my clothes. I ran my hand over my hair to get rid of the worst of the “wet,” then turned my palm up to watch dirt absorb into the lifeline there, just as water might do. The part of me that would always be six years old wanted to squeak, “So cool!” and do a little dance. Shamanism’s basic tenet was change: to heal someone, it was necessary to change their outlook for just an instant, just long enough to get their attention. It worked that way on every level, so if I could make myself believe, even briefly, that dirt was water, well, then, I could move through dirt like I could move through water.
Magic, when I let myself acknowledge it, was really pretty damned nifty. I shook the last of the dirt away and lifted my eyes, trying to prepare myself for the worst possible visage of Annie’s garden.
Unfortunately, I got it. I had just come off a visit to Aidan’s war-ravaged garden, a place that had been so damaged it crumbled beneath our feet. Annie’s was maybe even worse than that.
What had no doubt once been greenery was infested with black oil. Not just slicked with it, but grayed-out leaves pulsed black ichor through their thin veins like it was sap, and the roots of bleached grass sucked death out of the dry soil. Meadows and scant trees rolled on forever, the size of the place reminding me a little of the jungle that represented Gary’s garden. It appeared a life well-led created a tremendous depth of soul that was represented by vast distances. I thought of my own small, tidy garden, and how the walls that penned it in were only just now crumbling. I had a long way to go to catch up to Gary and Annie. Or even Morrison, for that matter. I was getting there, though, and every step I took through my own garden or someone else’s helped me become a little more of what I wanted to be.
Feeling a bit braver and more confident, I walked into Annie’s meadows, trying not