Spiritwalk

  “I’m trying now,” she said. “To do something and learn at the same time.”

  Grandmother Toad nodded. “Seeking your sister who dropped like a fallen star, from what she was to be reborn.”

  “She’s... Is she dead, then? Am I too late?”

  “Somewhere, her body breathes, but not for long. Her soul has already gone on to the spirit lands.”

  Esmeralda shook her head. “It’s too soon.”

  “It was what she wanted.”

  “She doesn’t really know what she wanted. Please, Grandmother. Bring her back. It’s partly my fault. I went on ahead in the journey, expecting her to catch up when she lagged, instead of stopping to help her so that we could travel together.”

  Grandmother Toad appeared to consider that. “Three chances of choice she had—when you first met, last year when her Autumn Gift was woken once more, and then this night’s journey west. But perhaps... perhaps your being here was to be her third choice.”

  “Please... just let me talk to her.”

  “I can’t bring her to you—you must go to her. Will you dare the journey along the Path of Souls?”

  Esmeralda nodded.

  “If you fail, there will be no return for you either—you understand that?”

  Again Esmeralda nodded.

  “Then come,” Grandmother Toad said, offering her hand. “We must travel quickly, for if her body fails while you are still in my grandson’s realm, it will be the same as your failing in this task.”

  Esmeralda didn’t need to think. She took Grandmother Toad’s hand in her own, marveling at the spark of warmth that sped up her arm at the contact of their skin. The spirit drums sounded louder. She sensed shifting shapes moving around them. Then the world where the old man had constructed his conjuring lodge faded behind them and they were walking into deeper spirit realms.

  6

  They approached the parking lot at Lac la Pêche without lights, the Bronco coasting in for the last few hundred yards, engine dead. Ernie put on the brakes.

  “Shit,” he said quietly as the Bronco came to a halt. “I forgot that the brake lights’d show.”

  “It’s okay,” Blue told him. “The action’s out in the woods.”

  There was only one other car in the lot—a Buick Skylark. Blue went to check it out while Hacker reached into the space behind the backseat of the Bronco and took out a Blue Jays baseball cap, which he pushed down over his unruly hair, the sun visor pointing backward. Grabbing a couple of baseball bats, he joined the rest of them in the parking lot.

  “The Skylark’s clean,” Blue said.

  “You figure they came in that?” Ernie asked.

  Blue shrugged. “They had to come in something.”

  But he was remembering how the creatures had been afraid of the iron in his shotgun’s pellets last time and was wondering what new human agents they had helping them now. He had a sick, desperate feeling inside. They weren’t going to make it. It didn’t matter how strong he was, how much he cared about her, what he tried, Emma was going to die.

  “Here you go, slugger,” Hacker said, tossing Judy one of the bats. “Bases are loaded—let’s give ’em hell.”

  “What are you doing with that cap?” she asked.

  “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m playing ball.”

  “What are we looking at here anyway?” Ernie asked Blue. “How many do you think we’re going up against?” He had a tire iron in his hand that he’d pulled from under the driver’s seat.

  Blue shook his head. “I’m trying to remember how many there were the last time. Thing is, I figure we’ve got to finish them all or Emma’s just going to be going through this same shit over and over again.”

  He saw the wheel turning in his mind’s eye, going around in a long slow spin...

  “You think these fairies had something to do with her coma, too?” Judy asked.

  “Fairies?” Ernie demanded. “Jesus H. Christ. I thought we were taking down some of the Dragon.”

  “These guys are worse-looking than any bikers,” Blue said.

  “Great. A bunch of ugly homos. What the hell are they doing with your woman anyway?”

  “Not fairy like in gay,” Judy told him. “Faerie like in goblins and things that go bump in the night.”

  “Is this for real, Blue? Are we chasing down some spooks or is Judy just shitting me again?”

  Blue wished they’d stop horsing around. On one level he knew it was just their way of dealing with the situation, but all he could think of was Emma out there in the woods somewhere, the witch’s creatures doing Christ knew what to her. He pumped a shell into the firing chamber of his shotgun.

  “Let’s go,” he said, leading the way into the woods.

  “Don’t you just love it when he plays the strong silent type?” Hacker asked Ernie as they followed.

  “What’s this shit about fairies?” Ernie wanted to know.

  “Can it, you guys,” Judy told them.

  Though it had been months since he’d been there, Blue still remembered the way to the glade where he’d found Emma the last time. Once they were close to it, he got down low, crawling forward with the shotgun held in his hands, using his elbows to drag himself along. The others followed suit, quiet now that the business was at hand.

  When Blue paused, then found shelter behind a fat pine bole, Judy crept up on his right, the other pair on his left.

  “See anything?” she breathed in his ear.

  Blue pointed. Looking down, they could all see the stone in the center of the glade, the pale form in a skimpy hospital gown lying on top of it. From where they were, they could just barely see that some kind of glowing designs had been painted on her skin. A vague sickly yellow light emanated from her body.

  The hopeless feeling grew in Blue, just looking at her. Hang in there, Emma, he thought. He raked the glade with a desperate gaze, trying to find the creatures. If they were just waiting for him to make his move, he wouldn’t keep them guessing for long. Only where the fuck were they?

  “I don’t see anybody,” Hacker whispered.

  “They’re here,” Blue replied. “I can feel them and I’m not waiting.”

  “What the hell’s that glow around her?” Ernie wanted to know.

  “I don’t know. But I’m going to find—”

  Judy gripped his arm suddenly and they all saw it then. It was a squat ugly creature, thick body hair covering its lower torso like trousers. White uncombed braids of hair framed its face to fall down to past its shoulders. It carried a short staff, bedecked with bones and feathers, in its left hand. In its right, it carried a dagger. Like another staff, its erect penis swayed back and forth as it crossed the grass to where Emma lay.

  “Oh, Jesus,” Ernie muttered. “What the fuck is that thing?”

  Judy and Hacker stared wide-eyed along with him, dumbstruck at the undeniable alienness of the creature. Blue recognized it as the leader of the creatures. Didn’t matter where the others were. Not when he had this one in his sights.

  “No way!” he cried, rising to his feet. “No way you’re getting her, pal!”

  He ran toward the stone, bringing the shotgun to bear, then hit an invisible wall and went sprawling. He lost his grip on the shotgun and rolled toward where it had fallen. By that time the others had reached him. They approached the unseen barrier more cautiously. As Blue got to his feet, the reclaimed shotgun back in his hands, they all pushed at the wall with their hands, looking for all the world like a group of mimes pretending that they were feeling the confines of an invisible box.

  “Look,” Judy said.

  She pointed at their feet. A thin strip of phosphorescence lay on the grass, running off in either direction for as far as they could see, curving inward, obviously enclosing the glade in a circle of protection. Hacker tried to touch it with the end of his bat, but it was protected by the invisible barrier.

  “We can’t get through,” he said.

  “We’ve got to ge
t through!” Blue cried, desperation now creeping into his voice.

  He hit the barrier with the stock of the shotgun, again and again, so hard that his hands began to sting from the impact, but it wouldn’t give. By now the creature below had taken notice of them and was approaching.

  “Come to watch the rites, did you?” it asked, grinning maliciously at their helplessness. “I’ll chew your pretty little thing’s heart, won’t I? I’ll suck the marrow from her sweetmeat bones. And then I’ll come for you, don’t you doubt it. Then I’ll come for you.”

  It turned away to return to where Emma lay, laughter trailing behind it. Blue howled and threw himself at the barrier, too far gone to listen to anything now.

  “Hacker,” Judy said quickly, “you take the left—Ernie, go right. Test this thing every couple of feet and shout out if you find a way through.”

  Wasting no time, both men set out, slapping their weapons against the barrier as they went.

  “Blue,” Judy tried, pulling at his warm. “Blue! For Christ’s sake, will you listen to me?”

  When he turned, she thought he was going to have a go at her. His eyes were crazy. The shotgun went up like a club. She lifted her bat to ward off the blow, but then he gave a rattling cough and leaned weakly against the barrier, the arm holding the shotgun falling limply to his side.

  “It’s no good,” he said hollowly. His eyes shone with frustrated tears.

  “Give me a boost,” Judy said.

  He gave her a numb look. “What?”

  “A boost, for Christ’s sake—up that tree.” She pointed to a pine that the phosphorescent trail circled around. “Depending on how high that barrier is, I might be able to get over it by climbing up the tree and sliding down one of the branches.”

  She watched hope flicker deep in his eyes, and then they were running for the pine.

  7

  After a time of walking through trackless forests, Grandmother Toad led Esmeralda to a place where mists grew thick between the trees. Tendrils curled up to touch Esmeralda’s cheek; the wind that followed her brushed them away. Against the soft sound of spirit drumming, she heard the occasional drop of moisture falling to the leaves. In the distance an owl hooted.

  “This is meekunnaug,” Grandmother Toad said. “The Path of Souls.” She indicated a wide path that appeared through the mists, tall trees rising on either side of it. “You must follow it until you come to a river—your sister will be on its opposite bank.”

  “I understand.”

  “Remember: If you fail, you remain here. If your sister’s body ceases to breathe in the Outer World, you will both remain here. This is a place where the dead walk, daughter. My light allows you to travel it in the flesh, but if you abide too long, if the moon sets before you have returned, you will both remain here forever.”

  Esmeralda nodded. Grandmother Toad gave her hand a squeeze and kissed her cheek, then loosed the hold she had on Esmeralda’s fingers and stepped back.

  “Go now, daughter,” she said. “And be quick.”

  Esmeralda hesitated one long moment, then started down the mist-strewn path. In moments Grandmother Toad was lost to sight. The spirit drums still sounded, but very faintly now. She felt invisible presences on the path with her, brushing close to her in the thick mist. Not spirit guides, these. These were the spirits of the dead, traveling west.

  She walked until a face appeared suddenly out of the mist on her right. Pausing, she saw that it was carved from the living wood of a tree—an old man’s face, his braids descending into bark below his perfectly crafted features. When she stopped, the carving’s eyes opened and the face spoke to her.

  “Give up this hopeless quest,” it told her. “The one you seek is content as she is. If you burden your soul with this trial while you still live, you will retain the memory of that sorrow in Epanggishimuk when you die and never know peace.”

  “She didn’t know what she was doing,” Esmeralda told the face.

  But the features had grown still once more. She touched its cheek and felt only wood under her fingertips. The mists swirled up between her and the tree. When the wind that followed her cleared them away once more, no face remained. Only rough bark, a knothole where she had seen a mouth. Two more where she had seen eyes. The stub of a branch, where she had seen a nose.

  Turning from it, she continued down the path.

  The sound of the spirit drums was so faint now, she might have only been listening to the blood move in her own veins. A second face appeared out of the mist—this time on her left, an old woman’s face carved from a granite outcrop that rose tall and gray, its heights lost in the haziness. She stopped before it and once again inanimate eyes opened, the face speaking.

  “Destiny governs parts of our lives,” it said, “permitting certain events, preventing others. The wheel turns. Accept what has been apportioned to you and your sister.”

  Esmeralda shook her head. “Emma made the choice—a wrong choice. There’s nothing preordained about this.”

  She turned and continued on before the face lost its mobility and became simply stone as the face in the tree had earlier. She hurried now, sensing the night winding away from her, the moon setting, Grandmother Toad’s protection waning.

  The spirit drums had fallen silent. The only sound she heard now was that of her own breath and her footfalls on the Path of Souls. One part of her feared this surreal journey, another reveled in its mystery.

  Just don’t forget why you’re here, she told herself. It would be so easy, and time was running out.

  She smelled the river through the mist, before she reached it. At its banks, she paused again. The mists cleared enough for her to look across its vast width, and she knew one long unhappy moment of failure before spying the canoe that was pulled up among the reeds and rushes close at hand. A loon called from somewhere on the water—the sound of its cry ringing eerie and distant. Hesitating for only a moment longer, Esmeralda launched the canoe and began to paddle across the river.

  Strange glowing shapes under the surface of the water caught her attention as she made her way through the stands of rushes that choked the river’s banks. She looked over the side of the canoe and saw faces lying in the water, looking upward, watching her. When she paused in midstroke, one of them rose to the surface and spoke to her.

  “Go back,” it said. “We understand your sorrow, but you do not belong here. All beings grieve when good ends, when what ought to be comes to nothing, but there is a new wheel for each that ends. Go back and build anew upon the ruins of what you have lost. Forget this well-intended yet foolish quest.”

  “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.”