A breath of a chuckle came through the air, but that was all. No more words, nothing reassuring, no explanation as to how I might go about stopping Barb from sucking my friends’ life forces. “Coyote, I need you.” I sounded young and so tremulous I’d moved beyond pathetic into outright fear.
He didn’t say anything else. The garden seemed to shift and sigh, like it was waiting for something, and I put my face in my hands with a hoarse laugh. “Imagination trumps reality. Please, oh, God, please help me get this right.”
I reached for my power, still whispering pleas into my fingers. It spilled upward, delicate as a filigree net, pouring through me until I could see my garden the way the younger me had, some fifteen years ago. Life infused it, though not as thoroughly as it had then. Here, it simmered below the surface, instead of bursting free and full of laughter. My waterfall, always off to my right, was as I remembered it, sheeting down a wall of granite, rather than thundering so hard and fast it made mist, but at least it held the promise of more. Everything felt that way, as if it waited to come to a boil again. I was absurdly grateful it thought it still could.
I dropped my hands from my face and reached out, casting my net of power as if I would be able to draw Coyote in. It shimmered blue, ocean-colored, and rode the air like feathers on the water. I had no car analogy to suit this, but nets had worked for me in the past, and the one I wove now was so fine it might catch raindrops and cradle them between its threads. I clung to the idea of my spirit guide, trying to gather him in so he could become cohesive and whole again, instead of just a voice in the ether.
A pulse ran through the net, silver power that rippled and overwhelmed the blue that was predominant. It caught me in the belly and pulled me forward with unexpected strength. Panic seized me and I resisted, for which trouble I earned a snort I knew all too well, and a distinct sensation of dismissal.
I couldn’t tell if it was surprise or dismay that caught me out, but it didn’t matter. I faltered for just an instant, a hiccup of concentration lost. Silver swept my net, wrapped around me, and hauled me through space and time like so much flotsam.
Joanne was tall at—more than thirteen, now. I’d had one disastrous flirtation with perms as a teenager, the summer after my freshman year. The ends of her short hair were still curled, so she’d been fifteen for a few months, and if I remembered my own haircuts correctly, that meant in another six or eight weeks she’d be pregnant. My stomach cramped up and I knotted my hands into fists, staring down at the younger me. I was less than two inches taller than she was, and by the end of her sophomore year she’d be able to look me in the eye. Right now, height was the only thing I had on her at all.
I could see the cohesion of her power, riding under her skin and sparking through her aura. The net I’d woven was gone, replaced by a silver cord that thrummed back and forth between us, twisting and writhing in the air like it had life of its own. I wanted to bat at it and make it lie down. Joanne ignored it, looking over me like I made a bad taste in her mouth.
“Jeez,” she said, “you don’t know anything at all. What the hell happened to you?”
“Wow.” I startled out of staring at the cord and stared at Joanne instead. “You really were a little shit, weren’t you? Anybody ever tell you that you catch more flies with honey?” Wow. I wasn’t going to like me at all. From either side of this conversation. Joanne’s eyes narrowed and her sneer settled into place. I wanted to reach across and smack it off her. “I need to talk to Coyote.”
Joanne tossed her head, which would’ve been more effective if her hair was long enough to swish. “Too bad.”
My hands were still fisted at my sides. I took a moment to explain to them that I did not approve of giving my younger self a knuckle sandwich, no matter how much she deserved it, and deliberately unknotted them and put them in my pockets so they couldn’t act on their own.
“Seriously,” she said. “What happened to you? You’re a total mess.”
I actually felt her reach into my head and draw out my own private image, the shattered windshield that reflected the state of my soul. It superimposed itself across the whole of my garden, which was Joanne’s version of the garden, verdant and lush and full of life until my cracks and seams sucked some of the health from it.
“I mean, look at that,” she said, somewhere between admiring and horrified. “You’ve got a bullet hole right through the middle of you. What happened?” A note of urgency threaded through her voice with the third repetition of the question, and to my surprise I felt sorry for her.
“It doesn’t matter, Jo. Just—”
Her hackles went up. “Don’t call me that.”
A muscle cramped in my shoulderblade and I reached around with my left hand to massage it, startled. “Sorry. I forgot.” Dad called me Jo, like he wanted a boy if he wanted a kid at all, and I’d hated it. Sometime in the past six or seven months I’d gotten used to Gary using the nickname, and it’d worked its way into being a name I used for myself. The younger me stared.
“You forgot? I hate being called Jo.”
“I know. You get over it.”
Outraged disbelief settled on Joanne’s features. She wasn’t unattractive, I thought rather clinically, although the sneer and the chip on her shoulder made her much less pretty than she could be. I wondered how much of that I still carried with me, and glanced around the shadow-stained garden. Probably more than I wanted to admit to. “I would never get over it,” Joanne announced with furious dignity. I shrugged.
“I know. That’s why I’m not going to tell you what happens.”
Her lip curled again, this time with incomprehension. It was good, I thought, that I could at least consistently and properly read my own expressions. “Look, if I try to warn you, you’ll say, ’That’ll never happen to me,’ and go charging along on your predestined path, and if I don’t, you will, anyway, so there’s no point in telling you what happens. It happened. It’s done.”
A narrow breach appeared in the tightness of her face, a place where fear could enter. “But I don’t want to end up like that.” She waved a hand, encompassing my shattered soul. I managed a faint smile.
“I don’t want you to, either. Sorry, Joanie.”
“You’re not either sorry. You don’t care at all.”
“Wouldn’t it be a lot easier of that was true. Look, Joanne, I don’t really have time to hang out and argue with you. I really do need to talk to Coyote.”
“No.”
I abruptly recognized the tone, as if I could hear the rest of her words echoing in my mind: he’s my friend. You don’t get to take him away from me.
I thought, oh, crap, and let the lead weight that suddenly filled my stomach pull me to my knees. I felt my hands cover my face, a fingertip bumping over the thin scar on my cheek, and all I could think was, crap, no, crap, shit, no, don’t do this. I could feel Joanne’s distress rolling off her in waves as I put my hands forward in the earth of the garden and brought my forehead down to it, clutching grass and fighting against misery. I could see, could see the path opening up in front of me, in front of Joanne, and I didn’t see a way to get off it.
“Please.” Hotness dripped from my eyes, staining the grass with sizzling spots, salt burning away the green. “Please don’t do this.” Even as I spoke I reached for my power, the ball of energy that seemed to lie behind my breastbone, separate but part of me.
And Joanne’s answered, pure amalgamated strength that was as much a part of her as her eyes or fingers. The river Coyote’d pulled me from swept around me, time shifting and flexing as I borrowed what was mine thirteen years earlier. I didn’t drain my younger self, no more than she could drain me, but I did take her control, whispering, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Joanie, I’m so sorry,” as I did so.