I let out a hoarse laugh and looked away, like I could see through the walls of the apartment. Actually, I could, but I didn’t want to right now, so they were solid and normal. “Begochidi’s not just a minor character in Navajo legend. He’s the Maker of the world, both male and female. Mark and Barbara,” I heard myself add wearily. Gary made a sound of dismay and I couldn’t bring myself to look at him or explain that particular misfortune any further. “Twins, male and female, to carry his spirit toward the blight that endangered his people. Only I think I freed Mark from his hold, so now it’s just Barb out there someplace and I’ve got to fight her.”
I was used to running behind, trying desperately to catch up. It turned out being ahead of the curve sucked just as much as not knowing what I was getting myself into. Maybe more. There was a certain blind hope associated with playing catch-up. Having a clear idea of what I was up against made me feel pretty damn grim.
“You sure ’bout this, Jo?”
I nodded. I didn’t have the impression that shamans went through quite such dramatic trials by fire under usual circumstances, but nothing about my life had been much in the way of normal for a long time now. Longer than I’d thought, really, looking back to my Coyote dreams. Longer than that, even, if I’d really been mixed up by the Makers of the world. Not Begochidi. He wasn’t one of the ones responsible for me, or he’d recognize me. But even the Navajo had more than one creation myth, and from what I’d read, Begochidi didn’t feature as powerfully in all of them. The Makers, it seemed, weren’t necessarily in on the Making together. I’d have to give them a scolding about that, if I ever got the chance.
“Arright, Jo. So what do we do now?”
I shook my head, taking a deep breath. “You don’t do anything. I’m going to sleep.”
Thursday, July 7, 7:37 a.m.
Nothing in my dreams of Coyote or in any other experience in my life had taught me how to say “I’m going to sleep” as a declaration of war. Consequently, it sounded nothing like one, which disappointed me. I wanted it to be dramatic and world-shaking, but it just sounded like exhausted relief. I wanted to sleep so badly I could taste it. Gary’s bushy eyebrows went up.
“You’re goin’ to sleep? Are you nuts? You just said this guy’s power is comin’ from everybody who’s asleep!”
“I know. Dreams are his domain, Gary. If I don’t meet him on his own ground I’m not going to be able to fight him at all. Barb keeps running away from me.” That made me laugh, huff of sound. “At least that’s something.”
Gary took another breath in protest, then exhaled and slumped his broad shoulders. “You sure,” he said again, but it wasn’t a question this time. “Arright. Lissen to me, Jo. You stay right there.” He got up from the couch and went into my bedroom while I wondered where exactly he thought I would go. I didn’t think dreamland was a place to be entered physically.
He came out of my bedroom with a sword. “Under the bed’s a lousy place to keep a sword, Jo.”
I blinked, getting up to meet him. “It’s a perfectly good place to keep a sword. It’s not like I use it a lot.” He offered to me, so I took it, surprised as always at its heft. The weight hadn’t meant anything to me when I’d first seen it in Cernunnos’s hand, silver metal gleaming beneath prosaic fluorescent lights, but it’d meant a lot later on when the damned thing got shoved through my lung. I’d struck back with iron-based steel, and Cernunnos had fled without his silver blade. It was only considerably after the fact that I brought it to a dealer to have it appraised and found out it really was silver. In retrospect, it made sense, as the Celtic god couldn’t touch anything made of iron.
The dealer had almost literally drooled over the blade. Its swept-silver handle protected the hand easily, the rapier blade impossibly sharp, holding its edge flawlessly despite the metal it was forged of. And that was something else: the forging was unlike anything he’d ever seen. Almost as if it had been cast, like a sculpture. He’d offered me such a ridiculous sum of money for it I hadn’t believed him, and I’d gone home to read up on the Internet about Celtic magic and silver. I’d learned about somebody named Nuada, whose hand, lost in battle, was re-made in silver by a god. I’d tapped a finger on the blade cautiously and wondered.
A week later the dealer called me up and offered twice what he’d offered in the first place. He was still calling occasionally. There had to be a price I couldn’t resist, but so far keeping Cernunnos’s sword beneath my bed was more appealing than cold hard cash. Of course, if the car insurance company didn’t pay up soon, I might start reconsidering my stance.”
“So you don’t go in unarmed,” Gary said to me as I took the sword. My eyebrows rose and I glanced up at him, half smiling, not sure how seriously to take him. He wasn’t smiling at all, eyes serious beneath untamed eyebrows. The lines in his face were deeper, as if the weight of the moment made him seem closer to his seventy-three years. My smile fell away and I just watched him, rapier balanced across my palms as I waited for whatever he had in mind next.
He didn’t disappoint. He pulled a copper cuff bracelet, one that usually sat on my dresser next to the drum, from his pocket. It’d been tarnished and green until recently, when I’d had cause to buy metal cleaner and scrub a silver necklace clean of my own blood. I’d done the bracelet then, too, tracing my fingertip over etched knotwork that might have been Celtic around its borders, and the cut away shapes of Cherokee spirit animals between the borders.
“Gary.” My voice came out small and tight as he turned the bracelet sideways and slid it over my wrist.
“’S from your dad, right?”
I nodded, unable to trust words, and he tapped the metal against my skin. It was already warm from the minute in his pocket. “Left wrist,” he said. “Protects your heart.”
My heart tightened as he spoke, throat closing even more. “Gary,” I said again, scratchy whisper, as if it would stop him, but he wasn’t done. He dipped into his pocket again and came out with what I knew he would, a silver choker necklace I hadn’t worn in months. Hollow tubes of metal rattled gently against its chain, the curved stretches broken apart by triskelions, the Celtic three-way knot that represented the Holy Trinity in modern days, and a much older trio of goddesses from a time before Christianity. The center pendant hung from the chain itself, just far enough to rest in the hollow of my throat: a Celtic cross, a circle quartered by two bars. My mother had given me the necklace as she lay dying, the only thing she’d ever given me besides life. Gary fastened the necklace around my throat with unbelievable delicacy, his big old hands far more certain than mine ever were when I put on jewelry. Something happened as the clasp shut, a soft sparkle of warmth that danced over my skin as powerfully as Gary’s words did.
“To guard your soul,” he said. My heart contracted again, tears blurring my vision, though I managed a painful little smile as I looked down at the sword and the bracelet. The necklace made an uncomfortable pressure against my throat, something I’d never given myself time to get used to. Then I looked up again, smile shaky.
“What about you?” I was trying to tease him, but emotion rode me far too hard. I felt girded for battle, as if I’d been entrusted with a kingdom’s honor and my loved ones had helped me don my armor. “Don’t I get anything from you? Mother’s got my soul covered and Dad’s got my heart, but without you, jeez, Gary, I wouldn’t be here at all. You took the damned sword out of me when I was dying so I could heal myself. And all I get is a lousy little ritual?” I was afraid to blink, for fear tears that burned my eyes would scald my cheeks. My smile was so tremulous I thought it might shake those tears loose, anyway.