Catherine Knutsson - Shadows Cast by Stars

Dawn still clings to the cedars as the dzoonokwa force us to wake, rise, and push on. My gut aches from hunger, and my head is fuzzy with fatigue. The dzoonokwa set a grueling pace, leaving Bran and me struggling to keep up. We don’t want to find out what will happen if we fall behind.

I sense the monolith long before we reach its clearing. The spirit stone at my throat begins to vibrate and I hear the monolith’s hum in my mind. It knows we’re coming.

Bran walks as close to me as he can. “I feel strange,” he whispers.

“I know,” I say. “The veil between the worlds is thin here. Hold on to me. I’ll keep you from passing over.” I’m not sure when I became so certain of myself, but Bran nods and slips his hand into mine. If he believes in me, then I’ll have to find a way to believe in myself.

We step from the forest into the clearing, where two dzoonokwa block our path, motioning for us to stop. Bran glances at me and chews on his lip as we wait.

I’ve forgotten how still the land is here. The humming from the monolith is one thing-I’m not even sure it’s really sound. I think I hear it only in my mind. Everything else is silent, as if the land has ceased to live. There is no birdsong. Wind doesn’t touch the trees. Even the subtle, near-silent pulse of the earth is absent. Bran senses it too. His shoulders are set and full of tension.

A howl breaks the silence in two. It’s answered by the dzoonokwa guarding us, and then they gather, emerging from the forest, circling the clearing as Bran and I clasp hands and stare. I lose count at thirty. Thirty? How can it be that so many of these creatures exist here, unseen by the rest of the world?

“You see them too, right?” I whisper to Bran, just to be sure.

“Yeah, I see them,” he whispers back.

Okay, then. I’m not losing my mind. That’s something, at least .

The last dzoonokwa to step from the forest is taller than the rest, and holds Madda’s partially decayed face in her hands. She turns the skull this way and that, as if using it to see. My gut churns, but I will not let myself be sick. I don’t know what these creatures intend, but I have power in my own right, and I will not give it away by being weak.

Madda’s eyeless skull stares at me, for I know that eyes are not all we use to see.

Our guards push us forward. We stumble down the scree before finding our feet, and turn back to face their circle. The dzoonokwa don’t follow. They stand in their ring, edging the clearing. The tallest points at the monolith, so we make our way to it, the black center in the middle of their shadow ring.

“Now what do we do?” Bran asks. He peers into the monolith. His face stares back.

“I’m not sure,” I say as I touch Madda’s spirit stone. “I think this must have something to do with it. Hold yours up.”

He pulls his spirit stone from his pocket and thrusts it out toward the monolith. The dzoonokwa begin to shriek. Bran flinches and presses his hands to his ears, almost dropping the spirit stone in the process. “Why are they doing that?” he yells.

“I don’t know,” I scream over the din, “but I think you were doing the right thing!” I lift my spirit stone closer to the monolith. Bran copies me, and then all at once, light shatters my vision and all goes dark.

W hen I open my eyes, I’m no longer standing in the clearing. I’m in the spirit world, and Bran is standing next to me. The bright red spikes of a kingfisher run down the crest of his head, and his arms have turned into slate blue wings.

He flaps them and gives me a worried look. “What’s happened to me?” he asks. “What’s happened to you?”

I beat the mica-scaled wings of a sisiutl. “We’re in spirit,” I say, pitching my voice to sound matter-of-fact and in control, even though this is a place in the spirit would I’ve never visited before. There’s nothing under my feet. There’s nothing above my head. All there is is darkness, though I can see Bran well enough. “You’re just manifesting your shade.”

“I am?” He flaps his wings again, this time with a bit more strength so he lifts into the blackness. “But my totem is a bear.”

“Not that I’ve ever seen,” I say. “Who told you that?”

“Madda,” he says.

I don’t know what to say. Bran’s followed around by a bunch of stuff, but I’ve never seen a bear in his entourage. So, who is wrong? Me, or Madda? Doubt raises its ugly head. Maybe my abilities aren’t as strong as I think they are after all. I sense this is somehow important, but right now, we’ve got other things to tend to. The darkness at the edge of my vision shimmers, and when I turn, the monolith emerges from a bloodred mist. It’s not alone. Behind it, in the shadows that aren’t shadows, is a creature that’s part wolf, part whale, and something else that has no name. It blinks in and out, disappearing only to reappear with some new physical configuration. Depraved eyes, decaying flesh, and a stink of such foulness that I choke when I breathe. I know this creature. I know that stink. It doesn’t come from the sea wolf-it comes with it.

“Now what?” Bran says, edging close to me. I can feel his fear, and so can the monster behind the monolith.

“I don’t know,” I say, though as the words leave my mouth, I start to boil with rage-not my own rage, but the rage of the sisiutl and of the raven and the dzoonokwa and all the creatures of the spirit world, and that rage is directed squarely at the sea wolf, who is also the man who has my brother. Hunt him, hunt him , they whisper in my mind. You must destroy him before he destroys you; before he destroys us .

I reach inside myself and search for a storm, but there’s nothing in this place to draw on. This is not the world by the twilight lake, where nature still has a role, where I’ve figured out how to wield what power I have. This is another place, a place of darkness and shadow, with little substance and no rules. “Have you still got your spirit stone?” I ask Bran. If the dzoonokwa sent us here with the stones, we must be meant to do something with them.

He dips his head to his chest so the spikes of red feathers on his skull shoot straight up in the air while he picks his spirit stone up with his mouth. “I have no hands,” he says with a frustrated grimace.

The sea wolf laughs as Bran fumbles with his stone. Is that what you mean to defend yourselves with? he growls.

“Not exactly,” I say as I move closer to the monolith.

Yes, yes , the creatures of spirit whisper in my ear. The monolith, the monolith!

But the monolith senses our approach. Its hum crescendoes, filling my ears with such a sound that I’m sure my mind will explode as the monolith begins to recede into the void.

“Quickly!” I shout at Bran. “It wants to get away!”

The sea wolf snarls and wraps his tail around the monolith. Come and get it , he says.

Bran mutters that rocks can’t move, but that’s exactly what the monolith is doing. It’s a living, breathing entity, and it’s trying to run from us.

“Faster,” I say to Bran. “Faster!”

He rises into the air. I follow, speeding after the monolith, which is fading, fading…

And then we slam into it, headlong. Bran crumples to the earth, unconscious. I hover in midair, screaming in pain. One of my wings is badly torn, but somehow I manage to land safely, only to find myself face-to-face with the sea wolf.

I’ve been waiting for you , he says. And now it looks like I’ve got you and your boyfriend after all. Time for you to give your totem up to your brother . Grotesque, mutilated fin-hands reach toward me, but he pauses, reconsiders, and turns toward Bran. I think I’ll take him first. Easy pickings, you know…