C. E. Murphy - No Dominion - A Garrison Report

In an agonizing instant, it winked out. Suzy whimpered.

Kiseko was there all of a sudden, wrapping her arms around Suzy’s shoulders. She was warm and sturdy, not cold and shaking like Suzy was. “You’re okay, Suze. I’m here. You okay? That was crazy,” she said more softly. “That was really brave, Suzy. I didn’t know you had it in you. I’m sorry for messing with magic, all right? I won’t do it again. I don’t want to mess my best friend up. Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” Suzy croaked the word. “I think so.”

“Good.” Kiseko sat back on her heels just enough to grin lopsidedly at Suzy. “Because we’re going to have to come up with some kind of totally awesome story to explain why you’re here in the middle of this mess. And then we’re gonna have to convince your aunt that since you’re here you might as well stay for the whole weekend, right? And—” She bounced up, bright and cheerful as always, but Suzy caught a glimpse of deeper worry as Kiseko offered a hand. The performance was all for Suzy’s sake, Kiseko’s way of making sure everything seemed normal.

Suzy let Kiso pull her up, then hugged her and did her best to sound light-hearted and frivolous, too. “Localized windstorm. You left the window open and look what happened!”

“That’s a terrible cover story, Suze.”

“Your parents believed the zombie movie thing, didn’t they?”

“Mmrgh.” Kiseko rolled her eyes. “I guess so. And so what, did the windstorm blow you in too?”

“That’d be an awfully big storm. Uh—”

“Suzy! Your aunt called!” Kiseko’s parents, wearing robes and slippers, came down the stairs together and stopped, expressions comically confused at the mess spread around the basement. “She said you were coming up as a surprise for Kiseko’s birthday, but we didn’t expect you so soon…what happened down here?”

Suzy gave Kiseko a wide-eyed look, then smiled at her parents. “I, um, got in way earlier tonight but I was, um, trying to surprise Kiseko so I snuck in and then we, uh, fell asleep? And then the window let in the storm and we were all like ‘Oh god we have to clean this up before Mr and Mrs Anderson see,’ and—but you woke up. Early. Uh. Hi!”

“It must have been the wind that woke us,” Kiso’s mom said to her dad, who frowned at Kiseko. “How many times have I told you to be sure the windows are closed at night?”

“I’m totally sorry, Dad. We’ll get it cleaned up, okay?”

Mr Anderson nodded, appeased, and his wife smiled. “I’m glad nothing was destroyed. It’s good to see you again, Suzy. I’ll make you girls some strawberry waffles in the morning, but we’re going back to bed now.”

Kiso’s parents waved and went back upstairs, leaving the two girls to blink uncertainly at each other. Kiseko finally whispered, “Your aunt called?”

Suzy shook her head. “No way. It’s the magic, or the effect of magic. Making sense of things that don’t make sense. I hope it worked on Aunt Mae, too, or I’ll be grounded until I leave for college.”

“Are you still gonna go to UDub?” Kiseko became light and chipper again as she looked over the wreck of the basement. “Think Mom and Dad will mind if we don’t clean up until morning?”

Suzy gave her a look and Kiso giggled. “Yeah, I thought so. Okay. I’ll get some towels for the water and I’ll scrub up the chalk marks if you can get the branches and things.” She ran off to the bathroom without waiting for an answer, and Suzy picked up the nearest branches. The window was still open, so she pushed the branches through and peered into the darkness, trying to see if Robert had escaped safely.

There was no sign of him, anyway. Instead there were stormclouds on the horizon, colored yellow by Seattle’s lights. They had a dark heart, as dark as the seed she’d burst in her mine. Suzy shuddered. She knew there were other colors out there too, like Detective Walker’s gunmetal silver and blue, but she couldn’t see them, not even when she looked through the other gaze, the one that showed her the possible futures. She should be able to see them. She’d always been able to before. But there was nothing there now, just the seed of darkness.

The darkness and the shadow she cast herself, of the rising green.

“Band-Aids and Bog-Men” takes place about a month after SHAMAN RISES, the 9th and final book of the Walker Papers, but contains no spoilers for that book.

Auntie Sheila was a tall woman whose black hair grew wild and whose nose was as pointed as her wit. She wore skirts and strong boots, for she said knees were easier to clean than jeans and that there was no sense risking your ankles climbing up and down the mountainsides. And climb she did, up the Reek eight times a year, up Croagh Padraig, Saint Patrick’s holy mountain, to say holy prayers on holy days. The strangest thing was that the Reek was always empty when Auntie Sheila went up, even if it meant there were a hundred tourists coming down and looking as if they weren’t sure why.

Caitríona O’Reilly was a little afraid of her aunt, but that had never stopped her from scrambling up the loose scrim that called itself the pilgrim’s path on the Reek to watch Sheila MacNamarra lay down her prayers. The same way every time, first striding North East South and West to touch the ground, and in the last year or so Caitríona had fancied that she saw a flare of white, like the aurora borealis bursting up from the earth, when Auntie Sheila finished that circle. Then she wandered the mountain’s small top, avoiding the chapel at the front-center, and laid her palms against the rocky soil time and time again. Sometimes pain creased Auntie Sheila’s face, and sometimes she flinched like the ground had burned her, but she never stopped. For an hour beneath the open sky each time, she laid her hands on the earth, and at the end of that hour she walked her circle the other direction to unwind it, and came back to the switchback trail leading down the mountain.

Until Caitríona was thirteen, Auntie Sheila pretended that she never saw her at all, not even when she swept by Caitríona’s hiding place at the edge of the mountain. The year Caitríona turned thirteen, Auntie winked when she passed by, and all the times after that, Cat crept closer and closer to the mountaintop, trying to see more clearly. Auntie never stopped her, but nor did she tell her what it was she was doing, beyond what was clear: blessing the holy mountain, as if a site for Christian pilgrims needed a pagan’s help as well.

For there was no question of that, at least. Auntie went to the mountain on the old high holy days, on Imbolc and Beltaine, Lughnasa and Samhein, and on the quarter-days as well: the solstices and equinoxes, or close enough as didn’t matter. “Every day is holy somewhere, to someone,” she said to Caitríona the summer Cat turned fifteen, the first words she’d ever spoken to Cat as they came off the Reek together. Caitríona, in trainers and cut-off jeans, was cold and wet to the bone after a summer storm had lashed them on the mountaintop. Sheila was every bit as wet, her denim skirt sodden and sticking to her legs, but her boots gripped the slippy mountainside more surely than Cat’s trainers did, and Sheila gripped Cat’s arm in turn, keeping her arright. “I like to come on the old holy days, but if I can’t make it then I come as close as I can. It’s what’s in your heart that counts, Caitríona.”

“What’s in yours?” Scree shifted under Cat’s feet and down she went, Sheila’s grip not strong enough after all. Scrapes and bruises appeared as if by magic, but her head hit last and there were no stars to be seen, thanks be to God. She sat and turned her hands up, palms abraded, and Auntie Sheila clucked like a good maiden auntie and pulled Cat to her feet.