C.E. Murphy - Mountain Echoes

“It might be easier from the outside,” he conceded. “I can afford to be impressed, from out here. But you should be proud of yourself, Joanne. You’ve come a long way.”

“‘Joanne.’ That’s not fair. I can’t get my head around the idea of calling you Michael.”

“You’ll adapt. I’ll wait.”

“Good, because I think you’re going to have to. Maybe when we get back to Seattle we can practice. I’ll say Michael and you’ll turn around and respond naturally, just like it was your name or something.”

“We don’t even have to wait until we get home.”

“No, I’m sure that’s important. I’m sure there’s some kind of rule about not making drastic changes to your lifestyle when you’re not in your home environment, because otherwise it won’t stick when you go home.”

Morrison laughed. “All right. We’ll work on it being all right for you to be impressed that we’re time traveling first. Time traveling, for God’s sake, Walker,” he said, and suddenly sounded like a kid, bubbly and full of excitement. “We’re stuck at the beginning of European contact with the Americas. That’s incredible. ”

“Yeah.” I grinned against his chest and wrapped my arm around him, pulling myself closer. “Yeah, actually, I guess it kind of is. We should...” I laughed. “We should go find a rock in this valley and carve our initials in it, or something, and check for it when we get home.”

I could hear Morrison’s grin. “In the morning.” He curled his arm around my shoulders, nestling me close, and fell asleep with the efficiency of a soldier. I stayed awake a while, listening to him breathe, watching the moon edge across the sky and the bands of the Milky Way change colors, until movement caught my eye. I pushed up a few inches.

The elderly shaman was watching us with a smile. She nodded at my sleeping partner, tapped the side of her head like she was suggesting the man had wisdom worth listening to, then slipped away into the darkness. It wasn’t until morning that I realized she’d built a power circle around us again, keeping us safe from nightmares and restless sleep.

It also wasn’t until morning that I thought to ask how far north the scouts meant, when they said they’d seen war to the north. The answer came back days, and I was a little numb with worry as we accepted some water skins and deer jerky to see us on our way. We followed the river until it disappeared into the hills, me silent and Morrison surprisingly chipper. When the water went underground, he stopped and scraped dirt away until he’d exposed rock, then crouched by it thoughtfully. “What is this, anyway? Granite?”

It had been a long time since my high school geology classes. I peered at the rock. “I think so. Granite and, um. Quartz, maybe.”

“Quartzite,” Morrison suggested. “That’s the sparkle in the stone. So I’d need a diamond cutter. Can you do it?”

“Do what?”

He looked over his shoulder at me, blue eyes mirthful. “Carve our initials in a heart, Walker. Leave a mark to know ourselves by.”

“Oh. Oh! Really? I was joking.” I leaned on the exposed rock beside him, palms against it, feeling the slow ancient wearing down of the mountain. Its patience ran deep. Much deeper than my own, and made me think that, “Initials in the rock seems kind of crude.” The mountain’s life echoed in my hands, undisturbed by the idea of being carved. It didn’t mind what I did to it—it would endure far beyond my brief years, but that was why I didn’t want JW+MM carved into it forever.

Morrison straightened up, looking faintly disappointed. “If you say so.”

“Hey, Mr. Pouty Pants. Give me a minute before you get all sullen.” The stone was surprisingly malleable under my magic’s questing pressure. I’d done body work on dozens of cars, and the mental process wasn’t so different. Heat bent metal, water pitted stone; I combined the images to build cold fire in my palms, and spread it out across the exposed rock face. Stone shifted and deepened, lines melting into existence instead of being chipped or ground. After a few minutes I released the magic and stepped away, letting Morrison examine my handiwork.

His smile was slow in coming, but as strong as the hills themselves. He pulled me into his arms, offering a kiss to go with the embrace, and we departed the valley hand in hand, the petroglyphs left behind.

“We’re never going to get there.” Morrison surveyed the mountains running north and east of us and shook his head. “Even assuming we don’t run into unfriendly natives, I don’t see how we’re going to cover the distance we need to. If Aidan’s out there being used as a repository, we’re on a schedule.”

“I’ve been thinking about that. Not about the schedule. The schedule’s not our problem. He got pulled where they wanted him, and I didn’t have the presence of mind to lock on and go with him. Which is probably just as well, because it would have stranded you in that valley, out of time and with no idea what had happened. So I’m going to work under the assumption that if there’s war, death, misery and mayhem going on, that they’re going to stay there sucking it down until they’ve drained everybody dry.”

Morrison eyed me. “All right. If the schedule isn’t the problem, then how do we solve the problem of traveling through hundreds of miles of unfriendly territory?”

“You’re not going to like it.” In fact, he was going to not like it so much I couldn’t help grinning with anticipation. >

He took in the grin and became suitably wary. “What is it?”

“You made a very pretty wolf, Morrison.”

It took a full five seconds for the implication to sink in. Then his eyes widened with genuine horror. “Oh, no. No way, Walker. No way are you turning me into an animal again.”

“Wolves can travel thirty miles a day just hunting, and they’re top-of-the-food-chain predators. Nothing except humans and maybe a desperate puma is likely to attack one, whereas as humans we’d be much more vulnerable to any predators and very, very slow by comparison. Thirty or forty miles a day in clear territory, which the pre-Columbian Eastern seaboard forests are not. Do you have a better idea?”

Dismay stretched Morrison’s mouth downward. “Walker, do you have any idea what happened while I was a wo—” Color stained his cheeks and his mouth snapped shut. I suspected we both very much wished he hadn’t started to ask the question.

I didn’t, in fact, know what had happened. Not specifically, because about thirty seconds after I’d gotten him back into human form I’d jumped on a plane to Ireland, and we’d mostly been talking about me since we’d been reunited. I had an unpleasant idea of what might have happened, though. Tia Carley, the werewolf I’d ended up neutering, had been as attractive a wolf as Morrison, and I was pretty sure she’d taken a fancy to my boss. There was no delicate way to ask, and besides, I really didn’t want to know. After a few seconds of mental fumbling, I answered with what I did know: “You saved five people’s lives while you were a wolf, and got me out of that cave system in one piece.”

Some of the color faded from his face and an acknowledgment pulled at one corner of his mouth. I didn’t know if he needed a way out, but I was more than happy to give him one. If there had been wolfy hijinks with him and Tia, I did not want to know. Not one little bit at all. He said, “I also terrorized some security guards and half a dozen Seattle cops,” though most of the discomfort had gone out of the confession.

“I’m just glad nobody shot you. I was scared to death someone would. I’m really sorry about that, Michael. I had no idea it would happen. The dance performances...”