C.E. Murphy - Mountain Echoes

We knew what we were approaching: the tang in the air told us.

It was e="ze bstill a shock to burst into a mountain meadow and see a war being fought on the river plains below.

With Rattler at attention in the back of my skull, I changed to human form, then swiftly built a power circle around Morrison before calling up the magic to transform him. His first words were “Was that necessary?”

“The power circle? Yeah, you need to see—”

“The coyote.”

For about three seconds I genuinely didn’t know what he meant. Then the top blew off my head and I flung my hands in the air. “For crying out loud, Morrison, are you serious? You’re thirty-eight years old! Are you really this insecure over my ex? I’ve known Coyote my entire life. He’s been my mentor since I was thirteen. He’s taught me most of what I know about magic. I’ve got an affinity for the shape through long familiarity, so what? It doesn’t mean I’m going to bail and go make little coyote puppies with him happily ever after. Seriously, you’ve been gnawing on this for three days? ”

“You wouldn’t turn me back into a man so we could discuss it.”

I threw my hands up again. “Oh, my God! Really? You think I deliberately kept you in wolf form so we couldn’t talk about it? I just thought we were moving, Morrison, no reason to keep shifting back and forth. Canines have nice warm fur coats to sleep in, they hunt well, they can drink from streams more easily than humans. Are you serious? Holy crap, Morrison, seriously, where is the insecurity coming from? You’re the most secure person I’ve ever met. And I told you before, me, Cyrano, there’s nothing there. There could have been, in a whole different world, but no. It’s you, it’s been you all along, and I can’t believe you’re so damned worried about it! What do I have to do?”

“Not shapeshifting into a coyote would help.”

I put my face in my hands, dragged them down, and showed him the reds of my eyes. “You’re insane, Morrison. You’re bonkers. The coyote is as natural to me as a wolf is to you. What did you want me to do?”

“You could have tried.”

“No! No, I could not have. God dammit, Morrison, I turned into a werewolf, all right? I tried to kill Gary. Cernunnos nearly crushed my head, putting me in my place. I’m sorry, but no. I am not going to go down that road just to make you more comfortable. Almost anything else, yes. I will bend over backward to make you happy. But you’re just going to have to suck this one up, because the wolf might be your personal affinity, but in my pantheon it scares the crap out of me.”

That was obviously the exact wrong thing to say. Morrison stiffened right up and I made gargling sounds of frustration in my throat. “Not you. You don’t scare the crap out of me except in the sense of yes, for God’s sake, I am in love with you and I have no idea how to deal with that because you may not have noticed but I’ve kind of got the emotional spectrum of a turnip but I’ve never been so happy to be this scared and—”

I ran out of steam, my shoulders dropping as I looked away. We were both still naked. Having a naked shouting match on a mountainside should have been funny, but it wasn’t. Not at all. “You drove my car across the country, and I was happy,” I said dully. “Don’t you get that, Morrison? The onlingifouly other time somebody drove that car I just about ripped her ears off. But I was happy Petite brought you to me. I was happy to see you behind the wheel. You don’t get more inside me than that, Michael. You just don’t.”

After a very long silence, he said, “You hadn’t told me about Muldoon.”

I closed my eyes and sank down to fold my arms around my knees. “When have I had time?” It seemed like we’d been doing nothing but talking since we’d reunited, but we’d also been running hell for breakfast all over the countryside. I’d caught him up on what was going on in North Carolina. I hadn’t even touched on what had gone down in Ireland.

Another very long silence passed before he said, “I’m sorry.”

I laughed, a tired, broken little sound. “Me, too. Seriously, Morrison, what the hell.”

“You’ve known him your entire life, you share a magic I can’t even touch, you have an affinity for his chosen animal form, you love him, he’s good-looking, and he’s your age.”

“Jesus.” I pressed my fingertips against my eyes, then twisted my neck so I could see Morrison. “You’re really hung up on the age thing, aren’t you? I didn’t even know how old you were until I got a look at your driver’s license last year. It doesn’t matter. And I’ll share as much of the magic with you as I can, if that’s what you want, but you’re my rock, Morrison. You’re what keeps me connected. You’re what I want to come home to. Yeah, I love Cyrano, but I wouldn’t give up everything for him. I wouldn’t give up anything for him, when it came down to it, and it did. You, I’d...” I’d die for you was the way that sentence ended, but it wouldn’t be something Morrison wanted me to say or do, so I let it fade away.

He heard it anyway, and said, “Don’t,” quietly, then came to sit beside me. He was warm, even not quite touching me, and I wanted to lean against him and shiver in his body heat. After a while he said, “I am hung up about my age. I always have been.”

I laughed again, a tiny, high-pitched and not very happy sound that was intended as an invitation to explain that remark. He took it for what it was. “I wanted to be a cop ever since I was a kid. I took college courses so when I graduated high school I only had three years of classes to get through. I finished the academy six weeks before I turned twenty-one, so I was very aware of being the rookie who was just barely allowed to go into bars. I made detective three years later, as soon as it was possible. My hair started going silver when I was about twenty-six, and I was self-conscious about that, too. I got promoted to lieutenant after three years in Homicide, because Captain Nichols liked me, knew I was dedicated, and thought it would be good for the department to have new blood in its ranks. Because of that, I was thirty-three when I was made captain, and I was chosen over a lot of older, more qualified men.”

Morrison exhaled slowly. “And now I’m just about the right age for people to start muttering about a midlife crisis, and I’ve fallen in love with a woman eleven years my junior. So, yeah. You could say I’m hung up about my age.”

“You’re crazy,” I said again, a lot more softly this time, and did lean against him, shivering against his warmth. He put his arm around my shoulder, cautiously, and I shifted a little closer. “And I’ll be damned. The Almighty Morrison is human after all. You do have neuroses and flaws like the rest of us.”

“The Almighty Morrison. Is that what you call me? I liked ‘Boss’ better. Or does thar. a wt mean I’m forgiven?”

“You’re forgiven as long as you quit getting your knickers in a bunch over Coyote.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“Then you’re forgiven. I had no idea you were so self-conscious about your age, Morrison. You’re, um.” I pressed my lips together, looking at the valley below us. “You’re a very private man. There’s a lot I don’t know about you.”

“That,” he said, “may also be a source of my concern. You know Cyrano very well, and I’m aware I’m...” He chuckled very softly indeed. “Private. Is there a word that goes beyond that?”

“Guarded. Discreet. Reserved. Chary. Restra—”

Morrison held his hand up. “ Chary, Walker? I know you have an English degree, but chary? ”