C.E. Murphy - Mountain Echoes

“You can’t.” I had no other argument, and barely enough energy for this one. In fact, I wasn’t having an argument. Maybe Dad was, but from my perspective it was a detailing of rote information. “I don’t know, Dad. Maybe it’s the two heritages. Shaman and mage. Maybe it’s being a brand-new sparkly fresh soul. Maybe it’s not being hobbled by tradition. Maybe it’s because I learned the hard way. Maybe it’s that I just don’t know what I can and can’t do, so I do it anyway. I mean, hey, yeah, okay, it’s pretty clear I shouldn’t try the flying-car stunt again. Or healing cancer,” I said with a sideways glance at Morrison. “But mostly the only way I find out I shouldn’t do something is by doing it. I don’t have any preconceptions, Dad. I have no fucking clue what I’m doing. I never have.”

That wasn’t true anymore. I actually had a pretty good idea what I was doing now, and it had become clear that most of my limitations were self-imposed, failures of imagination rather than failures of raw power. I couldn’t figure out how to track magic, for example. I’d never been able to convince my slightly near-sighted eyes that it would be okay for me to heal them, though I had no doubt if I went in for LASIK surgery that it would work just fine. I accepted that I shouldn’t try healing major illnesses without a power circle to support me, at the very least. That kind of shit was dangerous, and despite my reckless behavior I wasn’t really trying to get myself killed. I just didn’t know where the line was until I crossed it.

And when I got right down to it, I didn’t have a problem with that. I was not going to become increasingly conservative as I grew to understand my power more fully. In fact, backed by Rattler and Renee and Raven, I saw no reason why I shouldn’t become less conservative, especially in cases where I’d learned where the lines lay.

Looking at my father, at the worry pinching his face and at the barely restrained disbelief in his eyes, I thought for the first time that maybe I was more like my mother than I’d imagined. I’d never thought of Dad as conservative, but it was the first word that would’ve come to mind for Mom. The second one was stubborn, or maybe willful. The woman had concentrated herself to death, after all, to make sure she could be in the right spiritual place and time to save my tuchus more than once. It was inconceivable that she would let some piddling opinion like “you shouldn’t have been able to” stop her from doing anything. I rolled that thought around in my mind a few seconds, then spread my hands and shrugged. “This is how it works with me, Dad. You’re just going to have to get used to it. Now, what are we going to do about Petite?”

My father looked at me for a long time, with much the same expression he’d often had when I was younger. It was the one I’d interpreted as “How the hell did I get stuck with a kid?” but now I thought maybe it was really more like “How the hell do I roll with the insane punches this kid throws?” After a while he shook his head and pointed his thumb up the mountain. “There’s a cave system up the road a ways. We can bring her up there and tuck her in. If you don’t know where it is, it’s hard to find.”

The military was likely to be combing every inch of the mountain, and I doubted they’d miss it, but it was better than nothing. Maybe I could do something very rash, like bring a little rock-fall down over the cave mouth, except that would leave fresh scars for them to find, which would again defeat the point. And besides, the idea made me stumble with exhaustion, even though I wasn’t moving. Morrison tightened his arm around me and my father glanced at us, worry etching his face again.

I hadn’t quite put that together, that he might thhis arm a be worried about me, and shifted uncomfortably. “I’m okay, Dad. I’m fine.”

“You’re not,” he said stubbornly. “I told you. Your reserves are completely depleted, beyond anything that should leave you on your feet, and it’s not the first time that’s happened recently. What have you been doing, Joanne?”

I wet my lips and frowned at the mountain above his head. It was certainly true that this wasn’t the first time I’d been totally wiped out in the past few weeks, but last time I’d gotten this flat it had been followed up by the most invigorating spirit dance I would probably ever encounter. I’d have thought that had fueled me sufficiently that the drain wouldn’t leave any marks, but I supposed running beyond empty left scars on any engine. “It’s a long story, Dad. We’d be here for a week if I tried explaining it all. Am I okay to get up the mountain?”

“No. We could bodily carry you up there,” he said grudgingly, “but if we don’t do something about your reserves you’re not going to be any help if things go badly.”

“Things will go badly,” I assured him. “Let’s get Petite into that cave and we’ll worry about the rest later.”

“Later” came a lot sooner than I expected. We rolled Petite up the mountain and into the cave, which is to say, Morrison and Dad rolled Petite up the mountain and into the cave while I steered with a focus and ferocity previously known only to kittens intent on a piece of string. I managed not to crash her, which in my book was a huge triumph. Proud of myself, I got out of the car. Morrison put me right back in, and dragged my drum out from behind the driver’s seat again. I stared at it like I’d never even seen it before. So did Dad, with more justification: he hadn’t seen it before, at least not with its new modifications. I’d just totally forgotten about it. After a while I mumbled, “Wish I’d remembered that was there. It probably would’ve helped with...flying the car.”

When I said the words out loud it struck me just how amazingly stupid that stunt had been. I mean, I really had been utterly, absolutely confident of my ability to do it, which meant I’d been able to do it. But I would never be able to do it again, because I was now far too aware of the cost. Maybe if the choices were Morrison being eaten by monsters or me flying Petite again, but short of genuine life and death it was never gonna happen again. And really, that was okay, because although I didn’t want to tell Morrison, I could barely feel my arms and legs, never mind fingers and toes. I wasn’t at all sure I was still functional on any meaningful level.

“Yes,” Morrison said dryly. “I’m sure it would have helped with flying the car, if any of us had been calm and rational enough to think of taking a drum out and performing some theme music for your James Bond meets Harry Potter special effects. But since we weren’t, now I’m going to drum until you stop looking like something the cat dragged in. Don’t argue with me.”

I nodded mutely, and honestly didn’t remember more than the first beat or two of the stick against the drumhead. I had odd, flitting dreams of healing power washing through me, like I was one of my own patients, and every once in a while I felt my breath catch like maybe I’d stopped breathing and someone was getting it started for me again. The drumbeat broke through every few minutes, dragging me toward the surface of sleep before losing its grip on me again. It was pleasant, in a soft, surreal way. I could feel the earth’s weight abovs ry e me, its steadiness below me, and the stillness of the air within the small cave. I felt comforted, contained, safe. I wanted to stay there for weeks, though a niggling, uncomfortable feeling suggested that wouldn’t work.

After a far-too-brief forever, Dad’s voice broke through my reverie. “We’re going to have to leave if we want to get into the mountains before dark.”