C.E. Murphy - Mountain Echoes

There were clods of earth still clinging to the oak’s roots when I reached it. Nothing more than that: it was essentially drifting alone, dying in a vast nothingness. I wrapped my arms around it as far as they would go, until my heart was pressed against the shattered tree. I pressed my cheek against it, too, whispering, “C’mon, kid. Take what you need,” and opened up the whole of my magic, no shields, no armor, no protection.

All the lights went out.

For a few long hideous seconds I thought I’d blown it. I thought I was too la I was tte, that the Executioner had won. That I’d sacrificed Aidan’s life in the name of chasing a phantom bad guy all over the mindscape, and that I was going to have to live with that. I couldn’t even cry. I couldn’t breathe, much less sob. The air turned to ice in my lungs, blood frozen in my chest, the magic I clung to cold and dead under my hands. I forced my fingers into the tree’s bark, jamming a pulse of power into it. I knew I should be reaching for a line to ham it up: live, damn you! Live! Anything to ease my fear, but the thought carried no laughter, no release. I couldn’t draw air to cry out, Noooooooooo! like a proper movie hero would. All I could do was empty my chest a little more, and slam another pulse of magic into the tree. And another, blind eyes staring into darkness like I was waiting for the blip on a cardiac machine’s screen. And another, waiting for a doctor to say it was too late, and call the time of death.

On a cold day in Hell.

Resolve burned through the ice in my body, fire wakening not the humor I was desperate for, but a flat determination that was considerably scarier. I would quit when Hell froze over, I would stop trying when the world fell down, I would give up at the death of the universe, and even then Cernunnos would have to drag me kicking and screaming into the great beyond. I jolted power into the tree again, and again, and again, until somewhere deep in the heart of it, something responded. A flicker of a pulse, not coming back from the dead but daring, fearfully, to expose itself. A spark against the darkness, that’s all it was. White magic, twin auras bound together to hold out against the night. Scalding tears slid down my cold cheeks and melted into the oak’s rough bark. I whispered, “C’mon, kid. Come out here again. Let’s make this right.”

That was asking too much, but that was okay. I knew the glimmer of light was in there now, which meant the rest of it could heal. I had, once before, given what I could to a dying land. I reached deep to do the same again, searching for what I could in order to help rebuild Aidan’s garden. It had been easier with Cernunnos: his world had only been dying, not nearly destroyed. The physicality of it had remained, but there was so little left to the garden that its substance had to be entirely remade.

I started with my own, because it was all I had. The tall stone walls slowly breaking down, the precisely cut grass only just starting to grow wild around the edges. Tidy trees, carefully laid stone walks leading to a small pool fed by a waterfall. It had all been so particular, but there had been one thing about my garden that broke my own evidently deep-set mental ideas of what my soul looked like. There had been a robin to call out and tell me of a door hidden behind a fall of ivy, because it couldn’t be a secret garden without a hidden door.

I knew what that door opened onto. It opened into a vast gestalt, a place where other inner gardens could be reached from. In my experience, there were miles of empty land between one garden and another, huge amounts of territory to traverse to reach someone else’s soul.

But there didn’t have to be, and so this time when I dug up the key and opened the door, my garden’s limited greenery spilled through into the darkness that had become Aidan’s inner sanctuary, and gave it something to start with.

Trees began unfurling on his side of the door the very moment it opened. Their roots sank into the blackness, creating rich earth as they grew, and lush bluegrass sprang up. The relentless rain that had fallen provided water for the sudden growth, though all the sunlight that shone through still came from my garden. In a fit of recka fit oflessness I cast a net and caught my own garden walls in it, pulling stone down in lumps that reminded me of fallen Irish castles. More sunlight washed into Aidan’s garden, the narrow doorway-size path broadening and allowing more and more life to take root. I tucked the secret door’s key into my pockets and got busy knocking more walls down, alternating between pulling and kicking. Dust rose and fell again, mortar crumbling to bits, and with every stone that crashed to the earth on my side, Aidan’s garden reclaimed some of its vibrancy.

My own garden began reshaping itself with enthusiasm, once the strongest barriers were down. The quiet little waterfall shifted deep into the ground and rose again as a river that sped through a half-familiar landscape. Woodhenges broke free from the earth, marked with petroglyphic storytelling. I dearly wanted to go read them, but my garden was rumbling too much, land shifting and changing beneath my feet, and the changes rolled right into Aidan’s space, where they individualized themselves according to his tastes. Beyond the henges, my space grew into low Appalachian mountains and Irish fields; on Aidan’s side, a fine rash of poison oak grew up, threatening to anyone who came in uninvited. It went on and on, until all that separated his garden from mine was a hand-built stone wall of about hip height.

I waited, hoping, but he didn’t come to the wall. The oak tree stood in the distance, still recovering: its black bark shone with strength, and new leaves budded, but its height had been broken, and I had no idea if it could recover. I didn’t know if I should stay and encourage it, or if it was better to let it rebuild on its own. I was still hesitating when Aidan stepped out of the tree and came toward me.

He looked more fragile within the confines of his garden than in the world outside. No surprise, given what he’d been through, but I thought it was more than that. His image of himself reminded me of Billy Holliday, whose garden self was more delicate and lightly built than the big man who lived in the Middle World. Billy had been a child when his sister died and their bond made her choose to stay with him. Aidan and Ayita had both been infants when their souls had become one.

He wasn’t feminine. It wasn’t as if here at the heart of his soul he reflected only what Ayita had been. It was more evenly balanced than that, their spirits so well-melded that either’s strengths could come to the forefront at any moment. But in the Middle World he seemed fairly serious, and here there was more sense of impishness, as if Ayita’s presence was willing and able to wink at the world. And I thought maybe right now she was the stronger of the two, because he was the one whose physical form was undergoing the transformations and power surges brought on by the Executioner’s presence and the opening vortex. She wasn’t protected, exactly: their two spirits were too completely one for that. But she had given up her physical body a long time ago, and I thought that might be strengthening her spiritual presence now.

He sounded exactly like himself, unbroken voice as easily feminine as masculine. “Your garden looks better.”

I laughed, taken aback, and humor sparkled in his eyes. “Well, it does.”

“It does. So does yours.”

“Eh.” He wrinkled his nose, looking around. “Not better than it was before. I didn’t mean for this to happen. I’m not one of the bad guys.” A tremulous note shook his voice, like he was hoping I would confirm that, and wasn’t absolutely certain I would.