C.E. Murphy - Raven Calls

I was saying my last prayers when Gary rode out of the sunset and shoved my sword through the bitch’s back.

Aibhill’s scream turned to a squeak. She slid forward off the rapier, blood bright over her white gown and astonishment vivid on her pretty face.

Her astonishment had nothing on mine. I stood where I was, shock still, with the vestiges of screams faltering around me. With my shields shivering themselves back together, now that they were no longer under assault. With my heart holding still in my chest and my lungs empty of air, because I was afraid if I breathed again, if my heart beat again, that the vision of Gary would disappear once and for all and he would be gone from my life forever.

Forget Aibhill. Forget Lugh and Nuada and Cernunnos and all the other inhumanly gorgeous people I had ever encountered. I had never seen anything as beautiful as Garrison Matthew Muldoon, seventy-four years old, white-haired, broad-shouldered like a linebacker and with a smile to break the hearts of girls young enough to be his granddaughter. Not that he was smiling now. He sat straight in his saddle, expression solemn as he looked at the woman he’d just killed. Aibhill, whose body slowly degraded from beauty to age as I watched. It would get worse, I thought, and I didn’t want to see the transition from age to extreme age, then to dust as the life force lent to her by the banshees bled away. I wondered what was happening to them, and whether we’d saved Sheila, and then Gary looked up and did give me that movie-star grin, and said, “H’lo, darlin’. Did I miss anything?”

What air was left in my lungs rushed out and I ran forward on willpower alone, no oxygen, no thought, just the need to crash into my best friend’s arms and hug him as hard as I possibly could. He even slid off the horse quickly enough for me to do that, and we both thumped against the animal as I flung myself into his arms. He bent his head over mine and we stayed there until I could draw breath again, which only happened after black dots and stars started dancing in my vision. “Do you have false teeth?”

Gary guffawed. “What kinda question is that, doll?”

“It’s just your teeth are so perfect and I know you used to smoke and I always thought they had to be false and then she said you’d be at Méabh’s tomb and a skeleton was and it had false teeth but they weren’t perfect that was how I knew it wasn’t you but I was so scared and I was sure at first it was and do you?”

Gary set me back and beamed at me. “’Course I do. Got in a fight just after Korea and two of ’em got knocked out. I had the doc pull ’em all. He was furious ’cause I had good teeth, but everybody loses their teeth eventually, so I figured no point in waiting. So what’s this about Méabh’s tomb? Never been there.”

“No, you have to have been, she said you’d be waiting at her final restin—” The breath went out of me again and I got cold. “Her final resting place.”

I did not want to turn around. Did not want to look toward Méabh, who I’d forgotten about in the past minutes. But I couldn’t not, either, not after the day we’d spent together. I grabbed Gary’s hand, both unwilling to ever let him go and reluctant to look at Méabh without support. He gave me a reassuring nod, and I clenched my fingers harder around his and made myself look.

She was horribly still. Eyes open, staring toward the exposed sky. I made a sound, but it didn’t get past my throat. Gary very gently tugged me into motion, and then we were running toward her and collapsing on our knees at her side. Her chest rose and fell, minute motions, but it was something. It was enough, with Aibhill no longer mistress of this domain. I shot a glance at the banshee queen’s body: shriveling now, falling bit by slow bit into white dust. Another minute and she would be nothing. Relieved, I reached for the healing power, and instead was taken aback by another voice I hadn’t expected to hear again.

“I might make you an offer.” Cernunnos rode out of the sunset as well, ash and silver cutting a mark against gold. He wasn’t, though, speaking to me: his gaze was for the woman dying at my side.

Being a master of discretion, I gave a bleat of protest and managed to turn it into words as he dismounted and glanced at me. “She’s not exactly up to a bargain, Cernunnos!”

“There is no bargain to be made. No cost for what I will ask, because it is to my benefit as well as hers.” He knelt on Méabh’s other side, head heavy with horns as he lowered it toward hers. “Do not die here, Queen of Connacht. Instead give up this land, this world and become a creature of my earth instead. It will sustain you and all your kind for as long as I exist, and I am not an easy thing to end.” He glanced at me as he spoke, emerald eyes fiery. Not easy, but not impossible: I had almost seen his end, and that was a deep bond between us. That acknowledgment made, he looked back to Méabh, voice softer still. “You know already that the aos sí do not exist in Joanne’s world, in Joanne’s time. The choice is yours, for all your kin: fade away under the hills, or come beyond the sunset—”

“‘And all the western stars,’” I whispered. “‘Until I die.’”

Méabh’s gaze sharpened on me and she laughed. Breathless ugly sound, but a laugh. “A poet and a warrior. Write my song, then, Granddaughter. Write my song, as I go. I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll miss you, too. I’m glad I got to meet you. And the poem’s not mine.” And I’d mangled it anyway, but it was close enough for the moment. I struggled for the right thing to say, finally blurting, “I’ll say it for you, though. On the old holy days, darkest night and brightest day.”

“Then I’ll go.” She looked at Cernunnos, and for the first time I saw the woman soften. I sympathized, even as my heart wrenched. We’d gone through a lot of adventure together in the past day. I didn’t want to have yanked her out of time only to have gotten her killed. The thought made me give Gary a look of guilty relief. He beetled his bushy eyebrows at me.

I shook my head. I didn’t want to explain that while I didn’t want to have gotten Méabh killed out of time, I could live with it, whereas I couldn’t have forgiven myself for doing the same to him. A jolt of bewilderment finally hit me: I didn’t even know how he and Cernunnos had gotten here. Especially since I was still pretty sure “here” was the Lower World, where I doubted Cernunnos belonged at all.

“My people,” Méabh said to Cernunnos, “my people aren’t mine to call. I wouldn’t be one of them, not in my heart, not in my soul.”

“But you are in the blood,” said the god of the hunt, and then, to me, “Give her strength enough to survive the ride across the stars. That alone, and no more. Tir na nOg will do the rest, and she will be better for it. More, the land will come to know her people through her blood, and they will leave this world for mine. It has long been lonesome,” he murmured, and I couldn’t meet his eyes. I only nodded, reaching for my magic.

Half to my surprise, power responded promptly, leaping awake with a rush of enthusiasm. It poured through me, starting in my fingertips and sizzling up my arms. I had about a nanosecond to recognize that usually it went the other direction.

Then I turned into a werewolf.

It happened so fast I didn’t know what had happened. A bolt of pain, but not the drawn-out agony from before. Just a clear pure explosion of it and then the world was a simpler place. Bright sharp smells overwhelmed me: blood and dying magic and surprise and dust and grass and stone and sky. I sneezed once, sending some of the scent away, and focused on the important things.