C.E. Murphy - Raven Calls

But so much had gotten cleared away recently. I had to go back to North Carolina, that was increasingly obvious, but beyond my dad and Aidan, I’d done so well lately. Like I’d told my mother, I’d gotten the magic, the guy, the job. I didn’t have much left to be afraid of, and no sense at all of why I should be so afraid that turning into a werewolf seemed like a better option.

“You’re afraid of success,” my own voice said to me. I bobbled around to see myself, aged fifteen, standing a few yards beyond the deadwood tree. It was the angry version of me, the one that had lost all contact with the shamanic heritage she’d been learning about. She’d chopped her hair off in defiance, and if she wasn’t already, she’d be pregnant within a few weeks, in her timeline. I thought she was a brat.

She was also painfully clear-sighted about some things. She, who had fought the whole damned world tooth and nail, had gotten me through a confrontation with a Navajo Maker god by demanding to know why it was I, the person she’d become, thought everything had to be a fight. It didn’t, it turned out. Some things needed acceptance, not railing against. I had no idea how she’d figured that out, when I, a dozen years older and presumably wiser, certainly hadn’t. So if she was turning up to let me know new and obvious ways in which she thought I sucked, I should probably listen.

“Who the hell,” I demanded, “is afraid of success? ”

“You are.” She walked around me, eyeing the ropes and the dead tree with a sort of scathing respect. Respect for the bindings, scathing for me. “Seriously, look at you. You’ve spent my entire life running from responsibility and pretending all you’re good for is fixing cars. Only, oh, no! It turns out that if you’re, like, forced to be, you’re pretty good at some other stuff, too. And now you’ve finally tapped into the real power I was working toward before you screwed me over, and you’re all ‘Oh, my God! More responsibility!’” She made spooky wavy hands and put a tremble in her voice with the last bit. “‘Oh, no! I’ve gotten this far but I can’t handle even more responsibility! What if I screw up with it? Worse! What if I don’t! What if it turns out I can actually, like, be really good at saving the world and helping people? No, no, Brer Rabbit, we can’t risk that, better get turned into a horrible monster instead! Oh, my God, Morrison really likes me! We can’t have that! I better run off and get myself killed fighting banshees instead! Oh, no! Mom didn’t hate me after all! I better—’”

“ALL RIGHT ALREADY.” Jesus but I didn’t like that kid. I bobbled around in another circle and glared when she came back into view. “What’re you doing here, anyway? I didn’t go stealing power from you this time, there’s no time loop to cl—”

Scathing respect had faded into the rant, but now scathing pity rose to replace it. “Are you kidding? We’re almost at the end of the time loop now. Not just ours, but the big one, the one the Master and the Morrígan set in place when they made the cauldron. I always would’ve been here, in Ireland, fighting this fight, because of what happened with us and Mom and the banshee before we were born. This is it,” she said a lot more softly. “This is the end of me. Tie us up with a bow. Tell Coyote goodbye, because from here on out it’s all you, Siobhán. ”

Desert heat or not, the idea that my younger self was facing her last moments was a bucket of cold water in the face. I didn’t like her, but she appeared to have her shit together in a way I hadn’t for a long time, and she had, frankly, deserved better than me. I tried to wet my lips, had nothing to do it with and croaked, “Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. Be good. Be right. Be a hero.” She’d demanded that of me once before, and I supposed if anybody did, she had the right. She pointed at my arm, at the shiny red-hot infection, said, “Man up, Joanne,” and vanished.

Right there in that instant, she healed me. Not because she was throwing power around, but because she’d hit me so hard I had to see the world a different way, and that was all it took for a shaman. Just a moment’s change of viewpoint. I’d been so proud of myself for doing increasingly well it had never occurred to me I might be afraid of doing better yet. Of succeeding. But my younger self, brat or not, was nobody’s fool, either, and all of a sudden I could see success for the huge, scary beastie that it was.

I’d never had ambitions toward greatness. I genuinely believed I’d have been happy running a mechanic shop, tinkering with Petite and drinking beer with the guys on days off. But that wasn’t in the cards, and I’d gotten good at the hand I’d been dealt. I’d been pleased with that and hadn’t wanted more. It never crossed my mind that being dealt an even better hand would scare me, but Joanne The Younger was right.

It terrified me. And terror, George Lucas forgive me, was the way to the dark. Realistically I should’ve been scared spitless back when this began, but I hadn’t known enough. I’d just resented it. Now, when I knew a lot more, I didn’t have nearly as much to be afraid of, even if the potential power load had increased. Now I had Billy and Melinda. Now I had Gary. I had Coyote. I had Morrison, and it was all his damned fault I’d gotten better at things anyway, because not only had he been more willing to use my esoteric skill set, but because I, foolish creature that I was, hadn’t wanted to disappoint him.

He was going to be very disappointed if I came home from Ireland a werewolf.

Coyote nominally had the healing gig in hand. I didn’t try to usurp it. I just ripped down all the shells and shields and protective barriers and finally, finally let my fresh new topped-up Siobhán Walkingstick magic flow in behind his, his robin’s-egg-blue flooding forward on a tide of steely-blue, his hot-desert-gold cooled by a rush of my silver.

For just an instant there I was raw to him. Exposed, open, vulnerable. It was mostly about Morrison, between us. My former boss, silver-haired, blue-eyed, solid as the earth. My laughter, my tears, my safety and my future. My everything, these days.

For the space of a breath, his presence between us cut too deep. Coyote retreated, leaving me all alone against the black magic running through my veins. I staggered, shocked at its strength. I thought I could beat it, but not easily. I couldn’t do everything alone, after all. I’d found that out the hard way. But I’d do this alone, if I had to, because I was not going to go home to Morrison all furry and toothy.

Then the breath was gone and Coyote’s power surged back to the fore, leading mine in a ferocious battle against the wolf. Two coyotes on the mesa now, and the black wolf dwindled simply because of my attention, my presence, in the battle. I sensed its rage as the infection grew less profound, sensed the threads that had slowly bound me closer to the Master shriveling and sensed his fury that one of my lineage had once more slipped through his fingers.

But not all of us. Crystal-clear thought in the midst of his anger. Master’s meal was a little wild, bore herself a wee boy child. The one precious piece of information Sheila had garnered while still in his thrall. The one thing she’d shared with the Master, before her bones were burned and he lost most of his hold on her.

I could all but feel his promise: that he would find and destroy Aidan not for the sake of damaging the family line, but sheerly for revenge against me. Me, the one who had helped Sheila MacNamarra get away thirty years ago and just last night. The one who had thrown down a gauntlet a few months ago, a gauntlet the Master had declined—or been unable—to take up.