C.E. Murphy - Raven Calls

I whispered, “Like hell. I’m coming for your witch Morrígan and then I’m coming for you.”

Raucous laughter answered me. Raven’s laughter, harsh and unkind. Heard a challenge in that laughter, a dare: if I met the Morrígan, he would come to me himself. Right here, right now. We could finally go mano a mano, and if I won, well, then. He would leave Aidan be.

“You’d have to, you stupid bastard. I’m gonna kick your ass so far back into the caves even the cavemen won’t be able to find you. I’ll see you at Tara, you son of a bitch.”

The Master cackled again and the threads along which we communicated were suddenly gone. So was the ache, the infection, the terrible redness in my arm. The black magic receded, and in the planescape of psychic battle, the wolf simply disappeared. I snapped back to the hanging tree, still dangling upside-down, and Coyote, limping, disheveled, his hair in tangles, came across the mesa and sat at the foot of the tree with a thud.

Big Coyote, who hadn’t been there before, but who was also always here in this desert, meandered up and shoved his nose into Coyote’s hand, which made him chuckle and drag the gleaming animal into a hug. They were astonishing together, Big Coyote’s every strand of fur a bristling wire of gold or copper or brass, and his eyes full of stars, while my Coyote was a sweat-stained red-skinned tangle-haired dirty mess. Or he was at first. All of it washed away under Big Coyote’s lean, and my Coyote looked refreshed when he let the archetype go. “Seriously,” he said as I rotated in another slow circle: tree, desertscape, blinding sky, more desert, tree and coyotes again. “Seriously,” my Coyote repeated, “you thought I was him? ”

They wobbled out of my view as I spun again. Twisting my head toward them only made an impending headache worse, so I stopped trying and mumbled, “Well, yeah. Back in the day. I didn’t know better.”

Big Coyote snorted. So did Little. I tried shrugging, but that made my head hurt, too. Hanging upside-down was not my favorite place to be. “Look, I’m sorry, okay? But we won, right? Does that mean someone’s going to let me down now?”

The two coyotes exchanged glances in a way that didn’t bode well for the home team. But then Coyote, my Coyote, got up and did something I couldn’t see to the ropes. They went elastic-y and dropped me on my skull, which was moderately better than hanging upside-down. It wasn’t good, though, and I spent a minute with my arms curled around my head, trying to get past the starbursts in my vision. When I finally looked up, both coyotes looked like I was their idea of a great afternoon’s entertainment. I started to say something caustic, then thought better of it. “You guys saved my bacon. Thank you.”

Big Coyote’s tongue slurped halfway around his head, like not even amazing animistic representations of archetypes were immune to the power of bacon. I had another dizzy moment of wondering when, exactly, I’d last eaten something worth calling food, and hoped all this not-eating would have knocked off the five or so pounds I’d put back on recently. If it had, I promised I wouldn’t eat so many doughnuts once I got home. And that I would take up jogging. And follow through on whatever other rash promises I’d made over the past several days. “Coyote?”

One pricked his ears and the other sat up a little straighter. I chuckled, but it was the second one I spoke to, humor fading fast. “I’m supposed to say goodbye to you f—”

“ What? Joanne, no, you—”

Okay, that hadn’t been the best way to launch into the goodbye. I sat up, grateful my head had stopped throbbing, and waved my hands in the face of his protests. “Listen! Stop freaking out! I’m supposed to say goodbye from…me. From me fifteen years ago, from me you started teaching when I was a kid. She’s…”

Little Coyote looked uncomprehending while I searched for the right way to explain, but Big Coyote’s star-filled eyes were sad and acknowledging and maybe a little proud. He, at least, understood what had gone on between my younger and current self. Probably understood better than I did, for that matter. And he was certainly in a position to be watching over time loops, so he must have known this one was coming to an end.

“She’s been this annoying little voice of reason at the back of my skull for ages now,” I said after a while. “My dream self, the part of me that remembered your teachings even after I went and ripped them away from myself mid-lessons. But she says no matter what, she would have ended up here, fighting this fight in Ireland, and that means we’re coming to the end of her. I’m…integrating. Siobhán and Joanne and magic and…all of it. So she—” In the middle of the sentence I understood. She, the younger Joanne, the one who’d been in love with Coyote, was the one saying goodbye. Another loop closed. I faltered, then swallowed and, helpless, said, “She loved you. She loves you. And she’s…”

“Gone.” One rough low word from my mentor, and suddenly even Big Coyote’s brilliance wasn’t enough to make Little Coyote reflect shining glory. He turned his face away, giving me a profile shot: strong nose, strong jaw, restless black hair, brick-red skin against the bleached desert whiteness. Beautiful. Perfect. Very literally the man of my childhood dreams.

And then, because this was a landscape of the mind, and because magic let us do things that we couldn’t otherwise, because of those things, and because I’d finally and for the last time broken his heart…

…he was gone.

I opened my eyes to find Gary and my mother sitting cross-legged up against a half-fallen wall, both of them laughing so hard they had tears running down their faces. My mother had Gary’s forearm in one hand as she wheezed, “She didn’t, she didn’t!” and wiped tears away with the other, and Gary nodded so merrily it appeared his head would go bobbling off.

It was so completely incongruous with the farewell I’d just experienced I just sat there, offended on general principles, and waited for them to notice I’d woken up. Instead my mother threw her head back and shrieked like a delighted banshee, laughter bouncing off the crumbling walls.

I looked upward. The surviving banshees still sat in the oak rafters, many of them with expressions of accusation. This was not how things were done, and it was clearly all my fault. I shrugged a protestation of innocence, and when Gary started in with, “That’s nothing, you should’ve seen her when—” I decided I’d better take matters into my own hands before I found out for sure they were in hysterics over me.

I cleared my throat. Loudly. Gary, without the slightest hint of guilt, looked up, beamed and said, “There you are, darlin’. You never told me your old lady was so much fun,” which made my solemn, reserved, Altoids-loving mother whack his shoulder.

“Auld me foot,” said she, “sure and you’re old enough to be me own father, so let’s hear none of this auld lady nonsense. How’s your arm, Joanne?”

I couldn’t think of anything I’d done half so funny as to bring people to such gales of laughter, but I couldn’t shake the feeling they were laughing at me, so I extended my arm petulantly without speaking. The action sounded like wings whispering together, which made my skin crawl, but there was no sign of bite or infection under the shredded remains of my coat sleeve.

“There’s me lass!” my mother said in delight. “I knew it couldn’t keep ye down. Now to—” Now to notice my expression, apparently, because her gaiety fell away into concern. “Joanne?”

“I’m fine. What’s so funny?”

Gary lumbered to his feet and came to offer me a hand up. “I was just tellin’ her some stories about me and Annie back in the day. I wish you coulda met her, Jo. You’da liked her.”