C.E. Murphy - Demon Hunts

Instead of the bits of broken branch he'd had, Coyote held a spear half again his own height in his hands. It was made of a white branch stripped of bark and polished, though knots and whorls marked its surface, so the haft wasn't a straight smooth shaft like I thought of spears as having. Its head was black wood, so dark and shining that moonlight reflected off it like metal. A feathered leather strip bound haft and head, but I was quite certain that if the leather was taken away there would be a seamless transformation from the white wood to the black.

I, Joanne Walker, master of the obvious, said, "Holy crap, you've got a spear! Where'd that come from?"

From Herne, obviously, but not even Coyote's expression managed to say that much. He just shook his head, then wordlessly extended the weapon to me.

I actually backed up a few steps. "No way. He didn't give it to me."

He gave the spear a couple of shakes and came toward me, obviously trying to get rid of it. I tucked my hands behind my back. "When gods give you gifts, Coyote, you do not go around handing them off to the nearest sucker you can find." A lightbulb went off, and I almost ran forward to seize the spear regardless of what I'd just said. "Bound to the earth and able to reach for the sky. Trees. Duh. That thing's meant to fight the wendigo with, and he gave it to you."

"But this isn't what I do! I don't—I don't fight! I don't even know how to use this!"

"I think traditionally you stick the bad guy with the pointy end. My path's changed, Ro. Maybe yours is changing, too."

I swear to God, you'd think I'd said maybe your grandmother has recently contracted syphilis from the way he glared at me.

"Donno about his," Gary said from out of nowhere, "but ours sure as hell did. Where are we, doll? How'd we get here?" He broke through the trees a dozen yards away, and I lifted my hands with a squeak.

"Stop! Wait! We have all this unbroken snow, we should use it!"

Gary froze with Sara a step behind him, both of them wideeyed as startled deer. I said, "Herne brought you here to keep you safe from the wendigo," like it was a perfectly normal explanation. The funny thing was Gary's eyes lit up and he went ah like it was, in fact, a perfectly normal explanation. Sara didn't look so understanding, but nor did she push it, for which I would thank her later. For the nonce I pointed imperiously in opposite directions. "Both of you go that way. Make a circle. But take a jump forward so your footsteps don't run into it."

There was a small kerfuffle while they got who was going which way sorted out, but peculiarly, they did as I ordered without asking why. I eyeballed the handful of steps Coyote and I had taken, then tromped a circumference slightly larger than that around them. "Mash everything inside this down, will you?"

Coyote eyeballed me, but did as I asked while I turned around, trying to get my bearings. I had no sense of direction; Rainier was off to my left, but that didn't mean anything, particularly under a sky too bright with moonshine to show me the North Star. After a second I stopped looking with my eyes and reached out with the Sight, trying to get the same sense of place in the Middle World that I could achieve in the Lower.

The earth itself gave a confident thump when I settled on true north. I said, "Thanks," out loud, and struck off that way, making a thick spoke in the snow. "Only walk inside these, okay, guys? I want the rest of it pristine."

Sara, more than forty feet away, muttered, "She's nuts. She's completely bonkers," and the snow carried it to me clear as day.

Carried it to Gary, too, who said, "Nah, she knows what she's doing," which heartened me more than I could've imagined. I marched back the other way, extending the line south, then ran around behind Sara to the most westerly point so I could make a cross-path to the east. I was sweating and panting by the time I was done, and everybody else was sitting in the middle admiring Coyote's spear. My eyebrows waggled entirely of their own volition, and I rejoined them, trying not to giggle.

Coyote looked up at me, eyes gold in the moonlight. "Is this circle meant to keep things in, or out?"

I swallowed the temptation to give him the same answer Melinda'd given me, and said, "Some of both," instead as I trod a little path at the outer edge of the inner circle. It was about ten feet across, plenty big for the four of us, and the snow was well-packed. I took my snowshoes off and stomped a smaller cross like the one I'd just beaten into the unbroken snow, only with the spokes at the lesser cardinal points. My footprints were deep, dark blue shadows—imperfect, but pretty. "Everybody, and when I say everybody I mean you, Sara, and then Gary and then Coyote, in that order, stay inside this circle. This is going to be the keep-things-out circle."

Sara, sounding very much like a petulant teen, said, "Why me most of all?" but also blew the question off with a raspberry, which I translated loosely as because I'm not a magical fruit-cake and the rest of you are.

"The larger one will be the keep-things-in circle." I slipped mostly free of my body, letting my astral form rise up above the snow so I could see my circle's shape.

It was surprisingly—no, strike that— unbelievably perfect. I'd known I was keeping to straight lines with my spokes, but I had the advantage of following the earth's magnetic fields when I was doing that. Gary and Sara were just winging it, but they'd done an incredible job. There were tiny wavers in the circle's outer edges, but no obvious bulges or indentations. It felt strong and ready to accept whatever power I poured into it.

I dropped back into my body to beam foolishly at Gary and Sara. "You guys are amazing. The circle's amazing. Thank you. Okay. I've never really done this before…."

The truth was I'd never done it at all. Melinda's promise to teach me how to open a power circle loomed large, and I wished to high heaven that we'd had time to do that. That we'd made time to do it. I'd gone home and gone to bed two days ago when I could've gone back to her house to learn. That hadn't seemed like an oversight at the time, but it left me with a thimbleful of experience where I needed a vat-full. Accidentally reactivating Mel's power circle with Raven's help wasn't exactly in the same league as what I was about to try.

I knelt where I was, tugging my mittens off to place bare hands against the snow. It was very cold, almost ice, and despite having been mashed down, sharp edges poked my palms. I resisted the urge to stuff my hands into my armpits to warm them up, and instead reached inside myself, eyes closed as I whispered to my power.

Keep-things-out. I was good at that; I could build shields and sling them around with the best of them, these days. But I needed something more from the magic, now. I needed it to come alive outside of myself, to live within the circle until I called it back. I needed to not have to concentrate on it, to trust that the form I'd given it was strong enough to hold shape and protect my friends while I dealt with terrible things beyond its defensive walls.

Purpose came first, in waking it. I felt my needs sinking through the snow, sinking into the earth, where they were absorbed and considered. I recognized in its strength an aspect of my need, and asked that it share with me what it could.

I felt its pride in its own power, at the very idea that I should come to it and ask for help. There was spirit in all things; that was a tenet of shamanism, and I'd come to appreciate it more and more as time went on. Everything was imbued with purpose, and one of the many things the earth itself coveted was to give life. My desire to protect life wed nicely to that, and with a roar of silence, power rushed upward, greeting me, leaping into the boundaries set by my circle. My own power answered, containing it, tempering it, drawing vitality, until the two dancing magics balanced each other: my need and the earth's willingness to offer. Rich clay brown wove through silver-blue, pushing and pulling against one another in an endless, sustainable flux of magic. It would hold, robust and true, until I brought it down again with the same deliberation it had taken to raise it. It would keep things out as long as I needed it to.