C.E. Murphy - Coyote Dreams

“Chose to, Jo,” Gary said quietly. “You keep tellin’ me that’s what shamanism’s all about. Makin’ choices.”

I finally focused on him again, feeling bleakness carving itself into my face. “That doesn’t make it any less my fault.” There were so many recriminations to heap on my own head I could’ve stayed there for the rest of my life, paralyzed and shriveled by guilt and misery. I reached out to fumble the toilet lever down, washing away the spatters of bile I’d choked up, then used the bowl and the tub to push myself upward.

“Where’re you goin’?”

“I don’t know.” I sounded like someone’d flattened me with a rolling pin and stabbed holes in what remained, to make sure I’d never rise properly again. “I’ve got to get somewhere I can think. I’ll call you, Gary. I’ll call in a while. I’m sorry.”

I stumbled out of the apartment and down to my car. A minute later she pulled out into five o’clock traffic, me feeling like she was steering herself.

Pretty much the last place I expected her to go was Thunderbird Falls.

I had to park along the road near Matthews Beach Park, as the parking lot itself was still a hopscotch of fallen land and broken pavement. There were boards up over the deeper and wider crevasses, and the yellow danger tape spread everywhere was torn and cut away, left to rustle in the evening breeze. I made my way through the mess left of the lot, watching my feet instead of the passersby. There were more of them than I expected, given the area had been cordoned off two weeks ago and was still supposed to be unused. No one in the neighborhood seemed to be taking that seriously, voices raised in good nature and kids running about, leaping over the cuts in the earth as if they didn’t exist. Evidence of the earthquake that had torn Lake Washington’s western side was everywhere, and people were just going about their lives without concern despite that. It was as if the magic that had been thrust into Seattle’s atmosphere a few weeks earlier had sluffed off, putting everything back to normal. If someone had not just died for me, I might have taken comfort in feeling I wasn’t making irrevocable changes to strangers’ lives.

Instead, I felt like something worse than panic had taken hold inside me. It felt cold and resolute, the feeling of despair tangled with destiny. Coyote’d died for me. Colin and Faye had died because of me. I would be God damned if I was going to lose anybody else on my watch. I wished my newfound resolution felt good, but it only felt like somebody’d sealed over my emotions with lead piping and was waiting for my body to realize my soul was dead. Spiderweb cracks slid through my vision, a windshield shattered. My soul hadn’t notified my body of its pathetic, miserable state for half my life. I’d been used to feeling cut off. I’d have thought feeling that way again would be comforting.

There were more voices down at the falls than I expected, doing something that sounded suspiciously like chanting. Sunlight caught a glitter on something gold and metallic through the trees, and I slowed down. It wasn’t like I’d intended to come here. It’d been my car’s idea. I was going to have to rename her Kitt.

For some reason my feet kept moving me forward while I peered ahead of myself, uncomfortably certain of what I’d see once I got clear of the boardwalks and wooden steps that made hash of what had once been treed waterfront. I could hear the stream made by the falls, and wondered briefly what people were calling it. Probably not Jo’s Hand’s Stream . I kept catching mere glimpses of people ahead of me, as if the sunlight was helping them deliberately evade my sight. They winked in and out of my vision as if they didn’t quite belong in this world, and by the time I got to the bottom of the boardwalk, I wasn’t sure they did.

Not that they were Otherworldly. They were perfectly human, all of them, even the guy wearing white robes and a beard down to his belly button. He was behind a set of skin drums broad enough to be heard halfway across Seattle, but rumbled them so quietly I didn’t realize I’d been hearing them until I saw him playing. I came to a stop, still standing on the boardwalk, and looked over what I automatically and uncharitably categorized as an enormous group of longhaired hippie freaks.

There were several dozen of them, women in long skirts with long hair, men in bell-bottom jeans and tie-dyed shirts. There were also a fair number of incredibly normal-looking people mixed in with them, but even the ones wearing slacks and button-down shirts looked too damned cheerful to fit into my idea of natural behavior. They were mingling, laughing, chatting, waving their hands passionately as they disagreed without venom. They stood together in groups or pairs, no one alone at a single glance, though a second look showed me individuals sitting or standing in meditation, apparently consumed with personal joy that required no sharing.

Even without the sight triggered I could practically see their auras, glowing with good-naturedness and excitement. The air tingled with it, as if people were doing—

I brushed my hand over my eyes, knowing when I lowered it, I would see in two worlds. As if people were doing magic, Joanne . I finished the thought forcibly, and dropped my hand.

Right at the foot of the falls, there was a group weaving power together, a delicate construction that took form before my eyes. I could see where it was going, and it was going to be beautiful: an arch that would rise over the edge of the fallen lake, fifteen or twenty feet into the air, made of starlight and sunlight. Glimmers of a thunderbird were already in place at its apex, like a sign of welcome to anyone with eyes to see it.

And it was clear nearly everyone here had those eyes. Power, far more than the eleven coven members had shared, was palpable here. It strengthened auras and built on itself, like static charges from winter-dry wool. The earth itself announced its presence, torn and battered as it was: magic had been done here, and had left its mark. These pleasant, joyful people had been drawn here by power I’d laid down. By mistakes I’d made. And they were glad of it, the whole area having the sense of a giant coming-out party. They weren’t pretending or hoping or hiding, for the most part. They were there to share themselves, their experience, their lives that they’d tried to live quietly, for fear people like me would stare and call them crazy.

These were my people.

I sat down on the boardwalk and put my face in my hands, less to hide the activity from my gaze than to wrap my mind around that appalling idea. These were my people. The men and women who’d gathered here, at the site of my battle with an ancient, deadly serpent, were the ones who would believe in me and in what I could do without fail and without hesitation. They would accept me as one of their own, and very probably revere me if they figured out I was the one who’d shared skin with the thunderbird. The idea was horrifying.

“Joanne?”

I knew the woman’s voice and wasn’t entirely surprised to hear it here. It still took a few moments to lift my head and look up to find Marcia Williams standing before me. She was in her fifties, the lines of wisdom around her mouth now more deeply etched with sorrow. She’d held the position of the Crone in the coven I’d been a part of for a few days. Her power, genuine and pale in its colors, washed around her as she offered a sad smile and took a seat beside me on the boardwalk. “I wondered if you’d come here,” she said. “I wondered if it would draw you back.”

“How is everyone?”

“Thomas is here. The others—” Marcia spread her hands in a shrug. “They may never come back,” she admitted. “I’ve thought about staying away myself.”