C.E. Murphy - Coyote Dreams

Part of me also thought, a bit grimly, that it would be a good way to find out if the sleep demon was triggering to any external magic I did, or just attempts at healing. I wasn’t strictly sure the light trick was external, but it was far more external than visiting my garden and the realms accessible from there to find Coyote.

My heart spasmed again and I got out of the car, hoping that moving and taking deliberate deep breaths would help me get through the impulse to burst into tears.

My reflection, highlighted by a streetlamp in a night-dark window, caught my eye before I got to the main entrance. Light bounced around me, warping and weaving in smooth glass, like I’d been stretched out of shape. I stopped, watching my distorted self. Disappearing had come from far within me back in January, anger and desperation pushing me to use my power for something other than healing. Choosing to use it in a different way.

Choice. My reflection’s lips parted with the word, though I didn’t say it out loud. I felt out of focus, staring at a corner of glass, listening to a running patter that went on in the back of my mind: c’mon, baby, you can do it. This is what the magic’s there for, right? Shamanism’s about choosing different paths, so you just have to choose to embrace it, Joanne. Choose to use it. You know you can do it . I knew the cajoling rhythm: it was what I used with Petite when I needed just a little more out of her. I honestly couldn’t remember ever using it on myself to encourage a little more out of the gifts I’d been granted, much less encouraging the power itself. I’d paid for that, too, and so had others. Without really thinking about it, I walked forward to put my fingertips against my reflection’s, looking at myself without seeing.

For two weeks I’d been running helter-skelter, looking for answers and quick fixes and a crash course in using the powers that had grown up inside me. I’d drummed and gone in and out of my body until it was halfway natural, and I’d faced up to being stuck with magical talent. All of a sudden I wasn’t sure that facing up was the same as accepting.

An evil spirit had told me that I might very well have to struggle every single day to accept what I was and what I could do. I’d let myself forget about that, because, hey, evil spirits. Standing there staring through my reflection in the dark, I wondered if the message had been right, even if the bearer had used it to confound me. I could not imagine there’d come a day when I was happy or comfortable being a shaman. The idea that my natural skepticism would eventually give up the fight seemed ludicrous.

It also seemed inevitable. How long could I keep not quite believing in my own gifts? How long was I going to wince when somebody like Mark wanted to know about them? I wasn’t even letting him judge for himself whether I was nuts or not. I was doing the job for him, putting it out there so he couldn’t reject me first.

That was uncomfortably like another one of those introspective thoughts I never enjoyed having. I finally focused on my reflection, my eyes dark in the overhead lights. Like it or not, this was who and what I was. I said, “Shit,” under my breath, very quietly, and the black-haired woman in the window looked about as unhappy as I felt.

Conviction, a grim dark feeling of knowing I could pull this off, was right there, waiting for me to sink into it again. I’d done it before, more than once, pulling belief around me like a cloak to be shed when the crisis had passed. I didn’t exactly feel guilty about dropping it when the moment was gone, but I was getting tired of it. I just didn’t know how to stop. I closed my eyes, prickles of weariness stinging the inside of my nose like a warning of tears. The power behind my sternum waited, so calm and patient it felt like mockery. For the first time I could remember I just stood there, paying attention to what it felt like. It was cool and still, mostly centered in my diaphragm, but if I concentrated I felt it welling up higher, running through my veins like blood, as if it was a part of me. If I called up the second sight and looked at my skin, I thought I’d be able to see it, silver and blue and flowing inside me. It wasn’t conscious, but I could be subsumed by it, giving myself over to its strange and scary potential.

The idea terrified me. I wanted to be in control, rational and intelligent and logical, not at the mercy of a healing magic sufficiently greater than myself that I couldn’t even recognize what to do with it half the time.

I also wanted to go in and visit Billy. I opened my eyes again and whispered, “Okay. I’m trying this your way,” to my reflection. “You can do it. It’s who you are. You taught Coyote, remember? Just let yourself…go.”

Feather-soft warmth enveloped me. For an instant I thought I saw a white ghost of wings in the reflection, making a shelter that fell around my shoulders. Inside that hollow place of safety, I felt as though I slid inside myself, a cool drink of water sliding down my insides. It brought the Sight with it, the world visible in two realities for a few seconds, one ordinary and night-dark, the other neon brilliant and vibrating with life. Then the second one settled out, leaving me with whispers of encouragement reverberating through my mind and echoing in the power centered within me. I did my best to formulate a please without making the word, afraid something as mundane as language would screw my attempts up for good, and magic responded.

It burgeoned out of me, pushing out in bubbles and bursts of pleasure at being used, and slithered over my skin like a coat of thick paint. It started with my chest and ran downward, distorting even my own vision so that light bent and I seemed to be looking through myself. It ran over my fingertips and touched the glass, then splashed back up my arm to my throat and face. The last thing I saw was my eyes, oddly gold in the darkness, and then my reflection wasn’t there at all.

Absolute sheer panic erupted in my stomach, cramping it and making cold sweat stand out all over my body as I stared at where I ought to be reflected. I clenched my teeth and breathed in and out like a Lamaze mother, half convinced that if I couldn’t see my reflection, I wasn’t there. I wondered if vampires felt that way, then had to remind myself severely that there was no such thing.

God on high, how I hoped there was no such thing.

The thought seemed to be a source of amusement to the power hiding me from myself. I ground my teeth and willed myself to take a few steps backward, seeing if the magic would hold. To my complete fascination, moving made me visible, but only just: if I didn’t know where to look, I wouldn’t see me. I’d seen news stories about technology that did what I seemed to be doing, projecting images of what was around me over where I was. The tech I’d read about only worked from one direction, but as I peered over my own shoulder, it appeared that magic was a more effective invisibility cloak than technology. A very tiny pop of glee burst through me. There was no actual crisis and I’d talked myself into doing something pretty dramatic with my power. I actually whispered “Thank you” to myself, and headed for the hospital doors.

It was then that it occurred to me to wonder if the hospital’s sliding glass doors were triggered by weight or motion. The question kept me paralyzed for several long seconds as I stared at the doors a few yards ahead. Then someone exited and I made a mad dash inside, never knowing which it might’ve been.

A noseful of sharp sweet hospital smell made me sneeze so explosively I staggered to the lobby chairs, leaning on one while tears ran down my face and I sneezed again. More people than I’d hoped were about at that hour. Every single one of them stared around in confusion at the sneezes evidently coming out of nowhere. I got myself under control and snuffled my way to the elevators, still wiping at my eyes and nose. I couldn’t remember Harry Potter ever having this sort of problem while he was running around in his invisibility cloak. I was going to have to speak to the management.