C.E. Murphy - Coyote Dreams

“The shamans weren’t my fault,” I heard myself whisper, voice scratchy, as if the cold pressure from my mother’s necklace had scraped my vocal box into disuse. “I probably could’ve done better, but I did my best. And I saved Suzanne Quinley.” I felt a weak, miserable smile tweak my mouth. “That’s got to count for something. I saved Gary.”

A flash of warmth spilled through me at that, make me break out with a hoarse laugh. “I even saved myself. At least, I’m working on it.” I could feel so much of the angry, resentful child I’d been still knotted up inside me, her world taken away from her in the moment I’d reached back through time to borrow the training she’d worked so hard to master. A shattershot image of a spider-webbed windshield flashed through my vision and I laughed again, another coarse sound. “I’m out of balance right now,” I admitted. “More people dead because of me than alive. But I’m working on it. And I’m not the one pulling life force from others to stay awake. That’s what you’re doing, isn’t it, Begochidi?”

I knotted my fingers around the necklace, hanging on to it to keep my thoughts in order, and advanced a step toward the god’s avatar who stood before me. “You woke up without meaning to and took strength from the first people you could reach. The Dine. Your people. But you’re supposed to save them, not put them all to sleep forever, so you had to let them wake them up again, didn’t you? They woke up and started getting ready for the end of the world, while you looked for the strength to wake all the way up yourself. The poor bastards at the university.”

I reached out, searching for Mark’s memories and dreams in the darkness. “Is that what happened?” I whispered. I could sense excitement in their dreams—daydreams, night dreams; it didn’t matter. Both could be found in this place. I should know. I’d been offered the stuff of daydreams repeatedly in the last few days. I clung to their anticipation, spinning out misty recollection from the recesses of Mark’s mind, so foggy it seemed he didn’t actively recall the day.

They invited everybody in the department down to the lab to watch the first test of their machine. I’d seen photographs of a machine other physicists had build that could teleport a photon from one place to another. I’d retained a critical disappointment that it hadn’t looked like the beam-me-up sort, and felt similarly about the wormhole-maker. It looked more like a 1980s movie laser than a machine that could tear space and time asunder, and when they turned it on, there was little more than a pulse that rippled the air, and then silence.

Terrible silence, as everyone in the lab fell, soundless, to the floor. Everyone, including Mark and Barbara Bragg. The memory/dream faded into unconsciousness, Mark no longer able to provide information about what had happened, and me with no idea how to draw memory out of a god of sleep.

Mark stood very still, a sign I took as hopeful. I’d fought a god and won once. I didn’t want to put money on pulling it off a second time. “Is that what you had to do all the other times, Begochidi? The world’s ended a lot of times before. Did you have to reach out beyond the People for your strength? It shouldn’t be this hard, should it? If it’s really supposed to be the end of the world, shouldn’t you have just woken right up and gone to save your people? You shouldn’t have to fight so hard, should you?”

I inhaled, tasting my own sorrow in the dreamland. “All my friends,” I said quietly. “If you think taking their lives will weaken me, you’re wrong. If that’s why you’re choosing them to take life force from, let me tell you, it’s not going to work. Not any more than me threatening your people with annihilation would keep you from fighting. You’re putting me in a position where I’ve got nothing to lose, Begochidi.”

Mark turned his face away, almost submissive action, and for one bright moment I had hope. There didn’t have to be an end-all, be-all battle. We could work it out with words.

And then something happened in his eyes, something deep and profound that turned them to agate blue, like Barbara’s. The color of a hard desert sky. My jaw set and I let the Sight film over my own vision, looking to See what I suspected.

I hated being wrong, but there were days I hated being right even more.

Mark’s aura was no longer split. The full spectrum of rainbow colors bled out so sharply it hurt to look at, throbbing and pulsing with power. There were no empty razors of blackness between the brilliant shades, nothing suggesting a weakness. Then again, it wasn’t really Mark. It wasn’t even Barbara, and I had no idea what had happened to her, if Begochidi had consolidated his energy to the dreamlands. The image of her collapsed somewhere wasn’t entirely unappealing, though I knew that was petty and nasty and should be scrubbed from my brain. I’d scrub it later.

Assuming there was a later.

Two attacks. One emotional, trying to trap me in a dream, the other intellectual, trying to weigh me down with implacable logic. The lingering burn in my throat felt tied to the dissipated ache in my wrist, the talismans Gary had girded me with reminding me of what they protected. My heart. My head, which was, for all intents and purposes, where I thought of my soul as residing. That left one obvious method of attack.

I snatched Cernunnos’s sword from my hip and flung up my free hand as if I bore a shield, just as Mark gathered his hands in to his chest, then released them in a burst of winged color. Butterflies swarmed over me, parting with such force as they hit my shield and sword that I felt the reverberations up my arm and through my body.

They were a distraction, nothing more. In the instant they cleared I saw that Mark had disappeared, dreamtime swallowing him as if he’d never been. Swallowing him as effectively as he’d absorbed Coyote. My heart lurched, painful missed beat, and I tightened my hand around the rapier’s hilt. It would not do to keep thinking of him as Mark. This was Begochidi I faced, a god wrapped in a sandy-haired man’s form. I lowered my blade and my shield arm, casting out with hyper-natural senses to see if I could locate Begochidi in the darkness.

A rainbow of color hammered down on me, grasping the narrow threads I put out and draining their silver-blue dry. I reeled back, and lifted my sword again. Begochidi’s assault faded away again, as if he couldn’t attack directly unless I provided him with a power line to feed on, or find me by. I hoped so. I thought that meant he wasn’t drawing any more from the people in Seattle who slept beneath his spell.

A net had done nicely to catch the god of the Hunt. It seemed more than a little ironic that it wouldn’t work on a butterfly god. On the other hand, standing here sending out dribbles of power until he sucked all the life force out of me wasn’t exactly the best plan I’d ever come up with. I took a moment to wonder if there was some kind of handbook on how best to fight powerful otherworldly beings, or if I was going to be stuck making the best of it every time I faced one. I was pretty sure I’d be stuck. That seemed excruciatingly unfair.

On the other hand, maybe it meant the powerful otherworldly beings didn’t have any idea how to fight me, either. The thought cheered me, and I found myself doing like I’d seen in the movies, banging my sword against my shield to call my enemy out. It was only then that I noticed I was in fact carrying a shield, that the purple heart Gary had pinned to my breast had become a small round shield, quartered by a cross, clutched in my left hand. I had no idea how to fight with a sword and shield. I was going to have to go back to fencing lessons, and see if Phoebe could teach me.