C.E. Murphy - Thunderbird Falls

“Look, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude. The truth is, no, I’ve never wanted to live in a world with magic. I like my world to make sense. I hate this mucking with magic thing.”

Faye whirled on me, eyes bright with emotion. “But you’re really powerful, Joanne! How can you say that? We all felt it, the power you command. You could change the world.”

“I know.” I looked down at her, searching for words. “Look, you ever notice how in movies or TV the one guy who gets the phenomenal cosmic power is the one guy who doesn’t want it? Maybe the universe sets itself up that way as a fail-safe. Maybe that’s why I ended up with all this power, instead of somebody who’d been pursuing it her whole life.”

Faye’s mouth tightened into a thin line. Great, I’d done it again. “Faye, I wasn’t trying to be insulting—”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said flatly. “You’re a part of the coven now. We’ll help guide you into your powers, and when Virissong has returned to this world you’ll see that it’s better the way that we’re trying to make it. Come on. We’re going to be late.” She turned and stalked off again, leaving me with nothing to do but walk away or follow.

I followed, feeling oddly abandoned. Tromping around parks preparing for coven meetings wasn’t my usual evening routine, and after the past few days I felt distanced from what I considered my real life. I wanted to hang out with Gary and maybe go see a movie, or go drink beer with some of the guys from the shop. Normal things, which I didn’t seem to have time for. Failing that, it would be nice to fit in with the coven in some fashion, but here I was, studying the angry swing of Faye’s hair as she marched ahead of me. I couldn’t imagine asking for a shaman’s gifts, or wanting the responsibility of trying to save the world, whereas the coven seemed very into that idea. Cars. I was happy being responsible for the state of someone’s vehicle. Their spirits or souls—that was a calling I wasn’t at all happy with.

Then again, my power animals hadn’t charged me with being comfortable with what I was and what I could do, only to accept, honor, and study. Curiously, that made me feel better.

“Joanne, Faye. There you are.” Marcia’s voice interrupted my train of thought and I blinked. We stood in a copse of trees, blocks of sunlight sliding through the trunks in golden, dust-littered chunks. The coven, looking mobbish and happy, surrounded me, and I hadn’t even noticed approaching them. Garth and Sam were building an entirely illegal fire.

“Nice trick,” I said. “How do you do that, the hiding in plain sight thing?”

“It’s a matter of expectation. I’m surprised you didn’t see us.” Marcia sounded ever so slightly accusing. I shrugged.

“I was thinking about something else. Aren’t we going to get in trouble for that fire?”

“No one will notice,” she promised me.

Another matter of expectation, I presumed. My own personal expectation was that somebody out of her sphere of influence would see smoke rising from the park grounds and call the cops, but I didn’t say that out loud. I sat down a few feet away, watching the fire build. “So I thought this was all going down on Tuesday.”

“Tuesday’s the grand finale.” Garth straightened out of his crouch, dusting his palms against his jean shorts.

“Okay. Tonight’s spirit, Tuesday’s the grand finale. What’s tomorrow?” At least I could be better prepared once.

“Tomorrow we give the spirits body.”

I must’ve looked as bewildered as I felt, because another coven member—a girl whose name I thought was Roxie—said, “So they can walk the earth as they did when the world was young.”

“We can do that without a full coven?” I asked cautiously. Around me, guarded looks were exchanged.

“We think so,” Marcia finally said. “It would be better with the thirteenth, but with you—”

What was I, the Energizer Bunny? “I’ll try,” I said. I felt like I had to. I wanted to do what I could to end the heat wave. Smiles met my words, and I ducked my head to hide a grimace. I hadn’t meant to sign on for changing the face of the earth, spiritually or otherwise. “Did it,” I started, then cut myself off as curious faces turned to me. “Never mind.”

“Did it what?” Roxie, if that was her name, had a headful of tight curls and a cant to her stance that invited openness.

“Did it ever occur to any of you that there might be a reason the spirits don’t walk the earth anymore?” I sighed. “Maybe a good reason?”

Blank expressions met my words. I nodded. “That’s what I thought. Just thought I’d bring it up. Never mind. Carry on.”

“We turned our back on the spirits a long time ago,” Marcia said. “They moved away, to wait for us to recognize our need for them. Now that we have, we’ll share that knowledge with the rest of the world, and balance will be restored.” She sounded utterly confident.

“And you don’t think eleven people making a decision for six billion others might be a little…arrogant?” Man. My mouth just wouldn’t shut up.

“Of course it is.” Marcia smiled, and Faye’s eyebrows drew down into a scowl. “If we’re truly arrogant and this is truly not the correct path, I believe that the Goddess will not allow us to succeed.”

“And if she does, it’s okay?”

Marcia nodded. The Elder stepped up beside her, as confident in his bearing as Marcia was in her words. “I admire your caution, Joanne. It shows wisdom.”

I grinned a bit. “A trait not normally seen in the young?”

He flashed me a smile in return, without nodding. For an unexpected moment, my vision deepened, setting aside the mundane world for the spirit world the coven was so eager to call up. The Elder blazed with power, a V-8 engine stuffed into a body designed for a V-6 at best. He was connected to the earth in an almost literal fashion, glowing lines of strength flowing from his spine, from his hands and feet, and burying themselves in the ground. When he stepped away from Marcia, it was with a profound sense of centeredness, as if nothing could knock him from his feet unless he permitted it to. The earth itself held him in its grasp, sure as the earth was in the sun’s thrall. Seen this way, he was gorgeous, serene colors of confidence connecting him to the world.

At least, I hoped they were serene colors of confidence. My vision clung to the inverted, and his power lines were weirdly spiked, black centers with glowing outsides that filtered from one shade to another. He felt honest and true, but my eyes couldn’t prove it.

Faye had real power as well, glowing a horrible lime-green against the black circle of the setting sun. I thought it might be sunlight yellow against the genuine gold of the sunset, if my vision’d been behaving. Garth, to my surprise, spiked with power, too, his a murky brown that I thought might really be green. My head was beginning to pound, but I didn’t dare blink as I looked from one coven member to another.

The others were duller, even the Father, their magic buoyed by their faith in the Goddess more than their own ability to command power. They were, I thought, what the strength of the coven needed: support. I blinked away from them toward Marcia, wanting a read on the final living member of the six named positions in the coven. She stepped into a shaft of sunlight as I looked her way, and inverted color inverted again, flaring from black into gold. Tears sprang to my eyes from the brilliance. By the time I’d blinked them away again, I’d lost the sight, and Marcia was smiling down at me. “Do you think you’re ready, Joanne?”

I wasn’t ready at all, but I climbed to my feet. “Yeah. Yeah, all right, let’s do this thing.”