C.E. Murphy - Thunderbird Falls

“Can’t you feel it?” I didn’t know if anyone else could hear me. I wasn’t sure I was speaking out loud, or if my voice was making it through the tight heat that clenched in my throat. “Can’t you feel it coming?” I didn’t know how they could miss the pressure building, the impatience buried beneath the land.

No one answered. I spun in a reckless circle, coming too close to the fire. It ripped my breath away, leaving my lungs empty and burning, too. Faye, across the circle, met my eyes. Her eyes were back to normal, but her gaze was sharp and intense, like it could flay the burning flesh from my bones. “You feel it,” I panted at her. She tensed and looked away, gaze skittering to the fire. I couldn’t tell if it was denial or encouragement. I swung to face the fire myself, and shrugged. My tank top scraped my skin and I found myself savoring the rough, painful feeling. It was the last time I’d ever feel it. I knew what the demanding earth beneath my feet wanted. I knew what the burning in my skin wanted. And really, I didn’t think I could hurt anymore than I did already. It might even be peaceful. I was ridiculously glad I’d met Judy and had learned enough in a few short days to understand what was going on, and what I needed to do.

I took one last look around at the coven and shrugged again. “Hell with it.” My voice was breathy and light, like flame itself.

I walked into the fire and let it burn.

Exultation boiled through me, peeling the skin from my flesh. The fire gobbled its way inside me, meeting up with the heat I’d taken into myself. Together they tangled and tore me apart from the cellular level out, exploding my bones and my brain and leaving me in a floating haze of pain and delight. Breathing didn’t seem to hurt anymore. I had a vague sense of wrongness about that, like there ought to be pain in not breathing, but it swept over me like a runner’s high. The fire had forced me over a threshold: pain was good. Agony was a decadent ending to the build of heat inside me. It ached through my fingertips and curled my feet, and I tried to breathe it in more deeply, grateful for it.

I couldn’t hear the coven anymore; even the popping fire had faded into a song that rang high and sweet against my eardrums. It sounded like freedom, like bells calling everyone home. The stinging purity brought tears to my eyes, like liquid goose bumps, involuntary and a little startling. They heralded change and acknowledged me as the conduit. I tilted my head back, lifting my arms to embrace the old world and the ancient creatures that had roamed it. I invited them through me, the Mother, bound by blood and fire to the earth.

It was the utter opposite of the thunderbird. Wolves and bears, wild-eyed things I’d never dreamed of in my nightmares and gentle monsters with the light of hope in their souls fed themselves to me a hundred at a time. Some were malignant and dark, tasting of ash and tar. They came hand in wing with lighthearted, benign creatures that left the scent of clean air and roses in my throat. Some were tricky, and stuck like molasses, only to be washed down by the cool water and straight-forward dedication of their counterparts. I couldn’t name most of them even if I’d wanted to, but they fed me and grew fat on me, and through me were born out into the world.

I tore apart with the birth of a thousand creatures, feeling the earth tear with me. I didn’t think I cried out loud, but I didn’t need to: the earth itself shrieked and rumbled with the influx of things from the otherworld. I burned, no longer inside my skin, but in my core, spinning eternally, creating life. Time stretched and snapped and twisted until it was meaningless. I had no sense of age, no sense of purpose; I simply was, and would be until I ended. Nothing could change me, not the life I brought forth nor the death that inevitably cycled with it. I drifted in that complacency, warmed by my core and no longer worried about anything. The world went on. It always would. Birthing pains faded away. I felt nothing, no conscious thought or fear to disrupt me. I spun, bound to my own heat and nothing more.

Something tickled inside my ear.

I ignored it, then swatted at it, writhing with irritation. The tickle turned into a stab of pain and I clawed at it, feeling like I was trying to scrape a needle from my eardrum. The pain grew, wriggling and pricking and poking, until it became a fierce, furious shriek, like a raptor’s call. Raptors don’t hunt at night , I thought peevishly. The idea bounced through me, shocking in that it was made of words and images. I clutched my head, an ache pounding through my temples and reminding me of myself. Reminding me of consciousness and of choice, rather than the act of simply being.

Faye’s voice cut through the screeching birdcall in my head, whispering to me. I could feel the power of the coven behind her, lending her the strength necessary to work through the layers of earth that held me away from them. “Joanne, don’t forget us. Remember our purpose. We can’t lose you. Without you we’ll fail and the world will die with us.” Her voice was deeper than usual, older than I remembered it sounding, like it carried the weight of more than one speaker. It reverberated through the earth, making my skin itch and shudder as if I were a horse trying to dislodge a fly.

Remember . I struggled after Faye’s words, trying to make sense of them. Remember what? Remember—

Remember Gary . Colin. Coyote . Remember the heat wave burning Seattle, spreading out to the world. Remember who I am (Joanne Walker) , a back part of my mind said. A part further back, noisily, said, Remember the Alamo ! and beneath that whispered another name to me, so hidden and soft that I couldn’t let myself even think it, but I knew what it was. Who it was. Who I was.

I uncurled with a gasp, struggling back to my feet, grasping at an awareness of things like up and down and hot and cold. The earth shouted, ripping apart, as if protesting my actions and my free will.

The fire fell away from around my feet. I hung suspended in the air, my bones shaking and twisting and roaring disapproval. The coven disappeared, out of my inverted sight and out of my ability to sense them, leaving me alone with nothing except stars in the night sky and the treetops I was surrounded by.

A tremendous release of power hit me in the gut with the intensity of a waterfall. It knocked me ass over teakettle, endless roaring filling my ears. I slammed upside-down into one of the trees, crunching into branches with enough force to break them. I tumbled down, catching my shoulder on another branch and flipping right-side up again in time for a solid Y in the tree to catch me in the crotch and hold me. Disorientation smashed over me, leaving my mind blank of anything except an appreciation for excruciating pain. I hadn’t done that since I was a kid, and I didn’t miss it one bit at all. Poor men. Getting caught in the crotch made me wheeze and want to vomit. I couldn’t and didn’t much want to imagine what getting kicked in the nuts felt like.

Then a giant ripped the tree I was in out of the ground and flung it to the earth with a resounding, wet crash, and I stopped caring about anything for a while.

Tuesday, June 21, 5:45 a.m.

I was cold. Goose bumps were all over my skin, and my tank top was clammy and sticky against my back. I kept shivering.

After the last couple of days of heat, and the episode with the fire, I was surprised I could even be cold anymore. I lay there thinking about it, and wondering if I was broken anywhere or if I was just cold. There seemed to be a tree lying partly on top of me, which overall struck me as somewhat peculiar. I remembered being in the tree, but without opening my eyes—which I didn’t much want to do—it felt like I was now lying in mud.