C.E. Murphy - Thunderbird Falls

Poor fish , I thought unexpectedly, and for the first time started to worry about things like airplanes and weather patterns when there was a whirlpool in the sky. I reached out with my power, trying to feel the rest of the city, to see if I’d endangered anyone or anything.

The whirlpool nearly crushed me, water slamming in toward my body so fast it stole my breath again. Fresh panic flared, forcing the waterspout to its original dimensions, my focus entirely on it again. I gnawed my lower lip, at least mentally—bird beaks weren’t really meant for gnawing—and gave the power inside me a sort of sideways glance, trying to peek at it. I’d had it drained from an external source before, but I’d kind of hoped it might be like the Energizer Bunny, left to its own.

That was clearly not the case. I was tapping the absolute limit of my own abilities, so much so that I couldn’t even afford to open myself up and let the city hit me with its strength. It was pretty clear that a lapse in concentration would kill me.

The good news was that all manner of creatures were thundering into the lake below me, physical bodies and spirits seeming to separate as they hit the double whirlpool. They raced up and down the swirls, becoming part of the aurora or part of the lake, returning to the things they’d come from. I just needed to hold on long enough for the rain to drive everything home again.

Long enough becomes a strange amount of time, when it’s just you against yourself. Long enough becomes one more second , each one infinite but graspable in conception. I can hold on one more second . Each one became the sum total of my universe, until there was nothing left of me but a shell pressing outward, holding the water back like Moses at the Red Sea. One more second . Meaningless, endless time lost in an aurora so intense that my eyes slowly learned to deny it. All around me there was nothing but static white light, and then that, too, faded away into a sky full of broken clouds and the scent of rain.

I beat the thin air with weary wings, turning a slow wheel on a tip so I could cock one eye at the rip in the sky. It was all but gone now, last vestiges of what I hoped was victory. The lake, far below me once again, was almost settled, a few choppy waves rippling its surface. I heaved a sigh and folded my wings, plunging toward the white-capped lake. It was over.

Slamming into my own body at two hundred miles an hour drove me beneath the surface, so deep I wondered if I’d be able to make it back up again. There was no somersault sensation this time, just a good old-fashioned kick to the gut as I sank into the water. My lungs hurt. My ribs hurt. Golden fire burned into my breastbone, doing something to replenish the worn-out power I carried within me, but not doing a damned thing for the lack of air in my system. I was too tired to panic. Hell, I was too tired to kick toward the surface. Maybe I could survive long enough to bobble that way with whatever little air was still left in my lungs.

Soft gold power drew me upward, exiting my chest as it had done before, but without taking my sense of body with it. One last spirit to go home , I thought hazily. The tear in the sky had to still be there, so the thunderbird could return to the Upper World.

Two spirits , someone inside my own head corrected me. Nakaytah’s voice, oddly familiar in my own mind. I exhaled, somewhat foolishly, all the stress leaving my system as I finally recognized who had spoken through my mouth when I’d named Virissong properly.

I hoarded his name for all this time , Nakaytah said. Only a shaman speaking it could drive Amhuluk and Idlirvirissong back into the Lower World .

I wished I had some air to breathe, but I smiled a little anyway. Drowning turned out to be a surprisingly pleasant way to go after all. I was going to have to apologize to—well, somebody—for my sarcastic doubting earlier. You’re the Wakinyan’s host, too, you know ? I asked her. Your name is a part of it, too, now. It can’t be banished unless the Enemy knows to call your name, too .

Nor released , she agreed, and because I could take a hint, I drew in a lungful of water and whispered, “Goodbye, Nakaytah Wakinyan.”

I like to think I was the only one who saw the golden ghost of a thunderbird rise upward from my chest and speed into the sky like a star falling in reverse.

Eventually it struck me that being dead was a great deal like floating in a giant swimming pool, my chest rising and falling just like I was still alive and breathing. My eyelids were so heavy I had to lift my eyebrows to get them far enough open to see. A handful of fuzzy bright stars came into sight, and I began to think I probably wasn’t dead after all. I’d lost my contacts in the lake water, but on a scale of one to ten, with ten being dead, losing my contacts was probably somewhere around a negative fourteen in matters of consequence.

The lake water was still incredibly warm from the heat wave, though the air itself seemed to have cooled. I drifted for probably half the night before it occurred to me that I could swim to shore. Getting there took a long time, and once I crawled onto the beach I didn’t want to do anything else. I sat there until the sun rose, like I was waiting for something.

And I was. A gray shape in the water became recognizable as morning sunlight began to pick its way across the lake’s surface. I got up and walked into the water again, striking out in a swim when the bottom fell away, and brought Colin’s body back to shore.

Wednesday, June 22, 8:25 a. m.

I must have slept, because the next thing I remembered was Billy’s hand on my shoulder as he said, “It’s all right, Joanie. We’ve got him.”

The sun was higher in the sky, and the entire coven, including Melinda, was there. Billy wasn’t the only police officer, and someone had already called an ambulance. I didn’t want to look at any of them, but I couldn’t look away from Garth. He looked older and much more haggard, bags under his eyes that spoke both of sorrow and exhaustion.

But the worst of it was what he said. He met my eyes, then looked away, watching them take his brother’s body to the ambulance, and echoed Colin’s opinion: “It beats the cancer ward.”

Knots twisted in my stomach, until I couldn’t tell if I wanted or dreaded forgiveness. But I still had to say I was sorry. I’d fucked up so badly. “Garth,” I whispered.

“Don’t.” His answer snapped out, hard enough to be a blow. I flinched and closed my eyes, glad for the pain. “Don’t,” he said again. Controlled emotion bled through his voice, anger and despair. “Just…don’t.”

I lowered my chin to my chest and pressed my lips together, nodding. I felt Billy’s hand on my shoulder again, then heard him say, “C’mon, let’s get her to the hospital, too.”

“I’m fine,” I said very quietly. I was not fine. Two people had died because I’d screwed up, and a third almost had. I wasn’t sure I could face Gary again. I couldn’t bear the idea of facing Morrison. And Coyote might have abandoned me for good, which I couldn’t blame him for.

All of which was why I got to my feet and went with Billy to the hospital. I didn’t care if anybody else might be able to forgive me. I was not going to let myself off the hook.

The radio on the drive over said the heat wave had broken, that a cooler front was moving in. It coincided with the end of the global warming symposium, a fact which the commentator clearly thought had meaning, because he repeated it twice with a sort of nudge-nudge-wink-wink delivery. In more local news, there was already a petition to the city to leave the new Lake Washington waterfall in place. They were calling it Thunderbird Falls. The battle over the lake hadn’t gone unnoticed.