“Should we all be defined by only one facet of who we are?” she replied. “Would you prefer to only be known as an Indian? Or the driver of one of Angel’s vans? As an abused child? As a recovered alcoholic? Or aren’t you all these things and more?”
Tommy flushed. “How do you know all this?”
“How can she not?” Sunday said, laying a hand on his shoulder. She gave Nuala a small, respectful bow. “I see now that you are a manitou yourself. Far from home, perhaps, but no less venerable because of that.”
Nuala gave a dismissive wave with her hand. “I’m only a housekeeper.”
“And I am an only child,” Sunday replied.
Nuala sighed. “We are all who we are, none of us more important than the other.”
But Tommy’s eyes had gone wide. Miki knew exactly how he was feeling because she was still stumbling over Sunday describing the housekeeper as belonging to the spiritworld.
“Wait a sec’,” she said. “Do you mean—”
“We don’t have time for this,” Zulema said, interrupting.
Nuala nodded. She sat down on a piece of the wall. With the bowl on her lap, she began to caress its perimeter with the stick. Within moments the circular motion woke up a deep, resonant drone that seemed far out of proportion for the size of the bowl. Sunday and Zulema sat on their heels in front of Nuala so that the three of them made up the points of a triangle. Miki and the others stood back, watching.
Sunday took smudgesticks out of her pocket and gave one to her sister. When they lit them, the sweet smell of cedar and sage filled the air. Miki shook her head. Anyone looking at them would think they were getting soaked by the freezing rain that continued to fall a heartbeat away from wherever it was that they were standing, but here they were, untouched by the weather and dry enough to be burning smudgesticks.
Sunday and Zulema began to chant, their voices rising and falling in twinned cadences that played against the thrumming drone that came from the bowl. Nuala remained silent, but her eyes were closed in concentration.
“What’re they saying?” Miki whispered to Tommy.
“I don’t know exactly. Calling on the spirits to help, I’m guessing.”
“We’re not going to see them, are we?” Miki asked. “I mean, they’re not going to actually show up or anything, right?”
Salvador leaned close to catch Tommy’s answer, a worried look in his features.
“I don’t think so…”
“Todo está loco,” Salvador muttered.
Miki didn’t really know any Spanish, but it wasn’t hard to figure out what he’d said. Things were crazy.
“No kidding,” she said.
And then the strangeness factor got cranked up yet another notch.
The chanting suddenly broke off. The hum of the bowl took longer to fade, although Nuala had removed the stick from its rim long moments before. Turning back to look at the wall of the house, Miki and the others were just in time to see a flood of light come spilling through the makeshift wooden barrier that had been built over the hole the Glasduine had made when escaping. It was a dazzling display made up of a thousand different shades of green, veined with blue and gold and amber bands, all of it shimmering and shifting. The light hung there by the wall, a throbbing glow that swelled with each rhythmic pulse until it suddenly sped off across the lawn, disappearing into the trees. In its wake it left behind a pathway of that same green and gold light that undulated from the wall of the house to where it ran into the woods. It was like a ribbon touched by a constant breeze, four feet across. A path of light in which colors glimmered and flared, echoing the heartbeats of those watching.
The three women backed away from it until they were standing near Miki and the others.
“This isn’t right,” Zulema said.
Sunday nodded, turning to Nuala. “Believe me. This is nothing we called up.”
“I know,” the housekeeper said, her voice tired. “It’s easy to see now that it was there all along—invisible until we allowed it to manifest itself. I knew we should have left well enough alone.”
“But what is it?” Miki wanted to know.
She walked up closer to it. The pulsing of the colors woke an odd yearning inside her. They put her in mind of childhood days when she was able to escape the pubs and kitchens where her uncle held court, and her father drank himself senseless. The smell of peat came to her. The rich greens of hills.
“It has something to do with the Glasduine,” Nuala said. “I can feel its presence in that light.”
Miki glanced at her before returning her gaze to the mesmerizing ribbon of light.
“But the Glasduine’s evil,” she said. “Isn’t that what you told us? This doesn’t feel evil at all.”
“No,” Nuala agreed. “It simply is.”
Sunday nodded. “This is the thread connecting the Glasduine to the place from which it was drawn.”
“You mean like some kind of spiritual umbilical cord?” Tommy asked.
“Pretty much,” Zulema told him.
“It almost looks like you could pick it up,” Miki said. “Like… like the fabric they use in those installations that people have done where they run some piece of cloth that’s hundreds and hundreds of yards long over the side of a building, or across a lawn like this. I wonder what it feels like.”
“Don’t!” Nuala and Sunday said simultaneously.
But they were too late. Miki had already stooped down to touch the pulsing ribbon. Her hands went into the light and she was immediately pulled onto it and carried away, tumbling head over heels along the length of the path that the Glasduine had taken after bursting through the wall.
“Oh, shit!” Tommy cried.
He ran forward to try and grab her legs before it took her too far away. Zulema moved to block his way, but she miscalculated and only succeeded in knocking him off-balance. His anus pinwheeled for balance before he fell onto the ribbon as well. The light carried him off, as quickly and smoothly as it had Miki, and then they were both gone.
“We must—” Sunday began.
“Do nothing,” Zulema said, her voice heavy with the loss they were both feeling. “Except finish the task Nancy left us. We’ll follow the path to where it crosses over and close this world to the creature.”
“But…”
“I know. We should have realized that Whiteduck’s prophecies always have a way of fulfilling themselves, no matter how we try to forestall them.”
“But Miki,” Salvador said, staring helplessly at the pulsing ribbon. “And your nephew. What will become of them?”
“We must protect this world from the creature’s return,” Zulema told him. “That is our first priority.”
The Creek sisters left the two of them standing there by the house and followed the ribbon of light into the woods, their backs stooped as though they carried a great weight.
Salvador turned to Nuala. “¿Y bien?” he said. “They said you have some power over the spirits. Won’t you help them?”
Nuala shook her head. “I can’t. I have no power except for that which lets me protect this house in my charge.” She glanced at where the creature had broken through from the sculpting studio. “And you see how effective I have been.”
She collected her singing bowl from where she’d left it, then walked back towards the kitchen door.
“Mayo ellos vaya con Dios,” Salvador said in a low voice.
He made the sign of the cross, then slowly followed the housekeeper inside.
7