“Only you would think it’s the good stuff.” I squished farther into the couch and, between bites of crackers and meat, told him about my day. Six months ago Gary’d thought I was a hundred percent insane when I climbed in his cab in search of a woman I’d seen from an airplane. By the end of that same morning I’d come back from the dead and he was determined to stick with me on the logic that I was the most interesting thing that’d happened to him in years. Things I could barely handle, like the very idea of the power that’d awakened inside me, he took in stride, shrugging off improbability with easy axioms about old dogs needing to learn new tricks, or they’d just up and die. By that standard, I suspected I’d been dead for half my life already.
“You think she’s right?” Gary asked, bushy eyebrows elevated as I finished. “About the heat wave being somethin’ you did?”
“Gary, if I thought I could affect global weather patterns, I would go home and hide under the bed for the rest of my life.” I stared gloomily at the pasta salad, my appetite suddenly gone. Gary noticed and harrumphed.
“So you think she’s right.”
I sighed and sank a few inches farther into the couch. The quilt slid down over my shoulder, blocking most of my view of Gary. I felt like a Kilroy, peeking over it at him. “So what do I do?”
Gary gave me an incredulous look that made me want to pull the quilt all the way up so it covered me entirely. “You fix it, Jo. You go listen to this dame and you learn what you gotta do to fix it.”
I pushed the quilt back up over the arm of the couch and reached for my salad again, picking at it without enthusiasm. “I hate it when you’re right.”
Gary beamed. “You got a lotta hate going on, then, darlin’. No point in bein’ an old dog if you can’t be right.”
A wheeze of a laugh erupted up through my throat, quick jolts that were more like a cough than laughter, but a grin spread across my face. “Yeah, yeah yeah. All right, fine. Be that way. I’ll show you.”
“You will?”
“Yeah.” I got up from the couch, heading for the kitchen again. “I’m going to eat all your ice cream. So there.”
“What makes you think I’ve got any?”
“You’ve always got ice cream.” I pulled open the freezer and took out a carton. “Gary! It’s rocky road. You know I don’t like rocky road!”
I heard him kick the footrest up on his chair, and when I looked over my shoulder he had his arms folded behind his head, expression smug as a cat’s. “Now who showed who? Get me a bowl, wouldya? And if you dump it on my head like you’re thinkin’ about,” he added a minute later as I came out with his bowl of ice cream, “I won’t tell you where that raspberry-chocolate stuff you like is hidden.”
I stopped with the bowl tilted at a precarious angle and stared down at him. He grinned up at me genially. “Youth and good looks are no match for old age and treachery, doll. Who wins?”
“You do, you old goat.”
Gary’s grin expanded exponentially. “Garage freezer.”
I went out, trying not to laugh as I grumbled dire imprecations loudly enough for him to hear me. Gary’s chortles followed me all the way into the garage.
CHAPTER 7
Friday, June 17, 5:58 a.m.
6:00 a.m. two mornings in a row was more than any civilized person should have to bear. Or me, for that matter. I sat at the edge of my garden’s pond, not looking behind me. I could feel Judy, ten steps away, standing in the middle of the very short lawn. The grass looked, if anything, worse than it had the day before. Clouds hung thick and low over the cliffs that made up the northern boundary of the garden, full of the promise of rain. I felt like that myself, on the edge of overflowing with tears. It bothered me that I still felt that fragile after spending the evening at Gary’s and eating an entire pint of chocolate-raspberry swirl ice cream.
Judy sat down beside me on the pond shore, close enough that I could feel the warmth of her skin next to mine. I leaned away semiconsciously, the clouds above darkening with displeasure. I might need a teacher, but that didn’t mean she had to come barging into my personal space.
“Where does the power come from?” she asked in a light, lilting tone. It reminded me of my neighbor’s cat, which habitually sat beside the sink and stared at the faucet while she washed dishes. When she turned the water off, he would thrust his head beneath the faucet, as if trying to figure out where the water came from.
“Everywhere,” I said, able to answer Judy, if not the cat. “Every living thing carries power within itself. A shaman is a conduit, a focus, for that power. We can use what’s given to us to affect changes. To heal. That’s what we’re supposed to do, is heal.”
“At least you’ve learned something.” She didn’t sound particularly pleased.
“Go me.” I waved an imaginary flag. Judy’s gaze slid sideways toward me, then away again.
“Asking you what your spirit animals are would be rude,” Judy said. The implication that I should tell her anyway was clear, but instead I scowled at the water and shrugged.
“Haven’t got any.” I glanced at Judy, whose stare all but bore a hole into my head.
“What?”
“You have no spirit animals? You’ve never done a quest for one?” Her expression was indecipherable.
“I’ve done a couple. Nothing came to me, or whatever’s supposed to happen.” It irritated me that my halfhearted attempts to summon a spirit animal felt like failures. The truth was I wanted my cake and to eat it, too. I didn’t want to admit any of this shamanic nonsense was real, but I also wanted to be able to snap my fingers and make it so. I was pretty sure I’d thwarted my own questing experiments with the mental equivalent of concrete bunkers of disbelief.
“Is this really so hard for you to resolve?” Judy asked. “You’ve been a part of these other realities. Why do you reject them so fiercely?”
“No sense in being Irish if you can’t be thick,” I muttered. It was a cop-out answer, but it made Judy’s mouth quirk.
“Maybe we can wear some of that thickness away. I can guide your search for spirit animals, if you think it might help.”
I mumbled so incoherently even I didn’t know what I was trying to say. Judy’s smile broadened. “I’ll take that as a yes.” She opened her hands, a skin drum appearing in them. “I’ll drum us under,” she said. “Are you ready?”
It was different.
The drumbeat rang in my blood, tasting like copper. I ran up a mountainside, nimble as a goat, leaping from one stone to another without hesitation or fear. The sky above was pale, washed-out blue, so thin a sparkle of stars shone through it.
To the west I saw a glint in the sky, gold sheering through the paleness like godslight.
The air was rarefied, burning my lungs as I swallowed down deep breaths. I crossed some unseeable barrier as I climbed, and snow began gleaming in cold soft spots around me. I kicked it up in puffs and slid through it as I scrambled higher.
The shadow of a bird passed over me, blue against the snow. I squinted up into the sky, but the bird was gone again.
I couldn’t see or feel Judy anywhere, and wondered if she’d managed to come on this journey with me at all. My hands were hot, excitement pounding through them. I touched the frozen ground as I clambered upward, leaving steaming prints deep in the snow.
A sharp, almost sheer cliff face rose up in front of me. I dug my hands into the snow, pulling myself up, my breath whisked away in little clouds of heat. Ice stung my palms and drops of sweat rolled out of my hair and into my eyes. I lost track of time, inching up the cliff. My arms burned, fingers splaying wide in search of handholds, and then I folded my hand over a distinct edge. Panting with triumph, I swung my leg up and hauled myself onto the top of the mountain. I stayed on my hands and knees, head hanging down while I wheezed, then pushed myself to my feet, bracing myself on my thighs.