“Hnnng,” I said again, and tried to shake my head. Someone drove an icepick into my skull behind my left ear.
“Good.” He left me alone with the explosions of pain. Spirit guides, I decided, around shards of shrapnel slicing through my skull, were a pain in the ass.
I’d been through all this before. A little visualization, and I’d heal right up. Just a little concentration.
Too bad I couldn’t concentrate with Paul Bunyan hammering my head in. Brilliant spots of light burst into being and faded out again in random patterns, whether I had my eyes opened or closed. They slid by like a star scape, while I wondered if I was going somewhere or if I’d damaged my occipital lobe somehow. I’d hit the back of my head, so it didn’t seem likely, but stranger things have happened. A lot of stranger things had happened recently, in fact, so who was I to dismiss the theory out of hand?
One of the spots faded in and slid closer, growing progressively larger and resolving slowly into a more solid image. “And behold Death, who comes on a pale horse,” I mumbled. The rider drew to a stop before me, smiling his wicked, devastating smile.
“I have always liked that,” he admitted. Stars kept flooding by, but a dais of blackness formed under us, supporting us in the journey through the cosmos.
“You look better.” I closed my eyes. Interestingly, Cernunnos’s image didn’t disappear. Thwarted, I opened my eyes again. It was less disconcerting that way.
“You’re not so easily rid of me as all of that,” he chided. I didn’t want to, but I smiled.
“I should be so lucky. Where are we?”
“Your world.” Cernunnos lifted one hand to make a loose fist of it. “And mine.” He made a fist of his other hand, and placed one above the other so they brushed occasionally with the small motion of his breathing. He expanded that distance a little, so I could see it was there, and said, “We are here.”
“Just a hunch,” I said, and pointed at the fist he’d called my world, “but don’t I want to be there?”
“We both do,” the ancient god replied. He swung down off the liquid silver stallion and walked to the edge of the ebony dais.
“Why? I mean, I know why I want to be there. Why do you?” I watched him crouch and trail his fingers off the side of the dais. Ripples spilled back, sending wavers through the rushing stars. “Am I dead?” I asked, suddenly curious. “This looks kind of like where I met the shamans.”
“You are not dead yet.” Cernunnos hit the surface of space with the palm of his hand. Another shock of waves splattered the dais with a few drops of midnight. “Nor do I think that you are at the moment dying, though certainly your mortal body is injured.”
“You know, I wasn’t a reckless kid,” I said. “This really isn’t like me. Getting hurt all the time.”
“Hurt is not something only the physical body feels, little shaman. There is a darkness within you. You hide it well, but it was torn open in our first encounter. Even now I see its mark on you.” The god flickered his fingers, a casual gesture.
The spiderweb I’d imposed on myself as a shattered windshield flared into physical lines, a hole that ran all the way through my belly. It felt like a gunshot wound with a concussion of broken glass around it. It was worst around the hole, fogged lines held together by false plasticity. They spread out, down through my groin and into my thighs and shins, to the bottoms of my feet, and up through my breasts and shoulders and out my fingertips. I was glad I couldn’t see the dark striations on my face.
It was the only thing at all that I was glad for. Pain lanced through me, memories creeping through the outlets he’d colored into my body.
I was only fifteen, and very, very naive. Fifteen and convinced it couldn’t happen to me. Just like every other girl thinks. Just like every girl who was ever wrong.
First Boy. That’s how I thought of him, with capital letters. The First Boy who’d noticed me. The First Boy I ever fell in love with. The First Boy, who split for his mother’s people in Canada when I got pregnant.
The babies came four weeks early. The little girl, who was so very tiny, was born second. She held on to her brother’s hand with all her dying strength for the few minutes that she lived.
First death.
I called her Ayita, which meant “first to dance” in Cherokee, and named the boy Aidan even though I knew his adoptive parents would probably change his name. He was almost twelve years old now and I had never seen him beyond those first few minutes. It was better that way, but it didn’t stop me from wondering, sometimes, somewhere deep and private in myself where I didn’t let other people get close.
I was never, ever going to make a mistake like that again.
Cernunnos tipped his head to the side, like a bird studying a worm. “I can take that pain away, little shaman.” He smiled and stepped closer, until I could see nothing but his deep eyes and the wealth of power he could drown me in. He promised peace, and escape from the aching emptiness that boiled cold through my blood.
I took it.
* * *
They say drowning is an easy death. Not the panic, but the last moments, as your lungs fill with water and you stop struggling in face of the inevitable. That it’s not so bad, then. That it’s warm and comforting, as from water we are born, and so in drowning we return to water in death.
I’d like to know how the hell they know that.
Still, the warmth of Cernunnos’s power was as great a refuge as I’d ever known. Green god, horned god, my god. I rode beside him, neither queen nor consort, but Rider of the Wild Hunt. The purpose of chaos sang in my blood, a raw sound that heeded no boundaries. I was wrapped in it, and gave myself up to it.
“Little shaman,” Cernunnos said. I smiled at the name he’d always called me by, endless years of memory coloring the words with affection. “Whither wilt thou lead us?”
“To Babylon and back again, by candlelight.” The nursery rhyme popped to my lips unexpectedly.
One elegant pale eyebrow arched. “Then lead us to this land of Babyl, little shaman, and together we shall see if this curse that holds us might be undone.”
Curse? a very faint part of my mind asked, but the mare leaped under me, and ran with a purpose unlike anything I’d ever known. I crouched low over her neck, shouting out the glee of speed into the whipping wind. I barely guided her, my hands buried in her mane and my touch on the reins incidental. The slightest movement of my body, leaning to the left or right, sent her into long graceful curves. Behind us the Hunt ran, with Cernunnos himself at my left flank.
Is this not as it is meant to be? he demanded, silent, the question echoing in the bones of my skull. Tell me of your pain now, little shaman.
My pain. I remembered it, distantly. I reached for it, and found the warm green of Cernunnos’s power instead. It reacted to my touch like it was the caress of a lover, filling me, pure and raw and hungry. I forgot old pain in pursuit of new pleasure. Cernunnos chuckled, low and approving, a sound that somehow carried through the chilly blackness of the star field. I threw a brilliant smile back over my shoulder, and urged the mare on, leading the Hunt.
Something was important about where I rode. The thought was fleeting, and Cernunnos curled around it. Of course it is important, little shaman, he murmured reassuringly. You guide us in our eternal duty.
“Is that it?” I asked. The task seemed ever so slightly alien, but I couldn’t understand why. My thoughts felt thick and slow: it was the inability to speak to Cernunnos’s mind. Had I known the trick of mind-speech? Had I forgotten it?
Only will it, and it will be so, Cernunnos said. His power flowed around me, a safety net. I glanced over my shoulder. The rest of the host leaned into their horses, keeping pace. To a man they watched me, dusky eyes drinking me down.