The Walker Papers: Raven Calls Part 11

"Joy," she said without missing a beat. "She was here, Joanne. I'm sure of it. She knows what was done here, and it's gladdened her heart."

"Go us." I picked up my coat and mashed it against my mouth while I thought. It smelled faintly of stardust. Don't ask how I knew what stardust smelled like. It just smelled of stardust. Clear and thin and distant and crisp. "Okay. The body is destroyed. That means the spirit's attachment to the world is weaker, but it also means if she was attached to the bones, then the spirit hasn't crossed over. Whatever's on the other side, it ain't there yet." I did my best to sound like Gary, which was a mistake. Fortunately I already had the coat covering half my face and could wipe at tears without being too obvious about it. Not that leather was any good for absorbing tears, but at least they weren't leaking down my face. I had to get him back. I had to do about a million things, all by sunset tonight.

"That's right," Meabh said while I wiped my face and glanced at the sky. Midmorning, if not a little later. We had six or eight hours to stage all the rescues in. I clung to that and turned my attention back to Meabh, who was saying, "He'll have wanted her bound by her bones to this earth for all time. No spirit in his grasp can cross if he holds her bones."

"Okay. Okay. So what do we do next? How do we free her spirit?"

Meabh, font of all knowledge, dried up. I waited, then waited some more, and finally realized she wasn't going to come through with an answer. Desperate, I glanced at Caitriona, but she only shrugged apologetically. I stomped in a small circle, swore, reversed the whole thing, swore again and said, "Okay, fine. Then I'm going to go try to talk to her, because maybe she'll know. I don't know what else to do."

"Talk to who?" Caitriona and Meabh asked with varying degrees of wariness and suspicion.

I spread my hands and sat to sketch a circle around myself. "My mother, who else?"

They exchanged glances, making me feel ganged up on. Meabh was voted spokesperson by silent ballot, and said, in a purely accusational tone, "I thought ye said speaking with the dead wasn't a skill ye had."

"It's not, but apparently her spirit's been tied to her bones all this time, which means if we've shaken her spirit loose at all we've only just done it, so maybe she hasn't gotten that far into the great beyond. If she hasn't, then I've got an inside man for the job."

Raven dove down out of the sky.

Typically, my avian friend was pretty enthusiastic about-well, everything. The slightest opportunity to explore regions unknown was generally greeted by quarking and kloking and an admirable tattoo of wings. This time, though, he landed in a poof of feathers, then tucked his wings around himself and c.o.c.ked his head to give me an unmistakably concerned look. I didn't think of birds as having a lot of emotive capability, but Raven was happy to prove me wrong. Or unhappy, as the case happened to be.

My shoulders slumped. "What? Do you have a better idea? We've gotten off pretty lucky so far, and any day that includes accidental time travel, losing a friend in the annals of history and setting a mountaintop on fire doesn't exactly rise high on my list of lucky days. If Mom can give us any guidance at all, we need it."

He gave a low, drawn-out "quaa-aaa-aaar-k-k-k" of dismay. I slumped further. "Yeah, I know, but like I said, do you have a better idea?"

How I knew his hopeful hop and perky look around meant "We could go look for s.h.i.+ny food!" I don't know, but I was absolutely certain that was his better idea. I chuckled and put my hands out to him. He hopped in, even though his expression said quite clearly that he knew I was a.s.suaging his dashed hopes. "I meant a better idea with regards to how to find Mom before she becomes a hundred-percent banshee, get Gary back and kick the Morrigan's a.s.s, because I promise I'm not going home until I've gotten a piece of that b.i.t.c.h."

What there was of Raven's shoulders drooped. I kissed his head and said, "Yeah, I thought not. So will you guide me, Raven? Can we go into the Dead Zone and see if we can connect with Sheila MacNamarra before the Master takes her for his own?"

He sighed a heartfelt birdy sigh, hopped back out of my hands and stretched his wings until they touched both sides of the power circle. I twisted and touched it at opposite points, and magic rose with soothing, gentle ease to usher Raven and myself into the Dead Zone.

There was a weight on my shoulder. Slight, not like Raven's heft. I turned my head to find myself nose to beak with the ancient, white-winged raven that had been my mother's spirit companion. Raven, my Raven, still in my palms, made a sound of astonishment and hopped onto my other shoulder to peer around my head at the new arrival. White Wings peered the other way, and in no time at all they were playing a game, trying to catch the other out as they ducked back and forth around my head. I swore they were laughing, their rapid-fire kloks sounding like joyful, long-overdue greetings.

Me, I couldn't actually see them. Partly because it was hard to focus on things on my shoulders, but mostly because my eyes p.r.i.c.kled with tears. I hardly had a voice to say, "Hey, Wings," to the white raven. "That's what aine was doing. She gave you to me before she burned the bones. I am so glad to meet you."

Wings stopped playing hide-and-seek in my hair and pressed his head against my cheek. He didn't even seem to mind that doing so spilled the tears from my eyes and made wet spots on top of his white head. Raven, a little jealous, pressed against me from the other side, and I put my hands up to cover both of them in a gentle embrace. "I have never been so glad to see anybody as I am to see you two right now. Wings, we've got to look for my mother. Raven's amazing at guiding me through the Dead Zone, but you know her better than anybody, huh? With both of you helping I can't go wrong, can I?"

I probably could, but there was no need to say that to them. Neither was willing to leave my shoulders, but they both hopped on them, evidently happy with the arrangement. My vision finally cleared enough to see, and for a moment I was too astonished to do anything but look.

I was accustomed to the Dead Zone being a black expanse a hairsbreadth smaller than infinity. It was featureless, unnavigable and generally scary in the sense of being implacably large to my infinitesimal smallness, which smallness I had no doubt the Dead Zone could crush like a bug at its faintest whim. It didn't help that I had occasionally met giant murderous snakes and the occasional ferryman while here, neither of which was rea.s.suring.

Raven's presence made the whole place just slightly less dreadful. Just slightly, but sometimes that was enough. With him on my shoulder, I got a sense of landscape, though it changed with every breath. With him, I could see the rivers that carried the dead, the reapers that collected souls, takers-of-the-dead from different cultures all over the world. None of them saw each other, all traveling through the same idea-s.p.a.ce without ever impinging on one another's territory. I was the only one who did that.

Viewed with the help of two ravens, the Dead Zone became navigable. More than that: it became a real landscape, a countryside that misted around the edges but no longer stretched over intimidating distances. No longer threatening, though I had no doubt it remained dangerous. But it had a sense of comfort about it now, a sense of recognition of history that my travails from Seattle hadn't shared. More of a reverence for the dead, less fear and more acceptance, maybe, than I was accustomed to. I still didn't want to wander the green rolling hills, knowing they only tempered the Dead Zone's dangers, but at least I wasn't a mote in a vast nothingness.

I s.h.i.+vered, then exhaled quietly. I had blood ties to the spirit I was looking for this time, and her raven on my shoulder. That ought to help. I hoped. I called up a picture of my mother and said, "You're not the Master's yet," to the darkness. "And G.o.d knows you were the most willful woman I've ever met, so I'm guessing if you want to you can break away from whatever hold he's got on you, and come say hi."

Wings kloked in dismay and I shrugged. "Look, we didn't get along all that brilliantly, okay? I could be all mushy and squishy and sob story, but I don't think she'd even know who I was if I did that. I might as well call it like I see it."

"That," Sheila MacNamarra said a little wryly, "that you got from me."

Chapter Nineteen.

Someday I was going to be cool enough to not shriek and fall over when things like that happened, but today was not that day. My raven dug his claws in, and Wings flew up into the air to go land on Sheila's shoulder as I sat up again clutching my heart. She forgot me for an instant and turned her face against Wings's wing, the small motion replete with joy. They communed a little while, until she finally looked toward me again, the corner of her mouth turning up. "Thank you for bringing him to see me, Siobhan. No," she added without hesitation. "You didn't like that. Joanne, then."

Feeling like I was giving one up for the team, I took a deep breath and said, "Siobhan's all right. I've gotten a little more used to it the past year."

"Is that so." I'd almost never seen my mother smile. It warmed her eyes considerably. I thought she was quite pretty in that clear-complexioned Irish way. It was even clearer now that she was dead, her freckles faded from lack of sunlight, so her dark hair was all the more striking around her pale face. I didn't look like her, but I didn't not, either. That was a revelation, since I'd thought we didn't look anything at all alike.

She'd been studying me while I studied her, and broke the silence. "You'll still prefer Joanne, I think."

"I will. I mean, I do. Yes. But, y'know, whatever works."

"The past year, is it? A year since when, Joanne? Since I died?"

"Since you saved my a.s.s from the Blade." That banshee had had a name. I didn't know why it rated and the others were just nameless banshees, but probably the opportunity to earn a name was not something I wanted for my mother's undead soul. "Look, um, I'm not sure I said thanks for that. Or...a lot of things. So let me just get this out of the way, okay? I understand a lot more than I did then, and I'm really sorry I was such a d.i.c.k. Although to be fair you could've at least tried to explain why you'd brought me to America." That was not exactly high up there in the ranks of graceful apologies. I cringed.

Sheila, however, looked ever so faintly amused. "Would you have listened?"

"No, but it might have seeped through eventually. Once I started learning about all...this." I gestured to the complete and total emptiness around us, which didn't really go very far in impressing a this on me.

"It seems to have seeped through anyway."

I couldn't tell if she was being funny or superior. My lips peeled back from my teeth in one of those telling microexpressions, and she looked away with a sigh. "A warm and loving family we are not, Siobhan MacNamarra. How bad has it gotten, then, that you come seeking me?"

"Did you know?" My voice broke on the three little words and I cleared my throat, trying to sound stronger. "When you came back from the dead to help me fight the Blade, did you know it was going to put you in thrall to...him?"

"For Heaven's sake, Joanne," my mother said crisply, "he's not Voldemort. You can say his name."

"I don't..." I couldn't get past my mother knowing who Voldemort was. It took a minute to finish the sentence. "I don't know his name. All I've got for him is a t.i.tle. The Master," I said in my best portentous voice. "It gets old. So what's his name?"

Sheila had the grace to look ever so slightly abashed. "I know him by the t.i.tle, as well. The name itself is a secret well-guarded."

"What, would the Rumpelstiltskin thing work on him? It didn't on Rumpelstiltskin."

"...you met Rumpelstiltskin?"

"A horrible little gnome creature, anyway. Caitriona said he was a frog derek. Something like that. A Red Cap. He was wearing one. Look, that's not the point. Did you know you were going to end up his slave?"

"Rumpelstiltskin's?" Sheila asked archly, and Raven, the betraying little b.a.s.t.a.r.d, laughed. So did Wings, which made it worse.

Ravens laughing would usually be awesome enough to undermine my irritation, but I wanted to throttle them both. All. Mostly because I had the sudden dismaying suspicion that I did exactly that same kind of verbal game. I put another bullet point on the endless list of things I really needed to change about myself, and grated, "No. The Master's. I don't know how long we've got here, Mom. Should we really be s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around with semantics and unclear p.r.o.nouns?"

Her humor fell away. "I suppose these are bridges that ought to have been crossed while I lived, not now. And I'm not enslaved yet, Joanne. Not yet. You've burned my bones, haven't you? All that's left is to destroy the banshee queen. I'm too small, too far removed from the Master for him to catch me with his own long fingers. He needs her, and so without her I'm free."

"The banshee queen." I pressed my eyes shut. "Great. I'll get right on that. You're not answering the question."

Tension came into Sheila's presence, and when I opened my eyes she spoke through compressed lips. "Very well. Yes. I knew."

A double p.r.o.ng of guilt and horror stabbed me in the gut. If my dead mother was reaching out from beyond the grave, I should probably make some effort to meet her halfway and try building a meaningful emotional relations.h.i.+p. But we were on a tight schedule, and really, shock obliterated the guilt pretty fast.

Despite asking, I hadn't in a million years really thought she'd have known what she was getting into. That added a whole new level of guilt to the trip I was busy burying. Voice rising, I demanded, "Then what the h.e.l.l'd you do it for!" even though the answer was terribly, terribly obvious.

Sheila said, "You," and my world fell down.

The Dead Zone dissolved, which it had never done before. Soft green landscape melted like sugar in rain to reveal the black nothingness I was more familiar with. Then that softened, too, gray bleeding down to bubble against earth that slowly turned green with gra.s.s. Rigidly cut gra.s.s, millimeter-exact in height, but at least it was no longer so short the earth could be seen between individual blades. Elsewhere the Dead Zone's matter began to burble, the sound of a small waterfall falling into a pool. There were paving stones leading hither and yon through the greening garden, and benches that had softened from concrete to slatted wood. I had a momentary vision of a day when they might just be moss-covered hillocks, cool and p.r.i.c.kly to snuggle into, but the idea faded before the reality of my inner sanctuary.

I hadn't been here in a while, truth be told. The tall ivy-covered walls were more fragile than they had been, time wearing away at them so they were lived-in and comfortable rather than imprisoning. A single bird twittered like mad, and I smiled. I couldn't see him, but it was a robin. An American one, because it had twisted my brain inside-out the first time I saw an Irish robin and realized Mary Lennox's key-finding companion had been a completely different kind of bird than I'd always thought. In my secret garden, the robins were like the North Carolina birds of my teen years.

"It's not what I'd have expected of you," Sheila said gently, and I closed my eyes. Her garden would have the sparrow-like robins, if it had birds at all. We were creations of completely different cultures, my mother and I.

"It's a lot better than it was. The first time I came here it was almost dead. Not exactly the most spiritually competent kid on the block, me."

"What happened?"

G.o.d. There was so much we hadn't talked about. A whole lifetime, neither of us able to breach the chasm of my resentment in the few months we'd had. But I couldn't just answer, oh no. That would be easy. Instead I said, "Don't you know?"

She was silent a long time. So long I'd have thought she'd disappeared, except I had invited her here when I'd left the Dead Zone, and she wouldn't leave without my permission. I wasn't sure she couldn't, but she wouldn't, because this was the closest I'd ever come to opening up to my mother. This place was the center of my soul, with all the faults and flaws and strengths and wisdom exposed and on display. She'd have to be a real a.s.s to walk out, and mostly that t.i.tle belonged to me.

"Mother's daughter was a little wild," she whispered eventually. "Had herself a wee boy child."

"And a girl." I still hadn't looked at her. I wasn't sure I would, as long as we were in here. I already felt naked. Meeting her eyes seemed like it would be too much. "She died, she died right away. I wasn't a healer yet. I'd stolen my own magic away and I couldn't do anything to help. But that was after." I made my voice harsh so I could keep talking. "The twins were the aftermath. That wasn't what went wrong. My life is so screwed up, Mom. Do you reach through time? Because I've been doing it all my life. Right from when you were pregnant with me and we fought the Blade."

Her silence this time was brief but full of the things I didn't want her to say. I was about a hair's breadth from crying on my mommy's shoulder, and that was so far outside my comfort zone I couldn't even begin to express it. I thought she knew it, too, because when she did speak, she said, "No, alanna. I suppose that would be from your father's side of the family," rather than offer any kind of sympathy or condolence.

That was okay, because it brought my brain to a full stop. Choked off Emo Jo and made me spin around on a heel to gape at her. "My father's side of the family?"

Sheila MacNamarra got a sly little smile that made her look about nineteen. "Sure and you didn't think I flew all the way to New York just for a pretty face, lovey, though oh my Lord, he was pretty. I could feel his pull from Ireland, Siobhan. The power, the pa.s.sion for the earth, the..."

I could not have been more astonished if she'd pulled up her skirts and started doing an authentic Can-Can. She trailed off, then said, "You don't know any of this, do you, my girl?"

"Dad...has magic?"

"A shaman's magic, to be sure. Not like my own, oh no. Magery is spells and incantations, Siobhan. I could do most anything with it, but with preparation and study. Your father, though." Mother's eyes were s.h.i.+ning. I'd thought she and Dad hardly knew each other, but it suddenly struck me that didn't mean they hadn't been in love. That she wasn't still in love with him, a year after she'd been buried. No wonder I didn't have any siblings. "Your father could just will it to be, and it was. He said it could be such a dangerous magic, such an easy path to the dark, but he shone like nothing I'd ever seen. Everywhere he went, the very earth responded to him like a lover, eager for his touch."

Our endless road trips abruptly made more sense. I'd thought Dad just hated being in one place, since the only time he'd settled down for any length of time, an Irish woman had come back from across the ocean and handed him a baby before disappearing forever. I'd just found out a few days earlier that the only other time he'd come close to settling down, his mother had been killed in a horrific car wreck that had sent him away from Qualla Boundary for good.

But maybe we'd been on the road constantly because he was responding to the needs of a weary earth. My vivid memory of visiting Montana and the Battle of Little Bighorn site abruptly seemed a lot like the afternoon's antics on Croagh Patrick. Dad had been disgusted with the white men who'd fought there, which even my eight-year-old self had understood. There were still bullets buried in the tops of the small, sharply rolling hills: it was not a site for modern warfare to take place. But Dad's disgust could have gone much deeper than that...and so could have the time we'd spent there, crawling up and down hills, our hands in the dirt. I'd just been playing, but if Dad had power, too, then that wasn't a place he'd be playing at.

An awful, awful lot of the places we'd visited came clear when seen in that light. We'd followed the Trail of Tears. Visited nuclear test sites in Nevada, and I remembered Dad talking with Shoshone tribal elders before we went out into the desert. The Hopewell mound cities in Ohio. Mount Rushmore, which I recalled had almost literally made Dad's head steam. I'd been about twelve then, and wondered now if I'd been Seeing some of his anger at the desecration of ancient Native holy places.

I sat, face hidden in my hands. After a moment I spread my fingers to stare between them at Sheila, who looked discomfited. "You'd no idea, had you."

"Not a clue. Not a single..." I closed my fingers again and sat there a long d.a.m.ned time. Finally, and more to myself than Sheila, I said, "I'd like a do-over. I mean, in the end I'm doing okay with my life, I think. I got the guy, I got the best friend, I got the magic. I'm doing okay. But I want a do-over. I want to go back through my life and knock the giant-a.s.s chip off my shoulder. I want to hear what Dad might've been trying to say to me. I want to have the nerve to ask about my mother. I want..." It didn't really matter what I wanted. I pushed my tongue around inside my lower lip, contorting my face before finis.h.i.+ng, "I want to know what my life would've been like if I hadn't been such a jacka.s.s through most of it. It's too d.a.m.ned late to be sorry, but I am anyway, Mom. You probably deserved a much better kid than me. I'm sure Dad did. So I'm sorry."

"It may be you deserved a better mother, alanna. Shall we forgive one another while we still can?"

"Oh, sure. I'm sure I deserved a better mother than the one who chose not to hand the Master a major defeat because it might've risked my unborn self, or the one who gave me up to my father so the Master couldn't keep the bead he'd had on me, or the one who gave me a magic silver necklace to protect my soul from evil, or the one who came back from the dead to lay a smackdown on the Master and kick a banshee's a.s.s because I was too new and feeble in my powers to do it myself. I'm sure I deserved-"

"A mother," Sheila interrupted, and to my horror tears flooded my eyes. "Shall we forgive?" she asked again, even more quietly. I nodded, miserable with embarra.s.sment, and she sighed before a note of playfulness came into her voice. "Now, I know we've little time and much to talk about, Siobhan, but there's two things you've said that have my attention, so they do."

I looked up, snuffling, to see her smile and lift a finger to touch its tip. "One-you got the guy?"

I laughed through snorting snot, which made for a very wet burbly disgusting laugh, but it was heartfelt. "My boss. My former boss. Captain Morrison? Did I mention-"

"The one who can't tell a Corvette from a Mustang," Sheila said, eyes solemn. Then she leaned forward confidentially and admitted, "I'm Irish, la.s.s. I wouldn't know the one from the other if my life depended on it."

"Yes, but you're Irish. He's a red-blooded American male, it just shouldn't be possible for him not to know." I snuffled again and wiped my hand under my nose. Six-year-olds had more dignity than I did. "But anyway, yeah. We sort of...yeah. It's not like you and Dad." A thought which bent my brain. "Morrison's not magical at all. But I don't need any more magic in my life. He grounds me. He's..." G.o.d. My stupid eyes filled up with tears again, for a whole different reason this time. I was turning into a regular Waterworks Wendy.

"That's grand so," my mother said in delight. "Congratulations, Joanne. Be happy, alanna. Be happy."

"I hope so." I cleared my throat. "What was the other thing?"

"Oh!" Her eyes lit up. "A magic necklace?"

"Yeah, my-your-silver choker? It's magic. Didn't you know that? Nuada made it for the Morrigan when he married her and it bound her to this whole fight we're in. Hobbled her, like." I was falling into the Irish idiom of adding "like" or "so" to the end of sentences for no apparent reason. If I stayed here more than a week I'd forget how to speak American English. "I don't know if it's got any other power, but reining in G.o.ddesses is a pretty good one-shot to have. And, oh, it's, um, sort of bound to our family line. I was kind of there when it was forged and put some of my blood into the forging. The Morrigan had to bear a child to have it removed, and that child was Meabh, who made a choice to fight against her mother and our whole family has been doing it ever since. I've got Caitriona O'Reilly with me now. She's taking up your mantle, she'll be the new Irish mage, since I'm not cut out for it."

Mother hesitated. "Caitriona? Truly?"

"Oh, yeah. She found us at the graveyard about to burn your bones and made us come up to Croagh Patrick, where aine triggered her magic. Meabh's having a fit because that's not how it's done in her estimation, but it sure looks like that's what's happened anyway."

I was as unaccustomed to seeing pride on Sheila's face as I was smiles, but there was unmistakable pride now. "Caitriona will be grand so. Oh, but she's got so much study ahead of her, Joanne. The mage's path isn't an easy one. She's a fine la.s.s, though, strong and quick. She'll do well. Tell her I said so, won't you?"

"Yeah." I cleared my throat. "Yeah, of course I will. It'll torque Meabh's jaws, but that'll be fun, too."

It was Sheila's turn to clear her throat, after which she said, "Meabh," cautiously. "We're the daughters of Meabh? Of the Meabh? Queen Meabh of Connacht?"

"Yep, that one." Ah, how my life had s.h.i.+fted, that I could say that so casually. "She's kind of hanging around on Croagh Patrick right now while I talk to you. Do you want to meet her?"

Mother's eyes got very nearly as big as saucer plates, which in the garden of the soul was a dangerous kind of phrase to indulge in. "I would so," she whispered, and I sat up straighter, pleased to be able to offer something to my mother that would mean something to her.

If I turned my attention outward, Meabh's presence was easy to distinguish, a roaring flame of connected power. A flame which appeared to be in heated argument with Caitriona. I was going to have to separate those two, but not just yet. I softened my s.h.i.+elds ever so slightly, extending an invitation to Meabh. She broke off fighting with Cat and spun to face me, her own s.h.i.+elds melding until they fit the shape of doorway I offered. A moment later she stepped through, larger than life and glorious even in the garden of my mind.

Which would have been fine, except the Morrigan stalked into my garden on her heels.

Chapter Twenty.