No Dominion (The Walker Papers: A Garrison Report) (30 page)

“I am.”

There wasn’t a trace of humor in the horned god’s eyes, an’ my own kinda fell away for another minute. My girl, my other girl, Joanne, she was out there, an’ sometimes I was pretty certain it was love that was getting her through the day. Truth was, for the past year and some, a lotta that love had been mine. Joanne needed somebody to love her, warts and all, as much as I’d been wanting someone to love again. It wasn’t ever gonna be like Annie, but I didn’t want it to be. Jo needed somethin’ different from me, just like I needed somethin’ different from her. I guessed there were worse things to think than believin’ that love conquered all.  

“All right. All right, then. I guess…I guess we did all right, then. She’s…Annie, I mean. She’s…she’s all right? Guess if I’ve learned anything this last year, I’ve learned the wheel keeps coming around. Annie’s back on the merry-go-round, right? She’s gonna get another chance, somewhere down the road? Old soul born to new parents? That’s how it works, ain’t it?”

“That is how it works, and I will guide her to her resting place when her incarnation is ended. You’ve done well, Master Muldoon. You have made space for hope, and that is never a bad thing.”

“Okay. All right. So we go home now.” I was pushing an awful lot of thoughts an’ emotions back, knowing they were gonna come back to be dealt with later. But I’d left Jo bouncing around through the wrong end of time, an’ I hated ta think what kinda trouble she was getting in without me. “You figured out how to get us home yet? Back ta Jo, I mean?”

Cernunnos’s lip curled. “Best you first trade your steed with one of the others. Yours has ridden a long while with us now, but she will not know Joanne’s pull, when it comes. The others have met her in and out of time.”

Regret caught me harder’n I expected as I slid off Imelda’s back an’ patted her neck. “You’re a good girl, sweetheart. Hope I see you again.”

She put her forehead against mine an’ drooled down my shirt. I figured that was her way of saying she hoped so too, and patted her a couple more times before walking away. The rider on the brown mare—I knew his name, but there was something about the Hunt that made usin’ it seem rude—he dismounted an’ handed me the reins on his way to Imelda. I swung up on the mare, patted her neck too, and watched the big bearded fella ride Imelda toward the stars.

Then I looked at the house. It was starting to get that faded look, while the Hunt was getting more real around me. There was a faint trace of light through one of the dark windows, saying somebody at the back of the house was home. “I’m still in there, ain’t I? Holden’ her, and remembering…rememberin’ somethin’ that ain’t quite real. Why do I remember her dying at the hospital, Horns? What the hell’d he do to me?”

“All he could.” Cernunnos turned the stallion away from the house while he was talkin’, and the Hunt followed him into the sky, the boy on his right an’ me at his left. “I once said to Joanne that perhaps the past I remembered best, you had not come to Tara with her.”

“Yeah. I remember that. So?” I looked back once more, not sure what I was hoping to see. It wasn’t there, anyway: just a quiet ol’ house fulla memories that I had to leave behind. Or maybe that was what I was looking for after all, ‘cause after a few seconds I felt something go outta me, some kinda regret I’d been holding on to, and then I started listenin’ to Horns again.

“That past is no longer the one I remember best. Now in almost all memories, you came to Tara and we fought together at Knocknaree.”

“Sure, buddy, ‘cause that’s what happened.”

“Now it is what happened. Then…” Horns shrugged, making the thick muscles in his neck flex in an ugly way. “You remember her death in a hospital because then, in those other times when you did not come to Tara, that is where she died.”

“But you’re saying I always came to Tara.” I was giving myself a headache, an’ from Horns’s expression, I thought he was getting one too.

“Time opens and closes on itself, Master Muldoon. It does not like loose ends. Your memory of her death in a hospital is—”

“An oxbow lake.” I said it quick as I could, not wanting to lose the idea. “It’s something that happened an’ got cut out, yeah? It’s maybe the one in a hundred path, and the other ninety nine went this way?”

“Yes.” He lowered his big head like he’d been carrying its weight too long and I’d just lightened it a little. “You know by now that mortal minds dismiss and explain magic away even at the best of times. The Devourer caught you at the worst of them, and stole away what you had chosen to accept. The rest of it is what is necessary, nothing more. A filling of empty spaces with memories that make sense, regardless of their truth. Her death in a hospital would make sense, and is the easiest path to lying to you. You remember both deaths now because you have been at the eye of the storm, and from the eye, we see clearly.”

“It happened and it didn’t. We changed it an’ the first way got cut out, but it’s still hanging around main’ an extra ripple in the current. This was easier ta understand when it was Jo messin’ with time, not myself, Horns.”

“Joanne has never walked so closely along her own path. This is more complex than what she has done.”

“But she’s the shaman!”

“And you the mortal man. Don’t discount the power in an ordinary life, Master Muldoon.”

I thought of Annie the same way I always did the past few years, with an ache an’ a squeeze in my heart, an’ I said, “Don’t reckon there’s much chance of that,” more to myself than Horns. We’d ridden toward the stars while we were talking, but not so high as we’d gone before. The wind was soft an’ warm, an’ the path we followed was made of moonlight streaming across the clouds. We were moving faster than sense could make, already going ‘round the curve of the world. Heading back to Ireland, so we’d be closer to where we’d left Jo.

I was about to ask Horns how we were gonna find her when the sword on my hip lit up blue an’ started to fade.

Horns snarled, “Do not let it go,” and grabbed hold of my horse’s reins as hard as I grabbed onto the sword. The sky flickered around us once an’ shut off, like we were moving through the space of a heartbeat. The Hunt disappeared, all ‘cept me an’ Horns, an’ in the next heartbeat we were somewhere else. The sky up above was blue, an’ down below was the ruins of a castle on the tallest hill for miles. Then it all went black again, another in-between heartbeat, an’ when we came out it was sunset at that same castle, except it wasn’t fallen-down an’ the whole world’s horizons were too close.

Cernunnos made a sound kinda like the one Annie’d made when she saw him, like recognition and anticipation. I started to ask, but he put his hand out to shut me up. For a second I couldn’t talk, which was a lousy trick, him throwin’ his weight around like that, but then the screaming started and I was just as glad I hadn’t said a word.

It was like every scream I’d ever heard in Korea turned all the way up and played all at once. It went straight under my skin, making me want to run and fight back all at once. The sword yanked me toward the castle, an’ the castle started falling apart, like the screams were attacking it, too. I figured if the sword wanted in there, that was where Jo was, so I kicked the brown’s sides and rode for the western wall of the castle, where it was falling the fastest.

I came around the corner hard, the setting sun at my back and turning the dust from falling rock into a wall of gold that I couldn’t see through. Jo’s sword was pulling me so hard I could barely stay in the saddle, an’ I took it out to smack one of the smaller stones outta my way.

Its light cut through the dust, lettin’ me see a blond woman dressed all in white, standing with her back to me. The air was vibrating with her screams, pulsing with ‘em while the building fell down around her. Joanne was a couple feet further on, barely on her feet, looking like the screams that were bugging me were about to shatter her.

The blonde never knew I was comin’. It was just a couple of long strides for the brown mare, an’ I drove the rapier into the woman’s back.

Her screaming cut off with a squeak, an’ she slid off the sword without making any more sound. Joanne went from looking about to shatter to being rigid, the kinda rigid that said she was in more danger of falling apart now than she’d ever been before. Her eyes were wider than I’d ever seen ‘em, tears rolling down her cheeks, an’ she wasn’t breathing. She was just staring at me, not even at the lady I’d killed, but me, like she’d never laid eyes on me before. She didn’t blink while I looked down at the dead woman.

The dame was degrading like a salt sculpture in water. Her dress shriveled, an’ so did her hair, an’ it went faster and faster, until I figured she was prob’ly dead for good, and looked back at Joanne.

My poor girl still hadn’t moved, still wasn’t breathing. I didn’t know what she’d been through while I’d been gone, but it didn’t look like any of it had been good, an’ it was gonna end with her passing out if she didn’t take a breath soon. I figured I better do something, so I called up my best wicked grin, slid off the mare, an’ opened my arms.

“H’lo, darlin’. Did I miss anything?”

~0~

The Rising Green

“The Rising Green” takes place at the same time MOUNTAIN ECHOES (Book Eight of the Walker Papers) ends, but contains no spoilers for that book.

The pull came from under her skin, a faint itching sensation that wouldn’t go away. It reminded Suzy of the chicken pox, which she hadn’t had until she was eleven, so she remembered it all miserably well. It wasn’t that bad, but it was enough to wake her up. Suzy crunched her eyes shut and flung one elbow over them, rubbing her forearm with the other hand. It itched. She ignored it, or tried to. Then she lifted her elbow and looked at her clock, illuminated by a soft green glow.

A quarter to midnight. Suzy dropped her elbow over her eyes again. The green glow lingered behind her eyelids. She was supposed to be up in six hours for an early-morning study group, preparing for a test the next afternoon. She didn’t
need
the study group. She was going to ace the test anyway. But study groups were the only thing Aunt Mae would let her out of the house for, ever since The Halloween Incident. It had been almost six months, and Aunt Mae still referred to it that way. The Halloween Incident.

Suzy’s parents had never managed to keep her grounded for more than a weekend. Not that she was doing that thing, the
omg my parents were so much cooler than you thing,
because although it was true, it was also true that just because Suzy was fifteen didn’t mean she was a complete asshole. Her aunt, her father’s sister, had stepped up like crazy when Suzy’s parents were murdered, and she was doing the best she could with suddenly being a parent.

It was
also
true that while her parents had been alive, Suzanne Melody Quinley had never done anything like walk out of school at the last bell, get on a bus, and head a hundred miles out of town without any kind of warning. She’d
had
to see Detective Joanne Walker. It had literally been life-and-death important. Aunt Mae would never really understand that, but then, Suzy hadn’t tried very hard to make her. She’d deserved to be grounded. Maybe not for six months, but still, she’d deserved it.

And she was never going to get back to sleep with the green shimmer peeping through her elbow or her thoughts going circles on the topic of The Halloween Incident. Once she started remembering the zombies it was all over anyway. Suzy sat up with a sigh and threw the covers aside.

The room lit up, soft green with glimmers of white and gold. Suzy stared at her legs, then pulled the covers over them and lay back down, her eyes squeezed shut again.

She knew—she’d known for some time now, of course—that she was the granddaughter of a god. The daughter of a demi-god, which made her think she should be called a semi-god herself, but it didn’t really matter. What mattered was that her grandfather’s legacy gave her power, more power than she knew what to do with. She’d deleted someone from the time line once, with that power. Other times she’d seen dozens of futures, and had tried to help people pick the right path to the only safe one.

And every time, she’d burned, blazed, with brilliant green magic. That was the color of her power, as it was the color of Cernunnos’s and of Herne’s. She knew what using that magic felt like. Breath-taking. Liberating. Exciting. Terrifying.

It was
not
a gentle glow or itchiness in the middle of the night. Something was wrong. Extra-wrong, and when magic went wrong the only person Suzy knew to go to was Detective  Walker. Who was in Seattle. Where Aunt Mae had forbidden Suzy to ever go again without adult accompaniment.

She tried, briefly, to envision going into Aunt Mae’s room, waking her aunt up, and asking to be taken to Seattle, all while glowing like a firefly. She failed. Which meant she had to go to Seattle alone. Again. While glowing green.

She was going to be grounded for the rest of her
life
.

The whole idea made her skin itch even more. Suzy rubbed her arms ferociously, then stopped when the magic coursing under her skin brightened with the activity. It was no use panicking, she told herself as she threw the covers off again and got up to find clothes. At least she didn’t have to turn the lights on. She could navigate by the glow of her skin. and wanted to bite her arms by the time she found some jeans, like she could suck the magic and the itching away as if it was poison. There was a bus at a quarter past midnight, the last one heading to Seattle. She could probably catch that. If she had an extra minute at the bus station she could even call ahead to warn Detective Walker she was coming.