Under Witch Aura (Moon Shadow Series) (37 page)

“Mom!” She and Dad had made
it to the top of the ridge, but they were too late.

With no further warning,
the edge of
the gaping wound in Mother Earth swallowed me whole. A tint of blue
sky winked for only a second before it was blotted out by White
Feather as he jumped in after me.

There was no sense of air
inside the
tornado. I tried grounding, hoping to find Mother Earth, preferably
before I landed, if I landed. I lifted my hiking boot to smash the
helium packet. Maybe if I smashed the packet at just the right
moment, I wouldn't be crushed against whatever I landed on.

Sand rushed by my senses, a
falling
through earth that was liquid. In the Navajo legend, the world came
from the belly of the earth. So did the monsters.

My silver heated against
my skin. As
if being low on oxygen wasn’t enough, silver heating up was
never a good sign.

I looked up. White Feather
was still
above me, caught in a swirl that kept him in place, dancing with the
wind. There was the tiniest sense of him every time I took a breath.

Ah. He was the reason
breathing was
possible inside the maelstrom. Each shallow breath was a small bubble
of air that I had to grab quickly or it was gone.

I crushed the helium packet
in my shoe
and aimed for White Feather.

The first burst of helium
was always
the strongest. That being the case, I was in real trouble.

In the belly of this beast,
the helium
was whisked away. I wasn’t going up. For a few seconds all the
helium did was keep me in place.

It was almost enough. I
clawed toward
White Feather. He did his best to meet me halfway.

I wished I hadn’t dropped
the
heliotrope because it might have helped. I had no link to anything
here. My silver was still hot, still warning me—
silver
!

The thought was action. He
wore my
ring, made from the same silver as my bracelet. I searched for it
with my very heartbeat.

Like to like, even in a
storm. I
pulled myself to him with every ounce of my being.

White Feather wrapped his
fingers
around mine and reeled me close. “Got you!”

Breathing was not any
easier. White
Feather held tight, but his eyes were barely slits. His skin was taut
as though it was being blown back--or sucked dry.

I wondered how far we had
fallen. The
sky was still visible. I tucked my head against White Feather’s
heart. Instead of a pounding heartbeat, his faltered each time he
created the tiny air bubbles that allowed us to breathe.

The tornado was draining
him dry.

I panicked. I couldn't
surround him
with Mother Earth. My silver was linked to his, but with no way to
regenerate from Mother Earth, the link was weak and getting weaker.

With the debris and the
moving air, it
took several seconds before I realized we were not being drawn
underground. At first I thought White Feather was pulsing us out, but
as much as I wanted it to be true, nothing on earth had that kind of
strength.

The tornado had dragged me
over the
edge, but instead of depositing me deep in the belly where the
spirits resided, we stayed nearly level with the sand painting as the
tornado renewed itself with power from the belly of Mother Earth. We
swirled around and around in the circulating air.

A tattered and tiny group
held court
outside what had once been the edge of the painting. They were
insignificant, unable to surround it, unable to keep the beast locked
inside. In the first swirl, I recognized my parents.

Mom huddled on the ground.
Granny Ruth
stood next to a large net that was anchored by thick lines into the
sand.

The wind stole my vision
again,
spinning us away, but my mind filled in the blanks. Granny was
weaving. Mom was drawing. Dad and Gomez surrounded the entire group
with a herd of horses, protecting them with a magical barrier. I
couldn’t hear the chants.

It was nearly impossible to
concentrate
because with each breath, a bit of White Feather was lost. His
heartbeat and therefore the air we breathed was random. The silver on
my arm turned cold, icy across my wrist.

The tornado gathered itself
and washed
easily through the breach in Claire’s painting. It bore down on
the group.

The horses ran, but not
away. They
headed in a line around the tornado.

Fear owned every part of
me. My hand
tingled as though stabbed with needles. We were trapped inside and
the group on the ground could not contain this thing. Even if they
somehow succeeded, we had no way out.

A flash, not unlike
lightning, burned
the backs of my eyelids. I looked to the heavens because the ground
was rapidly receding.

The wind had upended us. Up
was down,
down was up.

“Can’t...control...nothing...left.”

It took four breaths for
White Feather
to relay the message. He needn’t have bothered because I knew.
We were in a place humans were not meant to go, never mind survive.

Across the sky, horses
thundered
straight at us. Green sparks shot from their hooves, trailing out
behind them, a giant cascade of northern lights too far south.

At first I thought they were
Gomez’s
horses picked up by the winds, but then we tipped. Gomez’s
horses remained below, but a green tint surrounded them also. The
horses in the sky were a mirror of what was on earth.

“Look,” I tried to shout.
One of the clouds was the shape of an old woman, weaving, just like
Granny Ruth was weaving on her loom. A long, thin line of clouds spun
out from the old woman’s loom, flowing across the sky.

I had no air to tell White
Feather that
maybe the spirits from the east were answering.

We
dipped low again, but weren’t thrown free. The little cat was
there briefly, but then its features blurred until it
became
the shadow of a coyote, the trickster. It ran through the opening on
the east side of the painting, grabbed a bone and dragged it to the
outside. Once there, it picked up a flaming branch and deposited it
along the west side.

Dad mimicked the coyote. He
threw a log
into the heart of the beast, igniting it as it hit. The fire was the
beginning of a line along the west side of the crack.

Right before we rotated
away again, the
coyote started chewing through the bindings that held Martin in
place. The trickster was dismantling the painting, piece by piece.

Faster,
my heart pleaded. Even though they couldn’t save us, they might
save themselves.

I scanned the sky, fearful
of what
Martin might have as a mirror image in any other realm. He, like me,
was of the earth. Only with him, we might get naked angels or drunken
sprites.

Granny Ruth came into view
again. A
white thread spun out from her, just as it did from the cloud. My
hand tingled from the lack of oxygen...but the jabbing was only in my
left hand.

I peeled my fingers away
from White
Feather.

The sticky mass from the
dirt was
Granny’s miniature loom. From one end, a tiny string spooled
outward.

The weavers in the sky and
on the
ground were linking their design. The miniature in my hand unwound
and floated toward the threads.

It didn’t matter. Breathing
was
painful and not often enough. Some of the debris scraped through
White Feather’s protection. His heartbeat had slowed to an
erratic, hopeless rhythm.

“I--” There was too much I
had never said to him.

His eyelids flickered.

One more bubble. I gasped
it in. He did
not.

I waited, but there was no
more air. No
more heartbeat. He had given me his last breath.

The strand in my hand
dragged my arm
away from White Feather. “No!!” I wasted my last
breath, but I would not leave him. Not for death, not for life.

The weavers pulled. I
resisted,
clutching White Feather for all I was worth. We were too high up to
save and White Feather...I expelled the very last bit of air in my
lungs and prepared to join him.

The earth was full of
living things:
bugs, worms, soil, decomposing bits. There was water, trees and
minerals, a tie that for me was an energy stream. Being without any
of those things made them much more noticeable when they reappeared.

I couldn’t see them, but I
sensed
them rushing closer. The world was without color, a black pit. I only
knew we were free of the storm because there was air for my lungs
again.

It was a waste, really. As
high up as
we were, any landing would be too hard to survive. I sighed, wanting
to give my own breath to White Feather.

The
thread on my hand went suddenly limp. My silver sparked electricity
as it felt Mother Earth arrive, but instead of smashing to bits, w
e
bounced. A net closed in around us, confining and constricting us. It
floated down slowly, gathering speed as gravity asserted itself.

By the time we hit the
loom, the impact
was not all that gentle, but considering the circumstances, it beat
being crushed to bits.

The sky was dark except for
lightning
from the east, an eerie green. The horses still ran across the sky
and on the earth. The pounding of their hooves beat around us.

My mother went straight to
White
Feather, but issued orders my way. “Don’t get up, mija.”

Moving was an
impossibility. I held his
hand as she began working to save him.

The silver at my wrists and
fingers
pulsed like lifeblood for me, but the beat wasn’t steady. The
rocks beneath my back shuddered as the horses pounded along the
ridge.

Dad yelled, “Keep them
going! The
wall is finished.”

Gomez answered, “They won’t
stop.”

Tara flashed by and then
Lynx.

Granny Ruth squeezed my
hand. “Link
to earth, dear. We’re going to circle it. We’re sending
it back.”

White Feather was on the
other side of
me. Dead or alive, I linked to the ring. To my surprise, there was
barely any silver left circling his finger.

I traced the loop slowly.
The arrowhead
in his ring had been blown out or used completely, and what was left
of the ring was no more than a thin wire. My own bracelet was smooth
as silk. The design had worn completely off.

I touched his chest. It
rose and fell,
slowly. Tears of gratitude filled my eyes.

Mom smiled down at me.
“He’s
a fighter.” She stayed on his other side, giving him strength
and forming her part of the circle.

“The circle...?” I
struggled to sit.

The light from the east
grew brighter
as if it were sunrise. The horses were now end-to-end, seemingly
galloping in place. They completed the circle that we humans couldn't
finish alone.

Dad focused on the
painting, his eyes a
reflection of a fire. He controlled flames that created a turbulence
meant to contain the tornado.

Surrounding the flames was
water, a
solid ring of it. Moments passed before my frantic search finally
located Mat. She channeled water from a crystal bowl to the outside
of the fire.

We humans were the outer
circle. Then
water, then fire.

I probed the heavens. No
Spider Woman
in the clouds. No horses. But they were there. I had seen them.

“Fire, water, earth,” my
mother chanted. Granny echoed it from the other side.

I repeated with them,
“Fire,
Water, Earth.”

The circles snapped into
place. With a
roar, the tail of the tornado sucked back into the crack of earth.

“Hold the circle!” my
father yelled.

We continued the chant.

Instead of fighting, the
wind turned in
on itself. It ducked into Mother Earth, and I thought it was gone.

The sand at my feet moved,
slowly
morphing into the shape of a box. One side remained missing. Mother
Earth had drawn this symbol before, warning me of sand paintings with
the west side opened.

“’Ware,” I shouted.
“It’s not contained! The west is still open!”

When nothing stirred, I
thought maybe I
was reading Mother Earth wrong. But the silence didn't last.

As suddenly as it had
disappeared, the
raging wind screamed back into existence. It had gathered strength
from its base. Four eyes instead of two now threatened us. The mouth
stretched wide with hunger.

The wail of the wind was
met by a flash
of green from the heavens. Thundering hooves sparked lightning.

I
burrowed deeper into Mother Earth, sending her strength along the
circle. A whisper of magic the color of gold spread from Gomez to his
charges. “
Stand. Steady. Courage.”

The wind howled. My feet
dug in
deeper.

Granny Ruth hissed, “Spin!”
Threads of silk from the net that had broken our fall unraveled.
Strand by strand, the pieces snaked out around the horses, another
giant woven circle. Tiny spiders secured the links.

The wind shuddered, but
didn’t
back down. Debris hung inside the anger of a confused spirit. The
lowest pieces sank beneath the crack. For a long protracted moment
the world was silent, but then, the earth shuddered and split again.

Granny
Ruth
screamed, “Spin!”

A
jagged crater
opened next to the horses’ hooves on the west side, scattering
them back.

My hand in Granny's
slipped.

“Hold on!” I fought to
maintain my grip on her weathered fingers. Two of hers snapped free
of their sockets, but I refused to let go.

I flinched when a spider
dropped from
her hair and scurried across her fingertip to mine. It may have
bitten her, but she did not protest. The spider wove first around her
fingers and then around our hands. I wasn’t about to complain.