Under Witch Aura (Moon Shadow Series) (38 page)

The burned logs that formed
the west
wall tumbled into the crevice. Dad was bullied back by an invisible
hand that ate at the fire he had created. Sparks flew from his
fingers as he tried to burn the air to keep the wall alive.

Three horses slipped.

Gomez
fell to one
knee as two paints and a palomino screamed. They were too close to
the new crack in Mother Earth. Gomez gasped in pain as they were
sucked over the edge into the maelstrom.

“
Stand.”
The
circle of horses wavered, but Granny’s spider silk held just
long enough for the remaining horses to find their footing. Their
tails and necks stretched to keep the circle intact.
There
was a snort and then a whinny. It echoed along the line.

The magic of the circles
snapped back
into place.

Still, the wind rose up as
though our
efforts were nothing.

My mind barely grasped the
impossibility of trying to mend Mother Earth, but Martin shouted,
“Connect!” He paused but a second to allow Gomez to take
Mat’s hand from him.

Then, Martin jumped on the
back of the
first horse, a short pony. He hopped to the next, a mule or burro.
Martin, as naked and bloody as the day he was born, skipped from
mount to mount, his very own circus act. When he finally reached the
opposite side, he slid down.

I screamed a warning.
“Martin,
you’re inside the circle!” He couldn’t possibly be
drunk after all we’d been through!

Martin lay down on the west
side almost
directly underneath the hooves of a short bay stallion. He completed
the missing edge of the painting.

Then, he sang. His voice
was the
whisper of sand against the tent rocks. It was the deep rumble of
Mother Earth, a molten burping. It was the same rumbling I had heard
in Tent Rock when Mother Earth spoke. Martin was not just talking to
Mother Earth. As I had tried to merge with her to mimic White
Feather’s wind spell, Martin was surely melding with her now,
but more completely than I had ever intended.

“Oh, Martin.” He couldn't
have heard my whisper, but I lent him my strength. It occurred to me
that maybe Martin drank because he was too close to Mother Earth,
because he heard her voice too clearly. Chanting sounds not meant for
human ears vibrated underneath us.

The wind sucked back so
violently, we
jerked forward.

“Hold,” my father yelled.

We chanted, “Earth, Wind,
Fire,
Water.”

Earth slipped into the
crack, but we
held true.

Martin stayed in place.

Sand from an errant breeze
or a direct
gift from Mother Earth dusted him with fine particles. His wrinkles
filled with ripples of sand. His leathery skin was full of shadows, a
mix of earth weathered by sun, wind and rain.

He turned his head our way
for only an
instant before again gazing straight to the heavens. The crack in
Mother Earth rumbled. In concert with a clap of thunder from the sky,
the earth screamed. Rocks and boulders scattered and flowed.

The shaking tossed me
sideways across
White Feather. My father caught Mom before she fell, but Granny Ruth
and Mat both crashed to the ground. Gomez held onto one of his
horses.

I blinked. There was a
flash of green,
and the fires went out. For a long, silent moment, there was no
light. When I blinked again, my vision cleared. Everything remained
in place except for Martin. He was gone.

Well, not entirely. The
shape of a man
encased in rock, wrinkled sand and all, formed the wall where he had
closed the painting and the rift in Mother Earth.

Final rest, indeed.

Time seemed to stop while
Mother Earth
shifted restlessly, sand filling in gaps. My body felt her wounds as
a long ache in my heart, but it was still beating, both hers and
mine.

The heavens echoed her
complaints,
rolling with thunder and threats as the spirits retreated. Rain,
almost a gushing river, slashed across the mountainside. The smell of
sulfur and smoke gave way to wet sand and water on the desert wind.

For several minutes, we
huddled,
letting the rain beat down on us. The sun was setting somewhere
behind the dark clouds. This was one sand painting that would not see
nightfall.

Mat panted, “Water is a
cleanser.”

Mom said, “Although we’ll
catch our death of cold.”

Dad laughed, a booming
relief. He
leaned over to touch my shoulder. His eyes were lit from behind,
flames that still flickered, ready to burn the enemy. “Good
thing he went in after you,” Dad said. “I’m not
dumb enough to have jumped in there.”

It was a lie and we both
knew it. I
grabbed hold of his forearm and squeezed. “Yeah, good thing.”
Maybe now Dad wouldn’t have to test White Feather. Seemed to me
he should have an automatic passing grade. “Good thing you guys
showed up and that Granny Ruth was able to spin so quickly.” I
flexed my hand, but there were no fibers there now.

The sand from the painting
was fast
becoming a mixture of mud and rocks. Shattered pieces of chitin
floated in a pool of water. Claire was nothing more than leftover
garbage.

Gomez said, “Time to get
the
horses down the mountain. They can’t make it through the
canyon.” At his whistle, the stallion raised its front hooves.
With a scream of triumph, it headed in the opposite direction of the
trail, leading the herd into Indian land.

Lynx said, “He's right.
Canyon
could fill with water. Maybe I’ll go with him.” He held
the cat in his arms, the tiny insignificant house cat. His body
didn’t do much to shelter it from the rain.

There was a darker flicker
around the
cat just before I recognized Sarah.

The cat emitted an
impressively feral
hiss. Lynx scooted away from the dark pattern, offering a hiss of his
own.

Just before the wisp faded
into the
rain, Sarah nodded in my direction. Whether it was appreciation or
something else, I would never know.

Lynx said, “When she died,
her
ghost hid in the cat. She hid so they couldn't eat her spirit, or
take her to the nether world where you just about went.”

“The cat told you this?”

Lynx gave me his usual
smile, the one
with no teeth and knowing, yellow eyes.

Mom was only slightly
suspicious when I
insisted on White Feather’s shattered home for his
recuperation. Since she wasn’t keen on doctors or hospitals
and she had already given him her strength, she agreed to leave us there.

I paid Lynx to bring food
and told him
where to leave it without telling him where we’d be.

Mom was instructing him to
come to her
house and pick up said food as they left us in what remained of White
Feather's home. As soon as the door closed behind them, I heaved a
barely responding White Feather into the safety of his grandfather’s
shelter. I probably should have worried that it wouldn't open, but
the dresser answered my touch without a squeak of protest.

“Come on,” I whispered
softly. The sides were rounded and comfortably hollowed. White
Feather already had a sleeping bag snuggled into one side.

I fixed the other side with
blankets
and rugs.

The walls were a comfort
and a healing.

Over the next day and night
I read the
stories on the wall often. I was on my third reading of the lower
panel, sometime during the second day, when it occurred to me that my
great-grandfather had probably hidden his “book” in plain
sight. All along people had been hunting for a traditional book, but
there were many ways to tell a story.

I chuckled softly.

“What?”

I sat up instantly. White
Feather was
already sitting, having propped himself against the opposite wall
without my noticing.

“How do you feel?” I asked.

“About like you'd expect
after
being eaten and then vomited by wind.”

I adjusted the small
battery light so
that it illuminated more of the room and reached for his hand.

“I take it we lived.
Although
this wouldn’t be a bad substitute for heaven if there was
food.”

I smiled. “I’ve got some.”
I rummaged around in a small cooler and extracted cold herbal tea and
burritos. “The burritos aren't warm any longer. I can heat them
if you want.”

“Don’t bother.” He
accepted the tea and then tugged me over to his hollow. “If I
recall correctly, didn’t you feed me some soup?”

“Twice.”

He swallowed some tea and
then rested
his head against the wall. He ate a few bites of burrito, but his
heart wasn’t really in it.

I stashed it back in the
cooler.

He worked his fingers along
one of the
carvings above his head. When he found the spot he wanted, he pressed
gently. He was still weak, but his essence radiated around him. He
was healing.

The space behind the knot
in the wood
contained a miniature railroad car. After a brief rest, he handed it
to me. “I found this train piece while I was cleaning up. Two
of the cars made it through mostly intact. I'll put the other one in
the new model railroad I'm building, but this one is for you.”

“Oh!” A silly grin lit my
face. The rail car had a small dent on one side, but otherwise was in
perfect condition. The lingering scent of coffee had me breathing
deep in appreciation.

When I lifted the top,
light reflected
off the contents.

He said, “I set the diamond
in my
grandmother’s ring. I used some of the silver from the ring you
gave me and kept some of the gold for my ring. There are probably
things you can do to improve the design. No one works earth like you
do, but I did the best I could.”

The glint of light and
promise froze me
in place.

White Feather plucked the
boxcar from
my nerveless fingers and extracted the ring. The gold filigree band
was a delicate, intricate laced pattern. Instead of a simple round
design, the top part was woven into a raised latticework where the
diamond winked in the light.

“I worked the gold myself
because
there wasn’t originally a place for the stone. See,” he
pointed to the top. “I opened it here and put in two drops of
silver from the ring you made for me. The weaving in the band allows
earth magic to travel and be multiplied, and if the ring takes a hit,
it spreads it out.”

He gifted me with a crooked
grin. “I’m
hoping it will protect you better than your own magic can by itself.”

My voice was nothing but a
squeak, so I
had to try again. “But White Feather! You know what can happen
to a diamond. And your grandmother’s ring!” Emotions
rushed over the jumble of words, nearly drowning me.

White Feather chuckled
softly. “I
know what you do with stones, Adriel. You use them.”

“If I use it--” My voice
was muffled behind his hand.

When my protests stopped,
he slipped
the ring on my finger. “I know. After you left The Owl the
other night, Martin was still in the parking lot. I offered him a
ride, and he told me that if you’re ever in need of a lot of
Mother
Earth
,
you will
likely sheer one of the planes right off the diamond.” He
smiled. “But he also said there’s no tougher stone out
there or one with more power. Given the messes you find yourself in,
I thought we’d better make sure you had at least one diamond.
I’m saving up for a pair of earrings as backup.”

My eyes goggled. Not at the
expense,
which was bad enough, but because White Feather
understood.
A
diamond was clear, able to reflect colors. It had facets. It was
created by Mother Earth using incredible pressure. It was
old.
A gifted diamond on top of all
those other properties, and...well.

I had thought about buying
a diamond
more than once. But the possibility of destroying it and the expense
was simply too much. I never had the money or the nerve.

I made a fist, wrapping my
fingers
around the ring. It sparkled, teasing. If I added a tiny piece of
turquoise from Grandma’s bracelet, some silver...I flexed my
fingers. I had no right to own such a thing. “White Feather.
It’s your grandmother’s ring.” It was detailed, old
and lovingly made.

The colors in his eyes
flickered from
green to brown. “And you’ll wear it every day, no matter
where you go, no matter what spells you are working on. If I’m
not around to protect you, and the diamond wears completely away,
that gold has the love of the ages in it. Including mine.” He
squeezed my fingers, testing the ring to make certain it wouldn’t
slip off.

I threaded my fingers
through his.
“I’ll wear it.” I would never take it off.

“With this ring, I can find
you
anywhere—in this world or any other,” he said, leaning in to
seal the promise with a kiss.

There was nothing between
us now, not
even wind.

Other
Works

Most
of my other works are mysteries. The
Sedona O’Hala series (
Executive
Lunch
,
Executive
Retention
,
Executive
Sick Days
)
is
a series of contemporary cozy mysteries:
Sedona
must solve a few crimes while fighting her way up the corporate
ladder; mostly she dangles from her fingertips just trying to
survive.

Catch
an Honest Thief
is
a stand alone mystery, combining a stealthy caper in the New Mexico
desert with high-tech gadgets. Alexia must try to save her
career--and her life.