Widdershins (43 page)

Jack gives a slow nod. “And that’s just for starters.”

“What do you mean?”

“I see both living spirits and the ghosts of their dead, which tells me that they’re calling in
all
the buffalo tribes, past and present.”

“I still don’t know what it means.”

Jack gives her a look that says Who are you kidding?, but he only says, “Do you have any idea how many buffalo got displaced or killed when the humans you followed over here made a grab for their lands?”

“We had nothing to do with that.”

“Maybe not. But you still took advantage of their misfortune and moved right into their territories wherever you could.”

When Tatiana doesn’t respond, Jack adds, “Come on. You had to know this was coming. Sooner or later, there had to be a reckoning.”

“We settled that with Raven.”

Jack shakes his head. “You settled a local problem. And then you let your people go out and hunt cousins.”

Tatiana doesn’t look at him. She can’t take her gaze from the gathering buffalo.

“You have to get Joe back here,” she finally says. “He has to talk to them.”

When Jack doesn’t respond, she turns to look at him. He just shrugs.

“I can do that,” he says. “Soon as you bring Jilly and her friend back to us—safe
and
sound—I’m sure he’ll be happy to give it a shot.”

“So he’s just going to let the buffalo overrun the city because of two missing humans?”

“You know it’s not about that.”

“But it’s awfully convenient that they should all show up just when he thinks he needs some bargaining power.”

Jack gives her a hard look. “Joe had nothing to do with this. You called it down on yourselves by not keeping your bogans in check.”

“Maybe we could have kept a better eye on them,” she says, “but this is still overkill.”

“Fairies don’t much care for cousins,” Jack tells her. “Cousins don’t much care for fairy. It’s been like that since you first showed up on these shores. Sometimes we get along, sure, but that’s only been the easygoing among us. Back in the hills there have always been individuals, waiting and brooding and planning. It’s just your bad luck that one of them got elected war chief at the same time that some of your people decided it would be entertaining to kill a few cousins.”

“You know it’s something we don’t condone,” she says, falling back into royal speech and repetition.

Jack sighs. “But you didn’t control it, either.”

“So because of that, Joe’s going to make us suffer.”

Jack shakes his head. “No. Joe’s so focused on his family that he probably doesn’t care one way or the other what goes down. None of this’ll mean anything to him until his sister’s safe.”

“But we don’t
know
where the humans are.”

“Then you know Joe’s not going to be helping you.”

“In the time it would take for us to track them down, we could lose everything to that army. Tell him we’ll do whatever he wants if he first helps us stop this.”

Listening to the two of them talk, I feel for her. Once those buffalo start to move they’re going to wipe out pretty much every fairy they find in the city. And once they have the taste of fairy blood, I doubt it’ll stop there. After all, so far as a lot of cousins are concerned, there’s a whole continent to take back.

Yeah, I feel sorry for her, but I empathize with the cousins, too.

“And in the time he takes to help you,” Jack is saying, “Jilly and her friend could be killed.”

“You don’t know that.”

“We don’t know
anything,”
Jack says. “That’s a big part of the problem.”

“But—”

“And I doubt it’d make that much difference to him anyway. You know Joe. He looks at the little picture first. Until he knows his family’s safe, you’d have better luck whistling up the wind to help you.”

It’s pretty obvious from Tatiana’s face that she already knows this, but I guess she had to try.

“How about you?” she asks Jack. “Can you talk to them?”

“The buffalo wouldn’t listen to me. You need someone way up on the respect ladder, or at least someone who’s got the gift of calm, the way Joe does. I wouldn’t know where to start with that trick of his that has people putting down their weapons to listen to him pretty much as soon as he opens his mouth.” He shoots a glance at Mother Crone. “Barring one or two exceptions, that is.”

Tatiana lets the veil that separates the between from her court fall closed once more. We can still hear the buffalo, but it’s like a distant thunder now.

“So, what do we do?” she asks Jack.

“I haven’t a clue,” he says. “All I know is you’ve got a problem.”

“You can’t seriously not care.”

“What I feel’s got nothing to do with it.”

“You could at least try.”

“I’m telling you right now, they wouldn’t listen to me, and I’ll be damned if I’ll let them pound me into the ground under a few hundred hooves just to prove that to you.”

“But—”

“You’re just going to have to find your own way out of this,” Jack says, cutting her off. Then he turns to me. “We need to get out of here.”

I hear Tatiana calling Jack’s name, but we’re already on the move, shifting from the world the court is in to the between that lies next to it. The sound of the buffalo is louder once more. We’re not exactly on the plain where they’re gathering, but close enough to hear them. Really, how could we
not
hear them? Thousands of drums. Hundreds of thousands of hooves pounding on the dirt. A line of trees blocks our view, but we can see the dust from their dancing rising up above the topmost boughs.

“You were a little harsh back there,” I say.

Jack shrugs. “We were wasting time. There’s nothing you or I could do to help, in the court or with the buffalo.”

“But the queen was right. We could have tried.”

“We’re not going to try, we’re going to do.”

I raise my eyebrows.

“Here’s how I see it,” Jack says. “This whole show is Minisino’s doing and though I don’t entirely disagree with his reasons, I don’t believe that everybody should pay for the sins of a few. Trouble is, all that war chief of the buffalo is going to listen to is someone with a bigger gun.”

“Which we don’t have.”

“Nope. But maybe we can find us one or two.”

“Now you’ve lost me.”

“You ever hear of Ayabe?” he asks.

I nod. People talk about wolves and bears—maybe elk—as being the lords of the forest, but the most powerful beings you’re going to find in the deep woods are the moose spirits. Like the buffalo, they don’t have a whole lot of give to them. Unlike the buffalo, they don’t have a herd mentality. They’re solitary by nature, but that doesn’t make them easy prey because
nobody
willingly takes on a moose. They weigh in at over half a ton, can have an antler spread of six feet, and they’re not the most even-tempered of the cerva. Easy to piss off, and impossible to shake if they get it in their heads to come after you.

Ayabe’s the oldest of the moose spirits in this area and his range takes in everything from the Kickaha Mountains down to Newford’s lake.

“You think he’d be interested in helping us?” I ask.

“If I can convince him it’d be in the best long-term interests of his people, yes.”

“Well, let’s go.”

Jack shakes his head. “No, I’ll go. I need you to talk to Lucius.”

He means Raven, the big gun of the corbae, my people. I’ve never met him, but from all I’ve heard I know what his reaction would be.

“I can already tell you what he’ll say,” I tell Jack. “He’ll say that the fairy brought this problem onto themselves, so they can fix it themselves. That’s pretty much his response to anybody who comes looking for him to get involved in something.”

And while I hate to say it of one of my own, he’d probably rationalize the whole thing along the lines of not wanting to be seen as pro-fairy when the buffalo run them over, but he also wouldn’t want to join them in case the fairy pull something out of a hat at the last minute. He’s always the mediator, the old stories say.

“I still need you to try,” Jack says.

“I’ll try. I don’t know if he’ll even hear me out, but I’ll give it a shot.”

“That’s all anyone can ask.”

“And if he won’t help?”

Jack grins. “Then stick around. There’ll be plenty of pickings for a carrion bird.”

With that, he steps away and I’m alone in the between with the sound of the buffalo ringing in my ears and echoing the drum of my own heartbeat, deep in my chest.

I find myself wondering what I’m doing here, going out on a limb for a people I don’t even like in the first place. All I was interested in doing was seeing that some justice was done to Anwatan’s murderers. Then that got complicated in this search for Lizzie and Joe’s sister Jilly. Now here I am, going off to petition the head of the corbae clan to intercede on behalf of what I’ve always pretty much felt were my enemies.

And none of this even comes close to dealing with my own problems with Odawa.

I listen to the buffalo for a little longer, let their righteous anger rise up and fill me.

But it won’t hold.

I’ve given my word.

So I step back into
Kakagi-aki
—Raven’s world—and set off to find its creator. Who knows? Maybe he’ll listen to me. Maybe he’ll take out that old pot of his, the one he stirred that brought the world into being in the long ago. Maybe he’ll stir it again and re-create the world. Make a place where we can all start over and do it right this time.

Jilly

My paralysis lasts right up
until the moment Del actually touches me . . .

And then all hell breaks loose.

Maybe I’m just a little kid, but I only
look
like a little kid. I’m still the grown-up me inside this nine-year-old body. I’m tough. I’m resilient. I’ve survived a lifetime of good and bad, and while maybe the good was really good, the bad was worse than bad, so it’s not like I’m a pushover.

What I know for sure is, I don’t have to take his crap anymore—not like the little kid I used to be had to.

Am I still scared? Sure I am. I’d be stupid not to be. In my present circumstances, he’s at least twice my size and way stronger. And he’s always been way
meaner.

But I don’t give up.

Through the hardest times I’ve been through, I never gave up except for once—that day when I was out of dope and out of money and three-days hungry, when Lou found me and took me to Angel. And even then, I still sassed him. But I just didn’t have it in me to care anymore.

I care now. I care big time.

What’s happening to me right now is something I’ve fought against ever since I got myself off the streets. Not just for myself, but for other people, for other kids. I’ve worked at raising awareness. At standing up when standing up was needed. Being the shoulder to lean on. Working the soup kitchens, the crisis lines, whatever was needed when it was needed, not only when it was convenient.

Until my accident, I was always out there on the front lines, cutting out a chunk of every week to be there. To be doing something. To fight the injustice and wrongs that we seem to do so casually to each other.

So how can I not fight for myself?

As soon as that big brother of mine gets close enough, I give him a solid kick in the groin with all the power of a little girl’s leg behind it. And it hurts him. I
know
it hurts him. I can see it in his eyes. I can see it in his body language.

But he doesn’t buckle. He just stands there, and I watch the pain leave his eyes. I see him grin at me.

“You just don’t get it, do you?” he says. “You might have put this world together in some little dark place of your mind, but it was never yours. It was always mine, little sister. What I say goes and
only
what I say.”

“Bullshit.”

He gives me a casual swat with his hand that sends my little child’s body tumbling to the grass.

“Don’t you sass me, little sister,” he says. “I purely don’t have the patience for it.”

My head is ringing, but I force myself to sit up. I can feel the heat of a welt burning on my cheek. But I’m too mad to pay attention to either. Too mad to consider the consequences of fighting back, if only with words.

“You don’t have the patience for it?” I say, getting to my feet. I feel dizzy and my voice sounds so weird—thin and childlike. “You arrogant piece of—”

He hits me again—still with an open hand, but harder now, enough to make me cry out and send me sprawling once more. Before I can even think of getting up, he’s standing over me—towering, larger than life. He puts a boot on my shoulder and pushes down until it feels like my shoulder is going to snap.

“Where’d you get all this fight in you?” he asks.

He leans down, peering into my face. The motion puts increased pressure on the weight of his boot. Tears of pain leak from my eyes.

“Not that it matters none,” he tells me. “It all comes out the same in the end. You do whatever the hell I tell you, when I tell you, the way I tell you. Or I just break you like a twig.”

The weight of his boot lifts for a moment, then he brings it down hard and bones snap in my shoulder. He grins as I cry out.