Widdershins (80 page)

“Yes, suh . . . Joe.”

Joe smiled. He turned to Cassie.

“You want to see where Honey lives?” he asked.

“Even when she doesn’t like ‘five-fingered beings’?”

“You’re cool. Don’t worry about it.”

“Then, sure,” Cassie said. “But we’re not completely finished here.” She turned to Jack and asked, “Can you make us a cigarette?”

Jack nodded. When he pulled tobacco and papers from his pocket and started to build the cigarette, Cassie returned her attention to Rabedy.

“Do you know what this means?” she asked him. “Our sharing the sacred smoke?”

The little bogan shook his head.

“Three is sacred to fairy,” she said, “but among the cousins the sacred number is four, because there are four directions. When cousins share smoke, they are offering it to the spirits of the four directions, which ensures that no spirit is forgotten, and they are asking the spirits to make note of the bond of peace and friendship that the smoke represents. If that bond is broken, it makes the spirits angry.”

“And you don’t want to see those old spirits angry,” Jack put in.

“So . . . you want
me
to smoke with
you?”
Rabedy asked.

Cassie and the two canids all nodded.

The bogan couldn’t seem to believe this.

“You would make a bond with
me?
But I’m just a useless bogan.”

“You’re not,” Cassie said. “And we’re none of us special. I’m human, Joe’s a mongrel, and Jack . . . “ She smiled. “Well, Jack’s Jack. Individually, no one’s really special. It’s how we connect to each other that’s special. How we can make something good come of that. So the smoke binds that promise and reminds us that we’re not alone, even when we feel we are.”

“I . . . I’m honoured,” Rabedy said.

Jack responded for Joe, Cassie, and himself.

“So are we,” he said.

He lit the cigarette with that old Zippo of his. He offered smoke to the four directions, then passed the cigarette to Rabedy.

It was closing in on midnight in the arroyo by Honey’s den, but her pups were still playing down in the riverbed. Among them was a new foster brother, a black dog that was a little clumsy but his barks were the most joyful.

Cassie and Jack sat on stones close to the riverbed, tossing twigs for the pups, laughing to see the way they’d chase and have mock battles over the little lengths of wood. Higher up on the slope, Joe sat cross-legged in the dirt with Honey beside him.

“Thanks for this,” Joe said.

Honey shook her head.
I would have done it anyway. He’s a Child of the Secret, just like Jilly and me.

“Yeah, I kind of figured that was the case. There was too much unhappiness in him for it just to have been caused by these hunts he was forced to go on.”

The Secret pushes us into ourselves, closing us off from the world. The hardest lesson we learn is that it doesn’t have to be that way.

“Not an easy thing to trust in when you’ve had a lifetime to teach you otherwise.”

No. It’s not easy, but it’s worth the effort. Unfortunately, we don’t learn that until after we’ve had the courage to reach out to accept the helping hand.

They were quiet for a moment, watching the pups playing. When Joe sighed, Honey turned to him.

What is it?
she asked.

“You know Jack was right when he said it’s not so bad to be a human from time to time. For one thing, it gives you another perspective.”

Why should I seek that perspective?

“It’s just good to have an understanding of the beings you interact with.”

I don’t have any urge to understand humans, any more than I do the ground squirrels or other game I hunt.

“You don’t hunt humans.

She bared her teeth.
No. But there are some for which I’d make an exception.

“So there’s no other shape you’d like to try?”

Her muzzle rose upwards.
I think it would be
. . .
interesting to view the world from a bird’s view.

The crow in Joe’s blood stirred at her words.

“I wish I could teach you that shape,” he said, “but like I told you before, all I see in you is your canid blood.”

And it is enough. It will be enough for my pups, so it will be enough for me.

“I wish it could be different. I wish we could all see the world through whatever eyes our hearts fancy. We’re all so connected to each other, but most of us just can’t see it.”

I won’t be convinced.

Joe nodded. “Don’t mind me. When it’s unfinished business, I always find it hard to let a thing go.”

It’s what makes you who you are.

“I suppose. But tell me. What was it that made you change your mind about this? Back when we started off to look for Jilly, you seemed pretty interested in learning to wear another shape.”

Jilly’s brother reminded me of everything I hate about that shape.

“I thought it was something like that. But if you ever change your mind . . .”

I’ll know who to ask for help.

Joe nodded. But he thought that if that day ever did come, it was a long way from today.

What’s going to happen to Odawa?
Honey asked.

Joe shrugged. “Damned if I know. He’ll probably be put down. They’re having a big meeting about it at dawn—the air and water clans.”

You won’t be there?

“I don’t have any interest in cousin politics, unless it impacts on those who can’t defend themselves, and we’re way beyond that now. The corbae and water cousins have it covered.”

So, what will you do?

Joe smiled. “Right now? I just want to collect my girl and take her home.”

It’s good to have a home.

“Tell me about it. I didn’t have one for so long, I thought I never would. But then it turned out I just needed someone to have a home
with.
Now it doesn’t matter where we stay—so long as Cassie’s there, I’m home.”

That’s how it is for me with my pack and my pups.

Joe nodded. “Jack might stick around for a few days—just to help you keep an eye on the new pup. I know,” he added before Honey could interrupt. “You can handle yourself and your family. But we feel responsible bringing him here. We just want to make sure he fits in and doesn’t try to hurt anybody.”

Honey looked down the slope.

I have a good feeling about Rabedy
, she said.
Anwatan was right to spare him, and you were right to bring him here. He has the potential to grow up strong and true.

“That’s all we can ask of anyone, darling—you and me included.”

He stood up and brushed the dirt from his jeans.

You’ll be back?
she asked.

“Yeah, and I won’t be so long about it, either—that’s a promise. But you’ve got to promise me that the next time you get a hankering to walk in Raven’s world and hang around outside our building, you come up to the door and let us offer you some hospitality.”

I think I can do that.

Joe let a mock growl rise up in his chest.

“You do that,” he said, “or I’ll know the reason why.”

She bumped her head against his thigh.

You’re such a tough lone wolf
, she teased.
How does Cassie ever put up with you?

“With lots and lots of patience.”

He started down the slope to join the others, Honey padding at his side, her laughter ringing in his mind.

Grey

The way Raven had talked
about the air and water clans that were coming, I’m expecting a turnout of all kinds of different tribes of cousins, but when we get to the meeting field, the only air cousins are corbae. Oh, there’s a big representation of the water clans, fresh and salt water, but the only birds are crows and ravens. Jackdaws, rooks, and magpies—local ones, as well as a pair of our mottled Australian cousins. I spy a few jays, but they’re mostly blue and none of them are kin.

We all come as five-fingered beings as a courtesy to the water clans who might have had trouble travelling here otherwise, and we’re now a couple hundred cousins gathered here on a peninsula not far from the city. The meeting field’s a big expanse of flat rock, duned beach, and grasslands, surrounded by the lake on three sides and a forest on the remaining fourth.

Dawn’s waking on the eastern horizon by the time everybody has gathered, and Raven’s people walk Odawa out into the middle of the big circle that’s formed. The trees behind us are black with crows and ravens and other blackbirds, sticking to their avian shapes. I wonder if the crow girls are among them, because I don’t see them on the meeting field.

“You’ll never find them at something like this,” Chloë says when I ask her.

I’m walking beside her, the two of us making up the last of Raven’s entourage.

“Why not?” I ask.

“It’s too depressing for them. I know they can be serious—deadly serious—but they try to avoid being so as much as possible.”

I know just how they feel. I’ve never seen so many grim faces all in one place before, and it’s pretty obvious how this is going to go. But I feel I have to be here. I was there at the beginning, I owe it to my dead to be a witness at the end.

“I’m with them on that,” I say.

“I suppose,” Chloë says. “But we all have responsibilities to the greater good.”

“Maybe theirs is to make the world seem a little less grim than it is. Or at least to remind us that it can be.”

Chloë gives me a small smile. “Maybe it is.”

Once everyone’s settled, there’s an immediate argument raised by the salmon clan, that this is a blood feud and so no one’s business but that of those involved. Waninin, the chief of the salmon clan, makes the point that if anyone should be on trial, it’s me, since I struck the first blow.

I’m willing to take the judgment on that, but there are too many predators present for the argument to go unchallenged. Lazy Lightning, an orca from a pod near the shores of my home forests, stands to glare at Waninin with an unblinking gaze. He stands tall—taller than any of the buffalo clans—and his shoulders strain against the fabric of his shirt.

“Since when does a hunt for food become a feud?” he demands. “We are predators. Or are you saying that we should forsake our natures?”

“Cousins don’t hunt cousins.”

“No,” Lazy Lightning agrees. “And that was not the case here, either. Odawa himself has admitted that Grey only blinded him because he thought he’d come upon a dead salmon, half frozen in a stream. There was no malicious intent upon Grey’s part. Odawa’s retribution—that’s an entirely different matter.”

Tall and grave, a dark-haired woman I recognize as Moon Song of a Wave Upon the Coral, a rootwife of the dolphin clan, rises and waits for silence. She’s dressed in a long dress the colour of the sea, which brings out the blue highlights in her own dark skin. I’ve seen her at councils such as this, back home, and while I know she can be patient, she doesn’t suffer fools.

“Deciding the wrong or right of Odawa’s blinding isn’t our business today,” she says. “We’re here because of his dealing with fairy and the impact that has had—and could still have—on all of us.”

“Better they were all dead anyway,” someone says.

I can’t see who’s spoken, but Moon Song turns in the direction of a group of sea otters. The animosity between the otter clan and fairy selchie has never been satisfactorily resolved—at least, not so far as the otter are concerned. They have such friendly, round faces that it’s always a surprise to me how dark and deep their anger can run.

But in that way, we’re no different from humans. We have our differences—with other clans, with fairy and humans, and even with those who are members of our own tribes. Raven knows, I’ve carried my own for long enough.

“And that is not today’s business, either,” she tells the otters.

“And,”
Raven puts in, “we have treaties in place with fairy, agreed upon by the chiefs of all gathered here, as well as by those who aren’t with us.”

It’s the first time he’s spoken, but his silence hasn’t surprised me. I’ve come to see that Raven downplays the history that could make him an automatic leader of all the clans. It would be hard to argue with the one who brought the whole world into being, back in the long ago. I wonder if he ever plays that hand, or if he’s always content to wander among us, his part in our origin mostly forgotten.

Moon Song nods in agreement with him. She’s never been afraid to take on the role of leader if she feels it’s required.

“Treaties that Odawa deliberately undermined,” she says. “He wasn’t simply taking revenge on Grey. He was trying to start another war with fairy. And tell me this, Waninin, and you, Yanei Ohka. Is a feud between two cousins reason enough to cause the deaths of the hundreds of brothers and sisters we would lose in another war with fairy?”

“You know that’s not what I meant,” Waninin says.

The sea otter that Moon Song puts the same question to, answers by changing the subject.