Shadows Cast by Stars (39 page)

Helen looks up as I stand and dust my hands on my filthy pants. “Where are you going?” she asks, wide-eyed with fear.

“Out.” I duck out into the slanting downpour before she can stop me. Rain soaks me to the skin in an instant, but I don’t care. I open my arms wide and run, run as fast as I
can down toward the crabbed pine forest where the burial ground sleeps, where platforms with old bones watch the sky. I have no idea where I’m going. All I know is that I must run, and the faster I run, the faster I will find myself because that’s what I’ve been looking for all along. That’s the one thing I need before I cross into spirit to find Bran’s father.

I run until my pulse screams in my ears and my lungs cry out for breath. I run until my legs ache and sand blisters my soles. I run until sky and earth become one and until the storm blows through me and past me and over me. And then I drop to my knees, turn my face to the sky, and let the rain wash me clean.

Above me, the clouds shift back and forth, rubbing together, and a low rumble comes from the east. A flash of light, and an answering rumble, and another flash. The skies are alive. When I was very little, my father would say the gods were bowling whenever I was frightened by a thunderstorm, but now, what I know is this: The gods don’t bowl. They dance. They writhe and twist and meld together until positive and negative become something more, something without a name, something that gives birth to lightning and her sister, thunder, and that’s when I know what I have to do.

I rise and run back to the longhouse. This time, I won’t fail.

• • •

Helen dashes to my side the moment I step into the long-house, draping a blanket around my shoulders, leading me to the fire. “You need to get warm,” she says.

“No,” I say, though I draw the blanket close with a shiver. “What I need is to get started.”

Bran’s face is pale with worry, but whether it’s for me or his father, I don’t know. It probably doesn’t matter. I’m no longer the Cassandra he once knew. I don’t know who I am, but I know what I need to accomplish and that’s all that’s important right now.

I drop more sage into the fire, sit down, and as soon as I close my eyes, I’m gone. When I open them again, the twilight lake is before me, and in its center is the sisiutl. It nods. I nod in return. We are two halves of a whole, two sides of a coin, and it will help me do what I need to do.

I scan the sky for the raven, but it’s not there, nor did I really expect it to be. The raven I’m looking for is injured, and injured animals hide. The place that’s darkest in this world and therefore the best for hiding? The lake.

I step into the water, wading deeper and deeper until the lake fills my mouth, my nose, my ears, enveloping me. I am the sisiutl. I can fly through the sky and swim through water, and nothing will harm me, save my second head at the end of my tail.

I walk to the center of the lake and look up to the sky.
Stars wink at me, so I reach up and pluck one, cupping it in my palm. It shall be my beacon in this underwater world, for the brightest stars cast the deepest shadows, and the deepest shadow is exactly what I’m looking for.

The bottom of the lake is littered with bones. Some I recognize: skulls, knuckles, rib cages, but some have come from creatures I’ve never seen, for they’ve never existed except in this place where all things are possible. I walk through the boneyard, looking for a raven, star glowing in my hand, until the star’s light catches on something cowering behind a pile of pelvises. I creep forward, and there it is: a raven, plucked bare, its wing broken. It looks up at me and tries to hop away, but it’s too sick and all it can manage is a feeble croak.

“Don’t fight,” I say as I pick it up. “I’ll help you.”

It fights anyhow, pecking at me as I tuck it under my arm and retrace my steps. I set the star back in the sky and walk ashore, carrying the raven that bleats like a lamb. It struggles against me with each step I take, but no matter how hard it tries, I won’t let it go.

Another raven is waiting for us on the beach, this one the large raven I’ve spoken with before.

He cocks his head.
I see you’ve caught my little brother. What are you going to do with him? Cook him up? Make a little raven soup?
His caws sound like laughter.

“Nope,” I say as I raise the little raven above my head and close my eyes. “Watch and see.”

Oh-ho
, the raven says.
A show!

I smile, but in my mind, I call wind and rain and clouds and all the power the sky can muster. Thunder rumbles across the twilight lake and I know it’s working—I’m going to make a storm. The rain hits me next, blowing in on a wind so strong I can feel its fury pierce my skin, letting blood, and why not? This requires a sacrifice, and what better one can I give than the most valuable thing I possess—my blood.

I take the plucked raven in my arms. “Hold on, little one,” I whisper to it. “This is going to hurt.” And with that, I scream to the skies and call the heavens down on me. They answer with sheets of light that strike me asunder.

I am lying in the sand. My head hurts. I reach up to touch my hair, but there is none. All I feel is skin.

A face swims before me and when my vision steadies, I can just make out Bran’s worried gray eyes.

“Did I do it?” I ask.

Bran helps me sit up. His father is beside me, asleep. At his shoulder, cast in the strange light of spirit, is the raven, battered and mewling, but there. I did it. I brought his totem back.

Bran eases me back down. “Now you,” he says, “are going to sleep.”

I try to answer, but I can’t. I’m already gone.

They let me sleep for two days before we set off toward home. They feed me clams and seaweed, the ocean’s bounty, when I wake, as if this is its way of making amends. The lightning singed most of my hair off. A small part of me hates to think what I look like, but when I run my hand over my head, I can feel fine stubble there already. Bran says he thinks I look beautiful like this, like an Egyptian goddess. I want to ask him how he knows what an Egyptian goddess looks like, but I don’t. For now, a goddess is what I choose to be, and I don’t really feel like breaking that spell.

Bran’s father sits next to Cedar, watching me. He’s stopped saying thank you now, but his eyes speak for him. After all, he was marked by the lightning too. His hair was once dark brown. Now it’s white.

We’re both lucky to be alive.

No one else has spoken of what happened. There will be another time for that. Right now, we’re just glad to be going home.

Before we dock in the estuary, we can tell there’s going to be trouble. Two armed men patrol the wharf, and as we approach, they load their weapons.

“Put them down,” Art, as he’s asked us to call him, says.

They gape at him until Bran stands beside his father. “Yeah,” he says. “He’s back.”

“I found them,” Cedar quickly adds.

None of us contradict him. If Cedar wants to lay claim to finding Arthur Eagleson’s body, that’s fine. We all know we did this together—all of us.

We’re driven into town and soon, word spreads. Someone thinks to fetch Grace, and I fade into the background as she throws herself into the arms of her husband and her son. I have my own family to see to.

The walk home feels longer than before. My legs are heavy. I can barely lift them. Long ago, the day we left the Corridor, I remember thinking that my father looked as if he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. I now understand what that must have felt like, because the news I carry now? It has left me feeling the same way.

My father finds me halfway back and when I tell him what’s happened, his knees buckle. We sit there in the dust as the shadows stretch across the road. We can’t cry. We can’t move. There is no measure of our grief. My brother, our Paul, is lost to us, and I have no idea how to get him back.

W
e keep close to our house at the lake and spend days sitting on the sundeck, thinking of Paul. There are so many things we should be doing—the list is endless—but neither of us can figure out how to start without Paul. The ship Bran was on was a large ocean-going vessel. There’s no way we could follow a ship like that, a ship that can cross waters our little skiffs aren’t built to weather.

My father thinks they must have a base—even a ship like that needs to put in to shore for supplies from time to time, but where? The coastline north of here is two thousand miles of inlets and fjords and islands, crisscrossed with treacherous currents and riptides that terrify even the most seasoned mariners. We will find him, my father says, but not just yet. With autumn approaching, with
the storm season on the horizon, now it just isn’t the right time. We must turn our attention to surviving the winter so there will be someone to mount a rescue in the spring.

While we talk about this, we listen to the dancing and singing celebrating the return of Bran’s father on the other side of the lake. It goes on for four days. A celebration like that is an event that will be talked about for years, but how can my father and I celebrate?

Every day, a man arrives, asking us to attend the night’s fire. On day five, he says that my attendance is required. I am medicine woman now. I have responsibilities. And, he adds just before he leaves, the Elders will not take no for an answer.

So we go. The fire roars. The drums throb. The celebration continues.

My father and I sit at the edge of the circle, watching, outsiders for a whole new reason: We’re the only ones whose cup does not floweth over, though we’re doing our best. Helen sits beside me. I’m glad she’s there.

The men start to dance, slowly at first, weaving and hopping around the fire. Tongues of flame flicker over them. I blink, and when I open my eyes again, I don’t see men. I see ravens streaked with blood, and it’s then I know that spirit isn’t done with us yet.

Bran dances beside his father. He alone is not a raven. I can see his kingfisher and something else just behind it, but I can’t say what. I could close my eyes and pass into spirit to find out, but for tonight, I’m staying grounded on earth. I’m done with the spirit world for now. I’ve got nothing left to sacrifice.

Bran turns and smiles at me. He steps from the dance and holds out a hand. “Come,” he says. “Come dance with me.”

I shake my head. Once, a long time ago, he told me he wouldn’t dance until his father returned. Now I will not dance until my brother is at my side again. Bran looks hurt, but I think he understands. He goes back to dancing, at least. My grief is not his. I will not share.

The dancers spin through the firelight, hopping and jumping so fast that when the first rock flies, no one notices. But then, a man close to me is struck. He stops, glances around, and goes back to dancing, but then another, and another, until rocks are raining down all around us. The drums fall silent. People scream and run for cover. Bran crouches beside me, protecting me from the worst, but not one stone touches us, and when I peer through the rain of stone, I know why.

The dzoonokwa have gathered.

They have come for me.

The dzoonokwa shriek and drive anyone who tries to flee back to the fire. When a man approaches them with a gun, the nearest dzoonokwa snatches him up and tosses him into the darkness as if he weighs no more than the rocks they’ve been throwing.

A little girl presses herself behind me. I let her, though there’s no point hiding now.

“What do they want?” a woman screams. “What do they want?”

“The wardings!” someone else says. “Why have they come through the wardings?”

Henry Crawford’s gaze finds mine. His face is almost expressionless—almost. His scar twitches. He’s got no one to blame but himself for what’s happened. Maybe now he’ll recognize that I’m not just a girl. No one is just anything.

Bran squeezes my hand. “Don’t move,” he whispers. “Dzoonokwa’s got bad eyesight. If we don’t move, they might not notice us.”

But I do move. I take a step toward them. Bran grabs at me, but I will not be stopped. “I know you,” I say. The people around me murmur as I walk right up to the nearest dzoonokwa. “What do you want from me?”

The dzoonokwa points at me, and then Bran. She closes the gap between us, and reaches out. I don’t move
a hair. I don’t even breathe as she pulls Madda’s moon-stone out from underneath my shirt, gently pressing it into my chest before gesturing at Bran again.

“What does she want?” Bran whispers.

“Your spirit stone, I think.” My heart sinks.

“But I gave it to you,” Bran says. “You have it, don’t you?”

“I lost it.” I can’t look at him. “I didn’t want to tell you.”

“No,” Bran says. “No, it’s here. I can feel it.” He whirls around. “Who’s got it? I know someone here has it. You’d better cough it up right now before I let the dzoonokwa search for it.”

The dzoonokwa mutter among themselves as Bran walks from person to person, staring at each one before moving on to the next. He finally stops in front of his mother. “Mother? You’ve got it, don’t you?”

Now she’s the one who won’t look at him.

“Give it to me.”