Shadows Cast by Stars (40 page)

The dzoonokwa go wild, screaming at the sky as Grace clutches her chest. “No!” she says. “You’ll just give it back to her! She doesn’t deserve it. I need it for the one who will wake your past….”

“Mother,” he says, “give it to me, or I’ll let them take it from you.” As I hold my breath, Bran takes his mother’s hand and forces it into her pocket. When he pulls her
hand out, it holds his spirit stone. “You had no right,” Bran growls.

“They gave it to me,” Grace says, her eyes wildly turning to Henry Crawford. “It binds you to the land, Bran. You shouldn’t have given it away.”

“I didn’t.” He curls his fingers around the stone. “I was sharing it.” He turns on his heel and pushes his way back to me. “Now what?” He leans closer to the dzoonokwa. “Don’t you think we’ve been through enough?”

The closest dzoonokwa steps toward us and ushers us forward. I take Bran’s hand. “Don’t let go. It’ll be all right,” I say.

But when we follow the dzoonokwa into the darkness, I hear someone laugh. Not a man, or a woman, but a raven, laughing at me.

We walk all night. All but one of the dzoonokwa fade away into the forest, but I know they haven’t left us. I catch glimpses of them from time to time. They watch us with their bloodshot eyes, and their voices accompany our footsteps.
Hoo, hoo
. That’s what they say. I wish I knew what it meant.

Bran and I stumble along, tripping over roots as fatigue presses down on us. We are permitted to stop at intervals to catch our breath or take a sip of water when we encounter
a stream, but never long enough to rest. Our stomachs grumble, for we’ve had nothing to eat. At morning’s first light, one of the dzoonokwa offers us a freshly caught rabbit, its body still warm. I push it back. The sharing of food is a sacred act, and I know I may have offended these creatures, but what would be worse? Biting into fresh, bloody meat that drew breath only a few seconds ago and vomiting, or just pretending I’m not hungry?

The dzoonokwa doesn’t seem to care either way. She tears the rabbit in two and chews it up, bones and all.
Fee-fi-fo-fum
. Will these creatures crush our bones to make their bread? I doubt it. They’ve kept us alive so far. They need us for something. That much I’ve figured out, but for what? And what happens when we’ve performed whatever task they need—what then?

“Don’t think,” Bran says, touching my arm. “Just keep going.”

And so we walk. I catch sight of the sun late in the afternoon, streaming down through the needles of a hemlock, and I can tell from its position we’re heading south. South, and east. My skin prickles. Unless I’m very much mistaken, we’re heading toward the monolith. The place where they took Madda and tore her limb from limb.

Bran, walking with his hand on my shoulder, gives me a questioning look.

“Just tired,” I whisper as a dzoonokwa’s gaze falls on me.

Bran cocks one eyebrow. He knows I’m not telling the whole truth, but there are some things that should not be said aloud. That we’re heading toward the monolith, the site of Madda’s murder, a place that reeks of a power that almost overwhelmed me? Those are things I’ll keep to myself.

The second night, we’re permitted to sleep. They keep watch over us, tall sentinels in the dark, and when I close my eyes, I can hear them slowly whispering to one another, the soft, lowing
Hoo hoo
, that, strangely, is as beguiling as a lullaby. Bran sleeps with his arms wrapped around me. I feel the slow rise and fall of his chest against my back, and though I fight sleep, it draws me down anyhow.

Dawn still clings to the cedars as the dzoonokwa force us to wake, rise, and push on. My gut aches from hunger, and my head is fuzzy with fatigue. The dzoonokwa set a grueling pace, leaving Bran and me struggling to keep up. We don’t want to find out what will happen if we fall behind.

I sense the monolith long before we reach its clearing. The spirit stone at my throat begins to vibrate and I hear the monolith’s hum in my mind. It knows we’re coming.

Bran walks as close to me as he can. “I feel strange,” he whispers.

“I know,” I say. “The veil between the worlds is thin here. Hold on to me. I’ll keep you from passing over.” I’m not sure when I became so certain of myself, but Bran nods and slips his hand into mine. If he believes in me, then I’ll have to find a way to believe in myself.

We step from the forest into the clearing, where two dzoonokwa block our path, motioning for us to stop. Bran glances at me and chews on his lip as we wait.

I’ve forgotten how still the land is here. The humming from the monolith is one thing—I’m not even sure it’s really sound. I think I hear it only in my mind. Everything else is silent, as if the land has ceased to live. There is no birdsong. Wind doesn’t touch the trees. Even the subtle, near-silent pulse of the earth is absent. Bran senses it too. His shoulders are set and full of tension.

A howl breaks the silence in two. It’s answered by the dzoonokwa guarding us, and then they gather, emerging from the forest, circling the clearing as Bran and I clasp hands and stare. I lose count at thirty. Thirty? How can it be that so many of these creatures exist here, unseen by the rest of the world?

“You see them too, right?” I whisper to Bran, just to be sure.

“Yeah, I see them,” he whispers back.

Okay, then. I’m not losing my mind. That’s something, at least
.

The last dzoonokwa to step from the forest is taller than the rest, and holds Madda’s partially decayed face in her hands. She turns the skull this way and that, as if using it to see. My gut churns, but I will not let myself be sick. I don’t know what these creatures intend, but I have power in my own right, and I will not give it away by being weak.

Madda’s eyeless skull stares at me, for I know that eyes are not all we use to see.

Our guards push us forward. We stumble down the scree before finding our feet, and turn back to face their circle. The dzoonokwa don’t follow. They stand in their ring, edging the clearing. The tallest points at the monolith, so we make our way to it, the black center in the middle of their shadow ring.

“Now what do we do?” Bran asks. He peers into the monolith. His face stares back.

“I’m not sure,” I say as I touch Madda’s spirit stone. “I think this must have something to do with it. Hold yours up.”

He pulls his spirit stone from his pocket and thrusts it out toward the monolith. The dzoonokwa begin to shriek. Bran flinches and presses his hands to his ears, almost
dropping the spirit stone in the process. “Why are they doing that?” he yells.

“I don’t know,” I scream over the din, “but I think you were doing the right thing!” I lift my spirit stone closer to the monolith. Bran copies me, and then all at once, light shatters my vision and all goes dark.

W
hen I open my eyes, I’m no longer standing in the clearing. I’m in the spirit world, and Bran is standing next to me. The bright red spikes of a kingfisher run down the crest of his head, and his arms have turned into slate blue wings.

He flaps them and gives me a worried look. “What’s happened to me?” he asks. “What’s happened to you?”

I beat the mica-scaled wings of a sisiutl. “We’re in spirit,” I say, pitching my voice to sound matter-of-fact and in control, even though this is a place in the spirit would I’ve never visited before. There’s nothing under my feet. There’s nothing above my head. All there is is darkness, though I can see Bran well enough. “You’re just manifesting your shade.”

“I am?” He flaps his wings again, this time with a bit more strength so he lifts into the blackness. “But my totem is a bear.”

“Not that I’ve ever seen,” I say. “Who told you that?”

“Madda,” he says.

I don’t know what to say. Bran’s followed around by a bunch of stuff, but I’ve never seen a bear in his entourage. So, who is wrong? Me, or Madda? Doubt raises its ugly head. Maybe my abilities aren’t as strong as I think they are after all. I sense this is somehow important, but right now, we’ve got other things to tend to. The darkness at the edge of my vision shimmers, and when I turn, the monolith emerges from a bloodred mist. It’s not alone. Behind it, in the shadows that aren’t shadows, is a creature that’s part wolf, part whale, and something else that has no name. It blinks in and out, disappearing only to reappear with some new physical configuration. Depraved eyes, decaying flesh, and a stink of such foulness that I choke when I breathe. I know this creature. I know that stink. It doesn’t come from the sea wolf—it comes with it.

“Now what?” Bran says, edging close to me. I can feel his fear, and so can the monster behind the monolith.

“I don’t know,” I say, though as the words leave my mouth, I start to boil with rage—not my own rage, but
the rage of the sisiutl and of the raven and the dzoonokwa and all the creatures of the spirit world, and that rage is directed squarely at the sea wolf, who is also the man who has my brother.
Hunt him, hunt him
, they whisper in my mind.
You must destroy him before he destroys you; before he destroys us
.

I reach inside myself and search for a storm, but there’s nothing in this place to draw on. This is not the world by the twilight lake, where nature still has a role, where I’ve figured out how to wield what power I have. This is another place, a place of darkness and shadow, with little substance and no rules. “Have you still got your spirit stone?” I ask Bran. If the dzoonokwa sent us here with the stones, we must be meant to do something with them.

He dips his head to his chest so the spikes of red feathers on his skull shoot straight up in the air while he picks his spirit stone up with his mouth. “I have no hands,” he says with a frustrated grimace.

The sea wolf laughs as Bran fumbles with his stone.
Is that what you mean to defend yourselves with?
he growls.

“Not exactly,” I say as I move closer to the monolith.

Yes, yes
, the creatures of spirit whisper in my ear.
The monolith, the monolith!

But the monolith senses our approach. Its hum crescendoes, filling my ears with such a sound that I’m sure my mind will explode as the monolith begins to recede into the void.

“Quickly!” I shout at Bran. “It wants to get away!”

The sea wolf snarls and wraps his tail around the monolith.
Come and get it
, he says.

Bran mutters that rocks can’t move, but that’s exactly what the monolith is doing. It’s a living, breathing entity, and it’s trying to run from us.

“Faster,” I say to Bran. “Faster!”

He rises into the air. I follow, speeding after the monolith, which is fading, fading …

And then we slam into it, headlong. Bran crumples to the earth, unconscious. I hover in midair, screaming in pain. One of my wings is badly torn, but somehow I manage to land safely, only to find myself face-to-face with the sea wolf.

I’ve been waiting for you
, he says.
And now it looks like I’ve got you and your boyfriend after all. Time for you to give your totem up to your brother
. Grotesque, mutilated fin-hands reach toward me, but he pauses, reconsiders, and turns toward Bran.
I think I’ll take him first. Easy pickings, you know …

“Leave him alone!” I lash out with my battered wings but hit nothing. The man has disappeared.

Is that the best you can do?
he cackles when he reappears on the other side of Bran.
Why don’t you give up now, before you really cause problems? I’ll let the boy go if you do
.

“No,” I say, because there’s a reason this creature suddenly wants to strike a deal. He has Paul. I think fast— what do I have that
he
wants? I stare at the moonstone hanging at my throat, and suddenly I know. It wants the monolith to remain intact. That’s why the dzoonokwa brought us here, why the raven has helped me along. They’re trapped by the monolith, trapped in the boundary that protects the entire Island, just like Ms. Adelaide said. And the sea wolf wants to keep it that way.

But why is it that he can come in, and yet the creatures of spirit can’t leave?

Because of whatever that stink is that follows him. I see it now, curling there, looming in the darkness, taking form. It rises up, a great maw and nothing else. This is what the creatures of the spirit world fear. I can sense it, rippling out toward the dzoonokwa, coursing through the nothingness around us. They are trapped, and while they are, the sea wolf and his denizen can hunt them as they desire—and us, too. I’ve already seen the poison gas take one person already. Saul. I thought it was my fault. But perhaps it wasn’t after all.

And now, I am here—because I share the power of
sisiutl, the strongest of the spirit creatures, and if I want to break the monolith, there is nothing the sea wolf can do to stop me.

I rest against the monolith, pressing my head to its cold, shining surface and listen, turning so I can see my eyes reflect back at me.
Do it
, my mind whispers. The searchers have already found their way through. The monolith is failing. If the creatures of spirit die altogether, what then? And what if this creature gains their power first?