Thunderbird Falls

Judy stepped up to my side, smiling. “It can be confusing for someone else to lead the spirit journey. You’ll get used to it, and then you’ll learn to do it on your own. As we traveled down I asked for those who were willing to guide you to join us. These are those who have answered my call on your behalf.”

She lifted her right hand. A copperhead snake, eyes bright and black, wound up around her arm and opened his mouth wide to me. “The strengths that snakes have I share with you,” he said. Its s’s were sibilant and hissed, stretched out long enough to make chills rise on my arms.

“Thank you.” I didn’t want a snake guide. My whole feeling about snakes was very mixed, after the encounter in the Dead Zone. I couldn’t think of a polite way to say that, though.

The snake flicked his tongue at me and twisted his way up to Judy’s shoulder, piling himself into tall coils there. As I watched, he changed, head growing rounder, shoulders appearing. Wings sprouted, a chest and spindly legs shaping out of the coils. His darting tongue stretched and became glossy and hard, until a raven perched on Judy’s shoulder, only its bright eyes the same as the snake’s. The raven stretched his throat and cawed, a sound of raucous music, before he cocked his head and stared at me one-eyed. “The strengths that ravens have, I share with you,” he said.

I found myself smiling. “Thank you. You’re beautiful,” I added impulsively. He puffed out his feathers, preening with satisfaction, then leaped off Judy’s shoulder, wings fanning out to encompass the shadows dropped by the enormous moon.

Darkness swept up into him, broadening his chest and lengthening his body. His wings buckled forward, becoming legs, his tail feathers extending into long black hairs. His neck elongated again, face shattering from a bird’s delicacy to the fine weight of a horse’s head. He snapped his tail over his sides as if brushing off a coating of dust, and pranced a time or two with his front feet, before inclining his head. His forelock fell over bright black eyes. Looking for all the world like an impatient kid, he tossed his head before saying, “The strengths that horses have, I share with you.”

“Thank you,” I said a third time, then, searching for some appropriate response, asked, “How can I honor you?”

The horse snorted and stomped his feet again, two solid thumps into the dark ground. From one hoof print, the snake coiled up again, winding itself around the horse’s leg. From the other, the raven exploded forth in a flurry of feathers and cawing, then winged around to settle on the horse’s head, between his ears. “How may I honor you all,” I amended hastily, “for sharing your gifts with me.”

“By heeding the words of your teacher,” the snake suggested.

“By seeking truth.” The raven gave the snake a one-eyed look, then turned it on me. I felt inexplicably guilty. No, not inexplicably: I could explic it perfectly well. I just didn’t like to.

“By accepting.” The horse’s voice had a raw tenor to it that shivered down my spine, making me cold despite the jungle heat. Hairs stood up on my arms, making me shiver a second time. I met the horse’s eyes for a few seconds, feeling exposed and vulnerable under its black gaze.

Months earlier, there’d been a moment of clarity, a moment when I’d understood that as a shaman, I could make a real difference in the world. The confidence had slipped away almost immediately when the conflict with Cernunnos had ended, and I’d let it. The world was simpler without the responsibility I’d taken on, and not believing was easy when there weren’t otherworldly monsters to fight every day. I took a deep breath, closing my eyes and struggling to remember the certainty that had filled my bones and my breath for a few hours.

I couldn’t. It was a struggle, like trying to bring a face to mind clearly. Instead of holding it, I could only grasp at the edges, knowing I’d had it and lost it again. Every time I tried, it slipped farther away, until my hands were shaking from a wholly different exertion.

“Can you tell me?” I asked, my voice small as I opened my eyes again. “Can you tell me how many times I’ll have to remind myself, or relearn what I can do, before I believe it without question?”

The raven made a derisive sound, a sort of trill that seemed to come from behind his eyes. “To be without question is to be dead.”

“Thanks,” I said, equilibrium temporarily restored by wryness. “Very reassuring.”

“Every day,” the horse said. “Until the hour comes when your first breath tells you the aches of the world and your first exhalation heals them, every morning you’ll have to fight to believe.” He inclined his head, making the raven grip his forelock and spread his wings to keep from sliding off. “Your nature is not that of an easy believer, but that’s not a flaw. It only means that when you accept the truth—” He snorted, tossing his head with very horselike amusement.

“That wild horses won’t be able to drag me from it?” I asked, smiling a little.

“Even so,” the horse agreed. The raven cawed, clearly irritated at having been outclevered. I looked down at the snake, wound around the horse’s leg, and sighed as I kneeled.

“What about you?” I asked him. “Do you have an answer for me?”

He stuck his tongue out at me. “Ssstudy. Your mind is closed to the possibility that this is real, even when you live it. Ssstudy will help open those doorsss. Then you will not look back, only forward, and you will go with strength. Heed your teacher. Heed your elders. Heed your ssspirits. When faith wavers, look to the things that have crossed over with you.”

An electronic beeping broke through the last of the snake’s words, an ugly counterpoint to the drum that still thumped in the background. “It’s time to go back,” Judy said. “We’ll meet again tomorrow morning.”

“Thank you,” I said, more to the spirit animals than to the woman who’d brought them to me. “I’ll try to remember what you said and honor your words and advice.”

“Honor your alarm clock,” the raven suggested, and I opened my eyes to find out I was already late for work.

CHAPTER EIGHT

I’d bite my own tongue off before admitting it to Morrison, but I actually sort of liked being a beat cop. Motor oil was good for the soul and all, but the truth is that as a mechanic I didn’t get out much. The only time I saw a new face was when there was a new hire, and let’s not even talk about the exercise regime I didn’t follow. I’d lost twelve pounds since I’d been stuck on patrol duty, and I felt like She Who Was Not To Be Messed With as a result.

The North Precinct covered a huge area, thirty-two square miles above and around the University of Washington. It ran the gamut of neighborhoods, from very nice to very bad, and I’d walked more of them than I’d ever dreamed possible. I had two favorite beats: the first was through some bad sections of Aurora, which was nobody’s sensible idea of a favorite beat. Still, it passed under the no-longer-guttering streetlight that had started me down the path I was on now. Given my usual bad temper about the whole shamanism business, I wasn’t sure why I was drawn back to the place that kicked it off. Moth to flame, I guessed. Either that or the less flattering “humans are stupid,” but I thought maybe I’d stick with the metaphor.

The other one I liked was University Avenue. I lived on its far north end, and working that beat always seemed like something of a reward, like I was keeping my very own personal neighborhood safe from hooligans.

I imagine every big city has at least one drag strip like the Ave. To my mind, University Bookstore was its linchpin. Spreading out from it on either side were restaurants and storefronts ranging from burger joints to tofu houses and from The Gap to bohemian, incense-filled shops filled with Indian imports. Young people—I observed them that way, like I was hitching along with a walker—spilled out of coffee shops to sit under sun-faded umbrella tables, chatting up every topic from Kant to Britney.

Police patrol was heavy along the Ave, increasing every fall when new students arrived to wreak havoc on unsuspecting Seattle. It used to be that any undercover cop could score the drug of her choice on the Ave. It was a matter of departmental pride that these days it was widely acknowledged that there was too much heat to risk turning a little illegal profit. The Ave was a battle against chaos, and for once, order was winning.

I usually got a friendly nod or two from store owners, particularly the restaurants I frequented. When I’d first begun patrol duty, I’d had to argue extensively with Mrs. Li, owner of my favorite Chinese place, who was convinced that all that walking would wear me away to a stick. She kept trying to give me “a little snack”—usually enough to feed two for a day—on the house, to keep my strength up. I finally convinced her that as a police officer I couldn’t take what she offered without compromising myself, and she retaliated by feeding me twice as much when I came in to the shop off-duty.

I waved at her through the restaurant window and grinned my way up the street. A long-nosed bicycle messenger zipped past me, illegally riding on the sidewalk. I barked, “Hey!” He shot a nasty glance over his shoulder at me and didn’t stop. At the corner, he bounced his bike off the curb and down into the street, careening across the avenue to ride on the correct, if not right, side. Rather than chase him down on foot, I punched 411 on my generally despised department-issued cell phone and got the number for the company he worked for. It took the length of waiting for one stoplight to register a request for disciplinary action. I crossed the street with the rest of the herd cheerfully. If I was lucky, I’d see his bike ahead of me and get to ticket it for vehicular misuse.

It was a sad, sad state when I was glad about carrying a cell phone and considered the opportunity to ticket a bicycle to be good luck.

Bells on a shop door behind me chimed urgently as someone pushed and held it open. “Excuse me. Officer Walker?”

I blinked over my shoulder. A girl of about twenty leaned in the door, vibrating it enough to keep the bells ringing. “Er, yeah? I mean, yes?”

Relief brightened her face. “Oh good. I had a premonition, you see, a dream about you, but I wasn’t sure if Walker was your last name or if it was just that you were a walker.” She gestured at me. “Foot patrol, see?”

I backed up a step and glanced at the name above the shop. It did not, as I half expected it to, say Lunatics “R” Us. Actually, it bore the innocuous name of East Asian Imports, although the girl whose leaning continued to jangle the bells was about as East Asian as Queen Elizabeth. She was blond and on the slightly chunky side of curvy, with brown eyes and a hopeful expression. For an unkind moment I thought of golden retrievers. “What can I do for you, miss?”

“My name’s Faye.” The door bells quivered with excitement. “I need your help.”

Fishwire tightened around my chest, making it difficult to breathe. “My help specifically, or the police in general?” Adrenaline made the tips of my fingers cold and tingly and slid the world into sharper focus. Given Faye’s opening statement about dreams, I wasn’t surprised when she said—

“Yours specifically. See, a friend of mine died yesterday, and I dreamed about you—”

Adrenaline abandoned my fingertips to turn into a festering pit of nausea in my belly. “Who was your friend?”

Tears welled in Faye’s eyes. “Her name was Cassie. Nobody even knows what happened yet.” She narrowly escaped wailing, mouth turned down in misery. “She couldn’t just die like that, could she? She was only twenty, and she couldn’t just die!” The bells shivered and banged and rang. I set my teeth together and stepped forward, not quite touching Faye’s elbow.

“How about if we go inside for a minute?” Because if we didn’t, I was going to shoot the bells right off the door. Faye sniffled miserably and backed into the store. It was poorly lit after the brilliant morning sunshine. I tripped over a solemn wooden monkey carved out of dark wood that sat precariously near the door. It wobbled ponderously. I slapped my hand on its flat head—maybe it was a plant stand—and left it complacently back in its place as I edged farther into the store.

“It’s okay.” Faye snuffled and wiped her hand under her nose, which would have been considerably more endearing if she’d been three. “Everybody does that.”

“Why don’t you move it, then?”

“He likes to be able to see out the door.”

I consider it a matter of great pride that I didn’t abandon the store right there. I paused, gathered up the several things I wanted to say, admired them briefly, then moved on as manfully as I could. “Ms.—” She hadn’t given me her last name. “Faye,” I said somewhat reluctantly, not wanting at all to get personal with the girl. “If you know something about Cassandra Tucker’s death, you should be talking with UW police, not with me.”

Faye’s gaze snapped to me, her big brown eyes seeming much less golden-retriever-like suddenly. “I didn’t mention Cassie’s last name.”

Crap. “No, you didn’t, but police departments do talk to one another.” I really didn’t want to confess to being the one who found her friend’s body. It seemed likely that it would get messy after that, and she was already snorfling all over the place. I made a slow circuit of the store, wedging myself between narrowly placed shelves and trying not to knock any more bric-a-brac over. I wondered if the place was up to fire code.

Faye, evidently mollified, kept pace with me on the other side of the skinny shelving unit. It, like the monkey, was carved of some kind of dark wood, and a price tag was wrapped around one of the supports. I wondered what would happen to all the stuff it held if someone saw fit to buy it. “I dreamed that you could help us,” she said.