Elf Saga: Bloodlines (Part 1: Curse of the Jaguar) (2 page)

As soon as I’m done eating, I’m back in the
saddle and riding west through the silent forest. At noon I stop at
a stream for a drink. I kneel by the water, sipping from my spotted
hand, and when I straighten up, there she is, standing right in
front of me across the stream.

Lozen Xocolatl Marev.

I stand up slowly, like she’s some deer that
might startle and run away, which is supremely stupid because there
isn’t a monster alive that can scare her. I wave. “Hello,
Mother.”

She nods. “Genesee.” Her mouth twitches like
she wants to smile, but can’t quite remember how.

She doesn’t look her age, and I can’t tell if
that’s the jaguar magic or just good blood. It’s been years since I
last saw her, but she looks the same to me. No gray hair, no lines
to speak of. She’s wearing a mish-mash of shirts and belts and
jackets from half the peoples of the Union, some woven, some
brightly patterned, some faded and dusty. And there’s that same old
wide-brimmed hat on her head, shading her golden eyes.

“That haircut is all wrong for the shape of
your face,” she says. “And those boots do nothing for your calves,
but whatever. So. What are you up to these days?”

“Canoes, mostly. I make canoes. Just finished
my apprenticeship, actually. I really love it,” I say, as if this
was any old conversation with any old friend. I frown, angry at
myself for letting her get even that tiny bit of information about
me.

“Sure, why not? Everyone loves a good canoe.”
She looks bored and disappointed. “How’s your father? Is he still
bitching and moaning about how I’m not mommy material?”

“He’s fine,” I say. “He never talks about
you.” That’s a lie. He misses her like crazy.

She smirks. “I’m sure. And your
brothers?”

I clear my throat. I’m not going to slip up
again. “Andrei got married last year. I don’t think you’d like her.
She’s really nice, from out west.” I pause. “Necalli sailed east,
saying he wanted to be an Alcani and ride unicorns.”

She nods. “Good for him.”

“If you say so.” I miss his laugh and his
hugs. But I don’t miss hearing him coughing at night.

She glances up at my pronghorn, a sleek red
thing with vicious little antlers, staring serenely at the stream.
“So what do you want, Gen? You came a hell of a long way just to
chat about canoes, and I have to warn you, there’s only so much
small talk I can make about canoes before I fall asleep here.”

I stare at her. She’s exactly like I
remembered. I thought I’d remembered wrong, that I was too young
and too angry, but no, this really is what she’s like. Harsh and
sharp, bored and distant, distracted and edgy. Strange and powerful
to look at, but dangerous to everyone, even herself, probably. This
is what Dad misses so much? “Look, I just figured you weren’t ever
coming back, so I’d have to find you if I wanted any answers.”

“What answers?” She shakes her head. “You’re
too old to be crying over why mommy left, Gen. You know why. I’ve
got things to do. Evil to smite. Innocents to save. Can’t do that
sitting around a longhouse with a bunch of babies. I stayed long
enough to wipe your butt and get you on your feet. Now I’m back on
the job.”

“The job?” I wince and look away. I want to
hit her, but I know better. I’m only half jaguar, and she’s the
real thing. I can go toe-to-toe with a half dozen men at once, but
not her. No one can take her. “Throwing soldiers into trees? That
job?”

“I made a deal once to get all the Azterans
out of the Union, every last one of them, but it didn’t last. They
came back, and they really like taking things that don’t belong to
them,” she says. “Land. Gold. Lives. Someone has to stand up to
them.”

“Yeah, you’re a real hero,” I say dully,
thinking of the three unfinished windmills.

“Damn straight, I’m a hero,” she snaps at me.
“Do you know how many wars I’ve stopped with my bare hands? How
many dragons I’ve killed with my bare hands?” She holds up her
hands, her furry hands covered in jaguar rosettes, and from her
fingertips she extends her obsidian claws. I shiver. I remember
those claws. They gave me nightmares when I was little. I’m glad I
didn’t inherit those.

“Yeah, I know. I remember how it was your
favorite excuse for not helping with the dishes. You were just too
damn heroic for all that.” I try to stare her down, like she isn’t
bothering me, but I doubt I’m doing a good job of it. If she can
face down a dragon, she’s probably not too worried about facing
down her canoe-carving daughter.

I look away. I’m not going to tell her why
I’m really here. She doesn’t deserve to know anything about me or
my brothers. “Listen, I just… Dad won’t talk about it. About the
old days, when you two were running around slaying dragons and
saving the world. Whenever I ask him anything, he just shakes his
head and changes the subject.”

“So you want to hear about how the most
badass mom in the world smashed every sword in a whole Shihoku
army? Or how I closed the doorway to the afterlife? Or when I
punched my way out of a dragon’s mouth?” She grins wickedly. “You
came all this way for story time?”

“No.” I hold up my hands with my own dark
jaguar rosettes. My nails are shiny and black, but they’re as weak
and round as anyone else’s. “I want to know what this jaguar curse
is. What it really is, what it means, and how I can get rid of
it.”

She stares at me. “Get rid of it? You can’t
get rid of it.”

I shiver. “How do you know? Why should I
believe you?”

“Because I say so!”

“I’m not a child anymore, Mother. Tell me the
truth. All of it this time.”

She holds up her claws again. “I did tell
you, a hundred times. The spirit Raven made me into the jaguar
knight so I could kill a mermaid. Mermaids are awful, if you
recall. She was a huge ugly thing in desperate need of a hair brush
and a breath mint, but I didn’t have either of those, so I tore off
her arm. And then her head.” Then she whispers, “Spoiler alert. She
died.”

“I know, but…” I look around the quiet
forest, as though I’ll see some sign to help me get the words
right. I’m feeling hot and distracted, and my head is pounding.
“...if you want to kill a monster, you just need a sword or a spell
or something. But this Raven spirit thing transformed you into a
jaguar warrior. And I’m like you too, it’s in our blood. But there
has to be more to it than just some muscles and spots. It has to
mean something more. And there has to be a way to get rid of it, to
be normal. I need to know. Please.”

She laughs at me, but she’s not amused.
There’s a strange look in her eyes, and for a second, I get the
feeling that she wants to run away.

“Mean something? You want it to mean
something?” She laughs that same weird laugh again, and shakes her
head as she turns away. “You’re too old for faerie tales, Gen. Stop
looking for morals and reasons. Life isn’t fair, the good guys
don’t always win, and sometimes shit just happens. So go home. Go
back to daddy, find a boy, and have a baby or something.” And she
runs off into the woods, running like a wildcat, bounding off
silently, and vanishing completely a moment later.

I stare after her.

I stand there, my hand still dripping with
stream water, staring into the forest.

I don’t know what I expected…

That’s a lie. I expected her to spill all the
secrets of the universe, to explain about Raven, and to tell me
what it means to be physically transformed into a blessed warrior.
I expected answers, mysteries, riddles, enlightenment. And I
expected a cure.

I didn’t expect to get laughed at.

But this doesn’t change anything.

I wipe my hand on my shirt, climb up into the
saddle, and go after her again.

For five more days I follow her trail, but
we’re not going west anymore. She’s leading me north now, and she’s
moving faster than before, away from the border, away from the
Azterans. Where the hell could she be going?

We’re in the Miroq province now, and here the
mountains are gray with a little snow up at the top, and the
forests are a bit cooler, a bit livelier. Rabbits and foxes and
beaver run and creep through the shadows, while crows and owls and
eagles perch overhead. Her trail skirts a handful of villages and I
smell food cooking and hear children singing. It feels a bit more
like home. It feels good.

Then it rains. That sucks. And it just makes
me want to be home even more. I miss my warm bed, and the smell of
eggs cooking, and the soft music of the flutes coming from next
door. I try to hum a tune, but I can’t remember more than a few
notes of any of them. I guess that’s why I don’t make flutes.

As the trail dips down through a gurgling
stream, I spot a carcass through the trees. It’s some sort of pine
drake, a dark green dragon only a little bigger than my pronghorn,
with two thin tails and short, broad wings for flying low through
the trees. The neck is all twisted and knotted like old rope, and
there’s a jagged, bloody hole in the thing’s chest. I glance
inside.

She tore out its heart with her bare
hands.

Of course she did.

It’s a fresh kill, so I’m still close behind
her. I don’t know if this is supposed to scare me off, but I’ve
seen plenty of dead animals in my life, so I ride around the drake
without touching it, and carry on.

Days pass. I stop counting.

On a cold morning, as the mist lies thick in
the forest and a fresh drizzle begins to patter on my head, I ride
out from a stand of trees into a clearing down to the edge of a
pond, and then I jerk my pronghorn to a halt because there is a
tall black figure standing on the surface of the pond.

Yeah, standing on the water.

“Screw me sideways,” I whisper, staring at
the cloaked figure.

I’ve heard of this before, in one of Mother’s
stories.

It’s him.

“It’s you,” I say in a shaky voice, too
stunned to think of anything less stupid to say.

“I usually am,” the figure says. The voice is
sort of husky, more like a woman than a man, I think. All I can see
is a pile of black rags, cloaks, and hoods. No hands, no face. But
there is a glimpse of white where the face should be. A mask? It
has to be him.

Raven.

“I’m looking for someone,” I say. “A woman
named Lozen, the jaguar knight.”

“You missed her,” says the stranger. “She’s
two days gone now.”

“Two?” I frown. How did I fall so far
behind?

“Not that you can catch her. She took our
last crystal ship. Mokokari was heartbroken. He only has a few
shards left, so it will take years to grow another one.”

A crystal ship? Just like in Dad’s
stories!

“Why did she take the ship?” I ask. “Where
did she go?”

“She went to find Raven.”

I freeze for a second, frowning. “But… aren’t
you Raven?”

“No, thankfully.” The black rags shake and
shudder, and they collapse in a heap. The elf-like figure is gone,
and now sitting among the black cloaks is a large white fox. “I am
Inari.”

“Inari?” It’s a talking fox. I think I
remember this from the stories too, but it’s been years since Dad
talked about this stuff. I think the fox’s tail is important. And
there was a woman with a tail too, more than one, actually. She
negotiated the Treaty of Wei Gan Shao and ended the dragon wars
between Tenjia and Varada. Why can’t I remember her name? It seems
like I should remember her name… “So, Inari, you’re one of the
other animal spirits, like Raven?”

“You can call me that. It’s true enough.” The
fox doesn’t move its mouth to speak. It just looks at me and the
words sort of just happen. It’s weird. And I can’t tell if Inari is
a he or a she.

“I’m her daughter,” I say, because I have no
idea what to say. “Lozen’s daughter. My name is Genesee Marev.”

“Yes, I know.”

Not terribly helpful, these animal
spirits.

“Can you… can you tell me about how Raven
changed my mother? Can you tell me how to get rid of the jaguar
curse?” I hold my breath, hoping beyond hope that this strange
creature is about to tell me…

“No.” Inari shrugs. “Sorry. None of my
business, I’m afraid.”

“Oh. Sure. Because that would be too easy,
wouldn’t it?”

I stare at the fox as the little flicker of
anticipation and excitement in my chest dies away into a cold gray
cinder. My head is aching and I want to lie down.

“Well, I need to talk to her, or to Raven, I
guess. Where are they?” I glance around the pond for tracks, or a
house, or a den, but there’s nothing here. I suppose I shouldn’t
expect to see anything normal when I’m talking to a fox that’s
sitting on the surface of a pond without making a ripple.

“Gone.”

“Gone where?” I swear, I could smack this
guy. You know, if he or she wasn’t standing on a pond.

“Several years ago, Coyote went to find the
lost city of Yas Yagaroth,” Inari says. “And then a year later,
Raven went to find our lost Coyote. And now Lozen has gone to find
poor Raven. I suppose you’ll go to find them too, now.”

“Lost city of Yas Yagaroth? Where the hell is
that?”

“It’s lost.” The fox gives me a funny look.
“Lost means we don’t know where it is.”

“I know what lost means, you ass.” I rub my
tired eyes. “But if it’s lost, then how is Mother planning to find
it?”

“All crystal ships are grown from shards,”
Inari says. “And all of the shards originally came from one
crystal, long ago. They call to one another. So Lozen’s ship will
guide her to Coyote’s ship.”

“What about Raven?”

“Raven is a raven,” Inari says slowly, head
tilting to the side. “He can fly without a crystal ship.”

I blink, too tired for a witty comeback.
“Okay. So I need my own crystal ship to track down Mother’s
ship?”

“Yes.”

“But you don’t have any more?”