Widdershins (61 page)

“Anwatan,” Walker said, the first to name her.

There was no happiness in the cerva’s voice. Only surprise at her unexpected appearance. And sadness for her death. Perhaps a touch of worry that she was here, instead of moving on into the next world.

So this was the girl the bogans had killed, Joe thought.

“How dare you decide on the manner of my retribution?” she demanded of Minisino.

The war chief actually retreated a step from her, but that, Joe decided, was involuntary, because it soon became apparent that he wasn’t backing down from his plans.

“This isn’t about you, Anwatan,” Minisino told her. “This is for all the cerva the aganesha have slaughtered.”

The spirit shook her head. “The dead see through the lies of the living,” she said. “Why don’t you tell this army you have gathered the truth, since they seem to be conveniently blind to it?”

“That’s because he wouldn’t have an army if he did,” another woman’s voice answered before Minisino could speak.

She didn’t take shape the way the deer spirit had. She’d stepped out of nowhere—the way you did in the between, when you come from the world that Raven made, or from the otherworld—a small woman with long tangles of red hair, dressed in baggy green cargo pants and a tight black T-shirt. There was something familiar about her, but Joe couldn’t quite place it. What he did know was that she wasn’t human or fairy, a cousin or a spirit.

Cody’s balls
, Jack said in his head.
This is turning into a regular variety show for freaks and misfits.

No kidding.

Minisino looked at the newcomer, and Joe saw something change in his eyes. Whoever the stranger was, the war chief knew her. Knew her and didn’t want her to be talking.

“Don’t even start, Christiana,” he said. “This is neither the time nor the—”

“Hey, speak for yourself,” Joe broke in. “Me, I’m all ears.”

Because now he knew who she was. Jilly’d spoken to him of her. She was Christy Riddell’s shadow.

“Yes,” the spirit of Anwatan said. “Let her speak, or I will.”

Minisino glanced back at his army.

“Drum,” he commanded. “Dance.”

But not a hand touched drum skin, not a foot moved, not a voice was raised in the stomp dance chant. Like Joe, the gathered buffalo knew that their war chief was afraid of the stranger’s words, and while they would readily follow their leader wherever he might lead them, whether it be battle or a strategic retreat, they would not follow a coward.

“Speak,” Anwatan repeated.

“Well,” Christiana said. “You all see a war chief standing here at the head of his army—and damn, he really looks the part, doesn’t he?”

“Christiana,” Minisino said softly, the threat plain in his voice.

The red-haired woman ignored him. “But we go way back, Minisino and me. Or should I say, Wininotawag—Fat Ear, because that’s how I knew him then.”

As serious as the gathering was, a rumble of soft laughter rose up from the buffalo army. A smile touched even Walker’s lips.

“Anyway,” Christiana went on, “I originally came here at the request of Tatiana McGree, Queen of the Newford Fairy Courts. She wanted me to set up a meeting with Fat Ear to see if, between the two of them, a peaceful solution could be found. And I was willing to do that because then they’d owe me a favour. But since this young woman—” She waved a hand in Anwatan’s direction. “—has brought it up, maybe it’d just be easier for you all to decide if Fat Ear should even be leading anybody in the first place.”

“This woman,” Minisino began, pointing at the red-haired stranger, his voice loud, “is—”

“Telling the truth so far,” Anwatan said. “So why don’t we let her continue?”

The war chief glared at Christiana. She’s just made herself a serious enemy, Joe thought. But it didn’t seem to bother her in the least.

I like this girl
, he told Jack.

Do you know her?

She’s Christy’s shadow. The question is, how did she get involved with all of this?

Who cares?
Jack replied.
She’s doing great so far.

No kidding.

Plus she’s got a nice ass
, Jack added.

Stay focused.

Oh, I am.

“So, as I was saying,” Christiana continued, “Fat Ear and me, we used to pal around, back in the once upon a time when we were young. Even then he was real serious—already the warrior—and ambitious as hell. He was going to lead the buffalo tribes back into glory, he told me, it didn’t matter what it would take. He’d chosen this new name—Minisino. Warrior. It’s got quite the ring, doesn’t it? Better than Fat Ear, anyway. I mean, who’s going to follow a war chief named Fat Ear?”

“Get to your point,” Raven said.

“Right.” She turned to face Minisino. “What you’re doing here isn’t right. It wasn’t right when you talked about it way back when, and it’s not right now when you’re actually doing it.”

Minisino hadn’t stopped glaring at her.

“You know the history of my people,” he said, his voice stiff with anger. “It’s long past time that we—”

“Oh, spare us all the bullshit. You’re doing this for one reason and one reason only: you want to be in charge. You want to be remembered—and not as Fat Ear. Pretending that you’re doing this for Anwatan, or for any other victim of injustice, is just low.”

“You—”

“And here’s the thing,” she went on, turning to look at Ayabe and the others. “Did you never wonder why this stomp dance is going on for so long? It’s because Fat Ear needs the Court’s army to come to him. Here he’s got the numbers. Over there . . . well, what does he have? Forty flesh and blood warriors? Maybe fifty? Because you do know that spirits of the dead can’t do much of anything once they cross back over to the world Raven made, don’t you?”

Her gaze went back to Minisino and his army.

“Here,” she said, “he’s got a sure victory that’ll live on in stories told around the campfires for a hundred years. Over there he’s going to get his ass handed to him on the end of a fairy spear, because if you don’t think Tatiana can field enough fairy to deal with fifty buffalo warriors, you’re living in a whole other reality than I am.”

Damn, she was right, Joe realized. Why hadn’t anybody else figured that out?

It was such a basic thing—all, or at least one of them, should have remembered.

“Tatiana’s already promised to see that Anwatan’s murderers are punished,” Christiana went on. “And I’m sure she’ll be open to hearing any other concerns. But this is the kind of thing you deal with at a council table, not on a battlefield. Not unless you want your asses whupped. Or—” She fixed her steady gaze on Minisino. “—you’re out to make some kind of a name for yourself.”

There was an uneasy shuffling in the ranks of the buffalo army. Minisino turned to them.

“You don’t actually
believe
this crap, do you?” he asked. “Why are you even listening to her? She’s not one of us. What do you even know about her?”

“You tell us,” one of the buffalo warriors said.

“We don’t have to know anything about her,” another added. This one was a spirit of the dead, the holes in his chest where the bullets had struck him were plainly visible. “We can see through the lie to the truth she tells.”

A third buffalo warrior—another of the spirits—nodded. “We should have seen it from the first, but we were too eager to be avenged.”

“We still can be!” Minisino cried. “If we guard the entrances of the otherworld against the aganesha, they’ll
have
to meet us here or the dreamlands will be closed to them forever.”

“What do you have that needs to be avenged?”

“You’re my people. Your deaths weigh on
me
.”

The buffalo spirit who had last spoken slowly shook his large shaggy head.

“No,” he said. “Anwatan spoke the truth. We let ourselves be blinded. But now we do see through the lie. All that weighs on you is your ambition. Our deaths . . . hers . . . they were only something you planned to use to reach your goal.”

One by one the spirits of the buffalo dead faded away until finally there was only the army of the living left. The ghost buffalo went silently, their drums silent, their hooves insubstantial and raising no dust with their passing. The few dozen buffalo soldiers that remained also turned their backs on their war chief, stepping away, out of the between.

When the last of them were gone, there was only Minisino standing on the plain. Minisino facing the handful of cousins and humans who’d had the courage to stand between his army and the fairy courts.

“Why did you do this to me?” he asked Christiana.

“I didn’t do it to you,” she said. “You did it to yourself. Truth is, I make it a rule never to get involved in this kind of crap, but I need a favour from Tatiana and stopping you’s the only way I’m going to get it.”

“You could have asked me for help.”

“Yeah, right.”

She turned to look at the others.

“That was well done,” Raven said.

She shook her head. “You heard me. I wasn’t doing this to help anybody but my brother. Now Tatiana has to find him for me.”

“Who is your brother?” Walker asked.

“Nobody you’d know. Just another human who got caught up in your fun and games.”

She tipped a finger against her brow and just like that, she was gone again, stepping away as suddenly as she’d come.

Jilly

Lizzie and Honey work at getting me
up on my feet—Lizzie physically trying to pull me up, Honey whispering encouragement in my mind—but I can’t rise. I can’t do anything. All I can do is relive that moment when I dropped the pail and so threw away any chance of getting Geordie back.

We can’t stay here
, Honey is saying.
We need to get out of the sun. And we need to find Joe. He’ll know what to do.

Not even Joe’s going to have an answer for this one. How do I reclaim all the dirt and debris that spilled out of the pail and went scattering down onto the rocks below? If I’ve doomed Geordie, I’ll be damned if I’ll do anything to help myself. I deserve to just die here. I should stay here until that burning sun overhead turns me into dust and the wind blows all the little bits of me away.

Let me be Dust Girl.

“You go on,” I say. “Just leave me here. I need to stay here.”

We can’t do that
, Lizzie says.
We won’t.

“Sure you can. You just put one foot in front of the other and away you go.”

Honey gives me a soft bump with her muzzle.
Jilly . . .

I turn to look at her. She knows what I’m going through. She’s failed the ones she’s loved as well. I remember Joe telling me about it, how her family all died in the dog fighting pits and there was nothing she could do about it.

How did you get past that? I want to ask her.

Geordie wouldn’t want you to be doing this
, she says.

She’s right. Geordie wouldn’t. But the world doesn’t go by what we want. I didn’t want Geordie to die, but he went ahead and got killed anyway, didn’t he?

Still, I let Lizzie pull me to my feet. Poor Lizzie, trapped in a child’s body just like me, except the lower part of her face is like a crash test dummy’s. She has no mouth, no jaw. She can’t eat, she can’t drink. She can’t speak.

But I suppose if she can still have hope, the least I can do is pretend that I do, too. And what does it matter? If I die here or someplace else? At least if we get away, we might be able to find someone who can fix Lizzie.

So I let her help me to my feet. I rub the tears from my eyes, making muddy streaks in the dust on my cheeks. I think of how Geordie would smile to see the mess and that just makes me want to cry again. But I can’t seem to cry anymore. Everything’s too dry, me included.

We hardly get started down the vague trail we’d been following before I fell, when Honey suddenly stiffens at my side. She turns, a threatening growl rumbling deep in her chest.

I remember what happened to Del and wouldn’t want to be whoever’s on the trail behind us.

There are two strangers there, obviously having just stepped out of nowhere the way we did earlier. For a long moment, we’re all transfixed. The monster holds our gaze first, a shambling thing in the shape of a man, made of seaweed and driftwood and shells. Beside him is a small fairy man the size of a child, but with the face of an old man. He’s dressed in a ragged litter of clothes, brown and dull green and grey, and his hair is a nest of matted dreadlocks.

Fairy and monster. Probably sent to us by the bogans.

At my side, I can sense that Honey is ready to attack. One wrong move on the part of the strangers is all it’ll take.

But Lizzie’s voice rings in our heads and stops her.

Honey, no!
she cries.
That’s my friend Timony.

Then I remember. I’d seen the little man before. I’d seen him changing from a pony into a man, falling out of a tree with Lizzie. She said he was a doonie. That he’d helped her.

Del made him vanish with a wave of his hand. But that doesn’t explain where the monster came from.