I knew where I was going this time. I wasn’t sure if I could get there, but I knew what I was looking for. The drum bumped along steadily. I wondered, briefly, about the sanity of inviting someone I barely knew to sit in my living room and watch me zone out, but the idea set off no alarm bells and I performed a mental shrug.
The room wasn’t quite warm enough for this kind of behavior. I could feel a cool draft from somewhere, and while I’d always appreciated the breeze in the summer, discovering it while lying on the floor in January wasn’t as pleasant.
On the other hand, the floor was remarkably comfortable. I’d slept on it for two months after I’d moved into the apartment, too broke to afford a bed. The carpet was soft enough to sort of sink down into, like I might fall through the floor.
I did fall through the floor, and into the coyote-sized hole I’d traveled before. It got smaller and smaller, and so did I, until I was mouse sized. A stream appeared alongside me and I jumped onto a palmero leaf that bobbled along the water’s surface. A moment or two later it dropped over the edge of a newly appeared waterfall, and I spread hawk wings to glide to the edge of the pool before landing on my own two perfectly human feet. I felt dizzy and exhilarated by the shifts, even if I didn’t know how I’d performed them. I stretched my arms, feeling like I might be able to sprout wings again, then relaxed.
“You’re back soon,” Coyote said. He hadn’t been there an instant earlier, but somehow it didn’t surprise me as he trotted up beside me and sat down. I scratched his ears and his tongue lolled out blissfully while I looked around.
The garden was healthier than it had been yesterday. There had been a lot of function, no form, precise trees and neatly cut grass, like an English maze. The trees had been browning, as if they needed watering, and nothing had bloomed, like the flowering season was long over. I was surprised at how much I remembered. I didn’t think I’d looked around that much.
“It’s your garden,” Coyote said lazily. “You should know what it looks like.” He stuck his nose in my hand and flipped my hand back on top of his head. I skritched his ears again, obediently, and looked around some more.
It still favored function, with austere stone benches and narrow pathways leading from bench to bench, to the pool, and to flowerbeds that had been empty of life yesterday. Today they were greening, and wind dusted up fallen leaves, shuffling them away in favor of growing grass. There were, I could see clearly, twigs sticking out from the carefully clipped trees, so they were no longer perfectly symmetrical.
It was very quiet, though. “Is everyone’s garden this quiet? I don’t hear any birds or squirrels or anything.”
“Some people like it quiet.” Coyote snapped his teeth together and wagged his tail, eyeing my hand hopefully. “I didn’t think you’d come back so soon. What happened?”
I sat down cross-legged and scruffled his ears again. “Is it undignified to scratch a spirit guide’s ears?”
He thumped his tail against the grass. “Not if the spirit guide likes it.” He lay down and put his nose against my leg, looking hopeful. I grinned and rubbed the top of his head.
“I went and visited a bunch of dead people.”
Coyote’s ears pricked up in alarm. “That’s dangerous.”
“Now you tell me. Did you know you were making me a…shaman?”
He sat up, paws placed mathematically in front of him. “I didn’t make you anything. You almost died. You chose to live, and that woke possibilities in you.”
“But you knew it was going to happen.”
He lay down again, chin on his paws. “There are so many people.” He sounded sad. “There are lots of new shamans, and they make a difference, but the Old Man thinks he needs someone with a little extra power.”
My eyebrows went up. “Old Man?”
Coyote licked his nose. “Grandfather Sky. The Maker. He has a hundred names. Brand-new souls are hard to make,” he said. “He worked hard on you. I knew if you chose to live everything you keep inside would start to spill out.”
“Damn,” I murmured. “I like my intestines where they are.” Coyote snapped his teeth at me again, like I was an aggravating fly. “I know,” I said. “That’s not what you meant. You meant…” I trailed off again. “What did you mean? Somebody made me? On purpose? Come on, Coyote. There’ve got to be jillions of new souls every day. There’s lots more people than there ever were before. Besides, who would make me? ”
“The Old Man would. There are many more people than there used to be, but there are far more souls than there have ever been people. They recycle.”
“You don’t look like a Buddhist.”
“Is there anything you believe in?” Coyote sounded impatient.
I thought about that. “I suppose this is an inappropriate time to say, ‘I believe I’ll have another cookie.’”
The coyote gave a very human-sounding sigh. “There’s no talking to you.”
I sighed back at him. “What’s this good for, Coyote? What do I do with it? Why am I the shiny new soul?”
He shifted his eyebrows, peering up at me until he was certain I was listening. “The Old Man wanted to bring together two very old cultures to make a child who would bridge both of them. There’ve been lots of Celtic- Cherokee crossbreeds before, but he wanted someone who could grow to her full potential. You can’t be tied down with a lot of back story, to do that.”
“Back story?”
“We carry the scars of our past lives with us. He thought starting fresh would be best.”
I pulled my knees up to my chest, wrapping my arms around them. “I’ve got plenty of scars.”
“I know.” Coyote’s voice gentled. “I’m not sure the Old Man remembered that we carry the wisdom of our past lives with us, too.”
I didn’t like where this conversation was going. I hunched my shoulders and scowled. “So what do I do with it?”
One of his ears pricked up, like a human lifting an eyebrow. “It’s a lever,” he said after a while.
“You don’t look much like Archimedes, Coyote. I bet he was taller than you, for one.”
How long does it take for the human eye and brain to register something it sees? For exactly that amount of time, Coyote was the golden-eyed Indian man again, stretched out on his belly with his chin in his hands, grinning at me. “Not really,” he said, and it was the coyote who said it. I blinked at him.
“ Stop that.” He grinned, a toothy coyote grin, and I rubbed my eyes. “Shouldn’t it take more than a blink of an eye to shapechange?” I demanded waspishly. He laughed, a mixture of human laughter and a coyote’s cheerful yip.
“Not when you’ve got as much practice as I do.” He sat up, lining his paws up together again. “It’s a lever, Joanne Walker. Sio-bhan Walkingstick. You can move the world. It won’t be easy, but I told you that before. You have the power to heal.” He leaned forward and butted his head against my shoulder. It was like having a block of furry concrete smack me. I rubbed my shoulder, frowning at him.
“But what am I, a physician’s assistant or a surgeon? I don’t understand this, Coyote.”
“You’re both.” He stuck his nose under my palm and asked for more scritches while he spoke. “Heal the patient, Jo. The patient-”
The drumbeat stopped and I opened my eyes on a sigh. “-is the world.”
“Eh?” Gary set the drum aside and leaned forward, looking down at me.
“The patient is the world,” I repeated, then slowly grinned at him. The euphoria of the drumbeat surged through me even though it had ended. The colors were brighter, noises sharper. Gary looked different. There was an air of contentment around him, knowledge of a life well-lived. “God damn, Gary, I feel good.”
He chuckled, like a nice big V-8 engine purring. I bet his Annie had been a V-4, higher pitch to complement his deeper sound. Divisible numbers, too: one went into the other. It fit. I wished I’d been able to meet her. Gary stood up and put the drum carefully on top of my computer desk. “Glad to hear it. You get anywhere?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, I did.” I got up from the floor, whistling “I’m A Believer.” Gary pursed his lips like he was trying to fight off a smile. “You hush,” I told him happily. Another crack fused shut, a feeling of heat and sizzling deep inside me. I rubbed the heel of my hand over my breastbone and grinned at Gary. “You hush,” I repeated. “You just let me be giddy and weird here for a minute. I’m jumping between worlds here. This is too wild. You just hush.”
