Raven Calls

Walkingstick. Joanne Walker. Thou has—”

Cernunnos rarely spoke English. Mostly, magic translated what he meant. In this particular case, I knew there were underlying words, a language I didn’t actually know, but what I heard was an incredibly idiomatic, “Thou hast a lot of nerve, Joanne Walker.”

That put the world back under my feet. I laughed and turned my palms up apologetically. “I know. Sorry. Hello, Cernunnos. It’s been a while.” It hadn’t really. Not from my direction. But from another direction it had been a few thousand years, and I figured that counted for more. I turned to Nuada, hands still spread. “Is this convincing enough?”

Nuada looked a bit pale around the edges. “It is.”

“A point?” Cernunnos asked in disbelief. “Thou hast—”

“I asked you not to do that. The theeing and the thouing.” I found it disconcerting and peculiarly attractive, which added to the disconcertment.

Cernunnos snapped his teeth at me, but for the second time in our relationship, complied with my linguistic preferences. “You’ve brought me here to make a point, Siobhán Walkingstick?”

“More like to prove I am who I say I am so he won’t marry the Morrígan and end up in that damned cauldron like the rest of them. Apparently elves need a lot of convincing,” I added a bit sourly, because really, I felt like the whole being out of time and having magic items created by the silversmith should count for enough. On the other hand, though I would have never believed I’d end up thinking this, any day that involved a chat with the horned god was a pretty good one, so I wasn’t going to complain too much.

“She speaks truly,” Cernunnos said, just in case Nuada hadn’t picked up on that. He nodded stiffly, and Cernunnos looked back at me, wickedness in his emerald eyes. “Ride with me. Let us go to Cnoc na rí and battle the beast who so nearly drains my spirit so many eons hence. Let us render the gift you gave me then unnecessary.”

His memory really did work in both directions. A shiver spilled over my arms and I looked away. “You knew,” I said uncertainly. “In the future, in my past, you must have known it was me at the diner. That I would take your sword. That we’d become…”

Wickedness lit his beautiful angular face again. “Siobhán Walkingstick, thou hast no idea what we shall become. But I do. I do. Come,” he said again as I gaped at him. “Let us change the future that you know, my gwyld. Let us defeat death in these backward days of history, and see what new world awaits.”

I wanted to. Oh, God, I wanted to. But I had ridden with the Hunt three times already, and I had barely escaped with my soul to call my own. And I knew I hadn’t ridden with him now, in the past, because I had escaped with my soul, and I didn’t think for a moment I could ride with him four times and not be his. Part of me wanted to be his. Part of me always would.

But sometime in the distant future I had already made this choice. Chosen a mortal existence with a mortal man, and even then Cernunnos had left me with an offer. A moment at the end of everything, where he and I might ride together one last time.

And he knew what I didn’t: what we would become. I had only had glimpses of it, if that was the future we shared at all, and I still wasn’t ready to make that choice.

“I can’t,” I whispered with genuine regret. “You know I can’t, my lord god of the hunt. I can’t ride with you again. I never could.”

“And yet I try,” Cernunnos said playfully. “Time and again throughout time, I try. Until we meet again, my gwyld. Until time brings us together again.” He swept a bow from the back of his great silver stallion, then looked to Nuada, all his grace turned to sour prissiness. “I would like that sword back, elf king.”

“It seems time and this gwyld are yours to weave and weft,” Nuada said without a hint of remorse. “Make your plea to her, not me. No one else in history has borne two of my blades, horned god. No one else has dared lose one.”

I actually expected him to finish the little lecture with “Don’t push it,” but he managed to avoid the temptation. Cernunnos crooked a smile, acknowledgment of both the scolding and its unspoken end, then reined the stallion up, its hooves punching dents in the soft green hillside. “A pity,” he said to all of us. “It would have been good to challenge the Morrígan’s master so early in his bid for power, but even I will not ride against death without a force for life at my side.”

Gary, diffidently, said, “I could go.”

Chapter Nine

“What?” At least this time it wasn’t just me. Nuada, Cernunnos and I all blurted the word, though Cernunnos looked an awful lot like the cat who stole the cream as he said it. Me, I finished with, “No way. Are you nuts? Are you crazy? Ride with the Wild Hunt without me to watch your back? Ride off through time on your own? Are you batshit insane? Are you nuts?”

“I’ve done it before,” Gary said a bit belligerently.

My hands flew upward and waved in the air like they were trying to escape my wrists. “With Morrison and Suzanne and Billy! You weren’t alone! And you weren’t thousands of years out of time! And—”

“And I didn’t have the Sight,” Gary reminded me. “And somebody’s gotta go meet Brigid, right? Maybe it ain’t you the cauldron spell gets bound to, Jo. Maybe it’s me. Besides, Horns here ain’t gonna let anything happen to me, are you?” he said to Cernunnos. “Because if you do, you’re gonna have Jo to reckon with, and I don’t figure that’s the kind of reckoning you’re lookin’ for with her.”

The horned god lifted an agreeing eyebrow, which didn’t reassure me at all. I gargled in frustration. “Come on, Cernunnos! You’re the one who remembers meeting me in the future! You’d remember Gary going gallivanting off with you in the past, too, if it had already happened!”

Cernunnos’s other eyebrow rose to match the first. “Would I? Perhaps in the past I remember best he came not to Tara with you. Of all mortals, you should realize that there are paths not taken. Nothing is immutable, Joanne. Not even for a god.”

That was not the answer I wanted, especially after future-Brigid hadn’t particularly seemed to know who Gary was. It lent credence to Cernunnos’s argument. I made throttling motions with my fingers, envisioning the horned god’s neck between them. “Okay, okay, all right, fine, but you just said you needed a force for life—”

“He may not heal,” Cernunnos said, “but Master Muldoon is as bright a force of life as I have seen, and I have seen many. More, he carries with him the spirit of tenacity, a creature of great age and soul. He—”

“That’s his spirit animal!” I howled. “I helped him find that!”

“All the better. It binds him to you and adds some note of your strength to his.”

Gary looked triumphant. I stomped my foot, afraid I’d already lost the battle. “I said no! God, just because I got you into this doesn’t mean you have to go gallivanting off across time and space to—”

“Save the world?” Gary planted himself in front of me. He made a big wall of a man, especially when he folded his arms across his chest and puffed up a little. “I’ve told you a hundred times you’re the best thing that’s happened to me in years, Joanie. You got me all tangled up in this crazy fantastic world of yours and brought me back to life after Annie died. I’ve watched you fling yourself into things you got no idea what’s coming, and you do it all because you’re trying to make the world a better place. You keep saying you want to grow up to be like me. Kid, I wish I’d been young like you. Now listen to me. You’re my girl, and I’m doing this thing because it’s what you would do if you could. ’Sides,” he added, gray eyes bright, “this might be my one chance to kick death in the balls. Can’t let an old guy miss that dance.”

I laughed. I didn’t want to, but I laughed. Then I hugged him, muttering, “If you don’t come back,” which I repeated when I let go of him, except this time I said it to Cernunnos, with a threatening finger added to the phrase.

He inclined his ashy head, temple bones visibly distorted in the fading light. “You have my word, Siobhán Walkingstick, and that is not a thing I give lightly.”