Raven Calls

Caitríona lowered her chin to her chest, eyes closed in concentration, and all of us held our breath, waiting to see Sheila’s ghost break free of the white bones.

A goddess rose up instead.

Chapter Seventeen

I had met gods, demigods, semi-gods or whatever the grandchildren of gods should be called, archetypes, demons, elves and avatars. There were magnitudes of difference in the power each category blazed with, and I had not one single teeny tiny doubt that I was finally—finally!—in the presence of a genuine goddess. The utterly irreverent part of me thought it was about damned time. The rest of me tried not to fall down on my knees in gibbering worship.

Cernunnos had that effect on me, too, but their similarities mostly ended there. He was a creature of order, for all that I thought of death and its attending miseries to be chaotic. But he helped maintain the flow of life into death, while she was the chaos of new life. Power boiled off her incandescent skin, curls of magic licking life into existence with each molecule of air they touched. Chance exploded at every instance, random and frantic exploration of mutations pursuing survival. Happenstance and hope guided all the permutations, fractals of magic struggling to create sustainable life in a world already filled with it. My eyes burned from watching her for barely the space of an indrawn breath. Then I howled and clapped my hands over my face, shutting down the Sight.

It faded slowly instead of its usual on-off switch, the goddess’s afterimage burning my retinas for a shockingly long time. When I finally dared open my eyes again, she was merely unbelievably, inhumanly, immortally beautiful instead of eye-searingly powerful. Like Cernunnos—who had also nearly burned my eyes out when I looked at him with the Sight—her hair was scattered with light, though hers was molten sunlight instead of his starlight. Also like him, her features were chiseled, delicate, remote, flawless: high round cheekbones, large eyes, a small chin, all like she was just verging on womanhood instead of bearing a godhead.

Unlike Cernunnos, however, she was naked.

I had seen a lot more naked women the past few days than I was accustomed to. I scratched my ear, tried to find somewhere safer to look and discovered Caitríona gaping at either me or our new naked friend. It was hard to tell. I sighed, shrugged my leather coat off and offered it to the goddess. She took it curiously. After a minute I took it back and put it on her, which earned me a lightning-bolt smile of pure delight. She snuggled into it and I decided not to explain about the dead lambs whose skin it was. “Hi. I’m…” There was really only one name that would do here. “Siobhán. Siobhán Walkingstick. Is there a name we would know you by?”

“Áine,” she said, and it sounded like goddamned silver bells chiming.

It also meant nothing to me. I glanced at Méabh and Caitríona, both of whom looked impressed. I took it as writ that Áine was somebody important in Irish cosmology, and smiled at the little goddess. She was little, now that she wasn’t blasting my eyes out: she couldn’t have been more than five feet tall. Even Melinda was taller than that.

Melinda, who had a personal relationship with a goddess. I blurted, “Do you know my friend Melinda?”

Áine looked amused. I ducked my head, muttering, “Yeah, right, no reason you’d be her goddess, right, sorry. Hey. Wait. Did you know my mother?”

Ineffable sorrow came into her eyes. I couldn’t tell what color they were. Not white, because that would be creepy, but they shifted from gray to blue to green and back to gray with the passing of clouds and the ripple of wind. It made her seem that much more elemental, and she really didn’t need any help in that department. I got hold of myself, trying to focus on her expression rather than her inhuman gaze. “You did know her. Is that why you came? We’re trying to lay her to rest. If you want to help, we’d be…”

Words sort of didn’t encompass it. I settled on “Grateful,” trusting she’d get the idea despite its utter inadequacy, then cleared my throat and tried again. “I can’t, um. I can heal and I can fight, but I guess I can’t set things on fire with my mind. Would you…do the honors?”

Áine pursed her lips and wandered from me to Caitríona, who she studied for a long time before putting her hands on Cat’s shoulders and drawing her close to kiss her forehead. An imprint of lips shone there for a moment, and Caitríona looked starstruck as Áine wandered away. At Mother’s bones, she knelt with an air of regret, and although I couldn’t See it, when she lifted her cupped hands, I was sure it was to hold and comfort the ancient spirit raven. She put the raven on her shoulder, then, much more purposefully, went to Méabh, at whom she smiled. Méabh’s expression remained solemn, and Áine smiled even more broadly, reaching up—way, way up—to pat the warrior queen’s cheek before she came back to me.

“You’re Brigid’s goddess, aren’t you?” I said when she got to me. “The one who elevated her the way the Master elevated the Morrígan. What is he? He must be something more than a god, because he just about wiped Cernunnos out, and I’d think they’d be on a pretty level playing field if they were both gods. If you were all gods. Whatever. So what is he? Is he like Coyote? Big Coyote, I mean, the archetypical Trickster, not my Coyote. Cyrano. My teacher. Is he, like, I don’t know, the archetype of death?” God. I was talking and I couldn’t shut up. Still, I really wanted to know what I was up against, and Cernunnos hadn’t been inclined to talk about it.

Of course, Áine didn’t much seem inclined to talk at all, even when I finally managed to shut up. Which lasted only a few seconds, since no answers were forthcoming. “And if he’s on a different level from you guys, how come you were able to uplift Brigid the way he did the Morrígan? And why is she the Morrígan instead of just Morrígan? Never mind, that doesn’t matter. Or maybe you couldn’t. Maybe that’s why Brigid needed a link with the time the cauldron was destroyed in order to bind it. Maybe she’s not as high on the avatar echelon as the Morrígan is. Oh, God, please, somebody make me stop talking.”

Áine laughed. It was like a baby’s laughter, a sound I wanted to get her to make again. I didn’t, however, want to start babbling again, so I pressed my lips together and smiled hopefully.

Instead of speaking, she turned her palms up and stood there patiently. After a handful of uncertain seconds, I put my palms down, against hers.

The werewolf bite on my forearm turned venomous.

Shining, blistering red-hot pain rocketed through it, so fierce I went dizzy before I could even take a breath. The blast of gorgeous, ice-cool healing power that followed was even more dizzifying. Little Coyote, my Coyote, had healed me of some bumps and bruises once, but it had been nothing like Áine’s power coursing through me. Her magic was elemental, sensual, sexual, profound. I could bask in it for days, like a lizard under the hot sun. It was absolute reassurance that all would be right with the world, and it was the most comforting, loving embrace I’d ever encountered. It felt like someone giving me a good scrubbing from the DNA on up. I’d just been more or less rewritten from the DNA on up, but that had been a much less pleasant experience.

Or it had been up until Áine’s power slammed into the magic that actually was trying to rewrite me from the DNA on up, because then things got down to some serious pain. Intellectually I knew there’d probably been barely a second between the first intense burst of agony from the bite when Áine touched me, the cushioning effect of her magic rushing through me and the infection’s response, but the moment of respite had seemed wonderfully drawn-out.

At least, it seemed drawn-out in comparison to the railroad spikes now being driven through my arm. I pried one eye open to make sure that wasn’t really happening. It wasn’t. That was good enough for me. I closed my eyes again and tried not to snivel.

My own power had been going great guns holding the infection in place. I kind of thought Áine’s should just smack it aside like a pesky bug, but I could feel her crashing against it, waves against the shore, neither giving way to the other. I didn’t dare trigger the Sight, not with a goddess using her power full tilt. I’d go blind, or possibly burn my brain out. Neither would be any fun. So I just held on, teeth gritted against relentless surges of magic battling it out under my skin, until Áine suddenly released me and stepped back.

The bite still hurt like blue blazes, and I didn’t really need to look to know it wasn’t one bit more healed than it had been. I looked anyway.