Thunderbird Falls

ready?”

I glanced skyward inadvertently, wondering if I’d get another glance of the thunderbird if I tried another Lower World journey. “Yeah, I think so.”

“He isn’t always easy to contact,” Judy warned. “This may take all of your lesson time today, and it’s not really what you need to be learning right now.”

“Tomorrow,” I promised. “Tomorrow we can do whatever comes after power animals.”

“More power animals,” she said with another smile. “But this time we’ll do it as a healing journey. You’ll be searching for an animal to help someone else.”

“Who?”

Judy shook her head. “That remains to be seen. Are you ready to begin this journey?”

I straightened my shoulders and nodded. “Let’s do it.”

There was no side trip to the Upper World, no thunderbird visitation. The drumbeat caught me, and I fell, chasing after Judy, into the Lower World. When I hit the earth—rich and loamy, full of nightcrawlers and clicking bugs—a jolt went through me, one part connection to the Lower World and one part disappointment that I hadn’t been moved to sneak away again.

“There’s more ritual,” Judy was telling me, “to asking someone like Virissong to come to you than there is in calling power animals. Begin with a power circle. Start in the north.”

I bit my tongue on asking which way was north, and tried to figure it out on my own. The Lower World felt flatter than the real world, as if I might be standing on the face of a compass. I closed my eyes, trying to feel the world around me through the darkness. After a moment I felt light and heat to my right, and turned that way.

The sun broke over the horizon, very fast and very large, coloring the sky in a flare of white that faded to red. I bowed toward it, like it had risen just to help me find my directions.

I’d never drawn a power circle before, and had no idea what was involved. No, not no idea. I had enough sense to thank the spirits of the north and invoke their protection. I did it again for the other three directions, making a circle around Judy, who looked pleased, and myself, who felt absurd.

There was a little burst of power as I thanked the last spirits, to the west, like a force field coming online around me. I pressed my palm against the air, then yanked it away again as I encountered resistance. Behind me, Judy laughed. “You have so little faith.” She sounded impressed. “Don’t worry. I’ll help you come to believe.”

Just what I always wanted. My own personal savior. “Now what?”

“Now the offering.” Judy looked expectant. I looked around.

“Of what?” I asked after a while, when nothing seemed to be happening.

“Didn’t you bring a gift?”

“Gosh, no. Fresh out of gifts. Nobody left me a memo.”

“No cornmeal? No water or tobacco?”

I shifted uncomfortably. Judy twisted her mouth in disapproval. “I thought you wanted to meet Virissong.”

“I do,” I protested.

“But you came without gifts?”

“I didn’t know I was supposed to bring any!”

Judy sighed. “I’m surprised you’ve lived this long. All right. We’ll have to make do. Give me your hand.”

Chagrined, I gave her my hand. “The point of the gift is to make an offering connected with the earth, so Virissong knows we respect him and will listen to our call,” she said. “Do you understand that?”

“Yeah.” Grumpy Jo. I sounded like a sullen teenager. “Yes, I do,” I said more politely.

“There’s one thing you carry within you at all times that’s connected to the earth and holds great power.”

“There is?” I asked, but instead of answering, Judy took a knife from the small of her back and laid my palm open to the bone.

CHAPTER 11

“Jesus motherfucking Christ!” I yanked my hand back, but Judy held it with a painfully solid grip, twisting my wrist so the blood pooling between my fingers dripped to the earth.

“Careful!” she snapped. “If it splashes onto the power circle, the shields will come down. Blood is power, Joanne Walker. Blood is the most precious gift that can be given. Now think of Virissong, and ask for him to visit us!”

“JesusChrist,” I said again. Judy let my hand go and I turned it up, curling my fingers around the wound. It hurt, but not as badly as I thought it should. It was a dull, thick pain, like my joints were tired instead of the clear sharpness I associated with a blade cut. I wrapped my other hand around it, trying to cut off the blood flow, but even as I watched, it began to heal, the blood congealing between my fingers. “Jesus Christ.” I thrust my jaw out and turned away from Judy, anger hunching my shoulders as I tried to clear my mind and think of England. Or Virissong.

An unexpected feeling of well-being swept over me. The ache faded from my hand and the air around me cleared, brightening in a way that had nothing to do with the rising sun. “Virissong,” Judy said in a warm voice. “We welcome and greet you.”

My anger couldn’t stand up under the onslaught of warm fuzzies. I turned, still clutching my injured hand, to face—

Well, it wasn’t a god. That much I knew. It was powerful, much more powerful than any person I’d met, but it didn’t carry with it the raw, primal forces of chaos that Cernunnos had.

Had I not met Cernunnos, though, I’d think I was facing a god. He was small and slender and the very air he exhaled was charged with energy. Power crawled over his skin, glittering white in the close morning sunlight. He was human, but only just. The hairs on my arms stood up, and I held my ground through conscious effort. “Thank you for answering our call,” I said. He turned to smile at me.

Was there a rule that otherworldly beings had to be gorgeous? He was dark-skinned and black-eyed, his broad features full of passion. “Joanne Walker.” His voice washed over me, a warm tenor that ought to have been filling concert halls. It raised the hairs on my arms just like Caruso’s voice might’ve, making me feel as if I might take wing and be transported somewhere else entirely by their lift.

“It is a very great pleasure to know you.” His voice dropped on the “know,” and I felt myself blush as I got all Biblical about it. I clearly needed a real-world relationship.

“It’s nice to meet you, too. I, um…”

“Had questions for me,” Virissong put in. I smiled crookedly, relieved I didn’t actually have to say that myself. It seemed presumptuous. “Will you walk with me?” he asked. I glanced at Judy, who spread her hands slightly.

“I think I should stay inside the power circle,” I said apologetically. His eyebrows lifted fractionally and he put his hand against the invisible wall between us. It bowed slightly under the pressure, but it held.

“Are you always so cautious?” he asked, not bothering to hide a smile. Great. I was being teased by three- thousand-year-old Indian witches. I wrinkled my nose.

“No, but it’s never too late to learn.” I’d been hanging out with Gary too much. Any minute now I was going to start calling myself an old dog.

He chuckled, liquid musical sound. My arm hairs gave up trying to escape and lay down flat, like a cat’s ears, and I rubbed my hands over them. My right hand didn’t hurt anymore. I turned it up to find the bone-deep slice across my palm had healed over entirely. “Very well,” Virissong said. “I’ll stay. Ask your questions, Joanne Walker.”

“I need to know your purpose.” Even as I said it, the sheer arrogance of it came back and hit me in the teeth. Virissong’s eyebrows shot up and he looked beyond me at Judy. She said nothing, though I saw her shrug from the corner of my eye. Virissong looked back at me.

“I don’t think anyone’s ever been quite that bald-faced about it,” he said. “My purpose, you say.”

I twisted my shoulders uncomfortably and let them fall again. “I’ve met some people who believe they can