choice, rather than the act of simply being.
Faye’s voice cut through the screeching birdcall in my head, whispering to me. I could feel the power of the coven behind her, lending her the strength necessary to work through the layers of earth that held me away from them. “Joanne, don’t forget us. Remember our purpose. We can’t lose you. Without you we’ll fail and the world will die with us.” Her voice was deeper than usual, older than I remembered it sounding, like it carried the weight of more than one speaker. It reverberated through the earth, making my skin itch and shudder as if I were a horse trying to dislodge a fly.
Remember
I uncurled with a gasp, struggling back to my feet, grasping at an awareness of things like up and down and hot and cold. The earth shouted, ripping apart, as if protesting my actions and my free will.
The fire fell away from around my feet. I hung suspended in the air, my bones shaking and twisting and roaring disapproval. The coven disappeared, out of my inverted sight and out of my ability to sense them, leaving me alone with nothing except stars in the night sky and the treetops I was surrounded by.
A tremendous release of power hit me in the gut with the intensity of a waterfall. It knocked me ass over teakettle, endless roaring filling my ears. I slammed upside-down into one of the trees, crunching into branches with enough force to break them. I tumbled down, catching my shoulder on another branch and flipping right-side up again in time for a solid Y in the tree to catch me in the crotch and hold me. Disorientation smashed over me, leaving my mind blank of anything except an appreciation for excruciating pain. I hadn’t done that since I was a kid, and I didn’t miss it one bit at all. Poor men. Getting caught in the crotch made me wheeze and want to vomit. I couldn’t and didn’t much want to imagine what getting kicked in the nuts felt like.
Then a giant ripped the tree I was in out of the ground and flung it to the earth with a resounding, wet crash, and I stopped caring about anything for a while.
I was cold. Goose bumps were all over my skin, and my tank top was clammy and sticky against my back. I kept shivering.
After the last couple of days of heat, and the episode with the fire, I was surprised I could even be cold anymore. I lay there thinking about it, and wondering if I was broken anywhere or if I was just cold. There seemed to be a tree lying partly on top of me, which overall struck me as somewhat peculiar. I remembered being in the tree, but without opening my eyes—which I didn’t much want to do—it felt like I was now lying in mud.
I moved my right hand very slightly, prodding at my resting place. Yes. Yes, it was mud. It schlucked and gooed and generally behaved like mud. Which was all wrong, because last time I was conscious it not only wasn’t muddy, but hadn’t rained in several weeks. Mud was very unusual. I wondered where exactly I was. There was a sound like thunder somewhere nearby, confusingly alien to the whisper of wind through trees that I last remembered. Well, that I last remembered in a world that made sense. There were dark places in my memory that I was reluctant to prod at yet. The mud and the thunder were enough for the moment.
My hand explored a little more, apparently content to do this without me opening my eyes. I was grateful. Perhaps I could get my hand something nice later on, when I’d gotten up again. A manicure, perhaps, or a ring. No, not a ring. A ring would get all nasty with oil and grease. Didn’t matter if I was a cop with a beat these days. I still thought of myself as a mechanic. I could start wearing the copper bracelet my father’d given me. It would look nice on my wrist, close to my hand. I thought my hand would like that. It seemed like a good idea, and I was satisfied.
There were branches and twigs in the mud, and then a puddle. The puddle surprised me enough that I opened my eyes.
It didn’t help. Not that I couldn’t see: I could. It was more that what I saw made no sense. Tree roots stuck up in the air, globs of dark earth hanging from them. Broken branches were strewn in every direction over a shattered landscape. There were huge humps of earth standing with their sides sheered away, looking precarious and wobbly without the support they used to have. One of them had a tree still standing on it, perfectly serene and unbothered by the changed world around it. Its roots stuck out of the sides of its earth pillar, reaching down for ground that had fallen away around it.
I lay in a low point. I pushed up on my elbows, the mud sucking at my face and chest before releasing me. The puddle my hand had discovered wasn’t a puddle at all, but a stream that hadn’t been there the last time I’d looked. It was muddy and thick and quite determined. If I listened I could hear its burble under the sound of thunder.
The thunder came from behind me. I pushed myself up to hands and knees in slow motion, my entire body stiff with mud and sore muscles. I had to scrape my leg out from under the tree I’d fallen with, but I didn’t seem to have taken much damage. As my hand sank into the mud, supporting my weight, I found that the tree was still beneath me, as well, just buried in the muck. It had very probably prevented me from drowning. I patted it with a fingertip and said, “Thanks,” absently, then crawled around in a half circle to see where the thunder was coming from.
Even looking at it, it took several moments to wrap my mind around the idea that the waterfall I was staring at had formerly been the western side of Lake Washington. The ground had collapsed at least fifteen feet. I couldn’t be sure if it was more, from where I rested on my hands and knees. It was a lot, anyway: fifteen feet is a lot when you’re talking about where the ground used to be and isn’t anymore.
The waterfall was broad and enthusiastic, tumbling down noisily and creating the stream my hand had discovered. I wondered if they’d let me call it Jo’s Hand Stream. Probably not. That was okay. It was a terrible name. I sat back on my heels, cautiously, and stared. The sun was rising, painting the falls and the lake behind them a startling gold color. I had no sense of how long I’d been out, or how long the ritual the night before had gone on.
“Oh, Jesus.” I staggered to my feet before consulting my body on whether it was a good idea or not. It wasn’t an impossible feat, but I hung on my fallen tree for a few moments, trying to regain my sense of balance. The coven must have been caught in the earthquake just as I’d been. If any of them were still alive, I had to find them and get help.
“Jesus Christ, there’s somebody over there. Hey. Hey! Lady! Are you okay?”
I wobbled around, trying to place the speaker over the sound of the waterfall. A man a few years older than I was appeared from around one of the tall earth humps, leaping gingerly over the stream and approaching me. “Hey, are you all right?”
“I’m not dead,” I offered. The guy split a grin and jumped over another stream rivulet.
“Well, thank God. We didn’t expect to find anybody alive down here.”
My stomach fell through my feet. “You’ve found dead people?”
“Not so far. It’s a goddamned miracle. Usually this time of year the parks are all madhouses, but it’s so damned hot everybody’s been at home with their air-conditioning.” His expression darkened. He had sandy hair and blue eyes and the complexion of someone who spent a lot of time outdoors. “Not that that hasn’t caused its own problems with this quake.”
“What time did it hit?”
“‘Bout ten o’clock last night. 6.2 on the Richter. You don’t remember?”
“I got hit by a tree.” My voice scraped and I coughed, trying to swallow the dryness away. “I don’t remember much after that.”
“Well, you’re goddamned lucky,” he opined. “We’ve got to get you to a hospital, get you checked over. You know your name?”
I blinked at him. “Yeah.” He waited, and I blinked some more before startling. “Oh! It’s Joanne. Joanne Walker.”
He stuck his hand out. “My name’s Crowder. Geologist.”
“Is ‘Geologist’ your first or last name?” I cracked a little grin as I shook his hand. He laughed.
