Sheila MacNamarra, my very own mother, stood a few feet away, wearing the cable-knit sweater and jeans she’d worn in the photograph taken almost twenty-seven years ago. A silver necklace glinted in the hollow of her throat, all but hidden by the sweater. Her hair was lifted on the wind, moving slowly, as if time was being stretched thin and we were slipping between moments of it.
“Sure, and that’s what’s happening, now, isn’t it?” She took a step forward, the blustery gray sky behind her superimposed over the shop’s girders and lights. “Siobhán Grania MacNamarra.” My name sounded liquid and lovely in her accent, if I overlooked the fact that none of it was the name I considered mine. “You grew up so tall, my girl.” Sheila curved her hand over her tummy and smiled at me. “Your father was tall.”
“He still is.” My voice was hoarse. I could see blowing grass around her knees, and a white two-story house in the middle of a field. I could also see, with a little more effort, the shop behind her. This was not like any of my limited experiences with worlds that were Other. As much as I wasn’t crazy about those, at least I kind of knew what to expect from them. This was a whole new ball game. “Are you real?”
“That I am.” Sheila crouched so that she was looking up at me on my stair. “So it’s come ’round again, has it? We’re back to where we began, you and I. How’ve we been, girl? Have we had a good life together?”
Cold shocked against my skin from the inside, making my cheeks burn. “What are you talking about? We haven’t had any life together at all. You’re dead.”
Sheila’s shoulders pulled back, her face blanching. “Am I now.” She stood, hands pressed against her thighs, and took a few steps away. Her shoulder ended up lodged in the stairwell corner, which bothered the hell out of me and didn’t seem to phase her at all. “And how long have I been dead?”
“About three months. What, you don’t kn—” Wire contracted around my lungs, forcing air out as surely as a sword could. I rubbed the heel of my hand against my breastbone and tried to pull in a breath deep enough to snap the feeling of suffocation. “You don’t know.” My words had no strength behind them. “I’m talking to the you from thirty years ago.”
“I told you, now, didn’t I? That we were between moments of time.” Sheila turned back to me, sudden urgency crackling in her movements. “And here I thought this was something done on purpose, but it’s not, lass, is it? You’ve fallen through time and don’t even know how you’ve done it. Have I been such a poor mother to you, then? Taught you nothing of the old ways? Ah, Siobhán, what’s gone on?”
“My name is Joanne.” Even as I spoke I saw the words cut her, something I hadn’t intended. Her eyes lost some of their light and she fell back a step, lowering her gaze.
“I see. Joanne, then. It’s a fine name, and isn’t it though. Now tell me, girl. You called me, but I think it’s my own skill that’s brought me here, not yours.” She frowned at me, faint and censuring. “I can see the power in you, but it’s raw and untempered. I don’t understand. You’re a woman grown. You should be at the height of your skill by now.”
“There’s not really time to go into it right now, Mother. You stopped someone, a killer, right?” It was all coming out much more sharply than I meant it to, but I had no idea how to deal with this woman. There was softness in her, kindness. Love. It didn’t fit with the mother I’d known, and I was afraid distraction would keep me from ever understanding what was going on. She was already dead. It seemed a little late for her to be getting the answers she needed. “He’s back, or somebody like him is back. What’s going on?”
I watched it happen. The gentleness drained from her, leaving behind something much colder and more stark. Lines that I hadn’t seen in her face a second earlier now etched themselves around her mouth and between her eyebrows. The serenity washed away, leaving behind nothing more than resolution.
A wave of sickness and sorrow hit me in the stomach and overtook my whole body, making tears sting at the back of my eyes. My throat tightened up and my hands cramped from cold. The girl in the photograph was gone, and the woman I’d known as my mother had replaced her. I wanted to say I was sorry, to take the words back, because I’d liked the confused, light-voiced young woman from the photo, and I’d made her leave.
I was never going to escape that. With a handful of sentences, I’d taken the joy out of my own mother’s heart and turned her into someone whose focus was so strong that she could will herself to death while I sat by her side and watched. The shriek of metal penetrated my awareness again, combining with the wind to scream in banshee cries that I thought would wake me up every night for the rest of my life.
“I’ve yet to fight the Blade. Those poor women, their lives lost and to no avail.” Sheila curved both her hands over her belly now, then made fists of her hands. “Damn him, damn them both to Hell.”
“Me?” There was something about an Irishman cursing someone to hell that carried far more conviction than an American making the same damnation. My voice came out a childish squeak, betraying a fear I thought should be absurd, but which seemed very real at that moment. Sheila jerked her head up, then yanked her hands away from her pregnant tummy.
“No.” The softness was gone from the Irish lilt, leaving cold edges. “Not you, Siobhán. Joanne. I thought I had the strength to banish him and lock away his master forever, but there are things I will not risk.”
“Me,” I squeaked again. Sheila flattened her hand against the curve of her belly again, the gesture more than answer enough. My head began to pound, a throb that fit into the beats between the rise and fall of the wind and tearing metal. “You didn’t stop this guy who rips out people’s entrails for fun and profit because you were protecting me?”
“Sure and I thought I’d be stopping him, girl.” Hard, dissonant notes sounded in my mother’s voice. “I’d thought this plan through for so long. Break his power circle and push him so far out of time he’ll be lost for good. But I can’t follow him to the ends of the earth to make certain, for the life within me can’t withstand the journey, my fragile Siobhán.”
Time blurred with a squeal of sound, a too-fast babbling of voices being sped up. The light changed, winter sun dropping and darkening into night. Clouds whisking above Sheila faded to an ominous red, as if the shadow of an eclipse was slipping over them. Even the prosaic flourescent lights burning behind the memory of clouds began bleeding. I twisted in my stair seat, looking behind me at a low red moon. Dread prickled up through the soles of my feet, itching like bee stings, and spread higher into my body. The bleat of time fast-forwarding slowed, and avaricious malevolence crawled over me, pinning me in place like an unfortunate butterfly. My lungs filled with blood, pain slicing my cheek as I clapped my hand against a healed-over scar there. My fingers came away coated in red wetness.
A piece of darkness fell away from the crimson moon, plunging tip over tail to the earth. In the instant before it smashed to the ground, blackness flared and it became a man, or at least a thing that looked like a man. Emaciated and pale, it moved too smoothly to be human, gliding across the Irish field and through the garage walls faster than a man could run. My belly contracted, the knot of power hidden there flaring, ready to be used if I could think of a way to use it.
I couldn’t think at all. The thing, the man—I saw in a flash of moonlight how sharp and narrow his features were, like the rest of him, and remembered that Sheila had called him the Blade. It seemed like a good name, and the choking sensation of blood in my lungs only brought home the accuracy of it. The Blade swept toward me, moving ever faster while I sat frozen, feeling as if I was wrapped in safety, unable to free myself even with the best of intentions. The Blade reached out long bony fingers, curling them as if he’d throttle me, and I sat and watched him do it.
Sheila MacNamarra did not. I never saw her move, but then, I was transfixed by the Blade and looking the other way. She put herself between me and him, a human woman vibrant with life. She flared golden, like a moment of star-born glory, and the Blade shrieked a sound of torn metal and moaning winds. He leaped forward, fingers clawed for her throat. She caught him with a foot in the stomach and they rolled ass over teakettle, thumping through the field and the bodies of police sedans.
I felt each jolt as they hit the ground, smashing through my body as if I was encased in water. Despite myself, I let go a little giggle: I felt no personal danger, only fascination and curiosity as I bounced around with the two combatants. I could feel Sheila gather her will and insist upon change. The air itself responded as she flung up her arm to block the Blade’s attack. His hands crashed against a shield of air as solid as steel. Sheila scrambled to her feet, still wielding her invisible shield, and smashed it in a backhand swing, catching the Blade by the face and knocking him backward.
Again I felt her gather her will. Bars that I couldn’t see but could sense began to spring up around the Blade. This wasn’t just the essence of healing, the thing I’d been told I could do as a shaman. It was something more, something far beyond not just my capabilities, but even my skill to imagine. I watched, round eyed with admiration
