Cold Fire (Spiritwalker 2)

“Cat! Don’t fight me!”

Bee’s voice! I went limp as she pulled. Then my mouth was above the water. I retched as air hit my lungs. The current tried to drag me back down. In panic I lunged upward through the shallows, shoving aside the body that was in my way and scrambling until solid ground met me. I collapsed, face pressed against a hot skin of stones.

“There’s thanks for you!” Bee sprawled on the rocky shore, water purling around her.

I heaved up a spew of sour-salty water. My whole body spasmed. “I thought…I was going to…lose you…just like my papa and mama…” I coughed out frantic sobs.

“There, now, Cat. There, now.” The warmth of her hand on my back soothed me.

Heat baked down on my hatless head. Wind murmured in leaves. Insects buzzed. A tremulous peace calmed my galloping heart. I hadn’t lost her. I hadn’t lost her. I hadn’t lost her.

I rose. We had floundered to shore on a rocky island trimmed with a sandbar. The sleepy horizon smelled of the sea. A wide, estuarine river flowed past, alive with a flashing presence. A feminine face with skin the blue-green of turquoise breached the surface. Eyes like stones tracked us. A slick shoulder streaked with long hair the color of twilight rolled away beneath the water.

Across the river stood tall trees leafed in summer glory. Far away, a winged creature perched on the blasted tip of a fire-scorched pine. On the far bank sat four wolves looking death in our direction. I was absolutely sure that they looked hungry and we looked delicious.

Bee tugged on my elbow. “Do you think they can swim across?”

“I wouldn’t like to stay and find out.”

The brushy sandbar on which we stood was separated from the other bank by a stagnant, muddy channel. Downstream, where the back channel met the river, the water was covered with algae. A foul substance stirred beneath that green surface in the same way heating water shrugs just before it boils.

“I guess we have to wade across that slimy-looking mud to get off this island,” I said. “Let’s get out of these winter clothes first.”

We stripped off coats, gloves, and petticoats. I peeled off my wool challis riding jacket as well, because it was so hot. We rolled up our gear into separate bundles. She still had the knit bag.

“At least you saved your sketchbook and the knife,” I said, my courage plunging. “I lost—”

Light winked on steel. Not ten paces away, my sword rocked in the wavelets along the shore. In the spirit world, it appeared as the sword it was rather than disguised as a black cane.

I pounced and swept it up. The blade flashed as if it had caught the rays of the sun, only there was no sun, nothing but a flare of gold on the horizon. The winged creature on the distant tree opened its wings and launched upward. It was not a bird of prey, as I had thought, but a winged woman, her skin as black as pitch and yet glowing as if she were a smoldering torch of power.

“Beware! Beware! A dragon is turning in her sleep!”

Did I imagine a voice, or actually hear one?

The wolves tested the river’s shallows as if they had decided they were indeed hungry enough to try to reach us.

Bee turned as she slung her bundled gear over her back. “Did you say something, Cat? Oh! Incredible! Your sword washed up!” She raised a hand to shade her eyes. “Is the sun rising?”

A line of fire limned the sky. A blast of wind shook the trees like an unseen hand wiping clean the slate on which all is written. What came behind it was sharp and painful and obliterating.

“It’s the tide of a dragon’s dream,” I cried. “Grab hold of me and don’t let go! If we’re swept away, we’ll go together.”

I threw my arms around her in an embrace so tight she grunted in protest. Across the river, the wolves plunged into the current and began swimming across.

A low bell tone shivered through the world. Its sonorous vibration splintered air from water, stone from fire, flesh from soul, here from there, now from now. The tone like a taut string passed through us as a knife slices parsnips, as a kiss unexpectedly filters through your entire being, as cold magic flows down a sword’s blade, as a choice propels you down a new path whose track you can never retrace once you have set your feet on it.

My heart, my flesh, my bones, my spirit; all thrummed as if caught within the enveloping thunder of a drumbeat that boomed on and on. Within the hollow rolling sound, the space between the beats, there unfolded a long white shore of glittering sand washed by lapis-blue waters and trimmed by thick vegetation with fanned, fringed leaves and flowers so vivid in their reds and oranges and whites they were almost molten. I felt I was looking through a window onto another shore. Then, like a vase shattering into pieces, the world tipped and parted beneath me. An abyss loomed.

I did not fall because Bee did not fall. Bee was an immoveable pillar of stone.

With a howl of rage, a shape writhed out of the channel where the water had run so green. It was far larger than could possibly rest under the surface unless the channel’s depths reached all the way to Cathay. It seemed not so much to unfold as to expand as a balloon expands when air is heated inside it. It spread a net of tentacles. Its maw was rimmed with razor teeth so white they hurt my eyes. This was the creature that had meant to eat me in the river. One huge appendage lashed overhead and snapped down to crush us.

“Hold on to me!” I shouted as I slashed at it with my sword.

My blade severed the limb. The tentacle fell writhing on the stones, spraying a stinging black ichor that hissed and bubbled across the earth. More appendages lashed over us. The tide of the dream cut through the creature. Its moist hide parted like peeled fruit. Light mottled the body, slithering in and twisting out until my stomach clenched. I shut my eyes, waiting to be smashed.

The air quieted, and the world grew still. The river flowed deep and dark and wide. The trees stood green and lovely. Bee still held me. We hadn’t moved. Nothing had changed around us.