There was a fundamental difference between going there and going…other places…that I went. It struck me that it might really be helpful to get a grasp of the different levels of reality that I seemed to be able to access. Being able to name them, for example, could be useful. It might make me sound—or at least feel—like less of an idiot.
Whether I had a name for it or not, the journey to my garden felt distinctly internal, whereas moving to the astral plane seemed to involve leaving my body in some kind of upward fashion. I scuttled through little tunnels, feeling myself drawing closer to the center of me, until the light turned gray around me and I popped out of a mouse-sized hole in one of the walls surrounding my garden. I looked back and the hole was gone, sealed up safely by my meager mental defenses.
The garden itself was—well, it wasn’t quite dead, which was something. It was functional, not beautiful, with straight pathways in geometric patterns and grass cropped so short I could see dirt between individual blades. A small pond with its own waterfall bubbled at one end of the garden, more agitated than I remembered it being. I took a couple of deep breaths to see if it would calm the pond, but it didn’t seem to help.
“The problem’s deeper than your breathing, Joanne.”
“I don’t have any problems!” There I went again with the juvenile-response syndrome. I waited a few seconds, trying not to blush, then looked for the speaker, who lolled on a concrete bench, his tongue hanging out. I tried very, very hard to modulate my voice into politeness as I said, “Hello, Coyote.”
He rolled to a sitting position and shook himself all over, golden eyes bright as he cocked his head at me. “If you don’t have any problems, what are you doing shouting for me?”
“I—” I took a deep breath and stood up straighter. “I need some, um, help. Guidance!” I latched on to the word, feeling rather proud of myself. “Please,” I added hastily. “If you could.” Nice Mr. Coyote Man, I thought but didn’t say. I didn’t have to: he snapped his teeth at me like I was an annoying fly.
“I heard that.”
My shoulders sagged. Coyote could hear anything I thought, while I heard nothing of what he thought. Sometimes I thought that meant I’d made him up. Other times I was equally certain it meant I hadn’t.
“You did not make me up,” Coyote said.
“No,” I muttered. “You’d be cuter and less annoying if I had.”
He grinned a coyote grin at me and stretched, long and lazy. When he was done stretching, he wasn’t a brown and gold beast any longer. Instead an Indian man sat there, his skin as red as bricks and his hair blue-black and long and falling to his hips. He wore jeans and was barefoot, looking incredibly comfortable in his own skin. Only the eyes were the same, bright gold and full of mirth. “Is this better?”
It was certainly cuter. He laughed even though I hadn’t spoken out loud, and stood up to go drag a hand through the bubbling pool at the end of my garden. “What do you need, Jo?”
“There’ve been some murders. And…my mother is alive. Or something. I—can you help me find her?”
He lifted his head in a swift motion, more like a coyote than a man. “Your mother?”
“Is up there in the astral realm or whatever it is, bossing me around.”
“Wow.”
I was practically certain spirit guides were not supposed to say wow. “’Cause you know so much about spirit guides,” he said. “I’ll see if I can—”
“You won’t be needing to, lad.”
“Jesus Christ!” I whipped around, unbalancing myself with the motion, to find my mother standing directly in front of the mouse hole that I could’ve sworn closed up when I arrived. She ignored me momentarily, focused on Coyote.
“Sheila MacNamarra,” she said to him. “A pleasure, and aren’t you the handsome one. Joanne’s a lucky girl.”
My dead mother was matchmaking me with a dog. Great.
“I’m not a dog.”
“I’m hardly matchmaking, Joanne. You opened up the conduit. I’m just here to say hello.”
I set my teeth together and waited a few seconds before I trusted my voice. “Hello, Mother.” I waited a few more seconds before it burst out of me: “What the hell are you doing alive?”
A trace of surprise and injury darkened her eyes. “I’m not alive, Joanne. You saw me die.”
“Then what are you doing here? Besides kicking my ass back into my body, which hurt, thank you very much.”
“Not nearly so much as facing down that enemy would have hurt. Joanne—” Sheila made a small and elegant gesture, bringing her hands in toward her heart, as if collecting sorrow there. “There’s very little time, and a great deal to tell you. I’d hoped we could talk before, but you weren’t ready—”
“Before what?”
“Before I died,” Sheila said, nonplussed. “That was why I asked you to come, of course. I never dreamed you’d be so closed off. If you’d been ready, I could have explained so much.”
“Ready for what?” I felt very small and young suddenly, a feeling that was reflected in the garden: it grew around me dramatically, until Coyote and my mother both towered over me, and even the sparse blades of grass seemed much larger in comparison to my own height.
My mother cast a glance at Coyote that clearly said she despaired of me, but she brought her attention back to me in an instant. “To accept your heritage, at least on my side. What you’ve got to face. You’re still not ready to hear it, but the moon is changing and I’m out of time. Siobhán, listen to me. I’m a gwyld, a—”
“Shaman,” I interrupted dully. I’d heard the word before, only directed at me, not my mother. “Some kind of druidic version of a shaman. You came back from the dead to tell me that? Like it could possibly matter? Like I could care?” I was not, I knew, being fair. Part of me did care. Part of me cared so much it hurt to breathe, and that was the part that lashed out at her. It was perversely like finding out there was a Santa after all.
Frustration creased her forehead. “I left the mortal world to protect you, Siobhán. I’ve known since before you were born what you might be, what it was you’d have to face. But you were so unprepared I saw no other choice. You needed protecting.”
“What,” I said, “if you strike me down I’ll become more powerful than you can ever imagine? Is that your gig?”
Complete incomprehension flitted across her expression. I set my teeth together, about to lash out again, but a shriek of wind erupted, sounding in my ears but going unfelt against my skin. My gaze went to the sky even as a shadow, dark and red, fell across my vision again. A full moon hung above me, one that hadn’t been shining on my garden moments before. One with blood spilling down its face, and with a piece of darkness falling from it like a scythe. A deep sense of malignancy boiled up inside me, as if a thing of hatred was being born. Cold, raging hands seemed to clench around my heart, and I listened frantically for the rhythmic drumbeat that would let me know I was still alive.
My mother let go an inhuman screech, like a car braking too hard, and flung herself at the sky. Her hair spread out like raven’s wings, blocking my view of the bloody moon. The slice of night that had fallen from it was enveloped by the black spiderweb of her hair. I heard another yowl, as gut-wrenching as the earlier ones, and the barbs that had knotted in my heart loosened.
A small, furry bundle of bone crashed into my chest, knocking my heart into pounding again as sweat stood out on my body in cold terror. Coyote stood over me for a moment or two, his golden gaze fixed on mine before he brought his head down to smash it against mine with tremendous force.
For the second time in a single evening, I slammed out of the realm of Other and back into my body, aching all over with pain and confusion.