No Dominion The Walker Papers - By CE Murphy Page 0,6

habit of departing this world—the Middle World—in physical form. I’d spent a fair amount of time over the past six months leaving it in spiritual terms, visiting a whole host of realms—Upper, Lower, Astral, Dream, Dead—but I hadn’t once physically crawled down a hole that led somewhere else. On a gut level, I thought Ashley and I were traveling into the Lower World, the plane of demons and power animals and extremely powerful, living mythology. It was the root of the universe to which the Middle World belonged; the Upper World was the branches, people by spirits and, er, well. Power animals and extremely powerful, living mythology.

Ashley, gleeful, shrieked, “There’s a raaaabbit! A white raaaabbit! C’mere, bunny! C’mon, Ossifficer Walker! Help me catch the rabbit!”

The part of my brain that was no help at all made me mumble, “It’s Detective Walker now, actually.” The part that was more helpful connected white rabbits with—well, Alice in Wonderland, as anybody would, but the Alice half of the Hampton Duo was off having a doughnut with Morrison.

Moving on, then. I went from Wonderland to the briar patch, and leggy trouble-making Brer Rabbit. Not for nothing had I spent some of my formative years in Qualla Boundary, the Eastern Band of Cherokee’s land trust in North Carolina. One part voodoo god, one part wise man, Brer Rabbit was a trickster, full of foolish cunning.

All of a sudden I really didn’t want Ashley to catch the critter she was after. “Ashley, wait up!”

I erupted out of the tunnel in a shower of soft loamy sweet-smelling earth. The world around me stretched flat for an instant, going two-dimensional and awful, then snapped back to a more comfortable three dimensions, though a hint of flatness remained. The sky above was rubbed with red, sunlight pouring down with less intensity than I was used to. The vegetation responded to the light, growing tall and thick but with black edges to the leaves: not sinister, but not normal. I was on a low hillside, above a slow-moving river that ran through the valley bottom.

Ashley scampered off across the landscape, shouting, “Come back, come back, Mister Rabbit! I want to have a tea party!”

A flash of cottontail white stopped and turned around to examine Ashley. I swore and scrambled to my feet, chasing child and bunny at top speed. There were aspects of the astral realms which I could travel at impossible speeds. This wasn’t one of them, and by the time I caught up with Ashley and Brer Rabbit, they were seated at a pink-clothed table which, thankfully, did not also have a dormouse and a Mad Hatter in attendence.

Still, a rabbit and a little girl sitting down to tea was really pretty much weird enough. Ashley saw a white rabbit. I saw a brown one, much less cartoony than Disney would have me imagine him, and looking at him gave me the same shiver of awe that the thunderbird and Big Coyote had.

“Well, how do you do, Ossifer Walker.” Brer Rabbit, a sparkle in his eyes, tipped his cup of tea toward me in greeting. I didn’t like that sparkle at all: it said that like far too many things in the Other parts of the universe, he knew more than he was saying. He’d call me Ossifer Walker for Ashley’s sake—in fact, the fact that he was talking at all put the whole worldscape solidly in Ashley’s view, because none of the primal animal beings that I’d met had talked, previously. For a disconcerting instant I saw through the button-nosed form sitting at the tea table: Saw through it, with the astounding second sight that I still hadn’t become entirely accustomed to.

Through that sight, Brer Rabbit was elemental, a thing of spikes and sparks and fractal patterns, chaos embodied. He was every trickster that had ever been, every one that ever would be, and he went back and forward through time as easily as wind blew through leaves. I forced my eyes shut, not that doing so affected the sight, and willed it away. I didn’t think human beings, even shamans, were supposed to spend much time contemplating chaos. I was afraid my brain would melt, and I wasn’t quite being hyperbolic about it.

My voice came out in a whisper, somewhat less certain than I’d have liked: “How do you do, Brer Rabbit.” Less certain and more Southern, which surprised me. Mostly I sounded like I was from Nowhere, U.S.A, due to having grown up Everywhere, U.S.A.