No Dominion The Walker Papers - By CE Murphy Page 0,98
it is what happened. Then…” Horns shrugged, making the thick muscles in his neck flex in an ugly way. “You remember her death in a hospital because then, in those other times when you did not come to Tara, that is where she died.”
“But you’re saying I always came to Tara.” I was giving myself a headache, an’ from Horns’s expression, I thought he was getting one too.
“Time opens and closes on itself, Master Muldoon. It does not like loose ends. Your memory of her death in a hospital is—”
“An oxbow lake.” I said it quick as I could, not wanting to lose the idea. “It’s something that happened an’ got cut out, yeah? It’s maybe the one in a hundred path, and the other ninety nine went this way?”
“Yes.” He lowered his big head like he’d been carrying its weight too long and I’d just lightened it a little. “You know by now that mortal minds dismiss and explain magic away even at the best of times. The Devourer caught you at the worst of them, and stole away what you had chosen to accept. The rest of it is what is necessary, nothing more. A filling of empty spaces with memories that make sense, regardless of their truth. Her death in a hospital would make sense, and is the easiest path to lying to you. You remember both deaths now because you have been at the eye of the storm, and from the eye, we see clearly.”
“It happened and it didn’t. We changed it an’ the first way got cut out, but it’s still hanging around main’ an extra ripple in the current. This was easier ta understand when it was Jo messin’ with time, not myself, Horns.”
“Joanne has never walked so closely along her own path. This is more complex than what she has done.”
“But she’s the shaman!”
“And you the mortal man. Don’t discount the power in an ordinary life, Master Muldoon.”
I thought of Annie the same way I always did the past few years, with an ache an’ a squeeze in my heart, an’ I said, “Don’t reckon there’s much chance of that,” more to myself than Horns. We’d ridden toward the stars while we were talking, but not so high as we’d gone before. The wind was soft an’ warm, an’ the path we followed was made of moonlight streaming across the clouds. We were moving faster than sense could make, already going ‘round the curve of the world. Heading back to Ireland, so we’d be closer to where we’d left Jo.
I was about to ask Horns how we were gonna find her when the sword on my hip lit up blue an’ started to fade.
Horns snarled, “Do not let it go,” and grabbed hold of my horse’s reins as hard as I grabbed onto the sword. The sky flickered around us once an’ shut off, like we were moving through the space of a heartbeat. The Hunt disappeared, all ‘cept me an’ Horns, an’ in the next heartbeat we were somewhere else. The sky up above was blue, an’ down below was the ruins of a castle on the tallest hill for miles. Then it all went black again, another in-between heartbeat, an’ when we came out it was sunset at that same castle, except it wasn’t fallen-down an’ the whole world’s horizons were too close.
Cernunnos made a sound kinda like the one Annie’d made when she saw him, like recognition and anticipation. I started to ask, but he put his hand out to shut me up. For a second I couldn’t talk, which was a lousy trick, him throwin’ his weight around like that, but then the screaming started and I was just as glad I hadn’t said a word.
It was like every scream I’d ever heard in Korea turned all the way up and played all at once. It went straight under my skin, making me want to run and fight back all at once. The sword yanked me toward the castle, an’ the castle started falling apart, like the screams were attacking it, too. I figured if the sword wanted in there, that was where Jo was, so I kicked the brown’s sides and rode for the western wall of the castle, where it was falling the fastest.
I came around the corner hard, the setting sun at my back and turning the dust from falling rock into a wall of gold that I couldn’t see through. Jo’s sword was pulling me