his hands strong on my shoulders, lifting me. “I call on Kenati, her husband, the first man.” I went beneath the water and Eli pulled me back up. “I call on the great female spirit, Agisseequa.” I dipped again. “I call on the redeemer, who gives everyone a second chance.” I went under a sixth time and opened my eyes, staring at the blue, blue water and the dark hole below me, opening into the earth.
I broke the surface and said, “I accept the power that has been given to me. I accept the cost that will come to me.” I whispered to the injured, “Be healed.” Magic, the power of the Glob and le breloque, sparked and flew from me and into them. Looking up into Eli’s eyes I smiled. Without taking my eyes from his, I said, “Let go of me.”
“Janie.”
“Do it.” His eyes went cold, the hard, blank gaze of his battlefield self. He released me. I dipped the seventh time. Snapped the magic braid away from them. The current caught me. Sucked me down. And pulled me into the deeps.
The water buffeted me, boiling up and sweeping down. My body followed the current. But instead of taking me straight down, it swept me under a ledge to the side and swiftly into the dark beneath the crevasse. The light vanished. I crashed into rocks, unable to protect my broken body. Pain shot through me and I figured the rocks had broken me open again and I was bleeding out what little blood I had left. I was desperate to breathe, but my throat seemed to have closed down again too. I was too weak to fight any longer.
The water began to cool. Then grow cold. The underground river rushed me through the mountain. In the cold dark, I opened the Gray Between wider around me, pulling the new magic into me, twining it about myself, about the star magics, about Dudley, tied it into le breloque and the Glob. I didn’t struggle. Couldn’t struggle. The water grew colder and colder. My bodily functions began to close down. I gave in. I let the darkness take me.
CHAPTER 22
Dudley Had Caught Fire
I woke in the dark. I was lying in frigid water, the ground sandy beneath me. The roar of water surrounded me. Mist rose and fell. The sound and smell of this place was familiar. I was in the water below the waterfall in my soul home.
I had no idea if I was alive or not.
A light appeared in the darkness. On the bank over the stream stood Hayyel, his body glowing, his wings spread. He was dressed in white, loose pants and a tunic belted with a vibrant blue. He stepped down, across the rocky drop, the broken boulders looking suspiciously like the rocks below the cave in the crevasse. Which was odd.
He took my hand and pulled me from the water. Lifted me to my feet. I could stand, but I wasn’t sure this was real; it might be a vision. Probably was.
Hayyel helped me up the grade to the level floor of the tunnel. There he dropped my hand and turned, walking back toward the main room of my soul home. I was pretty certain that this wasn’t real, but something that was happening in my brain as I died. Not that I could change it. So I went with it.
I walked beside him, my clothes wet and clinging, my feet squelchy, in moccasins. I wasn’t in pain and when I touched my middle, I didn’t feel Dudley. I was wearing the woven cloth pants common to the men of my clan, with a long overshirt, tied with an even longer scarf. I was dressed kinda like Hayyel, or he was dressed like me. My vision, so my rules? At the thought, my clothes were dry. Yep. This was a vision.
My medicine bag and my doubled gold necklace were both around my neck. The Glob was in my belt. The Anzu feather was tight against my skin at my waist. My hair felt strange, and when I touched my head, I discovered two braids, the strands woven with feathers and beads and bits of ribbon and lengths of leather, which made no sense. The Cherokee didn’t adorn their braids often, and certainly not in a spirit dream. The hair was sort of like the vision of the soul. They should represent my spirit, my image of myself. Ornate and pretty wasn’t it. The braids