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The wind howled across the icy plain and bit where flesh was bare. The bitter wind of lost desire, Sh’Tagwa had told him. An old woman howling because she could not weep. Her people had names and stories for every kind of wind. Between the folds of his head wrap Jeremy squinted at the horizon, a white glare where sky met black earth. Mountains humped low on either side; they had reached the barren center of the Warrior’s Plain. Here and there thick stakes of ash-wood pierced the frozen soil. Once-bright tatters of green and gold and violet, faded now, whipped in the unrelenting wind. More stakes lay rotting on the ground, and Jeremy’s horse shimmied as it stepped on one, grinding the carved hieroglyphs to dust. He raised his hand and the weary convoy stopped. He pointed to a stretch of frosted grass. “Here.” The shaggy mountain horses stood patiently as the men, indistinguishable from each other in their heavy furs, unloaded the shovels and the bark-wrapped body. The freezing air had stiffened her beyond rigor. It soaked, that air, thick and viscous into the bones of the soul. We are cold kin to dead kin, thought Jeremy, as they began to scrape at the hardened earth. The half-healed scar along his ribs hurt when he began to dig, but he didn’t stop. By the time the sky had turned bloody they’d managed to gouge a shallow hole in the plain. They laid Sh’Tagwa down in the trench, wrapped snugly with the votive figures grasped tightly in her left hand, the dagger in her right. Jeremy watched as old N’Anamanste fumbled in his clothes and withdrew two silver coins. With a muttered prayer he placed them on her eyelids. Between her brows the skin was slightly puckered, as if she were frowning in concern or mild disapproval. Jeremy fought the impulse to stroke the wrinkle away. He never would have touched her like that while she lived and death changes little. The others brought a horsehide pouch and poured water over her; it puddled in the shallow grave without draining. Soon she would freeze solid. That thought, more than the steely bitch-wind, made him shiver. As they covered her with soil and the sod they had carefully cut from the plain, Jeremy unpacked the carved ash stake. He’d seen it before, across her thighs as she carved it: the warriors all carved their own stakes, passwords and symbols so that in the next world they’d remember who they were. The Tchak tribal pennant, violet with the raven and the snake embroidered in gold, streamed from the tip. He caressed the totemic figures, gave it up reluctantly when N’Anamanste took it in his gnarled hands. The old man hammered it at the head of the grave, deep and secure. And that was all. As they rode away the purple pennant snapped behind, its wind-whipped voice rising with the others, all singing together. Until the day he died Jeremy never forgot that sound.
 The dagger was for the Shadow Demons that roamed Death’s border, savage and envious of the living. The votives proved to Raven that Sh’Tagwa was her daughter, free to travel her domain. The coins were for Golgora. When he’d asked N’Anamanste if Golgora was a God, the old man laughed. “Golgora is a greedy creature, in love with sweets and fried meats, and he wanders the world as a great fat merchant-man.” Tears of amusement glistened in the wrinkles bracketing his snow burned face. “He is the guardian of beginnings, and to be reborn the dead must first find him, then bribe him. If they can remember who he is.” N’Anamanste held up his hands, woven together. “We play a child’s game: the Mask of Golgora. See?” The stubby, mahogany thumb and forefingers formed a triangle, middle and ring fingers crisscrossing above. He held it up before Jeremy’s face and he saw it: a squat, chubby face with a wide mouth, squashed nose and eyes slit in fat. “So the dead know him in their wanderings. He is greedy, in love with gold and silver. He demands money of the dead, and if they have it not, they must run do his bidding.” The mage unraveled the Mask and wiped his eyes. “Golgora is selfish, but he is kind to children, which brings him Raven’s favor.”
 The pony jolted as they approached the spring camp. Jeremy was taller than the Tchak, loose-limbed and rangy, ill adapted to the stride of their tough little beasts. He dismounted and a swarm of children descended on the pony. The beasts were communally owned, maintained for everyone’s use. It was a matter of pride for the Wind-Tribes to have a healthy pack of ponies that any might use, from the child in search of bloodberries to a woman with a load of furs or a warrior scouting tomorrow’s trail. Usually the children sang as they groomed their shaggy charges. Today they were silent. N’Anamanste gripped his arm as he passed. Jeremy repressed a start. It wasn’t the Tchak’s habit to touch each other casually. They were warmer than before. They’d greeted him hospitably when he appeared, a stranger from the Barrier with his notebook, survival gear and gift of languages. They were polite, but reserved, as was proper in dealing with an Outlander. But he fought beside them when the Slavers came, fought beside Sh’Tagwa, sat with her as she died with a Slaver’s sword through her belly. She died on the plain, her eyes open and wind ruffling the spring grass. Sweet Sister Wind, warm with coming summer and reproachful for work left undone. He killed the Slaver who struck her down, bearing him to the ground with his greater height and using his army knife at close quarters. He didn’t feel the Southerner’s weapon against his ribcage. It stung later, when N’Anamanste and B’Ira, the woman who kept the dried fish, rubbed salve into the wound. Ten years of military service, five years consulting Special Ops and he never used deadly force before. It should’ve been harder to kill a man.
If Greenhut’s theory was correct, if the world of the Tchak was his world’s past, he’d really blown it. By killing a man he’d changed the past, altering the future. He knew Greenhut was wrong. There were things in this land his world never saw. The Tchaks themselves, for one: not the tribe but the white weasel-like creature they took their name from. Like the mink and the snow hare, it changed coloration with the season. Unlike the graceful mink, it was bottom-heavy. Unlike the hare, it was slow. With teeth like an opossum and a temper like a badger, it was more than capable of defending itself, a good, strong totem for a strong, scrappy people. And the snakes, the little grass snakes that swarmed like bees in the early spring, released from their torpor in the frozen soil. The cold places of his world never knew so many snakes. The snake was their symbol, but it was not a totem. Sh’Tagwa had tried to explain. “I am daughter to the Raven and sister to the Snake. Raven bore Snake and Tchak to her consort the Spotted Wolf. We are Tchak.” “So why isn’t the Tchak your symbol?” She frowned, trying to understand the question. “The meaning is there for those with eyes to see. Look here.” She squatted, drawing pictures in the campfire ash. “Our trading-kin, the Sparrow People, weave a spray of berries into their cloth. That’s because Sparrow brought the bloodberry across the sea, a gift to Raven, who granted her free passage across the plains.” “But why not show the Sparrow?” She sat on her heels. “Because the berries tell the tale.” He smiled. “Perhaps one day I will understand.” She rose, wiping ashy hands on her leggings. “The day you see the spots on the wolf and the difference between Haideo and Hairoke.”
The day before he had knelt with her on the raspy grass. She was trying to explain the difference between the two kinds of reindeer in the vast herd before them. “The Haideo is darker, and patched like the wolf. Their legs are stiffer, their meat is grainy. The Hairoke is smaller, faster with sweeter meat.” He stared. “I don’t see it. They are like the reindeer from my world.” She laughed at him. “You don’t see the wolf’s spots, either.” “That is true.” He couldn’t. He didn’t know whether his color perception was different from the Tchak, or if he didn’t understand their meaning of the word “spot.” He shifted, and the closest reindeer looked about uneasily. “Do the Haideo and the Hairoke ever mate?” She stiffened. “No. Never.” “But they herd together.” Abruptly: “Yes.” He’d blundered into one of their taboos. It was a hazard when dealing with any indigenous people. He was good at negotiating such pitfalls, good at languages, good at adapting to harsh landscapes. It was what made him valuable as a military consultant. It was why they’d chosen him for this mission. And the fact he had nothing to lose. Not since Jacob-John died. On the horizon, beyond the reindeer, movement. He nudged her arm and pointed. Instantly she sunk into the grass, eyes narrowing against the sun. “Slavers. Southerners,” she growled. “Hunting human.” She wriggled down the gentle slope until the hillock hid the reindeer and the Slaver band. He followed as quietly as he could, and ran beside her in the steady trot of the hunter following the spoor. “They kill any save the children that might survive a long journey,” she whispered. “Some of the women, too, old enough to amuse them and too young to fight.” He saw hatred in the white line of her lips, the hardened jaw-line. He’d learned to read the Tchak’s emotions by small changes in their lean faces. He wondered if anyone could show him the wolf’s spots, if Sh’Tagwa couldn’t.
They take any children that might survive. He was in the field, on the Siberian Mapping Project. They claimed there was no way to contact him between checkpoints. Jacob-John was dead three days before he heard. Spinal Meningitis. It happens, the doctors said. Nobody’s fault. He knew Sabrina thought if he’d been home it would have been different. Checks and balances. Maybe his instincts would’ve kicked in sooner than Sabrina’s, her instincts blunted to fevers, and it wouldn’t have been too late for JJ. Sabrina never forgave herself for not dying too. “He’s a little boy alone in the dark, Jeremy,” she told him; back when they still talked. “I don’t want him to be alone in the dark.”
A week after they buried Sh’Tagwa, Jeremy woke with the taste of candy floss in his mouth. He woke to the cold of the midnight air and the sight of Sh’Tagwa, pale and gray, standing over him, dagger flat over his chest. Her face was drawn and her eyes were terrible, as if she’d been fighting for days. He rolled off the cot, freeing himself from his night wraps, bracing himself for the dagger’s down stroke. His training made him balance on the balls of his feet, crouched and ready to meet her attack from below. But she didn’t move, although her eyes followed his movements. She kept the knife outstretched over the empty cot, parallel to the ground. The muscles in the back of her hand twitched as if it took great effort to keep it there. They stared at each other, and it was as if one great heart pulsed between them. Then, fading as the fog fades when the Lovers’ Wind begins, she vanished. The dagger stayed an instant longer, hovering over the bed like a Cheshire Cat’s grin. He expected it to fall on the cot but it winked out of sight, as if she’d whisked a stray piece of fabric to her.
N’Anamanste stared into the fire a long time after Jeremy told him. “Are you a brave man, Jeremy Kobold?” he said at last. Jeremy didn’t answer immediately. “Sometimes,” he finally ventured. N’Anamanste nodded. “It is rare for the dead to speak to us. They have better things to do. I have heard in your world that the dead walk the paths of the living, gathering tatters of their old lives like a cloth unraveled. Is it so?” “Ghosts.” The old man shook his head. “Our dead battle from the dawn of their burial until the time of their rebirth, and they must find Golgora. They are too busy to...” “Haunt.” “Ah. Haunt, then. To haunt the living. If Sh’Tagwa seeks you, she has something to say. Something she has found in the realm of the Raven, or something she forgot to tell you while she lived. The question is, will you seek her in turn?” “How?” N’Anamanste shrugged. “You know the answer. You will find her in the land of the dead, Raven’s realm. If you wish it, I will help you to die. With luck, I may even be able to bring you back.”
They rode North, Jeremy, N’Anamanste, and Sh’Uru, a warrior full-grown and battle-scarred. Jeremy asked if the warrior was the mage’s apprentice. “Would you have me train a boy, or a merchant, or a girl picking flowers?” said N’Anamanste. “Only two of our tribe may have the mage-training: a warrior who has sent a man to death, or a woman who has braved death through childbirth. Before I was N’Anamanste, mage to the Tchak, I was Sh’Anaman, and counted three Slavers on my dagger’s hilt.” The old man chuckled at Jeremy’s expression. “You think I’ve been a lazy old man all my life? No, though I’d apprentice myself to Golgora if I could. You tell him that, if you find him. They left the hills and came to the plains where Father Death Wind, slow, cold and penetrating, moved between boulders deposited by retreating glaciers. Here and there pools of spring-thaw welled up, soggy spots in the dense thatch. The pony’s feet were sinking when N’Anamanste stopped. Jeremy dismounted, feeling the familiar soreness in his thighs, and stood by as the old man slid from his mount. A pool of dirty green water stretched before them, studded at the nearer end with the glacial rocks. It was as wide as his tent, twice as long, and deep enough to submerge a man. Deep enough. Jeremy began to understand, and a leaden fear blossomed in his gut. He looked at Sh’Uru, who had come to stand beside him. The warrior’s eyes betrayed nothing. The mage was busy with a bundle of white Tchak fur. Always the Southern merchants begged for Tchak pelts, paying silver, gold, and sweet oils for the few the People of the Winds would trade. The contents of the bundle must be valuable. Could a sheaf of dried leaves be valuable? At N’Anamanste’s gesture Sh’Uru spread a length of reindeer hide. The mage crouched on it, muttering and arranging his leaves and other things—some wrinkled berries Jeremy didn’t recognize, a glass tube—rare in the North—that held gray powder. The old man gestured impatiently at Sh’Uru. “Fire,” he grunted. “You know what we need. Long and hot.” In a people so intimate with the cold, the making of different kinds of fire—for warmth, for cooking, for communication, for comfort—was a vital skill. They had as many fires as they had winds. Jeremy moved to help Sh’Uru cut some of the dry turf that lay on the sun-baked side of the larger boulders. He didn’t want to look at the pool. But N’Anamanste beckoned him close, and he reluctantly left the warrior to his work. “You must prepare,” said the mage. “You have your book of writings with you? Good. Tear a clean page, so there is no mistaking, and make what marks you may so that in Raven’s realm you may remember who you are.” Jeremy had his field notebook and stylus in hand, but at the old man’s words he froze. “You don’t know the proper signs to remind you,” said N’Anamanste. “But use your speaking-signs as best you may. Choose carefully, for without them you will forget everything.” He turned back to his leaves and powders. Jeremy sat on a cold chunk of granite, notebook on his knee with nothing to say. Was he really going to let this crazy old man kill him? He tried one sentence. The black letters looked very small. “My name is Jeremy Kobold.” The wind pressed against his back. “I am a Special Operations consultant for the United States Army. I have crossed a Barrier of no defined origin and am studying the indigenous peoples. “A week ago I killed a man for the first time. “My son died two years ago of Spinal Meningitis. His favorite foods were pizza and mandarin orange slices. “I do not like oranges. I do not like sweet things. “I graduated from the University of Virginia. My wife has left me for now. “Sh’Tagwa has been trying to show me the spots on the wolf. Sh’Tagwa is dead. She is the daughter of the Raven.” “In my world the raven is a large black bird. In this world it is a Goddess. “I like to eat watermelon seeds because they are bitter. My retirement account is in excess of five hundred thousand dollars. “The tech who took my stats before I came over the Barrier had sour breath at the end of her shift. Apple seeds are bitter. The husks of sunflower seeds are bitter and salty.” There didn’t seem to be any thing else to say. Sh’Uru had the long bank of fire going strong. It roasted Jeremy’s spine and made his front colder than it had ever been. N’Anamanste took the notebook from him and stowed it in one of his many pouches, retaining the one, chicken-scratched page. He opened the front of Jeremy’s jacket, then the shirt beneath. When he pulled up the thermal vest it felt like a hundred tiny knives pricking his flesh. Sh’Uru brought N’Anamanste a drawing-stick. The warrior stood beside the old mage, holding a flat container of pasty pigment, purple and gray in the coming dusk. N’Anamanste scooped some of the pigment and drew practiced strokes on Jeremy’s bare chest. He used the wedged head as delicately as a fine brush. “You were not born of our tribe, so you have no votives to show Raven. I am putting the signs on your body, like an infant that has died before his quickening, before he receives his votives. This sign you should know.” A simple figure was drawn on Jeremy’s sternum, two lines forming a body, a short curve for a beak, and two more lines for wings. “Raven,” said Jeremy. So he was a son of the Raven. N’Anamanste was drawing another figure below the Raven, more detailed. Jeremy squinted down, unable to extrapolate upside-down. “The Tchak,” said the mage, without looking up. “We use it rarely, for it is our sign. But you are not Tchak, you are its brother.” “The Snake,” said Jeremy. “Yes. The little grass snake that comes from the other world every spring, from the mysterious places between the rocks and the frozen grasses.” He smiled and Jeremy saw himself, outlandishly tall, reflected in his eyes. “Am I right?” “You are right,” he said. He was getting very cold. They brought him to the rim of the pool. N’Anamanste took the gray powder and gestured at Jeremy’s mouth. “Open,” he said, as if coaxing a horse to take a bit. Feeling foolish, Jeremy complied. The old man’s finger felt rough as he rubbed the gritty powder into Jeremy’s gums. Immediately his mouth tingled and went numb. Poison, he thought. The tingling, chased by warmth, spread through his body. N’Anamanste took a dried leaf and rubbed it between his hands, releasing the sweaty smell of sage. Jeremy felt dizzy. His knees buckled. “Quickly,” said the mage, and Sh’Uru caught Jeremy as he fell. His vision narrowed. Someone was fumbling with his hands; his left hand was unfolded and then closed upon a scrap of paper. He felt the cool grip of his service knife slide into his right hand. It took both of the Tchak to lift Jeremy and guide him into the pool. He slid under the water, feeling the bitter cold penetrate his flesh and stop, baffled, by the warmth of the drug. The cut along his ribs stung. Rationally he knew that soon hypothermia would set in, that his core temperature would drop and that he would die. Hands cradled the back of his head, keeping his nose and mouth above the water. His ears filled and he heard roaring, and above that another sound, a roaring and a snapping. The sound of a thousand flags snapping in the Wind of Lost Desire. The sound of the grave pennants slapping against themselves on the Warrior’s Plain.
His eyes snapped open in time to see a smoke-dark thing thrusting towards him. He rolled away, knife back tight to his belly, and landed on his feet, ready for the uppercut. The creature growled. Its mouth was a pink-red maw lined with sharp white teeth, and two red eyes glared. The mouth and eyes were the only things of substance in the creature; it was as if the air itself had coalesced into a living fog composed of purest hatred. No, envy. Envy of the living. Who told him that? He couldn’t remember. The thing lunged at him and his body moved with a speed his mind had forgotten. The red-mawed fog-creature leapt for his throat, and he dropped his shoulder and moved into the attack. Expecting him to jump back, it missed his jugular and he had a clear stab at the underside. He took it. His arm was numb with cold and the creature screamed in his ear, a high pitched scream like paper tearing, like a hysterical woman, like metal grinding concrete. He gritted his teeth and thrust deeper. The Shadow Demon (how did he know that?) screamed once more and vanished, leaving his arm and shoulder ice cold. The saw-toothed blade was clean. He took a long, shuddering breath and looked around. Everything around him was gray, smoke-gray, velvet gray, gray so dark it was almost black, light silver gray. He was in a gray land strewn with boulders, and the ground was sand and pebbles. Black pebbles, pebbles the color of soft lead. The sky overhead was sable, yet he could see perfectly clearly. It was as if the rocks held within them their own light, or the power of making themselves seen. Cautiously he stepped into a clearing between the boulders. Small puddles, silver by their own light, nestled here and there in the sand, between the pebbles. One pool stretched larger than the others, mirroring nothing to the black sky. Instinctively he crouched. Something, or someone, was beside that pool. Something he couldn’t see. When no nightmare creature attacked, he relaxed slightly and circled the pool. There—at the rightmost edge of his vision—a crouching man. He whirled and the figure vanished. Slowly he turned his head away and squinted. The figure coalesced into view, and he froze. Another figure, a standing man, appeared next to the pool. Both figures were focused on something that floated in the silver water. Something that looked like a man. “They guard you in your death,” said a woman’s voice, quite near. He whirled, knife ready. The woman before him did not flinch. A small woman, dressed in thick leather leggings and a loose one-piece shirting. A knife, slender and smaller than his own, was sheathed at her side. Her hair was soft gray in this world of grays and chopped off roughly beneath her shoulders. Her lips were red, curved in a smile almost sardonic, and he could see a faint pink blush along the ridges of her high cheeks, pink in the whites of her eyes. He lowered the knife. Slowly she reached out to him. He watched as she reached for his left hand, which had been clenched tight all this time. He wondered why. He wondered who he was. Maybe she knew. Gently she touched his fist and he was startled at the warmth of it. This monochrome landscape should’ve drained everything of heat, save the bright flashes of red and pink. Her fingers couldn’t enfold his larger fist, but she took two of his fingers and drew them back. There was a piece of paper crumpled there. He caught it before it fell and stared. Letters, blacker than when they were written, covered one side. She stepped back. “Read,” she said. “Then I will explain.” He smoothed the paper against his thigh and read the first line: “My name is Jeremy Kobold.” Memory came back so fast it hurt, and he staggered. Dead, he was dead in that pond. Poisoned and frozen to death by that mad old man. “I do not like oranges. I do not like sweet things.” With that came the memory of Jacob-John and Jeremy Kobold sat down heavily. For a while, just a moment he had forgotten, his very cells had forgotten that his son was dead and now the memory came back, flooding untempered by the walls of time and distance he’d built around that raw well of pain. He looked up at the woman. Sh’Tagwa. Daughter of the Raven. “He’s a little boy, alone in the dark,” he said. She watched him dispassionately as he struggled for control. “Yes,” she said. “And he doesn’t know me. That’s why I came for you, for he is of your world. You must remind him who he is. You must tell him to trust me. And I will take him to Golgora.”
As they ran between nightscape boulders Sh’Tagwa chanted to herself. She caught him looking at her and smiled. “I stayed by my grave on the warrior’s plain for days, memorizing the signs on my stake,” she said. “So I could remember who I was. It was hard. The Shadow Demons attack when you stay in one place too long. Some of the dead flee them and never come back; they lose all memory, all sense of themselves and become Onega, the forgotten, wandering Raven’s realm like lost souls. But I remained, I fought off the demons until I remembered, until I’d made an alphabet of my life, something I could say over and over again.” She put out her hand, stopping them both. “What is your name?” He opened his mouth to answer, and couldn’t. “Read,” said Sh’Tagwa, pushing the hand that held the paper. He looked down. He’d forgotten what it was. “Sh’Tagwa has been trying to show me the spots on the wolf,” he read. Sh’Tagwa pulled at him, hurrying him forward. “I fear your son has become Onega,” she said, between chanting her alphabet. “But maybe you can bring him back.”
She brought him to a place where rocks piled high, creating velvet caves. At her urging they crouched, and she pointed at a triangular space between a gray boulder and a black one. The shadows were darker than the black stone. “Look carefully,” she whispered. They knelt still as stone, becoming stone. Then, a flutter at the side of the tiny cave, pale against the blackness. Small fingers, then a hand. A child’s hand. Jeremy’s breath caught painfully in his chest. The hand snaked along the rock wall, followed by an arm, a shoulder, a sliver of a face. Sh’Tagwa made a small coaxing sound. Giant, terrified eyes stared out of that face. Jacob-John. JJ. Alone in the dark, forgetting who he was. Chased for God knew how long by Shadow Demons. Onega. “I found him between the stones, and he ran from me,” whispered Sh’Tagwa, not moving her lips, letting the air carry her words between them. “He’s been here a long time.” “How?” Jeremy whispered, wanting to bellow. “How did he get here? Did I bring him?” “Perhaps,” she said. “Does it matter? He is here now, defenseless. Raven guards her smallest children from the Shadow Demons and brings them to Golgora herself, but without the votives or the signs painted on his body cannot recognize him.” Jacob-John saw him and his eyes widened. He retreated into his cave, and only a pale glimmer showed where his face was. “Jacob,” said Jeremy, trying to remember the right voice to use. “Jacob-John, come out here at once.” For a second nothing happened. Then the face advanced, half-moon to full. JJ looked more puzzled than afraid. “Give him a memory,” said Sh’Tagwa. “We were going to Nana’s, JJ,” said Jeremy. “We saw the Fair and stopped. And you were running to see the pigs and you fell and skinned your knee. Do you remember?” It was a bad cut, with dirt and gravel rubbed deep. They’d gone to the first aid tent to get it cleaned. Sabrina crying, trying not to show it. “The nurse said you were a brave boy, JJ. She gave you the red sucker, not green, and you rode on my shoulders and we saw the pigs. You got cotton candy in my hair.” Slowly the rest of his son emerged. He wore the clothes he was buried in, the burial Jeremy never saw. A button-down, plaid shirt, and khaki pants. Jeremy was glad that Sabrina had not buried him in a suit. “Daddy?” said JJ. “Mommy sung to you the rest of the way to Nana’s. The New York song. Do you remember?” Jeremy’s voice was cracked and tuneless. “‘Here comes Mommy from New York City, she is kind and she is pretty. She can choose, one two three…’” He couldn’t remember the rest. Jacob-John crawled to him, and Jeremy pulled him close. “When I leave the rocks, they chase me. I’m sorry, Daddy. I tried to be brave. I’ve been running forever.” “I know,” said Jeremy, his son’s chin hooked over his shoulder. “I know. I’m here now.” In his ear, JJ screamed. Sh’Tagwa hissed in anger or fear. Jeremy looked up. Perched on the rocks above were six or seven of the Shadow Demons, their red mouths open and hungry, their eyes fierce. Jeremy stood and drew his knife. He felt the warm length of Sh’Tagwa’s back against his and lowered JJ so he was between them. The demons inched forward, knowing they had their prey cornered. Can demons kill you when you’re dead? Time to find out. Jeremy and Sh’Tagwa braced their shoulders against each other as the demons tensed. But then Jeremy felt a presence fill the little spill of boulders, a power, bird-like, woman-like: so strong it could snap them in two with a thought. Which is what happened to three of the demons. With an inward pop they imploded, the fog of their bodies condensing suddenly into a dense mass, then expanding outward like mist. The rest froze in shock. Then they ran, howling. The power lazily turned its—her – attention to the three figures standing together in the tiny valley. Jeremy saw her, a giant bird—no, a woman at least six feet tall, standing on—no, above—the nearest boulder. Like the figures by the death-pool who guarded his body, he couldn’t see her straight on. When he looked at her sideways he saw great black wings spread above her body. Raven, consort of the Spotted Wolf. A bird, or a woman, depended on how he squinted. “My Mother,” said Sh’Tagwa, not relaxing her stance. My Daughter, came the response, though the figure’s mouth did not move. Jeremy felt her attention turn to him. And the Snake, my elusive Son. And one, a little one, a child not known to me. He doesn’t bear the signs. “Let me take him to Golgora, Mother,” said Sh’Tagwa. “He doesn’t belong here. Golgora may have my coins, and take him back to the beginning of things.” Golgora will take you and the child, or answer to me. Raven’s voice was amused. He’ll make you dance to his tune and run an errand or two, but you will return. “Thank you, Mother,” said Sh’Tagwa. Raven considered Jeremy a long minute. The next time you enter my realm you will not return to the same body, Snake. You may now if you’re lucky and N’Anamanste retains his skill. Remember that. Jeremy’s mouth was dry. He nodded. The power was gone. “Listen, ” said Sh’Tagwa, turning on him quickly. “You must hurry back to your body or they won’t be able to bring you back. Your scribbles will not be enough and you will forget, become Onega. There is not much time.” “I understand.” Jeremy knelt in front of JJ. “Jacob-John, you need to go with this lady. She tried to protect you from the demons. Do you remember?” JJ looked at Sh’Tagwa’s and nodded, unsmiling. “If you start to forget things, if you start to get scared, just sing that song. The New York song about Mommy. OK?” JJ nodded again. “I’ll show you a game. It’s called the Mask of Golgora. See?” Inexpertly he wove his fingers to form the face, the fat, squashed nose; the gaping mouth. JJ tried to do it and laughed. “That’s who you’re looking for. He likes children.” Jeremy glanced up at Sh’Tagwa. “That’s right, isn’t it?” Sh’Tagwa nodded. “Go,” she said. “Hurry.” “Thank you.” “Go.” Jeremy turned back once. JJ was trying to make the Mask of Golgora for Sh’Tagwa. Their laughter followed him as he ran between the boulders, ran across the pebbles, ran for the pool, and fell before he reached it, forgetting as he fell, forgetting everything.
Jeremy gasping, cold air painful in his lungs. He opened his eyes wide and closed them as the light stabbed. Cautiously he squinted at the sky, at his surroundings. He was wrapped in layers of furs, tucked closed beside the long bank of coals Sh’Uru had built. “I know. The colors hurt,” said N’Anamanste, nearby. Jeremy twisted his stiff neck. Everywhere colors blazed. The air was redolent with the smell of herbs burning on the coals. “Hold still.” N’Anamanste’s weathered face appeared above him. Jeremy marveled at the shades in it, mahogany and brown and ochre and everything in between. The old man grinned, his teeth every wonderful shade of yellow. “Yes. I remember the colors, when I came back. It’s like the bone disease, you never recover, but you get used to it.” Jeremy looked at the covering tucked around him. “What fur is this?” he asked hoarsely. N’Anamanste frowned. “It is the pelt of a wolf.” “I thought so,” said Jeremy, slitting his eyes sleepily. “Because of the spots.”
Someone had been knocking at the door a long time before Sabrina Kobold heard it. In the too-new apartment with too-fresh paint, she couldn’t hear anything right. She squinted through the peephole and sucked in her breath at the sight of Jeremy on the threshold. She could go to the bedroom, crawl under the cheap new sheets and shut him out if she wanted. She did want. But Jeremy would know; he always knew where she was. When she opened the door he didn’t try to come in. “You were right,” he said, without preamble. “About Jacob-John. He was alone in the dark.” Tears sprang to her eyes, sorrow and relief. He understood, finally. He watched her without reacting. “But he isn’t anymore. Someone is with him, a good friend of mine. She’s going to take him back to the beginning of things.” “I don’t understand,” she managed, without anger. He nodded. “I know.” “The beginning of things? Where’s that?” “It’s a nice place. Pack your things. I’ll take you there.” She was about to refuse. Then she turned on her heel and walked into the too-white bedroom. “What should I bring?” she called. Jeremy’s voice came from the front door. “Layers. It can get a little brisk.”
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