Mountain Echoes

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I was halfway up the mountain when Ada Monroe slammed a four-foot-long hickory log against the Executioner’s spine.

It misted to pieces again, and the log crashed against the shields I was holding around Aidan. A roar of approval chased me up the mountain, my own voice fronting it as the leading shout. The Executioner came together again, its ax-like aspects increasing as it prepared to strike Ada down. She swung her hickory bat again, and to my astonishment, I Saw power streak the air. Green, the determined, resolute color that most buildings and protective structures were imbued with. It hit the Executioner with more force than I’d have expected, and by that time I was only ten steps away. I launched myself at it in a superhero jump, fully intending to slam my sword into its shady skull from above.

It howled in fury and for the third time, fled. I cast the sword aside as I came down, seized Ada’s shoulders when I landed, and bellowed, “You! Are! AWESOME!” into her face. Then we both dropped to our knees on either side of Aidan, whose brilliant, multivariegated aura was spinning wildly with fear, surprise, confusion, pride, anger and a dozen other emotions I couldn’t focus on long enough to name.

Pride won out, at least temporarily, because he, too, was bellowing, “MOM! DID YOU SEE THAT! YOU’RE AWESOME!” at Ada, and smacking at both of us as we tried to make sure he was all in one piece.

I couldn’t See any indication that the Executioner had ripped any life force away from him, but his aura was so overwhelming I wasn’t sure how I’d be able to tell. I just didn’t know him well enough. I looked up at Ada, meeting her eyes, and we both blurted, “Is he okay?” at the same time.

“I’m fine.” Aidan sat up, suddenly remembering his dignity. In remembering, he looked so much like my friend Billy’s thirteen-year-old son I giggled. Aidan glowered at me and I wiped laughter away.

Once it was gone I remembered the chaos left in the valley below, and all hope of humor faded. I got up and stared down the path I’d taken, realizing it was not humanly possible for me to have climbed the distance I had in the time I had. Rattler?

Ssspeed is an easier gift in the otherworlds, he answered wearily, but when necesssssary...

“Thank you,” I whispered aloud. “Thank you.”

I felt his pleasure in the acknowledgment, and let the poor snake drift back into resting. I badly needed to spend some quiet time in a drum circle, letting it fill me up and replenish my spirit snake. I’d done a little of that work in Ireland before Sara called, but not nearly enough. It wasn’t looking especially promising to get any done in North Carolina, either. I let out a long, slow breath, and murmured, “I’m sorry,” to everyone in the valley.

Then I pulled up my big-girl pants and headed back down the mountain, because I certainly had some explaining to do, and we had seven bodies to carry out of the hills.

* * *

Sara was kneeling by Carrie Little Turtle’s body when I got back down. Aidan and Ada had followed me, but their footsteps had stopped when they’d gotten close enough to get a sense of what had happened. Others were gathered around the other dead women and men, most faces still too shocked to begin moving on to grief. I went to Sara and Carrie, though I pitched my voice to carry around the fallen circle. “We were sucker punched. This whole thing was a bait and switch. It was trying to get at me. That’s probably why Dad went missing.”

“Who the hell are you, that an evil wants you this badly?” A big-boned man spoke from across the circle, accusation raw in his question.

Despite everything that was happening, I doubted he wanted to know my long, drawn-out history with the Master and his minions. After a long minute I settled on a response that might or might not mean anything to him, but did, in its way, answer the question: “I’m Joanne Walkingstick.”

Apparently it answered the question a lot better than I’d thought it would. A ripple of recognition and a strange mix of relief and hostility swept the gathered mourners. The hostility wasn’t much of a surprise. I hadn’t exactly left the Qualla on good terms, and I’d come back to preside over the mass murder of seven elders.

The relief was unexpected, given that I had just presided over a mass murder. Not deliberately, maybe, but still. It gave me the sneaking suspicion that my family name carried a lot more weight and a lot more respect than I’d ever imagined. I was going to punch my father in the nose when I found him again. Sara, quietly, said, “That thing ran away. Is it over?”

“No. I’m going to have to go hunting.” Hunting magic wasn’t easy, at least not for me. It didn’t leave discernible tracks, and unless I knew exactly what I was looking for, I often couldn’t see the scars it left on the landscape where it gathered. “We need to get everyone back down into town, though. We—”

“Can you magic them down there?”

I blinked. “Er. No. That would be cool. But no.”

“Then you need to go hunt and the rest of us will deal with the bodies.”

I opened my mouth and shut it again. Sara had a point. A very good one, actually, thwarted only by one minor detail. “I need Les. Or somebody else who actually grew up in the mountains, Sara. I spent some time tromping around when I was a teenager, but I’d be kidding myself if I didn’t think I’d get my ass lost up here by the time I was five minutes out of this holler. Can you...?”

“If I was good enough in the mountains to guide you I’d have found Lucas by now.”

“I’ll take her.” Aidan had come up behind us. I twitched around to see him and bit my lower lip. The warmth was gone from his face, leaving blue shadows under his eyes and his skin sallow. He focused on a spot just beyond Carrie, close enough he could pretend he was looking at her without actually doing so. Being brave, in other words, and it broke my heart.