Eyes of Crow (19 page)

The chant cradled her in a soft, dark embrace. It dulled the edges of her thoughts and memories, turning her mind as impenetrable and inanimate as a stone. Her breath and heartbeat slowed, until she thought they couldn’t get any farther apart without stopping altogether. Yet they kept coming, each breath lasting an hour, it seemed, each heartbeat a day.

If she held her last breath, could she keep it inside her and live forever? Had anyone ever tried? She would, with the next breath, in case it was the final one.

She waited, but the next breath never came. Not that it mattered.

Crow was here.

“You came back for me,” she said without speaking.

“I told you I would.” His voice smoothed the last strand of her fear. “I always come back.”

“You look beautiful.”

His feathers fluffed, sending shafts of black-violet light in every direction. “Why, thank you. So do you.”

“No, I don’t. I probably look dead.”

“I’ll show you. Are you ready?”

“Show me what?”

“Everything.”

“Yes.”

His beak reached for her. When it touched her heart, all that was heavy turned light. She was free.

She stood outside the circle and observed the young woman in white slumped on the ground.

“I’m so small,” she said to Crow.

“Not anymore.”

Her vision shifted then, not away from the scene, but widening so that it encompassed all that lay around her, as if the back of her head were now transparent. Nothing—and everything—was a part of her now.

Coranna stopped chanting and knelt beside the woman’s body. She anointed her forehead again, with a different oil than at the ritual’s beginning, then turned to look directly at them.

“She can see us?”

“Of course. Wave goodbye.”

“How long will I be gone?”

“To them, no more than a few minutes.”

Them. Marek stood at the mouth of the cave, face soaked in tears. Coranna gave him a nod of reassurance, an effusive gesture for her, but he turned away, just out of reach of Elora’s sympathetic embrace.

Rhia turned away as well. “I can’t watch his pain. It feels like my own.”

Crow faced the circle. “Wave goodbye to Coranna. It’s important.”

Rhia had no hand to raise, so she merely thought about waving, about sending a warm farewell to the woman she had hated a short time before. Coranna lifted her own hand and smiled. Then she drew the white veil over the eyes of the Rhia-that-was.

Crow’s feathers, even softer than Rhia remembered, brushed through her.

Peace. Light.

A bright tunnel opened before them, off the side of the mountain, where there should have been a view of the Great Forest and the valleys beyond.

The moment they entered, everything else disappeared. Not only was there no pain, but Rhia wondered if there ever had been such a thing. All she recognized was love.

It was bigger and smaller than the love between mates or siblings or between a parent and a child. It was the love of everything for everything else, all added and multiplied and found in one place. Though it came to greet her now, it had always been within her reach.

If she still had eyes, they would have filled with tears.

“Is this what everyone sees?” she asked Crow.

“This part is common to all people. What you see after the tunnel of light is unique to you.”

“What do animals see?”

“Impossible to describe to a human. You wouldn’t understand, any more than a dog would understand what you are about to witness.”

Rhia looked up and down the tunnel. “I don’t understand
this
. How will I understand what comes next?”

She felt Crow smile.

The Other Side.

It came to her as sounds she could see, sights she could smell, tastes she could touch. All senses took each other’s places, then merged into one.

Honey-flavored light bathed her from the inside out and the outside in, until there was no longer any difference between out and in.

She almost laughed when she thought of the name of the place: the Other Side. What was it the Other Side of? Hadn’t she always been here? All time shrank into one moment, a Forever Now. She never wanted to leave, and took comfort in the certainty that Never would never come.

The spirits of the dead surrounded her, but dead was too…
dead
a word to describe them. Their lives had always been and always would be, here, nestled in the realm of Crow.

“Why are you black?” she asked him. “You should be every color, like Raven, to match your home.”

“Black is only what you see in your world. Look at me now.”

She turned to him. He was still black. Perhaps it was a joke. But as she gazed longer into the depths of his darkness, she did see, hear, taste, smell, feel every color. They were not arrayed in a twisting, dancing rainbow—the way Raven had appeared to her before the Bestowing—but rather they each lay behind and pulsed through the others. All colors were one in black, just as all spirits were one in this place.

The oneness was interrupted suddenly, by a figure in the corner of her vision. A little girl.

Rhia.

She whispered her own name as though it belonged to someone else.

“Why am I here already?” she asked Crow.

“You left part of yourself behind when you almost died before.”

She watched the girl run and cartwheel among invisible hills, as confident as a colt. “Is that why I’ve been weak ever since?”

“Perhaps.”

“May I take her back?”

“Ask her.”

She could not move. Instead she willed the child to approach her, which she did, unafraid. Her long red hair glinted in sunlight too earthly for this place. The Rhia-that-was stared at the Rhia-that-is with somber green eyes.

“I’ve been waiting,” the child said.

“I’m sorry.”

The younger Rhia smiled. A front tooth was missing. “I like it here.”

“Me, too.”

“Can you stay?”

Rhia cast a secretive glance at Crow. Maybe if they asked very politely…

He cocked His head as if hearing a far-off call. “It’s time to go. They need you.”

“Who?” She didn’t know anyone. Or rather, she knew everyone and everything, but no one and nothing in particular.

“Your people.”

“I’m needed here.”

“Not yet.” Crow turned his back. “Please follow me.”

“No! I want to stay.” The child’s presence goaded Rhia’s own petulance. “I need to stay.”

“You’ll be back someday to stay forever. Until then—”

“Please.” If she had knees, she would kneel. If she had hands, she would clutch Crow’s feathers in supplication. “There must be lost souls who need shepherding, souls who can’t find their way to the Other Side. I can help them. I can help you. Here.”

Crow turned to her slowly, revealing a look as desperate as she felt.

“I need you to return.”

Rhia met His gaze and felt her will relent. “Why?”

His eyes darkened from midnight blue to a piercing black. “Another time of conflict approaches, a time when death will fall from the sky like hail.”

Rhia absorbed His words with a calm that surprised her. What Crow spoke of was distant and impossible, like the spooky stories the elders would tell children around the campfire at Harvest Festivals, tales of rage and chaos in the times before the so-called Reawakening. In this place, she could imagine no trouble touching her or anyone she knew.

She looked at the little girl’s outstretched hand and felt her flow into her own being.

She had to learn to trust Crow. And herself.

“Bring me back.”

Crow bowed. “Until next time.” With a great thumping of wings, He took off, leaving her behind.

A heavy weight threw her into darkness. Cold air swiped her face. She struggled for breath, lungs pierced with pain, and realized that the heavy weight was her own body.

A voice called her name from far away.

Marek.

She tried to open her eyes, twitch her fingers, any signal to show she was there.

Help me.

Coranna’s chants thrummed the air, as they had before Rhia had died. All of this was her death in reverse—the cold, the chants, Marek calling her name.

Except for the pain. Death hadn’t hurt like this.

Panic seized her body as she fought for the first breath. Her heart wanted to beat, was promising to pump life again, but demanded air as ransom. Her lungs seemed to be waiting for her heart to start first. Neither wanted to grant life, for they were each too cold to try.

Come back,
she cried to Crow.
I’m trapped in a body that doesn’t work. It’s too late to live. Let me die.

No response.

Please. It hurts.

“Rhia.” Coranna spoke at her ear. “Welcome back.”

No!

“You’re going to live,” she said. “Your body will wake up soon.”

“How soon?” Marek asked.

“Be patient.” Elora’s voice came from farther away. “If she comes back too fast…”

“Shh.” Coranna spoke with a level voice. “She can hear your doubts, which are quite unnecessary. Right now we need to give her spirit time to remember what it’s like to live.”

I don’t want to live. I want to go home.

“What if she doesn’t want to live?” he said. “What if she’s suffering? If Rhia can hear us, then she’s aware, which means she knows she can’t breathe. Doesn’t that hurt?”

Yes.

“No,” Coranna said.

What?

Coranna must know what this is like,
Rhia thought.
Maybe she’s lying to keep Marek calm. But what about me? Am I not supposed to suffer? Is something wrong?

“Let me talk to her,” Marek said.

There was a sigh, then a shuffling of feet and cloth. Marek’s voice came closer.

“Rhia, you may not know it, but I’m holding your hand. Please come back so you can feel it again.” He steadied his voice. “All I want is to lie next to you and bring you to life. But I can’t yet. Elora says we can’t warm you too fast or you’ll die again, maybe for good this time. Coranna’s never brought anyone back twice.

“Just live. The rest will follow, but you have to want it.” He leaned closer. “I won’t let you not want it.”

Rhia’s mind cried out to him, uncertain whether it was to call him closer or push him away. It was like shouting through a mouthful of dust.

He spoke to Coranna. “What’s it like, the place where she was?”

After a long pause, she replied, “The details change for each person, but most experience it as a place of light and acceptance.”

“She must have loved it. She hates the dark.” He spoke to Rhia again. “Remember what I taught you that night, about the energy that flows between you and me and everything? It’s here in this world, too.”

She felt a pressure against her chest, and didn’t know whether it came from inside or outside her skin. Had her heart beat, or had Marek touched her?

Regardless, it meant she would stay.

Breaths came at last, shallow and slow, and each one brought immeasurable pain, as if the air were filled with tiny daggers. Rhia wanted to cry but had no tears, to scream but had no voice.

She was wrapped tight inside something thick and soft that protected her body from the ground, which no longer stole her heat. The wind did not touch her here, so they must have moved her inside the cave.

She hated breathing, but forced herself to continue. The others waited in silence around her. She wished they would chatter about anything, to distract her from the pain and the laborious struggle for life.

Perhaps they slept. She couldn’t wait to sleep. She couldn’t wait to move, to eat, to drink. To live.

So she did want to live, after all. Though it wasn’t as good as death—nothing ever would be, she knew now—life would surpass this paralysis that evoked the weakness that had depleted her many years before. Her strength had never returned in full, and for that she was bitter even to this moment. If only she were stronger, she would have recovered by now. Instead she was causing these people to sit in a chilly cave overnight waiting for her to get around to living.

Serves them right,
she thought.

A giggle bottled up inside her and finally escaped in a tiny burst of noise. Inside Rhia’s head it sounded like a hiccup, which made her want to laugh more. A panicky delirium took hold.

Someone drew near and pressed a fingertip to the side of Rhia’s neck, calming her. She felt her own pulse greet the person’s touch.

“It’s stronger now,” Elora said. “Steadier.”

“So she lives,” Marek whispered. “If she hadn’t—”

“She does,” Coranna said. “She will.”

Marek was silent for several moments. “Forgive my lack of faith.” His voice held true contrition. “I shouldn’t have doubted you.”

“You have every right to doubt me,” Coranna said softly.

Elora held the back of her hand to Rhia’s forehead. “She’s still cold. It will be a long night.” She tugged the blanket tighter. “Perhaps you two should sleep.”

“No,” Marek and Coranna said together.