I had worked with search and rescue in the mountains before. Being taken out in a rescue litter or a scoop stretcher would be a long, arduous, painful process. And time-consuming. And time was something I no longer had. “Ne’er easssy,” I managed.
He laughed, some foreign emotion on his face. Maybe grief. “Now that I know you’re conscious, is this a rift?” he asked me.
“Yeessss,” I breathed.
“You said that if we ever find a rift, we should break the crystal and free Soul. You want to watch?”
“Sssssure.”
“Go ahead,” Eli said. He shifted me slightly to see the hot pool.
If I hadn’t been dying, I’d have screamed with the movement. As it was, my vision went dark until I managed a breath. Shaddock leaned out over the blue water. Without hesitation, he broke the crystal of quartz and instantly dropped it into the water. He leaped back to safety.
From the corner of my eyes, I watched as Edmund performed cardiac compressions on Bruiser. My heart was breaking. But something wriggled in the back of my mind. Something about the rift. Unlike the other things that had come clear, I couldn’t find it, whatever it was. The fleeting memory was gone. Important. It was important.
From the water, Soul leaped high, in partial mermaid form, pearlescent teeth gleaming, her legs ending with huge fins instead of feet, her fish frill wide. She landed with a broad splash. I caught a glimpse of horrible scarring up one leg and all along her body on that side, as if Soul had been hit by lightning or burned. The scarring led to one ankle where a thin braided strip of silver alloy was linked, burning her. I had thought it was jewelry, but it was a prison. Holding her in human and fish form. Soulwas still being punished for helping Leo, or trying to. For not letting the arcenciels go back in time. Probably for other infractions that I didn’t know about.
Soul broke the surface of the water, her silver hair streaming back. “You freed me from time,” she said to Shaddock.
“Reckon I did,” he said back. “But you can thank our Queenie for that.”
Above the pool, Gee perched in his Anzu form, preening and batting his wings in the rising and falling steam, like a bird. There was a small scarlet-winged lizard on his shoulder. I hadn’t gotten around to talking to him about that. One of many things I might never get the chance to do. The lizzie was staring at Soul, his tongue flicking out and in, tasting the mineral and blood-laden air. Gee said, “If the silver cuff were off, she could go through the rift. She would heal.”
“How do we get it off?” Shaddock asked. “I could—”
“Wait,” I whispered. Shaddock paused. Soul’s part-fish, part-human face froze in what could only be called fear. “I claim my boon,” I said to Soul. “Heal Bruiser.”
She tossed a spray of water into the air and studied the droplets as they fell. Without looking I knew they were moments of time. “You would trade your boon for a single life?”
“I’m nothing but a sacrifice. Right?” I whispered.
“You are what you fight for,” the Anzu said from overhead. “Not all sacrifices die. Some suffer and live and make the world a better place.” And wasn’t that a cheerful thought. The Mercy Blade flipped a wing and a long Anzu feather dropped from him to the crevasse floor. Eli picked it up and pressed it to my middle, over the wound where he had taped Dudley in place. My pain eased slightly. Not enough. But anything helped.
“Heal Bruiser,” I repeated, the words barely a breath. “I’ll owe you a boon.”
“It is too late. His soul is ready to depart,” Gee said, “ready to shatter the earthly bonds.”
My own soul shriveled inside me.
“Withle breloque, you could have all the power of theworld,” Soul said. “You could go back and keep all this from happening. You could go back to your father’s house and save him from the white men who killed him. You could stop the Trail of Tears. You could create the world that could have been. Or you could give it to me. Allow me to rule.”
Pain slithered through my insides like a ball of snakes. It took two tries but I managed to say, “No one should have that power. Not even the arcenciels.” I breathed in, fighting the pain. “So I’ll just take my chances, like I’ve always done, and pray and hope God’s listening.”Or Hayyel... Or... I’ll go to water,I thought.
The memory surfaced, like a whale rising through the ocean, shoving everything else aside. The rift had been called the Waters of Life. Who had used that phrase? I couldn’t remember. But Waters of Life sounded like... healing.
The way of the Cherokee was harmony, and to achieve harmony with others and with nature, we went to water. So I’d go to water here, and I’d take Bruiser with me. And Beast. The little witch. Tex. I’d take them all. I told Eli what I wanted to do. What I wanted him to do.
Soul looked us over, thinking. She splashed a fin and studied the droplets of time in them. Her eyes went wide. “You have... You might... This is a new possibility, one not yet posited or evaluated by the Conseil d’Arcenciels.”
From the darks of the crevasse, I heard the clatter of movement and saw lights. Soul slid deeper into the water, half-alarmed, uncertain, as she splashed and studied the droplets my words had changed. The noise of humans grew closer. Liz, the redheaded witch, walked into the small clearing, looking over the wounded and the exoskeleton. She bent her knees, putting one to the earth beside Eli, looking me over. “Dayam, woman, you look bad.” She placed a duffel beside Eli and opened it. “Got what you asked for.”
Eli reached in and pulled out the small white box holding my medicine bag. His face like stone, he opened the box and lifted the thong over my head, settling the bag on my chest. “Your teeth from when you were five,” he said.Then he removedle breloqueand placed it on my head. It sealed to me tightly. I raised my eyes to him. I hadn’t been thinking about using the crown, but then I wasn’t exactly strategizing for an op. “Your crown, my queen,” he said, straight-faced, serious.
Shaddock was holding the Glob. “Ugliest thing I thing I’ve ever seen, and pulling it out of a bug skull wasn’t fun, but you know?” He flipped the Glob over and over as if testing its weight. “The power in this thing is mighty amazing. Don’t reckon you’d want to sell it?”
“Like the crown, it chooses its victim.”
“Mmmm. Dawn’s coming. We need to get moving, Queenie.” Shaddock placed the Glob in my hand, and when he realized I couldn’t hold it, he tied it in place with a strip of cloth he cut from his own shirt. “Your scepter.”
