The Elder tilted her head in acquiescence. “To findhealing,” Savannah said softly, “we must accept what we are. For me it is to accept that I failed my child. That all my pride will always be false. That any success will always carry the taint of my failure. Do you accept that you are Beast? For the sake of healing, will you take that name for yourself for a time, as a reminder of personal sacrifice and strength?”
I breathed out a laugh, more whisper than anything else. “I’m not going to try to get that put on my driver’s license, but sure. Yes. We are Beast. Not that I know what to do with a name.”
I had slipped, but she didn’t react to the pronounwe. “There is power in self-acceptance,” she said. “In ceremony to change names.”
“Who are you, then?” I asked.
“I have been, for many years,Udalvquodi. Arrogant,” she translated for me. “I am nowUnastisgi. Crazy. I do not know what I will become after I have moved through the liminality between one part of being and the next.”
“What?” I asked, a stack of memories suddenly squirming at the back of my mind like worms on a fishhook.
At the expression on my face she went on. “All the worlds line up and down and all around, like the small pockets of a honeycomb.” Savannah held up her hands, slightly cupped, and showed how the cups of a honeycomb rest one on the others in a pattern of strength and solidarity. “You, Beast, sit in the liminality between one part of being and the next. You are becoming a new thing. Hence the ceremony name.”
“Liminality,” I whispered. “That was it.”
One of my stacked and squirming memories came clear to me. It was a conversation I had with Rick’s cousin, Sarge Walker, a pilot who lived outside of Chauvin, Louisiana, south of Houma. He’d been talking about liminal lines and liminal thresholds. I had said to him, “I’ve heard of sites and places on Earth where the fabric of reality is thin, where one reality can bleed into another. Places where the coin stack of universes meet and mesh and sometimes things can cross over from one reality to another.”
Sarge had replied, “Liminal thresholds are theoretical, the type of conjecture toyed with when physicists have drinking parties and alcohol loosens their tongues.”
“I was told that the Earth has three liminal lines. They supposedly curve across the Earth. One starts in southwest Mexico, curves across the Gulf of Mexico to Chauvin, Louisiana, then follows the Appalachians east and north in a curve like the trade winds sometimes make, but more stable, static, bigger, and smoother. Then it curves across the ocean.”
The memory faded, leaving behind the beginning of... something. Wisdom. A solution. A memory of an arcenciel long before current time.
I had been in Louisiana, and was now, once again, in the Appalachians, two places where one of the biggest liminal lines ran. A place where Beast had once seen a young arcenciel and let the young one eat her dinner. That realization made my salted pelt stand up on end. I had been pulled back and forth between parts of the world touched by liminal lines. Coincidence? Or serendipity? Or the plans of a higher being?Hayyel. Dang it!
“Beast. Beast?”
I raised my head to see Savannah. “Sorry. Woolgathering.”
Beast wants to gather and eat sheep.
I laughed and the Elder glared at me.
The session broke up moments later, as if Savannah Walkingstick could tell I had been pulled out of the necessary frame of mind to continue. We dressed in our clothes, mine damp, sour, and stinky from creek water.
I walked her through the snow to her car and watched her leave, her four-wheel-drive making fresh tracks in more new-fallen snow.
When I was sure she was gone, I went to the house, to Alex’s work area, and asked Alex to pull up a map of the liminal lines and ley lines. And to overlap them. There were way more than three lines of earth power. There were dozens of ley lines just across the U.S. And there were also a series of pentagrams across the U.S., formed by ley lines, perhaps the most clear one in the Southeast. One of thelines passed between southeast Louisiana and close to Asheville. “Well, dang,” I whispered. I was right.
I touched my middle and investigated myself with Beast’s eyes, eyes that could see magic better than my own eyes could. I might not have cancer in this form, but my own pentagram magics were still clear and potent. “Do me a favor,” I said. “Start looking for any ley lines that run through this property, especially if it intersects this liminal line.” I pointed.
“Why?” he asked, his voice dropping low, like mine.
I had a possible answer, but I wasn’t ready to commit.Hey, we have a ley line on this land. How’s that for coincidence!Not. Because if we did have a ley line near here, then I had to assume that Hayyel was involved in the happenstance of... of everything, making sure I purchased this land and would be here to discover it. Worse, despite his surprise when he realized that I had a magical tumor, it might be possible that Hayyel had participated in my getting sick. I didn’t trust the angel. “Not sure yet. But it’s worth checking out, to see if something magical or odd is close by.”
“Okay fine. But you need to shower. You’re”—his face took on an expression of glee, having caught me in a sin once often ascribed to him—“stinky.”
“Yeah. I am.” I ruffled his curls with my too-big hand and ran out of the room and up the stairs for the shower. Fortunately for my enjoyment, Shiloh was no longer lying in my tub.
CHAPTER 9
You Are the Dark Queen of Holding Grudges
I was trying to eat—my fangs made it hard to chew oatmeal—when a sleepy Alex brought my cell, his laptop, and three other tablets to the kitchen. It was as if he was moving his electronic HQ. He set the cell on the counter near my elbow. “Your brother,” he said.
I glanced at the cell and at Eli. “Guess he doesn’t mean you.”
“Negative. I’m not a timewalker. Can’t be here and on the phone to you at the same time. Take the call.”
