Beyond the Western Sun Page 8

  Needing him, though, didn’t mean respecting him, and so if he took a few beatings across the bridge, she certainly wouldn’t feel guilty about enjoying the view.

  Ian grinned when a yipping, playful cocker spaniel came running to his side, short tail wagging excitedly as she licked her former owner’s hands. “Hey, girl,” he said quietly, a bit choked up at the sight of his childhood best friend. “Hi, Roxy. Oh, man, I missed you.”

  Roxy, who had seen Ian through his childhood years, yipped in response. She jumped up, her front paws reaching his stomach as she begged to be scratched behind the ears. He obliged her, his mind taking him back to the day when his mother had sat him down and explained that his best friend was sick. To a ten year-old, losing a dog was devastating, and he’d been furious with his parents for months after Roxy had been put to sleep. To the day, he’d refused to ever have another pet. Cole had been hinting at getting a puppy for about six months now, and every time Ian had found ways to change the subject.

  But now Roxy was back, if only for a short time. And she was back to help him, to make sure he stayed safe across the Bridge of the Dead. She’d always been protective. Sweet as sugar until she felt little Ian was being threatened, and then she’d become the ultimate guard dog. Roxy had taken down the next-door neighbor’s aggressive black lab, a rogue fox, and even Jimmy Henden, fourth-grade bully.

  “Let’s see what I’ll need protection from this time,” he said quietly, kneeling down and keeping an arm around his old friend.

  Ian didn’t hear the sarcastic huff that escaped Whisper when the images began to form, nor did he look back to see the way her lips pressed together angrily. He was too busy calculating how the hell he was going to live through this complete and utter disaster.

  He immediately recognized the three cats that sat shoulder-to-shoulder on the bridge like sentries, ears pricked, green eyes burning through him. One was all black, one white with orange patches, and the other fluffy and gray. And he knew their names—Midnight, Shasta, and Tomboy.

  His sister’s cats. He’d hated those beasts growing up. Midnight was always peeing on his shoes and Shasta shed white fur all over his clothes. They’d both died of old age. But Tomboy was curious to him, because that cat, fifteen years old and rescued from a shelter that caught fire, was still alive, roaming around his sister’s house, content with being the only pet. Though he hadn’t talked to his sister in about five months and knew it was entirely possible that the cat had died, he was still pretty sure that Tomboy was born of evil and would live forever.

  “Guess cats really are guardians of the dead. Crap,” Ian muttered, disgust curling at the corners of his mouth. Those animals would fight him to the death. As a kid he hadn’t been the nicest to them, kicking them out of his way, pulling their tail because he thought it was funny. As an adult, he’d once agreed to feed Tomboy while his sister was away on vacation with her husband and three kids, then subsequently forgot about the arrangement. Five days later he remembered and made his way to his sister’s, and found the cat hungry but alive, and very pissed off.

  “Crap,” he muttered again when a hawk landed on the rope railing of the bridge, the same hawk that, as a teenager, he’d struck down with a stone just to see if he could. A flurry of insects scattered the bridge, as they had for the professor, and interestingly a pelican appeared just behind the cats. Ian had no idea what he had done to the bird, but wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that he’d kicked sand in its face or caught its wing with a hook while fishing. There were a lot of careless things he did without ever thinking twice.

  “Okay, I can handle this.” Ian straightened and held his head high. If these animals were all he had to worry about, and Roxy was there to defend him, then he was confident he could make it across the Bridge of the Dead. He rubbed his hands together as he calculated the best way across, refusing to look over his shoulder at Whisper, worried that a single glance at her face, which he was sure was crossed with a disapproving scowl, would loosen his nerves.

  “Okay, Roxy, we’ll run.” Roxy seemed to understand, crouching low, barking twice. “We’ll just run straight across. Ready?”

  Ian lowered himself into a sprinter’s position, glared at the three cats, his biggest threat. He took a few deep breaths, eyed the other side of the gorge, and nodded. “Go!”

  Both man and dog lunged for the bridge. At the same time, vengeance drove forth the disrespected animals. Midnight and Tomboy leapt for Ian first, howling as they clawed at his hands, struggling to get them away from his face, biting at his scalp. Roxy pounced down on Shasta and took the cat out of the fight with a single nip to the throat. Before she could turn to help her master, the hawk bared its claws and clamped them down onto the dog’s spine. Laughter erupted from the sidelines.

  The yelp of pain drew Ian’s hands away from his face. Midnight took the opportunity to rake his claws down the man’s cheek, but Ian ignored the pain, blood dripping into his mouth, and grabbed the cat with one hand while punching the hawk with the other. The cat went sailing over the bridge and the hawk lay on the splintered wood, dazed.

  Roaches and beetles crawled up Ian’s legs, under his shirt, in his hair, as he grabbed Roxy and cradled her to his chest. Tomboy clung to his back, teeth latched onto his shoulder and pointed nails digging in deep. With a snarl, Ian leapt past the snapping pelican. The hook of its bill snagged his flesh, dragging across his stomach, but the bird hardly concerned the man.

  He was almost there. A few more steps, that’s all he needed. Just a few more, and he was safe. The whimpering dog in his arms drove him forward.

  “Get off me, you son-of-a-bitch!”

  With a shout of rage and desperation, Ian reached back for Tomboy, fingers clasping around the cat’s neck. Tomboy fought back, curling his body around Ian’s arm and kicking with his back legs. With all the strength he had, Ian rammed his arm down on the side of the bridge. When Tomboy connected with the small slab of wood he went limp, and fell into the abyss.

  He’d made it. Ian collapsed on the ground, hugging Roxy as he felt the bugs crawl off his body and scatter into the darkness. Across the gorge, Whisper stood perfectly still, arms crossed, observing the scene.

  Ian gently laid Roxy on the gray and cracked earth, inspecting her wounds. Deep punctures lined her spine, paralyzing her front legs. She peered up at him through watery brown eyes, feebly licking his hand as he leaned over her, petting her head as tears escaped. Her tail thumped once against the ground.

  “Thank you, Roxy. You did good, girl,” he whispered in her ear, knowing that the gleam in her eyes was one of pure loyalty, the devotion of a dog who loved her master unconditionally. “Thank you for getting me closer to Cole.” Then, before he knew what was happening, Roxy faded away and he was left with nothing but his own blood to warm him.

  The reality of his condition set in. His back stung where the shirt clung to the open wounds. His left cheek was on fire, and his arm looked like it had just seen the inside of a paper shredder. Blood soaked his clothes, was already starting to clump on his skin. He wondered if it was possible to die twice, to die again in death, because of blood loss. And for that matter, he wondered why he even had blood at all. He didn’t feel weak or tired. All he felt was the worst pain of his life, a pain that brought forth anger and a sense of betrayal, as though the woman across the bridge had been planning for this to happen all along.

  When he dared to look her way, he saw that she had taken her place at the edge of the bridge, but her arms were still crossed and her eyes still narrowed. She offered no words of condolence or congratulations, just a glare of repulsion.

  “So what?” he shouted across the gorge, standing and lifting his mutilated arms out to his sides to challenge her, any sense of maturity shifting into a teenage need for competition. “So I’m human! No one is perfect! Not even you!” His words traveled across the gorge and reached her ears just as reinforcements came to her aid.

  “Fool,” she whispered, a smal
l grin tugging at her mouth when Ian’s nearly dropped to the ground.

  The sight was miraculous. It was impossible. It was…beautiful. An entire army of animals lined the gorge. Bears, deer, raccoons, beavers, birds, mountain lions, all stood side-by-side with pride and majesty. Their coats gleamed, eyes shining in the grayness, sturdy bodies primed for a battle that did not exist. And in the center was Whisper, the fur that lined her hood and the buckskin that clung to her body giving her an animal aura all her own. It seemed to radiate…glow. She was glowing, Ian realized, a spark of color in a world of empty hues.

  The Bridge of the Dead was empty. Not even so much as a mosquito prevented her passage to the other side. And yet, as she took a step forward, her companions rushed forth, an entire battalion of spirits and guardians surrounding Whisper in a blanket of other-worldly protection.

  She never took her eyes off Ian as she sauntered across the bridge. When her feet touched the earth again, she closed her eyes and whispered a prayer. The animals bowed in response before disappearing.

  Whisper opened her eyes, sensing a dozen questions roaming around Ian’s thoughts. “No one is perfect, Mr. Daivya,” she agreed coolly, “but respect is something we are all capable of giving.” To her, respect for the natural world meant praying to the gods of the earth, thanking the animals that gave up their lives so that she may live and apologizing for those she accidentally harmed, even the tiny insects that may have met their death beneath her wandering feet.

  “Though,” she continued, looking Ian up and down, “I am trapped with a companion who demands respect but is incapable of offering it.”

  Ian sighed impatiently. “Drop the holier-than-thou crap. I made it across the bridge, didn’t I? And you don’t have to like me, or respect me, but you brought me here to find my son. So let’s go.”

  Whisper considered his demand. “Why did your son die?”

  Ian hesitated, taken aback by the strange and unexpected question. At first he thought she was antagonizing him, but her tone was sincere. “He fell into the river and…drowned. You told me that.”

  “Oh…yes.” She sounded disappointed as she turned. Lifting a hand, Whisper pointed to the mountains. On this side of the canyon, the sun loomed larger than before, burned brighter. “We will rest in the shadow of the cliff. We shall be safe there, and I can tend to your wounds.”

  Chapter 10

  They made camp beneath a small overhang that ran alongside the mountain. The space was no larger than a restaurant bathroom, but the two weary travelers welcomed the sense of security. Whisper made a fire from the rotted wood of a fallen tree, and Ian had marveled over the light. Expecting the fire to be orange, he had been fascinated by the white flames and black smoke. It seemed that in death, only Whisper was able to call upon the power of color.

  Ian lay on his stomach, staring out at the vast open land. The earth was endless, scattered with deep potholes, jagged cracks, scraggly trees that oozed black pus. In the shadow of the mountain, they were hidden from the light of the sun, tucked away in darkness. But what worried him most were the people, depressed bodies searching for salvation in a land of emptiness. They’d made it over the Bridge of the Dead, but were yet to find their way. He wondered if he too would be a wanderer, were it not for his guide.

  Whisper was kneeling over him, gently removing the torn scraps of fabric, not at all sympathetic when he winced. She didn’t say a word as she layered a foul mixture of water, dirt, tree ooze, and something dusty from one of the pouches on her belt across the wounds. He’d had reservations about her method at first, but whatever she was doing, it was working. The pain was subsiding, allowing his mind to think about other things, the things he’d been fighting to the back of his thoughts.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  Whisper frowned. She didn’t want to talk to him, not to this man who had no regard for anyone or anything but himself. The only reason she was tending to his wounds was because she needed him in top form for the rest of the journey.

  “Yes,” she answered quietly.

  Ian stared out at the traveling bodies, some leaving blood trails in their wake, evidence of their fight across the bridge. “How…..why do we still have blood?”

  Whisper spared a second’s glance at the passing dead souls. “I do not know for sure,” she answered truthfully. “Some say it is because the Great Spirit, Creator, wishes for the dead to remember who they are, and to comfort them with their human form. Other ancient stories say that it is not blood at all, but death that has entered our bodies and taken over our senses.” She did not care to know which, if either, was correct. “But I sense that is not what you wanted to ask me, Mr. Daivya.”

  Caught, Ian sighed heavily and rubbed his eyes. “It’s…it’s about Cole…How could he have survived this far? He’s just a kid…How would he have known where to go? What if he’s lost, back on the other side of the bridge?”

  “He made it across the Bridge of the Dead,” Whisper affirmed, layering strips of thin hide over his back.

  “But how do you know?”

  A howl in the distance troubled Whisper. She knew that sound, that cry of misery and fear. It was the sound of a soul giving up the hope of peace in death.

  “Cole is…safe,” she answered his question as honestly as she could. “I have asked.”

  “Asked who?”

  Whisper waved a hand, covered with black goo, towards the vast open land. “The souls…they speak, when asked the right questions. Elder Smoke Speaker comes from a long line of Speakers. He communicates with the dead through the smokes of the earth. Fires, fogs, dusts. He taught me to communicate through the whispers that travel on the wind. I have learned the art of Speaking, but not as well as the Elder. I do not hear as clearly, or as loudly, as he, but I still hear. I have asked about the fate of your son, whispered my inquiries to those who have already reached the other side. Cole is in the Land of the Dead.”

  He didn’t know if he believed her, or if he even wanted to. Speaking to ghosts, reading smoke, it didn’t seem possible. Then again, he mused, he’d surfaced into a world of gray after an old man drowned him in a lake, a world where his hands passed through his crying wife, where angry animals tried to push dead souls into a black abyss, a world where his fate was in the hands of a young woman with a strange accent and eyes that had seen the deaths of thousands. It could have all been a dream, but if it wasn’t, then he had to be prepared for the worst.

  Then her words sunk in, and something she said struck a cord in him. He lifted his head and rolled to his side to ask his suddenly burning question, and was momentarily silenced by the sight that met his eyes.

  Whisper had taken off her hooded cloak and fringed coat. Beneath them she was wearing a white top with straps that crisscrossed her shoulders, the back held together by a thick strand of fabric woven from top to bottom. It mirrored the front, which scooped low across her chest and was decorated with dark stitches. But it wasn’t her clothing that shocked Ian. It was what he had already seen that rendered him silent, a sight that was even more spectacular in the Land of the Dead.

  Black tattoos covered her skin. Circling her shoulders, down her back, and up her stomach, the intricate design wound its way across her body. Foreign letters, symbols, and places were etched out in great detail, and in between her shoulder blades was a strange spherical marking with streaks of dark red among the black. The tattoo seemed to swirl around itself, consume itself, and as Ian stared at the marking, mesmerized, he realized that it was at the center of the tattoos that traversed her body. Thin black lines exploded from the emblem, arcing across her shoulders, shooting down her spine, splitting into a language, a message, that Ian could not understand.

  Despite his hatred of the woman, Ian felt himself longing to run his fingers across the markings, trace them across her fabulous body. He wanted to know what they meant, how to read the strange words, and somewhere deep in the animal side of him he wanted to know just how far down those strokes of
black went beneath the waistline of her pants.

  “If you have a question, Mr. Daivya, then ask,” Whisper said, her back to him as she tossed a rotted log onto the white fire. Her inflected voice was accusatory rather than inviting. “Stares answer nothing.”

  Embarrassed, Ian cleared his throat and looked away, focusing his attention on the trees in the distance. He wanted to ask about the tattoos, but refused to admit he had been staring. “You said…you said Cole has reached the Land of the Dead.”

  “He did.”

  “Right…but, I thought…I thought this was the Land of the Dead.”

  Whisper turned and settled down beside Ian as he lifted himself to a sitting position, gingerly touching the wounds on his cheek that she had already tended to. She stretched her legs out in front of her and leaned back on her hands.

  “This is not the Land of the Dead, Mr. Daivya. This place, Agatiyv, the place of Waiting, is merely the way there.”

  “Like Purgatory.”

  Whisper lifted a shoulder at Ian’s suggestion. “Perhaps. You see, Mr. Daivya, people like us, the ones who die and never receive a proper burial, have one of three fates. Saquu, we are lost on the way to the Bridge of the Dead and become monsters, like the one that attacked you. Tali, we find our way to the bridge, but are overcome by our enemies, and so our souls are forced to wander for all eternity. Tsoi, we make it across, and into the Land of the Dead.” She sighed, drawing her knees up and wrapping her arms around her legs. Her fingers subconsciously rubbed the leather band around her wrist as she spoke. “Those who do get a proper burial have one fate. Passage into the Spirit World.”

  “Which is what?”

  “The Spirit World is…beautiful, peaceful, a world of light and color and love. The Land of the Dead…is dark.” Whisper stared into the fire, remembering her lessons. “Those who do reach it are given a…peace…away from the fear of eternal restlessness, but are forbidden to be with their ancestors. Family…family becomes whoever you find at your side.”