Walker Papers - Eternity and a Day
AN - I have no idea what this is, it just decided it really, really needed to be written immediately upon reading Raven Calls. Not totally pleased with the final result, either, but chances are no one is ever going to read this but me anyway. Vague Spoilers for the whole Walker Papers series up through Raven Calls, but it takes place in the very very distant future. It won't make a damn bit of sense unless you're familiar with the series.
First there is darkness; empty, total, and all consuming.
Then… it isn't anymore.
Star, something whispers.
Something else laughs, young and bright. Firefly, it says.
Those are her first thoughts.
Her, is the second. I am 'her'.
She, another something corrects, stern and older, a grand dame correcting her child.
She… her… grand dame… child… Words she didn't know until she knew them, thought them, like the memories were there but they were slow and patchy with disuse.
What the hell is going on?
(Full sentences, apparently)
Another flash of knowing and not knowing; understanding even though she didn't, of memories she didn't know she had.
Memories. Oh.
That one word triggers a flood, and her first thoughts become millions.
This is how it starts.
…
Lives. So many lives, an eternity of them - of Joanne and Siobhán and Ilana and Yevett and Alannah… Generation after generation of lives, each one different and unique.
All of them hers.
Lives that jumbled together, real and natural and easy to understand (mechanic/beat cop/detective) side by side with the extraordinary (ravens (dreamers)/coyotes (tricksters)/wolves (leaders)) that had the consistency of a dream, wavering between reality and disbelief.
She had ridden with gods. She had run from monsters. She wondered why they were so hard to tell apart.
A voice knots into and around all the memories, tangling them together. A voice (voices?) familiar and feminine meshed with equally familiar and not, speaking familiar words.
Physician, heal thyself.
Okay.
…
She pulls and the power comes, new and ancient and silver blue. It fills her, rebuilds her, sewing together all her lives, but there are so many. They blur and twist and morph and wiggle from her grasp.
Unmoored.
How can I create what I don't understand?! she wails into the darkness.
And, beyond all reason...
... The darkness answers.
Siobhán Grainne McNamara Walkingstick.
It's an anchor, a spark of recognition in a sea of confusion. A tipping point for eternity.
(…Little Shaman…)
The spark flares, and she burns.
"Holy shit, what the hell just happened?!" Joanne Walker exclaims, heart pounding like she just woke up from a really, really, really bad nightmare. Considering her past, she had a lot of nightmare fodder to work from. It wasn't exactly a comforting thought.
Even less comforting is the darkness that surrounds her, pushing in from all sides. She flinches, calling herself ten kinds of stupid for accidentally magiking herself into the Dead Zone again, without even Raven to guide her, like some two-bit rookie on her first jaunt into the world between worlds. She thought she was beyond such dangerous - and quite easily terminal - mistakes by her age, but apparently not.
"Rav-" she starts, but cuts herself off just as quickly. Darkness surrounds her, yeah, but it isn't the Dead Zone. Big and scary, sure - after all, there is a reason humans never quite managed to obliterate the deep, primal fear of the dark and things that go bump in the night - but it's not the Dead Zone. This darkness doesn't seem so vast as to squish her like a bug in her tiny, insignificantness. More like she was stuck in a totally dark room without windows, and if she fumbled around a bit she might get lucky and eventually find a light switch.
Before she gets a chance to follow through on her fumbling plan, though, a spark of light flickers into existence a few feet in front of her. A moment later a second one joins the first, glittering lazily in the not-breeze. Another follows, and another one. They multiply and drift, falling down around her like flecks of stardust from the not-sky. Before long they're everywhere, and Joanne half expects David Bowie to show up in a crazy glittering white-blond wig and an unfortunate choice in men's hosery.
Then, between one breath and the next - eerily similar to how the Goblin King likes to make an entrance, come to think of it - she's not alone anymore.
Joanne smiles and bows her head in greeting.
"We meet again, my Lord Master of the Hunt."
Way better than David Bowie, she thinks.
"An eternity and a day since the last, gwyld," Cerunnos agrees, offering her the barest inclination and arch of an eyebrow in return, saying without words exactly what he thinks of her mental comparison, and her smile turns wry. Serves you right if you're going to snoop around in my head.
"That is a long time between temptations, my lord," Joanne teases out loud. "Used to be only a few months would pass before our paths crossed once again and you would present an offer it so pained me to refuse. It almost makes a girl fear she has lost your favor."
Once upon a time, way back in the early days, such words would've earned her a dark look at the best and a silver sword through some vital part of her anatomy at the worst. As the millennia passed and their tentative alliance grew into something closely resembling friendship, she might've even gotten the barest ghost of a smile.
Never, though, in all their years of acquaintance, did Joanne expect such words to cause the Celtic God of the Hunt, Gatherer of Souls, to flinch.
"Much has happened since last we met, little shaman," Cerunnos responds wearily, the fierce light in his eyes dimming to a slow burn. "For all that it is a phrase that has been used between us many times before, we are at an impasse."
It is only then Joanne realizes how tired the god looks, beaten down and worn around the edges, lines of exhaustion around his eyes and mouth that were never there before.
In short, Cerunnos looks old.
Gods aren't supposed to look old. Weary, sure - tired after a battle against the Master's favorite psychopathic warrior mistress, or when they've come home after a three month jaunt through the Middle World collecting souls - but never old.
"My lord?" she asks, concern wrinkling her brow. "Is something amiss?"
Cerunnos takes a moment before answering, and when he does, his voice is like crushed stone, dusty and worn by time.
"Naught has come to pass but what was meant to be," he tells her. "That does not make the ache any less sharp." As if the admission cost him precious energy, the god shrinks in on himself as he speaks, the power that usually writhes about him pulling back beneath his skin. Not contained, never that, just… tired. Like everything else about him.
"I am not sure I understand, lord," she asks again. "Is the truth so hard to bear?"
"More so than you could possibly imagine without knowing for yourself," he replies. "Though you may never forgive me for asking it of you, Siobhán, you must open your Eyes, as mine are weary with all I have Seen."
She eyes him again, worried now and unsure if she really wants to See what kind of burden the god carries that weighs so heavy on his heart. Then, before she has a chance to think about it any further, she triggers the Sight.
And she Sees… nothing.
Not a thing. No crystalline structures, no rivers of power flowing beneath her feet, no colors or auroras dancing across the sky because there is no sky. No earth. No spark of life at all except herself and the beaten down god before her.
"Cerunnos," she asks again, unable to disguise the tremor in her voice, "what's going on?"
"It is the end, gwyld," he answers. "My duty is complete."
For all that the darkness has held firm this far, it crumbles beneath her and Joanne's heart plummets into the nothingness.
...
The end. The end of everything.
Just… the end.
"How?" she croaks.
Cerunnos steps forward, closing the distance between them and lifting a hand to swipe a stray tear from her cheek with a calloused thumb. "Time, Little Shaman," he replies, voice gentler than she ever thought it could possibly be, softened by his own sorrow. "Nothing more, nothing less. Everything ends."
Everything ends.
His voice shouldn't be echoing because there is no air to carry the sound, no walls or mountains for it to reflect it back to her, but it does. It's all she can hear, echoing through her head (her heart), rattling around until there is nothing but those two words.
Everything ends. All those she loved, everything she did, all that she fought for and gained in every life that she lived, that she paid for in blood and tears and love and sacrifice - all of it gone.
Safe within the arms of a god, she lets herself mourn.
She doesn't know how long they stand like that, two memories alone in an endless, empty darkness. It could've been minutes. It could've been centuries; time had no meaning any more, not here, not in this place at the end of it all.
Everything ends.
Except us, some small voice in the back of her mind breaks through the sadness, for once sympathetic instead of snarky. It brings her some measure of calm, soothing her hurt and her loss like a balm.
It isn't about the destination, she reminds herself, but the journey. I've lived a thousand lives, won so many victories I lost track, and helped keep the end from coming too soon.
What more can one ask for, really.
Everything ends. And it hurts like a sonfabitch, but she's still here. She made a difference. That's got to count for something.
She sniffs, scrubs her eyes, allowing herself one more moment to compose herself the shelter of Cerunnous' embrace before she lifts her head and meets his gaze.
"An impasse," she agrees, "and a promise come due. If your duty is complete, then mine is as well, which only leaves the oldest promise between us to be fulfilled."
She steps back, out of the comfort of his arms, choosing instead to stand proud and tall on her own two feet. Her eyes are red and her face is blotchy, but dammit, she's a force to be reckoned with, too; one who has bested him twice and who has her own supernatural mojo going on. Submissive is not in her nature, and if they're going to do this thing, it'll be as equals or not at all.
"I am here, Cerunnous. What say you now?"
He smiles sharply, eyes becoming cold, hard chips of emerald once again. He steps back as well, straightening his shoulders and casting off the burden of duty and mortality once and for all.
"An eternity has passed, Little Shaman," the God of the Hunt speaks in reply. "An eternity and more, all that is left of your world the stardust you used to recreate yourself."
His power swells, filling him up until he is once more the arrogant, self-assured god that could melt her with a look and seduce her with a promise. It fills the emptiness, twisting and boiling around him like a storm cloud. His mercury stallion materializes beside him, and he leaps onto the beast with such grace and speed that Joanne barely even sees him move.
His power continues to twists and form, shapes battering their way into existence despite the emptiness that tries to swallow them up. Within a few heartbeats the rest of the Hunt is at his back, horses prancing in place and tossing their heads, red-eared hounds slinking between their hooves with supernatural grace.
Only the rooks are at rest, settled on saddle pommels or the convenient shoulder, some with their head tucked under a wing for a well deserved snooze, others puffed up and looking like so many black fluff balls, satisfied with a job well done.
All except one, winging toward her with a raucous call, black and sleek. She barely even has time to register his trajectory before his weight settles on her shoulder, comfortable and familiar, and she lets out a half laugh/half sob as she recognizes one of her oldest, dearest friends.
She buries her face in Raven's warm, soft feathers, letting his gleeful and obnoxious kluks and scolds wash over her.
"Yeah, buddy," she agrees, "I missed you, too."
Cerunnous smiles briefly at their reunion, the barest flicker of warmth softening slightly - very slightly - his cold, godly demeanor, before he gets back to business.
"And so I ask again, one final time, as promised." His voice rumbles like thunder, getting inside her and filling up some of the empty places left by the loss of her world. He holds out his hand, offering it to her as he had so many times before. "Will you ride with me?"
Joanne lifts her face from where she had hidden it against her spirit guide's breast. Triggering the Sight once more, she meets Cerunnos' eyes, his radiance made all the more brilliant through the remnants of her tears.
"My Lord Master of the Hunt," she replies, voice thick with emotion, "I accept."
Raven takes wing as she accepts his offered hand. He smiles once more, grabbing her wrist in a firm warriors grip and pulling her up behind him. For once, his quicksilver giant of a stallion holds steady, not flinching or fighting as her weight settles on his back, even going so far as to swing his great head around in a feat of flexibility to nuzzle her knee in a friendly greeting.
She smiles at his antics, shifting to more comfortably against Cerunnos' back. With the motion, something clicks deep inside her, beneath her breast bone where her magic used to lie, like the last piece of a puzzle snapping into place.
By the time the feeling passes, her spiritual armor has settled around her like an old, comfortable sweater - her mother's necklace to guard her life, her father's bracelet to guard her soul, and a purple heart surrounded by a silver ring (Gary was the first man to touch her heart, Michael the first to hold it safe in his hands. Their love left the deepest mark of all, a brand of love that no one - not even a god- would ever have the power to take that away from her) to protect her heart.
Everything ends. Except me. Except us. I will carry them in my heart forever, all of them, and in doing so they will be immortalized.
With silver blades forged in magic and shaped by the same hand, Siobhán Grainne McNamara Walkingstick, Warrior Shaman, and Cerunnos, Master of the Wild Hunt, slash at the emptiness and part the barrier between the worlds. Tir Na nOg opens up before them, ready welcome her long wandering riders home.
...