Akando fell next to her. His spirit roared out of him, bursting into an orange glow not as bright as her own. Fala heard the watching crowd gasp in wonder.
Their spirits, attracted by the energy of one another, drew closer. Before they melded, Fala’s spirit paused and hovered there.
Rainbow-colored rings surrounded the orbs as they undulated, swelled, surged, receded and waved in an age-old mating dance. Fala’s unwilling spirit avoided Akando’s thrusts to reach her.
“Fala, let your reluctance go,” Meikoda ordered.
I’m trying. Fala squeezed her eyes closed and concentrated on reining in her will.
After what seemed like years, but had to have been minutes, Meikoda said, “Enough.” She swept her hands through the air in a quickness that defied her age. A burst of brilliant white light burst from her palms and struck both spirits.
Fala felt her essence rush back into her own body in an electrifying whoosh. It felt as if someone had stepped off her chest and she could breathe freely again. She let the life-giving feeling wash over her, while she caught a whiff of the ionized scent that permeated the air from Meikoda’s magic, a smell much like the cleansed smell after a lightning strike. She grew aware of the flutist who stopped playing. Dead silence blanketed the cold air.
Akando, already on his feet, stood before her. He bent and grabbed her hand and jerked her up before she could protest. When they stood nose to nose, he said, “You’re delaying this on purpose.” The terse words revealed the blow to his ego.
“We’ll try again.”
He grabbed her arms, his face defiant. “I’ll not be made a fool of a second time.”
Fala felt his finger bite into her flesh as she pulled away, a warning flaring in her eyes. Now she knew why she had never liked Akando. His male beauty had spoiled him and he didn’t take rejection well. In fact, he was all too arrogant for her tastes.
“Enough.” Meikoda held up a hand. A bolt of lightning shot out from her fingers, hissing and spitting like a welder’s torch.
Fala and Akando backed away, giving Meikoda a wide berth, a lesson Fala had learned within the first hour of having been dumped at Meikoda’s doorstep as a child. This was the angriest Fala had ever seen her grandmother.
“No more anger on this holy ground.” Meikoda leveled a scathing look at Akando. “We will perform the ceremony again when Fala is ready.”
Akando opened his mouth to protest, but when he looked at Meikoda he looked into the face of the high priestess, the Tsimshian, the Guardian of white magic, the most powerful shape-shifter on earth. He clamped his mouth closed. After a withering glance in Fala’s direction, he stormed away, his form melting into the darkness.
“All of you leave now.” Meikoda motioned to the council, and the women followed in Akando’s wake.
Now that they were alone, Meikoda’s annoyance melted within the folds of her wrinkled face. “Tell me now, Granddaughter. Will you ever be able to finish the ceremony?”
“I can’t force it,” Fala whispered back, wishing she could summon more than dislike for Akando. “I need some time.”
“You only have a week before the winter solstice and the Warrior Bear Maiden reaches her zenith.” Worry pulled at Meikoda’s brow as she pointed skyward.
Fala gazed up at the sky to glimpse the Warrior Bear Maiden. But that damn moon blocked the constellation. On a clear night, the seven brightest stars that sliced through the Maiden’s belly could be easily seen. Her people called this cluster of stars the Utsi Yonia, or Bear Mother’s Womb. It is the Big Dipper. Those seven stars were magical, and on the exact moment of the winter solstice, when Fala had lived four annual cycles of seven, or her twenty-eighth birthday, the Bear Maiden’s womb would open and the seven stars would form a conduit between heaven and earth, thus sanctifying her and transferring Meikoda’s power to Fala. This cyclic blessing would begin all over again when Fala married Akando and bore a female child. The thought of bearing a child and heaping such an enormous responsibility on her made Fala groan inside. It was an honor being the Tsimshian, but at the same time it was a curse.
As if Meikoda read Fala’s mind, she frowned, deepening the wrinkles in her brow. “And you know what will happen if you receive your powers and are not joined to Akando within twenty-four hours.”
“I know, I know.” Fala squeezed her eyes closed to shut out the world around her. It didn’t work. The oppressive heat of the fire and the cold air on the holy mound suddenly collided around her and pressed against her. She felt trapped by it as she said, “He’ll die.”
“Is that what you want?”
“It’s just that…he was never my choice.”
“Choice. Choice has nothing to do with it, and you know this.” She punctuated her next words with an angry poke at the air. “You were both born at the same instant. You know this binds your spirits and preordains your marriage to him. If you do not marry him, another Tsimshian will not be born. Would you reap those consequences upon the earth?”
Fala hated to think what would happen without a Tsimshian on Earth. The balance between good and evil would tip and the underworld would gain control. Innocent humans would suffer the most. “I know my duty,” Fala said with a touch of flint in her voice. “And I’ll do it, unlike my mother.”
At the mention of Fala’s mother, Meikoda seemed to age before Fala’s eyes. “Your mother always did what pleased her and thought of no one else.” She paused and appeared to be reliving something painful, then she spoke more to herself. “We’ll speak no more of her.”
Fala gulped hard as she stared at the woman whose blood ran in her veins, who had raised her, whom she loved and respected, and whose strength had supported everyone around her. She was the most formidable woman Fala had ever known, but Meikoda’s strength hadn’t been able to manage her only daughter. After Fala’s father had died twenty-three years ago, her mother had dumped Fala and her two younger sisters on Meikoda’s doorstep and left the tribe to never return. Fala knew Meikoda was not only experiencing the pain Fala had just given her by not finishing the ceremony, but also the failure of having lost a daughter.
“I’m sorry,” Fala said, her voice cracking as she untied the wedding robe and handed it to Meikoda. She wanted to say, Can’t you see I’m not like my mother? I’ve lived my whole life proving I’m nothing like her. I’d never turn my back on responsibility, or hurt those I loved, or leave three daughters in your care. Instead she remained silent.
Meikoda’s eyes narrowed on Fala as if she were trying to search inside her, heal that part of Fala that belonged to her mother and wasn’t perfect. “If only humbling yourself could take care of this.” Meikoda sighed loudly. “But it will not keep you safe. You’ll be tested.”
Fala stiffened beneath the gaze. “How?”
“Darkness is drawn to the light of the Tsimshian powers.”
“I know that.”
“But, you do not know what Tumseneha—” Meikoda pronounced the name slowly, Tum-se-ne-ha, adding a certain element of well-deserved contempt to each syllable “—is capable of.”
Fala flinched at the name and felt a chill come over her. Everything in nature and magic had an opposite. White magic versus black magic. Male spirit versus female spirit. Yin versus yang. The Tsimshian’s dark counterpart was Tumseneha, the enemy of every Guardian who had come before her, and now he would be her enemy. “What do you mean?”
Meikoda said, “He will go to any lengths to take your powers and turn them to his own evil plans. Your life is in danger when you are away from the tribe and the elders.”
Fala’s face contorted as she thought of Tumseneha.