staring at her own re

staring at her own re ;

Storm-Eye discovered that the Garou war-form, so well suited to rihing opponents to bloody chunks, is far less use 1 for swimming. The more she thrashed at the w r ter, the farther she sank and the more cold, dark liquid found its way into her She had the pres L ce of mind to want to step nose and throat. staring at her own re ; ection and merging with it, sideways into the Udbra. She’d hardly have survived ten winters as a Garou if she couldn’t think of that. Unfortunate1 , stepping sideways required and not only was she! sorely lacking in mirrored surfaces, but she had lkft all of Helios’s light a hundred feet above. Along with air to breathe.

Rage pounded at her heart and she gave into it. She twisted to get at the great leaden thing on her back and no longer felt its teeth tearing at her flesh or the burning of her air-starved lungs. A great war howl rose from her gut and exploded out of her open maw-and water rushed in.

Storm-Eye woke.. .elsewhere.

The Wyrm-wolf was gone, but she could still feel its fresh bite on her back. When she thought of reaching back to check for blood, she realized she was back in her true form. Everything around her had a bluish, milky tint to it. Blurs of movement whipped past her from behind, careening off into the distance on some unseen current.

Everything went black. *** No, not on a current. They were the current.

She tracked one with her eyes quickly enough to see the mercurial contours and shining inner light of an elemental river spirit. Was she in the Umbra? Surely, but it felt different from any previous journey into the Penumbra. She was deeper.

She sniffed the air and it wasn’t air, but water.

Not the cold, dark, choking water she had swallowed before. This was crisp and clean and carried nourishing oxygen into her lungs as well as air would. No, better than air would. The water carried scents as well. And what scents! Storm-Eye could smell the schools of fish upstream, and the frogs and the grass. And the tributaries and springs that fed the river. And the summer rain and spring thaw that fed those. She could smell what was downstream, too. Great falls into a ocean so deep it covered the world. Great whales and kraken swimming its depth as they had long before the Weaver’s madness and Wyrm’s rage. This was a great river indeed.

She was no Theurge, but Storm-Eye knew this was a great moment, and she marveled at it. She let the refreshing water flow in and out of her and closed her eyes. She felt at peace. She wasA searing pain in her back broke her reflection and she turned to see a stream of red blood rising from her and drifting away on the current.

The bite marks on her back burned like silver and all her muscles tensed as the agony mounted.

“Why?” she cried out to no one in particular.

“Why can’t I stop this Wyrm-wolf? I’ve slain fomori and Dancers, Banes and blight-monsters in my ten winters. Why is this wolf-thing so different?”

The voice was huge, deep and terrifyingly quiet when it answered. The answers to your question lie within.

And then she was rising.

Storm-Eye broke the river’s surface and gulped at sweet air. She realized she was in Homid form when she treaded water and cleared her eyes with a hand.

“Watch out!” It was Julia Spencer in Crinos form, crying from the bow of the May Belle, which was bearing down on Storm-Eye at full steam. She waved and then extended a pole from her long brown arm. “Grab hold!”

Storm-Eye didn’t have time even to wonder how she had ended up in front of the vessel after falling overboard. She reached up and grabbed the pole just as she was going to be swept under. Julia pulled her up with one great pull, arcing her over the railing. Storm-Eye switched to Crinos herself as soon as she landed, because it was obvious a battle was underway.

Behind the bridge of the vessel, Carlita and Cries Havoc were both in their war-forms and fighting a new Wyrm-beast. It looked like a human woman, although with far too tiny a waist and great sweeping hips. She was wearing shiny black leather and laughing hysterically. From two great seeping sores on her back extended four long, transparent insect wings. *** From smaller cuts in her palms, long black tendrils extended, each tipped with a sharp stinger. StormEye knew a fomor-a human who had sold what little soul it had to the Wynn-when she saw one.

Cries Havoc made a swipe at the thing, leaping at it with his claws extended. With a terrible buzzing of its wings, it leapt high in turn and avoided the blow. Thankfully, the metis dodged its counter-attack.

The stinger-tentacles missed him by mere inches.

Carlita tried to take advantage of the fomor’s distraction and swiped at it with her fang dagger, trying to cut into its ample hips. It flew up and away again.

Storm-Eye looked at Julia, who nodded. A moment later, the Theurge vanished into the Umbra, but Storm-Eye had already moved on to the next task. “The wings!” she growled out at her young charges. “Get the wings!”

The two Garou didn’t even look her way, just acted. Carlita circled and stabbed at the thing with her fang dagger again, and again it sailed up and above her blow. But this time Cries Havoc was ready and he made a broad swipe at the air into which it flew. His claws struck into the buzzing blur just behind the fomor and tore its wings to viscous shreds. It screamed and fell to the deck.

Storm-Eye moved up to join her fellows and together they hemmed the creature in. It was wounded but still deadly, and its stinger-tipped tentacles danced in the air, readying to strike. It was about to do so when its body suddenly shook with a loud cough. Phlegm and blood shot from its mouth and nose and fear flashed in its milky eyes.

Julia. In the Umbra, attacking the Bane spirit coiled inside the fomor. Thank Gaia.

Another cough wracked the thing’s body and it lifted its hands to make a last-ditch strike.

Storm-Eye barked the command and she and her fellows moved in unison. She leapt high in Hispo while Cries Havoc swiped with his great Crinos claws. Carlita for her part came in low, fang dagger biting into Wyrm flesh. In a bloody blur of Garou fury, the fomor screamed and died.

The howl of victory was long and glorious, broken only by the sudden addition of a new voice.

“And I was coming to help,’’ it said. A tall, young man-a Native American from his broad face, tan skin and long black hair-stood at the end of the deck, the air behind him still shimmering from where he had stepped sideways out of the Umbra. His bare chest showed off an impressive tattoo of a great raven.

He carried a long spear and had the bearing of a warrior. “I’m John North Wind’s Son. Antonine Teardrop sent me to get you.”

The Sept of Caribou Crossing was very much awake. A bonfire burned high and true, visible from many miles away, and the chorus of wolf and human song that surrounded it was audible from farther still. As Storm-Eye crested the hill south of the caern, just past the scent marks that delineated the bawn, she could see the silhouettes of Homid, Glabro and Crinos forms dancing around the fire. Lupus Garou stood in a large pack some fifty yards away calling to beasts and spirits in a great howl. One of the wolf-howls was truer than all others, somehow catching the resonance of wind and stone just right and setting the very air vibrating. It was not the loudest song or the highest in pitch, but Storm-Eye easily recognized the voice of Heard-by-Gaia.

She loped toward the pack of signers. Her first instinct was to join in the chorus, to call out her own story to the wind and sky. We are the warrioTs of Gaia, the children of Grifin and Uktena, of Caribou and Luna, they howled. She was that as well and longed to announce it to all-but she didn’t. Didn’t because other songs resonated in her lowered lupine ears, songs of shame and scorn. Storm-Eye Wiser-thaGaia, those songs chided from the chorus of memory.

She who makes men of wolves. Storm-Eye lay down on the hill and watched the great song, an outsider among her own kind.

Her dark mood kept her from appreciating much of it, but the moot was apparently a grand affair. Besides Heard-by-Gaia, the group of singing lupus included a half-dozen other high-ranking Galliards, all singing of their own caems and septs scattered across the Canadian north. Lower-ranking werewolves-mostly Red Talons or others of wolf-stock-sang back-up to these worthies.

Those of homid stock seemed to be gathered around the bonfire, including several who bore the tribal markings of the Uktena, as well as a few Wendigo and Black Furies. One woman, her Crinos fur black and silver in the firelight, hefted a klaive marked with the glyphs of Uktena and Caribou. She was obviously deserving of status and deference, and even a young Wendigo Ahroun in the full grips of the fire-dance and the high, full moon above stepped aside when she strode off from the circle.

It took Storm-Eye a few minutes to realize the Uktena was headed toward her. The woman shrank down to Glabro form when she was a few steps away and knelt down to look at Storm-Eye.

“The wind whispers stories of you, lost cub.”

No one had called Storm-Eye a cub in many a winter and she didn’t like it at all. Before she had any time to reflect she was baring her teeth in protest. The Uktena woman barely batted an eye at the challenge, just locked gazes with the great, growling wolf before her and spoke quietly.

“Will you cow me as you do wolves, cub?”

Rage and shame struggled inside Storm-Eye and resolved themselves into sorrow. Her head sank to the cold ground again.

“Before you do the unthinkable, cub, remember that they once called you Two-World Daughter.

That’s no small blessing.” The Uktena woman rose and started to walk off, adding just as she rejoined the dance near the fire, ‘‘I suggest you earn it.”

The next day, after the singing and dancing were long over and many of the celebrants had rested, Storm-Eye approached the Talon Galliard she had traveled so far to see. She knew the real business of the moot-surely something grave to attract this gathering of worthies-would begin in earnest at nightfall. If she wished to have Heard-by-Gaia’s attention, it would have to be today. She found the great brown and gray wolf padding near the remnants of the bonfire, sniffing the ash.

He raised his head and stared at her when she came within ten yards, a statement both that he had known she was there all along and a quick proclamation of his superior status. Storm-Eye looked away and then down in acknowledgement, and when he too looked away, approached. Hello song-singer, she said with quiet affection, your voice is true a d strong.

The Galliard nuzzled Storm-Eye like a cub.

Hello to you, daughter.

Storm-Eye hadn’t seen her father for several winters, not since the days right after she and Mephi Faster-than-Death had sought vengeance on Wyrm-Rutter, not since she had returned to run with the wolves. She should submit to him as an alpha, as Fights-the-Bear’s cubs had to him.

Instead, her heart thrilled to his loving touch.

You are troubled, daughter.

Storm-Eye tensed, as if for attack. It would not be out of bounds for her father to pin her to the cold ground, to impose a harsh reprimand. You have heard the wind.

The wind has many stones, he said with a dismissive tail wag and yip. These led seamlessly to a solid stare, right at and into Storm-Eye, that said Tell me yours.

And she did. Without excuses or embellishment, without hesitation or defiance. How she had run with the wolf pack she had been born into and felt freer there than in any fight against Wyrm or Weaver as a Garou. How she had bonded with Fights-the-Bear and hoped to make pups with him.

How she had felt sadness at his decaying health, so starkly contrasted to her own unearned vigor.

How she knew he would be forgotten by wolf and werewolf alike when he failed to return from the hunt; how that was not just. How he deserved to die a hero’s death, more so than any foolish cliath who perished in a foolhardy sortie in a Wyrm pit and was sung as a martyr to Gaia. She sought her wolf-brother’s due, tradition be damned. Let the winds call her the fool, she was not ashamed.

Tell me, he repeated with a firm gaze.

Storm-Eye struggled for gestures and gazes that could communicate what she was feeling, the deeper truths her father demanded of her, and finally settled into the language of Garou. “Except I always remember how he defied me until I cowed him. He didn’t want to go and I forced him. And now no one will