own. Fala blinked and quickly lost this battle and her concentration.
Meikoda’s energy struck Fala, and she rocked back on her knees from the impact and sucked in her breath. Okay, she got the warning: Don’t move. Don’t give into your fear and run from the sacred mound before the ceremony is complete. She really didn’t want to be another disappointment to her grandmother, and it took all of her willpower to stay kneeling.
Meikoda flicked the mat’s edge and gently picked up an ancient bowl carved in the form of two bears, their noses touching. White mist spiraled up from the hot potion and flowed over Meikoda’s gnarled hands as she raised the bowl heavenward. She closed her eyes and spoke an ancient incantation. “May blessings from the seven stars bind you for all eternity and the light of our Great Bear Maiden seal the union. Drink from the sacred bowl and be one.”
Fala knew that Meikoda chanted to the Warrior Bear Maiden, known to humans only as the constellation Ursa Major. Since the Dawning, the Great Bear Maiden had always been the totem of her tribe and the gateway to the source of their white magic and that of the Tsimshian’s power.
After a moment of reverent silence, Meikoda handed the bowl to Fala first.
Fala’s hand trembled as she drank from the bear on the left. The bitter liquid burned her throat, then she handed the vessel to Akando. Their fingers touched and he allowed the moment to linger until her eyes met his, eyes that glistened with greed and hunger. He grinned at her, then without taking his gaze from her, raised the bowl to his lips and drank.
Heat from the fire tugged at her, and she shook all over. Her vision blurred. Her head fell back and she collapsed on the ground. All she could see was that damn moon. The magnetic pull of it flayed her skin from bone, going deeper and deeper into her. The atoms of her body strained against the sensation of being torn apart. A strange lifting sensation engulfed her, then her spirit departed her physical body. It churned over her in a brilliant orb.
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.”
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