Chapter 5 #2
A laugh escaped Tanner. “Hell, no.” He ignored the restless energy sparking under his skin. “My warrior experience was centuries ago. I’m no war leader. I’m just a small-town sheriff.”
It was the responsible thing to say, but the words tasted like ash.
He didn’t tell Shiloh about the itch between his shoulder blades that had started during the defense of Fort LeBlanc, the urge to fly high enough that the whole continent would hear his challenge.
He pushed the feeling down, burying it under his duty and debt.
“Go home, Shiloh, before Matteo accuses me of calling you in.”
Shiloh gave him a momentary searching glance, then gave him a sardonic salute and sauntered out.
The office suddenly felt too quiet and too small.
Tanner chugged the last of his coffee and grabbed his jacket again.
The sun was dipping below the peaks, casting long, twilight purple shadows across the snow.
He told himself he was just going to finish his rounds, ensuring peace in the town he was sworn to protect.
He absolutely was not going back out to see if a certain blonde dragon shifter was still lighting up the street with her smile.
Midnight crept in with a silence so comprehensive it felt like the world had stopped. The wind had finally died, leaving behind a stillness that made the cold sink into everything.
Tanner arrived at the edge of the town’s solstice circle, his breath creating clouds that crystallized instantly in the freezing air.
He hadn’t visited the circle in years, usually preferring to honor the remembrance in the solitude of his own cabin, but the news of Rutera and Timoki had stirred up his ghosts.
As Kotoyeesinay did every winter solstice, the large terraced circle, surrounded by gently curved benches, had been transformed into a place of memory.
Panel walls on wheels, standing wooden partitions, and woven baskets lined the perimeter, illuminated by the frosty blue light of outdoor lamps.
It was a place for anyone to leave photos, letters, or offerings for the missing and the lost.
He wasn’t alone. A solitary figure sat on one of the curved stone benches, hunched over a task that required concentration. Tanner recognized the neon splash of the pink coat instantly. Avelunne. Why was she there?
He walked into the light and watched her.
She looked up briefly, then back to her work.
“Sheriff.” Her voice barely disturbed the quiet as her fingers worked.
“I didn’t think anyone else would be here this late.
” A subtle sensation of magic brushed over him like a drape of silk.
The peace bonds she wore would have blocked it if her intent was malign.
“I could say the same,” Tanner said, stepping closer. “How did you know about this place?”
“Tinsel enlisted me to help set up more partitions this morning.” After a moment, she held up her palm, on which rested an ornament-sized sculpture made of what appeared to be pine needles, shredded cardboard, and scraps of gold giftwrap.
Somehow, she’d turned them into a small, stiff-legged coyote figure.
“In the holding pens, we had no place to anchor memories. If you forgot someone’s face, they were gone forever.
” She swept the standing walls with a glance, her expression soft. “This place is beautiful.”
Tanner sat on the bench adjacent to hers, the stone chilling his thighs despite his flannel-lined pants.
He watched as she bent a small ornament hook to attach the coyote to a bracelet she had braided from broken pieces of thin red garland.
Along the red braid, other small sculptures hung — poinsettia leaves folded into a wild pig with overgrown tusks made of toothpick ends, two wide-winged birds made of tinfoil, and a piece of wire bent into the shape of a lion.
He had spent the day tracking her like she was a spy, and here she was, working in the shadows to build a memorial from discarded bits, some of which he’d seen her collect.
He wanted to apologize, but then he’d have to explain what for, and he didn’t want to tell her. “I was concerned you might be lost.”
“I’m always a little lost when I’m on new ground.
” She gave him a faint smile, then stood and looked at the standing walls, a few of which already had mementos.
The red garland dangled from her fingers as she walked to the nearest partition.
She held the bracelet up to the smooth corkboard surface, then took it back with a sigh.
“No hooks, and I used up all the wire. I should have planned better.”
Tanner stood and reached into his pocket.
His fingers touched the two vintage silver stickpins, shaped like stylized feathers, that he’d bought at an antique shop in Cheyenne decades ago.
He had intended to pin them to the board for Rutera and Timoki, a silent signal to the universe that he hadn’t forgotten them.
“If I may.” He removed the guards from the stickpins, then stepped beside her to stick each into the board at an angle to the other. Lifting the bracelet from her unresisting hand, he looped her garland over them. The red bracelet hung as if suspended between two silver wings.
“For my friends.” Avelunne brushed one of her handmade charms, her silken magic flaring briefly like a caress across his collarbone.
He touched the feathers. “For my cousins.” He realized that never looked for them because, unlike him, they’d seemed to have their own lives well in hand. He’d been jealous. It was a painful truth to own up to.
“They were afraid no one remembered them. Especially Timoki, who missed his litanyu mate. He worried she would move on after a time, but at the same time, hoped she would find bliss again.” She shoved her hands in her pockets. “‘Tis a heavy thing, to be a ghost in your own life.”
“Is there anyone waiting for you?” Tanner asked. “From before?”
She shook her head, her gaze dropping to the radiating lines inlaid on the smooth terrace.
“No. I was... flighty. I fled my people and strove to be unmemorable, in case they wanted me back. I liked many, loved some, but never stayed.” A momentary wry smile flitted across her face.
“Moonwings are cursed to never know our mates.” She gave an indelicate snort.
“My clan claimed it was an unfair judgment from the distant past. I suspect they were likely unredeemable blackguards who crossed a being powerful enough to curse the whole bloodline.”
“Actually cursed, or just unlucky?”
“Both, I’d say, considering where I spent the last twelve or two hundred years, depending on how I count it.
The English version of the curse says, ‘Until last-born joins thrice-born and sings with one and no other, air must twine with icy spark, and ruler must wield the light but follow the sky music, the moonwings will ever be blind to a true mate’s glow.
While I still lived among the northern clans, there was considerable disagreement about how to translate Ancient Dragonic to modern languages. ”
Silence settled. He’d always loved puzzles. He mulled over the words, but would need time to think about them. “There’s hope. It’s a fundamental law of magic that every curse must have a way to end it.”
She glanced at him before looking away. “What about you, Sheriff? Do you go home this night to a true mate? Or what’s the modern word — partner?”
“No.” His avian side fluttered restively. Unlike mammalian shifters seemed to have, he didn’t have full-blown conversations with the thunderbird who shared his soul. It was more emotion-centered and instinctual, like an urge to pay attention.
To what, he didn’t know. Avelunne distracted him.
An errant breeze brought her scent past his nose.
Her short hair looked as soft and ethereal as spun moonlight.
Her slender figure belied the size of her dragon, which he’d only seen once when she lay broken and bloody on the flattened blue SUV in the street.
For some reason, he felt the need to explain his answer.
“We are an ancient species, with origins in the age of ice. We set ourselves to protect others from an implacable foe. We finally won, but at the cost of our purpose in life. After my people’s warrior clans fell apart, we all went our separate ways.
I didn’t handle it well. For decades, I was lost in the haze of addiction.
I wouldn’t have recognized a true mate if she flew spiraling rings around me and dropped a fresh-caught rabbit on my head.
” He twitched one shoulder, not sure why he shared his past with a stranger more readily than he did with townspeople he’d known for over a century.
“There is still hope, Sheriff.” When he glanced at her with a raised eyebrow, mischief danced in her eyes. “By now, the world must be full of acrobatic avian shifters with superb hunting skills.”
Tanner allowed himself a small smile. “So I’ve heard.” He squashed a sudden impulse to ask her if moonwing dragons were acrobatic.
“Goodnight, Sheriff Tanner.” She turned and walked away toward the Transition Center, leaving him alone with the silver feathers and the red garland and the rising wind.
He was beginning to suspect he’d been terribly wrong about Avelunne. Which led him to wonder what else he was wrong about, and what was wrong with him. And how would he know what was right?
Unable to deny the need any longer, Tanner shifted to his thunderbird form and took to the sky. His magic took care of his clothes, so his only worry was avoiding clipping the branches of the conifers with his beating wings as he gained altitude.
As always in his avian form, his thoughts narrowed to essentials. Though it would be more comfortable to pretend that he could only true-mate with another avian shifter, he knew it was a lie. His cousin Timoki — who might be in Surasa’s breeder demesne — was true-mated to another species.
And not just any other species, but to a water dragon shifter.
Who, he realized with some shame, he should have remembered to notify that there was a chance her mate was still alive.
Litanyu dragons weren’t that hard to track down in the magical world.
They had been so blissfully happy that he refused to believe Darataya would have forgotten her beloved thunderbird mate.
Resisting a strong instinct to keep the figure of Avelunne in his sight until she made it back to the Transition Center, he flew toward his cabin.
Her disarming charm and humor were what most people seemed to respond to, but he was more intrigued by the hidden layer of strength.
She was already weaving herself into the fabric of Kotoyeesinay, and it had only been two days.
Most new arrivals took months to find a place.
Or in his case, a year after recovering from a poisoned batch of fairy moondew and remembered his own name.
If not for the kindness of Kotoyeesinay, he’d be dead.
In the clear, still air of midnight, all things were possible. Not so much when he shifted back to human form, and took up the harness of duty and responsibility.