The Veil of Light
When I was small my mother would wait for my father to leave the cabin for the day, and she would begin to tell stories. I think back on them now and wonder why I sat still for them. They were long, and full of names I'd never heard. I shouldn't have been able to keep them straight, as young as I was, but I did. I listened and I remembered. I remember them now.
So does Julian. We all do. If we're honest with ourselves, we don't have any illusions of believing much else. We have been here too long and have watched too carefully. Yes, I mean the "we" I'm only half part of: I mean the tribe. Not the Europeans like my father or the Americans from town. And no, there's nothing wrong with all those people. But we're not exactly like them, and we feel it. When you remember—even if your people remember in the form of stories—you don't want to put all your trust in the people who forget.
My father could never understand it. To him, the stories my mother told were just that: stories. Mysteries about the land and sea and light were for children, he thought, and he was no child. He was a man who believed light was energy, and that its actions could be predicted. The same went for water. He believed the world worked according to laws.
Of course, his laws were a lot like my mother's stories. It's all just a way to live with the world every day. It's a way to handle the disappointment of not having control over most things. That's how I see it. And I don't see a reason to fight about what the meaning of the sea really is, or why the northern lights matter. But I remember my mother's answers, and I remember my father's. Out here alone, I return to my mother's stories.
Earlier this year I watched the lights and remembered one of the oldest stories. In it, the lights form a veil that touches the frozen earth. When the two meet, their energies combine—the nurturing power of the earth and the energetic display of the sky. Both those things have a lot of meanings, but in this case they are the body and the energy that animates it. They form the link between those energies: the human. But it's not so simple.
A combination of earth and light is not what made humans in the first place. That's a lot more complicated. No, the meeting of the veil and the earth has a weaker and more troubling power. It calls humans back to their earth—their bodies—to finish the work the soul must complete. The veil of light returns the lost.
When I was young I loved to think about that story. I loved to think of my grandmother walking out of the northern lights one night, healthy again. I missed her, I figured, so she had to be lost. I told my mother once. She laughed. She said my grandmother would come out of the veil a dead body, and nothing else. Her soul was finished. It was the same, she said, for bodies. The school friend that died pinned under an overturned truck would never come from the veil. His body had died. The lost only counted as lost if body and soul were meant to be alive.
My mother never explained further, and I've puzzled over it since then. How could someone be lost if they'd never died?
Cramped against the cabin side with the dogs standing guard I found my mind returning to the northern lights, and the lost. I shook it away and retrained my ears on my surroundings. The slight breeze picked up slightly, and a loose board in a window frame began to tap against the siding on the far edge of the house. The dogs ranged slightly farther from me. Perhaps whatever they heard was moving off.
I thought carefully about the edge of fabric I'd seen rounding the corner of the building. It had been dark, I knew that. It flowed out behind the person wearing it. The only logical conclusion stopped me cold: a cloak. A witch? A wizard? I gripped my wand tightly, fighting the tightness in my throat. Where was Black?
If he'd been with the person wearing the cloak, he'd have made such a noise the dogs would've all come running. Black had to be fine. The dogs would've reacted. I felt some of the tension release, and as it did I became aware of the chill setting into my skin. I edged back around the corner where I'd come, and the dogs followed.
I made my way back to the exercise yard to put up Blue and set the wards. I led Delphine out with me, and marshaled my meager courage to walk into the cabin. Delphine stood next to me, her stance solid and her ears forward. She walked first into the cabin as the hinges squeaked open. She stood in the center of the room for a moment, sniffing the air. Then she walked to the hearth as usual.
I followed her and lit a fire, then sat to think about what I'd do next. Something was wrong. More wrong than Black's absence, even. My gut said something was very wrong. But Delphine lounged on the hearth, calm as can be. I stood up.
"I don't know what it is, Delphine, but damned if I'm going to sit here and wait for it to come to me." I declared, pushing my arms into my coat sleeves. I'd just slid my wand into the front pocket of my coat and began to fumble with the zipper when the cabin door opened. Black.
I took several quick steps toward him before I checked the urge to launch myself at him. We didn't know each other like that, and he had no way of knowing the horrors I'd worked up in my mind while he was gone. I stood still in front of him with my hands frozen mid-gesture at my sides. We looked steadily at each other for a moment.
"Where were you?" I said at last.
"In town." He said, still holding his gaze steadily on my face. He seemed to be coming to a decision. "The dogs needed food." I looked back at him for a beat too long before responding.
"Oh. Thanks for doing that." I said, my voice flat.
"Dempsey?" Black asked. He raised a hand and moved it slowly to my shoulder, which he gripped for a moment. I could feel the joints of the bones of his fingers.
"Something happened," I blurted. Black pressed his hand against my shoulder to move me toward the table. "Black, would someone try to find you?" I asked, trying to keep my voice sounding reasonable.
"Why?" He pulled out a chair and pressed me down into it. I felt foolish for being so emotional in front of him. I coughed and ducked my chin a moment, determined to seem more together.
"When I came back from Juneau I couldn't find you, and I followed the dogs thinking they'd find you. Blue and Delphine reacted to something near the corner of the cabin." Black's eyebrows drew down as I spoke. He leaned toward me. "We went around the cabin corner and I think I saw—no, I know it was there—I saw fabric going around the corner of the house. Like the tail end of a cloak." I looked at him again, determined to get some assurance or at least an answer from him.
"Stay here," he said, his voice low. He transformed into the black dog without waiting for me to respond. I opened the front door for him and watched him head into the yard.
"Delphine." I called. At her name, the white dog got to her feet and looked at me with interest. "Go with him," I said quietly, gesturing toward the door. I knew she didn't know that as a command, but she seemed to understand the tone. She left the front door quietly and slipped in the same direction Black had gone. I closed the door behind them and worried my lip for a moment before turning in the middle of the room. "Get a grip, Dempsey," I ordered myself.