Spirit Dances. C.E. Murphy

was also potentially a whole lot more than just a mentor, and it occurred to me he might not like Morrison treading on his I’m-not-a-dog territory.

      A frown appeared between Morrison’s eyebrows, making me think maybe he didn’t like being compared to Coyote in any way, either. I wondered if men made everybody’s lives complicated or if I was just unusually incompetent in that field. All he said, though, was, “Just tell me if we need to get out of there, all right, Walker?”

      I nodded. “I will, but you might be more likely to notice than I am. I didn’t feel myself changing.”

      “I’ll keep an eye on you.” Morrison headed toward the theater, only turning back when he realized I wasn’t following. “Walker?”

      “Why aren’t you freaking out?” God, of all the graceful questions I could’ve asked. I put a palm to my forehead, searching for a better way to phrase it, but Morrison chuckled.

      “I’ve run out of freak, Walker. When it comes to you and Holliday, there’s no barometer. Every time I think I’ve seen or heard the strangest thing you could possibly come up with, you trump it. Besides, if somebody else in there had noticed what was happening, you’d have been in a world of trouble. I don’t care how weird you get. You’re one of my officers. I’m not going to let you down, not if I can help it.”

      In other words, if anybody under his command had suddenly started turning into a coyote, he’d have hustled them out of public view and worried about the details later.

      I wasn’t getting preferential treatment. That sort of made me feel better, but only sort of.

      Mostly what it did was remind me what a decent person my boss was. He’d gone out of his way for me more than once, even when we were barely on speaking terms. I shouldn’t be surprised that he could handle a little something like me shapeshifting, but I was. I fumbled around for a way to express that, and finally settled on a wholly inadequate, “Thank you.”

      Morrison crooked a smile. “Come on, Walker. The show’s about to start again.”

      I didn’t enjoy the opening of the second act nearly as much. Not because it wasn’t as good, but because I was concentrating so hard on not getting lost in the power the dancers generated that I couldn’t get lost in the stories they told, either. Morrison leaned over at one point and whispered, “Relax,” but that was easy for him to say. He wasn’t in any danger of sucking up so much magic he would start changing shape. I wondered if I’d have been so vulnerable if it hadn’t already been an emotionally traumatizing day.

      Not that it mattered. After a while, it became clear I wasn’t going to slide down that slippery path again. Where the first part had begun with the thunderbird and climaxed with the shapeshifter’s dance, the second opened with a piece that felt more familiar to me. I’d done spirit quests a-plenty over the past year, and the dancers called up the wonder of drifting in darkness as power animals came to examine, consider and eventually to choose. I half expected the audience to start exclaiming over their own spirit guides appearing, and even stole a glance at Morrison to see if he had been granted a vision by the dancers’ skill.

      He was watching me, not the stage. I muttered, “I’m fine,” and turned my attention back to the show.

      Their second dance tread more territory I recognized. The lights went hard red and yellow, making the stage a rough approximation of the Lower World, a place inhabited by demons and gods. One of the dancers became lost in that world, only to be found by the newly-spirit-guided lead from the previous dance. By the end of the third piece I knew where they were going, because I’d walked the path myself. The first act had followed a shaman’s journey as a shapeshifter, something totally outside my own experience. The second, though, was unquestionably the healer’s path. I was sure the final piece would be the ghost dance, and I knew exactly what to expect of it.

      A shaman could, in theory, affect a full-blown healing with the force of his will alone. It required belief on the part of the one being healed, as well, but extraordinary things could happen if both parties were utterly confident in the outcome. I’d only experienced it on a minor level myself, though I knew the power to heal completely lay within me.

      I was willing to bet it lay within the dancers, too. Not exactly as I experienced it, maybe, because my magic was largely internal, and they were unquestionably creating something external. My magic wasn’t something that caught others up in it, not the way a dance performance did. I couldn’t imagine a better way to draw people into the necessary mindset for healing to succeed than with a completely captivating dance. It didn’t have to be active belief—fully healing unconscious people was much easier than healing someone who was awake—but the dances could lower defenses, make people susceptible to a healing power they might not even realize existed.

      All of a sudden I understood the glowing reviews they’d received all around the country. Everyone, from the man on the street to the most jaded critic, had mentioned feeling lighter, happier, healthier, when they’d left the show. I’d read no reports of miraculous recoveries from terrible illnesses, but that made threefold sense: first, someone that sick might well not be at a dance performance, and second, even if they were, the chances of associating recovery with a theatrical show were slim to none. Third, while I had very little doubt the dancers could affect healing, dissipating it over hundreds of audience members might weaken it enough that no single individual would benefit one hundred percent from the magic.

      Never mind that I didn’t believe that last at all. Those who were most captivated would probably benefit the most strongly. It wasn’t impossible that a terminally ill patient caught up in the ghost dance would be healed, while the people around her, too concerned for her health to entirely focus on the dance, would only feel a brief lifting of their worry.

      Entranced by the thought, I closed my eyes against the dancers themselves and opened my senses to the audience around me. I’d never tried this before. Generally speaking, the idea of opening myself up to the pain, exhaustion and illness of hundreds of people at once wasn’t high on my list of things that sounded like fun. On the other hand, doing it in the midst of a performance was probably as good a time as any I could try: most people would be thinking about it instead of focusing on their aches and weariness, which had to lighten the burden a little. I hoped.

      Viewed through the Sight, the dancers on stage nearly overwhelmed their audience. People generally had two dominant colors to their auras, but at the moment the dancers each blazed with singular hues. That was a mark of focus, of giving everything they had to the moment, and it was wonderful to behold. I’d never seen so much energy focused together, vibrant shades of many colors giving and taking, aware of each other and building to create a whole out of their many pieces. I had, a few times, asked my friends to lend me strength to fight with. Their best efforts looked paltry compared to the dancers’.

      I shivered and turned my face away from the stage. Eyes closed or not, I could still See them too clearly to gauge the audience unless I directed my unseeing gaze elsewhere.

      Onto Morrison, in this case. I saw a red streak of concern leap in the rich blue and purple that was his usual aura, and put a hand on his arm in reassurance. Surprise spiked through him, then was tamped down so solidly it made me smile. I was glad he was there: he was a gauge to judge everyone else against. I knew what his colors should look like, even when he was intent on something.

      He also gave me something familiar to focus on until I could disengage the dancers’ radiating presence from the audience. It was harder than I expected: they wanted to be the center of attention. They were, in fact, giving being the center of attention everything they had, and there was a feedback loop going on: they wanted attention, the audience was providing it, I got sucked into what the audience was watching….

      I actually had to open my eyes and blink furiously at Morrison before I could disconnect myself from the loop. His eyebrows wrinkled and I said, “Keep looking at me,” which made his eyebrows convert to question-arches, but he did as I asked. I closed my eyes again, safe in his gaze, and that time was able to slip beyond the dancers’ pull to properly see the audience.

      They were, by and large,