Riordan lay on the sand, his lower body half floating every time a wave flowed over him, pushing him up the beach and then pulling him out towards deeper water. The tide was coming in slowly, the waves reaching higher and higher. It would keep going until it eventually lifted him all the way off the beach and swept him away. That didn’t sound so bad. Peaceful almost, until he got to the part where he’d drown. That part would be highly unpleasant.

He was empty of care now, content to watch the blank black sky overhead and listen to the waves coming to take him away. Fear and pain and sadness all existed at a distance, present but unreachable. The numbness was a gift. Riordan was just so tired.

A wail broke through the darkness, rising over the sound of the waves. It was an animal noise, desperate and crying, accompanied with splashing. From some reserve inside himself, Riordan rolled over and climbed to his hands and knees, looking for the source of the sound. Out in the dark water, he could barely make out a small paw sticking above the water. The creature splashed more, revealing its head briefly over the waves. A bear cub, struggling not to drown.

Even though Riordan had no strength of his own, he couldn’t help but move towards the cub. Before he could crawl even a foot through the sand and waves, a huge paw pressed into his back, pushing him back down into the beach and holding him there effortlessly. The freshwater waves lapped at his face as they came in, making Riordan sputter but not stopping his breath.

The paw was as big as his torso, bigger in fact, claws gently closing over his shoulders. Out of the corner of his eye, Riordan could see that it belonged to the largest bear Riordan had ever seen, towering like a large hill in animal form. Its black fur sprouted a forest upon its back and sand poured off of it. Its star-filled eyes gazed out over the water towards where the cub had been.

Riordan realized he could no longer hear the splashing. With great effort, he managed to turn his head back to the water. Where the cub had been, an island rose from the waves now, forested and shadowed. A second one, a bit larger, lay beyond the first. No sign remained of the cub itself.

The huge bear removed its paw from Riordan’s back and he sucked in air hungrily, surprised at the vibrant desire to live that filled him with that air. He coughed out the bits of water he’d swallowed before looking back up at the bear. Its face leaned down, regarding him with alien eyes that showed unending space, the birth and death of stars, infinity threatening to swallow Riordan and reduce him to so much stardust.

Its mouth yawned open, revealing silver teeth long enough to pierce all the way through Riordan’s body and a tongue as long as Riordan was tall, leading into a shadowed throat that sounded like rushing wind and smelled like fresh killed meat. Riordan remained frozen in front of it, prey before a predator, hoping to be too insignificant for it to bother eating him.

The giant tongue slowly reached out and licked Riordan from his feet to the top of his head, pressing him back down into the sand and surf once again. The sensation was literally overwhelming, wet and warm, the flexible muscle curving around his body as it passed, leaving him dripping. Instead of saliva, the wetness left by the bear’s tongue felt like being bathed in warm rain, cleansing and refreshing.

This time, Riordan didn’t try to rise, holding his breath any time a wave reached his face. The bear watched him a moment longer before turning and walking back inland with thundering steps. It slowly curled up further up the sandy beach and let its eyes fall closed, looking as if it had fallen asleep even as its body blended into the land around it, beach grasses replacing its fur to wave in an unseen breeze.

Riordan lay there, feeling like he was becoming part of the land as well. The land was a whole thing made of many pieces, enduring past damage, adapting to change. It lived and moved and breathed in a slow motion dance. Seasons passed in a momentary dream and the waves soothed him, welcoming him to the world again.

He blinked his eyes open, staring up at a black sky, this one filled with twinkling stars and soft clouds lit by a moon still out of sight. Sand cradled him and somewhere below him, he heard the waves. A scent of burning herbs emanated from nearby but Riordan felt no urgency. He also felt no pain, which was surreal in and of itself after how the last few days. He floated on a strange exhaustion, peaceful and boneless, his body far from his mind and spirit.

A pain cracked across Riordan’s cheek, snapping him out of his daze. He jerked, flailing to turn and rise simultaneously, ending up leaning on one elbow and gawping at the tiny old woman who sat laughing next to him, her voice rough and rich. She didn’t look like anyone Riordan had ever met before and as distinctive as she was, he knew he’d remember her.

She couldn’t be more than five feet tall, maybe less, and thin, both in bone structure and the way the elderly sometimes get. He could still see muscle under her wrinkled skin the color of sunbaked clay and tattoos stood out on her arms, chest and neck, visible past her tank top shirt and long loose vest. Mismatched bracelets jangled around her bony wrists. Earrings poked out of the multiple piercings along the curves of her ears, her short spiky silver hair doing nothing to hide it. A satchel lay open beside her and a patterned flat dish sat between them, the remaining embers of burnt leaves on it.

For the life of him, Riordan couldn’t come up with a reason why he was sitting in the sand together with this eccentric stranger.

“Well, you’re spirit drunk if I’ve ever seen it,” the woman spoke, “Need me to smack you again? Sometimes you gotta jiggle the casing before the soul fits back in right after spirit walking.”

“Don’t touch me,” Riordan snarled, the response automatic, conditioned by years of combat and living rough.

Wild unsettled emotions rolled around inside him at that trigger and he bared his teeth with an audible rattling growl, drawing on his badger to partial shift. His teeth sharpened as his eyes went completely dark, picking out all the details against the starlit sand. He rolled into a crouch, chest low down to the ground and fingers digging into the dirt as if they were his claws. Voices shouted from further down the sand dune, but their meaning was lost on Riordan.

Before he could sink further into an animalistic fury, the old woman smacked him again, the strike lightning fast against his cheek. Instead of leaping at her and ripping her apart with his bare teeth, Riordan blinked at her, momentarily stunned. His mind and emotions swirled, entirely out of his control. All he could do was stare at the woman, frozen.

“Act like an animal and you’ll get treated like one,” she said calmly and then commanded with a voice full of authority, “Down, boy.”

Something unfurled from her like wings and then smashed into Riordan. For the third time in too short a time, his face was pressed down into the sand as a blast of wind shoved him down, sending a cloud of sand flying around him. Riordan lay still, panting and scrambling for his scattered wits.

Sand, pressed into the sand. The bear. Waiting for the waves to take him away. Bleeding magic, draining away like the waves. Dying.

Memory snapped into place in Riordan’s head and he rolled onto his back, his hand flying to press against his chest. There had never been a physical hole through him, but now the magical hole was gone as well. Where it had been was now something else, healed scars made of a mix of energy. It was partially his energy, but it mixed and merged with what felt like the ambient mana of the land around him and a seed of spirit energy. It wasn’t the same tree spirit, which meant that the mountainous bear he’d seen had been more than a dying hallucination.

The bond loop he’d made with the tree spirit still ran through the middle of his soul scar. The black rope still wrapped his left arm, though he was growing so accustomed to its presence, he almost didn’t notice it anymore. Touching his pack bond still led to the pack well and the root network of ghostly connections.

As if summoned by Riordan’s touch of the pack bond, Daniel appeared next to him, leaning over Riordan’s prone body. The young man looked concerned, which was a decided improvement over the frantic worry of that last mile to the border. “Rior, you okay?” Daniel asked carefully.

“Just fucking peachy,” Riordan groaned, “And don’t call me that again.”

“Then don’t scare me like that again!”

Daniel reached out, smacking Riordan on the head. He tried to duck, even though all he felt was a slight chill as the ghost’s hand passed through him. Riordan rubbed his eyes, letting the last of his partial shift fade away, and complained, “Don’t you start hitting me too. She’s bad enough as it is.”

Riordan flopped a tired hand in the direction of the old woman. She’d been standing nearby, posture straight and poised, patiently observing Riordan like he was a curious fish in shallow water. At his reference to her, she moved closer, leaning over him on his other side and making Riordan feel distinctly small and chastised. He hated that feeling.

“Either you have cracked entirely,” she said tartly, “or you are haunted after all. Crazy would be preferable and your idiotic spellwork would support it.”

“Sorry to break it to you, lady,” Riordan replied just as dryly, “but I seem to have an infestation of ghosts. Side effect of this.” He held up his rope-wrapped arm as evidence for the ritual and everything that had happened since then.

The woman tsked in annoyance and shook her head. “Nasty spell, but don’t dodge blame for your actions, young man. I’ve been a shaman too long not to recognize the intention of your sloppy spells. What blind idiot trained you?”

Shaman. In retrospect, Riordan should have realized that from the way she felt and the fact she’d been doing something with herbs here while he got licked by a giant spirit bear. His brain still felt decidedly shaken though and he cut himself some slack on missing the obvious. Spirit drunk, she’d called it, and it was definitely an odd impairing sensation.

She’d also asked him a question. “Trained?” Riordan asked back, not caring he was laying in the sand for this conversation. His ability to give a fuck had never been particularly strong even without the emotional bomb he was under. “In what? Spells? I can’t do active magic, so why would I be trained?”

Good lord, if the corner of her eye kept twitching like that, the shaman was going to have a stroke. She whirled, throwing her hands up and talking loudly towards someone out of sight down the dune, “Not trained! Can’t do active magic! I can’t. Vera! He’s an idiot and a public menace, but he’s yours now!”

“Oh thanks, love,” an amused and sarcastic female voice replied, “As if there aren’t enough idiots around here.”

“You asked for this one and Mother Bear didn’t eat him, so you’re stuck with it!” the shaman yelled back as a plump curvy woman climbed up the dune into view. “I’m not going to eat him for you either!”