Mark had been following orders, meditating near Mother Bear, but if the greater spirit was listening, she certainly wasn’t speaking. And if it was clearing some sort of spiritual influence off Mark, lingering from his exposure to the tree spirit’s peaceful aura of death, well, he didn’t feel that either.

Instead, all he really felt like he’d gained from the exercise was sand in his boxers and Mark wasn’t even sure how that had happened.

Frankie always possessed good reasons for her directions. Mark knew he should be able to figure out what the goal here was and how to pursue it usefully, but his mind just wouldn’t settle. The dunes were a place of power, the home of a greater spirit. Shouldn’t the call of the sand and the lake be stronger than the call of a certain forest glade?

He dug his bare toes and fingers into the sand of the dunes. The sand was fine and soft, ground down by the passage of glaciers thousands of years ago. The sun warmed the surface layers, becoming almost uncomfortably hot, but then it quickly cooled as he swirled deeper. The air smelled of plants and dust, the beach cherries in flower nearby. Birds were calling. Mark should know those bird calls, but it all escaped him at the moment.

What was the point of everything he’d memorized? All those lists of plants and animals and rocks, with their physical uses and their magical ones? Mark had prided himself on his scholarship before, but it all felt empty in the face of real problems.

Intellectually, Mark knew that he was in crisis. He had been through a life-threatening, life-changing experience. His emotions and mental state were in disarray. He needed to find some sort of peace with what had happened to and around him in order to move forward.

Emotionally, he was now confused about how he wanted to move forward. Mark had always wanted to be a pack shaman, a spiritual and emotional pillar to a community. That hadn’t changed, exactly, but…

But how could he guide anyone wisely if his experiences were so narrow? Never before had his youth felt not like potential but like immaturity.

Worse, Mark wanted, with all the childish petulance of a toddler throwing a tantrum, to be ready now. And he wasn’t. And wouldn’t be. Couldn’t be.

So, yes, eventually he wanted to be a pack shaman. Mark just wasn’t sure that being an apprentice, staying in his safe home studying other people’s knowledge, was what he wanted right now.

That sounded petty, even to him, but it didn’t make it any less true.

He kicked his feet in the sand, enjoying the physical expression of his turbulent inner feelings. It grounded him. Mark went back to running the sand between his fingers.

“I can’t sleep, Mother Bear,” Mark whispered to the air. “You sleep all the time, watching over your children. Think you could help me out?”

Actually, thinking back on the legend of the Sleeping Bear dunes, Mother Bear was really watching over the corpses of her children. They had just been cubs and they had drowned while swimming away from danger, turning into the two islands visible out in the lake. It had never occurred to Mark before how the greater spirit he’d been born near was already one associated with finding peace after death. It was just the death of a loved one in this case.

Mother Bear found peace through its eternal vigil. Or at least, long lived vigil. He wasn’t sure how the spirit would transform once the dune itself disappeared. Mark knew that spirits arose from concepts or locations or stories, spontaneously awakening to sentience, and could persist past the physical existence or common knowledge of their root source.

At the same time, without some focal point to gather magic around, those spirits often faded slowly, returning back to energy. Or perhaps slumbering.

Would the Mother Bear simply cease to wake one day and then slowly fade back into the fabric of the world?

If one had to cease to exist, that method didn’t sound so bad.

His phone rang, breaking the quiet of the dunes. Mark glanced at the caller ID and then answered, still sprawled out in the sand. “Frankie? Is everything alright? I’m out meditating like you advised.”

“I know, dear,” Frankie said fondly, “I just need you to do a favor for me.”

Mark sat up, shaking off his sleepiness and the sand. “Of course. What do you need?”

“Riordan was hassled by one of the agents and took off into the woods to calm down. He’s finally settled in one place. Hrr is watching him, but I think you would be the best choice for someone non-threatening to retrieve him.”

“Yeah, of course. I’m happy to help,” Mark confirmed, already snatching up his discarded shoes and scrambling to his feet. He wasn’t super thrilled to be called non-threatening at the moment, his recent experiences still leaving him feeling overall vulnerable and weak, but that didn’t make it any less true. He might as well take advantage of it to help someone. “Send me his location?”

Mark envied the head shaman’s connection with the territory spells. Or, he used to. Now he was less sure. He knew of some of the benefits that came with being the physical controller of those ancient spells and spirit pacts, but Mark was realizing he didn’t know the costs and drawbacks. Lucinda did, being the senior apprentice and almost a full shaman in her own rights.

Mark didn’t know enough. His recent experiences enlightened him, pulling back the veil so that Mark could see that he hadn’t even been asking all the right questions yet, much less possessing all the right answers.

His ignorance shouldn’t bother him so much. He was young, just growing into adulthood and independence. If he’d been part of a normal human community, maybe he’d be a bit further ahead, a little less coddled, but maybe not. He didn’t know. There was so much he didn’t know.

Riordan was in one of the sparsely populated wooded sections that dominated the area. He’d left the property directly owned by the pack, making surprisingly good distance over whatever amount of time it had been since he’d felt like he needed space, but Riordan wasn’t in danger of being bothered where he was.

Mark parked in the closest overlook to the area and hiked out to Riordan’s last known location, trusting Frankie to message him if that drastically changed. He walked noisily and made sure to come from upwind so Riordan could hear and smell him coming. He didn’t want to spook Riordan. That seemed unwise and likely to end poorly for Mark.

As it was, Riordan appeared relaxed enough when Mark finally spotted him, sitting at the base of an old gnarled pine tree, one with long roots spreading out around Riordan. He had his head tilted back against the trunk and his eyes closed.

Mark approached and then plopped down a few feet away, just being present. Riordan obviously knew he was there. Mark could see in the subtle shifting of muscles and breath, the bending of the body around the intruding presence. He scooted a little further away, relieving some of that tension.

The corners of Riordan’s lips quirked up. “I’m not going to bite you, kid.”

“I know.”

The silence returned, but Mark eased into it this time. He realized that Riordan felt a bit like that place in the forest. Like the tree spirit. He shouldn’t have been surprised. Riordan clearly bore the spirit’s mark upon his soul. After the magical storm that Riordan so recently weathered, tossed and turned and tethered to that tree, how could he not bear marks?

And yet, beneath the peaceful oblivion emanating from Riordan as he sat with the silence and his thoughts, Mark sensed a fire that was all Riordan, stubborn and dangerous, a wild beast at rest.

Mark longed for that sense of coiled power. He wasn’t weak, really. His animal spirit wasn’t a predator, but a porcupine had distinct defensive advantages. Even more, Mark was a shaman, possessing magic that would make him very dangerous in his own right once he was fully trained.

He might be an apprentice, but he’d gone into that fight at the ritual wielding charms and laying low groups of potential assailants at once. If the charms had been designed to kill instead of disable, Mark probably couldn’t have used them, but…

The facts didn’t matter. Mark wanted to be strong. Strong enough that death choked if it tried to swallow him again.

The very thought was absurd. No one escaped death in the end. Mark didn’t even mind that; living forever was its own sort of horror.

He just wanted to be strong enough to go to death in his own time, head held high.

Mark turned his gaze back towards Riordan, who hadn’t moved. After a few seconds, Riordan asked, “What?”

“We talked a few days ago about… about trauma, and how to feel safe again?” Mark hated how the statement came out as a question, his anxiety showing.

Riordan opened his eyes, dark gaze pinning Mark in place, though not unkindly. The man tensed, waiting. “Yes, we did.”

“I think I need to get personally stronger to feel safe,” Mark said, the realization slipping from his lips before he knew he was going to say it. “Or to accept the amount of risk there is in the world, anyway. And I need to stop being so scared of death.”

Riordan somehow managed to relax his tension and grow tightly stern simultaneously. “Fear of death is important for self preservation.”

“I’m not explaining it well,” Mark laughed, the sound surprising him in the middle of such a serious conversation. “I want to move from existential terror to healthy respect.”

“Ah. That would be good, yes.” It was Riordan’s turn to laugh.

“Do you fear death?”

Riordan paused, considering the question seriously. Mark loved the way Riordan treated him as an adult despite the gap in years and experience. And the way Riordan didn’t lie to him.

“Not as much as I should. Deciding to live is… hard. I have to keep choosing to not take the easy way out.” Riordan grinned, the expression decidedly feral. “It helps that I’m a contrary bastard. If someone else wants me dead, I’m hardly going to oblige.”

Mark was less sure about that. He remembered how Riordan had looked the first time he’d ever laid eyes on the man. His soul damage bled everywhere, but there was a peace about him even then. It was living that made Riordan fight like hell for each and every step along the way.

He shied away from that thought, changing the subject. “I want to see Daniel.”

Riordan sputtered slightly. Mark noted the way Riordan’s gaze landed a few feet away and up from where Mark “Oh?”

“You were right. Seeing his corpse wasn’t good for me. So I want to see him again, to remember that death of the body isn’t the end.”

Riordan went thoughtful. He spoke to the air, asking, “What do you think?”

Mark couldn’t hear the reply, but his skin prickled with an awareness of the invisible third person in their little space. How could something or someone be so close and yet spark no mark upon his senses?

And then he did feel something. A breath of cold air like a caress settled on his head and Mark thought he could sense the intangible hand touching him. The feeling left as quickly as it came, leaving Mark feeling a bit… not bereft, exactly, but lost.

Riordan’s attention swung back to Mark. “Daniel’s all for it. When do you want to do it?”

“I have to figure out how first,” Mark’s frustration bled into his voice. “I’m too inexperienced or untalented to see ghosts.”

“Oh,” Riordan remarked, surprised, “Well, I can help with that.”