Work Text:
Shadow never feared the dead. Even before Laura, before his own death tied to the Tree, before it all, he'd held no trembling vapors against thoughts of decaying bodies. The dead were gone, the working parts fled for better climes. He'd never been a big believer in Heaven although prior to his experience with Mr. Ibis he had pictured the place to resemble south Florida. Everything that remained after was clay. Ghost stories hadn't startled him, either. Restless spirits who'd missed the metaphorical last bus to Miami had been figments of someone else's imagination, bits of undigested gristle or early warning signs of mental illness.
That was before.
Shadow saw them in the corners of the world, now that his eyes could see, and many days, he wished he couldn't. Unquiet souls languished around him, mingled with the living. A girl sat on a bench, waiting for the train like everyone else, but only Shadow watched her sob over and over as the still-breathing humans around her sat through her and moved quickly away unsure of the sudden cold. Old men, missing limbs, hobbled through fields Shadow visited as he traveled, marking bloodier times now gone.
The worst, by far, were the children. Everywhere he went, infants who'd been left to starve wailed from their ghostly swaddles, while little tots marked with every childhood pock and plague wandered over the streets looking for their parents.
"It's horrible," he said, sitting in a dirty café overlooking what should have been a gorgeous summer view of the Med. Just outside, a baby withered from a thousand-year exposure screamed and screamed but only Shadow and his dining companion could hear.
"Call me Phoebe," she'd said when they met, and despite the gorgeous tan on her flawless skin and the intriguing scent of the dark curls spilling over her shoulders, Shadow had known at once she was never to be more than a friend. Her eyes followed an attractive young lady as she walked past their table and paused to watch the seabirds.
Phoebe crushed out her cigarette. "It is."
"Is there anything I can do?"
He'd turned the question around in his mind. He'd helped the old gods in his country, tricked as he'd been. These were humans. Surely there was something that could be done to still the hollow cries.
"For the older ones, you can ask what they've left undone."
"And the kids?"
She took his hand across the table. "You have a good heart, Shadow. Don't drown it with sorrow you can't heal."
"There's a way. Isn't there?"
Phoebe lit another cigarette. "You really want to know?" He nodded. She took the stick from her mouth, waving it like a conductor as she spoke. "There's a charm. You're part god. It might work. It might drive you mad. Sing the charm to the little ghostlings, and sometimes they sleep."
"Ghosts sleep?" She smiled. "What do they dream about?"
"Their mothers. It isn't always a pleasant dream. Are you sure you want to know?"
"Teach me."
Phoebe cleared her throat and sang to him in words he could not speak but knew in his bones. Ghost words. Sorrow words. "Repeat."
Shadow mimicked the song as best he could.
"Half god," Phoebe said. "You'll do."
He nodded, not really understanding, but he paid for her meal and she kissed his head. Here in her home, she had power, and a lick of it cascaded through him. Then she smiled, and gathered her bow, and sauntered easily after the pretty girl.
He picked up a dog somewhere along the road. Fluffy tail, brown coat, no breed he could discern, it made itself at home by his campfire at night, and growled when strangers came too near, and only asked for his scraps when he finished eating.
"Fido," Shadow said, and the dog sniffed, growling low. "All right, Spot." Another growl. "Dave?" No go. Shadow thought as they walked. He'd camped across half of Europe so far, and debated walking in Russia before the winter. "Rolf."
The dog whined, then barked happily.
"Rolf it is."
His passport let him cross border after border, despite having no proper visa. He'd wondered about that after a while, if one of his contacts had done something to his papers. The picture looked like him, the same kind of passport he'd had since he was a child following his mother from embassy to embassy, but this one opened gates without question, and Rolf always met him on the other side of the border, tail wagging and tongue lolled. Shadow bought him a collar in Sofia, a simple brown leather strap and a tag bearing the number for the phone Shadow carried. Not that it mattered. He knew if Rolf wanted to go, he'd go, and no amount of retrieving him later would make him Shadow's should he not wish that.
Romania was beautiful and poor, like so many other places he'd visited. In the forest where he camped, Rolf woke him nightly to worry at the bats in the trees watching them both with intelligent interest.
On the third night, Shadow remained awake, and when the night pressed in, stars a brittle ceiling overhead, he said, "All right."
The bats lit from their branches, swirling up into the air before swooping down before him. He was unsurprised when they hiccoughed into humanoid form with a taste for evening wear.
"You are a god," it said.
"Half."
"Half is enough."
Shadow watched it, this lonely creature driven to the deep woods. Perhaps it had been human once. Now it had gone feral, more creature than man. Would it feed from him and take the little power he had, restore itself?
"Are you cursed?"
The thing nodded. "Hundreds of years ago. It's not important now."
Shadow thought perhaps it was. Had he been a great warrior, terrorizing his subjects with spears impaling the still-living? Had he been a thief, or a scoundrel, or a rapist, justly punished by a vengeful magician? Had he been a fool, tripping into a trap for which he'd had no words and now had no escape?
He rolled Phoebe's words in his head. "What do you need?"
The creature looked at the flickering fire. "An ending. I can't do it myself."
The brands burned merrily, and Rolf carefully nudged one free of the rest. Flames licked the end, and it came to a point at the end.
Shadow buried the remains the next day.
Witches lived in the villages on the outskirts of Kiev. They lived together in pairs and triads, a few married and most not. Withered old women all, Shadow knew them under their hats and scarves, knew their faces, and knew their language without knowing how.
"There's a good boy," said the ancient witch, feeding a sliver of chicken to Rolf. Shadow slept on the floor of the apartment she shared with her sister, cleaning the tiny surgery they kept for his board. Today he'd watched her concoct a salve for a young boy born without legs, easing the pain of the pressure sores he endured from his prosthetics. Yesterday he'd watched her sister carefully and professionally perform a D&C on a girl, no more than eighteen years old, whose fetus had died in utero.
Their surgery was full of splash and pus, which Shadow diligently mopped away and disinfected.
"Aren't there doctors?" he asked after the first long day.
"Of course. But the doctors can only do so much."
And it was true the women did what the doctors could not, offering up muttered curses as they worked, soothing the heart pain in their patients.
It rained death on the villages to the north twenty years ago, said the older witch, and many of the survivors were relocated to this place. Some died quickly, others not so quickly.
And powers stirred.
"I lived in Korogod," said the younger witch. "My family died within a year. I couldn't heal them. But I can heal others."
"What do you need?" he asked them, one after the other.
"Clean bandages. Clean water. Clean air," said the younger.
"I'll do with another twenty years before me of working," said the elder.
Shadow mopped, and he scrubbed, and he listened.
Shadow walked through five pairs of shoes before finding himself in Berlin for the second time, under a moon larger than life and still almost outshone by the city's lights. Money jingled in his pocket from work he'd picked up along the way. A hotel was in order.
Rolf waited at the fire escape when he went into his room, and with only a slight pang of guilt, Shadow let him inside. As dogs went, his was free of fleas and well house trained, and his pooch even joined him in the shower, shaking off the dust of their journey in great doggy shakes.
Shadow snorted, washing himself and then using some of the hotel shampoo on Rolf's shaggy coat.
"Buddy, you are a good dog."
Rolf whined and wagged his wet tail in full agreement. The spare towel dried him a bit, even if it smelled of dog after. Shadow crawled into the bed, luxuriating in sheets instead of his sleeping bag. Rolf jumped up on top of the covers.
The heating in the hotel wasn't good, and Shadow shivered in his sleep. Sometime after midnight, he felt shifting. When he drifted awake in the dark, he found another man in his bed, mother naked, and fast asleep. He wore a simple brown leather collar around his neck.
Shadow thought about this, mind slow with fatigue. "In the morning, you and I are having a long talk."
Rolf growled in his sleep, but he smiled.
End