She was standing on the edge of a rocky shore. It overlooked a lake so clear she could stare down to its very depths. Its water caught the light like a polished gem set to a ring, rippling blue and green in the light breeze breathed from the trees. Arthritic fir trees that bent like her grandmother’s fingers, solid spruce, and fragrant pine lined the waters. Regbi breathed them in like a perfume. The sky overhead was perfectly clear save for a meandering band of clouds spread across it like splayed fingers; she could feel the sun peeking out from under them like a timid child. Its warmth beckoned her to touch the water. She grazed her fingers against its surface and shivered. There was a bite behind its beauty, a cold that not even the sun could chase out.

Omol was its name. Regbi had swum in its waters in the waking world as well as in sleep, but that was so long ago that she had forgotten the feel of its cold against her skin. The way it stole the breath from her lungs when she plunged into its depths and returned it to her with new vigor when she lay panting on its shores. If she squinted, she could just make out where the painted wooden roof of her grandmother’s house should be, peering out from the treetops like a nosy neighbor. But there were no houses in the spirit world. Just sun and water, wind and trees.

Spirits too. With an ear-splitting shriek, Regbi’s converged upon her.

“You!” it screamed, barreling into her face. It pecked and scratched with all the force that a tiny wren could muster. “Skulking creature! Truant! Thief!”

Regbi shielded her face with one hand, using the other to swat at the spirit.

“Did you think you could hide from me forever? You, who has profaned my proud form!” It beat at her with its little wings, covering her face in a downy cloud of feathers. “Wretched, ignoble, despicable,” it peeped each accusation with the vehemence of a tin whistle, “cowardly deserter, bumbling stain on your name, afterbirth of your lineage!”

“Is that why you called me here?” Regbi managed through a mouthful of wispy feathers. She spat them onto the ground. “To hurl insults at me and peck out my eyes?”

It certainly hadn’t been her choice to make the journey. In the year since her botched attempt to take in her spirit, she had done her best to avoid crossing over. She had remained as firmly rooted to her body as if she were planted there. And she had had no intention of ever wandering from it again, not when an angry spirit was waiting for her on the other side.

“If it were in my power to do so, I would have summoned you at the first opportunity and demanded that you restore me,” the spirit said. “Leaving me in this pitiful state—”

Regbi lifted her hands to shield herself from another onslaught of vitriol.

“It was an accident,” she said. “I only meant to spit you out, not tear you to pieces.”

And a piece was all that she was left with. A fragment of her true spirit who could do little more than chirp its displeasure with her. Where the rest of it was she didn’t know, only that she didn’t care to find it. Not when it had caused her so much pain to begin with. The spirit that had called for her to be its conduit was too powerful a creature for her to channel; she considered herself lucky that it had ruptured rather than take her over. Regbi would rather be weak than house a spirit that controlled her. A pitiful excuse for a shaman with a vengeful scrap of a spirit.

“Spit me out it says—spit me out as if it had been called to take in a mouthful of carrion and not a Guardian of its shamanic lineage! I am Kharakhaikha, The Black Wind!” the wren shrieked. “Lesser spirits quake at my majesty! Countless shamans have perished under my vast shadow!”

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Regbi groaned, massaging the bridge of her nose. How was it possible for her head to ache when she knew it was back with the rest of her body?

“Cowardly, incompetent creature! You have reduced me to this shameful state!”

“You were the one that called out to me,” Regbi reminded it. Him. Her. Did spirits even have genders? “If you had just chosen someone else neither one of us would be in this position.”

The spirit squawked its discontent, flying in furious circles around her head.

“Your blood is bound to mine in covenant, disgraceful girl. There is no other conduit to carry my splendor. Generations of your line have housed me honorably—it is only you who has failed! Unworthy vessel! Blacken your face in shame and score your flesh—”

“Enough!” The force of her voice was all it took to send the little spirit careening through the air. There was a reason she had stayed away from the spirit world and this was part of it: at least in the waking world her spirit was silent. A shadow of its self who did her bidding without complaint. “You have my full attention—what do you want me to do about it? Hm? Besides covering my face in ash and cutting myself with a knife, that is.”

“Restore me to my former glory!” the wren demanded in a shrill cry. “Do your duty by me and together we will free you from the bonds of your shameful captivity! We will subjugate the desert shaman’s spirits and make them our slaves! We shall—”

But Regbi had stopped attending to Kharakhaikha. Something in the air had changed. Her ears pricked at the sound of waves lapping at the shore. The once calm waters had turned dark and turbulent the way they would before a building storm. Regbi looked to the sky. It mirrored the water beneath it, its dark clouds heavy with impending rain and thunder.

“What is this?” Regbi wondered. “I thought it didn’t storm in the spirit world.”

The little spirit let out a spiteful laugh. “The power that you feel building in the wind is me, stupid girl! The Black Wind of the lake! It feels the missing part of its soul and screams for us to be reunited! It is the one who has called you here!”

“Can’t you make it stop?” Regbi demanded. “I’m not ready!”

“It calls to you as much as me. You’ve taken something from it and it won’t rest until it’s returned,” the wren cried over the wailing of the wind. “Open your arms and embrace it, shaman; you’ll never outrun it.”

The wind shrieked in Regbi’s ears. It had a feral quality to it, low and wrathful. It reverberated through her bones. She trembled in its wake, stricken with a primal terror. How had anyone ever channeled such a spirit? It would tear her flesh from her bones and consume her to the very marrows if she let it inside of her. She still dreamed of the pain it had caused her when she tried. There was no honor in becoming the conduit of a spirit like that. Only death.

“Take me back to my body,” she hissed, reaching for her spirit. It flitted just beyond her reach. “Now! I command you!”

“Until you command all of me you command none of me!”

The wren tumbled in the gale wind above her head. The wind began to draw it in inch by inch like a flopping fish on a line. It was only Regbi’s connection to her spirit that held it back from its howling clutches. She could feel herself being pulled along with it. The wind raked claw-like against her skin and tore at her hair. She felt as if she were being dragged into the mouth of a yawning whirlpool. In its center loomed something sepulchral. Through the rain Regbi could just make out the shadow of taloned wings.

With a scream of frustration, Regbi called to her spirit.

“Spirit that I called by the drum, I, Regbi of the Kultuk, command that you return to me!” she screeched above the tempest. Her voice wavered like a flickering flame in the face of her terror, but it gave the spirit pause enough for her to brush the tip of its tail with her fingers. With a furious peep it retreated into her. “Now take me to my body!”

Words gave way to wings and the wind shrieked as Regbi fled from it. She closed her eyes and willed herself back to her body.