Where am I?

Something soft under me, but it doesn't feel right for my bed. Warm blankets over me. I think I'm dressed, at least partly, but it doesn't feel quite right. Something against me, something big and heavy and warm... and purring?

I wasn't supposed to survive that poison. Maybe I'm still hallucinating. I must be, because otherwise, where could I possibly be?

He felt too dissociated still for fear, but he did open his eyes.

Twilight, dim but with a soft illumination from somewhere above, faintly yellow-green in tone. He could make out only vague shadows, nothing that made any sense.

Rolling over took an extraordinary amount of effort.

Lying beside him was a cat the size of a human, who opened eyes that caught and reflected the light. It yawned, and the white teeth showed quite clearly enough.

Probably he should be terrified, but what could it do except kill him?

Then it wasn't a cat, it was a naked human man.

“Oh, good, you're awake.” He sounded pleased. “We weren't entirely certain you would wake up. You came very close to dying.”

“Then why did you stop me?” Corin asked bitterly. It felt like he hadn't spoken in an eternity; his voice was harsh, hurt his throat.

Luminous eyes blinked. “You wanted to die?” The pleased tone became deep perplexity. “Why? You aren't sick with something painful and incurable or anything like that, so nothing's that bad.”

“You wouldn't understand.”

“Dayr might or might not,” another voice said softly, one that was also male but lighter, with that same unfamiliar accent. “Weyres find unpredictable things utterly baffling, but other things they grasp with surprising speed. Odds are quite good that I will understand, however.”

Corin forced his rebellious, aching body to sit up, but gathered the blankets around him as much as possible with another body—the weyre? Dayr?—pinning one side. He'd been right, he was wearing a clean pale shirt, he couldn't tell the length of it. “Why should I tell you?”

“Wouldn't it feel good to make sure that someone knows, even if those you've left behind never do?”

More light, as the newcomer uncovered a palm-sized hemisphere resting on a small table; it might be wood or dull metal or thin pottery, Corin couldn't tell, but it was pierced with many holes in a regular pattern, and clear white light escaped through them, brightening the room enough that Corin could see. The newcomer must be shyani, humans didn't have skin so pale or hair that was golden or large bright sea-blue eyes. Small silver rings showed, high in the cartilage of each ear, one on each side.

Which all meant that somehow, impossibly, he must be in a shyani hill.

Jared would be so jealous.

That thought was just too much: tears gathered, and wouldn't be stopped.

The shyani simply handed Corin a square of soft thin fabric and seated himself on a stool next to the bed.

A warm furry body curled around his back, purring reassuringly.

Had he ever really cried before, for all the times he'd smiled while weeping inside, all the countless tiny cuts inflicted day after day with each bleeding away a bit more of his will to live, for everything it had cost him to lie to himself so that he could tell everyone else the lie they demanded to hear?

Exhausted and abused, his body couldn't sustain the aching sobs for long, before he wound down to sniffles and catches in his breath and a throbbing headache.

“Be still a moment.” The shyani began to sing softly, he couldn't understand the words and yet somehow they sounded right. He reached out and laid one palm against Corin's forehead.

The headache faded away.

Corin stared at him, certain he looked shocked. “How did you do that?”

The shyani smiled. “I'm a shaman. In human terms, that is partly a spiritual calling and partly a healer and a few other things as well. I've spent quite a lot of time and effort repairing the damage done to your body by lack of water and food and proper sleep and too much exertion. If I should not have done that and you intend to make it pointless as soon as you leave here, would you be willing to tell me why?”

The puma curled around him, a great living purring backrest, swiped his leg with one cheek.

Corin looked down, twisting the rather soggy handkerchief in both hands. “Because there's nothing to live for. I can't be what everyone says I have to be. No one will let me be what I am. I've gotten very good at lying to myself so that I'm better at lying to everyone else. But it's killing me a little at a time, and I'd rather just die so it won't hurt any more.”

“What are you that no one wants you to be?”

There, Corin balked. Even dying was easier than saying those words out loud.

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“Hm. Will you tell us, then, how you came to be alone in the highlands and nearly dead?”

“I... I was at the University. It's a place humans go to learn more advanced sorts of things. I'm a student there, I've been studying medicine, mostly. I had... I had poison, it would have been fast. Before I could drink it, but I thought I had drunk it and was hallucinating, there was a red fox in my room. He walked through the door and wanted me to follow him.” The cat behind him made a low chuffing noise, ears perking forward. “And I did. I suppose he must have led me to where you found me. I don't know what he wanted.” He shook his head quickly. “That sounds insane. I must have imagined him, or it was some self-preservation instinct trying to keep me from doing it.”

“Or there was actually something there,” the shyani said. “A part of the shaman's calling involves communicating with the spirit world. When each shyani child reaches the appropriate age, a shaman sings his or her spirit animal into coming forward to be guardian and guide for the rest of that shyani's life. Often the spirit animal gives us a clue about that child's future or inner nature. I would have had to call yours in order to heal you, but he was already with you. Red Fox most often chooses witches and those called to be shamans, though occasionally someone with another notable gift instead. And he chooses only women and osana, never men.”

Heart thumping hard, Corin looked down, drawing in closer on himself. Belatedly, the unfamiliar term registered. “What's an... osana?”

“To us, one is born with a body that is male or female or otherwise, and an inner self which can be masculine or feminine or otherwise. When the body is male and the inner self masculine, or the body is female and the inner self feminine, the result is man or woman. Much less often, one can be born with a body that is male and an inner self which is feminine, and that is what we call osana, or a body that is female and an inner self which is masculine, which we call umana. There are those who do not fit either category on one level or both, and they are called etana. Many, but not all, osana and umana and etana become shamans. Whether we do or not, we are acknowledged as what we are.” His tone turned very gentle. “We are not driven into being something else, or forced to lie to ourselves and others. I think many lives must be lost that way, that otherwise could make the world a more wonderful place. I think that you were very nearly one of them, but when you stood at the doorway between life and death, it gave Red Fox a way in and he led you here.”

The cat behind him made a low chuffing noise that sounded rather like a greeting. Corin rubbed his eyes with one hand, but he could still see glowing green eyes and a narrow russet face in the corner, watching him, white-tipped tail coiled around small paws.

The shaman glanced in that direction, and inclined his head respectfully.

“You see him too?”

“Indeed. That is one thing shamans do. We see what is there. And weyres often perceive things of spirit, some more clearly than others. Your guide is here to observe the results of his efforts.”

Well, that more or less ruled out his hallucinating only the fox, though it left other possibilities. “So now I know it isn't the same everywhere,” Corin said wearily. “Now I can feel terrible about being born human instead of shyani along with...” He swallowed hard, forced the words out. “Along with being born wrong. Oh, that helps.”

The shyani shook his head. “Your old life is gone,” he said, still gently. “You decided to end it, quite definitively. But perhaps you can find a new one, one that will allow you to learn who you truly are, and to be that. Endings can become beginnings, as well.”

“You're asking me to live.”

“I'm suggesting that we find you a way to live without pain or lies.”

The hope being offered was terrifying, far more so than the thought of escape.

“You said we. Not just now. A minute ago.”

The shaman nodded. “I knew when I was very young that I was umana. I knew when my spirit animal came that I would be a shaman. Beaver builds dams that create ponds that help all things in their community to thrive, and a dam can also serve as a bridge. I've never been in a position of anyone condemning me for being what I am. Exactly the opposite. That doesn't mean I can't see the hurting in you and want it to heal. That's what I do, after all: I make things right, as much as I possibly can. You said you were studying medicine—that's the human system of healing, hm? So I think you must understand.”

“I'm human. Why would you care?”

“Is it any less painful than it would be for a shyani or a weyre? Is a wound any less for being on my wife or a stranger, one of our donkeys or a wild animal? It's all pain, physical or otherwise. Every life is priceless, and every life deserves to be lived with as little suffering as possible. Would you allow a shyani or a weyre to bleed to death at your door?”

Corin's eyes dropped to his hands.

“Do you have any idea what you're asking me to admit? How much contempt my own people, my own family and friends, would have for me if they knew? And... I chose to die. I tried to die. I didn't ask for any intervention, I tried to make sure there couldn't be any. You're telling me to do the opposite.”

“I doubt I do know, though the fact that you consider death more welcoming tells me a great deal. Is it that you wanted to die, though, or that you wanted to not live as you were and could find no other way out? You chose to follow Red Fox. Knowing that things are different here, that you can be accepted as you are and you can very probably find an important and valued place with us... do you still want to die more than anything else?”

“No,” Corin said softly. “I can't. Not knowing that.” And that was both a terrible grief in itself, that it wasn't yet over, and a vast relief, that it wasn't yet over. “I can't be who I was, but I'm still here.”

“Then who do you want to become?”

For a very long moment, Corin was silent.

“I want to help people,” he said finally. “That part was always real.”

“And may be why Red Fox took an interest in you. As I said, he comes to shamans and to witches, and you are not a witch. That is a gift some shyani are born with.”

“And,” he took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “I should not have been born male.”

The red fox in the corner stood up and stretched, then strolled across the room.

The shaman tilted his head to look at Corin. “Hm, that isn't what we would say, but then, there is infinite difference between seeing all variations as valid and valuable in their own right, and seeing everything in terms of two absolute labels. What does your own inner self say that you are, rather than what you are not?”

Heart pounding, Corin said, very quietly, “A woman.”

The shaman smiled and held out a hand, palm-up. There was a tattoo on the centre of his palm. “I'm Sanovas, shaman of Copper Springs. That is Dayr behind you—not of anywhere, he's been wandering, as young weyres often do. You are?”

Not Corin. Corin is dead.

Possibly it would be terribly offensive by shyani standards, or to the spirit-fox, but one name was there and waiting, right at the edge of consciousness.

“I'm Vixen.”

The red fox vanished, but it wasn't in anger, she was sure. No longer visible, maybe, to his human charge who had chosen to step out of the space between life and death. Not visible for the moment, at least. It felt rather pleasant, that someone had wanted her to live so badly.

That several someones had, really.

“Welcome to Copper Springs, Vixen. And if you're to live long enough to learn anything more about us, you badly need to eat.” Sanovas raised his voice. “Aerfen, my love, could you fill a bowl with that soup? And then come meet our new daughter.”