Coyote caught me with a grunt that sounded like a laugh and squeezed hard enough to take my breath as he swung me around and around in a slushy circle. I squeaked and buried my nose in his neck, and he didn't let me hang on nearly long enough before he set me back, hands on my shoulders.

His smile was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen, bright and gentle in a face that wasn't nearly as red-brick colored as he was in my dreams. Nor were his eyes golden, but the rest was as I remembered: straight nose, high cheekbones, hip-length black hair. He was a little shorter than me and smelled like the outdoors, and he wiped happy tears away from my cheeks. "We don't have a lot of time. How is she?"

I didn't care about the tears, didn't care that they tickled the creases around my mouth where my face was already getting tired from such a big smile, and somehow didn't care that I had a hundred thousand questions that were all going to have to wait. "She's all right physically. Banged up. But her aura, Coyote, it's gone. Like nobody's home."

He nodded, and though his joy didn't dissipate, the smile became something more serious. Something trustworthy and confident, something that I suddenly wished I could command myself. He took my hand and said, both apologetically and in a tone that brooked no nonsense, "We need to see your patient. Go ahead and drive us to the hospital, if you want, but I hope it won't be necessary," to the incensed ambulance driver.

We let ourselves in while the guy spluttered.

Both paramedics in the back gave guttural sounds of protest that faded into uncertainty when Coyote said, "It's all right. We're healers. Excuse us, please."

They both moved, and neither of them looked like they had the foggiest idea why. I didn't either, but I wished to hell I could do that. Jake Tiller, his face tear-stained, stared between us like we were aliens, and Coyote gripped the boy's shoulder a moment. "My name's Cyrano. This is my friend Joanne. You're…?"

"Jake," he whispered. The ambulance driver threw the back doors shut again as the kid spoke, and a few seconds later we were in motion. "Jake Tiller. This's my mom."

Coyote nodded solemnly. "I think Joanne and I can do something for your mom that the paramedics can't, Jake. Will you let us try?"

"Will it make her wake up?"

"I hope so."

The kid nodded. "Then okay."

One of the paramedics made another strangled noise, surging forward. "We can't let you—"

Trying to sound as calm and reassuring as Coyote, I said, "She's stabilized, right?" At the medic's reluctant nod, I offered a brief smile. "Then if we're right and we can help, you won't have anything to worry about. If we can't, well, this won't take more than a few minutes and we're already on the way to the hospital, so no time will be lost. Okay?"

"We could get sued—"

"You won't," Coyote said with serene confidence, then reached across Mandy's still form and said, "Have you done a soul retrieval yet? Besides me, I mean?"

"Besss—" I bit my tongue on the s and tried to claw shocked thoughts back under control. There would be time later. There had to be time later. "Billy, a few weeks ago. But I know him, Coyote. I know him really well."

"I'm here now. You'll be fine. We don't have a drum, Joanne, so I'm going to need you to—"

"I can do it." For once I felt as confident as I sounded. "Where are we going?"

"The Lower World."

I nodded, closed my eyes, and let the rattle of the ambulance over rough roads drop me into a world not my own.

Red skies and yellow earth, a flat sun and a world more two-dimensional than my own: that was the Lower World, in my rare experiences with it. I was certain there were other ways it could be viewed—roots of a mighty tree, burrows and hollows beneath the earth—but I saw it as one of the strange, not-quite-real worlds-that-had-come-before in terms of Native American mythology. It was beautiful and intimidating, and I knew almost nothing about navigating it safely. I said, "Raven?" into the empty air, hopefully.

My raven fell out of the sky, something glittering in his beak. He landed on the ground and dropped it, cocking his head first at me, then it, then back again before he pounced on it with both feet and tore it apart.

It was the shiny food I'd left him, Pop-Tarts wrapped in foil. He made delighted burbling sounds in the back of his birdy throat as he stabbed pieces of frosted raspberry tart and shredded the wrapper with his claws. I sat down, laughing, and stole a piece of pastry that had been flung away so I could offer it to him directly. He hopped over, snatched it from my fingers, and scurried back to his feast.

Coyote said, "This is a good sign," and licked my ear with a very long wet tongue. I squawked and reached out to grab him around the neck without even looking. I had thousands of questions, and none of them mattered as long as I could hide my face in his neck and hold on.

He leaned against me hard, until fur tickled my nose and I sneezed into his shoulder. I sat up to rub my nose, then grabbed him again, scruffing the top of his bony head and pulling on pointed ears. "Where've you been, you dumb dog? I missed you. I missed you so much." I could barely control my voice, even my whispers all shaky, and I tried to push relief so big it exhausted me away so I could ask, "How do we help Mandy?"

He rolled over on his back, legs waving in the air and neck stretched to try to nab a piece of my raven's treat. It quarked in agitation, wings spread as it hopped toward him, and he gave a coyote laugh and rolled away to sit up, prim and proper as a cat with his feet all in alignment. "I'm not a dog."

"You look like a dog." I never thought I'd be so happy to have that same stupid conversation again. Bewilderment and relief and joy knocked me flat again, and I toppled against him, hanging on to his skinny coyote form. He pressed a surprising amount of weight back into me, and we sat together for a moment, watching the raven stuff himself.

When the bird was finished, Coyote stood up and shook himself all over, then cocked an ear at me. "You arrived first, and your spirit animal came to join us. You lead the retrieval."

"But I don't know how!" It struck me that I'd spent six months fumbling through even when I didn't know how, and that probably relying on Coyote for all the answers was a crutch I couldn't afford, even if he was back. Lips pursed at the idea, I stood up and offered an arm to my raven. "A woman who greets the sunrise with music is lost, Raven. Will you help me find her?"

He bounced from the earth to my shoulder with a half-assed flurry of wings, like he could've made the jump without them but instinct forced them to spread anyway. Then he opened them farther, the better, I thought, to smack me in the head with one, and urged me into a run with strides so enormous it was almost like flying.

Coyote chased along behind in a long-legged lope. We tore across the landscape, leaving yellow fields and purpley forests for low hills that became rolling blue mountains. There was an odd flatness to them, as though, if we crested a peak too suddenly, we'd find ourselves looking down on plywood and two-by-fours propping up stage scenery rather than the back side of a proper mountain, but it never happened. Instead a storm came up, white howling blurs of snow that blocked out the mountains entirely. The raven leaped off my shoulder and flew ahead, cawing excitedly.

He was good at blizzards, was my raven. I wondered why he hadn't been on hand to help in the avalanche, though to be fair, one little bird against all that rolling chaos didn't seem like an equal fight. The fact that I'd have put money on the raven was beside the point.