Black Tarn never seemed to want to share her "secrets," even the lore all werewolves must know, but you have listened to her mystical ramblings over the years.
You need to think your way through this, to remember Black Tarn's words—almost never to you, but to Clay or Scarper or the empty air. Once, Garou could enter the Umbra as easily as taking a breath, but now it requires rites or Gifts or the blessing of a powerful spirit. Black Tarn taught you no rites, you wield no Gifts, and Beaver is asleep. But could you cobble something together, in your desperate need? You remember her telling you about her Umbral rite. She used a reflective surface to focus her will. Probably not the van's foggy mirror, but there are rivers beyond the garden. You start to walk, following a faint thinness in the air: a sign of Black Tarn's passage. What does Scarper call entering the Umbra?
Stepping sideways. Black Tarn always sneered at the term. "Flippant," she said. But as you walk into the woods, you find yourself beside a narrow frozen river. No snow covers it, and the reflected stars shine in its depths. You move laterally along the bank, and something huge comes into view, blotting out the stars.
Beaver, the spirit of this place, visible among the pale stars and the glittering ice.
Beaver floats in slumber, tumbling slowly like a civilization-ending asteroid, rimed with frost and glittering with starlight. Trails wind through the frozen river made of stars or spirits or ice. A canine shape slips along one of them, a flickering black shadow, then disappears.
Your fingers touch the ice. You're off the Map now, close to the Umbra, but not there yet.
"Beaver, wake up!" I pound the ice. I need him to help me enter the Umbra, and I can't awaken him with the proper rites because I don't know them.
"Black Tarn, where are you?" I know she's on the other side, deeply attuned to this spirit-realm. I reach into the ice, hoping to feel her hand.
We're doing this to cure Clay. And the first step is looking around for what infected him. Do I see anything unclean on the other side of the ice?
I wait in silence for Beaver or Black Tarn to help. Here I really do feel like a cub, and I'll follow my elders' advice.
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