“Did you say co-walker?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve never heard that term.”
“Out totems, especially our major totems, walk beside us on our path of faith, our journey through life. They are always with us, just most people can’t see them.”
“Like Guardian Angels.”
“Yes and no; angels need permission to help us once we stop being children and start making our own choices. Totems can interfere without permission, but they can’t force us to make the right decisions, and they can’t stop us if we’re determined to do something that all our instincts are telling us not to do.”
“How is that different from angels?” I asked.
“Totems can show up and make themselves known in more obvious ways than most Guardian Angels. Totems can be pushier and fight for your attention more than angels. You have to be quiet and listen to hear the brush of angel wings.”
“You have to be quiet and listen for your totems, too,” Jamie said.
Emma smiled at him and leaned her head against his, but now her hair went through the dove on her shoulder; but unlike a flesh-and-blood bird it didn’t get squished, it was more like it was suddenly more misty and less solid, but it rubbed its head between their heads as if the bird liked them touching, or liked them both.
“I guess so; I’ve seen my dove since I was a little girl, so for me she’s always been with me.”
“I had no idea I had a totem at all,” Jamie said, “let alone what it was.” He glanced at the orangutan as if he could see it, too, and I realized of course he could. He could see angels just like I could, so of course he could see other spiritual guides.
“When did you realize you had a totem?” I asked.
“A few weeks after I met Emma. I thought I was hallucinating again like I was being chased by this big orange monkey”—the orangutan gave him a look—“sorry, big orange ape.” The orangutan settled back satisfied and drank more from its phantom cup.
“Did the orangutan just get upset that you called it a monkey and not an ape?” I asked.
“Yes,” Jamie said, “and that’s part of what’s different about them, Z. Angels don’t have preferences about what you call them, they’re like shiny bits of God that are attached to you, but they don’t have personalities.”
“Most Guardian Angels don’t have what most people consider personalities,” I said.
“True, but most totems have more energy of the animal they represent, and animals have strong preferences just like we do.”
“Really?” I asked.
“They can,” Emma said, “but most totems are quieter. They’re more guiding spirits than interfering spirits.”
“When I first saw mine, I thought I was backsliding and going crazy again.”
“He called me in a panic,” Emma said.
“I bet.”
“Do you have any other questions about totems, Zaniel?” Emma asked, and then sipped her tea while she seemed to wait for me to think.
I drank some more tea, which was getting colder faster because it had so much milk in it, I think. It was still good, even cold; usually I reheated tea or made fresh, but this was like milky, sweet Earl Grey. It might even be good iced, and I usually hated iced coffee or tea drinks.
“You think that the orang . . . totem is what helped Levanael channel a seraph without any negative side effects?”
“He keeps me safe and helps me stay calm and just more even,” Jamie said.
“Then I am very grateful to him.” I frowned and turned to Emma. “Guardian Angels aren’t usually any gender, but you both have referred to your totems by gender; is that typical?”
“Some totems are very certain what gender they are, some don’t care about gender at all. Your totem is leopard with all the lessons that can teach you, but it’s not about being a male or female leopard, just a leopard. Other totems come to us to teach us specific lessons that need gender, like how to mother our inner child and heal from abuse from a mother figure, and your totem may need to be female to help you heal.”
“Or for me the orangutan is male because I’ve never been very good at being the typical male, so my orangutan is helping me learn to be comfortable with being sort of unconventional as a man.”
Emma leaned her head against him again, smiling and obviously perfectly happy with the type of man Jamie was. “Some totems switch genders back and forth depending on different lessons or protection or nurturing that their person needs. One of the witches I know is all about lion, but it’s male and female, in fact sometimes he’s surrounded by an entire pride of lions. That’s rare, but a lot of people have more than one totem, though most people have one main animal that’s their co-walker, or co-creator.”
“That’s fascinating, but do they all see their totems this clearly? I know many people can’t see their Guardian Angels, but they still believe in them and they still work with them and ask them for help,” I said.
“Most people can’t see their totems just like most people can’t see angels,” Emma said, “but they still collect images, figurines, anything and everything with their totem on it. Sometimes they don’t know why they do it, and other times they know that’s their animal, but they don’t understand what it means. They just know they’re incredibly drawn to wolf, or rabbit, or swallow and it makes them happy.”
“Do real animals show up?” I asked.
“They can; doves show up a lot around me. Sometimes a real animal will show up to warn you of danger, or give you a message by being somewhere you wouldn’t expect them, or by doing something that’s weird for the animal,” she said.
“Once Emma explained what was happening, I realized I’d been seeing orangutans on a poster for the zoo, in TV commercials, and there’s this one special about them that was playing every time anyone turned on a TV around me. There’d even been a little girl at the bus stop who had a stuffed toy, and a little boy who was coloring a picture of one on the bus on another day.”
“Totems aren’t nearly as circumspect as angels,” Emma said.
“You sure you don’t see any other totems in the room, Z?”
I glanced back at the people at the tables, looked harder at the new ones in line, and then at the staff behind the coffee bar. The blonde at the next table wasted another come-hither smile on me, which I did my best to ignore. I was looking for spirit animals, not blondes. “Could the bar hide a smaller totem from me, just like they were a real animal?” I asked.
“If you’re meant to see them, you’ll see them,” Emma said.
I turned back to her and Jamie and caught movement out of the corner of my eye. I looked for someone and then realized there was a wall there, so it couldn’t be a person, but there was something there. I looked down and there was a raccoon under the table. I startled as if it had been real, and then looked into the little masked face. I remembered Ravensong’s raccoon. It looked the same to me.
“Can someone share their totem with you?”
“You mean send it to give you a message?”
“Maybe,” I said, looking at the little animal where it stood on its hind legs looking up at me. It had one paw on the seat beside me and I had a serious urge to try to touch the clawed fingers; that reminded me of how I’d left Ravensong with a hand that was no longer human.