Keech awoke to the smell of a pungent oil under his nose. The odor cascaded into his nostrils and worked its way up through his skull. When he opened his eyes, he saw that he was inside a cozy cabin, stretched out on the floor beside a stone hearth. The abode’s fireplace crackled with glorious heat. In front of the fire lay a sodden pair of gloves and a flimsy black hat, sprinkles of snow melting off the brim. A Kentucky long rifle stood against the hearth. Across the cabin’s walls hung dozens of hand-drawn maps, yellowed and ripped by the nails driven into their corners. A few stacks of flat wooden crates sat against the walls beneath the maps, their lids tacked down and brown packing straw sticking out from the cracks.
“Keech, you’re awake!” The voice belonged to Quinn. He sat next to the fire, soaking in the heat. His lower lip appeared raw and sore.
Duck and Strong Heart stood nearby, their faces distressed.
“Sure glad you’re okay,” Quinn continued. “We thought you was a goner.”
“A goner?” Keech struggled to sit up, but a firm hand pushed him back down. His boots had been taken off. For that matter, he was missing his coat and pelt and bowler hat. “What happened? Where am I? Where are the horses?”
“Yer in my home, tadpole. Keep breathin’ the orchid. The horses are in the barn.”
Keech turned his head and saw the red-haired trapper, McCarty—O’Brien—squatting beside him. She held a small tin cup near his face. He caught a whiff of sour vinegar and pulled back. “What is that stuff?” he asked. “Smells awful.”
O’Brien said, “You took a nasty fall. I’m just helpin’ ya along so you and yer l’il partners can leave and get back on the trail.”
Beside the woman sat the shaggy dog, Achilles, warming himself by the fire. The dog lifted his head long enough to gnaw on a back paw for a moment before flopping over to expose his belly to the fire.
Duck said to O’Brien, “That was no fall, and you know it. Your reckless shot spooked his horse and threw him. And one of those weird trees grabbed him and changed him.”
“There’s a sickness to this place,” added Strong Heart, glaring at O’Brien. “You’ve done something bad here.”
Disorientation seized Keech’s brain. He tried to shake himself clear, but nothing made sense. “What do you mean I changed?”
Quinn licked his wounded lip. “You should’ve seen yourself, Keech. Your eyes went as black as coal, and you started screaming somethin’ awful. I tried to help and got this split lip for my trouble.”
“Strong Heart smacked the back of your head with her club,” Duck added. “We carried you over here.”
“I only struck you hard enough to make you sleep,” Strong Heart interjected.
“But I don’t understand,” Keech said, and rubbed the back of his head; a tender knot had blossomed across his skull. “Why would I start screaming and punching Quinn?”
“O’Brien, you owe us a dandy explanation,” Duck said to the trapper.
The Enforcer tossed up her hands. “I reckon I shouldn’t be surprised y’all know my true name. I knew you tadpoles wouldn’t leave me alone. I shoulda kept a closer watch on Achilles. For weeks he’s been rattlin’ on about his old master, tellin’ me Milos had sent help. Sure enough, you showed up at Hook’s Fort.”
Keech shook his head again—O’Brien spoke of Achilles as though the mutt could talk like a person—but his thoughts were still muddy, so he’d probably heard wrong. “O’Brien, we’re in a cabin. But I never saw any cabin, only the meadow and the mountain.”
O’Brien shoved the cup of steaming liquid under his nose again. She had seemed tipsy at Hook’s Fort, but now she was as steady as an oak. “You never saw it because it’s under my protection. No one’s seen this place for years.”
“You can hide this cabin?” Quinn asked. “Just like my singing?”
Duck glanced at Keech and Quinn. “I’d wager that’s why we couldn’t find her trail outside Hook’s Fort. She cast a concealment spell on her tracks.”
Pushing up onto wobbly knees, his wounded arm heavy and sore, Keech faced O’Brien. “I think it’s high time you tell us what you’re doing up here. Start with the stuff in that cup.”
The Enforcer eyed the contents of the tin cup. “Most folks call it Adam and Eve root. It’s a kind of orchid, but it don’t grow here in the Rockies. Not to my knowledge, at least. I brought a few plants down from the north a long time ago, and over the years I’ve had to keep ’em in special containers and whatnot. It’s been a challenge, but I’ve managed to keep ’em alive. I made a tea from the root and gave ya some after yer tumble.”
“But what did breathing that stuff do to me?” Keech asked.
“It quieted the rage.” Straightening, O’Brien stepped closer to the fireplace. Achilles climbed to his feet, stretched his back legs, and trundled over to Quinn, who scratched between the dog’s ears. Keech heard the little tink-tink sound come from the dog’s neck pouch again. O’Brien set her cup on the fireplace mantel. “The little trees you saw ain’t normal, as you prob’ly made out. I call ’em my leech trees.”
“Leech trees,” Strong Heart repeated. “You planted a defense to keep people away?”
“That ain’t their purpose.” O’Brien put her hands to her temples. “You won’t understand the leech trees if ya don’t know other things first. Things that happened here a long time ago.”
Once again, Keech remembered the strange sensation he’d felt when they first approached the meadow. “O’Brien, what is this place? I think I know it.”
O’Brien gave him a grave look. “You know it ’cause you’ve been here before, Mr. Blackwood.”
“So you know me?”
“You may have learned somethin’ about me, but I’ve learned a lot about you in the past few hours,” she answered. Then her wary frown broke into a meager smile. “Yer connected to this place.”
“I don’t understand,” Keech said. “What do you mean?”
O’Brien shrugged. “I mean, you were born here, tadpole.”
With shock and disbelief, Keech gazed around the log cabin. He took in the stone hearth, the walls covered in homemade maps. The outer property seemed familiar, but nothing about the cabin rang true to his memory.
The evening’s harsh winds screamed around O’Brien’s cottage, driving against the logs like an army of trolls trying to batter their way inside. The trapper pointed to the creaking rafters. “I reckon you tadpoles know this weather ain’t natural. The Peak is known to send down a heavy snowfall or two, but nothin’ so fierce as what we’re seein’ now. These hard blows have been conjured by those yer huntin’.” A bitter growl coated her words. “By Ignatio.”
“La Sombra,” Quinn moaned.
O’Brien’s head turned sideways at the dreaded name, as though it numbed her blood to hear it. “That is the power you kids are facin’. More than you can hope to defeat.”
“We don’t accept that answer,” Duck said. “We ain’t about to back down, so you can either help us or you can get out of our way.”
O’Brien’s defiant features sagged, like a snare-trapped animal who has lost its fighting spirit. Keech felt a dash of sympathy for her, but Milos Horner had sent them to the woman as their last source of hope. They were not about to back down.
“This cabin didn’t exist when you was born,” O’Brien said to Keech, “but you know the area nonetheless.” She stepped back as she spoke, and her boots came to rest on a large woven rug that was frayed along the edges. She dropped to one knee beside it. “You’ve seen the mountain we sit beneath, and you’ve played in the meadow where the leech trees now grow. You won’t recollect particulars—you was only three years old when you left—but it was yer home for those first few years of life. Here. Better to show ya.”
Seizing the woven rug by one corner, O’Brien snatched it back, revealing a trapdoor. She pulled up the latch. There was no dark staircase leading to a cellar, only a narrow crawl space. The patch of ground Keech could see was strangled with tall stalks of grass and lime-green weeds. The long, thick leaves of the weeds were shiny, as if glazed with a clear sap, and a strong fruity odor wafted up from them. The sweet smell reminded Keech of the crates down in the basement of Mercy Mission in Kansas. Horner’s whistle bombs had given off the same aroma.
Strong Heart tiptoed closer to the opening. “What is down there?”
O’Brien reached and grazed one of the weeds with her palm. As her fingers touched the shiny leaves, Keech thought he heard a sound emanate from the plant, a tiny whistling noise, like a breath of wind rushing through a narrow space. O’Brien smiled. “This is a very special plot of land, the only piece of ground around this mountain that can grow the plants I need. This is ground that survived the battle of 1845.”
When Keech heard the date, more puzzle pieces suddenly fell into place. “That was the year Pa Abner took me in! Are you saying this place is where my parents were killed?”
O’Brien withdrew her hand and the strange weed stopped whistling. “Yes, Mr. Blackwood. The Reverend Rose had sent his henchmen, the Big Snake, across the territories to hunt a collection of special artifacts.”
“We know this already, Miss O’Brien,” Quinn said. “The Char Stone, the Fang of Barachiel, and something called the Key of Enoch.”
O’Brien offered a slight nod. “Rose needed the relics to finish the ceremony that would grant him eternal life. We thought we had covered our trail, but they found us gathered here.”
“But why here?” Keech asked. “What’s so special about this place?”
O’Brien said, “The Big Snake was causin’ a world of trouble all through the West, from Missouri to California, even down to Mexico, in their hunt for the relics. Yer father, Bill Blackwood, called for the Enforcers to meet so we could discuss a way to be rid of the relics. He wanted to hide ’em so they’d never be found again.”
“So you stashed them away in Bone Ridge and Bonfire Crossing,” Duck said. “And inside the House of the Rabbit, whatever that is.”
Again, O’Brien seemed surprised, if not cautious. “Yes. But before that, we gathered here, upon this ground, to discuss where to hide the relics. That was just over ten years ago, in late April. I remember ridin’ up and seein’ little Keech in the meadow outside, chasin’ squirrels and spring butterflies. We had brought two of the relics with us and was discussin’ where to best hide ’em when the Big Snake ambushed us.”
“They caught your scent,” Quinn said.
O’Brien grunted. “That’s why they’d been kickin’ up such a ruckus in the other territories. It was all a ruse. They needed us to bring the relics together. We fell into their trap.”
Keech asked, “What happened that day, O’Brien? How did my parents die?”
Looking mournful, O’Brien slammed the trapdoor back over the crawl space, concealing the smelly weeds and grass again, and tossed the woven rug back over the door. “I could tell y’all how the ground outside was cursed and what happened, but I suspect you’ll better comprehend that day if you see for yerself.”
“See?” Quinn mused. “You mean a vision?”
“Yer a perceptive lad.” Walking over to the fireplace, O’Brien stooped near the hearth and paused to ponder the flames for a moment. Then she reached into her pocket and drew out a small leather bag that fit in the center of her hand. Loosening the twine around the pouch, she opened it to reveal a mound of slate-gray powder. Vivid sparkles winked inside the grains like minuscule diamonds.
“What is that stuff?” asked Duck.
“Oh, just my own special concoction of rosemary and sage. With a little extra kick thrown in from the magic planes. I call it the Cerridwen Herb.” The Enforcer’s strange word sounded like “carried wind.” Keech had never heard of or seen such an herb.
O’Brien leaned into the hearth and blew the twinkling substance off her palm and into the open fire. All four young riders flinched back when the flames sputtered and popped—but their curiosity returned when the fire’s glow transformed into a brilliant flare of sapphire.
Stepping back, O’Brien waved them toward to the fire transfigured by the Cerridwen Herb. “Gather ’round, tadpoles. Stare deep into the flame. Let it reveal what y’all came to see.”
“We’re just supposed to look at it?” asked Quinn.
“Like the concoction I gave Keech earlier, the firelight will open a place in yer minds. You’ll be stumped at first—nothin’ will look the same, and you’ll feel lost as a goose—but don’t be scared. Just accept what ya see.”
Do not fear the fire, Keech thought, remembering the words of the elders at Bonfire Crossing. Perhaps O’Brien’s little pouch of sparkly powder contained some of the same magic that once fashioned the containment fire on the western beach.
He followed his companions to the hearth. Understanding that his parents had been murdered here was difficult enough, but he feared that seeing the event itself might overwhelm his heart. Still, he was tired of puzzling over incomplete tidbits. It was time to learn the truth of what had happened on that fateful day.
Keech leaned close to the flames, gazed deeply into the sapphire glow, and braced for the unknown.