Gary shifted down for the curve and hill, trying to keep his driving as smooth as possible, and to keep the engine noise down. Jane was sleeping, slumped back against the car seat and the doorpost. He wished he was sleeping, preferably cuddled up close to her under that toasty down comforter that Aunt Alice had witched out of one of the closets, but they had to get back to Naskeag Falls. Had to get back to classes.
And sleeping in the Haskell House, making love in the Haskell House, made him twitchy. It kept watching. He could feel it.
Now he had to figure out what to do with a car on campus. He'd left it at home when he started school, not thinking it was worth the hassle. Damned university had about half the parking it needed for students and faculty, never mind visitors on campus. And the admin seemed to think they could earn a few dollars by charging a hundred bucks for a single parking violation. And two of the long-term lots they did let students use flooded every time an ice-jam blocked the Naskeag River. Only happened one year in five or six, Russian roulette, but you had maybe fifteen minutes to move your car. That, or watch it float . . .
But Jane needed Aunt Alice. She needed the House. And he needed Jane. So, the car. Dad's car, really, a middle-aged Subaru wagon, all-wheel-drive and anti-lock brakes and dual air bags so they might survive the weekly two-hour drive each way come winter.
It was a totally unnoticeable car in Maine; there were thousands like it, a Morgan car. That had defined the difference between Morgans and Pratts, the Subaru versus the Mercedes or the vintage Rolls. Tom Pratt had liked to be noticed. Look where it got him.
One of twelve corpses the police had found in the Pratt tunnels once the fire burned out, that was where, corpses laid out side by side in one room like a disaster morgue. No hearts.
He crested the hill and shifted again, soft, smooth, gentle, the same way he had to act toward her. That girl had seen too damn little "gentle" in her life. The road straightened out in front of them, and with the light traffic, he could afford to glance at her and enjoy the rare sight of a relaxed Jane White.
At least the Haskell House Effect lasted for, he checked clock and odometer, at least sixty miles and an hour fifteen plus. He should keep track of that. Aunt Alice would want to know. He stretched across and brushed a wisp of hair away from her eyes.
She reached up and caught his hand. Held it. Not a grab, not a block, not startled. She just took his hand and held it. Her eyes opened. She smiled at him.
"You're not asleep."
"The boy's a genius, I tell you."
"You should be sleeping."
"I'm too busy being alive. It tastes good."
He squeezed her hand and then reclaimed his own, two hands on the wheel, safe driving. He should always try to make her feel safe, the Gospel According to Aunt Alice. Unless she chooses danger. And never, never, let her think she couldn't leave. Never give her any hint of trap jaws closing.
Time to bite the bullet, give her a chance to think ahead. "What are your plans?"
She stretched like a cat and then settled back, adjusting her seat. "Plans? I think I'll bring some clothes next time. Borrowed sweats make me look like a total frump. 'Specially since nobody's the right size."
"You want to go back? Back to Aunt Alice?"
She shook her head, movement seen out of the corner of his eye. "Not Aunt Alice — the whole package. You. Your sisters, all three of them. Alice and that house. Even Dan and that cast-iron bastard father of yours. You picked up a stray kitten and gave her milk and a warm place by the fire. Now you're stuck with her. I want a family and a home. I never really had one, and you guys are just twisted enough for me to maybe fit."
"We could go straight, you know. Truly. We don't need the money."
"Jesus Christ, you want to be bored out of your fucking skulls? I don't think even Mouse and Ellie could go straight. Not in the genes."
Gary checked traffic and road far ahead before taking his eyes off the driving. He looked her in the eyes. "Then you're not going to run away and hide again? Promise?"
She met his look, square, eyes serious. "You'll have to shoot me to get rid of me."
"Oh, God. Don't ever say that around Ben."
"Not a chance, Lover Boy. Not a fucking chance. But I think Aunt Alice has his number."
They rode on in silence for a while, comfortable silence as if they'd been together for years. Something Gary had been thinking about . . .
"You know, if you ever want to get rid of that nose stud, we can afford plastic surgery. Bad memories and all that . . ."
She didn't answer for a mile or two at sixty per, until he thought he'd put his foot in it. Then she shook her head. "It's part of who I am. Taking the scars off my bod won't do a damn thing about my head, and if Aunt Alice and the House can straighten out my head, the scars won't matter."
"Okay, just remember that you have the choice." Then an image flashed in his head, something he'd seen in the tower. Probably it had been a cufflink in its former life, but . . .
"Would you like a jade stud, just to play with the image a bit? About the same size, flat, with a Chinese dragon carved on it? If the base is wrong, we can get it changed . . ."
Her eyes lit up. "Ohmigod. Real jade? Green? A dragon? That would like, totally go with that purple skirt and black top." And then she flashed a wicked grin, mocking the fashion-girl language.
Yep, and wearing a Morgan dragon in your nose might like, totally remind Ben of a little history. Help keep him under control.
*~*~*
Ben Morgan slithered out of the surging water and up a granite ledge into darkness. Lights came on, the motion-detector triggers they'd installed in this part of the tunnel complex long ago. If the alarm system was armed, he now had two minutes to Change and grow fingers and punch in the code on a touch-pad ten feet above spring high tide. Move your ass, mother.
Ben thought fire through his bones and felt it spread out into his flippers. Fur sank back into his skin, ten thousand needles piercing him at once, and he felt his body temperature spike as cells drank energy to mold their shape. Pain seared his chest, the left side, the bullet wound still red and angry and healing more with each Change from one body to the other. He gasped and struggled to his knees. The cave went black around him and he dropped back to all fours on the coarse granite ledge.
A minute passed as he knelt there, sweating, gasping. The cave came back into focus and the swirling white dots faded. Dan tossed him a towel.
"Not good enough. Gary nailed it, first time. He's even faster than I am. Healthy young body."
Ben staggered to his feet and dried himself and pulled clothing over bare cold skin. He shivered. This Changing business sucked. He'd hungered for it for over twenty years, ever since he'd first learned about it and then learned he couldn't do it. Now he'd finally forced his way through to it, and he wondered if the game was worth the candle. That much pain, just to catch your own sushi.
He didn't like sushi. Even as a seal.
Dan gloried in it, spoke rhapsodies about the sweet flesh of living lobster crunching in his jaws, the fragrance of herring oil in the water, the thrill of chasing salmon or bluefish or other swift hunters. Gary just shrugged — he could take it or leave it. And Ben hated herring breath. Maybe that was why he found the Change so hard. Dan was a natural selkie, Gary had failed his first test, and Ben had simply failed. Until now.
Maybe the sushi question meant something important. Meant that Dan would be the most likely to stay a seal, to forget to Change back. There might be something to that old warning against eating or drinking in fairyland, if you ever wanted to go home again. Have to watch out for Dan that way.
Ben picked up his Tear and hung it around his neck, the badge of a full Morgan. Four in use now, and one destroyed. And the Dragon had finally caught on to Women's Lib after all those centuries, granting a tear to Caroline. That made Ellie and Mouse unknown quantities. Maybe he needed to find a silversmith to make a couple more dragon pendants, just in case.
That was his job, after all, plans and contingencies and watching out. Chess moves, thinking six or seven layers down. Rewarding friends, destroying enemies.
Destroying enemies . . . he turned to Dan. "Are you sure Gary killed that flint? Now that we know what it does, I can think of some dandy places to sell it. Water isn't that deep out on the old bombing range — one of us could dive down there and retrieve the case." Now that would just about be worth the price of the ticket.
Dan stood there, eyes narrowed. "Benjamin Morgan, sometimes you are not the brightest bulb in the chandelier. I told you what Alice said about that thing, about that kind of thing. Didn't you hear a word I said?"
"But now that we know . . ."
"We know that damned thing bled when Gary shot it. You heard Jane. If you had the brains God gave an animal cracker, you'd be pushing to depth-charge that whole fucking range on the off-hand chance the goddamned flint wasn't dead already. Not looking to pull it up and clean it off and sell it again."
Bled. Some of that was his blood. Ben shuddered, remembering how his blood had vanished from the stone. Into the stone. And he still wanted the flint back. Well, the ache would probably die with time. At least Gary said that he could feel the damned thing before he shot it, and couldn't afterwards. It must be dead.
But he still could think of some people who deserved to own it. Or vice-versa.
Dan was staring at him with narrowed eyes. "Don't even think about it, you asshole. Maybe I'd better ask Alice to send Caroline out there to check on the bastard. She knows how to defuse that sort of bomb." He paused and grinned. "Besides, I've wondered how fast Caroline could Change, water magic and all. Healthy young bodies . . ."
Ben wasn't ready to think about Caroline Changing. Or Ellie or Mouse, for that matter. The Dragon had taken a couple of centuries to make up her mind — couldn't he have at least a couple of years?
*~*~*
Caroline pulled her old International Scout into Aunt Alice's dooryard and let it sputter to a stop next to Aunt Kate's truck. Monday morning, no sign of Gary's Subaru, he and Jane would be safely off to Naskeag Falls. Okay for Ol' Sheriff Kate to come back.
Caroline stepped down from the high seat, slammed her door to be sure of latching, and patted the blunt white metal nose of the hood. This was the car she needed out in Arizona. Tough as hell, and already so beat-up that another scratch or dent wouldn't even show. Lots of ground clearance, narrow, short wheelbase, low-range gears that would crawl up the steepest so-called trail. Totally reliable, it had started at first crank after sitting unused for over a year. Simple mechanics, no damned computers, even a dumb Indian girl could keep it running.
She double-checked the roof rack mounts and the lashings on her canoe, travel tech a few centuries older than the old car. Safe. Birch-bark and cedar tended to be more . . . delicate . . . than fiberglass or ABS, and she had about ten miles of bad road ahead.
Music reached out to her before she touched the kitchen door. Dave Brubeck, "Take Five," the extended version with Joe Morello's drum solo.
She took a deep breath and relaxed. That music, Brubeck and a few others, Aunt Alice only played them when she'd settled back into her center. Not manic. Not depressed. Not stressed tighter than a catgut fiddle string.
She stepped into a cloud of onion soup, double-reduced chicken stock, guaranteed to rout the meanest flu or cold bugs and send them fleeing into the woods. Another good sign. Aunt Alice didn't turn domestic unless she had a clean slate ahead. Making soup meant she wasn't even on call with the ambulance.
Nobody in the kitchen, just the stockpot simmering its seduction from the back of the iron cook-stove. She stepped through into the parlor, the new parlor added around the Civil War, and found Aunt Alice and Aunt Kate sitting, staring at a wooden box on the coffee table between them, Atropos purring on Kate's lap. Caroline got the sense that all three of them had been waiting for her, sort of a Christmas-morning-why-aren't-the-parents-up-yet-I-have-to-open-that-box anticipation.
Aunt Kate. Aunt Alice wasn't sure what was up with Aunt Kate — traumatic amnesia from whacking her head on a rock, repressed memories, or god-fingers tampering with her brain. Mix and match and take your choice. But the big woman only remembered snatches of the fight, freeze-frame flashbacks, and didn't have any coherent memory of killing Jackie's body and the brujo inside it.
She knew what had happened. She mourned with a bleak blank determination, marching straight ahead with a shell-shocked vet's hollow-eyed thousand-yard stare while doing the next thing and the next. She needed the House and Aunt Alice even more than Jane White did. Aunt Alice called them both "walking wounded."
One day at a time, that was her prescription. That, and onion soup. Concentrated love simmering on the range.
The box. Caroline felt it, the closer she got, the same vibrations of strength and faith and serenity that Kate had tucked behind the seat of her truck. And old, old like the stones in that circle, older than the House.
Old like the Hunter. Caroline shivered. She'd be real glad when they got that ugly old "obeah" home where She belonged. The fetish lurked.
"If either of you see Mom before she gets home, I left her a note. Tell her don't bother calling the cops. I stole my own car."
Kate lifted an eyebrow. "Don't suppose you bothered to register it and pass inspection?"
Ha! Got her, for once. "Farm vehicle tag. Road use is incidental to travel on private tribal land. You got a legal bitch with that, take it up with the Tribal Council." Which boiled down to Mom. Naskeags still lived in a matriarchy.
Kate shrugged. Auto licensing didn't come under her definition of important laws. Not unless she needed the excuse to hassle someone she felt deserved it.
Caroline turned to Aunt Alice. "One other thing I stopped by to tell you — I called that number out in Arizona. If anyone shows up asking for the Hunter, you know where She's sleeping. Let them take Her out of the duffel. Hell, let them take the bag 'as is.' There's nothing in there I'd miss."
"You're not taking Her back yourself?"
Caroline shivered at the thought of running the Hunter of Ghosts through airport security. "Not if I have a choice. Besides, I'm going out to the lake to spend a few days on our island. I need to do some thinking."
Alice considered that for a moment. "Fasting?"
"Yeah. Call it a vision quest if you want to get fancy. The whole roots thing up against whiteskin school and my Ph.D. Maybe Grandmother Loon will feel like offering some advice."
Her aunt spent some more time thinking, staring at the ceiling. "Don't let the House tell you what to do. Or Grandmother Walks, no matter how much you miss her. Concentrate on what Caroline needs. The House can sink its damned claws into Peggy or Ellen if it has to."
"They're back?"
"Off to school today. But yeah, they're back. Official Naskeags, scratched and bruised and hungry and damned proud about surviving a week in the Great North Woods on their own. Not eaten by bears or stomped by moose or vanished in some bog. The old hens said they were impressed."
"I'll remember to tell Mom what you think of her."
If the girls were back, the crisis was officially over. And Ben was alive, for whatever good or ill that meant. Alive and recuperating in the tower and wearing his own Dragon, a selkie at last. Maybe he'd quit being such a dickhead now that he didn't feel he had to prove himself. Didn't see himself as a second-class Morgan.
Both Kate and Alice kept glancing back at the coffee table, at that box. "What you got there?"
Aunt Alice looked at Kate.
Kate looked at the coffee table again and shook her head. "I was hoping you'd tell me. It's a birthday present from Grannie Rowley, twenty years late in coming. You're an ethnologist. Tell me what that ethnics."
Okay, maybe we've made it through to "later."
Caroline squatted in front of the coffee table and studied the box. Old, severely simple, with a purity of functional form she'd associated with Shaker woodworking, its clear oil finish showing worn age-darkened pink wood rather than varnish or lacquer. The sort of work she'd expect Aunt Kate to do for herself.
Ivory or bone latch, ivory or bone hinge, both yellowed with the years or oil. Years, for choice — the fine surface cracks and staining spoke of centuries. No metal showing, but made with metal tools. She didn't know the wood. Slight irregularity to the dovetails and grooves and mortises, faint ripples on the surface from a plane, hand work perfectly fitted. Pre-industrial, anyway.
"European or colonial America, at a guess, looks like eighteenth century or earlier. You want an expert for anything more. I don't get into that stuff. What's inside?"
Kate nodded. "Open it."
Aunt Alice leaned forward. So she hadn't seen the whatever, either.
The lid popped open with a slight hiss, air-tight seal and change in atmospheric pressure, and she caught a whiff of cedar over the onion soup. Red cedar, those didn't grow around here. Caroline lifted the lid and looked inside. A book, a big book, old, with crosses on the wooden cover.
Crosses. Could serve as a title, could serve as a binding on the contents. Keep the book under control. But it didn't feel dangerous. She lifted the book out and felt the power flowing into her hands. She set the book beside the box. Opened the book.
Her breath caught in her throat. "Oh. My. God."
Moving in a trance, she stepped back into the kitchen and fumbled inside her duffel bag for conservator's gloves, barely noticing the shrouded Hunter sleeping next to them. Back in the parlor, her whole being focused on the book.
She turned pages. Sheepskin parchment, twin to the earliest Morgan journals. Colored inks, black inks, gilt leaf with a trace of sizing still on the sheet, old ink formulas, she recognized the signs in the way they'd faded or discolored from her research with source materials on the Southwest natives. Some of those Spanish documents dated back to the 1500s. Illuminated letters, fanciful pictures, style seemed Celtic to her. She'd seen something like it in pictures, reproductions . . .
The Book of Kells.
Not this, but like this. A cousin. This was a cousin in perfect condition.
She studied the title page, studied letters, puzzling out an unfamiliar script. She leafed through, found another chapter head, studied it, let the pure beauty of the work sink into her eyes. She found margin notes here and there, a word crossed through with a single fine stroke so you could still read the original, a different word lettered perfectly in blank space nearby, sometimes with commentary, different inks, different hands. A book that was treasured but used, not locked away untouched, unseen.
She concentrated on breathing. She'd been holding her breath, not wanting to breathe moisture on parchment and ink after all those generations sealed in protection. Precious. Unique. Priceless. The words ran circles in her brain. Another chapter head, another. The end. Four chapters.
She squatted back on her heels, breathing. Just breathing. The Brubeck had played through and the room waited silent around her. Aunt Alice seemed ready to sit and watch all day, but Kate looked like she was about to burst from questions. Caroline turned back to the title page and looked at the sprig of rowan leaves and berries under the lettering. It matched the brooch on Kate's shirt. Matched it perfectly, the same number of twigs, number of leaves, number of berries, like original to copy. The stones of the brooch gave back more light than fell on them.
"Rowan's Daughter. You know the origin of the 'Rowley' name?"
"Alice told me."
"It probably had a root like 'cerdinen' before the priests turned it English to make your ancestors look bad. Something along the lines of 'Cwmcerdinen', 'Rowan-vale.' I don't know much Welsh, but I looked that one up. It's a place in Wales."
Kate shrugged with an impatient grimace. "Been Rowleys since forever, always thought we were English. Not about to change it."
"Just so's you know. Your roots go back around here, just as far as any Morgan."
Another shrug. She pointed her chin at the book and box. "What can you tell me about that?"
"Welsh. I can't read more than a word here and there, but it's Welsh. The four Gospels — Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. A translation of the Gospels into Welsh. Probably done in Wales, there's a place name that looks like some kind of abbey or monastery." Caroline sat and stared at the book, stunned, shaking her head.
Aunt Alice stirred from her waiting. "How old is it?"
Caroline shook her head again, putting clues together, adding in the origins of Stonefort. "I'm the wrong person for that. You need an expert. But I'm guessing maybe tenth, eleventh century. A thousand years old, give or take a few hundred." A book, as old as some of those pots and flints she kept poking through for her dissertation.
Aunt Alice nodded. She glanced at Kate. "Can you make any kind of guess at what it's worth?"
"Oh, God. No. How do you put a price on something unique? Truly unique, not that damned semantic nonsense of 'very' unique. I couldn't tell you within a million dollars. Within ten million. Worth more'n the House, that's certain."
Caroline thought for a moment, about her father and grave-robbers and antiquity laws. "You want to be damned careful who you let see that. And if you ever went to sell it, I bet there'd be a couple of governments that would try to confiscate it as a stolen 'National Heritage' treasure, and build a museum around it." Not just a medieval Gospel manuscript, but a vernacular translation that old, and annotated . . . there might be a theological firestorm or two hidden in that ink.
Kate touched her brooch, caressing it as if it felt alive to her, alive like Atropos snuggled in her lap. "A thousand years old. Made for my family. Kept in my family all that time." She shook herself, as if waking from a trance. "It stays in my family. Jeff's a Rowley. The stones know him."
Caroline wouldn't touch that with the proverbial ten-foot pole. Relationships between Kate Rowley, Jeff Burns, and that damned stone circle were going to remain Kate's problem. Caroline had enough tangles of her own to sort.
Speaking of which . . . she stood up. "Guard it, keep it in an archive vault for choice. A place with controlled temperature and humidity. It's priceless, literally. And I'd suggest asking your lawyers to see if they can trace it back through old wills and estate inventories. You should be able to prove you have a right to it, if the question ever comes up."
Aunt Alice looked up at her, Caroline's body-language already halfway out the door, and cocked her head. "Here's your hat, what's your hurry?"
Caroline grimaced. "That soup is driving me crazy. I'm not out on the island yet, and I'm already starving."
Her aunt laughed, practically a wicked-witch cackle. "Sorry, but you didn't warn me. The girls will probably scarf down whatever Kate leaves when they get home. That initiation turned them into bottomless pits. Neither one of them can hunt worth a damn."
"Congratulate them for me, if I don't see them soon."
Caroline looked down again at the book, Kate's heritage. It was such a beautiful, powerful thing, but good. Peaceful. Exactly what Kate needed after her ordeal. Just those four Gospels, it didn't even get into Saint Paul — rigid roles, warped sexuality, church politics and ego-games. But above all, none of the feeling of hunger and cruelty that Gary said the Mayan flint had broadcast. None of the sense of domination that had taken Ben's soul and twisted it.
Twisted it in a direction it was already primed to go, of course. Hope he isn't too old a dog to learn some new tricks. Otherwise, he's going to have a rough time with Gary and Jane.
She gritted her teeth and walked right past the soup pot, through the steamy savor of onions and chicken and tarragon. If she ate now, she'd just have to spend that much longer on the island, fasting, waiting for her brain to clear. She drooled, Pavlovian reflex, but she made it through and out the kitchen door.
She got into her car and it started with the first crank again, a mechanical "thank you" card for the oil-change and new filters she'd given it. Out along the roads, she knew everyone she saw, and all of them knew her. Home. Stonefort felt like the right size for people. Evolution hadn't had time to move human genes beyond allegiance to the village and the clan.
Back into the woods, on two-rut roads like Kate's, she unlocked a chain across the road and drove through to Naskeag lands. She locked it again behind her and drove on through patches of "green" harvesting and some spruce and pine almost as old as Kate's. Down to a gravel clearing a quarter mile from the lake's edge, there was portage access only, and dead leaves and needles lay undisturbed on the turnaround.
The lake. The island. Mom would know which lake, which island. Aunt Alice knew. Naskeag lands. The tribe owned the whole watershed, the title held by a corporation that answered to the tribal council. It was not a reservation — legal games played out back in colonial times when natives had no legal standing saw to that. Morgans had been involved.
And probably Rowleys.
She thought about Aunt Kate, and the book, and those lands out on the ridge. Balance. They leveled the balance between Aunt Kate and Aunt Alice, eased the "poor cousin" friction. Both women were rich. Neither really owned her riches. It was more like their peculiar wealth owned them.
Caroline parked her Scout and didn't bother to lock it, even leaving the keys on the floorboard under the seat. Some second or fifth cousin might need to move it. She untied the lashings on her canoe. She shouldered a light pack, with pads on the shoulder straps for the gunwales. She touched her canoe, smelled the resinous tang of it, remembering.
Birch canoe, Naskeag pattern, low rounded bow and stern, the work of her own hands. She'd found the tree, asked it for its blessing, and stripped the bark. Piece by slow piece, she'd split fragrant cedar for ribs and flooring and inner keel, springy straight-grained spruce for the gunwales and paddles, she'd scraped pale birch sapwood smooth as silk for the thwarts. Her fingers had grown calluses on calluses sewing the bark with spruce-root bindings, sealing the seams with hot pungent spruce pitch mixed with bear grease. Quiet chants for each step, the way Naskeags had built canoes and carved paddles for centuries out of mind. Her canoe, by the clearest possible claim. Light, nimble, delicate.
She stopped and studied it and thought for a moment, before lifting it onto her shoulders for the carry. The canoe had wanted to be a little less than fourteen feet, and narrow. That was the tree that spoke to her. A one-person canoe, really, fit to her own body. She'd had plenty of boyfriends when she made it, a couple of years past virginity, but she'd built a one-person canoe.
One-woman canoe.
That spoke a bad omen for Kenny Grayeyes. He wouldn't fit in this canoe. Where would he fit in her life?
That question. Other questions. She'd come back to her Scout when she had puzzled through to some answers.
She walked through the cedars and birches and spruce, the forest duff quiet under her feet, down to a small point of land, a set of granite ledge shelves that formed a natural wharf at different water levels, whether the spring flood or the fall slack. She settled the canoe in the water, unlashed her paddles, and switched from boots to moccasins. Boots in a canoe ranked fourth on her list of the seven deadly sins.
No food. One sleeping bag, one tarp, jacket, and a change of clothing she could wash in the icy clear water of the lake. She settled her pack in the bow. If old Glooscap decided to play jokes with the weather, her family had a cache on the island, food and a tent and winter gear. Assuming a fisher or bear hadn't decided to rip through galvanized sheet steel looking for a snack.
Into her canoe, kneeling, paddle in her hand, she felt the world come alive around her. Water. She always felt most alive on water. Home of homes, heart of hearts, each dip and twist and swirl of her paddle the beating of that heart, she felt the calm settle from her forehead to the heels under her butt. Her muscles moved in meditation, a Naskeag Dervish dance. She belonged in this place, in this time.
Could she stay away from it long enough to get that sheepskin? Grandmother Walks didn't know everything. That diploma could be precious, could let her do good things for Naskeags, for First People everywhere. Find things like the Hunter and return them to their People. Track down monsters like that flint and kill them.
And without her connection to the university and her department, she'd never have had the Hunter as a weapon. Without the Hunter, would Tupash have truly died?
Out on the water, crystal-clear liquid under her, rocks and sunken logs and wavering shadows of trout down in the depths. The lake lay calm around her, a mirror to blue sky and the rim of autumn trees, crimson and gold and pale yellow and purple rounded billows, accented by the deep green exclamation points of the spruce and pine and fir, the paler green of cedar, the smoke-gilded yellow tamaracks.
She drank it in. Memories. If Grandmother Loon told her to go back, she could scratch by on memories for two or three more years. And beyond that, she could live through airline hell to see Kenny every month or so, buy him tickets to come here. Damned long way to go to get laid, but money wasn't a problem. Generations of gifts to the Haskell Witch had seen to that.
And she had to think about genes for future Haskell Witches. Kenny just might fit in there, with his ties to his own land and people and spirits. Add a dash of mountain-lion shaman to the Naskeag and Welsh stew.
The island waited. Fifteen acres, twenty acres, depending on what season you did your measurements, large enough to get out of sight of water, but never out of hearing. Enough soil for latrine pits that wouldn't taint the lake. Red squirrels and an eagle nest and a family of otters. Sometimes a deer or moose.
The Geological Survey named it Spirit Island on the map, centered in Spirit Lake, and showed a graveyard symbol to call it sacred. To Naskeags, it was just "the island," not even capitalized. The place you went when you needed some quiet to think in for a few days. Any Naskeag who saw a canoe on the shore wouldn't land.
Caroline looked across the water. The landing waited, empty. The House wasn't the only Power that arranged the world to suit itself.
A hundred yards out from shore, beyond any likely gifts from incontinent moose or beaver, she laid her paddle down across the thwarts and let her canoe glide to a stop. Ripples spread across the mirror and settled back to calm. She bent over the side and dipped up water in her hands and washed her face, her hands, her neck, and drank. Cold water, clear water, clean water, water of her home. Sky water. It tasted nothing like the streams and lakes of Arizona, nothing like the liquid that flowed from city taps.
A loon called, eerie haunting laughter and echoes, down the lake beyond the island, her spirit guide welcoming her.
Did you enjoy Dragon's Teeth? If so, read on to find out about James's spectacular Wildwood series. Also, check out an excerpt from the first book in the Stonefort series, Dragon's Eye.