Aggie was silent as she led the way down the slope from the studio to her house. The dogs rose in a group as soon as they came outside, padding along on either side of them, their paws raising little puffs of dust in the dirt.
Leah stopped for a moment in the middle of the yard, captured by the view of the red dirt hills that danced off into the distance. Something swelled inside her at the sight. She could have stayed there all morning, but then Marisa called her name. She blinked and hurried to catch up with her friend, and the two women followed Aggie inside. The dogs dropped onto the flat stones outside the kitchen door, except for the red-furred one who trotted in behind them right on their heels.
“I’ll get the girl,” Aggie said.
She walked away down a short hall, leaving the two women time to admire the wealth of ma’inawo portraits that peopled her walls or were leaning five to ten deep against the baseboards. The art pulsed with life, the bright colours and startling images waking an array of stories in Leah’s head that bounced, one against the other, until she wanted to write them all down in the same rapturous jumble they provoked inside her. Looking at Aggie’s paintings, she could believe they were actual portraits. She could believe it was possible to call beings to you from another world through the application of pigment on canvas.
Leah glanced at Marisa. “How could you have never told me about Isabelle?” she asked as she continued to make a slow circuit of the room.
“It wasn’t my story to tell,” Marisa said.
“But you thought Aggie’s art did the same thing as Isabelle’s, didn’t you? I think our coming all the way out here on the basis of that little bit of withheld information makes it my story too.”
Marisa offered up a wry smile. “Whatever it was before, I suppose that’s true now.”
“So tell me—”
She broke off when Aggie reappeared. The older woman was alone.
“She’s gone,” Aggie said.
“Gone where?” Marisa asked.
The old woman shrugged. “Who knows? She’s a troubled child.”
“But who is she?” Leah asked.
“Her name’s Sadie, and I don’t know much more about her other than her father drove her out into the desert and dumped her. A friend of mine found her and brought her to me.”
Leah remembered the return address of the email that had brought her here: sadinsan@gmail.com
Which could read as an abbreviated “Sadie in Santo del Vado Viejo.”
“She sent the email,” she said to Aggie.
“Probably. That’s what I wanted to ask her.”
Aggie walked over to a stack of paintings that leaned against one of the walls, lifted one out and brought it over to them. “She could have used the camera on the laptop to take a picture of this to send to you.”
Leah studied the painting the old woman handed to her. Looking at the original, the subject looked even more like an older Jackson Cole than the image file had. “Who sat for this?” she asked.
“A friend of mine named Steve.”
“What’s his last name?”
Aggie shrugged. “Never asked.”
“So you aren’t close?”
“I didn’t say that. I said I didn’t ask. What’s important to me is who a person is, not who they once were. I accept the gifts of what I’m told and don’t push for more.”
Which sounded far more altruistic than most people.
Leah dug in her purse and came up with a copy of Burning Heart: The Jackson Cole Story, the first book she’d written about the band. Flipping through the pages, she found a good picture of Cole. “Do you think your friend Steve could have looked like this forty years ago?”
Aggie looked down at the picture and shrugged. “Who knows? Anyway, it’s not important. This is now, not forty years ago.” She handed the book back to Leah. “Now let’s see if we can find the girl. What do you say, Ruby?”
The question was directed at the red dog who sat up, then trotted to the front door as if she understood exactly what her mistress was asking.
Leah and Marisa exchanged glances.
“So is Ruby,” Leah asked. “Is she one of your…you know…”
“Ma’inawo?”
Leah nodded.
“They’re not my ma’inawo,” Aggie said, “and you’d have to ask Ruby that question.”
The dog turned, her gaze meeting Leah’s with a disarming intelligence in her deep brown eyes.
“Uh, maybe some other time,” Leah said.
Aggie chuckled and opened the door. The dog held Leah’s gaze for a moment longer before she followed the old woman outside. Once they were out of the house, the dog took the lead, taking them on a winding path through the cacti and brush.
The old woman was able to move at a surprising speed for her age, with Marisa close behind her. Leah lagged in the rear, trying to absorb everything around her while still keeping pace with her companions.
It was a losing battle. Her surroundings were everything she’d imagined they’d be while sitting outside her motel room last night, and she longed to go exploring at a much slower pace instead of hurrying after Aggie and the others. The tangled thickets of prickly pear and cholla were just as fascinating as the towering heights of the saguaro. And there was so much wildlife—more than she’d expected in a landscape such as this. The scurrying quail. A rabbit that was as startled as she was. Doves breaking into flight. An honest-to-god roadrunner, which looked nothing like the cartoons she remembered as a kid.
She paused by a jumble of stones when she saw a flash of brown movement and was delighted to catch a glimpse of a small lizard.
“Leah!” she heard Marisa call.
She hurried on, glad she was wearing sneakers as she picked up her pace on the uneven ground. Following the sound of Marisa’s voice, she jogged up a hill to find the two women and the dog waiting for her at the top. From where they stood, they could see a two-lane blacktop following the contour of the land below.
“The trail stops here,” Aggie said.
Leah peered down the hill again. “Do you think someone picked her up and gave her a ride?”
“No,” Aggie said. “I mean it stops right here where we’re standing. She walked this far, then went into the otherworld.”
“The…otherworld,” Leah repeated.
Aggie nodded.
“How’s any of this even possible?”
Leah turned to Marisa, who shrugged.
“I know for a fact,” Marisa said, “that Isabelle’s numena came from somewhere else by way of her paintings. So I believe that other worlds do exist.”
“Except this isn’t a painting.”
“No,” Marisa agreed. “But why shouldn’t there be more than one way to move between the worlds?”
“Oh boy.”
“Do you still want to talk to Sadie?” Aggie asked.
Leah gave an uneasy nod.
“Then we have to cross over as well.”
Leah thought about this unknown territory she was being asked to enter. What was it Dylan said? You can always come back, but you can’t come back all the way.
The old stories said the same thing about fairyland: how, when you returned, you were no longer the same.
Except she wasn’t starting that journey here, at this moment. She’d started it when she’d read Aimee’s journal—that had been the first step she’d taken on this road.
And didn’t every journey change you? Look at what she was already feeling after just coming to the desert and talking to that old man Ernie last night. The landscape, the plight of the people he’d described…
Change wasn’t necessarily bad. It was just scary.
“Okay,” she said.
Aggie offered a hand to each of them. “You might feel a moment of discomfort when we cross over, but it passes quickly.”
Leah and Marisa exchanged glances. Marisa raised an eyebrow, Leah shrugged, and then they smiled at each other as they each took one of Aggie’s hands and let the old lady take them into the otherworld, red-furred Ruby leading the way.
Leah knew she was anthropomorphizing the dog, but she was sure she saw a glint of laughter in those dark eyes.