The shape of the human pelvis bears a pleasing resemblance to the butterfly.

—Galen’s Anatomy

Chapter 16

An autumn morning in the mountains, when the air is still as glass and the peaks are brushed with snow, is something you should experience at least once. It has a way of clarifying priorities.

Nudged by the dawn, Jenny woke up feeling newborn. Who cared about nuggets and roses and useless arguments? She was alive to the call of her senses: the drought had been broken. The long rains had come.

Leaving Pandora asleep, Jenny nicked a piece of jerky and headed for the great beyond. What she found surpassed the boldest of her dreams.

Troy was fired in a riot of color. The blue of the sky was rimmed by the purple of sunlit rock. Caps of white crowned the mountains. In the hollow of the valley, the town was gray with wear, and green with turf, and yellow with aging oaks. Orange and red streaks, the scars of last night’s polar blast, were fading from the east.

But that wasn’t the best of the scenery—oh, by no means. The best of it lay in the water. Lake Gaia, that elusive stretch of dark that Jenny had tried so hard to find in the night, was now a giant mirror, reflecting every leaf and flake and speck in its surface. Up was down and down was up.

All of this was catnip to a high-country girl. Jenny wanted to run and run until thought and worry vanished. Down she dashed toward the lake, puddles splashing beneath her toes. When she was about six feet from the rim, she came to a halt. Nothing should be allowed to ruffle its surface.

Trouble being, something was disturbing it. A fly or a bug was making its way toward her, skimming so low that it made a trail of a snail in the water.

Closer it came, closer and closer, until Jenny was able to spy what it was. A stripe-breasted, sparrow-beaked bird with a new sheen of dew. It went whistling over her head and perched itself on a stump.

“Too late,” came a familiar growl.

Jenny turned. The human tumbleweed known as Jack was emerging from a shed by the waterside.

“Pardon?” dared Jenny.

“The cuckoo should have left in summer. Now it vill die from the cold.”

Silent Jack snapped his suspenders. The bird riffled its emerald feathers. Jenny had the courtesy to feel abashed.

“Thanks for letting us stay in your place last night,” she said. “I appreciate it.”

There was silence.

“Truly,” she continued. “I know you’re allergic to company.”

Her host ignored her still. Curtly, he turned on his heels, stomped over to a distant tree, and—with his back turned—began peeing on its roots. The cuckoo giggled.

Jenny bit back a sigh of envy. There had been many a time when she’d wished she could pee standing up.

“I was meaning to ask,” yelled Jenny. “Do you know if there was a forest fire near the head of the Gorge? There’s this grove that got destroyed . . .”

She might have done better howling at time. His business through, Silent Jack buttoned his fly, brushed his hands on his trousers, and headed for the church. Her morning now spoiled, Jenny followed.

Inside the building, the ghost of last night’s heat lingered around the woodstove, reluctant to return to the ashes. Pandora was busy divvying biscuits into equal portions. Jenny plonked down on the floor beside her.

“Morning,” whispered Jenny. “I forgive you for what you said to me yesterday.” Pandora’s reply was a glare. “Fine,” added Jenny. “Be like that.”

“You must leave after breakfast,” said Silent Jack, fishing out a box from behind the basin. “More bad vether coming.”

“But the mudslide washed out the road to Eden,” countered Jenny. “Nobody could go that way.”

The furze refused to answer. Instead, he ripped off a hunk of cured trout from his stash and began to gnaw on the flesh.

“Why do they call you Silent Jack?” asked Pandora, following up on Jenny’s comment from last night. “You speak to us.”

Without skipping a bite, Silent Jack reached over his barrel of a chest and drew back the flap of his bushman’s jacket. Tucked inside the lining, with its grip at a reachable height, was the end of a bone-handled revolver.

“But I let this do the talking ven the time is right.”

“Were you a gunslinger? Did you use that in the Rush?” asked Pandora.

Their host responded by slamming his box on the basin. “I hate the Rush! Men forget things.”

“What things?” asked Pandora.

“They forget the land,” said Silent Jack bitterly, “and the rivers that suckle them. They forget to be grateful for things they cannot see. They forget the cuckoo that stays too long.”

Despite her advances in other areas of life, Pandora still had little use for poetry, in this week or the next. “What do cuckoos have to do with anything?”

“People shouldn’t live in the mountains,” rasped Silent Jack. “Or anyvere else. The vurld vuld be a much better place without the human race.”

“Well, that makes no sense,” said Pandora. “Because we’re already here. Us and the rest of the animals and the plants and the seas. So we’d better find a way to muddle along together.”

Jenny was grudgingly impressed. Before the mudslide, Pandora would have glued her lips to the floor to avoid conversing with someone like Jack. But here she was debating the concept of life itself.

Realizing he had been bested, Silent Jack gave Pandora a shrewd glance, picked up her satchel, and stuck out his thumb.

“Enough talk. Come vith me.”

“Where are we going?” asked Jenny.

“Shut it,” barked Jack.

Walking down the pitted road through town, Jenny had a fuddled notion that this might be her last day on earth. She wondered what Silent Jack was planning to do with them. Shoot them and toss them in the waterfall, perhaps? Somewhere deep and dank where their bodies would never be found? Maybe he had a nice cave in mind.

Pandora was unconcerned. Shrouded in her oilskin, she fell into lockstep with Jack. Doom be darned—the terror of Troy had met his match.

“Were you always best friends with Doc Magee?”

Jack paused beside a toothless fence. A leaf fell from a poplar above him and settled on his shoulder. “Vatt does that vurd mean to you—‘friend’?”

Pandora considered the query. “I think it means someone who understands.”

“Yes. Understands. That is good.” He picked the leaf from his shoulder and crushed it in his palm. “But, you see, I did not understand Magee.”

“Why not?” asked Jenny.

“Because he vass in love vith gold,” growled Jack. “In love vith a cold piece of stone? It is nonsense, no?”

This question was directed solely to one person.

“Gold can be useful,” said Pandora. “My mum would find it very useful. She’s dying.”

Most folks would expect a civilized man to offer a few shreds of comfort to a girl who spoke these words. Silent Jack, however, was unmoved. He tossed the shreds of leaf on the ground and resumed his march.

For a moment, Jenny was tempted to trip him for being so cold. Then she recalled her own wish to keep the nugget all for herself. Sad to say, she hadn’t once thought of Mrs. Quinn or her condition since they had started up the Gorge.

“Did you fight with Magee?” asked Pandora, still nipping at his heels.

“Sometimes. Do you fight vith your friend?”

“Yes,” said Pandora. “A lot, lately.”

In the flash of a firefly, Jenny had a revelation. Maybe Jack had killed Doc Magee! He was tougher than oak, that was plain, and plenty used to violence. Maybe he had murdered his partner but missed out on the nugget. That would account for his wanderings. And his foul temper . . .

“So what did you do when Magee found the gold?” blurted out Jenny.

Silent Jack paused in front of the entrance to a forge. Startled by his presence, a long-legged spider skittered across the anvil and launched itself skyward on a line of silk.

“You know about the nugget?”

“Sure,” countered Jenny. “Everybody in the territory knows.”

Jack gave Jenny a look that went straight through her marrow and lodged itself in her spine. She observed that his eyes were of a peculiar color, like the wet of a greenstone polished by rubbing.

“He vent a-vay,” said Silent Jack. “And I never saw him again.”

Think what you will about Jenny, she’s got hold of something I wish more of us had. She can read the truth of people. Even when she was knee-high to a hare, she could tell that Pandora was a lost, loving girl and Mr. Polk was a right royal twit. These aren’t things that you’d spot on the skin; they’re embedded in the soul. And, to her surprise, in searching Jack’s stare, she knew that he was being honest. She believed him—Magee had gone away. Jack had never seen him again.

Yet, at the exact same time, she was alive to the fact that he wasn’t telling them the whole truth. Whether his partner was alive or dead, Jack knew more than he was speaking. She found herself smiling. The mystery of Mad Doc Magee was becoming very interesting.

Silent Jack didn’t have a clue what to do with a girl who smiled. Flummoxed by Jenny’s reaction, he tugged at his beard and scratched at his cheek and drew the wing of a fly from his eyelash. Then he shook his head.

“Come.”

From the forge and the anvil, they trudged past a couple of saggy-lipped storefronts and a creaky hitching post. The wind had regained some of its breath and was muttering to a curtain that hung in one of the windows. I tell you true, it was a haunted place, that valley of Troy. Haunted and odd.

Finally, they reached the last building in town. To the south stretched Lake Gaia, sprinkled with the dust of the sun. In front of them ran a footpath that curved and cut into a tract of native beeches, leading west toward an unknown fate. And to their immediate north, at the scuffed end of their elbows, was a jail.

It was a small jail, to be sure—a crumbling cube of limestone and one lonely window with bars. But it was enough of an establishment to make Jenny’s feet twitch. Then she noticed it was missing a key component. This made her feel better. It’s hard to keep someone penned in without a front door.

“Why are we stopping here?” asked Pandora.

Silent Jack pointed a furred finger toward the path. “Take that and you vill cross a bridge near the head of the Longshank.”

Jenny swallowed. The Longshank was where Kam and Lok had gone.

“Follow the riverbank down and you vill find a long route back to Eden.”

“Wait? That’s it?” asked Jenny.

“Yes,” retorted Jack. “Go home.”

This can’t be how the story ends, thought Jenny. It was true: she had never held much faith in Pandora’s plan to find Silent Jack. Still, now that she was here, she wanted to learn why Jack and Magee had fought. She needed to know more about the nugget and how Mad Doc had discovered it. She had to believe that she had been right to follow her instinct to the rosewood.

But the surly form of Silent Jack was already making its way past the forge. A few moments later, he was under the poplars. And then he was gone.

Jenny remained stiller than stone.

“What are you doing?” asked Pandora.

“We didn’t get any answers. Nothing!”

“We learned that Magee went away after he found the nugget.”

“You can’t believe him,” said Jenny. “Jack was lying through his teeth.”

“You don’t lie through your—”

“Okay, fine!” shouted Jenny. “You lie with your brain. And he was lying with his.”

Filled with a nameless fury, she slammed her fist on the side of the jail. The whitewash fractured, and a tiny cream butterfly, as delicate as paper, flew upward in panic.

“You almost killed it,” said Pandora.

“I’m aware of that!”

The butterfly was flitting wildly above the X-shaped crack in the wall. Three times it zigged, and three times it zagged, and then, in a burst of panic, it darted sideways through the open doorway.

“Wow,” said Pandora, stepping in behind it. “That’s a lot of butterflies making babies.”

With a show of annoyance, Jenny joined her friend. Though I give her credit for noticing the door, she had failed to realize that most of the roof was also gone. All that was left of the jail were four walls and one million butterflies.

You may think I’m joking, but I swear on my saddle it’s true. Since the last days of Troy, the only things stuck in that prison were roots. Seeds had been blown in by the breezes or dropped by the birds.

With the hot sun to grow them and the thick walls to warm them, these flecks of life had blossomed into harebells and clover, bittercress and beebalm. There were about thirty-odd varieties of plants that Jenny could identify and a hundred or more she could not.

Above and around these flowers hovered the cream-colored butterflies. From the looks of it, they appeared to be courting. Many of them were joined together in pairs, circling round and round the room like dancers in a reel.

“It’s a good place for a nursery,” said Pandora.

Jenny was of the same opinion. Suddenly, her head felt clearer and her bones felt lighter. Her anger dissolved. Standing in this square of fragile life, she could just imagine what it was like to hold a baby or stroke its cheek. Nature was cruel and beautiful, that she knew. She hadn’t realized it was motherly.

“I’d like to stay a few minutes,” said Jenny. “If that’s all right.”

Miraculously, Pandora nodded. Maybe, thought Jenny, her best friend was remembering better days with Mrs. Quinn. Somehow it felt like the right time to be thinking of that.

Skirting the wall to the one spot where she might sit without crushing flower petals, Jenny rested her back on the stone and closed her eyes.

For a moment, she allowed herself to picture what it would be like to live on her mother’s islands. Though she was without a compass to guide her, she reckoned there would be a lot of family activities. Swimming in the ocean and games with young cousins and sixteen hands reaching for the last of dinner.

And in the evening, when the fire was roaring, she imagined, there would be songs—songs about ancestors and curses and wild storms that blew wanderers to lands across the sea.

“I miss my cheese,” said Pandora sadly.

Jenny nodded. “I miss my cheese, too.”

“You don’t have any cheese,” countered Pandora.

Jenny nodded again. “I know.”

The sun was so kind on her face that Jenny could hardly bear to stir. She was almost tempted to lie down and become one with the soil. Skin to earth, heart to stone.

It was lucky for our story—if not for Jenny’s soul—that the cuckoo spat on her hand. Muttering a few choice words under her breath, she wiped her palm on the dirt. Satisfied it had gained her attention, the cuckoo darted between the butterflies and alit on a ledge in the wall. From there, it began to peck at the stone.

“What’s it doing?” asked Jenny,

“Probably trying to get insects to crawl out of the cracks.”

Peck, peck, peck. Peck, peck, peck. After a spell of daydreaming, this kind of noise can be maddening as math.

“Oh, would you be quiet!” shouted Jenny. The cuckoo waved its tail feathers in her face and darted into the blue above.

“Can you read the writing?” asked Pandora.

“What writing?”

“On the wall,” replied Pandora, pointing to a spot where the cuckoo had been investigating. “Right there.”

Over to the opposite wall they shuffled. Between the stalks and the blooms lay a series of phrases scratched deep into the plaster:

        SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS!

        BRANDY IS DANDY, BUT STRYCHNINE IS QUICKER.

        I SHOULDA BEEN A SAILOR.

“I reckon this must have been where the holding cell was,” said Jenny. She ran her eyes down the messages. “I guess the drunks had some time on their hands.”

        ROARING SUE HAS LOST MY SHOE AND DOESN’T KNOW WHERE TO FIND IT.

        DON’T READ THIS.

        MUCH SUSPECTED BY ME, NOTHING PROVED CAN BE.

“They’ve got rubbishy handwriting,” said Pandora.

“This one’s not bad,” said Jenny. “And there’s a picture to go with it.” She stuck her finger on a crude drawing of a rat with fangs. The nameless prisoner who had sketched it had also included a handy ditty:

        I, A RAT, CAN BITE THE LEG.

        I BITE THE LEG A RAT CAN.

        A RAT CAN BITE I, THE LEG.

“He wrote it three times,” said Pandora. Then she paused. And paused some more. With a surge of glee, Jenny waited for her best friend’s refrain.

“Well,” said Pandora, “that makes no sense at all.”