SEVENTEEN

Mary squinted at the thick maple limb as she made the final shadings on her sketch. When she was eight this tree had stretched up to heaven. She and her mother had often sat on its bench-sized roots—Mary drawing, her mother painting, both happy to sit under its sun-dappled shade. Sometimes her mother would hum an old tune, her eyes growing wistful. Mary guessed she was missing Jack Bennefield then, the handsome young husband and father they’d both known for far too short a time. Or maybe she was wishing that the spring would heal her wounds and deliver somebody new for her to love. But if her mother had hoped Atagahi might produce another love for her, she had died disappointed.

Now, Mary could almost see her sitting there, the sun casting blue highlights on her glossy black hair. She frowned. Her mother would now be over fifty. What would she have looked like? Chubby and diabetic like so many Cherokees? Or would she be merely an older version of the pretty, slender woman with the infectious laugh? Death left a small recompense for your pain, Mary supposed. It took the ones you loved, but left them unblemished in your memory. She smudged in one last shadow on the page with the tip of her little finger and closed her paint box.

She climbed off the maple roots, listening for the voices of her friends. The soft Atagahi breezes usually carried words like the fluff of a dandelion, but only a raspy chorus of jar flies greeted her as she picked her way through the coarse sedge that grew among the boulders surrounding this side of Atagahi. Alex and Joan were probably fast asleep by now, she decided. They’d hiked hard as bear hunters these last two days, and they were just three tenderfeet Atlanta attorneys.

Rock by rock she began to climb. The sandstone felt like warm pumice on the palms of her hands, and she scaled the old boulders as she had as a child—leaping from rock to rock, nimble as a goat. With a final jump she reached the top and stood straight, smiling, hungry to see the whole vista of Atagahi spread out below her. Suddenly her smile froze. Though the bright green water still lapped lush and inviting, two women no longer sunned themselves on its rocks. The place was empty. No one was there at all.

Mary blinked. The warm wind ruffled her hair. A joke, she told herself, ignoring the sudden stillness of the place. This has Alex’s fingerprints all over it. They’ve decided to hide and see what I do.

“Very funny, Alex and Joan!” she called. “You guys are real comediennes.”

No one stood up from behind the boulders. No muffled giggles rose from the rocks.

“Okay, you guys,” she called louder, now irritated. Mostly she loved Alex’s goofy sense of humor, but she was not finding this prank amusing. “It worked. I was scared for a full two seconds.”

Again, her words fell on hushed air.

Mary stared at the blank tableau, uncomprehending, then a tremor of fear rippled through her. Something has gone wrong, she realized as her heart began to beat like a snare drum. Something has gone very wrong.

“Joan? Alex?” she called, scraping her shins on the boulders as she raced carelessly down the rocks, desperate to hear one of Alex’s goofy wisecracks.

No one answered. Her paint box slipped from her fingers, clattering down the steep incline in front of her. She passed the boulders as if in a dream—each stood like a mute sentinel, yielding none of Atagahi’s ancient secrets.

“Joan! Alex!”

Only the rising wind sighed in reply. Frantically, she began to retrace their steps. They had dived in the water here, floated to there, climbed out here, sunned on the rocks there. There. Mary focused on one smooth rock. Could that long splotch on the far side of the boulder be blood?

She raced over, then her heart froze. A body lay sprawled on the rocky ground, the face covered with a black sweatshirt.

It was Joan. The legs were short, a small gold cross glittered between her breasts. Mud streaked across her upper thighs. Bloody teeth marks ringed one nipple. Raped. The word echoed through Mary’s head. Just like Mama.

“No!” she cried. The rocks echoed her protest back at her, mocking her outrage.

She knelt and yanked the sweatshirt away from Joan’s face. A blood-soaked cloth stretched her mouth in the rictus of a smile; her pretty white skin was blue. The delicate, sculpted shape that had once been her nose had been smashed into a grotesque red mangle. Mary put her hand against her cheek. It was cold. Joan was dead.

“No,” Mary cried. “Not again!”

She wrestled the rag from Joan’s mouth. What was it that you’re supposed to do to people who can’t breathe? Cover their noses and breathe into them? What if there’s no nose left? Shit, she’d only seen this done on television. She reached inside Joan’s mouth and pressed her tongue down with her thumb. With a huge gulp of air, she covered her friend’s lips with her own and blew.

The sharp taste of blood filled Mary’s mouth. She sat back and stared at Joan’s face. Nothing. Joan remained motionless; her skin waxen. Breathing as if inflating a reluctant balloon, Mary tried a second time. Again, nothing.

“Come on,” she demanded. Once more she filled her lungs until she felt light-headed, then she exhaled hard, willing every last molecule of her own oxygen down into Joan’s body. There was no response.

“Joan!” She grabbed her bare shoulders and shook her, hard. “Breathe, dammit!”

For what seemed like an eternity Joan lay motionless, then suddenly her chest jerked as if she had the hiccups. Her belly began to rise and slowly the purplish cast seeped from her lips. Her eyes flickered once, and she woke up coughing, like someone pulled drowning from the sea.

“Oh, please keep breathing.” Mary scooped her up in her arms and held her close. “Please . . .”

She clasped her for a long time, desperately trying to infuse her with her own warmth and strength. Slowly, the pale cheeks grew pink. Mary loosened her embrace and looked down at her. Joan’s eyes were open but focusing a thousand lifetimes beyond Mary’s shoulder. Her breath smelled of bile and blood.

“Joan?” Mary smoothed strands of sweaty hair away from the battered forehead. Joan stared straight ahead, seemingly unaware of her. “Joan, it’s Mary. Can you hear me?” She did not respond. Mary turned and looked at the rock where Alex had lain. It bore neither the scuffed marks of a struggle nor the bloody detritus of a rape. Neutral, it revealed nothing. Alex might have been there ten minutes ago; Alex might have been a mirage they’d both imagined. She turned back to Joan, and said in as calm a voice as she could muster, “Joan, do you know where Alex is?”

Joan blinked. She tried to speak, but only a hoarse grunt issued from her throat.

Mary looked into Joan’s eyes, willing her to establish some kind of connection. Though she wanted to scream and shake the words out of her, she took another deep breath and kept her voice low. “Joan, you’ve got to tell me what happened to Alex.”

Joan swallowed, wincing in pain. “A man . . . came,” she finally said in a reedy, old-woman voice. “Barefooted. He tied her arms together. Then he put a snake on me and pulled down my pants.” Her words emerged as if English had suddenly become her second language.

Mary frowned. This sounded absurd. A barefooted man with a snake? She held Joan tight. She would squeeze the answers out of her if she had to. “But what happened to Alex?”

Joan shook her head, her body jerking as if she were having some kind of fit. “He tied her up. He put a snake on me. After that . . . Oh, Mary, I don’t know!”

Joan’s voice disintegrated into a high wail. Mary rocked her, repeating her name, trying to soothe her as a mother soothes a baby. A man had found the two of them. He’d raped Joan. But what had he done to Alex? A rage began to race through her veins. This could not be happening. Not again.

“Joan, I’ve got to find Alex.”

“No!” Weeping, Joan grabbed Mary’s neck and clung to her like a terrified child. “Don’t leave me. Don’t! He hurt me!”

“I’ve got to, Joan. Alex may be tied up and hurt, too.” Mary unwrapped Joan’s arms from her neck and got to her feet. “Sit right here. I’m going to look around the spring. You can watch me the whole time.”

Joan grasped at Mary and kept keening, but Mary circled the spring, running like a frantic animal, looking for a boot or some blood or even a candy wrapper, but the water gave no clue and the rocks remained blank as untracked sand.

Please, she beseeched the Old Men as she searched. Don’t let me find her like Mama. I can bear anything except that.

With Joan’s cries reverberating in her brain, she worked her way to the tops of the boulders, finding nothing. She looked over the rocky walls that lifted Atagahi on two sides, dreading to see Alex sprawled there, her spine snapped against the boulders, but the cliffs were as empty of clues as the spring. As Joan’s whimpers faded, Mary pushed through the spiky weeds that encircled the north and east sides of Atagahi. At the willow where they’d left their supplies, she found only the paint box she’d dropped when she fled down from the tree, and Joan’s underpants, crumpled in the dirt.

Her breath was coming in hard gasps that scalded her throat. She had to stop. To think. She looked over at Joan. She’d stopped crying, but sat on the ground befuddled, like a newly hatched bird fallen from its nest, her face slick with tears and blood. Mary lifted one hand in a wave, then stooped beneath the willow. She would get Joan a cigarette. That would make her feel better. Hell, maybe she would even smoke one herself. She hurried to the tree, then her stomach clenched. The spot where their packs should have been was empty. Their clothes, their food, all their supplies had vanished. She gasped. A cold night was coming and she and Joan were stuck in the middle of a forest with only one complete set of clothes and a madman out there, waiting to strike again.