She studied him fixedly. “It has something to do with me, doesn’t it?”
Tell her! “It looks that way,” he hedged.
She waited a moment, then said, “I had a … dream about Gran last night. She was a girl, the way she looks in one of the pictures on the mantel. She was running in the park with the feeders. She was one of them. I asked her about it, and she admitted that she had done that when she was a girl.” She paused. “There was a demon with her. She admitted that, too. She said she didn’t know at first what it was, and that when she found out, she sent it away. Pick said that was true.” She paused. “What I wonder is if this might be the same demon, if it might have come back to hurt Gran through me.”
Ross nodded slowly. “It’s possible.”
She glared at him, needing more, wanting a better answer. “But how would that change anything about the future? What difference would that make to anyone but us?”
Ross started walking again, forcing her to follow. “I don’t know. What was it you were going to show me?”
She caught up to him easily, kept her hot gaze turned on him. “If you’re hiding something, I’ll find out what it is.” Her voice was hard-edged and determined, challenging him to respond. When he failed to do so, she moved ahead of him as if to push the matter aside, dismissive and contemptuous. “This way, over there, in those trees.”
They descended a gentle slope to a small stream and an old wooden bridge. They crossed the bridge and started up the other side into the deep woods. It was silent here, empty of people, of sound, of movement. The heat was trapped in the undergrowth, and none of the river’s coolness penetrated to ease the swelter. Insects buzzed annoyingly in their faces, attracted by their sweat.
“Actually, it wasn’t a dream,” she said suddenly. “About Gran, I mean. It was a vision. An Indian named Two Bears showed it to me. He took me to see the spirits of the Sinnissippi dance in the park last night after you left. He says he is the last of them.” She paused. “What do you think?”
A chill passed over John Ross in spite of the heat. O’olish Amaneh. “Was he a big man, a Vietnam vet?”
She looked over at him quickly. “Do you know him?”
“Maybe. There are stories about an Indian shaman, a seer. He uses different names. I’ve come across people who’ve met him once or twice, heard about some others.” He could not tell her of this, either. He could barely stand to think on it. O’olish Amaneh. “I think maybe he is in service to the Word.”
Nest looked away again. “He didn’t say so.”
“No, he wouldn’t. He never does. He just shows up and talks about the future, how it is linked to the past, how everything is tied together; then he disappears again. It’s always the same. But I think, from what I’ve heard, that maybe he is one of us.”
They pushed through a tangle of brush that had overgrown the narrow trail, spitting out gnats that flew into their mouths, lowering their heads against the shards of sunlight that penetrated the shadows.
“Tell me something about Wraith,” John Ross asked, trying to change the subject.
The girl shrugged. “You saw. I don’t know what he is. He’s been there ever since I was very little. He protects me from the feeders, but I don’t know why. Even Gran and Pick don’t seem to know. I don’t see him much. He mostly comes out when the feeders threaten me.”
She told him about her night forays into the park to rescue the strayed children, and how Wraith would always appear when the feeders tried to stop her. Ross mulled the matter over in his mind. He had never heard of anything like it, and he couldn’t be certain from what Nest told him if Wraith was a creature of the Word or the Void. Certainly Wraith’s behavior suggested his purpose was good, but Ross knew that where Nest Freemark was concerned things were not as simple as they might seem.
“Where are we going?” Ross asked her as they crested the rise and moved into the shadow of the deep woods.
“Just a little farther,” she advised, easing ahead on the narrow path to lead the way.
The ground leveled and the trees closed about, leaving them draped in heavy shadow. The air was fetid and damp with humidity, and insects were everywhere. Ross brushed at them futilely. The trail twisted and wound through thick patches of scrub and brambles. Several times it branched, but Nest did not hesitate in choosing the way. Ross marveled at the ease with which she navigated the tangle, thinking on how much at home she was here, on how much she seemed to belong. She had the confidence of youth, of a young girl who knew well the ground she had already covered, even if she did not begin to realize how much still lay ahead.
They passed from the thicket into a clearing, and there, before them, was a giant oak. The oak towered overhead, clearly the biggest tree in the park, one of the biggest that Ross had ever seen. But the tree was sick, its leaves curling and turning black at the tips, its bark split and ragged and oozing discolored fluid that stained the earth at its roots. Ross stared at the tree for a moment, stunned both by its size and the degree of its decay, then looked questioningly at the girl.
“This is what I wanted you to see,” she confirmed.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Exactly the question!” declared Pick, who materialized out of nowhere on Nest Freemark’s shoulder. “I thought that you might know.”
The sylvan was covered with dust and bits of leaves. He straightened himself on the girl’s shoulder, looking decidedly out of sorts.
“Spent all morning foraging about for roots and herbs that might be used to make a medicine, but nothing seems to help. I’ve tried everything, magic included, and I cannot stop the decay. It spreads all through the tree now, infecting every limb and every root. I’m at my wits’ end.”
“Pick thinks it’s the demon’s work,” Nest advised pointedly.
Ross looked at the tree anew, still perplexed. “Why would the demon do this?”
“Well, because this tree is the prison of a maentwrog!” Pick declared heatedly. Quickly, he told John Ross the tale of the maentwrog’s entrapment, of how it had remained imprisoned all these years, safe beyond the walls of magic and nature that combined to shut it away. “But no more,” the sylvan concluded with dire gloom. “At the rate the decay is spreading, it will be free before you know it!”
Ross walked forward and stood silently before the great oak. He knew something of the creatures that served the Void and particularly of those called maentwrogs. There were only a handful, but they were terrible things. Ross had never faced one, but he had been told of what they could do, consumed by their need to destroy, unresponsive to anything but their hunger. None had been loose in the world for centuries. He did not like thinking of what it would mean if one were to get loose now.
In his hand, the black staff pulsed faintly in response to the nearness of the beast, a warning of the danger. He stared upward into the branches of the ancient tree, trying to see something that would help him decide what to do.
“I lack any magic that would help,” he said quietly. “I’m not skilled in that way.”
“It’s the demon’s work, isn’t it?” Pick demanded heatedly.
Ross nodded. “I expect it is.”
The sylvan’s narrow face screwed into a knot. “I knew it, I just knew it! That’s why none of our efforts have been successful! He’s counteracting them!”
Ross looked away. It made sense. The maentwrog would be another distraction, another source of confusion. It was the way the demon liked to work, throwing up smoke and mirrors to mask what he was really about.
Nest was telling Pick about the encounter with the demon in church that morning, and the sylvan was jumping up and down on her shoulder and telling her he’d warned her, he’d told her. Nest looked appalled. They began to argue. Ross glanced over at them, then walked forward alone and stood directly before the tree. The staff was throbbing in his hand, alive with the magic, hot with anticipation for what waited. Not yet. He reached forward with his free hand and touched the
damaged bark gently. The tree felt slick and cold beneath his fingers, as if its sickness had come to the surface, coated its rough skin. A maentwrog, he thought grimly. A raver.
Ross studied the ground about him, and everywhere the earth was damp and pitted, revealing long stretches of the tree’s exposed roots. No ants or beetles crawled upon its surface. There was no movement anywhere. The tree and its soil had become anathema to living things.
Ross sighed deeply. His inadequacy appalled him. He should be able to do something. He should have magic to employ. But he was a knight, and the magic he had been given to use could only destroy.
He turned back again. Nest and Pick had stopped arguing and were watching him silently. He could read the question in their eyes. What should they do now? They were waiting on him to provide them with an answer.
There was only one answer he could give. They would have to find the demon.
Which was, of course, like so many things, much easier said than done.
CHAPTER 21
After John Ross and Nest departed, Old Bob helped Evelyn clean up the remains of the picnic lunch. While his wife packed away the dishes and leftovers, he gathered together the used paper plates, cups, and napkins and carried them to a trash bin over by one of the cook stations. When they were done, they sat together on the blanket and looked out through the heat to where the sunlight sparkled off the blue waters of the Rock River in brilliant, diamond bursts.
She liked it when I called her Dark Eyes, he thought as he sat with his hand covering hers, remembering the sudden, warm look she had given him. It took him back to when they were much younger, when Caitlin was still a baby, before the booze and the cigarettes and all the hurt. He remembered how funny she had been, how bright and gay and filled with life. He glanced over at her, seeing the young girl locked deep inside her aging body. His throat tightened. If she would just let me get close again.
On the river, boats were drifting with the current, slow and aimless. Some carried fishermen, poles extended over the water, bodies hunched forward on wooden seats in silent meditation. Some carried sunbathers and swimmers on their way to the smattering of scrub islands that dotted the waters where they widened just west of the park and the bayou. There were a few large cruisers, their motors throbbing faint and distant like aimless bumblebees. Flags and pennants flew from their masts. A single sailboat struggled to catch a breeze with its limp triangular sail. In the sunlight, birds soared from tree to tree, out over the waters and back again, small flickers of light and shadow.
After a time, he said, “I’m going to take a walk up to the horseshoe tournament, talk to a couple of the boys. Would you like to come along?”
She surprised him. “Matter of fact, Robert, I would.”
They rose and began the walk up the hill, leaving the blanket, the picnic basket, and the cooler behind. No one would steal them; this was Hopewell. Old Bob was already thinking ahead to what he was about to do. He had promised Mel Riorden he would speak with Derry Howe, and he tried hard to keep the promises he made. He had no idea what he was going to say to the boy. This wasn’t his business, after all. He no longer worked at MidCon; he was not an active member of the union. His connection with the mill and those who worked there was rooted mainly in the past, a part of a history that was forever behind him. What happened now would probably not affect him directly, not in the time he had left in this life. It might affect Nest, of course, but he thought she would leave when she was grown, move on to some other life. She was too talented to stay in Hopewell. He might argue that he had a lot of himself invested in the mill, but the truth was he had never been a man in search of a legacy, and he didn’t believe much in carrying the past forward.
Still, there were other people to be considered, and it was not in his nature to disregard their needs. If Derry was planning something foolish, something that would affect unfavorably those who had been his friends and neighbors, he owed it to them to try to do something about it.
But what should he say? What, that would make any difference to a boy like Derry, who had little respect for anyone, who had no reason to listen to him, to give him so much as the time of day?
But Mel thought the boy would listen to him, had respect for him. So he would try.
Evelyn’s arm linked with his, and he felt her lean into him. There was nothing to her anymore—bird bones held together by old skin and iron determination. He drew her along easily, liking the feel of her against him, the closeness of her. He loved her still, wished he could bring her back to the way she had been, but knew he never could. He smiled down at her, and the sharp, old eyes glanced briefly at him, then away. Love you forever, he thought.
They crested the rise and were back among the crowds. Children ran everywhere, trailing balloons and crepe-paper streamers, laughing and shrieking. People stood three and four deep in front of the refreshments, loading up on cans of pop, bags of popcorn, and cones of cotton candy. Old Bob steered a path behind them and veered toward the horseshoe tournament, which was set up out in the flats south of the pavilion. He could see Derry Howe already, standing easily in a crowd of other young men, tall and angular in his jeans, T-shirt, and old tennis shoes, a can of beer in his hand.
Old Bob caught sight of Mike Michaelson and his wife, waved hello, and led Evelyn over to talk to them. Mike wanted to know if Old Bob had heard anything from Richie Stoudt. Richie’s landlord had called, said Richie was supposed to do some work for him and hadn’t shown up. There was no answer at his apartment either. Old Bob shook his head. Al Garcia wandered over, eager to show his latest pictures of the new grandbaby. After a few minutes, Mel Riorden appeared, touting the lemonade they were selling, giving Old Bob a meaningful glance. His wife Carol joined him, a warm and embracing woman, cooing over the grandbaby and joshing Al Garcia about his camera work. Laughter and warm feelings laced the conversation, but Old Bob felt locked away from it, distanced by the task he had agreed to undertake and the implications it bore. His mind struggled with the problem of how to approach Derry Howe. Was it really necessary? Maybe Mel was mistaken. Wouldn’t be the first time. Sure wouldn’t be the last.
Penny Williamson strode up, his black skin glistening with sweat, his massive arms streaked with dust. Wasn’t anyone going to beat him this year in the horseshoe tournament, he announced. He was on, baby, he was dead on. Four ringers already. He clapped Old Bob on the back and bent to look at the pictures, asking Al Garcia whose grandbaby that was, wasn’t Al’s for sure, didn’t look ugly like Al, must be a ringer. There was more laughter, kidding.
Old Bob took a deep breath, whispered to Evelyn, asking her to wait for him a moment, excused himself, and moved away. He eased through the knots of people, tasting dust and sweat in the air, smelling the popcorn and cotton candy. People said hello, greeted him as he passed. He moved toward Derry Howe, thinking he should probably just let it go. Howe saw him coming, watched him, took a long swig of his beer, shook his head. In his eyes, Old Bob saw suspicion, wariness, and a wealth of impatience.
He walked up to Derry, nodded, said, “Got a moment?”
Howe looked at him, debating whether to give him the moment or not. Then he smiled, the soul of equanimity, sauntered forward to join him, said, “Sure, Robert. What’s up?”
Old Bob swung into step with him and they walked slowly past the participants in the horseshoe tournament. He nodded toward the field. “Having any luck?”
Derry Howe shrugged, looked at him, waiting.
“Heard a rumor that you were planning something special for the Fourth.”
Derry’s expression did not change. “Where’d you hear that?”
“Heard you were planning an accident, maybe.” Old Bob ignored him, did not look at him. “Something to persuade the MidCon people they ought to work a little harder at settling this strike.”
“Man, the things you hear.” Derry tossed the beer can into a metal trash bin and shoved his hands in his jeans pockets. He was smiling, being cool. “You pl
anning on coming out for the fireworks, Robert? Celebrating our independence?”
Old Bob stopped now, faced him, eyes hard. “Listen to me. If I know about it, others know about it, too. You’re not being very smart, son.”
Derry Howe’s smile froze, disappeared. “Maybe certain people ought to mind their own business.”
Old Bob nodded. “I’ll assume you’re not talking about me, because we’ve both got the same business interests where MidCon is concerned.”
There was a long pause as Derry studied him. He had misread the comment. “You saying you want in on this?”
“No.”
“Then what are you saying?”
Old Bob sighed. “I’m saying that maybe you ought to think this through a little further before you act on it. I’m saying it doesn’t sound like a very good idea. If you do something to the company, something that gets people hurt, it might rebound on you. You might get hurt, too.”
Derry Howe sneered. “I ain’t afraid of taking a chance. Not like Mel and the rest of you, sitting around talking all day while your lives go right down the toilet. I said it before, I’ll say it again. This ain’t going to get settled unless we do something to help it along. The company’s just going to wait us out. They’re starting up the fourteen-inch—hell, already started it up, I expect. They’ll have it up and running Tuesday morning, bright and early. They’re bringing in scabs and company men to run it. Some of the strikers are talking about going back, giving in because they’re scared. You know how it goes. When that happens, we’re done, Robert Roosevelt Freemark. And you know it.”
“Maybe. But blowing things up isn’t the answer either.”
Derry pulled a face. “Who said anything about blowing something up? Did I say anything like that? That what you heard?”