Indigo Springs (12 page)

“With luck, Ev won’t be opening people’s mail for much longer,” Sahara said.

“I can’t take the chance.” She cradled her throbbing head in her hands, feeling hunted. “I’m going the same route as Albert. I’m never going to have a normal life.”

Jacks rubbed her shoulders. “You can do Albert’s job, if you want to call it that, without making his sacrifices.”

“Job,” she said, easing into the massage. “It was his job, wasn’t it? All those years.”

“Some job. No thanks, no money, no benefits,” Sahara said. “Astrid, you are
not
going to turn into your father. There are three of us, we’ll use the gold dust to get money when we need it and we’ll spread out the labor.”

“Share the load,” Jacks agreed. “You won’t be alone with it the way Albert was.”

“Lord, when you think of it!” Sahara’s voice was reverent. “All that secrecy, all that trouble—for his entire life. It’s…heroic.”

Tears pricked Astrid’s eyes. She felt lighter, knowing things hadn’t been Dad’s fault. Sad too—that she hadn’t thought well enough of him to see through his charade.

But I did know, once. And then forgot. Why?

“With the three of us on the job, it’ll be more discreet. Does this thing do floors?” Tossing the ladybug onto the linoleum, Sahara squirted out dish soap.

“Not too much,” Astrid cautioned, but it was too late. Suds boiled outward like a swarm of ants. Before any of them could move, it was knee deep and rising.

Sahara stepped toward the back door.

“No,” Astrid said urgently. “We can’t let anyone see the foam.”

“What did someone say about discretion?” Jacks lunged at the kitchen window, losing his balance and then catching himself on the counter. Pulling himself upright, he shut the curtains with a clatter.

“You okay, Monet?”

“Yeah.” The soap bubbles were as high as his hips. “Floor’s slick, that’s all. Let’s retreat.”

“Hold hands,” Astrid said, reaching out. Sahara’s hand—small, dry, and warm—folded into her right. Jacks took the left. The soapy tide had risen to her chest. Below its surface, a million small scrub brushes scraped her exposed skin. Her shoes squeaked over the ice-slippery surface of the kitchen floor.

Hand in hand, they inched toward the living room.

Sahara said, “Did I say I’m sorry yet?”

“Do you ever?” Jacks replied.

“Peace,” Astrid warned. She lifted her chin, prepared to gulp air like a swimmer going underwater. But before the soap could rise over her neck, the suds sucked back into the ladybug with an echoing slurp. The three of them were left at the edge of the gleaming kitchen.

“Whew,” Sahara said, wobbling. “Sorry, Astrid.”

“Forget it.”

Sahara collapsed on the rug in the empty living room, dragging first Astrid and then Jacks down beside her. As one, they flopped onto their backs.

“I feel about how I would if I’d really just scrubbed the kitchen from floor to ceiling,” Sahara announced.

“Those guys on the discussion group weren’t kidding about chantments draining your energy,” Astrid agreed.

“It’s too bad,” Jacks said. “We could’ve tried cleaning in here.”

“Why?” Sahara asked.

“Because if magic is a huge secret, maybe we shouldn’t have a big blue stain on the ceiling.”

“If it won’t scrub off, I’ll paint it,” Sahara said.

“Okay, I’ll get paint,” Jacks said. “I’m buying for the mural anyway.”

“Thanks, guys,” Astrid said.

“See?” Sahara squeezed her. “We’re a team!”

“I’ll mail the ladybug from Wallowa,” Jacks said. “The rafting group I’m leading tomorrow meets there.”

“Will the Chief hear about that?” Sahara asked. “We don’t want anyone thinking
you’re
turning into Albert, either.”

“We’ll have to rely on my sense of timing—” He raised the hand wearing the watch; they were still holding hands, and he shook Astrid’s arm like a noodle. “This’ll keep me from running into any of the county busybodies.”

“I guess you’re the obvious choice,” Astrid said.

“Don’t worry.” He blew a hair from her forehead. “It’ll be fine.”

“I know.” It was at once scary and a relief to hand off the responsibility.

“Please. He’s offering to mail a package, not defuse a nuclear warhead.”

“We have to take this seriously, Sahara,” Jacks said.

“What makes you think I don’t?”

Astrid giggled. “You don’t take anything seriously.”

“I’ll be good as gold dust, I promise. Know why? Because once a secret like this gets loose, there’s no reeling it in. You lose control, and I
love
these things.”

“I do believe that,” Jacks said.

“That doesn’t mean I’m convinced there’s a magic Geiger counter out there that’s gonna lead a bunch of would-be thieves to our door.”

“Albert said we disperse the things, we disperse them,” Jacks said. “Especially until we know more.”

“I’m not saying we keep everything. Did I say that?”

“Stop fishing for wiggle room. Once Astrid learns more, we’ll know if it’s safe to hang on to a few things. A few, Sahara.”

“Albert kept stuff.”

“Things that were too dangerous to give away,” he said. “The knife, for example. It would certainly be easy to misuse the mermaid, wouldn’t it?”

She flushed at his pointed tone. “Do you honestly think there’s some bogeyman out there looking for us?”

Astrid remembered her moment of terror out on the front porch. The certainty of it—the media at her door—was unshakeable. But now as she lay on the rug with Sahara on one side, Jacks on the other, their bodies warm against hers and her heart singing with joy at discovering that Albert hadn’t been a deadbeat—it was easy to discount the fear, to chalk it up to vitagua-induced paranoia. “Probably not,” she said. “But let’s do it Dad’s way until we know it’s safe to do something different.”

The next time she was alone in the house, Astrid climbed up to the attic. Remembering the flash of memory that struck when she’d been there earlier, she paced from corner to corner, fingers trailing the walls.

Lost memories tickled her like stray hairs, but nothing came through. Finally she knelt near the hatch, laying her hands flat where she’d touched the floor before.

Albert had initiated her here when she was eight years old.

They had slipped away from Ma that day, as they so often did, supposedly to pick up shoes for school. She’d felt guilty about that, Astrid remembered now—the secrecy. Each lie made it worse. She had even asked Dad: What if I didn’t become the chanter? What if you picked someone else?

It was about to be too late.

“Ready, Bundle?” Albert said, and young Astrid had nodded. Astrid herself, caught up in reliving the experience—it seemed at once like new information and a very old part of herself—remembered fear and reluctance, mixed with a need to please.

“Okay,” said her father, taking a bundle of cloth from his shirt pocket. Inside was a scarred glass bead.

“Is that a chantment?” Astrid had asked.

“It’s sea-glass. It’ll show me if you’ve ever been contaminated with vitagua.”

“How?”

“Just take it, Bundle.”

She picked it up. It was warm and dry.

“Does it sting at all?” Albert asked.

“It’s supposed to sting?”

“Only if you’re contaminated.”

She rolled the bead on her palm. “No stings. Don’t feel anything.”

“Okay, that means you’re clean.” Albert caught the bead in the piece of fabric again. Next he produced a golden bowl, and an eyedropper full of vitagua. Astrid tipped her face up, and he put one tiny drop of liquid magic into each of her eyes.

Pain jolted her. She pitched forward, and Dad caught her, drawing her hands away from her face as her eyes welled up. A sobless cascade of vitagua-laced tears had fallen into the gold bowl.

“Ow,” Astrid had complained. “This hurts!”

“Half-over,” Albert crooned. “It’s okay, Bundle, you’re very brave and we’re half-done.”

“No, stop!”

“We can’t,” he said, and Astrid remembered the pain on her father’s face. Like an animal in a trap, she thought now—back then she had been too young and scared to understand. “We stop here, you’re cursed.”

“I don’t care,” Astrid whispered, then and now.

“You would care,” Dad said grimly, and as the flow of tears stopped he sat her up. Dipping a comb into the bowl, he ran it through her hair. Her curls snagged in the comb, even though he had trimmed her hair the week before.

“Ow,” Astrid said again, but this time it was subdued, a protest almost for form’s sake.

“You know, initiation is the most dangerous moment of life as a spring-tapper,” he said. Astrid, who had been about to yank loose, stilled. “Usually you do only one initiation, see, when you pick your apprentice. And the first time you do anything with magic, with vitagua, that’s when you’re most like to mess it up.”

“But you did this before,” she mumbled.

“That’s right. I initiated my cousin Ron, years ago.”

“And he died of that sick thing.”

“I thought becoming a spring-tapper might cure his leukemia. No such luck, though. I tried another fellow too, but he had a bad accident. I’d been hoping my little sister…well, she ran off East with that fellow.”

“That’s why it has to be me,” Astrid said.

“But, see, I’m better at initiating…better than my grandmother, than anyone.” Dad stroked her cheek. “It’s gonna be fine, Bundle. Third time’s the charm.”

She shuddered. Dad was careful not to touch her scalp with the mixture of vitagua and tears, simply drawing it through her hair. The combing brought with it a sense of hollowness, awareness of unfilled spaces inside her body, vaults of room between her molecules.

She heard ice groaning, a sound of dripping…and below that a murmur that sounded like her name.

The fear dissolved. “Can I make a chantment now?”

“I’m not quite finished, Bun.” Taking the nail clippers, Dad chopped off a few strands of her hair, laying them on the kerchief. He took a fingernail clipping too, then handed her a small pin.

Astrid poked her finger. A single drop of blood welled out; she dribbled it on the fabric.

“When you’ve done something once, you get ideas for next time.” Digging in his pocket, he produced two white nubs.

“Are those my baby teeth?”

She must have scowled, for her father grinned. “I paid the Tooth Fairy good money for ’em, I promise.”

She giggled. Dad added the teeth, poured the last of the tears onto the kerchief, and pulled its corners up into a bundle. He wound another strand of Astrid’s hair around a strong piece of twine, using it to bind the kerchief shut. Then he pierced his own finger. Vitagua flowed out.

“Watch,” he said. The fabric folded in on itself as he chanted it, becoming hard and blue like stone, a lump as wrinkled as a walnut or a brain. “Now we get rid of it.”

“Where?”

“In the creek.”

The memory cut off there, cleanly truncated upon the two of them leaving the attic. Astrid ran out back to the edge of the ravine, looking for a path. When she found it, she pushed both hands down through twigs and weeds, groping for soil.

There—she remembered eight-year-old Astrid walking solemnly to a sheer edge of the path.

It had been cold and snowy; her breath hung in the air. She had thrown the bundle, underhand. It arced up, maybe five feet, and then tumbled down the incline, leaving small dents in the snowpack. When it reached the iced-over thread of the creek, it punched down, like a fist going through drywall. A tremor ran through the ground. A fall of slush from the snowbank tumbled down, covering the small hole in the ice.

“You’re done.” Albert sighed, clearly relieved, and wrapped her in a hug. “Thank you, Bundle.”

“Can I make a chantment now?” The distant grumbles were friendly; she wanted to please them and Dad too.

“First things first—let’s see if the spirit water will mind you.” Young Astrid watched as he squeezed a drop of vitagua into the golden bowl. “Hold your hand over it.”

Staring at the blue droplet so hard her eyes hurt, Astrid obeyed. Her fingers tingled, and she felt as if the bead of vitagua was all but in her grasp, like a watermelon seed sheathed in slippery fruit juice.

“Push it around inside the bowl,” Albert said. “Don’t worry too much if it won’t go the first time.”

Easy, so easy, one of the grumbles whispered. Imagine the spaces inside yourself compressing.

“Hop, hop,” Astrid crooned. The bead of vitagua shot up, over the lip of the bowl, and struck a nodding, snow-covered daffodil.

“Um, okay.” Albert laughed, looking for the droplet and seeming only slowly to realize how far it had gone. He darted to rip up the flower. Its dirty roots protruded from the bulb, writhing like worms, tinged with blue and growing longer in his grip. “What’d I say about first times?”

He was uneasy, the adult Astrid thought, remembering his expression. A hand on her shoulder drew her still further from the mystic reverie. She wobbled, off balance, and Jacks steadied her.

“What are you doing?”

“Touching things,” she said. “Remembering.”

“Get anything useful?”

She beamed. “Nice things…about Dad.”

He tweaked her nose. “I’m glad. Listen, I had an urge to roust you and…maybe go somewhere?”

“Where?”

“I dunno.” Jacks held the watch to his ear, as if listening to it tick. “Hiking? Biking? I’m still getting the hang of this thing.”

“There’s a hang? I thought it dragged you around like a dog on a leash.”

“Woof. You want to come, or not?”

She glanced at the house.

“Come on, Sahara’s helping Mrs. Skye sort out the garbage in her basement. Fixing her, you might say.”

“I might say helping her out, being neighborly.”

“Whatever. Let’s go up Yellowtail Trail.”

“My bike brakes are shot.”

“I fixed ’em.” He raised his hands, showing off smudges of oil and dust. “You’re tuned and ready to go.”

Minutes later they were pedaling down Main Street, driving past the brick façade of the courthouse. The building was undergoing reconstruction, an earthquake-prevention measure mandated, despite local disapproval, by the State. Beds of flowers were blooming along the streets. People everywhere looked happy to be outdoors.

“Look, there’s Mrs. Kale.” She waved to the history teacher who had taught them both during Astrid’s abortive attempt to return to high school. “Reader, reader?”

Jacks laughed—it was a game they hadn’t played in years. “Olive mostly sells her true crime books.”

Astrid scanned the square for someone else they knew, finally pointing at the aging dentist.

“Doc Liam? He reads novels about animals.
Call of the Wild,
that sort of thing.”

“That’s right, we’ve done him before. Amy Burkette?”

“Magazines only. Makeup, celebrities, diet fads.”

They stopped at the lights and Astrid’s gaze fell on a woman who was crossing in front of the truck. “Her?”

“Newcomer. If she’s been to Olive’s, it’s since I stopped working in the bookstore.” Jacks leaned sharply to one side, stamping a foot down. His boot came down on the leash of a terrier on the run from its owner.

“Guess the magic watch has done its good deed for the day,” Astrid said, after he’d handed back the dog. “Is that all it wanted? Should we go home?”

He shook his head. “Turn right at the Grand Hotel.”

“I thought you said Yellowtail Trail?”

“Change of plan.” They crossed onto a secondary highway, starting uphill. With every mile the trees crept closer to the ditch, while fences, power poles, and other signs of human occupation—everything but the road itself—began to thin out. They were well out of town when Astrid saw the bottle-factory sign.