Stones (19 page)
“That’s it,” I blurted. “I saw it in my dream. That’s all the proof we need.”
Both of us were energized by the discovery. Not being an archeologist, I wasn’t sure what the best procedure would be. We had to make sure we got everything; we couldn’t leave a foot bone or a finger end behind. The job had to be complete.
“I think we should uncover all of her, leaving each bone in place, before we move anything. What do you think?” I asked Raphaella.
“That seems best. If we take out one bone at a time we might overlook something.”
“And,” I reminded her, “we have to be done before midnight.”
I could see her throat work when she gulped. She shuddered.
“Right. Why don’t you get started, and I’ll
go back to the van. We’re out of juice, and I’m thirsty.”
“Good idea.”
It was a muggy evening, humid and still, and a few mosquitoes hummed their irritating little one-note tune inside the tent. I lit a mosquito coil in one corner and went back to work.
I began to dig with the trowel, feeling like an expert now as I quickly but carefully removed dirt from around the skull, then worked my way down the vertebrae. I had uncovered a shoulder and upper arm when I heard footsteps rapidly nearing the tent. The flaps were swept aside and Raphaella stooped to get inside. She was panting.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her.
She fell to her knees and dropped a plastic supermarket bag beside the dug-out area. I heard cans knock together.
“I think those men are in the woods somewhere.” She picked up her trowel and began to scrape in the dirt.
“Where did you see them?”
“I didn’t. I sensed them.”
“Uh-oh.” A cold blade slid though my ribs.
We pressed on. The excavation wasn’t difficult, because the earth was loamy, but it took
time. We could have dug up the area with shovels and sifted the earth, like miners, but that seemed disrespectful.
“Do you feel it, too?” Raphaella said after a while.
“Yeah. They’re out there, all right. But we’re almost done.”
When we had uncovered the entire skeleton, we sat in the dirt for a moment and looked at Hannah’s remains. Her killers had buried her in the fetal position. Her legs were crossed at the ankles, her head rested on one hand. She looked almost peaceful.
But every major bone in her body — arms, legs, skull, four ribs, her pelvis — was broken.
“My god,” Raphaella moaned, “look what they did to her.”
R
everently, careful to leave nothing behind, we placed Hannah’s remains in the oaken box I had made, kneeling beside her in the dirt as we worked. I cleaned the pendant, rubbing it with a rag until it glowed. It was made of some charcoal-colored stone, not wood as I had first thought.
“I think Hannah would have liked you,” I said. “I’ll bet she’d want you to have this.”
“We’ve got a lot in common, I guess,” she replied, “but the pendant should stay with her.”
“Okay, if that’s —”
The voices interrupted me, that same angry background rumble, all talking at the same time, as if in dispute.
Raphaella moaned. “They’re here.”
I laid the pendant in the box and put on the
lid, using brass screws to secure it, fumbling with trembling hands.
“Done,” I squeaked nervously. “Let’s get out of here.”
“I don’t think they can hurt us physically,” Raphaella assured me, but she didn’t sound very confident.
I recalled the pockmarks on the back of the trailer, but said nothing.
When we emerged from the tent, it was twilight, and the smell of rain was in the air. The eight men were lined up along the fencerow, glaring in our direction, as if waiting for us. I saw them and saw through them. They were shades, but they were as frightening as any mob of real men, rough and strong looking in homespun shirts and worn overalls and heavy boots. They stood, silent now, and stared, not at me or the box that I held in my two hands, but at Raphaella.
“Stones,” someone whispered.
The wave of terror that struck me was almost physical. One of the men slowly lifted a stone from the wall.
“Get stones,” he said. One after another, the men obeyed.
“Raphaella, run!”
Raphaella sprinted toward the path and I turned to follow. A stone struck my elbow, knocking the box from my grip. I stooped to pick it up, hunching my shoulders, when another rock slammed into my back. I dashed into the trees, more stones thumping to the ground behind me.
It was awkward, running with a pack on my back and my hands full, and I knew I was moving too slowly to stay ahead of them for long. I pushed on, stumbling, my breath like fire in my chest. Where the land began to slope, the men caught up to me. The acrid stink of their sweat and the damp cold that seeped from them enveloped me. Oh, god, I thought, awaiting the crash of a rock on my skull. But they thundered past me, like a river flowing around a boulder. Panting and cursing, they left me in their wake, closing on Raphaella. She ran on, hair flowing behind her.
“They’re gaining on you!” I shouted. “Drop your pack!”
I tripped on a root and slammed into a tree at the side of the path. I fell to my knees, paralyzed and gasping.
Without slowing down, Raphaella shrugged off her pack and let it slide from her shoulders.
But as it fell it caught her heel. She pitched headlong to the ground and cried out, arms and legs flying as she rolled like a tossed doll down the slope and, with a splash, came to rest in the creek.
In an instant her pursuers were upon her. They encircled her to prevent escape, and each one, holding a stone in his two hands, raised it above his head. Unable to breathe or rise to my feet, I watched helplessly. It was as if, in that instant, we had all fallen back through time. A woman surrounded by violent men about to stone her to death and obliterate what they feared — her knowledge, her strength, her independence and a nameless quality, a something that they could never know or possess.
“No!” I shouted uselessly. “No, don’t!”
Raphaella did not cringe. She struggled onto all fours, then rose to her knees. Her shirt was torn, her hair a tangle of small sticks and leaves, her forehead scraped.
“Witch!”
In one quick motion, she took her ankh in one hand, pulled it over her head, dipped it into the creek and held it up. “By the power of water, I command you,” she said through clenched teeth.
A few of the men looked at one another and shuffled their feet, as if gathering strength.
“By the power of water, I command you!” Raphaella repeated, her voice stronger.
She bent and clutched a handful of damp dirt and held it out. “By the power of earth, I command you!”
As one, the men stepped back, lowering their arms.
Able to draw breath by then, I freed myself from the backpack and ran to Raphaella, breaking into the circle of men. They fell back in an uneven line at the edge of the stream. The stench was overpowering.
Raphaella rose slowly to her feet and, still holding her ankh in one hand, stepping carefully backward, pushed me across the creek. Her face was a mask of determination.
“Do you still have your matches?” she whispered, panting.
I dug the book of paper matches from my pocket.
“Get ready,” she said. Then, to the men, “By the power of air, I command you!”
I caught on. Opening the paper cover, I twisted a match from the book and pressed the head against the strike strip.
“By the power of fire, I command you! Go!”
My hand jerked. The tiny match burst into flame, sending off a sulphurous little cloud of black smoke. Dropping their stones, the men ran, dispersing like blown mist into the trees.
B
reath rasping in and out with the aftershock of fear, I began to brush away the bits of wood and leaves from Raphaella’s hair, willing myself not to think about what I had just witnessed. I pried the ankh from her grip and hung it around her neck.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
She straightened her soaking-wet clothing and touched the now bleeding scrape on her forehead. “I think so. What about you?”
“I’ll have a few bruises tomorrow. I thought we were in for it.”
“Me, too.”
“Wait here.”
To give myself time to think, I crossed the creek and walked back up the path, retrieving the box and our two backpacks. I helped
Raphaella into her pack, handed her the box, and slipped into mine.
“That was incredible,” I said, shaking my head. “How did you know what to do?”
“I didn’t. I was in the creek, soaking wet, and the idea just slipped into my mind. The four elements, water, earth, air and fire.
“You had them completely under your control.”
“Not really. The important thing is that
they
believed I had some sort of power.”
“Well,” I said, looking around the darkening forest, “it seemed to work.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever been so terrified.”
I took her hand, which was trembling almost as much as mine. “Let’s go,” I said.
By the time we got to the rail fence on the edge of the churchyard, a light rain had begun to fall. We retrieved our raincoats and a shovel from the van.
Nothing marked Jubal’s grave, but I had seen Hannah kneeling there, so I knew exactly where it was. The sod was as tough as leather, but beneath it the earth was easy to dig. I went
down about three feet, placed the box in the hole, and looked at Raphaella.
“No. There’s nothing we can say,” she assured me.
I buried the box and replaced the sod, stamping it into place firmly. The air warmed up noticeably. The grave was almost invisible. In a week, no one would be able to tell that someone had been digging there.
“Well,” I said, “they’re together again.”
Dirty and wet and sore, we headed toward the van. As we crossed the grassy churchyard, Raphaella put her arm around my shoulders.
“You know what?”
“What?” I asked.
“You are a good man, Garnet Havelock.”
W
ith school behind us, Raphaella and I were suddenly confronted with our futures. I had settled on what I wanted to do long before, and my plans to apprentice to Norbert Armstrong in Hillsdale were still firm. I was looking forward to it.
But with Raphaella, it was a different story. She was at loose ends. She had no plans for university or college because, with all the pressure from her mother, she hadn’t applied. She liked working in the theatre, but it wasn’t really a career option, especially as far as her mother was concerned. She could keep at it as a volunteer in community shows. She didn’t mind working in the Demeter, she said; she even liked it.
“But I can’t see myself growing old there, either,” she told me the day after we buried
Hannah. “Oh, it’s a mess. I can’t separate what I really want from the temptation to spite Mother.”
We had taken the aluminum fishing boat that Dad kept at a family friend’s boathouse and putted out to Horseshoe Island, lowered the anchor, and gone swimming. Afterwards we lay side by side on the bottom of the boat, looking up into a painfully blue sky, and talked as the lake gently rocked us.
