The Steward (2 page)

I snapped the handle of my hair brush just thinking about it. After another deep breath, I wrapped an elastic band around my fingers and pulled my long black curls through it to form a tight ponytail at the back of my head. The backpack, with flashlights, chalk, water, and a rope ladder, was still in the old cedar chest I kept locked at the foot of my bed.
Who am I kidding? It’s her bed
. The room had been my Great Aunt May’s bedroom until she became too weak to climb the stairs. Since our arrival two weeks ago, it served as my second story holding cell cleverly disguised as a bedroom—in a storybook cottage no less. Beyond the diamond-paned windows, the leafless trees and weathered bluffs of the Weald awaited me like the frozen exercise yard of some maximum-security prison.

They … them … my family, were gone today, attending some college basketball game in Fayetteville, a town about forty-five miles to the southwest. Life goes on—theirs at least. Aunt May had engineered their adventure to leave me alone for the morning … to give me time to complete the first of the elemental trials—the Earth trial, as she called it.

I liked her, even though she was a little odd—sort of a half-gypsy, half-hippie cross. Before we moved in with her, I’d only seen her in Florida. But she was always very kind, and my favorite family member. That’s not true, actually—my brother was my favorite. I adored Mitch. Except for the fact that he was annoyingly happy to live here, he was nearly perfect. An eight-year-old miniature version of my father—with Dad’s dark, leaf-green eyes, tawny hair, and irresistible dimples—he hasn’t really lived long enough to piss me off yet.

As if leaving my friends, my city, and my sanity behind wasn’t enough of a wrench in my gears, our move may have wrecked my best chance for a scholarship—swimming. I was a swimmer. And I was fast. I had won the state championships in Florida last year at the age of fifteen. I didn’t know what else I was, if anything, but in swimming I was an athlete. Of that I was certain—that I could count on. I wasn’t a tomboy, but neither was I much for girly things, despite that Girlie Girl was Aunt May’s nickname for me. Swimming was me—it had been my whole life.

Before we moved from Florida, I had several good friends—at least I thought as much, until they figured out we were broke. The snide comments about welfare and lazy parents revealed that only two of them were truly close friends. Lizbeth and Megan, my best friends, stood by me when the rest looked down their noses, and I hated leaving them. Their friendship was a cocoon that shielded me from the rest of the world. I had planned to stay there, close to them, and focus on swimming until I could emerge in three years as a college athlete, maybe even an Olympian. I had no idea, other than swimming, what I wanted to do with my life. Sometimes I felt like a loser when one of them talked about becoming a doctor or lawyer or whatever—I had no such ambitions. But I was happy there.

Florida was home. The other kids in Boca Raton didn’t matter—their barbs were harmless to me. I excelled in self-control, and because of that I was a star in the pool. It was a place where I could rely on myself, a place where I could focus on the only thing I really cared about without anyone letting me down.
Anyone.
It was a place where it didn’t matter that my mother was half-Cuban, or that my clothes were second-hand. But there was no swim team in Eureka Springs, no chance to win a scholarship, no daily escape.
Everything I ever wanted is gone.

Anger forced my eyes to mist up.
Enough of this!
I swung my arms over my head to loosen up, though my range of motion was limited under a t-shirt, two sweatshirts and an insulated coat. I tucked my ponytail under a knit cap and pulled it tight around my ears. Sweat already began beading up along my spine. Better to be safe than sorry. I had to cross a mile of forest to get to the bluffs that towered over the edge of the lake—and to the caves. I shuddered.

At forty-five degrees, it was warmer than it had been for the past two weeks. I nearly suffered frostbite when it snowed the first time.
God, I miss the sand and the sun and having feeling in my fingers.

The pit of my stomach felt more like a lead balloon as I crossed the wide wood-plank floor to the stairs.
Why am I doing this?

“Because of Aunt May, you dolt,” I reminded myself aloud. She needed me, and I had made a promise. Even though I didn’t have all of the facts at the time, I promised her that I’d go to the caves and take the Earth Trial. I have always tried to keep my promises—a moral lesson my parents taught me, and one of the few that stuck. I wasn’t a defiant person, but I wasn’t easy, either—apparently.

Two days after we unloaded the SUV, on January third, Aunt May sent my parents on errands to Fayetteville and began telling me about the
others
who lived on the Weald. The Weald—that was what everyone called this place. It was a 2,400-acre estate of unspoiled woods on the edge of Beaver Lake in the Ozark Mountains. Before New Year’s Day, I had never visited the Weald, despite that my father’s family has owned it since 1826. My father, David, never talked much about it, and until I overheard him discuss moving here with my mother, Elena, he never once suggested visiting it.

Because of that, I guess, I haven’t had the desire to see it myself. Being here, well, my instinct was right. In the dead of winter it was a cold, rough, formidable place with more leafless brown and gray trees than I’d ever imagined in my worst nightmares.
It’s true—my fear of the woods is second only to caves.
My latest nightmares seemed all too real, though, since I’d seen them with my eyes wide open.

I let go of the massive bronze handle on the front door and sat on the stairs, taking deep breaths to settle my racing heart. Justice, Aunt May’s black Standard Poodle, sprawled out in front of me on the stone floor of the foyer. He was going with me. I was absolutely not going into the woods alone—not ever again.

I knew I’d get through it, somehow, but fear still mingled with my thoughts. In the past, fear drove me, challenged me to beat it. When I was four, fear of the water drove me to learn to swim. After that lesson I never looked back. Dad said I was obstinate. It was true I suppose. This fear was different, though. Twice I’d seen a wolf in the Weald, and not one of the pretty ones on
National Geographic.
The one I saw was scarred and thin. It had hideous, foggy blue eyes and it … disappeared.
Both times.
Water, swimming, was easy. I could see the bottom of the pool. It never disappeared.

The second morning of our arrival to the Weald, I explored the mountain with Mitch despite nearly freezing to death in a puny windbreaker and struggling with a persistent runny nose. At the top, after following an old trail with stone stairs through the bluffs, I accidentally found the caretaker’s cottage—and the caretaker. The pockmarked old man with thin, creepy hair, deep lines, and cruel, cataract-filled blue eyes startled me. Chalen, he called himself, invited me to stay and look around the weed-choked gardens. He creeped me out, but when I attempted to leave he glared menacingly at me and
insisted
I stay.

That night I thought I saw him through my bedroom window, staring at me from the woods. When I blinked he vanished. Then, moments before I saw the wolf for the first time, I saw Chalen again, watching me from atop a bluff. He didn’t smile—he just stared, sending chills down my spine. Something else in the woods terrified me even more, though: the sensation of being watched, of unseen eyes tracking my every move. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something deep in the shadows, hidden behind the trees, wanted me to leave this place. My gut told me that whatever it was would hurt me if I stayed.

As I stared nervously at the front door, sweat ran down my forehead and my t-shirt felt soaked against my skin. My fingers fumbled with the zipper on my new coat.
Air—I need air.

Justice lifted his big head off the floor and wagged his tail, stirred by my sudden movements. But after losing interest in watching me hyperventilate, he put his head back down and waited for me to finally open the door.

He had been with me when I met Chalen. He even growled when Chalen moved closer to me after I said that I had to take Mitch back to the cottage and couldn’t stay.
Then there was the Voice.
When Chalen became hostile, I heard a woman’s voice in my head telling me to leave. It was clear and distinct. So when a small Blue Jay began dive-bombing Chalen repeatedly, I used the distraction to make a hasty retreat. It all seemed surreal at the time.
If I could find that bird, I’d take it and Justice with me to the cave.

Sitting on the stairs, refusing to even touch the front door, I grew angry with myself—angry that I continued to put off the inevitable. I’ve been angry a lot lately—not at all my usual self. I’ve always hidden my emotions, bottling them up just like my father did. I’ve even managed to keep my emotions in check for the last few days—difficult to say the least. But that was before the reality of my promise set in. I thought about the meaning of that day, and why the things that Aunt May had said compelled me to head out that door, into the woods, with Justice.

The day after my run-in with Chalen, Aunt May had been fidgety, even nervous, and asked me to stay with her while my parents were gone. It seemed like a good idea at the time. The last thing I wanted to do was spend the day in the tight confines of the SUV with my parents.
No one deserves that.

I stood, staring at the heavy wood front door, and zipped my coat back up.
I’ve really got to just do this. Oh, god.

It wasn’t that I believed Aunt May, but after the last two weeks I didn’t disbelieve her, either. That morning, after my parents left, Aunt May had hobbled on her cane back to the kitchen and asked me if I wouldn’t mind talking with her over tea. Darjeeling. While she clanked around in the enormous room, filling a copper kettle with water, she talked about brewing tea properly. I didn’t see the point, really—I preferred to nuke a teabag and call it good enough. I watched her, though, and listened. She seemed to need that most.

Aunt May settled into one of the large leather armchairs in the keeping room, stoked the fire, and then set the trap—the one that had me quivering at the front door. She stared for a minute at the gold-orange glow of the embers, at the flames dancing around the edges of the charred logs, before she spoke in her thick Ozark accent. “Maggie, ya seem ta be strugglin’ with the move more’n the rest of yer family.”

She was right, of course, and it embarrassed me that she noticed. As I brought the tray holding the tea set and cups to the table nearest Aunt May’s chair, I told her that I was happy in Florida. I said that it was nothing against her, but I didn’t want to leave.

“I know ya were happy.” She leaned forward and placed a tiny strainer over my cup before pulling the infuser out. “Don’t wanna over-steep the tea.” She let it finish dripping into the pot for a few seconds before she placed it on a saucer. “Looks perfect.” She then poured a stream of hot brown liquid into each cup, filling the room with a rich, woody aroma. “I hate ta see ya sad, Maggie, but I don’t hate that yer here.” She smiled, but her lower lids were pushed up, punctuating her brown eyes with wide crow’s feet that matched the deep furrow pressed into the wrinkled skin above her nose.

Though typically carefree, telling one story after another, the worry that deformed her face was a telltale sign that things were about to go badly—one that I didn’t recognize at the time. Instead, I assured her that I was fine, that I just needed some time to adjust to Arkansas. She assured me in return that I’d make a lot of new friends. “Yer funny, pretty, and smart—that’s the triad of popularity right there,” she said.

“Ya trust me?” she asked next.

I remember nodding.

“Unquestionably?” She asked, grinning, just showing her teeth while pulling back a handful of crazy gray-black hair from her forehead.

“Unequivocally!” I countered, managing a smile.

Aunt May feigned a stern look and glanced over her glasses at me for a moment. She removed the strainers and poured a little stream of cream in each cup. After adding two sugar cubes, she lifted her cup and saucer to her lap and stirred it slowly. I did the same and took a sip.

“Okay, this
is
the best tea I’ve ever had,” I admitted.

“I’m glad ya like it. Ya know I wouldn’t intentionally lead ya astray,” she said. A deep furrow once again formed just above her nose, and she flexed the fingers on her free hand before rolling them into a tight fist.

“Aunt May, what is it? Please, you can tell me.”

I had spoken those words with the best intentions, but with my journey across the woods and into the cave awaiting on the other side of the front door, the cold side, I wished I could take them back.

“I know I can, Girlie Girl. I’m just not sure how,” she had said.

Her smile turned to a slight frown that deepened the lines around her mouth. “I’m afraid you
had
to come here, Maggie. There really wasn’t any choice. I’m also afraid it’s completely unfair to you—more unfair to you than to anyone else.” All the typical inflections in her speech were subdued—she held them at bay.

“How so?” I finally asked.

“Because I’m about ta ask a lot-a ya. I’m about to ask ya ta do somethin’ that, by all appearances, ya won’t wanna do. That’s how,” she said, her inflections returning. May took another sip of her tea and looked back at the fire. “Ya prob’ly guessed that I’m not doin’ so hot?”

She caught me off guard with that one. So I did what I imagined most people do when someone older talks about dying … I denied the obvious and deflected. “Aunt May, I think you’re going to be around for a long time, especially now that we’re here to help you.”

She smiled. The flames caused the shadow of her glasses to dance on her cheek. “I’m optimistic that I got some time left, though ain’t sure how much. But that’s not really my point, Maggie. I’ve had a long, wonderful life. I had a fantastic husband for thirty years an’, while I didn’t have’m as long as I’d have liked, I had a beautiful boy, too. A great life—and I’m not gonna lament on how near the end of it I may’r may not be.” She turned to look at me. “Fact is, I need ya ta do somethin’ for me, Maggie.”