The Story Keeper (16 page)

~

Rand had doubled in on himself and begun to bolt before he comprehended that the sound was natural rather than man-made. They had reached the river’s edge, but the snow had begun to fall in earnest, dimming the afternoon light and casting the mountains into shadow. Laden with autumn leaves and the new cache of snow, the trees moaned like lost souls, the occasional splitting of wood and falling of branches creating a sound not unlike the crack of a rifle shot and the reverberation of exploding powder.

No one would pursue them in this weather. There was no small hazard to traveling beneath the trees now, but in truth it was the bone-shattering cold that stole his attention from all else. Inside his boots, his feet were wet, numb, raw, burning and tingling with each
step. He imagined what Sarra must be suffering in her homemade ankle-high moccasins. But she remained stark and stiff ahead. She’d not spoken to him since morning. Eventually, he cared little one way or the other. He’d wrapped his head and shoulders in his bedroll, unable to do anything but bend to the icy wind and follow the tracks she left behind.

It was he who first heard a lamb’s prattle during a break in the wind
 
—he who first looked up and saw the squat roof of a lean-to cabin on the opposite river shore, the curls of smoke from its chimney sifting away in the driving wind, so that neither he nor Sarra had smelled it.

Thank God,
he thought.
Thank God!
He’d begun to wonder, only to himself, if in spite of all they’d survived, this was how they would go
 
—frozen solid in the storm. Nothing to do with Jep and his men after all.

He forced his heavy legs to step up, to catch her, and he tugged the makeshift pack she’d created from one of her blankets. Her hair fell ice-tipped over his fingers as he pointed to the cabin on the far bank, then hurried to the shore to seek a means of crossing the water without further soaking his feet. A fallen log, lying top bank to top bank, offered a rickety bridge, and he shinnied over with his legs dangling on either side, rather than trust himself to balance on numb feet.

Sarra met him on the other shore, having clearly been there some time. He occasioned a quick remembrance of Revi’s talk about Melungeons and the witching of forest spirits, which he quickly
brushed away. Of course she’d not flown over the water but traversed it by some other means.

She hung back in the brush, he noticed as he stumbled up a small knoll, made more miserable, weary, and uncomfortable by the prospect of shelter and a warm fire not far away. He was quite certain he caught the scent of something cooking.

The bleating lamb was being dragged by a young girl in a dark wool cloak. She spied him before he could speak and ran to the house. Soon, a haggard-looking woman hurried from the door pointing a rifle in Rand’s direction, her gray hair flying loose in the wind.

“Keep ye right ’ere.” Her sharp drawl was barely recognizable as English. “Why ye come up’n here?”

He lifted his hands carefully, opening the blanket, allowing the wind to slice mercilessly in. “Seeking food and a place to shelter for the night. I’ve lost my mount and saddle several days ago, up the mountain. I can pay you.” The last statement gained her attention. He had expected that it would. Offers of actual coin were rare in these parts.

She lowered the rifle a bit but didn’t speak. From the porch, two half-grown red-haired girls watched him, now sharing the cloak.

“We need your help,” he said in hopes of convincing the woman. “We mean no harm to anyone.”

She peered suspiciously past him toward the brush. “Who ye got back ’ere? What’cha be hidin’?”

Too late, he realized his mistake. She suspected ambush. “No one but my traveling companion. A girl. We are only seeking shelter.” He
called for Sarra to show herself, and she did slowly, timidly leaving a snow-sugared growth of sapling pine.

The woman studied her, narrow-eyed. “Ye come nearish, gal. Up’n here a’side yer man.”

Sarra did as she was asked, and the woman’s chin rose as if she’d scented something foul. She returned her attention to Rand, circled the rifle barrel in his direction. “I’ll sup ye, if’n ye pay fer it, but not her. Ain’t havin’ her kind round ’ere.”

“For the love of God, woman. We’re half-frozen to death.”

“Said I ain’t a-havin’ her devil kind.” The unmistakable cock of the rifle returned his attention to the woman. “Town a Three Forks be ten mile downwater. Take ’er there.”

“We’ll never survive ten more miles in this storm. Night will catch us before then.” He’d been avoiding thinking of that grim reality
 
—of how they’d fare, wet and bedraggled as they were
 
—when the temperatures dropped and darkness came.

“Town be ten mile downwater. Bes’ git a-walkin’, ain’t ye?”

“Have you at least a mount I might purchase? And food?”

“Not fer her. Her witchin’ hand not be touched to nothin’ a’ our’n. Be off with ye now.” She advanced a step, her finger twitching on the trigger, leaving him no option but to retreat, and Sarra with him. Not until they’d cleared the brush and stumbled some distance downriver did he catch his breath and cease expecting a bullet in the back.

“Sarra,” he said finally. “Sarra, stop. I need a moment to think.” His mind had turned back to the cabin, entertaining an idea that would have seemed unconscionable scant days before. There was the
pistol in his pack. Perhaps he should circle back and take what they needed by force. Their very lives depended on it. Were there others in the cabin? A man? What might they be facing if they attempted this course?

What if he were forced to fire in defense? There were the little girls to consider. Mere innocents. He couldn’t risk injuring them. . . .

What now? What next? How could he preserve both Sarra’s life and his own?

She turned to him, her lips wind-chapped, cracked and bloodied, pressed tightly together to hide trembling, her eyes silver-pooled at the corners, her body quaking.

“Sarra,” he said softly, reaching for her.

She pulled away, turning her shoulder and curling into herself, into the shelter of the brush rather than what protection his body could offer.

“Don’t despair.” He reached for her again, but a sound from the hill overhead stopped him. A soft, human sound. From behind an ancient, gnarled hickory, the girl in the wool cloak beckoned, a shaft of light catching the escaped curls of her red hair, causing her to appear almost otherworldly, so that he wondered if hypothermic hallucinations had descended upon him and death might be nearer than he’d thought.

He checked Sarra, noted that she was watching as well. The girl motioned them to come to her.
Perhaps,
he thought,
the woman in the house has seen reason after all.
He climbed the hill, following the girl, who did not speak but remained always some distance ahead, checking now and again to be certain they followed. Her face, circled
by the hood, held the sweetness of an angel. She led them not toward the cabin, but farther up the slope, where she vanished among a nest of boulders, then reappeared atop one.

Turning to Sarra, Rand grabbed her before she could move away. “Stay here.”

She shook her head and for the first time touched him willingly. “No.” Her eyes were wide, fearful.

“Wait for me,” he ordered more firmly.

She didn’t, of course. He’d not moved far before he heard her behind him. They climbed the rocks in tandem and emerged along a ledge where an outcropping provided a providence he’d almost lost hope of. Shelter. Deep, dry, protected from both snow and wind. Standing in the center, the child smiled at him, then produced from beneath her cloak both a bundle of dry tinder and a poke fashioned of tow sack fabric. It fell open as she dropped it, revealing foodstuffs.

“Thank you,” he breathed and wondered again if perhaps he were collapsed along the trail, his blood slowly running thick and ceasing, his mind only conjuring. “Your name. What is your name?” Until his dying day, he would commit this forest child, this tiny savior, to his prayers.

She uttered a guttural sound, made a motion that gave him to know she was mute, yet acute of mind.

Her lips formed an impish twist, and then she turned and was gone.

Together, he and Sarra descended upon the poke, ravenous for the potatoes, leeks, and goat cheese that had undoubtedly been spirited from root cellar stores somewhere near the house.

When he’d dropped the final bit in his mouth
 
—he’d saved a bite of the goat cheese to enjoy last
 
—he sat back on his heels and found Sarra licking her frost-cracked lips.

“Guess’n we’d best get us a fire,” she said cheerfully, and for the first time since their acquaintance, she smiled. The shy, uncertain gesture surprised Rand, and he found himself smiling in return. Though his own face was wind-blistered and it should have been uncomfortable, he felt nothing but a sudden rush of warmth through his body, a draining of desperation and an inpouring of blessing.

“Guess we’d better.”

I paused at the end of the chapter, letting my mind rise from the frigid mountain. On the lake outside the cabin, a loon called, the sound thin and threadlike in the cool, smoky air, lending to the illusion that story and reality were one.

Friday had parked himself in a chair by the window. Lifting his head, he turned slowly toward the glass and growled. Uneasiness brushed over my skin, though I couldn’t say why.

My cell phone vibrated as I was contemplating heating the chai tea I’d brought from town. When I answered, Jamie was breathless on the other end. “I’ve been going crazy! You should never text me something like that when I’m tied up and can’t answer. You
know
I’ve been stuck in the bridal bizarre all day, and if I’m on my phone, my sister will have a fit. She wants my
full
attention. Ish! So you found more of it again this evening? More of the mysterious, marvelous manuscript? Did you find the
man
to go with the
man
uscript, by any chance?”

Jamie’s rapid-fire questions were a strangely abrupt transition back to the real world. “Okay, wait, take a breath over there and I’ll give you the details.” I checked the clock. Only nine, though it seemed like it should’ve been later. I filled Jamie in on the latest installment of
The Story Keeper
. “I still have more of it to read.”

“Well . . . but who’s bringing it? And why this way? Why all the cloak-and-dagger drama?”

“I have no idea. To tell you the truth, it’s starting to spook me a little, but I
love
the story. It’s fascinating.”

“Maybe Evan Hall himself is behind all this. Have you thought of that angle? Maybe it’s some sort of ploy to . . . drive up the price? No . . . I guess that doesn’t make much sense. The man does have gold fingers, after all. He can pretty much get whatever he wants for anything he’d dump on the market. All he’d have to do is put the manuscript up for auction. He’d have every house in New York jumping on it. . . .” Jamie paused to search for further alternatives.

“Yes, I know.”

“Maybe he’s just . . . like . . . enjoying the chase. Yanking your chain a little. Based on some of the press, I get the impression he’s not the most . . . normal kind of guy.”

“He seemed normal enough. Hostile. But normal.”

“Wait. Hold the phone. You
talked
to him? When? Where? How?”

“Yes, I did.” Just thinking back to this afternoon made my blood simmer and then boil. The simmer came from the moments by the goat trailer, when everything had been pleasant and friendly. The boil came from the cold-eyed accusation that I would use two old women and a little girl to get what I wanted.

While filling Jamie in on the details, I grabbed yesterday’s
leftover nachos and heated them up. Friday came along to the kitchen to let me know he had no problem with leftovers, especially nachos. He whimper-growled and shot accusing looks my way until I shared.

“Needless to say
 
—” I reached into the freezer for the half gallon of Moose Tracks ice cream I’d broken down and purchased after hanging around town, unsuccessfully trying to catch Helen Hall and explain why I’d abandoned her on the mountain
 
—“negotiations broke down in the most gruesome of ways. So here I am now with another new chunk of the manuscript, but once again, no answers. Oh . . . and I’ve permanently alienated the guy I was supposed to be warming up. This just keeps getting more and more bizarre. I’m worried that I’ve made the biggest mistake of my life by pursuing this thing.”

Jamie’s end of the phone buzzed with uncharacteristically dead air. “I should’ve nixed my sister’s shopping weekend and come with you. Listen, I could still grab a flight tomorrow, take some time off work, and
 
—”

I didn’t wait for the rest. “No, Jamie, this may take a few days, and you don’t need to be away from work, especially with the situation at the magazine right now.”

As much as company
 
—or confirmation for all the strange things that had happened so far
 
—would’ve been nice, I couldn’t have Jamie along for any number of reasons, not the least of those being the letter from my sister. With my mission here seemingly falling apart, I couldn’t put off the visit to Lane’s Hill any longer. Tomorrow I’d have to confront Coral Rebecca, face to face. “Besides, I’m starting to feel like I’m off down a goat trail, anyway. No reason for both of us to waste our time.”