The Wolf Tree (9 page)

“You have pushed yourself too far,” Jolie said midafternoon. They had been walking all day and the weather was warm. Conker had stumbled many times on the rocky trail along the north side of the creek.

“Just a little further.” Conker got up on one knee but collapsed back again, panting.

Jolie sighed. “Rest, while I look for food.”

Conker acceded with a frown.

Jolie had not been gone for more than half an hour when she returned with a harvest of Indian cucumber, sheep sorrel, and a pheasant. Where was Conker? Looking around curiously, she began to call but a hand clamped over her mouth.

“Don’t say nothing.”

Jolie dropped the food as she was pulled down to her knees. Conker released her and put his finger to his lips to whisper, “Quiet. There’s men on the other bank.”

Jolie heard the voices. She pulled the conch shell knife from her belt, as Conker pointed through the leaves.

A man with a dense black beard on a horse splashed down into the creek, his eyes searching their side of the bank and a stagecoach gun squared across the horse’s shoulders.

“Alston!” another voice called from the forest on the other side of the creek. “Come on.”

“Something moving over here,” the man mumbled, squinting and swinging the gun around in Jolie and Conker’s direction.

Two other men on horseback emerged on the far bank: one a filthy young man with longish blond hair and a pair of pistols at his belt, the other a neatly dressed black man with a tall, crisp hat on his head.

The black man spoke. “We’ll have time for shooting dinner later. I want to get there tonight, even if we push on through dark.”

Alston crossed a little deeper, the water splashing up onto his boots and pants legs.

The black man drew a long-barreled pistol from his jacket and cocked the lever. The gun erupted. Alston ducked and a bullet whizzed through the leaves past Jolie and Conker. His horse reared in alarm. “You hear me or do I have to send John Hardy here in to fish your body out of that creek?”

Alston grumbled, scratching at the nest on his face and turning back. “I’m hungry, Stacker.”

“You’ll eat when I say. Let’s move.”

Alston holstered the shotgun in the saddle and joined the other two on the bank with one last gaze back toward the far bank.

Jolie and Conker lay crouched in the underbrush for a long time after the men had moved on up the creek. Jolie’s eyes were still narrowed as she watched the direction they had gone.

“It’s okay,” Conker assured Jolie. “They’re bandits, but at least they’re headed the other direction.”

“They are headed toward the well!”

“How would they know about your well? Besides, it’s protected, right?”

Jolie stood and offered her hand to Conker. “You are right. But let us travel a little farther before we stop for a meal.”

6
THE ELEMENTAL ROSE

Q
UIET DAYS RETURNED TO
S
HUCKSTACK
. N
EL’S
eighty-first birthday celebration was past. The terror of the dying man from Kansas was fading into memory. Ray and Marisol had left with the Everetts, catching a ride on the
Ballyhoo
as far as St. Louis. And Sally was working with the other children of Shuckstack on the chores that encompassed their everyday routines.

With Mattias off with Dmitry hunting for game in the mountains, Sally had recruited Rosemary to help plant the seeds that would bring up kale and onions and radishes and other early spring vegetables. The girls sang songs and talked about the party as they worked with the hoes.

“What do you think of Noah’s scarecrow?” Oliver called as he came around the barn.

Sally and Rosemary turned and leaned against the hoes.
Oliver held the scarecrow’s sack head, while little Noah carried the post protruding from the feet. He had a proud tilt to his chin as he helped Oliver tilt the scarecrow upright.

“Is that my blouse?” Rosemary asked.

“It was in the pile of patches in Marisol’s room,” Noah said. “Thought you outgrowed it?”

“That’s fine,” Rosemary said. “Looks better on your scarecrow anyway.”

“He looks lovely,” Sally said, waving a hand to the mismatch of worn-out clothes covering the scarecrow’s lumpy body. “You know, I sat on my straw hat and now it’s got a hole in it. You can use it if you want.”

“Where is it?” Noah said, letting go of the scarecrow and surprising Oliver as the tall straw man tumbled on top of him.

Sally laughed. “Under my bed. Go get it.”

Noah set off running, his brogans slapping on the wet mud where the last snow had recently melted. He nearly knocked Buck and Si from the steps as he dashed up.

“Slow it!” Buck barked, grasping the railing.

Noah sprinted past calling out, “Okay, Buck. Excuse me, Si.”

Sally was about to return to hoeing when she saw Buck and Si go over to Carolyn. She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but in a moment the two passed by the garden plot, heading for the trail.

Si’s black braid hung tight and sleek across her shoulder, and she wore a bulging haversack. Her eyes were still darkly rimmed, but she seemed to be recovering from her injury.
Buck clamped his wide-brimmed cowboy hat over his rowdy black-and-silver hair. He hoisted a pair of waterskins over his shoulder and adjusted them to rest behind his holstered pistols.

“Where are you going?” Sally asked.

Buck kept walking, but Si stopped. “We’ll be up at the Clingman’s Dome for a few days.”

“You’re seeing Mother Salagi?” Sally asked curiously.

“Carolyn’s in charge,” Buck said. “She’s the oldest.”

“What about Mister Nel?” Rosemary asked.

“Leave Nel be,” Buck grunted over his shoulder as he continued toward the trail. “He’s got tonics to make to trade for a new wagon.”

Si began following him. “Don’t cause any trouble.”

“We don’t cause trouble,” Sally said with a huff.

“Don’t let Noah and George cause trouble,” Si said. “We’ll be back within the week.”

Sally watched them go. As she returned to the garden, her eyes followed a circle around the yard. All the children were busy with tasks: Felice and Naomi hanging up laundry, Dale and Adam cleaning out the chicken coop, Carolyn boiling lye and bear fat in a big cauldron for soap, Preston and George carrying in wood to the kitchen stove and the fireplaces.

“Why’s Si and Buck always thinking we’re going to make trouble when they’re away?” Sally grumbled to Rosemary.

“We can handle things without them, can’t we?” Rosemary said, scattering seeds over the damp earth.

Sally brought her hoe back to the soil with a quick swipe. “They keep us too busy to do anything we want to do.”

Rosemary laughed. “You just want to get back to your room so you can read that book from your pa.”

Sally frowned as she brought the hoe down again and again.

When supper was over and the dishes were washed, Sally sprinted up to her corner of the loft and lit a candle.

She set the candle on the windowsill and pulled her chair close to it. With
The Incunabula of Wandering
in her lap, she opened the book and the page fell to the Verse of the Lost. She had not had a chance to read it again since Ray had left. The poem mentioned the Elemental Rose, whatever that was. It would not normally have made her curious. The
Incunabula
was filled with strange references: the Haymaker’s Flute, the Toninyan, Marse Turnage’s Due, and all manner of bizarre names.

But the Elemental Rose. Why had Father needed it? Sally tilted the book to the candlelight and began reading it once more:

In the margin, Sally saw her father’s scrawling script.
The lost will be restored
. She looked up at the cobweb-cornered ceiling, thinking hard.

What was lost? she wondered. Her eyes drew up to the fifth line. “Lost is the potent passage.”

She knew vocabulary well enough, and
potent
meant “powerful.” What’s a “potent passage” mean? She blinked hard with the inkling of an idea forming.

A passage. Like a path someone follows. Like the Rambler path. Potent passage. Yes, she thought. Being a Rambler is like following a path of power! What if the lines were like this, some hidden meaning if she could just unravel the words?

She pulled the book closer, her eyes boring into the first two lines. “Storms of winter. Coming of night.” She said the lines over and over under her breath. Winter storms sounded bad, she thought. And night could be a scary time.

She kept reading. “Memories shall be harvested….” Harvested, she thought. “Harvested” was like collecting crops. But
harvest
also meant to take something away, didn’t it?

The meaning came to her, like several pieces in a puzzle suddenly taking shape. Ray had said that their father’s memory of his Rambler powers had been taken from him. Harvested. And the attack by the Hoarhound that had severed his hand, that had to be scary, something awful like a winter storm striking at night.

And wasn’t the Hound what caused her father to lose his Rambler powers, what had kept him from returning to her and Ray? He had lost his “potent passage.”

She read once more the sixth and seventh lines. She had no idea what the poem meant by a stick of yew, but “forsaking the wanderer’s compass” … A compass guides you. Her father’s Rambler powers guided him. So maybe she didn’t need to figure out what the stick of yew meant. They all were just saying basically the same thing. They were talking about the Rambler’s powers being taken away.

She was getting it!

Sally read the ninth and tenth lines. “Vessels,” she murmured. That’s like a cup or something, she decided. She wasn’t sure what it meant by gold and silver, or placing four of something, but “the taken,” that had to mean the lost powers again. “Sealed,” she mused. “Sealed in gold or silver vessels….”

Her father’s golden rabbit’s foot.

Nel’s silver fox paw.

Were they vessels? she wondered. Did they hold something? But of course they did. Her father’s powers. What if his powers were trapped in the golden rabbit’s foot she was now keeping safe for Ray?

Was she understanding this right? If she placed these four things—whatever they were—it would create the Elemental Rose. And the Elemental Rose could restore the lost … the lost Rambler powers. Was this what the poem was saying? Could his powers be restored?

She leaped up from her chair, pacing before the candle with the
Incunabula
in her hands.

She scanned the last lines. She did not know what it meant by restoration exacting a cost. Maybe there was something you had to give up to make the Elemental Rose. But the final line:
As the vessel can be made a beacon for the lost
.

Yes, the vessel, her father’s hand. It had been a beacon for Ray. It had led him to her father. Maybe the cost was losing the lodestone’s powers. Either way, she was certain now. The Verse of the Lost was talking about her father losing his powers. And for that matter, Nel’s powers as well …

She gasped as she lowered the
Incunabula
.

If Nel had his leg back, his powers would be returned. If he was a Rambler again, he could cross into the Gloaming. He could destroy the Machine. Ray could come back, and he wouldn’t be in any danger from the Darkness in Kansas. Maybe then Nel could help find their father.

Voices echoed from the stairs as the children came up, calling out “Good night” to Nel. Sally knelt to push the
Incunabula
under her bed.