remained of the head was unlike anything Jeb had ever seen. Like the rest of its body, the monster's head appeared to have been deflated, like a balloon, black rotting skin hanging loosely off an interior frame of bone, but even in this ruined shape, he could see that there was hair where there should not have been, eyes and nose that should not have been on any living creature, and far, far too many teeth. Long teeth. Pointed teeth.
The very air here felt heavy, and Jeb turned toward William. 'What do you think it is?' he asked, his voice hushed.
William shook his head, not taking his eyes off the monster. He bent forward to look more closely.
Jeb shivered. The canyon seemed suddenly far too small, far too narrow, and he looked up at the top of the rock walls
to see if there were any more of these creatures about. He didn't feel the presence of anything else here, but he did not trust his own instincts, and he glanced both up and down the canyon.
'It didn't die naturally,' William said. 'Something killed it. It looks like its insides were eaten out. Or sucked out through this hole at the top of the back.'
'What could kill something like this?'
William looked at him. 'I don't think we want to know.' Jeb wanted to get out of the mountains immediately, but though it was a small range, there was no way they could make it through before tomorrow or the day after, and they were forced to set up camp on a flattened ridge. At least they were out of the canyon. He would have rather walked through the night and taken his chances with the cliffs and the darkness than sleep in that cursed place.
Whatever could bring down a monster like that could have them for dessert, but they both wove protective spells around the camp and decided to take turns standing watch for the night, prepared to either flee or right at the first sign of anything unusual.
Jeb's watch was first, but he saw nothing, heard nothing, and, though he kept his senses wide open, felt nothing. The horse, too, seemed calm. As far as he could tell, they were alone in this place, and he hoped that it remained that way. At least until morning.
He woke William when the moon was halfway across the sky, and the two of them switched places. He knew he had to rest for the grueling trek tomorrow, but he was not at all tired and was not sure he would be able to sleep.
He was out almost immediately after his head hit the saddlebag.
He dreamed of a town in which all of the houses were identical and where at sunset a dwarf roamed the community, placing metal spoons on the porches of those who would
die before dawn. He was living in one of the houses and was awakened in the middle of the night by a mysterious sound and went outside to investigate. But when he walked onto the porch, he felt something cold and hard touch his toes, heard a clattering noise. He looked down to see that he'd accidentally kicked a rusted metal spoon off the porch.
There was a snickering from the bushes, and when he looked more closely, he saw the face of a dwarf grinning evilly up at him.
He awoke in the morning feeling urtrested. William had already conjured a fire and was making coffee with some muddy water he'd found in a barely trickling creek a little farther along the trail. They drank their breakfast, packed up, and set out, both of them wanting to escape from these mountains as quickly as possible.
They did not speak much that day, or that night when they camped in a narrow ravine between two tall cliffs. It was as if a spell had been cast on them, even though they had carefully protected themselves.
The next day they left the mountains and it felt to Jeb as though he had awakened from a bad dream. The feelings that had been following him faded, and even the memory of the monster seemed not as sharp. He recognized the sensation. It was the exhilaration one felt after averting disaster. He had guiltily experienced a variation of it upon escaping Lynchburg and avoiding his father's fate, and he knew that this sudden lifting of dread was due not to any magic but to simple human emotion.
They'd had two days to think about what they'd come across back in the canyon, and while he himself had not been able to piece together any solutions, William struck him as a more pensive sort, a deep thinker, and he turned toward his newfound friend. 'What do you. think killed that monster?' he asked
William shook his head, and Jeb understood that he did not want to talk about it. That was fine with him.
The landscape flattened out, and on this side of the mountains it seemed far less desolate. There were trees here. Bushes and grass.
There were still no signs of people, not even Indians, but other signs of life greeted them--birds circling in the sky, squirrels scampering along the ground, the: far-off roar of bear. Though this was still uncharted territory, they felt as thgugh they were easing back into the known world.
Their self-imposed silence ended as well, and they began to talk again.
They spoke of places they'd been, sights they'd seen along the way. Jeb had no destination, was not heading anywhere in particular, but William seemed to know where he wanted to go; his new friend had some sort of plan or specific intent.
He asked William. 'Where are we headed?'
'South.'
'I mean, where in particular?'
'Where were you headed when we met?'
Jeb shrugged. 'No place.'
William nodded. 'l'hat is the trouble with our kind, isn't it? We're never heading to something, we're always heading away from something.'
'We have no choice. That's the way things are.' William was silent for a moment. 'There are other persecuted people,' he said finally.
'People who have made a fresh start here in the West, who have built their own communities, away from everyone else, where no one bothers them. I've been thinking for some time that we could do the same. This is a land of opportunity because it is new and ' open, ready to be molded into whatever shape its settlers choose. It is not bound by the models of the past. It does
' ' not have to conform to any preexisting notion of what society should be. And it is big enough to support all.'
Jeb suddenly understood what he was getting at. 'A... town?' he said incredulously. 'You're talking about a town of witches?'
'Why not? There is going to be an entire Mormon Territory Why not at least a town for us?' Smiling, he sidled next to his horse and withdrew from the saddlebag a letter, imprinted with the seal of the government of the United
States. 'Tve already written to Washington, and Fenton
Barnes, the man to whom I wrote, has talked to the president about my idea.' 'The president? Of the country?'
'The government is worried that the violence out here will scare people away, worried that Mexico will be able to exploit this country's divisions to its advantage. A lot of that violence is directed at us, at the Mormons, at those who are. different, and if they can keep us separated from the rest of the population by giving us our own lands, and thus retain at least the appearance of national unity...' He shrugged. 'Well, they think it's worth it.'
'So what does that mean? They're going to give us land in order to start our own town?'
William nodded. 'Yes. Our own town, with our own local government and local laws. We'll be a recognized community, sanctioned by the federal government, segregated and protected by presidential order from the type of persecution we have faced in the past.' He smiled, passed Jeb the letter. 'here is the authorization for me to take possession of the land in the name of our people.'
'Where is it?' Jeb asked. 'Where is this place?'
William looked at him. 'In Arizona Territory. A place i called Wolf Canyon
