even to the back-arching death crane of the neck, with feather remnants and side-looking, traffic-polished skull intact. A rut, as if made by the last iron-wheeled horse wagon. A wood handled screwdriver. A brick peeking out, revealing a stamped date of 1908. A pair of smashed tortoiseshell eyeglasses caught in the black amber.
The late-blooming eighth-grader that still lived inside her had been on these streets before. It was a school trip remembered chiefly for ditching the chaperones and kissing Jimmy Friedlander, while the Police sang in the background.
That fall her dad would die in the Topanga fire and she would never really graduate to the ninth grade.
As she approached 92nd Street, the sidewalk featured an array of buskers. A black man picked out Louisville-style blues with Dobro and bottleneck. She dropped a dollar in his hat and he picked her a special lick. A group of rappers, bearing wireless mikes working through tinny little amps, accosted the crowd with earnest sexual lyrics acapella. Then there was a sandwich board sign that had somehow captured and enslaved a shoeless human who looked like the unshaven, older brother of the creeker in Topanga. The front board said:
And on the back:
The next few blocks were strangely quiet, almost empty. Cadence glimpsed New Jersey to her left, down a long street corridor. Her sneakers squeaked. She slowed to a sputtering walk and sorted once more through jumbled pieces of this puzzle.
At the top of the pile was her grandfather. Much was left to do — getting to know him, for one.
Don’t they say that the trauma of great loss has aftershocks that can come back years later? Unresolved good-byes, I-wishes, and if-onlys are the bread-and-butter regrets that always resurface. They are like errant locomotives sent off full-throttle into the trackless interior of the heart, that somehow find a turntable and now are heading back into town.
No discovery is complete unto itself, and she could not turn her back on the final question.
A rational person, like her mom, or Cadence as Cadence used to think she was, would see this clearly. There was not even a high-class mystery here — forget the fairy tale dust about trying to save a heroine. This was echoed by a cracked, gravelly voice, as if Burgess Meredith was in her head reprising a corrupt, cigar-chomping manager, telling her
She took another step.
At West 100th Street, she passed a shuttered McDonald’s that had been an infamous “Smackdonalds” in the 1970s. As Osley, her grandfather had talked about it as if he had been one of the regulars. More dollars were generated in horse than burgers. Dealers were always loitering out front while a stream of noddies queued to buy. Piss and barf smells clung to the perimeter, and it wasn’t much better inside. Supposedly Ronald visited once, all suited up in clown garb. He was a narc.
She kept running.
The extra-sensory perception of being stalked once fell into the camp of old wives’ tales and superstition. It has of late been resurrected for study by serious science, and with good reason. Perhaps it results from an aggregation of subtle clues that trips some primitive wire in our brains.
By West 104th Street, the tripwire had been snagged, and Cadence felt the queasy certainty of being followed. Her juju feeling reverberated like a drum circle. She had a good idea of who, or what, it was. She felt for the fine stationary letter folded in her pocket. Her feet had delivered her to the neighborhood where, if ever, she might find the Talisman Store and dare to save both her grandfather and Ara. Her hand also felt the two pages of new translation that she’d picked up off Osley’s desk. She felt edgy. She would look for a quiet spot to read them.
Barren’s own favorite among his many talents, aside, of course, from raw adaptability, was to let his preys’ own skills work against them. This was how he ensnared the Woodsmen. He let their own sixth sense first detect him, then he let it drive them to his trap.
It saved a lot of work.
Just to test things in this new world (he was constantly trying to update his thinking now), he would direct Cadence west, toward the river. He was two full blocks behind her, indistinguishable in the crowd. His signals, aura, pheromones, vibes— whatever there were — herded her as effectively as a spear to the rump of an aurochs.
Up ahead, Cadence hurried her pace, fidgeted at the light, looked around, and crossed over against the traffic to the west side of Broadway.
Past 113th Street, the West End Bar hunkered down, looking dreary and idle in the afternoon light. There were more trees after that, creating a slow strobe of light and shadow as she ran. The Columbia University enclave was coming up on the right.
The neck hairs’ sensation of being followed came on strong once again. She turned left at 114th, cut down the block, and stopped. She was on Riverside Drive in front of a neighborhood deli with a wooden half-wall gate across the door. Inside, one tough, uniformly auburn-hued dog sat watching. Smart dog. Waiting to chomp on the uninvited.
She found a brownstone doorstep that had been freshly swept and sat down. She pulled out the clump of translation pages and began to read. At the top, Jess had scrawled a note, probably a reminder for when they next talked: “There are two fragments here. By the tears and folds, each may have been secreted away many times. I don’t know if these are reliable. The first is part of a History of Aragranessa.”
Ara, the prisoner, stood in a darkened cavern before a large, ornate doorway that was almost closed. Torchlight flickered from inside. A fearful orc guard proddled her with his spear, backed up several steps, and then ran away. She forced one foot forward, then the other. With the certainty of ascending the gallow’s steps, Ara knew she walked to her death.
She thought,
She thought of her Amon, of his sad, desperate determination. She took a deep breath and slid through the crack … into the presence of the Dark Lord.
The room was large, long as a spear’s flight. Its ceiling dimmed in the waving shadows from torches jutting from each column. The walls rose with tier upon tier of shelves stuffed with codexes and scrolls. At the far end, held in a luminous glow of changing colors, was the shape of a man. He turned slowly, as if he awaited her arrival, and began to walk toward her.
Despite the length of that hall, it seemed he had taken but one step and was now before her. His hand held a robe, which he slipped over a chair. He wore a simple tunic and brought his hands together in supplication. He looked at her as one might a much anticipated guest. She was stunned by his gentle demeanor. His eyes spoke at once of need and hope. His gestures were those of a weary man of peace.
“Please, sit and eat.” He indicated a chair sized just for her. Before it was a low, broad table laden with food such as Halflings crave — biscuits and butter and fried bacon with roasted grazus. She had eaten naught but roots and brush bark for days. Her nose involuntarily flared and tweaked at the smell. But her heart resisted and she stiffened. He looked unjustly offended. “After all this way? And still not happy? Let us test the ill humor that sets itself against your happiness.” He motioned again. “Come, indulge an old man and sit with me.”
