All that traffic, cops in and out, barely left a trace. The tan dry grass stood straight, the red and orange and purple berry bushes spread their brilliance under the clear blue autumn sky. She paused, just inside the barren. Uncanny.
She sniffed. Blueberry barren smell, the bracken, the sandy soil, the faint spicy tang of overripe berries drying in the sun. None of that flinty warning of magic and danger in the air.
Orange caught her eye, masses of berries in a yellow flame of a tree, and she waded through the bracken to its trunk. Mountain ash, she knew it from landscaping jobs, her name-tree, rowan. And this tree was old — nearly two feet through the butt, with skeleton branches in its crown but still vigorous. Mountain ash was a short-lived tree.
It stood by itself, which also struck her as odd — those landscape jobs told Kate that rowan self-seeded like a weed, would make a thicket if left to its own ways. Then she spotted another, distant sunwards, also old. And another widdershins. They made equal spaces. No younger trees.
She climbed the slope, cold with recent memory, reluctant even though her hip behaved itself. The last time she'd made this climb . . .
Bare stones waited. No body lying on the altar.
She reached the altar stone and stared down at it. Folded biotite schist, the folds wrote words in some strange swirling calligraphy across the surface, she'd looked the stone up after staring at the evidence photos because she hadn't recognized it. Stone was as natural to her as the air she breathed. She knew stone. Stone knew her. She knew what that kind of stone was like. Hard, impervious, and damned rare in Maine — must be a glacial erratic, dragged down from somewhere on the Canadian Shield.
She climbed up on it, stiff and awkward, wondering if she was committing some kind of sacrilege. Memories again, vision matched with vision — she'd stood here as a child. There was Morgan's Castle, there was the steeple of the Congregational Church on the village green, beyond it the bay. In the other direction, the land dipped away to the salt marsh that made Stonefort an island at high tide. She'd stood here once before, felt Grannie's hands strong on her shoulders. It must have been permitted.
She scanned the horizon and the edge of the barren. More rowans, they made a circle. Each one lay on a direct line with one of the ring stones, circle within circle centered on the altar. Even the barren made a circle, no man-made rectangular field rimmed by a stone fence. Cosmic bull's-eye, a landing-zone for UFOs.
She felt power crawling across her skin, hair standing up on end like she felt in the House's cellar.
<Welcome, Rowan's-daughter. After many winters, again we welcome you.>
Kate spun around on the altar, frantic, searching for the speaker. She was alone. She climbed down and walked the stone circle. Alone. Wind teased her hair, leaves rustled, a knot of crows mobbed something in the top of a distant pine and their caws rode the breeze. Natural sounds.
Voices in her head. Warmth soaking her injured hip and shoulder, not the stabbing fire of pain but the soothing penetrating warmth of a heating pad or a hot whirlpool bath. A strong gentle hand laid on her shoulder. The smell of herbs, of lavender and rose-petal and clove sachet, in Grannie's spare bedroom.
Finding Grannie cold and still one morning.
Kate fled back to her truck.
Chapter Fifteen
The heat felt a little less fierce this morning. Either Caroline was getting used to it after three days, or the air was actually cooler. Grandmother Walks and her family didn’t keep a thermometer handy. After all, the wind and the sun didn’t care about whiteman measurements. Knowing the temperature wouldn’t change it.
She reminded herself that she liked staying warm and dry. Sometimes Stonefort fogs lingered for weeks, dank and gray and cold, never a glimpse of sun, even your skin and hair turned slimy and stank of rotten rockweed with a dash of herring for an accent. Then in winter the sea-smoke and spray froze to everything, icing the boats until the fishermen had to pound it off topsides and rigging or the weight of it would flip their boats right over at the mooring. There was a lot to be said for warm and dry.
And the House wouldn't allow a furnace. Yeah, you could keep warm in January and February — if you stayed within ten feet of a stove.
The canyonlands got cold in winter, too. Bitter cold, almost felt like home. But the sun shone nearly every day, and once it came up she could bask like a lizard and forget about the night. She didn't have to stay cold. And wet.
She squatted with her back against the trunk of a rough-barked cottonwood and closed her eyes, letting the shade and the gentle breeze cool her body and her thoughts. Air flowed down the dry creek bed, bringing with it the mingled scents of juniper and pine, of sage and rabbit-bush and dry grass and horse. And dust. Everywhere, the dust. Her rental car had chameleoned from blue to beige. She never would have taken a dark car into the desert, not even air-conditioned, but they'd already rented all the lighter colors. Just one of the joys of unplanned travel.
Soft footsteps scuffed the sand and gravel, polite deliberate noise to tell her that someone came. Caroline opened her eyes and looked up, blinking into the dappled light that filtered through the branches overhead.
"Grandmother asks for you."
Caroline nodded her thanks to the woman and stood up, brushing dust from her pants. Morning Star, whiteman name Helen Horsebreaker
