Spires of Spirit (19 page)

Joan Buckland. Who was that, anyway? Married, divorced, no children, running an employment agency. Controlling her business, controlling her counselors, controlling herself with a steel grip. It seemed very sad.

Free will, Wheat had said. Free will, and love, and aid, and comfort.

She stepped out of the stream and stood at the edge of the water, remembering, forgetting. With a hand to her forehead, she stared at the damp ground.
Who am I?
Her life seemed hazy, obscure, as though, with a book before her, she had forgotten how to read.

And she suddenly looked about her with eyes that were seeing everything for the first time, and the wonder that possessed her then blended with her new-found innocence and left her reeling.

“Ash.” It made sense, absolute sense. Ash. Of course. Joan was in the past. Joan was gone. She was Ash. Definitely. And it . . . it
was
a lovely name.

Dizzy, she climbed away from the stream and sat down at the base of a pine, content for the moment just to look at the forest. A large root arched up from the ground next to her, and she leaned against it, resting her head on her arm.

When she opened her eyes, it was dark.

Night sounds. Starlight filtering down through branches. Cool wind on her face. She was not dressed for a mountain night, but she was surprisingly warm, and it was only moments before she discovered that something large and furry had placed itself between her and the cold. Something large and furry . . .

. . . and alive.

With a gasp, she pressed back against the root. The animal was moving. Even in the darkness she could see every detail of the massive head that swung around to peer at her with two large brown eyes.

“Uh . . . hello, bear,” she said.

The bear rumbled in its throat and sniffed at her. It appeared to be deliberating.

She recalled Hadden's words:
There's nothing here that will hurt you.
She wondered if he had included bears in the guarantee.

The brown eyes regarded her with curiosity, and she dropped her head inquiringly.

“Friend?”

The bear rumbled again, snuffled for a moment, then touched noses with her. Slowly, it got to its feet and prepared to move off. As she watched it, though, she realized that she had no idea where she was. She appeared to be able to see well enough in the dark, but that did not alter the fact that she did not know the way back to her car.

“Wait a minute . . . please,” she called. The bear stopped, and she knelt before it. “Can you take me to Elvenhome?” she said. “I'm lost.”

The bear considered, then touched noses again and walked toward the stream. She followed, her hand resting lightly on its back. Beast and Elf, they traveled through the forest together, silent, unafraid.

A shimmering came into view ahead, and the bear stopped, nosed her gently, then turned and departed into the brush. In a minute, she stood alone in a dark silence that was broken only by the drift of quiet conversation from the direction of the shimmer.

She breathed softly, taking it all in: the night, the trees, the light of moon and stars shining down through the branches, the animals. There was light about her, and stars within her, and she realized—admitted—that it could be like this forever.
Forever.
All she had to do . . .

“Ash?” It was Wheat's voice. “Ash, are you there?”

All she had to do was . . .

“Ash?”

She pushed her hair back, carefully settling it behind her ears. Yes, it could be like this forever, and with a quick glance at the stars within her, she took a deep breath and—

“Yes, it's me: Ash,” she called. She saw Wheat then, barefoot, crowned with flowers. They stood looking at one another for a minute, and finally Ash smiled self-consciously and shrugged.

“I'm home,” she said softly.

Interstate 210 in California starts off promisingly enough as a branch of the vigorous and well-traveled Ventura Freeway. It skirts the northern reaches of Burbank and plunges through the very center of Pasadena before it turns south. Route 66 continues eastward in its incarnation as Foothill Boulevard, dwindling into a two-lane street that cuts across a half-farm, half-city landscape, cow pastures interspersed with fast food restaurants: fodder for two species.

Interstate 15 heads north, leaving behind quiet and obscurely named cities—Duarte, Glendora, Asuza—and it spans the windswept Mojave Desert. You can stop for lunch in Barstow, if you wish. Lauri did. The sun was high and the twin ribbons of asphalt seemed too endless just then, and she pulled off at one of the roadside steak houses for a burger and a Coke.

The highway leads on, traveling up through Las Vegas, racing across Nevada as the shadows fall from west to east and buttes and outcroppings leave trailing fingers of darkness to prefigure the night. I-15 continues. It noses into Arizona, then tips north again into Utah. Like Lauri, you can spend the night in Saint George, the party sounds of the out-of-state hot-rodders come for a race the next day drifting muffled through the walls. If you manage an early start, you can link with I-70 by noon, on the arid plains of Utah.

And I-70 will take you through the deep-sculpted desert of that state, eerie and colorful both, and will speed you into Colorado, climb the Continental Divide, and at last, amid the pines and aspens and the eastern foothills of the Rocky Mountains, it will bring you to Denver.

The highway continues on, of course, through Kansas and Missouri, and it, too, finally dwindles into a common street in Baltimore on the other side of the continent, where the Patapsco River mingles with the Chesapeake Bay. But if you are like Lauri, you stay in Denver, within sight of the mountains. You look for work. You try to sort out your life.

***

Lauri got into the office early that morning, partly because she had paperwork to catch up on, mostly because she enjoyed having her first cup of coffee away from her sparsely furnished apartment where, from across the pond that lay in the middle of the warrenlike complex, some idiot's rock and roll would already be blasting through the air, shattering the silence.

The office suite occupied by TreeStar Surveying was quiet. Carpeted in moss green and paneled in light wood, it possessed a peaceful solidity that was almost sylvan . . . as though a section of sunlit forest had been scooped up and magicked into a home for a surveying firm. At times, Lauri half expected to see chipmunks skitter across the floor, and she let the pervasive tranquillity take the tension from her shoulders as she let the door swing shut behind her.

It was a small company, and, in addition to Hadden, the owner, who worked in the field with Lauri, there was Julie, the secretary, and Web and Michael, who formed another field team. Together, they were something of a family. The constant good humor demonstrated by Hadden and Web was highly infectious, and there were days when, yes, Lauri actually hated to go home.

But at present, it was still early—the rest of the family had not arrived yet—and she made coffee and settled down at her desk in the quiet solitude. Outside the plate glass window, the world was coming rapidly alive, trees breaking out in an April haze of green leaves, tentative shoots that would soon be flowers poking up above the ground. For a minute, she watched two sparrows fighting over something indefinite on the lawn, and then she turned to her work. But though the calculations before her were involved, they were not difficult, and before a quarter of an hour passed, she made her final notation, sat back in her chair, stretched out her long legs, and returned to her coffee and her window.

Trees, flowers. The land out here on the southern outskirts of the metro area was still relatively undeveloped, and though office complexes, shopping malls, and houses were making incursions, there were still many places where the softness of undulating plains was broken only by fantasy folds of sandstone and granite upthrust by the local geology. By this time next year, Lauri might well be looking at a grocery store, but for now she had an uninterrupted view of the rolling land and, rising to the west, the mountains.

For a moment, though, she recalled—even saw—another window . . . one from which she had gazed months before. It was in Los Angeles, and it had granted a view only of sun-bleached streets and the near-featureless stucco walls that were all that a combination of architectural sterility and simple parsimony had allotted to large portions of that city. Denver was still open, was still, in many ways, young.

Denver was, for Lauri, a refuge.

Her eyes left the scene of sunlight and returned to her desk. Maybe there were windows like this one in Los Angeles, but she herself had never found them. Maybe there was something there that one could shelter and call precious, but it had, apparently, escaped her. Carrie was—

Let it go.

She swallowed more coffee, concentrating deliberately on the bitter liquid in order to take her mind off the past. When she looked out the window again, she saw that Hadden had pulled up in his blue Datsun. He parked and stepped out onto the asphalt, then looked up toward the bright morning sun, stretched, and laughed.

Lauri smiled. It would be a good day. She would be in the field with Hadden, and he seemed to be in a fine mood. But she recalled that he always seemed to be in a fine mood.

Hadden strode across the lawn and took a moment to stop and admire the buds and the leaves before he continued toward the office door. On the ground, square in his path, the sparrows were still fighting, and though they ended their battle and looked up at his approach, they showed no fear. He stopped before them with a smile, and he said something.

The birds were attentive. Quite obviously they had no intention of flying off. In fact, they seemed to be glad of Hadden's presence, and when he reached down and actually petted them, they looked as though they enjoyed it.

Lauri stared, her cup halfway to her lips.

Hadden set down his briefcase and held his hands a few inches over the birds. They fluttered and fluffed themselves as though in a warm bath. After a minute, he stroked them again, picked up his briefcase, and headed for the office door. Lauri was still staring at the birds.

“I really don't believe,” she murmured, “that things like that happen.”

The door swung open then, and Hadden entered, his smile bright. “Hi, Lauri. Getting an early start?”

She glanced back at the empty lawn for a moment. “Uh . . . yeah. Hi.”

“All ready for the Northridge job?”

Some people, she decided, had incredible talent with animals. Some people charmed snakes. Hadden obviously had a touch with sparrows. Lauri, on her part, attracted bees and wasps . . . usually with disastrous results when they found that she was not a six-foot-tall, black-haired flower. It was all a matter of vibes.

“Lauri?”

“Huh?”

“You didn't hear me?” Hadden sat on his desk and his open briefcase on his lap while he fished through the inner pockets.

“Hear what?”

“I asked you about the Northridge job and you went into a trance.” He grinned at her.

As was usually the case when she was flustered, she did not know what to do with her hands. “I'm sorry . . . I—” She nearly spilled her coffee. “I was thinking . . .”

Hadden came up with a red pencil and stuck it in his shirt pocket. “No problems, I hope.”

“Uh . . . no,” Lauri said quickly. “What . . . uh . . . what did you do to those birds?”

“The sparrows? Oh, just gave them a little pat.” Hadden sounded totally nonchalant. Such things happened every day. Sure they did.

“You have them . . . trained?”

“Hmmm? No, they were there, and they looked like they'd enjoy it.”

“That's nice,” said Lauri. “I wish I could do that.” One of the sparrows returned to browsing on the lawn: hop, peck . . . hop again.

Hadden went to the windows and examined the bird. “You might be able to learn.”

“I really like things like that,” she went on. “That's why I like the field work. It's good to be able to stand on the ground, feel the sunlight, breathe the air . . .” She caught herself and laughed self-consciously. “Listen to me, will you?”

“I am.”

Something about his tone made her look at him in surprise, and, as their eyes met, she saw something in Hadden, something that shimmered, something that gleamed in his eyes as though they were reflecting starlight and moonlight and not simply the sun of an early spring day. Hadden, she knew, was at least forty, but he looked thirty, and, right now, in this odd luminescence that seemed to be coming from within him, he looked even younger than that.

He smiled. “Be at peace.”

She blinked, and the vision was gone. But Hadden was still smiling.

“I'm going to grab a cup of coffee,” he said, “and then we'll head on out. Should be a nice day today.”

***

In accordance with the laws of whimsy that governed Colorado weather, the sky clouded up toward mid-afternoon, and it was soon raining. Hadden took the final readings while Lauri held her coat over the theodolite: it was not pouring, not yet, but the clouds looked very black out toward the mountains.

They were both thoroughly wet by the time they packed the instruments into the company van, and they stopped at a Burger King for coffee and a chance to dry off. Rain pattered on the roof and against the window. Hadden had pulled on a stocking cap when the wind had picked up, and he sat at the table, his hands wrapped around a smoking cup of coffee, looking like a pleasant-faced seaman examining a nor-wester kept safely behind glass.

“It's a nice day,” he said softly.

Lauri glanced out the window. “OK. Whatever you say.”

“Really,” he said. There was a distant flash of lightning. “So . . . what do you think of TreeStar?”

The question caught her off guard. “What's . . . uh . . . what's to think? It's a great place to work.”

“Enjoying it?”

“Yeah. A lot.”

“Good.” He swirled his coffee thoughtfully. “With many employers, there's a three-month probationary period. I don't bother with it, because my instincts are usually good regarding the people that come on board. But I think this is a good time to let you know that I'm very pleased with your work. I hope you'll stay on with us.”