The Hummingbird's Cage (18 page)

by a river of centuries,

restless as the London mist,

tameless as Cuchulain's

horses of the sea.

A thousand voices speak to them

each day in every tongue

but their own.

I gathered my papers. Without daring to look at the audience, I left the podium.

As I stepped from the stage, the applause began. The other readers had had their share of applause, of course, but this applause—this applause was for me.

This was mine.

And it felt . . .
wondrous
.

At the booth, Jessie and Olin hugged me in turn. Then Simon was standing in front of me, looking unsure. I laughed breathlessly. “I'd better sit before my knees buckle,” I said.

Back in the booth, Simon leaned across the table. “You were marvelous,” he said.

“I was okay. But I appreciate it.”

My head was spinning so fast I still can't recall the last reader of the night—for all I knew, it could have been Yeats himself.

*   *   *

The readings didn't close out the evening. Mahenny removed the podium, and three Irish musicians took the stage. The lead singer had ferocious red hair and a bird's nest of a beard, and
the three didn't just sing their songs—they attacked them. Tables and chairs were pushed aside to clear a dance floor.

George threw off his jacket and swung Molly around in a bucking polka, and the young poet with the piercings paired off with a cowboy in a starched shirt and handlebar mustache.

Bree stopped by with Reuben. “Jo, you were terrific.” She had to shout to be heard above the reel blasting from the stage.

Reuben leaned close. “The family's throwing a shindig in a few weeks for my brother's birthday. You're all invited.”

“How old's he now?” asked Simon.

“Turning sixteen,” Reuben answered as Bree pulled him back to the dance floor.

Olin stood and offered his hand to his wife. “Honor me?”

Jessie's smile as she took it dropped decades off her.

“You know,” I told Simon as I watched them on the floor, “they dance like this more nights than not. Turn on their old radio and off they go. I don't know where they get the energy. I'm starting to wonder what he packs in that rolling paper of his.”

Then it was Simon who stood and stepped to my side. “May I?”

I stared at his open hand.

“Simon,” I said, “I haven't danced in years. And I've never tried a reel in my life.”

He glanced toward the stage, then back at me. “This song's about over. If the next is a slow one, will you dance?”

The Irishmen had been playing only jigs and reels. They could read the crowd, and the crowd wanted to
move
. I felt safe in agreeing.

“Sure,” I said.

Almost as soon as I said it, the reel was over. There was a
pause, and the three musicians exchanged a look. Without a word, one of them took up a penny whistle, the second an electric guitar and the third an electric bass. The bass beat a deep, rhythmic thrum while the flute broke into a slow, melancholy tune.

“What are the odds?” I murmured.

Simon was gazing at me steadily now, arm outstretched.

I laid my hand in his and he pulled me gently to my feet.

Even after a decade, I still managed to remember whose arms went where. What I'd completely forgotten was the initial thrill of stepping into a man's embrace—the feel of skin against skin, of warm breath against my temple.

I moved stiffly at first—for so long, physical contact with a man was something I'd tried very hard to avoid. And I was painfully aware that I was just as skittish as I'd been at my first junior high dance. But if Simon was aware of it, he didn't show it.

He didn't pull me tight or let his hand roam, nor could I ever imagine he would. Not like that. He pressed his palm lightly against the small of my back, and the warmth of it seemed to percolate through my clothes, through my skin, down to my core.

The music was almost primal—a minor bass chord, over and over, like the beat of a drum, the flute raveling against it like a keening voice, prickling every hair on my arms.

I closed my eyes and there were images of landscapes I'd never seen before—immense, ragged mountain ridges carved by receding glaciers. Deep valleys exploding with yellow gorse and purple thyme. Lush lowlands sweeping down to the North Sea, waves pounding against the rocky coast, so close you could breathe in the cold salt spray . . .

The scenes were so intense, so vivid, that when I opened
my eyes again it was disorienting not to see the surf crashing on the rocks right in front of me . . . to feel the salt water on my face, or taste it on my tongue . . .

And there was Simon, watching me with the slightest smile, and those knowing, careful, hooded eyes.

It
took a while to identify what I was feeling lately. I ran through the usual roster, but nothing fit.

At last, I put my finger on it: I was
happy
.

It had been so long. Jim had taken so much—lopping away bits and pieces until there was nothing of the essentials left. Till Joanna was gone, boiled down to baser elements.

Now here she was again in the mirror, gazing back at me.
Not quite what she had been, not yet. But no longer the lump of potter's clay on Jim's wheel, either.

The feeling persisted until I filled up the notebook, then started another. I had so much to say, and every word on every page felt like a victory. A battle won. I reveled in it.

But there was a part of me that didn't trust it. A part that knew better.

And she wasn't wrong.

Late one afternoon I stepped out back to call Laurel in for supper. I heard nothing in return but the cluck of hens and sheets snapping on the line.

It was a peculiar, yawning silence, and I could feel the skin on my arms prickling to gooseflesh.

I called again.

Olin appeared in the open barn door, wiping his hands on a red bandanna. He was alone. He latched the door behind him and headed toward the house.

The sun was close to setting, shadows slanting low.

My heart skipped a beat. An alarm was clanging in my brain.

“Where's Laurel?” I demanded. “Not with you?”

Olin shook his head. “Not for a good while. Said she was headin' inside to help with supper.”

I swallowed hard. “When was that?”

“Oh, nigh on a couple hours.”

I swiveled and started to round the house at a fast clip, scouting the landscape for signs of her. Not by the creek. Not in the fields. She wouldn't have gone so far as the foothills, would she?

I turned one corner, then another, till I'd nearly circled the house, calling her name over and over.

Jessie swept through the front door onto the porch. “Somethin' wrong?” she asked.

I turned and stared, incapable of speech.

Wrong?

There were lots of reasons a curious seven-year-old might slip off and disappear for a while. None of them meant a thing to me in that cold-blooded moment.

By then, Jim had finally shrunk down from monster-sized to something more manageable—a toothless jackal prowling the perimeter. I could go entire days without his name, his face invading my thoughts. Weeks without sitting sentinel on the porch, watching the road.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

I ran up the porch steps, pushing past Jessie into the house. I took the stairs by twos up to the second floor and Laurel's room at the end of the hall. Empty. I ran to mine. Empty, too. The bathroom, Jessie and Olin's room, back downstairs to the den, the kitchen, calling Laurel's name in a ragged voice.

I pulled up in the middle of the living room, my heart thumping so hard it made my chest ache. Jessie was back inside by then, watching me gravely as I began to tick off Laurel's movements like a trail of bread crumbs that would end with her smiling up at me as I reached the last one.

“She came home from school . . . then with Olin in the fields . . . then heading inside . . .”

Then what? Then Jim intercepted her? Bundled her up, threw her in his Expedition? Drove back to Wheeler? Daring me to come get her?

Is that even possible?

Laurel's nightmare came back to me:
He's coming . . . He's coming . . . Daddy . . .

Olin was inside now, too.

“I need your truck keys,” I said, brushing past him to the cabinet where he kept his ammunition. I slid open a drawer and grabbed two boxes of shotgun shells.

“What on earth?” Jessie murmured.

“I'll need your 12-gauge, too.”

I didn't wait for permission. The shotgun was still mounted on the far wall of his den, next to the pair of Winchesters and the antique carbine. I took it down, broke open the breech, mastered my trembling hands long enough to slide a cartridge into each barrel, then snapped it to.

Olin was watching from the doorway. “Keep the safety on.”

“Not for long,” I said, pocketing the boxes of shells.

He followed me as I made for the barn and his truck sitting inside. It might be old, but it sure as hell would get me three miles over the break of hills and thirty miles due west.

In the barn, I opened the driver's door and slid the shotgun behind the seat. Finally I turned to Olin, my hand out for the keys.

But Olin was looking toward the far wall of the barn, at the row of horse stalls. They were empty—the horses were still pastured outside.

“Hold on . . .” he said, moving away.

“Olin, there's no time to waste,” I said.

“Hold on now,” he repeated, more firmly this time.

Then he was standing by the tack, eyeing bridles, halters, reins, martingales hanging from wall hooks, leather saddles slung side by side over a broad beam.

“Olin,”
I barked.

“Her saddle's gone,” he said. “Looks like she tacked up.”

He turned and left the barn, making for the pasture. I followed, and we both stared at the three horses grazing there.

Three horses. Not four.

Tse—the big roan, Rock, Laurel's horse—was gone.

“She couldn't have,” I said.

“She knows well enough how to do it,” said Olin. “It'd take some effort for a mite like her, but she could do it.”

Relief pulsed through me till I thought my head would burst. I tried to laugh but I huffed instead, catching my breath.

So Laurel hadn't been kidnapped after all. Jim hadn't snuck in while my guard was down and snatched her up.

“But why?” I said. “And where?”

Once more I scanned both ends of the valley, east and west. Then north at the foothills darkening under the setting sun, this time looking for a rider.

But Olin was peering up.

Up at the Mountain.

“I figure,” he said, “she went a-lookin' for that little dog of hers.”

*   *   *

Simon arrived by the time we'd saddled the three remaining horses, but supper would have to wait. It was decided Jessie would stay behind in case Laurel came home on her own. Simon would take Yas.

The three of us made for town at a canter, pulling up once we hit the asphalt. There we could see another rider waiting in front of the general store, watching us approach. It was Faro LaGow on a big Appaloosa.

“Heard your little gal went up the Mountain,” he told me as we pulled up. “Figured to help out.”

I didn't ask how he'd heard—he was one more pair of eyes on a good horse, and a cold night was falling fast.

“Thank you,” I said.

At the far end of town where the main road and the secondary splintered off, we stopped to carve out a plan. While the men briskly sorted it out, I glared up at the Mountain, impatient to be off.

This time there was none of the old, fearful reluctance. Its magnetic pull was just as sharp, but this time I wasn't resisting it. This landmass was a barrier between me and my daughter, and as far as I was concerned it had lured her there under false pretenses. Played on her affection for a dog that was long gone. This time I couldn't assail it soon enough.

It was decided that Olin and Faro would take the steeper main road that switchbacked up the side, while Simon and I took the narrower one that rounded it at a lower pitch and led to his cabin and beyond. I knew both routes also had any number of trails leading off into the forest.

I half expected someone to raise an objection about the futility of searching in the dark, especially with no clear sense of where to start and so much ground to cover. I thought someone might even suggest waiting to fetch some hunting dogs to try to sniff out a proper trail. If I'd been in my right mind, I might have suggested such a thing myself.

Olin wheeled Kilchii around to fall in beside me. His slight smile was meant to be comforting.

“Young'uns have lit out on their own before, up the Mountain or down the valley,” he said. “And we always find 'em safe and sound. We'll find your girl, too.”

There was a choking lump snagged in my throat. I nodded.

Then Olin and Faro trotted off to the left without a backward glance, disappearing into the gloom and the first bend in the road.

I turned to Simon, who was watching me with sympathy.

“Ready?” he asked.

Again, all I could do was nod, flick the reins and kick off.

*   *   *

Simon rode ahead where I could barely make him out in the darkness. But I could hear him plainly enough, calling Laurel's name. I called, too, our voices carrying into the dim woods on either side of us. Now and then I'd hear a dry rustle in the distance or the call of some creature or other, but never Laurel's voice calling back.

After an hour or so, Simon pulled up and handed me a canteen. It was coffee, still hot. He offered a sandwich Jessie had packed, but I had no appetite. Laurel was out there somewhere. Likely hungry and scared. Had she taken her jacket with her? Her mittens? Had she even thought that far ahead? Or had she just figured to point Tse in the general direction of that barking dog and be back with Tinkerbell in time for supper?

“How cold is it expected to get tonight?” I asked.

Simon was tucking his canteen back in his saddlebag. “Try not to worry.”

“Freezing?” I continued, ignoring him. “Even if it doesn't drop that far, hypothermia can set in well above freezing.”

I ran a guilty gloved hand down the arm of my warm
sheepskin coat. The moon was slipping out from behind a bank of clouds; it was still a few days from full but bright enough now that I could make out my breaths hitting the chilly air in puffs.

I heard a voice then, calling from farther up the road. But deep—the voice of a man, not a child. “Hello up ahead!”

Simon and I turned as one toward the sound. “Hello!” Simon shouted in return.

Out of the darkness appeared two riders at a hard trot. They were nearly upon us before I recognized them—Reuben and his father, Morgan Begay.

They reined in as they reached us. They didn't offer pleasantries or explanations about how they, too, had joined the search.

“Nothing on the road this side,” Begay said in his clipped voice. “We'll double back. Hit some trails.”

Simon nodded. “We'll take some trails, too. She's headed up—we know that.”

“She kept hearing a barking dog,” I said to Begay. “Any idea where it might be coming from?”

Begay shrugged. “Hard to tell. Lots of dogs here.”

“You find her, fire off three shots,” Simon advised him. “And we'll come fetch her.”

He said it as casually as if they were talking about a child who'd wandered off in a supermarket:
You find her in aisle three, give a holler.

“She won't be lost long,” Reuben said gently, watching me. “Tse has a mother spirit.”

A mother spirit? What on earth did that mean? That made as much sense as Simon telling me to “try not to worry.”

I wanted to light into both of them, kicking and punching.
When your daughter runs off God knows where into the freezing cold, lost and alone,
you
try not to worry.

We divided again, each pair returning the way we'd come. Except this time we didn't go far before Simon pulled up beside the barrel-sized trunk of a nearly leafless oak tree. It stood next to a narrow path I hadn't noticed the first time we passed.

“Started out as a deer track,” Simon explained. “Hunters use it mostly.”

My heart dropped.

“We must have passed dozens of these,” I said. “We don't have time to check them all.”

“Farther up the Mountain, a lot of them join together, like a big tangle,” he said reassuringly. “But the layout makes sense, once you know what you're dealing with. And I've been here awhile. I know what we're dealing with.”

The track cut up the Mountain at a steep, snaking incline—so steep in places that Nastas and Yas had to strain to climb as we stood in the stirrups, leaning forward for balance.

On either side, trees towered over us, many of them bare and black as woodcuts, others shaggy pines; together with the clouds snuffing out the moon, they made it impossible to see far in any direction. Now and then we'd stop and call, then keep still for a response, ears pricked, the horses under us panting from their effort in the thin air. Morro already sat at high altitude—more than a mile high. This mountain was taking us higher still.

Finally we stopped to call out again, and this time I heard something in the distance.

Not a voice. Not a human voice, anyway.

But a whinny.

I held my breath and waved for silence.

There it was again.

“Over there!” I said excitedly.

“I heard it,” said Simon. “Wait here. I'll check it out.”

“Like hell,” I said, wheeling Nastas toward the sound and kicking off.

The forest was thick, and Nastas had to maneuver carefully, picking his way on slim legs through a natural obstacle course of dead tree trunks toppled at weird angles, over brush and limbs and large rocks. I could hear Simon and Yas close behind. But Yas had surer footing in rough terrain and soon lunged around us, Simon urging him on. I tried not to think Simon was worried about what I might find if I got to the source of the whinnying first.

But soon there it was, in a clearing some fifty yards off.

It was Tse.

Riderless.

Her saddle was empty and slightly askew, as if it hadn't been cinched tight enough; the reins hung loose from the bridle. She stamped and whinnied again as we neared.

Simon was well in front then, and I could hear him murmuring, “Whoa, girl,” as he got to her and reached from Yas's back to gather up the reins.

It was then that Tse—gentle Tse—reared up, lashing out with her hooves. It startled Yas, who reared up, too, then landed and bucked.