Shaman's Moon

by Sarah Dreher

  Marylou frowned. “Unfortunately, she had nothing to say about that. I asked her if she’d heard of A.H., being in the same line of work and all. Told her I’d gotten both their names. She was noncommittal. Said she’d heard A.H. was a pretty good clairvoyant, hadn’t heard anything bad. She said you had some common acquaintances and interests, but she didn’t know you.”

  Aunt Hermione nodded. “That’s just what I’d say about her.”

  “What was her tone?” Stoner asked. “Did you pick up any undercurrents? Jealousy? Anger?”

  “None at all, and I was listening for them. If there’s any animosity there, she certainly has it under control. Nothing about you, of course, Stoner. I would have given away too much if I’d brought you up.” She took a sip of her coffee, then leaned forward. “I almost forgot. I saw no evidence of herbs or plants, poisonous or otherwise. Of course, that doesn’t mean much, since she’s surrounded by woods just bursting with plant life.”

  She gave a little shudder. “Rather creepy, actually. Underbrush.”

  “Anything else?” Gwen asked.

  Marylou shook her head. “That’s it. If I’d caught her mixing up some mind-altering potion, or chanting curses in Aunt Hermione’s direction, it would have been another matter. But I do think I found out as much as anyone could.”

  “A. H.,” Aunt Hermione said thoughtfully. “You know, I rather like that. Straightforward and to the point, and rather poetic.”

  “You did a great job,” Gwen said. “I can’t imagine anyone doing it better.” She poked Stoner in the side. “Isn’t that right?”

  Stoner, who’d been struggling with her feelings of disappointment, said, “Huh?”

  “Don’t you think Marylou did well?”

  “Oh, yeah, sure. I’m sorry. I was just kind of hoping she’d turn out to be guilty or something.”

  “So was I,” Marylou said. “Despite her hospitality, I did find her less than charming. So I guess it’s back to the drawing board.”

  “Well,” Stoner said, “it doesn’t entirely clear her of suspicion, but it does take her off the short list.”

  “Who’s on the short list?” Marylou asked.

  “No one.”

  Aunt Hermione stood and stretched. “I think I’ll go to my room and read for a while. Maybe I’ll fall asleep. Thank you, Marylou, this has been one of the most entertaining evenings I’ve had in a long time.” She patted Marylou’s head as she went by. “Actually, I believe you should plan to tell us stories at least once a week. You’re a natural.”

  Marylou actually blushed with pleasure. “Thank you.”

  “A. H.,” Aunt Hermione said again. “I have to give that some thought.”

  “As I recall,” Gwen said, “it’s my night to do the dishes.” She gathered up some of the cups and napkins and dessert dishes.

  “Where do we go from here?” Marylou asked after a brief silence.

  Stoner shrugged. “I wish I knew. She has an appointment with a neurologist in Worcester the day after tomorrow. If that doesn’t turn up anything…”

  “You don’t put much stock in what her spirits said, do you?”

  “I guess not.” She hunched down deeper into the sofa. “Someone stealing her soul? Driving her insane? Someone from the Other Side? It’s all so… I don’t know.”

  “Makes sense to me,” Marylou said.

  “I don’t even know if there is an ‘other side,’ much less what goes on there.” She looked up at her friend. “Do you?”

  “Nobody’s ever proved it to me. On the other hand, nobody’s ever proved there isn’t. I’m keeping an open mind.”

  “I’m keeping mine shut. I don’t want anything else to fall out.”

  “Your attitude surprises me, actually,” Marylou said. She got up and straightened the magazines on the coffee table. “After the experiences you’ve had.”

  “I don’t want to think about that,” Stoner said.

  “Well, you know what they say. ‘He who refuses to think about the after life is destined to repeat it.’”

  Stoner laughed. “It’d be nice, wouldn’t it, if we could just whip on over to another plane and get all the answers?”

  “Isn’t that what Aunt Hermione does in her readings?”

  “I’m sure she’d say that. Personally, I think she dips into the other person’s collective unconscious or something.”

  Marylou gave her an indulgent smile. “You don’t believe in the other side, but you believe Aunt Hermione is walking around with one foot in everyone else’s unconscious. Really, Stoner.”

  Stoner sighed. “I can’t talk about this stuff. It makes me nervous. I wish I could just go away and build bird houses or something.”

  “I think,” Marylou said as she found a bread crumb on her blouse and flicked it away, “you’d better go back to your list making.”

  “Yeah.”

  Gwen came in to clear the rest of the coffee cups and a plate of cookies Marylou had nearly polished off.

  “If you refuse to deal with ghosts,” Marylou said, “you’d better start dealing with people.”

  Something had been nagging at Stoner since this afternoon at the practice. She decided to say it. “Marylou, I know this is an awkward thing to ask, but… well, how much do you know about Cutter?”

  There was a very long, still silence.

  Marylou left the room.

  “I don’t believe this,” Gwen said after a while. She was holding the cups balanced precariously on her arm.

  “What?”

  “What you just did.”

  “I only asked—”

  “You as much as accused Cutter of trying to harm Aunt Hermione. How could you do that?”

  She knew she’d made a terrible mistake. She couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “Marylou loves him,”Gwen went on angrily. “She might even be in love with him.”

  “But we don’t know him.”

  “Marylou loves him,” Gwen repeated. “That’s enough to know.”

  “Not for me,” she said stubbornly.

  “Cut him some slack, for God’s sake. For Marylou’s sake.”

  Stoner stared at the floor. “It’s not about Cutter, Gwen. It’s about Aunt Hermione.”

  “It’s also about friendship. And loyalty. And trust.” She started out. At the doorway she turned. “I’ll sleep in with Marylou tonight.”

  Chapter 7

  Two days later it wasn’t any better. Marylou still wasn’t speaking to her, in spite of her attempts to apologize. And Gwen was forgiving but distant.

  Aunt Hermione, who hadn’t been there but whom Stoner had told about her bad behavior, couldn’t remember what she’d been told. This morning she’d gone to the grocery store and come home without the groceries or her purse.

  The only time she seemed to be almost tuned in was when she talked with Grace on the phone. Even then she was so spotty that Grace insisted on coming out to visit next weekend, whether Hermione was better or not. Edith offered to come, but Stoner didn’t feel ready for that yet.

  Right now she had to do what she could to repair her friendships. She still hadn’t come up with the slightest idea of where to begin.

  She might as well follow Marylou around. Stalk her. If she could get her to understand, maybe it would fall into place.

  Whatever “it” was.

  One thing she was certain of, as long as her friends were holding themselves aloof from her, she couldn’t even think rationally much less creatively.

  So when Marylou left the agency to go to softball practice, Stoner waited a safe five minutes, then locked the door and headed for the field.

  She felt pathetic, sitting there on the sidelines looking like a dog whose owners have just driven off for the afternoon without taking it along. Sad-eyed and pitiful. But, unlike the dog, as soon as the owners were out of sight, she wasn’t going to go looking for a neighbor’s dog to go knock over a few garbage cans with.

  Marylou had acknowledged her
arrival by simply staring at her and going back to coaching.

  That made her angry. Yes, she’d made a mistake. Yes, she’d said something tactless and hurtful. But they’d been friends for more than twenty years. Didn’t those years count for anything?

  Or was it like the house she’d grown up in and run away from? You could be every mother’s ideal, but make one little mistake and the ceiling caves in on you. From saint to scum in a few brief seconds, and years to crawl back up to saint.

  Well, damn it, she wasn’t going to crawl any more. Not for Marylou, not for Gwen, not even for Aunt Hermione. They could solve their own problems. Mogwye had the right idea. Be a grump and keep the whole world at bay. Hide out in the woods and cement down the lawn. Whatever. She was out of Shelburne Falls and out of their lives.

  She got up and walked toward the patch of woods that marked the shortcut home. Striding so if anyone was watching they’d know she was mad. And if nobody was watching, they’d find out when they got home and discovered she’d gone.

  She was taking the car, too, by God. Let them figure out how to get by with just one car for the three of them. Let dear A. H. conjure up a solution to that problem.

  “Stoner.”

  It was more like a low hiss than a word.

  She looked around.

  There was nothing there but underbrush, alder bushes with their pine cone-like flowers.

  “Stoner.”

  It made the hair rise on her arms.

  He was standing right in front of her and she hadn’t seen him. Not until he moved, choosing to be seen.

  “Cutter,” she said. “You scared me. I wish you wouldn’t lurk that way.”

  His eyes shot back and forth, scanning all the open space around. “They got to you,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “Them. The soul-stealers.”

  Stoner laughed. “Of course not.”

  “Yes,” he said. “They did. I can feel it.”

  “This is...” She started to say “crazy,” and realized she’d really be in trouble if she did. “…confusing.”

  “Not if you could see them.”

  She could feel irritation like acid in her stomach. “Nobody’s trying to get me. There’s nothing like that going on, and I wish everyone would just shut the hell up about it.”

  He seemed to smile a little. “That sound like you to you?”

  That stopped her. No, it didn’t sound like her. She hadn’t sounded, or looked, like her for two days now. And while we were on the subject, what she had said to Marylou hadn’t sounded like her, either.

  And it wasn’t like Gwen to give her the ice box treatment.

  Or like Marylou to carry a grudge beyond the first flare-up.

  “You think something’s going on, don’t you?” she asked Cutter.

  “Nope.” He pulled out a vicious-looking Army pocket knife and began opening and closing it rhythmically. “I know it.”

  She was mesmerized by the knife. “What do you know?”

  “I’ve seen ’em.”

  “Where?”

  “’Nam. Africa. Washington, DC.” He gave a crooked grin. Two of his back teeth were missing. “Government’s full of them.”

  She would have laughed, except for the way he was opening and closing the knife. “Would you please put that away,” she said. “It makes me nervous.”

  He folded the knife and slipped it in his pocket. “Afraid I’m going to stick you with it?”

  “No.”

  “Habit of mine. Makes me feel safer. Sometimes I forget where I am.”

  “I sympathize,” Stoner said. “Lately I forget who I am.”

  Cutter nodded. “They do that.”

  “There is no they,” she said firmly.

  “Not where you’re lookin’. You’re barking up the wrong tree when you should be climbing it.” He glanced around. “I gotta go. Been talking too much. When I talk too much, I feel like I’m going to explode.”

  She put her hand on his arm. “Cutter, I want to apologize. For something I said to Marylou. About you.”

  “I know what you said.” He pulled away, not in a rejecting way but just because the touch made him uncomfortable.

  “I’m sorry I was suspicious of you. It was only for a minute. These days I think I’m a little suspicious of everyone.”

  “Hell,” he said, “you better be. It’s the only way to stay alive.”

  He turned away and disappeared.

  Marylou and Aunt Hermione insisted that they were driving to Worcester to the Medical Center together, and no one else was invited along.

  Stoner had heard a lot of bad ideas in her life, but this one took the cake.“You hate to drive,” she pointed out to Marylou.

  “Aunt Hermione’s driving. I’m going along so there’ll be someone to call 911 when she goes into a ditch.”

  She appealed to her aunt. “You’re not well,” she said. “You’ll get lost. You’ll forget to come home.”

  “Actually,” Aunt Hermione said, “I’ve been feeling a great deal better the past day or so. It’ll do me good to accomplish something, even if it’s only driving the car.”

  She was about to argue when she stopped herself. Aunt Hermione really had seemed better. They’d all been feeling better, as if something had lifted from them. Marylou decided that Stoner hadn’t meant to hurt anyone, but was merely being her bumbling, inept self when she asked about Cutter. Gwen decided the tension between them was just too awful, and that she realized what Stoner had really been trying to do.

  It had all happened since Stoner’s conversation with Cutter. But that was only a coincidence.

  She hoped.

  For herself, Stoner had decided to lighten up and do what Aunt Hermione wanted and see where it led. Not that she had much choice. Absolutely nothing was getting accomplished the way she was going about it.

  And she couldn’t bear the thought of all of them piling into the car and being crowded and carsick and then piling out at the Medical Center and stepping on one another’s heels like ducklings. The living situation was just on the verge of becoming claustrophobic.

  “Okay,” she said. “Gwen and I’ll have a day together.”

  That seemed to please Gwen, too.

  “There are a couple of things I have to do,” Stoner explained when they were alone together. “One here and one in Northampton. Do you mind?”

  Gwen laughed. “Mind? You must be kidding. Time with my lover and a trip to the big city, all rolled into one.”

  Northampton wasn’t exactly a Big City, not by Boston standards. Compared to Shelburne Falls, though, it was a booming metropolis. In Shelburne Falls, you could eat out at the Railroad restaurant, or get gussied up in your finery and toot on out to the Mohawk Trail for dinner at a quaint and overpriced New England tourist trap. But Northampton had dozens of restaurants of every ethnic influence and level of dress. Although, it being New England, you wouldn’t be refused service no matter what you were wearing—unless it was bare feet and no shirt, or you were a dog. You could just about make it through all the restaurants in a month of eating out, and turn around and start all over because a third of them would have closed and reopened as a different kind of ethnic.

  There were a lot of small shops offering locally-made art work and pottery for sale, but Shelburne Falls had that in the Salmon Falls Marketplace. And the clothing stores were geared largely toward college students and professionals. What was really interesting about Northampton was that it had once been described in a national supermarket tabloid as ‘the home of ten thousands sex-starved lesbians,’ or words to that effect.

  It always seemed a little strange, to watch the younger lesbians strolling down the street with their arms around one another. They looked so natural, but Stoner could still remember when doing something like that could get you beaten up or worse. She tried to remind herself that these were different times, but the old hesitations lingered. She supposed they always would.

  But it was alway
s nice to see lesbians being free, and nice to know, if the mood struck you, you could take your lover’s hand in public.

  Gwen pulled up in front of the house that their directions had brought them to, and said she’d wait until Stoner was inside, just in case they’d made a mistake. Then she’d be back in about an hour.

  Stoner got out and started up the walk.

  It was an old, small house set back from the road behind a sprinkling of pine trees. The roof was slate, with a central chimney. A picture window had been installed into the front of the house on one side of the door, and beneath it a flower bed of old fashioned delphinium and stock and salvia. On the other side of the door, there were two paned windows. A large black cat lay on the porch and eyed her sleepily but warily.

  She went up the flagstone walk and met her first obstacle. Three doorbells. One was old, a small white button ivoried by age and set into a tarnished metal circle. Beneath it a more up-to-date rectangle with a raised symbol of musical notes. On the door itself was an ancient key-type bell you could ring by giving it a good hard twist. She supposed the new one was what she wanted, but what if there were two residences—one in the back—or a separate office, and she summoned some innocent person needlessly. She could try the key bell, but what if it was an antique and she broke it? Diana had given good directions, but she hadn’t mentioned doorbells.

  The cat was looking at her as if it were about to distrust her motives. She’d never had any experience with an attack cat, and didn’t want to start now. Aunt Hermione’s series of cats had been civil but aloof to her, so she figured they didn’t see her as the Goddess of Felines.

  She rang the bell with the raised musical notes.

  It was a late-middle-aged woman who opened the door. Her face tended toward square, and her gray and dark brown hair hung straight and chin-length. Her eyebrows were nearly white below her bangs, her eyes a lively slate blue. She wore a pantsuit of soft, dark, flowered material that looked as if it would be appropriate whether she were doing a few quick yoga exercises, taking a nap, or running out for a last-minute appointment with her tax lawyer.

  The cat made a dive for the indoors between their legs.