Veins of Gold

by Charlie N. Holmberg

  She hit something and shoved it back. Tried to run through it, but hands clasped her wrists and pulled her palms away from her ears.

  “Calm down, calm down!” a male voice broke through the jumble of her thoughts. “What’s wrong?”

  Gentry shook her head, twisting in the man’s grip, looking back over the spirits and ethereal creatures. She panted, desperate for air. “They’re . . . they’re everywhere. Can’t you see them?”

  A serpent passed close to her feet, a foot off the ground. Gentry’s muscles seized. “Go away!”

  “You see them?” the voice asked, and a bell of familiarity rang inside her mind. She turned back toward the man, meeting his bright, astonished eyes. “They won’t hurt you.”

  “Y-you see them?” she gasped.

  His blond eyebrows pulled together. “I’m surprised you do, miss. You didn’t see them yesterday.”

  Gentry took a shaky step back, and the stranger released her wrists. She studied him—his blond hair, swept back from his face. His eyes, the color of browning butter. His simple clothes and the gold studs in his ears.

  “You!” She nearly tripped over herself. “You . . . you’re from last night . . .”

  The man took her hands—her palms stung against his fingers—and pulled her toward a great boulder in the earth. Shimmers like small lightning bugs skittered over its face. He waved his hand and they scattered—only then did Gentry recognize their translucent bodies, their misshapen forms. More of the . . . monsters.

  “They won’t hurt you,” he repeated. “At least, they shouldn’t.”

  “Shouldn’t?”

  “Shhh, look.” He turned her around and gestured to the valley before them, at the swirling spirits and beasts roaming it. The great kite-thing had already fled, leaving twilight behind.

  Gentry stepped back until her shoulders hit the boulder. She leaned heavily against it, catching her breath, trying to steady herself. “Wh-what are they?”

  “Wild magic,” the golden man said. “No one has bespelled it, so it shouldn’t have any purpose with you besides mild curiosity. Not this close to other humans.”

  “Other . . . humans . . .” She eyed him, head to toe to head, ensuring that he was human and not . . . wild magic. “I don’t understand.”

  “Of course you don’t.” He grinned. “Few do, especially our kind. Your kind.”

  “What’s the difference?” Her question sounded sharper than she’d intended, but her breath was coming back, and she put its full force into the words.

  “Our kind. Whites, Anglos, what have you.” His tone was as casual as it would be over a cup of tea. “Your kind, the religious folk.”

  “I’m not a Mormon,” she snapped.

  “I . . . didn’t say you were.” His smiled faded for just a moment. A second later, it came back in full strength. “What did you say your name was?”

  “I didn’t.” Another serpent curled around the boulder. She bit down on a shriek as it neared her leg.

  “You’ve obviously done something to draw their attention,” he said, his manner too easy for Gentry’s liking. “It won’t hurt you. Shoo.”

  He kicked a booted foot at it, and the strange creature changed direction, slithering toward the Oquirrhs.

  “I—it’s Gentry.” She sucked in a deep breath. “My name. Gentry Abrams.”

  “Isn’t that a boy’s name?”

  “Well I certainly didn’t choose it!” She ached for something to climb to distance herself from the cacophony of . . . this. “I don’t understand any of this! Magic doesn’t exist!”

  The man laughed. “Either it does, or we’re both crazy, Gentry.”

  He paused, looking at her neck. No, her necklace. His face wrinkled for a second, then slid back into place. “Ah, I bet that’s it. May I?”

  She touched the heart pendant. “May you what?”

  He stepped around her and pinched the chain of her necklace. His too-familiar touch made her skin heat like the summer sun. She would have jerked away if not for fear of snapping the delicate chain

  He unclasped the necklace. The moment he pulled it from her skin, the monsters disappeared.

  Gentry gasped, spun. Winced at her ankle.

  Gone. Every last one. Before her stretched quiet, peaceful desert. Vanished with the lifting of her necklace. The sky held only fading colors and stretching twilight. She couldn’t see any houses or the lights of the town. How far had she run?

  “How did you—?”

  “I think they enchanted it when they took it.” He let the gold chain dangle from his fingers.

  “What are they?” she whispered.

  “Wild magic. It’s here. It’s always here, if you’re in the right place,” the man answered. “Fewer in the cities, always more at night.”

  “But I . . . they were on the road, in the cemetery . . .”

  “You’re from American Fork?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “J-just visiting. Please, give it back to me.”

  The man held up the necklace, studying it for a moment. “Are you sure?”

  She nodded too quickly. “I want to know where they are.”

  “They’re mostly harmless.” He handed her the necklace. Gentry clasped it, and her vision changed. The ghosts filled it again. There were more of them deeper in the valley, away from town. Dancing, shifting, shapeless shadows.

  “You’re all right?” he asked, looking at her hands. Her palms were scraped and bloody.

  Gentry didn’t answer, not right away. She took a limping step away from the boulder, then another, peering around it toward American Fork. Or where American Fork should be.

  A realization struck her. She turned back to the man.

  “You see them.”

  He nodded.

  “You said . . . last night. They were there?”

  He smiled.

  “You stopped them, didn’t you.” Her own words sounding somehow foreign to her ears. “You . . . shooed them away.”

  “Something like that.” He stepped forward and took her hand, the one that didn’t clutch the necklace, and opened it. As he examined it, Gentry noticed a seagull atop the boulder.

  When she turned her gaze back to him, she found herself looking into his eyes. The twilight hid her flushing cheeks.

  “I won’t hurt you, either,” he promised. “Since we’re already out here and sharing secrets, why don’t I take care of this, hm?”

  He held her hand to her face. Now that Gentry’s attention wasn’t solely focused on the spirits—the wild magic—she noticed the sting of her palms.

  She nodded once. It was enough.

  The man stepped back, still holding her hand, and waved his arm through the air.

  From behind the boulder soared dozens—no, hundreds—of seagulls, soaring into the air in a sea of white and gray, some diving down, others turning in sharp curves. The wind their wings created rustled Gentry’s hair and fluttered about her skirt. Her eyes widened at the sight of the man’s forearm. Patterns of lightning glowed gold beneath his skin. No—those were his veins.

  The birds spiraled, forming shapes, their individual bodies blurring together, hardening into something distinctly not bird.

  Within moments, a white-and-gray mottled house loomed before them, hovering above the ground just as the ethereal serpents had.

  Gentry was going to faint.

  She stumbled back, nearly tripping as the house formed before her, solid and . . . house-like. As though it had been carved from marble. Other than the color, one would never have guessed it was made from—

  “Seagulls,” she whispered, and she pinched herself. She was going mad. She knew it. Something deep inside her brain had snapped.

  Something else not-normal purred softly behind her. She jumped and swatted away a small, hovering blob-thing.

  The man gestured to the door. “After you.”

  She swallowed and thought of Pearl. But Pearl wasn’t alone. She’d be fine. But would she be wor
rying? Did she think Gentry was merely chatting with Agnes?

  But Gentry was alone. With a man. Whom she assumed was unmarried and whose motives were not abundantly clear.

  “How do I know you’re not going to kill me?” she blurted.

  The man laughed. His laugh had a nice sound to it, a sort of easy genuineness that cut through some of the taut threads connecting Gentry’s rational brain to the rest of her body. “I’m harmless, especially to a pretty face.” He stepped into the house and patted the door frame. It sounded solid enough. “See? Safe.”

  Was he referring to the house or himself? Gentry inched forward, unsure of how to handle the compliment regarding her appearance. Was he trying to put her at ease, or did he really think . . . not that it mattered. In a place as sparse at this, it wasn’t hard to be pretty. There were only so many single women to look at.

  She stepped into the house and looked around. Pale lights shone in the corners, but there were no candles or lamps. Where did that light come from?

  The man—his eyes more golden now—slipped by her and guided her to sit on a white-and-gray block in the front room. He went to another, higher block and knocked on it. “Come now, Turkey,” he chided. “My pack, please.”

  The block grew feathers, ruffled them, then spat out an old leather pack. Gentry’s breath hitched at the sight of it. The seagull house had hidden compartments in it? Surely this is a dream.

  “Thank you,” the man said.

  It took Gentry a moment to relocate her breath. When she did, she asked, “T-turkey?”

  “Thinks he’s bigger than he is, and half the time you want to shoot him.” The man winked. He sat on the floor by Gentry’s feet and shuffled through the pack until he found some sort of ointment and some thin bandages. Oh. For her.

  She shifted on her bird-bench. “It’s not so bad—”

  “Hush. It will help.”

  Hesitant, Gentry opened her left hand. The cuts looked angry in the bright, unearthly light. He dabbed them with the ointment. She studied his face while he focused on her hands. She gauged him at about twenty-five, twenty-six. His nose was strong without being prominent. Some of the gold from his eyes had faded, but maybe that was a trick of the light too.

  He had four gold studs in each ear instead of the three and four he wore yesterday. Gentry had never seen a man with pierced ears, and while his now normal-colored eyes calmed her, the piercings were confusing.

  “Um,” she said as he wrapped a short length around her palm, What did you do to your ears? How did you turn seagulls into marble? “What was your name?”

  “One moment.” He lightly dabbed ointment across her palm. Gentry flinched, but the stranger kept her fingers in a soft yet firm grip, and in moments the sting of the cuts subsided to a warm buzz.

  Surely he can’t be bad, she told herself as he cut a strip of bandage, wrapped it around her hand, and tied it in an almost cute bow. Then he offered his own hand. Gentry awkwardly shook it.

  “Winn,” he said.

  “Win what?”

  “My name.” A bright, wide grin stretched his lips. “Winn. Nice to meet you, Gentry Abrams.”

  “Well, Winn”—he moved to her other hand, and she relaxed somewhat—“can you explain this to me?”

  She held up the necklace with her wrapped hand.

  “Earth spirits. Last night.” He applied ointment to her unbound palm. “They stay away from roads and cities. You were traveling over highly magicked ground, Gentry. They’re stirring because of the mining, and they sensed your gold.”

  The words buzzed through Gentry’s brain like angry flies. “Wait, what?”

  “Gold.” He tied a bandage into a second little bow on her other hand. Leaning back, he met her eyes. “It’s what they feed on. Gold.”

  “That makes no sense.”

  “I don’t make the rules.” He grinned. “But there were strong spirits migrating through here yesterday. I think they mistakenly enchanted that necklace of yours, which might explain why the others are bothering you. They know you can see them, and that’s an exciting prospect.”

  The center of Gentry’s forehead began to pulse. Sighing, she put her elbows on her knees and rubbed her temples. “None of this makes sense.”

  “That’s because you don’t want it to,” he said, “and it won’t until you stop trusting what others have told you and start believing in what you feel.”

  She eyed him.

  “Hagree proverb,” he said, referring to the Indians in the most western parts of Utah Territory.

  He sat straight, took her necklace, and placed it on her fingers above her bandage. He placed her other hand on top of it. “Don’t you feel it?”

  Gentry only felt her own pulse, which radiated in the scrapes along her palms. She glanced down to his hands.

  “Sorry.” He grinned all the more and released her.

  “Winn.”

  “Hm?”

  “How do you know all this? Do all . . . this?” She gestured to the house around them.

  “That, dear Gentry, is a long story. Perhaps for another night.” He stood and stretched. “You don’t perchance know an Ira Maheux, do you?”

  Gentry shook her head.

  “Ah, well.” He stretched his arms overhead for a moment before settling them onto his hips. “Just visiting. Where’s home then, if I might ask?”

  Gentry glanced to the bandages on her hand. Twice this man had been kind to her. She didn’t think it was a coincidence. “Dry Creek.”

  “I don’t know it.”

  “It’s small. Barely worth a dot on the map.” She pocketed the necklace. She couldn’t bring herself to wear it, not right now. “South and a little west. A day’s ride.” Her face fell at the prospect of morning. She began wringing her left index finger, but she winced when she tugged on the scraped skin of her palms. “Are the . . . spirits . . . gone from there?”

  “I imagine so. But the road is fine, now.”

  She straightened. “You saw that? The ponds?”

  Winn rubbed his chin. Something about the movement made him look older. “Yes. Nasty stuff. Happening more and more.”

  Gentry stood, then wobbled a little with the movement of the house. Was it going somewhere? She placed a hand on the wall to steady herself, then pulled it back when an unseen beak nipped at her. “There are more ponds like that?”

  Winn sighed. “Ponds, quakes, sometimes even storms. It’s a mess.”

  “Why are they happening?” Gentry still smelled the harsh stink of sulfur in her sinuses, felt the earthy claws grappling for her neck. She shivered.

  Winn noticed. “Cold?”

  She shook her head.

  “The magic in this world—what’s left of it—feeds off gold,” he said, softer. “When we pull too much of it out of the earth, it offsets the balance.”

  Gentry reached into her pocket and touched her necklace. Did he mean California? The mines? They were . . . offsetting the balance? Causing these pools and quakes that threatened her friends and family?

  Was her father all right?

  Chewing her lip, she turned to Winn and studied him, his hair that could have been made of gold thread, his gold-flecked eyes watching her. They crinkled as he smiled. She blushed, and he laughed.

  “Well, Gentry Abrams,” he said as though her first and last name were all one word, “will it be American Fork or Dry Creek?”

  She perked. “You can take me there?”

  “I would hardly be a gentleman if I didn’t.”

  A small smile tugged on Gentry’s mouth. “American Fork, please. My sister is there. The house off of Chipman Road, if you know it.”

  “I’ll get you as close as I can. Might startle a few night owls.” The house shifted. Based on the pressure in her belly, it felt like over and up. The unearthly light within dimmed to a twilightesque blue. Gentry peered out the window, but she saw only the occasional lantern. The valley had grown too dark to see anything but emerging stars.

&nb
sp; After a minute or so, Winn offered his hand. Gentry eyed him. Did he want to shake it again?

  “So you don’t fall,” he said.

  Gentry clasped his hand. The moment she did, the floor gave out from beneath her. She shrieked as birds reformed and broke apart from each other, carrying the scent of salt water and brine shrimp on their wings. The walls collapsed, then the roof, turning into a torrent of feathers and webbed feet.

  Gentry bit down another scream as wings whipped by her. Her free hand gripped Winn’s arm, and she protected her face against his chest.

  Seconds later, the storm died down, and Gentry felt solid ground beneath her feet.

  Lifting her head, Gentry searched for the birds. A few of them waddled over dark ground, moonlight glinting off their eyes. She recognized the edge of American Fork—the turnery. Chipman Road was perhaps a five-minute walk.

  If any of the town’s residents saw the unbecoming of the bird-house, they stayed hidden.

  “You all right?”

  Gentry immediately released Winn and stepped back, though he kept his hold on her hand. “I . . . yes, thank you.”

  He grinned. “Until we meet again.”

  “Again?” Gentry chirped, but the word wasn’t loud enough to carry past her lips. Did he expect another coincidence, or was a reunion intended? Her stomach fluttered at the thought.

  Winn actually bowed to her, and, at the bow’s lowest point, kissed her hand. Jitters burned an uneven trail up her arm.

  Then he turned and walked away—only a dozen steps or so before the birds flocked again, a tornado of bodies that swallowed the golden man and hid him in the shadows of the mountains.

  Gentry kept the necklace in her pocket for the sake of her sanity. Even without the ghosts, her hands trembled when she touched it.

  “Oh, I was getting worried.” Hannah lay a hand on her chest when Gentry came through the door of the Hinkle house. She sat in a chair in the front room nursing her baby girl, Rachel, who was only four months old. “Pearl was about to head to Agnes’s to see what kept you so long.”