Veins of Gold

by Charlie N. Holmberg

  Rooster shrugged. “Guess so. Didn’t seem interested in talking to me.”

  Gentry frowned. “Rude of them. After Pa worked there and all.”

  Rooster didn’t reply, and silence filled the house for several heartbeats.

  Her brother tilted his head. “Pearl?”

  “Gone to Ann’s.”

  “Hmm. Storm brought a lot of gulls.”

  Gentry perked and hurried to the nearest window, peeking outside. The puddles from the storm had sunk into the earth, but a few seagulls flapped about the yard and beyond, never seeming content to stay in one spot. They pecked at the ground and at each other, occasionally taking flight for half a second before resettling somewhere else.

  Gentry let out a sigh. “Maybe we can shoot one for supper.”

  “Pa took the gun.”

  “He did? Why would he do that?” Gentry’s stomach clenched. Not for hunger . . . she’d eaten just an hour ago.

  “Indians, I guess.” Rooster shrugged and closed his eyes, his head leaning against the back of the chair.

  Sighing, Gentry sealed her letter and scrawled the address provided by the mercantile owner. With nothing better to do, Rooster morose, and Pearl gone to play, she might as well make the trek to post it now. She rubbed the folded paper between her thumb and fingers. Don’t forget us, she thought.

  After fixing her hair, Gentry slid her bonnet over her bun and tied it beneath her chin. “I’m heading into town. Do we need anything?”

  Rooster, body still and arms folded across his chest, didn’t answer. He’d set his hat over his eyes. Tiptoeing past him, she stepped into the too-bright daylight.

  Gentry eyed the half-empty stable. It wasn’t a terribly long walk to the mercantile, which handled all the mail coming and going on wagon trains. She wanted to stretch her legs, besides. Bounder likely felt the same, so she crossed their yard to her stall, tucking a loose lock of hair under the brim of the bonnet. She checked the mare’s feed and water first before opening the pen. Bounder wouldn’t wander away, just mosey around the property, chewing on what weeds smelled appetizing.

  Bounder cleared the stall door, then hesitated, nickering softly. Her head bounced left and right, her nostrils wide.

  “What’s wrong?” Gentry asked, running her hand on the velvet of Bounder’s nose. She turned about, searching the property and beyond for a coyote. She saw none. Her skin prickled, remembering the earthquake near American Fork.

  Bounder blew hard through her nostrils.

  One hand still on Bounder’s nose, Gentry slipped the other into her pocket, where her ma’s necklace lay. Her fingers brushed its chain, and she looked around once more. Palmed the heart pendant. Saw a shadow on her shoulder.

  Shrieking, Gentry stumbled back from the mare, both hands brushing her shoulder, her bonnet. Nothing there. Chest light and pulsing, Gentry snatched the necklace out of her pocket, and her eyes cleared. There, on the dirt between her and the horse, bobbed a tar-like thing half made of shadow. It had dark pits for eyes and was shaped like the gummy candy sold in jars at the mercantile.

  The “eyes” focused on the necklace in Gentry’s hand.

  “Go away!” she cried, taking a few steps back. Bounder huffed, but the mare’s eyes never focused upon the creature—the wild magic. The blob bounced forward, none of the drying dirt of the ground sticking to its smooth, spectral form. It rolled to the right almost playfully, splitting into two smaller versions of itself.

  Gentry staggered back.

  They won’t hurt you, Winn’s voice said in her memory.

  The twin creatures bobbed toward her, water-like.

  “Go away!” She looked around to see if anyone had heard. She was, of course, alone.

  The blobs watched her necklace, contorting their strange bodies to follow it when Gentry flailed. What had Winn said about them? They eat gold? They certainly won’t be eating this!

  “Shoo, shoo!” She waved at them, trying to usher them away in the same manner Winn had with the serpent. “You’re not wanted.”

  A shadow fell on her shoulder. Gentry turned to see a third blob of wild magic perched beside her ear. She registered a subtle coolness from its body but no weight before biting down on another shriek and trying to beat it off with her fist. It was, however, the fist that held her ma’s necklace, and the blob latched onto it with some unknown appendage, chewing on the fine chain.

  “You can’t have it!” Gentry shouted, flinging her arm toward the ground and dislodging the creature. The other two blobs watched it right itself. “Go away!”

  The third blob, the largest of the three, obediently turned and began bouncing back toward the stable. The other two bobbed toward her in an unsure manner.

  For a moment, Gentry’s tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. She swallowed and watched the blob go.

  “Stop,” she tried, then wondered at herself.

  The wild thing stopped and twisted toward her.

  Good heavens, it’s listening to me. She took a step back. One of the twin blobs followed, and she kicked at it, sending it scurrying back to its mate.

  “Do you . . .” She swallowed again. “Do you understand me?”

  The blob watched her.

  Opening her hand, cupping her palm so the creatures wouldn’t see, she checked over her necklace, expecting another broken link. She found none. If this wild magic had gotten a taste, it had been a very tiny one.

  And now it listened to her?

  She thought of Winn’s gulls and licked her teeth.

  “Shoo,” she ordered the twin blobs as she took a few steps toward the listening one, kicking at them with her feet. A few paces from the blob, she said, “Well, then, jump up and down.”

  The blob jumped.

  A smile tempted Gentry’s lips. “Do it again.”

  This time the blob just watched her, disobedient. A strange, almost dizzying sensation flooded her mind, like her thoughts had become slick with oil. She blinked a few times and shook her head, but her mind had gone incoherent, and she couldn’t—

  Bounder nudged her shoulder, and Gentry came back to herself, eyeing the horse. She rubbed her forehead, then looked back toward the blobs. All three had disappeared, as had the strange sensation in her head.

  Shaking herself, she clasped the necklace around her neck and tucked the locket beneath her collar.

  “Sorry, girl.” She patted Bounder’s neck. “They’re gone. Be good.”

  Reaching into her other pocket, Gentry fingered the letter to her father and walked briskly in the direction of the mercantile as her thoughts reordered themselves. Mail the letter, stretch her legs. She started to mull over what chores needed doing upon her return when a seagull standing off the path not far from her let out a weak squawk. She glanced to it, then to another grasshopper near it, similar to the one that had accosted Rooster. The gull eyed her, then seized the insect, crunching it in its beak. Gentry gagged and stepped around it. The bird didn’t seem frightened of her at all.

  Gentry fingered her necklace through her collar as she walked, wondering at the blobby, candy-like creatures, wondering at wild magic and itching to see Winn one more time, if only to ask him more about it. She walked past the parcel of land her family owned and a little ways down the road before something crunched under her boot, emitting a loud and sickening sound. Pulling back, she saw a grasshopper under her sole, this one larger than the first two. Ahead, another one of the bugs leapt from the road, joining three more on a patch of wild grass.

  One of the seagulls cried behind her. She spun and watched it flap into the air, blinding her as it passed in front of the sun. Once she’d blinked the light from her eyes, she noticed a new storm brewing in the distance. Shielding her vision with a hand across her forehead, she squinted at the low, dusty-looking clouds. Queasiness filled her gut. Those weren’t clouds rushing toward her. Clouds didn’t make buzzing noises like that—low, culminating hums that grew louder with each passing second.

  Gentry�
��s stomach dropped to her toes. Swarm.

  These weren’t grasshoppers. They were locusts.

  The nastiest curse Gentry’s mind could conjure danced on her tongue, but it evaporated from her lips as the buzzing intensified and the black specks grew ever larger. Gripping the letter, she bolted back for the house.

  “Rooster!” she shouted, and the front of the swarm hit her, pelting her like dry hail. She shrieked and swatted the insects away. A few landed on her collar, their antennae prodding her necklace. She beat them with her fingers. “Rooster!”

  Rooster flung open the door. The nasty things flew and hopped around them both. He slammed the door shut against their intrusion, then creaked it open and shouted, “Come on!”

  Gentry ran in, nearly shoving Rooster to the floor as she barreled into him. Rooster’s palms slapped her back, knocking off locusts. Gentry danced up and down to smash them with her boots. She heard Bounder squeal, but the mare was lost among the swarm.

  Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry, they’re just insects—

  The curse reformed and burst from her mouth. She stiffened and cried, “The crops!”

  Rooster echoed her profanity and dashed into the bedroom, grabbing the same blankets that had shielded the garden just yesterday. He tossed one to Gentry and sprinted outside. Gentry followed him, sure to shut the door hard behind her.

  The things were everywhere, carpeting the ground in patches, clinging to the wood pile, zipping through the air. Pelting her like shot. Gentry kept her forearm in front of her face as she followed Rooster. He jumped the garden fence; Gentry stumbled through the gate.

  There were more locusts than leaves.

  “Go! Get away!” She grabbed the end of her blanket and swatted at the bugs. “Go, go!” Her eyes tried to find Rooster amidst the swarm. What if they hurt him?

  The locusts stirred, losing themselves among their endless comrades, only to resettle on different plants. For a moment Gentry saw dancing shadows among them, but the creatures whizzed by each other so swiftly she couldn’t be sure. The buzzing surrounded her, drilling into her brain, growing louder when the vermin leapt too close to her ears. Their legs crawled over her, clinging to the cotton of her dress, nibbling at her necklace.

  A flash of white slammed into her and knocked her to the earth. Locusts crunched beneath her. A repetitive, high-pitched cry echoed around her: aya aya aya!

  Swatting locusts from her vision, Gentry saw one, two, five, ten seagulls swooping down from the sky, their beaks stretched wide as they intercepted locusts, chomping down on their crunchy bodies. The aya aya aya! multiplied until it became one long, ebbing screech, and with the calls came gull after gull after gull, until the sky was more white and gray than it was blue and black. So many birds swarmed the house, devouring the insects, that for a moment Gentry forgot the locusts all together.

  Rooster—whole and well—spat out a storm, using the same obscenities her father favored, and backed up against the house, swatting at bug and bird alike. Gentry scrambled to her feet and rushed to his side, grabbing onto his arm.

  “They’re eating them!” she shouted over the ceaseless cries. “Look, Rooster!”

  Rooster shielded his eyes from wind and wings and spied about, his muscles tense under Gentry’s fingers.

  Gentry slapped one of the locusts from her collar, then touched her necklace, wondering. Attracted to the gold? Were these locusts like the bizarre spirits? Magically . . . awake? Like Winn’s . . .

  “Seagulls,” she whispered as the gulls feasted. She couldn’t see through the cluster of their bodies, nor through the clouds of insects as the locusts fled from the garden, leaping and flying from the crops. Gentry clung to her brother for several more minutes, until the gull cries weakened and seagulls began finding perches wherever they could fit—the roof, the fence, the stables, or the earth itself.

  Her gaze lifted and she saw him, the flash of his gold hair through the flock. He looked different in the sunlight, more real and yet more numinous, his hair as golden as the sun, his eyes bright as coins. If his veins glowed, the day shone too brightly for her to see them, or his loose sleeves were too covering, though he’d rolled them up to his elbows.

  “Winn,” she said, breathless, releasing Rooster and bounding over vegetable beds to the garden fence. He met her with a soft smile. “Winn, thank you.”

  Rooster eyed the seagulls, grimacing when one emptied its bowels from the eave near him. He inched away, eyeing Gentry, Winn, Gentry. “You know him?”

  Winn tipped an invisible hat. “How do you do?”

  “Rooster, this is Winn. He helped Pearl and I when we got stuck on our way to American Fork.” And rescued me from magical ghosts. And told me about magic. And he lives in a house made out of birds. I told you about him, didn’t I?

  Rooster nodded slowly, making his way to Gentry’s side, then up and over the fence. “Pearl talked all about you.” He offered his hand, notably looking at the studs in Winn’s ears.

  “Pearl did, did she?” Winn shook Rooster’s hand, but he looked at Gentry. Gentry merely coughed and tried to shake the anxious tremors from her body.

  “You have hellish timing,” Rooster said as he broke his grip, eyeing the birds. “Where’d they all come from?”

  “He, uh,” Gentry began, looking back to Winn, who stood straight and dazzling and not at all bothered by . . . anything. “He trains them.”

  Rooster cocked an eyebrow. “You train seagulls?”

  “Very smart animals,” Winn said.

  Rooster turned about and cursed again. “Where’s Bounder?”

  Gentry’s belly sank. “Run off; she wasn’t tied up—”

  A distant cry reached Gentry’s ears—not an equine sound, but a woman’s scream. Ducking between fence rails, she escaped the garden and jogged past the men, peering beyond the house toward the rest of Dry Creek. Toward the clouds of black that flitted about homes and farms like chimney smoke.

  “Oh no.” She exhaled the words. Rooster’s footsteps sounded behind her. Spinning on the sole of her foot, she hurried back to Winn.

  “They’re magic, aren’t they,” she said out of Rooster’s hearing, pinching the chain of her necklace. “The locusts.”

  Winn nodded—a single bob of his head. “The unrest from the mines riled them. Even all the way out here.” He looked over her head, which wasn’t hard to do, as he was nearly a full head taller than she. “Poor things.”

  “I’d hardly call them poor,” Gentry said, turning his attention back to her. The mines did this too? Threatened her crops, her horse, her family? And yet she could do nothing to stop it, not like Winn could.

  Pushing aside her worthlessness, she asked, “Can’t you . . . settle them down?”

  He shook his head. “They’re too independent, and riled up at that. They won’t listen to me like the birds do.”

  Easing the sharpness from her voice, Gentry asked, “The mines. You mentioned them before.”

  “I think I mentioned the gold.” He absentmindedly brushed a finger over the studs in one of his ears. His left only had three studs again instead of four. “It’s their mana, what keeps them awake and astute. What differs them from the dormant.”

  Rooster eyed them, and Winn dropped his voice. “One of the largest veins of gold is in California, and it’s being attacked by zealous miners. It’s offsetting the balance, so to speak. We’ve already felt the repercussions here, and I’ve seen them farther east too.”

  “The sulfur ponds, the quakes.”

  “There was a nasty storm too. Strange, for it to take to the sky.” Winn rubbed his chin. “The more gold they pull out, the more everything will forget.”

  “Forget?” Gentry repeated.

  Winn smiled. Gentry’s cheeks burned. “Anything of the earth and from the earth has magic. Had it—when something becomes too experienced with humans, too domesticated, it forgets the magic it once had—”

  “They’re everywhere, Gentry.” Rooster jogged to
ward her. One of the locusts fumbled in the soil at Rooster’s feet; he lifted his shoe and squashed it. Gentry didn’t miss Winn’s wince.

  “Can you help the others?” Gentry asked, wanting to grab his hands or his shirt or something, but she clasped her fingers together instead. “Can I . . . help them?”

  Winn frowned at the valley beyond the house. “Magic doesn’t like to fight magic. The gulls weren’t thrilled with this.”

  “Huh?” Rooster asked.

  Gentry ignored her brother. “Please. They’ll destroy everything.”

  Winn let out a long sigh. Reaching to his right ear, he pulled the highest stud from the cartilage and said, “Turkey!”

  One of the larger seagulls, perched on a post, cocked its head before flying over. For the first time, Gentry noticed a pale shimmer around it, almost invisible against the bright light of the sun. Magically awake. She touched her necklace.

  Winn tossed the stud into the air. Leaping, Turkey swallowed it and took off for the sky—Gentry winced at the loss of at least fifty cents worth of gold. He didn’t get far before the other seagulls, somehow sensing his purpose, stirred up dust and took off, soaring deeper into Dry Creek.

  Rooster stared. “Did you just . . . ?”

  “They’re very well trained.” Winn’s grin returned. “But it’s a temporary fix,” he added, eyes back to Gentry. “Hopefully the locusts will move on and forget us.”

  “Someone else’s problem.” Gentry frowned.

  Rooster snorted. “At least not ours.” He eyed Winn. “Thanks.” He shook Winn’s hand again. To Gentry he said, “Let’s survey the damage, then look for Bounder,” and hopped back over the fence.

  Gentry wrung her index finger. “How do they know?”

  “Hm?” asked Winn.

  “The birds. How do they know what to do?”

  “It’s bribery and imagination,” he said, his words lighter. “They hear your thoughts, when you want them to. Well, these birds do. If you can think it and the birds are willing . . .”

  “It happened to me, just before the locusts.” Gentry lowered her voice even more. “I saw some of that wild magic. Some little blobs who wanted to snack on this.” She looped a finger around the chain of her necklace. “And one of them listened to me. For a moment, anyway.”