Her gaze went back to Winn, who still held her close. She fit against him so nicely. She only imagined what her ma would say, were she still around. Then again, maybe she wouldn’t mind. In the end, her mother hadn’t cared much for propriety.
“Gentry,” he murmured, his voice husky, his breath warm.
She could kiss him, she realized, and a cool tingling encircled her crown and dripped down her neck. All it would take was lifting herself onto her toes and turning her head ever so slightly to the left. Would Winn close that lingering space between them? Did he really think of her the way she thought of him?
She pressed her fingers to his chest, trying to feel his heartbeat, desperate to know if it beat as quickly as hers. But Winn misread the gesture, perhaps thinking she wanted to push him away, and his arm slackened its hold on her. He stepped back, close but not close enough, an easy smile finding its way to his lips. It shocked Gentry how cold she felt with that bit of distance between them. She couldn’t think of a way to close it. She swallowed hard and eased her heart back down.
Winn glanced out the window. “We’re almost there.”
Gentry blinked into awareness. She didn’t see the San Pitches or the Wasatch out the window, just the last tendrils of the sun on the desert horizon. “Already?”
“Mount Moriah.” He stepped toward the window and put his hand on the wall beside it. Perhaps sensing the intent beneath his touch, the house rotated slowly until the window faced eastward, toward a tall, gray mountain ahead. “It’s not as majestic as the Wasatch range, but its peak will be a little warmer.”
Gentry marveled at the mountain, at the house growing level with it. Winn offered his hand, and Gentry took it without prompting. A moment later, the house bumped and shook, and the seagulls became seagulls once more, dissipating into the desert night like a thousand dandelion seeds.
The top of the mountain was wide and smooth, almost free of loose soil. A little farther down the slope the ever-thriving sagebrush grew, and even farther down grew clusters of pine trees. Gentry thought it would be very pretty in the snow, if it snowed here at all. The air smelled like cooling earth and that subtle sweetness desert nights always carried with them.
“Look.” Winn pointed upward, and Gentry tilted her head back to see.
Stars. They came alive as she watched, winking into existence, filling the bright streak that cut through the center of the sky and speckling the indigo beyond. Letting go of Winn’s hand, Gentry turned slowly, taking in the great expanse of the sky. Yes, the stars were visible from her home in Dry Creek, but when was the last time she had really looked at them?
“They’re beautiful.” She stopped to stare eastward, where the edges of night had begun to turn black and the stars were especially bright. She reached beside her, found Winn’s arm, and traced it up to his shoulder. Leaning her head back against it, she watched the stars twinkle. After a few minutes, she saw one streak across the sky.
“Did you see that?” She straightened. “It’s good luck to see a shooting star.”
“Did you make a wish?”
Gentry licked her lips and peered back toward the sky, where the streak had been. “I wouldn’t know where to start.”
Winn’s countenance drooped. “Gentry—”
“I’m looking for my father too.” She met his eyes for a moment. “We haven’t had word of him since he left, though I know he made it to California safely. I contacted a post there. I know he’s in California, but he hasn’t written. And surely . . . surely he’s received his wages by now.”
She folded her arms, suddenly cold. “We’ve been waiting all summer for him. For anything, but he’s silent. Why is he silent, Winn? Why hasn’t he tried to help us?”
Winn frowned. “I meant what I said. I can take you there. It’s not much farther than the Hagree.”
Her arms slackened. “All the way to California? To the Boston Company?”
He nodded.
“Oh Winn.” She let her hands drop. “That would be . . . so helpful. I need to know. I just . . .” Her stomach cramped, and she pressed a few fingers into it. Perhaps her supper wasn’t settling as well as she had hoped.
“I could take you in the morning.”
She shook her head. “I need a few days to get things in order. But yes, please. Winn, it would mean so much to me.”
His smile returned and was contagious. “Anything for you, Gentry,” he said, and her stomach loosened. “Shall we—”
He paused, turning suddenly toward the north, squinting through the darkness. His shoulders tensed, and nearby the seagulls grew restless, rustling their feathers and squawking deep in their gullets.
Gentry searched the sky, the horizon, but saw—and felt—nothing. “What is it?”
Winn’s jaw clenched. “Something’s wrong again.”
“Wrong?” she asked, then realization struck. “The mines?”
He nodded.
“Is it bad?”
He didn’t answer, but his silence was answer enough. Shoulders still tense, he said, “I’ll take you home, then—”
“I’m coming with you.”
He turned toward her, his brow raised and creasing his forehead.
“It will be faster, won’t it? You’ll get there sooner?” she asked. “I want to help. I mean, I won’t be very useful, but—”
He grabbed her hands. “Yes. Thank you, Gentry.” Releasing her, he put his middle finger and thumb to his lips and whistled, then waved his other arm, stirring the seagulls to life. They flew into the air with the speed of falcons and began to spiral around Gentry and Winn in a way much different than when they flew to form the house.
“Hold on.” Winn offered his arm. Gentry slipped hers around the crook of his elbow.
He chuckled. “No, really. Hold on.”
He embraced her, eliciting a small squeak from Gentry. The wind around them sped, a bird-made torrent that tugged pieces of hair out of Gentry’s bun and stung her eyes. She squeezed her eyelids shut and clutched Winn’s shirt in her fists. Her feet lifted off the ground without any floor to support them, and she soared blindly into the sky, skirt whipping as they raced across the desert.
The wind shrieked in Gentry’s ears, whistling and screeching an untamed melody. Winn’s chest was the only solid thing around her, and weightlessness engulfed her. She tried to peek, but the gusts drew tears from her eyes. She saw only snippets of blurring birds: white and gray, white and gray.
When her feet found ground, it jarred her. The wind lessened, but her head still spun in tight circles. Her body trembled. Her knuckles ached from her fingers’ death grip on Winn’s shirt.
The gusts finally settled, allowing new sound into her ears—rumbling, like a belch deep in the belly but so much bigger. And the trembling—that wasn’t her. That was the ground, just like when she and Pearl led Bounder off the road to American Fork.
She opened her eyes to the darkness. A three-quarter moon illuminated the night, along with so many stars. The ground quivered and opened onto more stars—no, those were ponds reflecting the sky. A whole network of them, like pockets in a slice of bread. The air had a musty, earthy smell, but there was something wrong underneath it. Something Gentry couldn’t describe. Something she had to stop before it reached home.
“Winn,” she whispered.
“This is big.” His face pointed toward the ponds. He cursed under his breath. “I shouldn’t have brought—”
A gull cried and flew down to him, tossing him a bunch of long sticks and grass. He grabbed them, clamping them in his fist as his other hand dug into his trouser pockets until he found a match. He struck it on one of the branches twice to get it to light, then lit the end of the branches. Gentry’s eyes caught a faint shimmer that was more than mere heat.
Winn palmed an earring and waved his hand over the fire, and it burst, growing exponentially, so hot and bright that Gentry staggered back and shielded her eyes, blinking spots. When she looked again, the sticks stood upright i
n the ground of their own accord, the bright firelight crackling and reaching outward, shaking as the earth quaked with renewed vigor.
“The mines did this?” Gentry asked, but Winn didn’t answer. He might not have heard her—she could barely hear herself. The reflected stars rippled and shuddered in the pools. Gentry gasped as a geyser shot up from one of the larger ponds. It sputtered into the sky far higher than the one on the road to American Fork had, and it stretched four times as wide. A brilliant shimmer surrounded it. Water droplets fell like stardust over the broken earth. The pungent smell of sulfur assaulted her nose.
She didn’t see Winn reach for her, only felt the tug as he jerked her behind him. Gold shimmered beneath his shirtsleeves, and when she saw his face, the veins in his neck and cheeks glowed a brilliant yellow. His other hand stretched toward the geyser, fingers crooked, tendons hard and straight.
She gawked at him, at the fire, at the raging geyser that continued to feed from the ponds. It pumped foul steam into the air and fought against the magicked fire.
“Winn—”
“Stay at my back.” His voice strained, and he released her, using the same hand to pluck two earrings from his ears. He threw the earrings into the air, and two bold seagulls swept in and caught them in their mouths. Instead of eating the gold, however, they soared past the smoke and steam toward the geyser, dropping the precious metal into it.
“Be calm!” Winn shouted. It was the first time Gentry had ever heard him give voice to his strange magic. The first time she’d ever heard him raise his voice, period. An unseen force pushed him backward; his shoes scuffed the earth, marking where he had once stood. Pulse pounding in her ears, Gentry braced herself against him, surprised when his body pushed back. Peeking over his shoulder, she saw the familiar shimmer the gulls always wore dancing in the space between Winn and the geyser.
The boiling geyser grew taller. Steam surrounded them and began eating at the edges of the fire. A force of invisible heat slammed into Winn and Gentry, making them both skid back a pace. Gentry bit down on a scream and threw her weight into her shoulder. Every muscle in Winn’s back had gone taut. It, too, began to glow in zigzagging shapes muted by the linen of his shirt.
Winn reached for his last earrings—a wave of wet heat collided into him and Gentry as he did. Gentry didn’t see where he threw the gold studs or if a gull gobbled them up. The birds seemed to have vanished. Gentry’s dress stuck to her skin with the steam, and a dull ache radiated from her shoulder and neck from where she supported Winn.
“Calm yourself! There’s none to hurt you here!” Winn bellowed something in the hard tones of the Hagree. Gentry nearly tripped as the earth buckled in response. Her foot slid in mud—water began to seep up from beneath the soil.
She turned, pressing both her hands into Winn’s shoulder blades, which heaved with his breaths. Both his arms stretched forward with crooked stiffness, and his veins glowed so brightly Gentry couldn’t look at them directly. Please help him, please help him, she prayed, for Gentry could do nothing but steady him against the onslaught of magic her natural eyes were blind to.
Winn’s left hand swung back to her, his gold-lit fingers clasping her ma’s necklace and pulling the chain taught against her neck. Gentry gasped, slipping momentarily. No, not that, she pleaded. Please don’t use that.
But Winn was out of gold, and the geyser—
The quaking settled to a shiver. Gentry dared to peer over Winn’s shoulder at the geyser, which slowly, so slowly, began to slim and shrink, its fetid waters fountaining with less and less gusto, until the water settled into a pond of a thousand ripples and the earth quieted to such an extreme that even silence sounded loud.
Winn released her necklace and dropped to one knee, the gold gone out of him.
“Winn.” Gentry’s voice rattled up her throat. She forced her wobbly legs forward and knelt in front of him. Sweat slicked his hair, and his face looked older. His shoulders slumped. Panic pulsed strength into Gentry’s limbs. “Winn, are you hurt? Winn?”
“I’m all right,” he said between breaths, and Gentry swallowed her relief. He tried to smile, but it slipped off his mouth. “One . . . moment.”
Gentry smoothed back locks of his hair and, not knowing what else to do, straightened his collar. No gold adorned his ears. A single gull cawed far to the right.
Moving away from the fallen geyser, Gentry hurried to the closest pond, knelt at its bank, and dipped her hand into its water. She smelled the bit pooling in her palm and tasted it with a flick of her tongue. Untainted. Scooping as much as two hands could hold, she walked it back to Winn.
“Is this safe to drink?” She knelt before him once more.
Winn didn’t answer; he cupped her hands in his and dropped his face into the water. Seconds later he pulled back and ran his forearm over his wet face. His movements were heavy, weary. Oh, Winn.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “For stopping that thing. No one else would have.”
He managed a single dry chuckle and swallowed. “One of my few talents.” His eyes swirled with a few remnants of gold. “Thank you.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
He touched her chin, but the effort seemed to tire him, and his arm dropped to his knee. “I need to take you home.”
“You don’t have to—”
“Your brother isn’t a small man.” He tried that smile again. “I’d hate to see what your father looks like.” He paused. “Don’t tell Hoss.”
A weak laugh struggled through the tight walls of her throat. “I won’t. I promise. I’m so sorry.”
“For what?”
Gentry didn’t answer. Instead she stood and looped one of Winn’s arms over her neck, helping him to his feet. He was surprisingly heavy. Gentry imagined how much taming a wild, magicked geyser took out of a man.
He leaned on her, and she said, “If you can’t—”
“Ssshhh.” He raised a weak hand. The seagulls reappeared as if from the air itself. The last of the fire winked out, and moonlit feathers surrounded them, forming the familiar house of gray and white with its sourceless pale light. The moment it was finished, Winn collapsed on the bench.
Gentry hurried to a blocky shelf. “Turkey.”
Nothing happened.
“Turkey,” Winn groaned.
The “stone” changed to feathers that pulled apart like the bellows of an accordion and spit out Winn’s bag. Gentry grabbed it and dug through it until she found a half-filled waterskin. Praising the Lord for the discovery, she hurried back to Winn and offered it.
“You’re an angel,” he mumbled, popping the cork and guzzling from the container. He paused halfway through and looked at her.
“I’m fine, you drink it,” she said, and he did.
After draining the waterskin, Winn set it on the bench next to him. Wringing her hands, Gentry sat on his other side. “Is there anything else I can do?”
He smiled, tired but genuine. “You’ve done more than enough, Gentry. I’ll be fine in a bit.”
“Someone should really pay you for this.”
He laughed and rubbed his eyes. “That would be nice, eh?” His countenance grew serious. “It’s all the mining. It’s too much.”
“There are mines in Utah,” Gentry said. “Lots of places.”
“I know,” he sighed. “Small mines don’t matter. They have repercussions the rest of us see as regular anomalies. How do you think all that mess on the Yellowstone River happened?”
“That’s in the northern territories?”
Winn nodded. “But California . . . veins of gold in the earth are similar to the veins in our own body. Instead of blood, however, they funnel magic throughout the world. Mining veins like the ones in California is like cutting open an artery. The earth . . . she’s retaliating.” He rubbed a thumb over pale stubble on his jaw. “It’s only going to get worse. That mess by the Egret—I’ve never seen it so bad.”
Gentry assumed the Egret was where Winn had j
ust fought the massive geyser.
He continued, “I’ll poke around a bit, maybe, when we go there.”
Gentry straightened. That was right—Winn was taking her to California. To find Pa. To get answers. It would be good to see Pa again, to see how he fared. If things were going well. If not, maybe he would come home. Maybe the mill would rehire him. If it was doing well, he could pay the next mortgage bill . . . which was, Gentry realized, overdue.
She chewed on her lip. If Pa’s mining efforts were going well, then he was part of the problem. She touched her necklace, wondering if she could show him the truth somehow.
The house began its slow descent. Gentry carefully made her way to the window and looked over the shadows of Dry Creek. She blinked against the darkness and eventually made out the stable as well as a millipede-like creature scurrying a ways behind it, its body glowing with magic. It dug down into the ground without really digging at all and disappeared.
The house settled and the birds broke apart, keeping their flock behind the stable. Gentry stepped off the enchantment without any problem—she was getting used to it, it seemed.
Winn offered her his elbow. His skin was pleasantly warm beneath the cotton sleeve, though the small thrill it sent up her arm felt cool. He escorted her to the house, his steps slow. Then again, maybe it was Gentry’s pace that held him back. She’d spent a full and rather adventurous day with him, yet she didn’t want it to end.
“It’s a good thing,” she said, “that I don’t have any close neighbors. In a town as dull as this one, I’m sure the sight of us would make for gossip.” Or worse.
Winn grinned. “She’s worried about the impropriety, not the birds.”
“You’ve never worried about the birds. Why should I?”
He glanced at her, his eyes brown and glimmering with only moonlight now, which Gentry found far more beautiful than gold. “Touché.”
She avoided looking at the crops as they passed—she didn’t need the reminder of how poorly they coped. The door to her small home loomed ahead, and her pulse quickened, remembering Mount Moriah. Any weariness worming through her body flitted away, lightening and loosening her limbs.
Veins of Gold Page 15
