Veins of Gold

by Charlie N. Holmberg

  There was a rhythm in the buzzing, a sort of cadence to the flight of the locusts. Gentry tried to focus on it, to steer her mind away from the speed and the height. She searched for patterns within it, and when she discovered one, she listened for its beginning, over and over. The sun hid its location from her, but the minutes flit by through the tiny holes in her locust-made net. Minutes, minutes. A quarter hour. Two. More, she thought, but the song of the locusts warped time almost as much as it warped direction.

  After what felt like hours, the vibrant song of the swarm began to slow, and Gentry knew her destination neared. Gently, please! she begged, as the swarm spiraled and deposited her on the top of a red-burnished butte. The sun had shifted slightly in the sky, but moving so far west, it had to be a later hour than it appeared.

  Gentry inched toward the edge of the butte on shaky legs; it wasn’t so different from flying in the torrent of gulls, but she didn’t have Winn to hold onto, not anymore. An ache zipped down her center, but she steeled herself and took in her surroundings.

  The locusts had dropped her on a butte above the mining efforts, not terribly far from where the Boston Company had been, if Gentry’s fleeting glimpse of Californian geography was right. A diverted river passed through the cliff’s shadow. Long, curving sluices bordered with men desperately panning edged it, along with tents and forts and a spiderwebbing of canals. Gentry had grown up in the city, surrounded by the workings of men, but seeing the mining now, through her gold-enchanted eyes, made her recognize the scars marring the earth and the deadness of the soil, for none of it had the shimmer of magic.

  They would never stop. This was a bandage, that was all. Yet she had no desire to hurt these ignorant people. First, she had to scare them and buy this bruised and battered land a little more time.

  Winn should have been here.

  She let herself smile. Despite the mess she had made with him, at least she was finally doing something herself. Finally able to take action for the better, so she hoped.

  Around her feet crawled the locusts, antsy for another feeding, another command. She didn’t know how much they would do without bribery. Their relationship was too new, but Gentry was ready to learn.

  She’d stay here and let them do the work, for they had the true power. She was, as Winn had said, only a conduit. Gentry took a deep breath, letting the air inflate her chest. She stepped closer to the edge of the butte. Reaching into her pocket, she pinched the last piece of her mother’s necklace between her fingers.

  “Save this if you can,” she begged them. “There is gold enough for all.”

  But she had to prompt them, so she dropped the golden clasp at her feet. The insects immediately swarmed for it, antennae and legs feathering against her shoes. This time, she spoke with her thoughts. Half of you, fly down to the river. Swarm, buzz, crawl. Scare them away.

  She visualized half of the locusts doing just that, and to her amazement, they responded. Half of the black insects rose into the air and from behind the butte, a cloud of pestilence. The buzzing radiated in Gentry’s bones and numbed her ears. They flew as though each was part of a larger creature, and they barreled down the mountainside toward the river and miners. Gentry could barely hear their screams of alarm over thousands of wings. She thought of the time these very creatures swarmed her small home, and her heartbeat quickened. Through open patches in the swarm, she saw men dropping pails and shovels, running downstream as they swatted at the insects.

  She reached out to the others with her thoughts. Can you hear me? Please, fly down to the river. Break the sluices and the dams.

  The rest of the swarm poured over the side of the butte like sludge. Gentry felt their song humming through her muscles, and, deep in her throat, she sang with them. The black locusts spread out like oil, chasing straggling men from the water. The supports holding the walls for the diverted river began to creak.

  Then Gentry noticed her hand. The veins glowed with gold. She traced the lines, feeling their warmth against her fingertips. Did her eyes shine too?

  A loud cracking echoed against the butte. One of the dams buckled, releasing a great current into the natural river bed. The force shoved waves up and over the banks and into the tents. Locusts gathered tight as spearheads and dive-bombed the sluices, penetrating the wood. Others chewed on supports like termites, knocking the slides to the ground, flooding the area.

  A gunshot rang into the air.

  Gentry backed away from the butte’s edge. She may have been noticed. That shot might have been meant for her, and a rush like snake venom raced through her limbs.

  A mill wheel fell from its supports and crashed into the new waves. Tent canvases bubbled in the growing depths. The remaining miners fled for dry ground, running to stay ahead of the surging river.

  The butte trembled. That, Gentry knew, wasn’t her doing.

  Something deep under the deadened earth was stirring.

  “Time to go,” she whispered, and she tried to push the thought out to the swarm. They responded, returning to the butte and swirling around her. Many of them clutched bits of gold in their legs or carried whole nuggets between them.

  “Thank you,” she murmured, the words mingling with their song. “Let’s go back to Dry Creek before the mob reaches us.”

  The locusts agreed—she felt it in the cadence of their buzzing—and they swooped beneath her, flying her across the desert, away from the descent of the sun.

  Caleb ran around in the yard before the Hinkle’s house, waving his half sister’s rag doll around in one hand as Pearl chased him, growling like a mountain lion and laughing. Gentry watched them from a soft chair in the front room of Hannah’s home, some knitting forgotten on her lap. They would intrude on the Hinkles’ hospitality only a day more before venturing north to Salt Lake City and to the rented spaces prepared for them. In the meantime, Rooster was helping Willard with equipment or orders or something to do with printing that went over Gentry’s head.

  “I know heartbreak when I see it.” Hannah’s statement drew Gentry’s attention away from the window and the children at play. She stood in the doorway, little Rachel bundled and asleep in her arms.

  Gentry smiled. “She’ll be too heavy to carry soon enough.”

  “Don’t go changing the subject.” Hannah crossed the room and sat on the bench beside Gentry. “There’s another wedding in your future.”

  “I’m the one who called it off.”

  “I know.” Rachel stirred, so Hannah began rocking side to side. “I also know that’s not why you’re heartsick.”

  Gentry sighed and looked back toward Pearl. “What do I have to be heartsick over? I’ve got Pearl and Rooster, and good job prospects, and a new home waiting. Not to mention generous friends.”

  Hannah smiled. “I had a beau of my own when I was a little younger than Rooster, before I met Willard. I loved him. At least, I thought I did. Feels so long ago now, it’s hard to remember.”

  Gentry met Hannah’s eyes. “What happened?”

  Hannah shrugged. “He was a Methodist. I was due west. He didn’t want to come, I didn’t want to stay, in the end.”

  “A sad parting,” Gentry said.

  She nodded. “But for the best, in the end.” She looked down at Rachel with such sweet affection, Gentry felt like she was intruding.

  She set her knitting aside. It had been so long since she’d had yarn to knit that her work looked sloppy, anyway. “I’m going to get some air.”

  “I’ll start dinner in a couple hours.”

  “Be back to help you.” Gentry offered another smile before tying on her bonnet and stepping out the door. She tousled Caleb’s dark hair as she passed.

  She knew her way around American Fork decently well and retraced a path that led to the cemetery. Memories of moving shadows and blob “monsters” tickled her thoughts, and she smiled genuinely. What an adventure that had been. And her adventures weren’t over. After settling in Salt Lake, she would still listen for the rumbl
ing of the earth and chase it down as Winn had, somehow. As long as she could find the gold, she could take care of her loved ones and calm the brewing tempests. But, as Gentry knew, gold was not easy to come by. Perhaps God intended her to resign as a homebody. Not the worst of fates, she supposed.

  “Nasty things! Shoo, shoo!”

  The woman’s cry made Gentry pause in her walk. She spied her waving a broom about a half-built porch at a few locusts taking perch there. A few shimmering ones.

  Her breath caught. She peered ahead, past the cemetery, searching for a private place. Down the road, a farm without other homes near it. She ran, her skirt fluttering behind her. To me, please! she begged, for she knew these locusts were not the ones who had taken her to California or followed her to American Fork.

  Her lungs and legs burned by the time she reached the farm and the stalks of corn growing along its crooked fence. Heat bloomed beneath her blouse and in her cheeks. Bending over, she breathed deeply, trying to steady herself. Moments later, the familiar hum of the locusts brushed her ears, and dozens took home in the corn leaves nearby her, antennae flicking back and forth, wings stretching as though excited.

  Gentry straightened and, keeping her voice low, asked, “Were you successful?”

  The creatures buzzed, bodies glimmering even without the sheen of the sun.

  Her heart flipped and twisted. “Which one? Who did you find?”

  They buzzed, and unbidden in her thoughts, Gentry saw the image of a seagull.

  Tears sprang to her eyes. They had found Winn. They knew where he was. But was it too late?

  Gentry shook her head, hope nearly choking her. She had to try. She would never forgive herself if she didn’t try.

  She loved him.

  “Please, can you take me to him?”

  As the locusts leapt from the cornstalks, Gentry realized she hadn’t asked how far he had gone. She’d promised Hannah to be back to help with dinner.

  But sometimes promises had to be broken for better ones.

  The locusts became a cloud around her, and soon her feet left the ground. She zoomed high into the air, certain someone would see her. Yet in the darkness between the insects’ bodies, Gentry could barely see anything herself.

  She flew with the power of a hundred eagles across the desert, not west, but south. Tendrils of wind whipped through spaces between locusts and danced around her limbs. Gentry hugged herself and tucked in her knees, trying to make herself smaller, centered. The shimmer of magic encompassed her, fueled by the rhythm of locusts’ wings. Without more gold, this might be the last time Gentry traveled such distance with such power, so she absorbed the song around her, memorizing its unspoken words.

  In a burst of weightlessness, Gentry managed to orient herself downward and spied rust-colored desert passing far below her. The gusts stole her breath away as she looked ahead through a star-shaped gap in the locusts, beholding the largest canyon she’d ever laid eyes on. It stretched for miles in either direction, a gaping maw carved right into the stony earth.

  The cloud dropped and propelled forward, heading right for it.

  “No!” Gentry cried. She grappled for something to hold on to but felt only the flitting of wings under her fingers. “No, not there! Let me down! Let me down!”

  The cloud swept upward. Blinding sunlight pierced the star-shaped window just before it closed. Gentry tumbled backward, feet over head, before weightlessness assaulted her once more. The cloud tightened around her, and Gentry’s backside thudded against something hard. As swiftly as the blowing out of a candle, the locusts lifted from her and spiraled down into the mouth of the great canyon, which gaped not twenty feet from her, stretching endlessly, as though the earth itself had broken in two.

  Gentry gasped for air, her chest and shoulders jerking with each intake. Her skirt puddled immodestly about her. Fingers dug into hot, dusty soil, gripping small handfuls in fists. Her bonnet barely held onto her neck and dangled between her shoulder blades, and pieces of hair flew wild about her face.

  She stared at the canyon until her heart slowed enough for her to differentiate one beat from another. Her body felt too cold and too hot at once. She blinked, her eyes dry.

  Slowly she got her feet beneath her and stood, her joints stiff and shaky, her torso light. She took a step forward and paused.

  The locusts had fled into the depths of that canyon. Gentry no longer heard their song.

  Was Winn . . . was he down there, or had the insects stranded her here, not understanding her wish or no longer caring to fulfill it?

  She slid a foot forward, sliding her shoe across the red-tinted dust. Moved the other. Held her arms out as though she walked a tightrope, eyeing the edge of the canyon the entire time. She inched forward bit by bit. When she stood a few paces from its lip, she dropped to her knees and crawled to the edge, peering over.

  The canyon plummeted deep into the earth, its base drawn by a slim, silver river over a mile below. Its walls were not straight but rocky, almost stair-like in many places, with stone layered in a way that made Gentry think of stacked flapjacks. Beige and rust and sienna, they seemed to lean toward that narrow river. She’d die before ever reaching the water, broken apart on the menacing cliffs.

  She didn’t see the cloud of locusts nor a single gull. Swallowing, she trembled.

  “Winn?” she whispered. Coughed. Gripping the edge of the cliff, she swallowed once more and shouted, “Winn!”

  His name echoed between cliffs, and in the sound she heard the desperation of her own voice. The call faded, leaving her alone once more.

  She backed away from the cliff a few feet and lifted herself onto her knees, peering about her barren surroundings. Nothing. There was nothing here but the great chasm. A chill coursed down her spine, contrasting with the merciless heat of the sun against her hair and shoulders. How would she get home?

  Setting her jaw, Gentry crept to the canyon lip once more. Filling her lungs to bursting, she shouted, “WINN!”

  The canyon shouted back, “Winn! Winn! Winn. Winn . . .”

  Silence.

  Gentry fisted her hands and blinked to keep her eyes dry. “I’m sorry,” she murmured into the depths. “I’m so sorry. Oh, Winn, if only you knew how much I—”

  Her words caught as she saw a glint of white down below, coming toward the lip. Gentry cried out in joy—a seagull with a shimmer about its wings. She leaned as far over the lip as she dared and waved, beckoning it to her, begging, Please, please, please. A weak laugh erupted from her throat when the bird did, indeed, sail toward her. It flapped with some difficulty until it rose above the lip and landed. A small rolled paper was tied just above a webbed foot.

  Gentry carefully reached shaking hands toward it, and when the bird didn’t shy, she grasped its leg with gentle fingers and untied the red thread holding the note in place. Unrolling it, she read its simple message.

  Do you trust me?

  “Winn.” A tear traced the length of her cheek. She flattened the note in her hands, searching for something more in its corners, but they were blank. She turned the paper over and found one more word: Jump.

  “You’re kidding.” She looked from the note to the seagull, which flapped its mottled gray wings and leapt back into the canyon. Gentry watched it disappear against the silver river.

  Her gaze dropped back to the paper and reread, Do you trust me? Jump.

  She read it again, and again, and again. Scanned the canyon cliffs below. Even with a running start, she’d never get far enough to make it to the river . . . and at such a height the water would be hard as stone. The locusts had vanished; she couldn’t ask them to buoy her. Surely Winn didn’t expect her to actually . . .

  The paper shivered in her hands. Do you trust me?

  Don’t you trust me? he’d asked it, last she saw him.

  “Yes,” she whispered, crumpling the note in her quivering hands. Her eyes stung, and her heart throbbed. “Yes.” She backed away from the lip and stood on nu
mb legs. A chill crept up her fingers, wrists, and arms. Her brain buzzed. She retreated another step, another, another. Knotted her skirt around her leg so it wouldn’t fly up. “Yes,” she repeated, letting the note fall from her hands.

  She gazed into the cloudless sky. Reached for her necklace, but found only her bare neck.

  “Yes,” she squeaked, and she ran toward the canyon.

  Gentry ran faster than ever before until the ground disappeared and her feet kicked only air.

  She fell, the silver river slicing through her vision, the air snapping and whistling in her ears, her skirt whipping as she soared past the first cliff. A large outcropping filled her vision, and in its rust-colored stone Gentry saw the blur of her life, of Virginia and Utah, and forgot them all at once.

  Then white rushed at her with the sound of beating feathers and crying gulls, soared with the heat of a geyser. The birds flew around her, passing her in her drop, spiraling around her feet—

  And two arms caught her, knocking the air from her lungs. She stopped falling, braced by forearms and hands that glowed faintly with gold. The birds flew in a tornado around her, and Gentry desperately fought for footing until she could turn around and come face-to-face with his golden eyes crinkled at the edges with a smile, and Gentry laughed and cried and threw her arms around him, burying her face into his neck.

  “I’m so sorry.” Her words flowed fast and jittery. “I’m so sorry. I made the wrong choice. I thought I had to . . . it’s not because of Rooster. I knew before that. I knew all along.”

  She pulled back and stared into Winn’s eyes as the beating of seagull wings tousled his golden hair. “I love you, Winn,” she said. “Please forgive me. Oh, Winn, I—”

  He kissed her, and Gentry was falling again, but this time she didn’t flounder. Her hands swept to his jaw, and she kissed him with all the energy eddying inside her, kissed him until her heart settled and beat with steady excitement. Kissed him until all she tasted and smelled and thought was Winn.