by Terry Brooks
She dashes into Nest’s arms, draws her close, and holds her tight. Nest recoils, then stares in shock. She knows this woman. She recognizes her face. She has seen her face, just as it is now, in a collection of framed photographs that sits upon the mantel over the fireplace in the living room. It is Caitlin Anne Freemark. It is her mother.
And yet it isn’t. Not quite. Something is amiss. It is almost her mother, but it is someone else, too. Nest gasps in shock, not quite certain what she is seeing. The woman breaks free, her face suddenly filled with regret and despair. Behind her, barely visible in the darkness, a man appears. He materializes suddenly, and the feeders, who are clustered all about the woman, give way instantly at his approach. Nest tries to see his face, but cannot. The woman sees him and hisses in anger and frustration. Then she flees into the night, racing away shadow-quick with the feeders bounding in pursuit, and is gone.
Nest blinked anew against the darkness and the sudden bright pain that stabbed her eyes. Images whirled and faded, and her vision cleared. She was sitting once more on the grass, cross-legged in the darkness, her hands clasped before her as if in prayer. Two Bears was seated next to her, his eyes closed, his chiseled body still. In the distance, the burial mounds rose silent and empty of life. No lights moved across the grassy slopes; no warriors danced on the air above. The ghosts of the Sinnissippi had gone.
Two Bears opened his eyes and stared out into the darkness, calm and distanced. Nest seized his arm.
“Did you see her?” she asked, unable to keep the anguish from her voice.
The big man shook his head. His painted copper face was bathed in sweat, and his brow was furrowed. “I did not share your vision, little bird’s Nest. Can you tell me of it?”
She tried to speak, to say the words, and found she could not. She shook her head slowly, feeling paralyzed, her skin hot and prickly, her face flushed with shame and confusion.
He nodded. “Sometimes it is better not to speak of what we see in our dreams.” He took her hand in his own and held it. “Sometimes our dreams belong only to us.”
“Did it really happen?” she asked softly. “Did the Sinnissippi come? Did we dance with them?”
He smiled faintly. “Ask your little friend when you find him again.”
Pick. Nest had forgotten him. She glanced down at her shoulder, but the sylvan was gone.
“I learned many things tonight, little bird’s Nest,” Two Bears told her quietly, regaining her attention. “I was told of the fate of the Sinnissippi, my people. I was shown their story.” He shook his head. “But it is much more complicated than I thought, and I cannot yet find the words to explain it, even to myself. I have the images safely stored”—he touched his forehead—“but they are jumbled and vague, and they need time to reveal themselves.” His brow furrowed. “This much I know. The destruction of a people does not come easily or directly, but from a complex scheme of events and circumstances, and that, in part, is why it can happen. Because we lack the foresight to prevent it. Because we do not guard sufficiently against it. Because we do not truly understand it. Because we are, in some part, at least, the enemy we fear.”
She squeezed his hand. “I don’t think I learned anything. Nothing of what might destroy us. Nothing of what threatens. Nothing of Hopewell or anywhere else. Just …” She shook her head.
Two Bears rose, pulling her up with him, lifting her from the ground as if she were as light as a feather. The black paint gleamed on his face. “Maybe you were shown more than you realize. Maybe you need to give it more time, like me.”
She nodded. “Maybe.”
They stood facing each other in awkward silence, contemplating what they knew and what they didn’t. Finally, Nest said, “Will you come back tomorrow night and summon the spirits of the Sinnissippi again?”
Two Bears shook his head. “No. I am leaving now.”
“But maybe the spirits …”
“The spirits appeared, and I danced with them. They told me what they wished. There is nothing more for me to do.”
Nest took a deep breath. She wanted him to stay for her. She found comfort in his presence, in his voice, in the strength of his convictions. “Maybe you could stay until after the Fourth. Just another few days.”
He shook his head. “There is no reason. This is not my home, and I do not belong here.”
He walked to the hibachi and retrieved his pipe. He knocked the contents of the bowl into the hibachi, then stuck the pipe in his belt. He took a cloth and carefully wiped the black paint from his face and arms and chest, then slipped into his torn army field jacket. He retrieved his backpack and bedroll from the darkness and strapped them on. Nest stood watching, unable to think of anything to say, watching as he transformed back into the man he had been when she had first encountered him, ragged and worn and shabby, another nomad come off the nation’s highways.
“This could be your home,” she said finally, her voice taking on an urgency she could not conceal.
He walked over to her and stared into her eyes. “Speak my name,” he commanded softly.
“O’olish Amaneh.”
“And your own.”
“Nest Freemark.”
He nodded. “Names of power. But yours is the stronger, little bird’s Nest. Yours is the one with true magic. There is nothing more that I can do for you. What remains to be done, you must do for yourself. I came to speak with the dead of my people, and I have done so. I saw that it would help you to be there with me, and so I asked you to attend. What there was that I could offer, I have given. Now you must take what you have gained and put it to good use. You do not need me for that.”
She stood staring at him in the humid dark, at his strong, blunt features, at the implacable certainty mirrored in his eyes. “I’m afraid,” she said.
“Yes,” he agreed. “But fear is a fire to temper courage and resolve. Use it so. Speak my name once more.”
She swallowed. “O’olish Amaneh.”
“Yes. Say it often when I am gone, so that I will not be forgotten.”
She nodded.
“Good-bye, little bird’s Nest,” he whispered.
Then he turned and walked away.
Nest stood watching after him until he was out of sight. She could see him until he reached the edge of the park, and then he seemed to fade into the darkness. She thought more than once to call him back or to run after him, but she knew he would not want that. She felt drained and worn, emptied of emotion and strength alike, and she found herself wondering if she would ever see Two Bears again.
“O’olish Amaneh,” she whispered.
She started back across the park, wondering anew what had become of Pick. One moment he had been sitting on her shoulder, all quiet and absorbed in the spirit dance, and the next he had been gone. What had happened? She trudged through the dark, moving toward home and bed, starting to be sleepy now in spite of all that had happened. She tried to make sense of the vision she had seen of the young woman and the feeders and the shadowy figure who accompanied them, but failed. She tried to draw something useful from what Two Bears had told her and failed there, as well. Everything seemed to confuse her, one question leading to another, none of them leading to the answers she sought.
In the shadows about her, a handful of feeders kept pace, as if predators waiting for their prey to falter. They watched her with their steady, implacable gaze, and she could feel the weight of their hunger. They did not stalk her, she knew; they simply watched. Usually, their presence didn’t bother her. Tonight she felt unnerved.
She was out of the park and walking through her backyard toward the house when she realized suddenly what was amiss about the young woman in her vision. She stopped where she was and stared wide-eyed into the darkness, feeling the crawl of her skin turn to dryness in her throat. She knew the woman, of course. She had been right about that. And she had seen the woman’s photograph on the fireplace mantel, too. But the photograph wasn’t of her mother. It was of another woman
, one who had been young a long time ago, before Nest or her mother were even born.
The photograph was of Gran.
SUNDAY, JULY 3
CHAPTER 17
It was approaching seven when Nest awoke the following morning, and the sun had already been up for an hour and a half. She had slept poorly for most of the night, haunted by the vision of Gran, plagued by questions and suspicions and doubts, and she did not sleep soundly until almost sunrise. Bright sunlight and birdsong woke her, and she could tell at once that it was going to be another hot, steamy July day. The air from the fan was warm and stale, and through her open window she could see the leaves of the big oaks hanging limp and unmoving. She lay motionless beneath the sheet for a time, staring up at the ceiling, trying to pretend that last night hadn’t happened. She had been so eager to watch the dance of the spirits of the Sinnissippi, so anxious to learn what the spirits would tell her of the future. But she had been shown nothing of the future. Instead, she had been given a strange, almost frightening glimpse of the past. She felt cheated and angry. She felt betrayed. She told herself she would have been better off if she had never met Two Bears.
O’olish Amaneh.
But after a while her anger cooled, and she began to consider the possibility that what she had been shown was more important than she realized. Two Bears had hinted that she would need time to understand the vision, to come to grips with what it meant in her own life. She stared at the ceiling some more, trying to make sense of the shadows cast there by the sun, superimposing her own images, willing them to come to life so that they might speak to her.
Finally she rose and went into the bathroom, stopping at the mirror to look at herself, to see if she had changed in some way. But she saw only the face she always saw when she looked at herself, and nothing of secrets revealed. She sighed disconsolately, stripped off her sleep shirt, and stepped into the shower. She let cold water wash over her hot skin, let it cool her until she was chilled, then stepped out and dried. She dressed for church, knowing her grandfather would be expecting her to go, slipping into a simple print dress and her favorite low heels, and went down to breakfast. She passed through the living room long enough to check the pictures on the mantel. Sure enough, there was Gran, looking just as she had in the vision last night, her face young, her eyes reckless and challenging as they peered out from the scrolled iron frame.
She ate her breakfast without saying much, feeling awkward and uncomfortable in her grandmother’s presence. She should speak to Gran of the vision, but she didn’t know how. What could she say? Should she tell Gran what the vision had revealed or take a more circumspect approach and ask about her youth, about whether she had ever run with the feeders? And what did that mean, anyway? What did it mean when you ran with the feeders as Gran had done in the vision? Feeders were to be avoided; that was what Nest had been taught from the time she was little. Pick had warned her. Gran had warned her. So what did it mean that she was forbidden from doing something Gran had done?
And what, she wondered suddenly, had her mother done when she was a child? What did any of this have to do with her?
“You should eat something, Evelyn,” her grandfather said quietly, breaking the momentary silence.
Gran was drinking her vodka and orange juice and smoking her cigarettes. There was no food in front of her. “I ate some toast earlier,” the old woman responded distantly. Her eyes were directed out the window again, toward the park. “Just eat your own; don’t worry about me.”
Nest watched her grandfather shake his head and finish the last of his coffee. “Ready, Nest?”
She nodded and rose, gathering her dishes to carry to the sink. “Leave them,” Gran called after her. “I’ll clean up while you’re gone.”
“Sure you don’t want to come?” Old Bob pressed gently. “It would be good for you.”
Gran gave him a sideways look. “It would be good for the church gossips, maybe. You go on. I’ll work on the picnic lunch.” She paused long enough to take a hard drag on her cigarette. “You might want to give some more thought to inviting that boy, Robert. He’s not what you think.”
Her meaning was plain. Nest placed her dishes in the sink and waited for someone to speak. When no one did, she left the room and went down the hall to brush her teeth and give her hair a final comb. In the kitchen, she could hear her grandparents’ voices, low and deliberate, arguing over John Ross.
She rode downtown in the pickup with her grandfather, neither of them saying anything, the windows rolled down so that Old Bob could smell the trees and flowers. It was just after ten o’clock, so the Illinois heat was not yet unbearable and there was still a hint of night’s cool. Traffic on Lincoln Highway was light, and the parking lot at the supermarket as they turned off Sinnissippi Road was mostly empty. Nest breathed the summer air and looked down at her hands. She felt oddly disconnected from everything, as if she had been taken away from the home and the people she had always known and relocated to another part of the country. She felt she should be doing something—she had already been enlisted in the fight against the demon—but she had no idea where she ought to begin.
She looked at her reflection in the windshield and wondered if she really was only fourteen or if she was in fact much older and had missed some crucial part of her life while she slept.
Old Bob parked the pickup on Second Avenue in front of Kelly’s Furniture directly opposite the First Congregational Church. They got out and crossed the street, stopping momentarily on the sidewalk to say hello to a handful of others on their way inside. Effusive compliments were extended to Nest on her achievements in running, sprinkled with comments concerning the depth of her competition, the state of her health, and the nature of the town’s expectations for her. Nest smiled and nodded dutifully, suffering it all as graciously as she could, all the while looking around without success for John Ross.
Then they were inside the church, passing through wide, double doors into a vestibule that wrapped the sanctuary on two sides. It was cool and dark, the intense heat kept at bay by central air, the burning sunlight filtered by ribbons of stained glass. Greeters stood at each door, waiting to shake hands with those entering, and to pin flowers on the men’s coats and the women’s dresses. An elderly couple welcomed Nest and her grandfather, and the woman asked after Evelyn. An usher took them to a pew about halfway down on the left side of the sanctuary. The church was filling rapidly, and more than half the pews were occupied already. Nest and her grandfather sat on the aisle, holding their programs and glancing around in the hushed, cool gloom. The cathedral ceiling arched darkly overhead, its wooden beams gleaming. Organ music played softly, and the candles on the altar had already been lit by the acolytes. Nest looked again for John Ross, but he was nowhere to be seen. He wasn’t coming, she thought, disappointed. But, after all, why would he?
Robert Heppler was sitting with his parents on the other side of the sanctuary near the back. The Hepplers liked the Congregational Church because it wasn’t mired in dogma (this from Robert, purportedly quoting his father) and it embraced a larger span of life choices and secular attitudes. Robert said this was very different from being Catholic. Robert gave Nest a brief wave, and she gave him one back. She saw one of her grandfather’s steel-mill friends, Mr. Michaelson, sitting with his wife several rows in front of the Hepplers.
The choir filed in and took their seats in the loft beside the pulpit, and everyone opened their programs and began studying the order of events and their hymnals.
Then John Ross appeared at the far side of the chamber, limping through the doorway with the aid of his black staff. He wore a fresh shirt, slacks, and a tie, and his long hair was carefully combed and tied back. He looked ill at ease and unsure of himself. Nest tried and failed to get his attention. Ross followed the usher down the aisle to a mostly empty row behind the Michaelsons and eased himself gingerly into place.
Now the choir rose, and the organist played a brief introduction. The minister app
eared through a side door on the dais and walked to the pulpit. Ralph Emery was round and short and sort of strange-looking, with large ears and heavy jowls, but he was kind and funny and he was well known for giving thought-provoking sermons. He stood now in his black robes looking out over the congregation as if trying to decide whether to proceed. Then he asked the congregation to bow their heads, and he gave a brief invocation. When he was finished, he asked everyone to rise and turn to hymn number 236. The congregation stood, opened their hymnals, and began to sing “Morning Has Broken.”
They had just reached the second verse when the feeders began to appear, dozens of them, materializing out of the gloom like ghosts. They crept from behind the empty pews down front where no one liked to sit and from under the offertory and sacrament tables at the chamber’s rear. They rose out of the choir loft, from behind the blue velvet drapes that flanked the altar, and from under the cantilevered pulpit. They seemed to be everywhere. Nest was so stunned that she stopped singing. She had never seen feeders in the church. She had never imagined they could enter here. She stared at the closest in disbelief, a pair that slithered beneath the pew in front of her between the legs of the Robinson sisters. She fought down the revulsion she felt at seeing them here, in this place where God was worshipped and from which dark things were banished. She glanced around in horror, finding them hanging from the ceiling rafters, curled around the chandeliers, and propped up within the frescoes and bays. Yellow eyes stared at her from every quarter. Her heart quickened and her pulse began to race. No one could see the feeders but her. But even that didn’t help. She could not tolerate having them here. She could not abide their presence. What were they doing in a church? In her church! What had drawn them? Despite the cool air of the sanctuary, she began to sweat. She glanced at her grandfather, but he was oblivious of what was happening, his gaze focused on his hymnal.
