"You answered the call, my dear. That is different. Do you remember what I told the congregation?"
"I walked in shadows."
"Yes, precisely that. Do you know the significance of shadows? The art of shadowmancy? No, of course you do not, and neither should you. No god-fearing girl ought to open herself up to life on the fringes of the dark. That is where evil lurks, in the shadows. You are not evil, are you, child?"
Colleen shook her head.
"I would know if you were." he said.
She watched him as he toyed subconsciously with the trinket that hung around his neck. The Deacon followed the direction of her eyes and stopped, suddenly self conscious. It was the first time she had seen him as anything other than sure, arrogant even. "How do you feel?" he asked.
She started to tell him but as she opened her mouth she realised that she didn’t know, not when it came to putting words to it.
"I see," he said, a slow almost lazy smile creeping across his face all the way up to his eyes. "So, Colleen Daisy Tranter, tell me, would you like to join us?"
Part of her translated the question to: wouldn’t you like to belong somewhere? Wouldn’t you like to fit in? Wouldn’t you like to be a part of something? And, almost as though he had put the thought there for her, wouldn’t you like to be loved instead of used?
"I think so," she said. What did she have waiting for her back in Rookwood? A life on her back? She couldn’t imagine anything as simple and pure as love.
Almost as though it sensed her sadness, the child in the Deacon’s arms stirred and let out a mewling cry. He hushed it tenderly. And that made it all the more painful for her to watch because she didn’t see love when she looked down at them; she saw what she couldn’t have. It was as simple and sad as that.
Boone had had her sterilized when she first bled – there was no sentiment in it, he had told her. She still remembered all too vividly the hateful look on his face as he explained: "It is business, child. No one will pay to lie with a pregnant sow." She hadn’t thought about that conversation in years, not consciously at least. She had dreamed it over and again while the consequences of it haunted the darkness when she could not sleep; there would be no children for Colleen. But she hadn’t thought about it.
"Then stay here, child. Stay as long as you like – as long as you need. Think about it. There is a home here - a purpose."
"I don’t know . . ."
"If you could have any one thing out of this life, what would it be?"
"I don’t know," she said again.
"Imagine, for a moment, that you could have anything. What would you choose?"
"I can’t have that one thing," Colleen said, "and to pretend otherwise is just a cruel game.
"Then imagine I have it in my power to give it to you, child. I have the gift of the Lord flowing through my veins, nothing is beyond me, so what would you have me give you?"
"Nothing. I don’t want anything," she lied.
‡‡‡
She awoke to the darkness for the second time that night.
This time she was not alone.
It took her a moment to realise what it was that had woken her – the wet phlegmy sound of a baby crying.
Colleen rolled over on the uncomfortable mattress. Beside her, wrapped in a bundle of rags lay the baby the Deacon had been comforting.
The old man stood silhouetted in the doorway. "What you were too frightened to ask for," he said, and left her, only this time she was not alone. He had offered her anything, and she had asked for nothing, yet in her heart of hearts Colleen Daisy Tranter yearned for that one thing she could never have – and with this boon the Deacon had bought her soul.
She had a child of her own to care for.
Chapter Fifteen
The three sisters stood together in the dust, waiting. When The Deacon climbed down from the wagon, he saw them, and nodded. They regarded him without expression, as was their way.
"Let's get on with it, shall we?" he said.
They turned then, and started away from him. Their movements were eerily synchronized, as if joined by some thread or binding that could not be seen, but that they were unable to resist. The Deacon waited until they were a few yards ahead of him, and then followed more slowly. Few of his flock commanded his respect. Most of them were sad, pathetic things, unable to exist outside the tiny world he'd created for them. The sisters had come to him as they were, and they were a strange lot.
The sisters’ tent stood just off to the right at the rear of the great tent. It was old – the fabric stretched taut over its poles and frame like the wings of a great bat. The Deacon had touched that fabric once. The memory was so vivid he felt his gorge rise at the thought of it. It had felt alive, and when the wind lifted and teased at it, flapping it against the posts, it seemed to breathe.
The sisters stopped short of the tent, and The Deacon, though he feared nothing, expelled a breath he hadn't consciously meant to hold in. Their fire smouldered in a ring of stones. There were larger stones circling the fire…three on one side, and only one on the other.
The sisters parted, rounded the fire, and crossed between and behind one another in an oddly intricate pattern before seating themselves. The Deacon hesitated only a moment, and then took the solitary stone for his own.
"What would you know?" The tallest sister asked. Her name was Lottie, and she was always first to speak. If she spoke, her sister Attie, the shorter sister would respond. He had never heard it otherwise, not in a greeting, or an exclamation. The third sister, Chessie, never spoke. She never smiled. Hers was the most expressionless face The Deacon had ever encountered, perfectly framed by her more animated companions.
"There is something in the wind," he said. "Something has raked its claws through the crows and set them to flight. Darkness is on the land, and if that darkness should be headed my way, I want to know. For all our sakes," he added, "I want to know."
Lottie cackled at this. Attie glanced over at her, and grinned. Chessie stared straight ahead into the fire. The Deacon noticed that she now held a leather bag in her lap. The bag had not been there when she sat down. It was too large to have been carried with her. Sweat trickled down The Deacon's neck and stained his dusty collar.
"He's worried about darkness," Lottie said.
"It's dark here," Attie added. "Darker than here, then, very dark"
Chessie was silent, but her skeletal fingers worked the ties on the bag, and the knot released with a soft hiss of leather. She tugged the top of the bag open, but she did not glance inside.
The Deacon fingered the leather pouch at his neck. He frowned. He knew they mocked him, but he needed their knowledge. He had the vague sensation that, though he ruled his small kingdom, and the power that kept it whole was his alone, these three stood outside that circle. They made the hairs on his arms and the nape of his neck stand and dance in the chill breeze, and their laughter cut through him like blades of ice, but they had never steered him wrong. Each and every time they'd answered his call, their words had rung true, and the world had followed their pattern.
"Tell me," he said.
Chessie upturned the bag.
Bones fell in a sun-bleached rain. Small skulls, fingers and legs, teeth and ribs. They tumbled and scattered at Chessie's feet, but still she stared straight ahead. The others bobbed and cackled, but they did not glance down. The bones settled into a pattern – but The Deacon refused to look at it, waiting for their words to give the moment substance. When all was quiet, and the fire settled, Lottie and Attie fell silent, and Chessie began to speak.
"She died," Chessie said. "She died, rose, and nearly died again. She comes. The crows know her – the crows guide her. She follows the sound of a crying child. She follows the drag of un-kept promises on her heart.
"She is his, and she stands alone. Hers is vengeance, and hunger. Hers is the blade and the stake. Hers is the gun..."
As Chessie spoke, she grew agitated. She had been sitting very stil
l, staring into the distance with a placid, emotionless mask. As the words flowed from her lips, her features contorted. Her expression was that of someone captivated by something a great distance away. She frowned. Sweat beaded on her withered brow and rolled down her cheeks. She pulled her feet up onto the stone and clutched her knees tightly, then she began to rock up and back, and side to side. The Deacon feared she'd topple from her perch, but he did not interrupt.
"She will bind the contract," Chessie said. "She will find what has been lost and it shall be free. Her blood is flame. She comes."
Chessie's head turned slowly, almost as if controlled by some unseen forced. Her gaze locked onto The Deacon's. The temperature in the small clearing dropped so far, and so fast that her breath emerged as a blast of misty fog. Her final words dropped from that mist in icy chunks that drove into The Deacon's heart.
"She comes for you."
A sudden wind whipped through the camp and caught the sister's tent. The already taut material made a whip-crack that nearly stopped The Deacon's heart. He closed his eyes, then blinked, then focused.
"No more to see – no more to tell," Lottie said. All the mirth and cackle had drained from her voice.
"No more. She comes," Attie added.
Her voice sounded brittle – old and worn. She sounded drained.
"Who is she?" the Deacon asked. "Who is coming, and why?"
"It is late," Lottie said. "Our sister is tired – very tired. We must let her sleep."
"There is not much left of the night," Attie offered.
The Deacon opened his mouth as if to protest, then clamped it shut. The three made almost no sense on a normal day – after this he was as likely to get a real answer from them as he was to walk in on The Last Supper and take the seat of honor.
The fire, which had burned so brightly only moments before, was no more than a pit of spent coals. Wisps of smoke rose up and around the three women, obscuring them from view.
The Deacon glanced down at their feet. He searched the ground, but found no sign of the bones. The dirt in front of Chessie's stone was bare and undisturbed. He glanced up. The bag rested in the old hag's lap. The drawstrings were tied, and it bulged – as if the bones had not only been returned to it, but augmented in some way – as if there were more bones, or those that there were had grown larger.
He rose, turned, and strode away from the fire. He did not look back, but as he stepped away, he heard – and felt – the flames rising. Whisper-thin voices floated in the air and tickled at his senses, but he could not make out their words.
He rounded a large wooden wagon and stopped short.
The dwarf hung suspended in the air, his head to the earth and his feet to the air. In his hand, he held a paint brush. The Deacon stepped forward and saw that the tiny man's legs were tied to ropes and bound over the top of the wagon. A wire framework dangled over the roof the wagon, and the ropes were threaded through it, giving the tiny man a foot or so of clearance from his work.
The Deacon said nothing, but turned to the wagon. On the side, the image of a man had been painted. The man was upright, but the dwarf who painted him hung upside down. The man's leg was bent, toe to the ground and the sole of his shoe pressed against the opposite ankle. His hands were clasped behind his back, and he stood with his head dead-center on a wooden beam suspended between two tree trunks. The Hanged Man.
The Deacon concentrated and the words came to him. Release. It was Odin's card, the man hanged by his ankle, surrendering himself for knowledge. Then he frowned. The man should have been suspended by his ankle, and yet, here he was depicted upright. It was a symbol of blockage. Of being trapped in something or mired in the world.
But the dwarf was upside down, painting the card … letting go of it? Was the card an upside down depiction of the right side up image? The Deacon glanced down. On a small table against the wall of the wagon sat a Tarot deck. Leaning against the wagon was a single card. The Hanged Man. Reversed. The image spun and The Deacon stepped back. A wave of vertigo swept through him. He tried to concentrate. He tried to think, turning his mind to the dwarf's perspective, to the card being painted on the wagon, and could not pin it down.
He glanced to the dwarf, who spun halfway around and met his gaze. The little man winked, then spun lazily back to his work. The Deacon started forward, not sure if he meant to question the artist, or yank him off his damned scaffold and stomp his misshapen little body into the dust.
At that moment, a cry rose. It was plaintive, keening voice of a child. A very young child. The Deacon turned toward the sound. When he looked back, the dwarf was gone…and The Hanged Man met his gaze, unperturbed.
Over the ridge, the glow of the rising sun filtered up to the clouds as Wednesday faded. The Deacon turned and strode off toward his tent, and his bed. There was little time for rest, and he sensed he was going to need his wits and his strength for the trials to come. The crying of the child had ceased. When he reached the rear of his wagon he heard Colleen softly singing. The words were indistinct, but the tune was soothing, and he smiled. Then he stepped up into the wagon, and closed the door behind him.
Chapter Sixteen
Even though the clearing where the trappers had camped was still deserted, Creed hunkered down and watched if for a while before getting too close. He hadn't grown as old as he had by taking chances. He was as brave as the next man, braver than most, but something was wrong with that camp site – wrong enough that a woman had staggered out of it to die among strangers, and wrong enough that whoever she'd been travelling with had vanished.
Creed scouted the camp. He checked the trails in and out, and no matter how carefully he looked, he found no sign of anyone passing. Not in, and not out. The camp was there – there was no way around that. There were footprints near the stone-circled fire and the tents, and not all of the belonged to the girl. Only hers led out from the camp.
So he waited, and he watched. If he made a mistake, he somehow thought the next person to wander in and study the place might find another set of prints near the fire – and nothing else but wind and dust. He wasn't an ambitious man, but he had plans that included other times and places than this one. He intended to reach those times and places intact.
The tent flaps fluttered in the breeze. Creed thought of ghost towns he'd seen. There was a feel to a dead place, the sense of total abandonment, coupled with the uneasy sensation that no matter how long the former residents had been gone, if you touched or took something you'd feel the weight of their gaze at the nape of your neck. You'd hear their voices whispering to you softly, just out of range of your hearing. In the periphery of your vision, shadows would move, but when you turned, no one was there – but you'd still want to run.
So he waited until he figured it had reached the point of balance between time to do something and time to leave, stood slowly, and walked up to the fire. A tin coffee pot sat on a flat piece of stone. It was blackened and ruined. Forgotten. Creed poked at it with the toe of his boot and it crumbled.
He turned and surveyed the tents. There were three of them – one smaller than the other two. He figured that for the woman's tent. He started there. Somehow it was easier to go through her things. At least he'd seen her when she was alive.
The tent flap was open. He ducked inside and scanned the interior. A bedroll was spread on the ground. It was rumpled. Like the coffee pot, it had been abandoned, and forgotten. There was a black leather pack against one wall of the tent. Creed bent down and picked it up. It was heavy. He started to unfasten the clasps, then glanced around, and stopped. Whatever was inside, it could wait until he was safely out of this place and far away. He slung it over one shoulder. The rest of the tent was bare, so he stepped back into the clearing.
The other two tents were closed, their flaps carefully tied shut with rawhide straps. Dust blew against their canvas sides. Creed stepped up to the first tent. He pulled his knife and slashed the rawhide strap. He tore the flap aside and stepped inside, holdi
ng the blade out like a shield.
There was nothing inside. It wasn't like the smaller tent, which looked lived in, but abandoned in a hurry. It was absolutely empty. There were no boot prints in the dusty floor of the interior, though there were odd scratches, like hieroglyphics carved with something sharp.
Creed glanced up. The tent's roof was slashed. He should have seen it from outside, but he'd concentrated on the ground, and the fire. He saw the trees clearly through the ruined canvas, and he stared up through the leafy branches at the blue sky beyond. A sliver of icy fear drove into his spine, and he spun. He pushed his way back out so roughly he nearly dragged the tent's stakes from the hard ground. The clearing was as empty as before.
Steeling his nerves he stepped up to the second of the larger tents, slashed the rawhide straps as he had on the first, and pulled back the flap. This time he didn't step in. There was no need. It was as bare as the first. The canvas roof was shredded, flapping outward like the tendrils of some freakish vine. Creed let the flap drop back into place and turned away.
A wind had kicked up, and he lifted his gaze to the sky. Rain was an oddity in Rookwood, but not impossibility, and when it came, it was swift and dangerous. Flood waters were common. The town rested on a low rise, and the camp where The Deacon and his tents rested should be protected, at least for a while, by the gulch, but if it stormed, this campsite wasn't the place to ride it out.
The sky, which had been clear and blue, darkened to a dusty, slate gray. Clouds scudded across that surface, and the dry, twisted trees shifted and creaked. Something fluttered in the breeze, spinning and shifting through the air to land in the dust at his feet. Creed bent and snatched it before the wind could carry it out of reach.
It was a large, black feather. He started to release it in the breeze, and then stopped. For no earthly reason he could fathom, he tucked it into the pocket of his jacket. Then, without another glance at the camp, he took off at a run. He unbound his horse's reins from the tree where he'd left it, swung up into the saddle, and took off at a fast trot, ducking in and out of the trees and headed for Rookwood.
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