She hadn’t danced since she graduated from high school.
It felt good. No, it felt great.
She lost herself in song after song, sweat beading on her forehead and running down the middle of her back and the backs of her knees. Most of the songs were fast, which suited her perfectly. She could lose herself and her worries and her anger in the precision of movement, the attention to others around her, the shifting beat of the drum, the high wails of the singer.
The band called a break, and the lead singer hopped off the stage and scampered to the bar. They were shorter off-stage than they had looked on-stage, but just as bright as they turned around with a beer and a cup of water. The singer headed right for Coryn and handed her the water. “You must need this. You danced that whole set.”
“Thanks.” Coryn sipped at the water, and then upended the whole thing and filled her mouth. It was the best thing she had tasted all day. “I guess I did. Need the water. And dance the whole set.” She sounded tongue tied, awkward. “Thanks,” she said again.
The singer took her arm and tugged her back toward an empty table. “Good to see you again.”
“You look familiar.”
“I saw you at the Mayor’s Ball.”
Oh. There had been so many faces there. “That was an overwhelming evening.”
They smiled. “I only have a few minutes’ break, but I wanted to tell you I love your dancing.”
It made for such a horrible pick-up line that maybe it wasn’t one. “I’ve had good music to dance for.”
That earned her a smile and an outstretched hand. “I’m Imke.”
Coryn remembered. A pretty name, indeterminate. “Coryn.”
“I’ve never seen you here.”
Coryn laughed, feeling bit drunk in spite of the fact that water couldn’t possibly have that effect. Maybe she was drunk with newness, with change, with making a choice of her own. “I usually don’t have time to dance.”
“That’s almost criminal.”
Coryn shook her head. Lou needed her. Jake was dying. “No. There’s just a lot to do.”
“You’re far more earnest than you looked on the dance floor.”
“Dancing felt good.”
Imke’s gentle laugh made the jewels in their hair and ears sparkle as they moved in the light. “Music is always good for the soul. Will you stay after and talk to me?”
Coryn swallowed, suddenly feeling light and a little nervous. They were beautiful, with creamy brown skin the color of good tea, long lashes over wide dark eyes, and lips so russet they must be enhanced. Imke’s ears dripped with metal and stones and they had a few small tattoo marks on their face, although Coryn couldn’t tell if they were real or merely paint. “How long?” she asked. “I mean, until you are done? I have to run in the morning.”
An eyebrow went up. Not in an exaggerated way. Merely—interest. The singer glanced up at the stage. “At least a few hours.”
“Do you play every night? Perhaps I could come back.”
“I play Thursday through Sunday.”
Coryn tilted her empty water cup into the light and stared into it. “This is Monday.”
“Yes. I have a meeting tomorrow. But I’m free Wednesday night.”
Coryn watched them carefully, uncertain and interested. They obviously drank, and she despised the way Adam drank too much, or at least avoided him for it. But they were far more interesting than Adam, even though Coryn could put no finger on why. They were quick and creative and moved like a dream.
They noticed her hesitation. “Dinner? At a reasonable hour?”
She didn’t know what to think. Blessing? But he was far away. Besides, what would he say? You might die every day. Get your work done and be brave. Coryn stammered. “6:00 p.m.? Meet here?”
“Not here. Meet at the waterfront?”
“By the big wheel?”
“That’s too crowded. There’s a park just south of it. Near where the middle spiral of the Bridge of Stars touches down in the city center. Do you know where that is?”
“Yes. I’ll see you there.” Maybe best not to meet where Blessing had kissed her anyway.
They climbed back up onto the stage.
Coryn stayed through two more songs, watching them as much as the area around her, and she even stumbled once, looking up to see if they had noticed.
They had. They smiled and touched two fingers to their brow.
Coryn smiled back and turned to the doorway, and her keeper. She was already looking forward to Wednesday.
Damn.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The world smelled of old fire, dry fall grass, dust, and horse sweat, which was just fine with Lou. She was finally searching for wolves.
She and Mouse topped a ridge, and the view made her feel small and in tune with the world. The deep blue of Lake Chelan peeked here and there through brown hills. To the east, sharper ridges and then soft hills spread for miles, damping into high plains that would eventually hit mountains again. Sharper features rose to the east and north, blending into the Sawtooth Mountains.
Felipe came up beside her on Blessing’s horse, and she asked him, “Where’s the water from here? How far?”
“An hour that way.” He pointed almost straight north. “Two if those two don’t go faster,” he suggested, with a lazy grin that softened the square features of his face. He nodded toward Valeria and Matchiko, who were still a bit behind, Valeria on Daryl’s steady mount, and Matchiko on the slightly more fractious Pal.
“It would be worse if we brought Buster.” She licked her lips, lifted her canteen, and sipped. “Is it always so dry in the fall?” They’d passed two small lakes, only one of which had been accessible for the horses to drink.
“Almost.” He fell quiet, watching the skies. Even though Felipe was a few years older than Lou, he’d taken well enough to her leadership, and proven as useful and steady as Daryl. But Daryl would thrive anywhere. Felipe’s life revolved around his mother. Lou suspected that all of Valeria’s children would turn to dust if anything happened to her.
Felipe had sworn he’d seen wolves out here three times, and that he saw tracks almost every trip he took up into these hills, so she had asked him to show her.
They’d seen nothing.
As soon as the other riders caught up, Matchiko slid from her horse, grunting when her feet hit the ground.
Everyone dismounted except Felipe, who shook his head when Lou reached toward his horse’s reins. “Someone has to watch.”
Matchiko took her notebook out and started writing.
“What did you see?”
“Coyote tracks. Two green snakes.” She held up a slender feather. “I think I found a peregrine falcon wingtip feather.”
Felipe held his hand out for the feather, looking closely at it. “I haven’t seen a peregrine in years. Been too hot.”
Matchiko nodded. “Still too hot, I think. And dry. It’s probably migratory. Still . . .” She tucked the feather neatly into one of her sample bags and tucked that into her saddlebag. She grinned up at Lou. “Do I get a shower tonight?”
If they turned around now, they would have to push hard to get back to the farm. “No.”
“Good.”
“I love you,” she whispered.
Matchiko merely laughed and climbed back on her horse.
It took more than an hour to reach Felipe’s promised water. Lou selected a flat spot with some nearby rocks for seats, and glanced at Felipe. “Why don’t you and Matchiko go look for tracks? You can make it all the way around the water and back here around before dinner.”
“Hey!” Matchiko said. “That means we have to eat your cooking.”
“You’re the best tracker.”
“Felipe might have me beat.”
“You can test your skills. Take paper. We’ll manage the horses and setup camp.”
“I’ll bet on Felipe,” Valeria declared, apparently willing to support Lou’s plan.
“And I’ll
bet on Matchiko.”
As soon as Matchiko and Felipe set their saddles on the ground, pommels down, damp blankets spread on tops, they were gone. Lou turned to Valeria. “They look like a panther and a bear.”
Valeria smiled.
“Two wild things, anyway.” Lou wished she were going with them. She wanted to spot the first wolf track out here. But she also needed time with Valeria.
Valeria turned to her. “Tents?”
“Sure.” As they were stringing up the top pole on the smaller tent for Felipe, Lou asked, “Where did Felipe learn so much about tracking?”
“His father was a guide. His name was Immanuel. When the taking started, he kept his job, since he was in Stehekin and it was sanctioned. It was one of the few jobs that survived. It didn’t pay much, but it fed us.”
“What happened to him?”
Valeria shook her head. “He disappeared one day. Felipe looked for his bones in the hills for years but never found him. I think he still goes out to look sometimes.”
Lou imagined that, Felipe riding the hills and looking down. How sad. “How old was Felipe then?”
“Twelve. He used to accompany his dad sometimes, even that young, but that trip I didn’t let him go. He had school. They all went to school in Stehekin, every one of my kids. I made them learn.”
“Of course you did.” It was probably twenty years ago, maybe more. She could picture it, too. A younger Valeria with seven kids stuck to her, dancing to her demands, all of them a pack that no one in their right mind would challenge. “You had to raise them all, didn’t you?”
Valeria smiled at that, as if raising seven kids was like having a glass of wine or making a single complex meal. “Sofia was only one year old when he died.”
“I’m impressed.” Julianna had described Valeria as a revolutionary. “You had to be quite the matriarch. How did you survive?”
Valeria didn’t answer until they finished the first tent, pounding in stakes on each corner to hold it in case of wind. “I went to work for Henrietta at first, saved money, then started farming.”
“Who’s Henrietta?” Lou dragged the bigger tent out of its folds in her saddlebag.
Valeria took one corner and pulled, then grabbed a second corner and walked toward the spot they’d chosen for the women’s tent. “If you think I’m a matriarch, you should see her.”
“Tell me about her?”
Valeria laughed. “There are no words for Henrietta. She’s John Smith’s mother.”
“Surely that’s not his real name.”
“It is. Henrietta named all of her children as white-bread American as she could. But more later. She depresses me. I will sing you a song about her tonight, while we’re watching stars.” She flashed a wide smile. “If I remember.”
“Okay.” As they settled on a space for the tent, Lou realized how grateful she was for Valeria’s help. She had expected to fight the older woman, but Valeria took Lou’s orders, and if she disagreed she did it in private, to Lou’s face. A little too often, that, but Lou had made peace with it. Felipe, Astrid, and Angel all worked for the Foundation now. The parents. They were perfect.
Felipe knew how to track, Astrid’s knowledge of plants rivaled Matchiko’s, and Angel had started following Daryl and Blessing around like a puppy.
She shook the door open and held up the front of the tent for Valeria to attach a rope to. “Will Felipe or Matchiko see more animals?”
“Felipe will win.”
“You are very stubborn. There’s something else I wanted to ask. That road we passed way down by town?”
Valeria bent down to pick up a pole. “What about it?”
“There were a lot of tracks on it.” It had been a forest road once, a maintained gravel way to get up here into the Sawtooths. “Horse tracks. They weren’t more than a week old.”
“Caravans.”
“Caravans?”
“Traders. People who take things from place to place and let people trade other things for them. They’ve gotten busy ever since all the Listeners were killed or sent back to the city.”
Maybe they’d driven the Listener purge. She tugged on the back wall of the tent to get it square while Valeria went for the hammer and stakes to finish it off. “What do they trade?”
“Food. Sometimes they buy it from us. They trade horses. Donkeys. Information. They take our fall chickens sometimes, use them for a few meals, give us a tool or two. It’s a way to make a living, out here.” She shrugged and arched an eyebrow at Lou. “You have a golden life.”
A common perception: Wilders as spoiled because they drew salaries for living Outside. “I’ve lost a few friends in this business. We’re targets.”
“Everybody dies Outside.”
Lou stiffened. Valeria was nowhere near that casual about her family. “How often do they come through? The traders?”
“Here? More often than most places. We need the supplies. They just rode through a week ago.”
That jived with Coryn’s statement, or close. Good. “Any juicy information?”
Valeria shook her head. “Not for a while. Everything’s gone quiet since the last attacks.”
“There will be more.”
“We Keepers will always hate it when the city tells us what to do.”
She’d never heard that term. “Keepers?”
“Yeah. Keepers. We don’t want to go to the city, we don’t want to go backward. Returners think the past will save us. Stupid. The past is a dead god.” She brushed a stand of hair from her face. “The way to look is forward. There’s room for sustainable living out here. Small farms.” She glanced at Lou, smiled. “Like you and I share.”
Lou’s stomach tightened as she watched Valeria kneel and tap the last tent peg into the ground.
“No factories, no big farms. No cattle. We get that. But farms like ours, and the ability to live out here?” She swept her arm toward the lake. “Don’t you want that?”
Lou stiffened. “We haven’t stopped the warming yet, or put back enough wild places.”
“There are many.”
Lou was saved from having to respond as Felipe and Matchiko walked into camp. “Dinner ready?”
“What did you do? Run around the lake? How do you find tracks that way?”
“We saw a black bear with two of this year’s cubs. So we turned around.”
A bear with cubs! Lou smiled.
Valeria cocked an eyebrow at her. “See, there’s wild for you.”
Lou’s smile soured. She’d seen more dead bears than living ones, and not many of either. They were nowhere near ready for more humans out here. Nevertheless, She forced a little humor into her voice for Matchiko’s sake. “Who won?”
Felipe smiled. “We have to count.”
Matchiko tilted her head, looking briefly younger. “I counted five different things. Rabbit. Deer. Snake. Coyote.” She smiled. “And bear.”
“No wolf?” Lou asked.
Felipe held up his notebook. “No. But I saw three distinct coyote. Different animals.”
Valeria glanced at Lou, smiling. “We’ll call it a tie. I presume the bear isn’t coming this way?”
Felipe answered. “It ran off to the north, so I think we’re safe.”
Matchiko was already reaching for supplies and pulling out cooking implements.
Lou teased her, “So you really don’t like my cooking?”
“Mine’s better.”
“No argument.” If only they’d seen a wolf. Maybe tomorrow. Damned things were elusive as hell.
That night, from her tent, she heard the calls of at least one coyote pack, maybe two. The howls and yips bounced off of the hills and there was no way to tell where they came from. Not close, anyway.
She hoped she wouldn’t have to shoot coyotes. It happened. Wilding meant managing populations while you drove them into balance. She’d shot buffalo and coyote. The coyotes were hard. She admired them. They were small, cooperative with each other, and fierce, but
also beautiful.
As she drifted off, she remembered that Valeria hadn’t sung to her about Henrietta. She hadn’t sung at all.
‡ ‡ ‡
The next day warmed up slowly from a near freeze. They heated their hands with cups of coffee before getting the horses saddled and ate lunch three hours northeast of where they had camped. Most of what they’d ridden through had been marked by fire. The trees were no higher than the horse’s bellies, mostly spruce and subalpine fir here, now that they were higher. The recent storms had driven spears of green grass up through the summer’s sun-dried tans.
They’d seen no wolves, no deer, nothing but three coyotes at a distance and plenty of rabbits. Lou sighed, disappointed. “We need to start home.”
Matchiko nodded. Her foot was mostly healed and they’d been on horses, but she still looked a little drawn.
Valeria and Felipe exchanged glances. “Let’s go for one more hour,” Felipe urged. “I know a faster way back.”
She hated going back with nothing. “Do you have a particular place in mind?”
Valeria merely smiled, but Lou interpreted that as a yes.
They rode up a series of steeply cornered switchbacks, the sun blazing down on them. Sweat covered the horses’ necks, Lou’s neck, and stuck her hair to her scalp.
Surely it shouldn’t be this hot here?
They topped the hills, finally, and Valeria immediately dismounted. In front of them and below, a stream ran through a narrow valley. “This is Grade Creek,” she said. “Felipe has offered to watch the horses so we can go sit by the water.”
Lou glanced at Matchiko, who smiled and said, “Maybe I can put my ankle in cold water.”
“You can.” Valeria led them down a long, rocky trail bordered by small trees.
“Why did we leave the horses?” Lou asked.
“So they don’t spook the wildlife.”
Lou swallowed, uncertain what to think. She walked just a little behind Matchiko, prepared to steady her if she twisted her ankle or fell.
Valeria led them along a faint trail near the creek, which was thin this time of year but still fell in small, singing waterfalls. She settled them by one of those, where the water itself sounded like music. She pulled a flute from her shirt, surprising Lou.
Keepers Page 20
