Her presence startled him, which she hadn't expected, either, especially since she hadn't been particularly stealthy. He touched his ear—a hearing aid?—and that, too made him seem more human. More approachable.
"Brenna," he said. "I'm surprised to see you." Then he must have realized how it sounded, for he smiled. "Glad, of course. But after a gap of so many years, I expected more time to pass before our next encounter."
"I've been thinking," she said, and she had, too—furiously, these past several minutes, about just the right way to ask this. And still she hunted for words.
"I can see that you have," he said, after a moment of struggling silence. "I didn't mean to take your presence lightly."
"If a culture hadn't been exposed to Christianity yet, or to the Old Testament Yahweh," she said, slowly enough so she could take back a word in an instant if it felt like the wrong one, "and yet God was acting among them, then they'd have to find their own words and ways to explain what was happening, don't you think?"
"I'm certain you're right," he said, frowning. No doubt trying to understand how this fit with her previous discussion.
"So if that culture called the power they believed to be responsible by their own name of, say, George...then you or I might call them heathens, but wouldn't we be wrong? Wouldn't that mean they were only identifying God in the best way they knew how?"
Dayne was still frowning, but it looked more thoughtful than before. "God has worked through prophets to make sure we do know who He is."
"Yes, in the culture that we consider to be dominant," Brenna said. "But I should think God would be wise enough to choose a method that best suited the culture he was working within."
A slow smile spread across his face. "I'm not sure I can agree with the fact that God isn't wise enough be able to get his point across to anyone he wants to," he said. "But this conversation truly does make me wish I could entice you to the women's study group. A fresh point of view would be most welcome. It would give me time to consider the question more thoroughly—in truth, I'm caught a little short here. Maybe I've been a little too complacent lately, comfortable with counseling bereavements and divorce issues."
"Well," Brenna said, "it's not like I called ahead. And really, just being in a position where I had to put the questions into words has helped." Because no matter what the pastor's reaction had been to her last comment, Brenna felt something inside her ease as soon as her words came out. Differing labels wasn't a complete resolution to her dilemma...but it felt like it was close.
He reached for a fresh piece of paper, scrawled down a of couple lines. "You might find these books helpful, if you have a chance to get them. I don't think the library has them, but they can borrow from the city library."
Brenna took the paper from him. Robin Lane Fox, Ramsey MacMullen.
"I don't remember the exact titles," he said, nodding at the paper. "The best Fox book is Pagans and Christians, I believe. But go looking for those two authors, and almost anything you find will be on the subject."
"Thank you," she said, sticking the note in her back pocket. Maybe when she returned this batch of books, she'd ask about it. "Sorry to have interrupted."
Outside, she donned her helmet. The sun had dropped low enough, behind her, that she stuck the sunglasses in her pack before she shrugged it on. She headed back for the road in a more thoughtful mood. She was on the right track to reconciling her relationships with two different belief systems—supposing it was possible—but she hadn't gotten there yet. And she needed to get there, because as a girl she'd made a call to a very specific deity, and in retrospect—knowing how impossible it was for the old hound to have rallied, knowing what Masera had told her and of all the recent events—it seemed obvious that the...being...had responded. If I'm going to believe in the darkness, I darn well better believe Mars Nodens—or something—was there first. And Mars Nodens—or something—had answered that specific call when her early prayers had gotten her nowhere.
Which seemed very much to indicate a difference in the beings involved. The gods involved.
It was hard to even think those last words. She made herself face them, to linger on them. At least Masera hadn't made any indication that he considered the darkness to be a devil analogy. Then again...she wasn't certain he considered Mars Nodens an actual god, either.
She groaned out loud with the awareness that she'd have to ask him about these confusions, see if she could pry more answers from his closemouthed self. And also with the awareness that however she came to peace within herself, it might never be on terms that satisfied her own religious community.
She had nearly made it home, had reached the long stretch of travel along the road that ran in front of her house and had her pasture in sight, when a vehicle came up behind her...and didn't pass her. She hugged the shoulder, as close as she could come without slipping off the pavement to the gravelly dirt, and still it didn't pass her; she could hear the radio blaring inside; then it cut off.
A man's voice yelled at her, incomprehensible over the noise of the vehicle and the wind in her ears. A trickle of uncertainty took up residence between her shoulders; she found herself calculating how quickly she could swap directions—faster than a car, that was for sure—and how long it would take her to reach the last house she'd passed.
Too long.
A glance behind showed her a small, square-fronted vehicle. She didn't recognize it, but at her look the shouting from within repeated itself. She bent over her handlebars, wondering if she should just ditch the bike and go cross-country, where the car couldn't follow—but as long as her legs were, they'd never been particularly swift. She pedaled hard. I don't see you. You're not there. I'm just minding my own business. Almost home.
If he wanted her, if he caught her anywhere, it would be going up that hill of a driveway. Damn.
Another car approached from the opposite direction; she thought about trying to catch the driver's attention—how? and say what?—and too late; it whooshed past.
As soon as it did, the car behind her accelerated; she heard the change in engine pitch. It pulled out and alongside her, with the driver still shouting, leaning over to the passenger window and steering with one extended arm. Great. If he didn't run her over on purpose, he'd do it by accident.
Brenna slowed, letting him pull ahead of her, getting her first good look at the vehicle—and suddenly it all fell together. A small, Jeep-like sport vehicle, the shouting—Brenna, he'd said, at least some of it—and the dark hair, the bold nose of the driver. She came to a dead stop; he pulled over to the shoulder just in front of her, and she dismounted the bike to walk with furious strides up to the passenger window.
"Eztebe!" she said, and hit his car for emphasis, "what the hell are you doing stalking me down the road? Don't you know any better than to scare a woman like that?" And she hit his car again, with the flat of her hand and making plenty of noise.
Enough to get him out of the car, looking at her over top of it, unable to reach her but stretching out his arms anyway, his hands spread against the roof. "Brenna!" he said. "Ez dut ulertzen—please, why are you upset? I done nothing!"
"Why do you think I'm upset?" Brenna said, but she didn't hit the car again. Her hand still stung from the last time. "How do the women in your country feel when a stranger lurks behind them?"
"But you know me," he said, true confusion apparent. "I'm Iban's brother, we talked at my door."
She hissed in irritation. "We talked once, Eztebe. We didn't do it with you on one side of your windshield and me on the other, moving down the road at thirty-five miles an hour!"
He took on an uh-oh look. Much easier to read than his brother. "The car," he said. "You did not remember it."
"No, not at first." She bit her lip, frowned through it. "You called me by name. I never gave that to you. And why did you stop me, anyway?"
"Iban pointed you out at the store," Eztebe said.
That was bound to happen, she supposed.
/> "I stopped you because I am here on this road to see you, anyway. Your house is not far, I think."
That wasn't. She stared her most direct stare at him. "And you know where I live...how? Do you Masera brothers make me a habit or something? Haven't you got anything better to do?"
He scratched the back of his neck and said tentatively, "The phone book? Your address is right there."
"Meaning you didn't ask your brother."
"No, he doesn't know—" Eztebe stopped, scowled, and said, "This isn't going right."
"I don't suppose it is." She toed her bike's kickstand down, shifting the backpack. Too many books. "You've got about thirty seconds to make it go right. After that, I'm going home to call the police. That probably wouldn't do your visa any good, would it?"
That alarmed him, all right. "No, no—let me get some thoughts straight." He closed his eyes, fingertips massaging little circles at each temple. It didn't take him long, which was good for him as far as Brenna was concerned. He'd already used at least forty-five of his thirty seconds. "First, I apologize for scaring you. It was thoughtlessness of me." He hesitated as another car, too much in need of a muffler to talk over, passed them. "Iban speaks of you; I know he has been here. To your home, I mean, not this side of the road."
"I would think he goes to many homes," Brenna said, still without any understanding of what had prompted this visit, and getting impatient. More impatient. "Considering his line of work, I mean. What's the point?"
"The point." Eztebe shrugged suddenly, offering up his hands. "I worry about him. He keeps something from me, and it sits on him. He comes home with injuries all over his face. He buys young dogs not for himself, works with them, does not try to sell them. He does these things without sense."
"The pit bulls," Brenna said. "Fighting dogs."
"Yes," Eztebe said. "Not that I know things so well over here, but I see them on the T.V."
"He said he wasn't going to fight the dogs." Brenna shifted the pack again, debated whether to shed it altogether.
"There, I was right. You do know things."
"No, I knew a thing. That was it. What on earth makes you think he talks to me?"
Eztebe shrugged again, a smaller response that revealed something of his despair over it all. "The truth is...I do not know that he does. If I were less worried, I would never bother you. But my brother is in trouble, I think, so I do everything I can think of. He has spent time with you. He points you out at the store. He mentions your name at home. So, I think of you."
"Is he in trouble so often?" Her shoulders won; Brenna slipped the pack to the ground and rested it against her leg.
Eztebe gave her a wry smile. "He is in trouble never. That is why it worries me so much to think that now, he is." He hesitated, and drummed his fingers on the top of the car. Finally he said, "And also, he tells me you have a place of power on your land." He glanced at her, a wary look, as though he thought Masera had betrayed a confidence to tell him and now he was betraying Masera to reveal that he knew.
And Brenna thought that Masera had, and that Eztebe was.
She took a deep breath, and forced the sudden tension from her body, right out her fingers and toes. It didn't work. With much effort, she unclenched her hands. Masera, she would yell at. She would let him take Eztebe to task, if he chose.
"I thought that might be part of it," Eztebe said, growing bold in her silence.
"I don't think so." Brenna couldn't help an involuntary glance at the pasture, the front part of which ran along the road, although the spring was not visible from here. "There is something going on. Frankly, Eztebe, there's a hell of a lot going on, and I'm not sure I can put any of it together. But I can tell you that he keeps things from me, too. Whatever he's up to, it's something else besides what he's found in my pasture and how he's helped me with my dog."
"Funny-looking dog," he said, and grinned at her, a woefully transparent—if earnest—attempt to earn back her good will. "But in a strange way, very handsome."
"He's a wonderful dog," Brenna said, having grown used to Druid's short legs and long body and hardly even registering Eztebe's initial, poking-fun comment. A Corgi was an odd sight to those who'd never seen one before. Eztebe, she assumed, had seen Druid at the store. "But even the way he came to me is part of the strangeness." She shook her head. "Look, I'd tell you what I knew if I knew anything. But you know, Masera—"
"Iban," said Eztebe, eyebrows raised. "If he calls you Brenna, in this country, surely you are right to call him Iban."
"Only if I want to," Brenna said, pointedly enough to evince a flinch from Eztebe. "What I was saying was, he doesn't owe me anything. He has less reason to tell me any of his secrets than he has to tell his own brother. And he hasn't."
He raised an eyebrow at her. "You might think less of yourself than you should. Or maybe you think more of me. Iban and I have not been close. We care, but our lives have been spent apart since he left Euskal Herria. It is a funny thing, too. He had more time with our mother when she allowed herself to work; he had the time to learn of what she knew. He has the more feel for it. But it is he who went away, and I who stayed."
"Your mother doesn't...work...anymore?"
Eztebe glanced away. He was going to say something he was afraid she'd find offensive, then; she'd already learned that of him. Just the opposite of Masera, who deliberately looked you right in the eye. Watching to see if you had the nerve to bite back at him, she realized, and recalling that the first time, she'd all but chased him out of the room. For some reason it made her want to smile—but Eztebe wouldn't have understood, so she didn't. She listened to him instead. "My father wished not. She has her land, he says, but he is the one to work in the family. She only ever wanted to help people, but...it is not always a safe thing, to be sorgin, and she agreed to his wishes. I was half-grown, then."
Brenna could feel nothing but the sadness of that, although Eztebe seemed oblivious enough, in his strange mix of Old World upbringing and New World awareness. "Maybe that's why Masera left," she said. "So he wouldn't have to watch her not do what sounds so important to her."
He jerked his gaze back to her, startled. "Maybe that is so."
"And what about you?" she said, turning the tables on him. He'd thought to get information from her; let him provide the same for her. She looked over to her pasture. "What do you think about the place of power by my spring? What do you think of whatever I connected with? Is it God? Is it a god? Is it blasphemy?"
At first it looked like he wasn't going to answer, that he'd just shrug her off. Then he said, "It bothers you."
Brenna said dryly, "Only intensely."
"Different people think different things," he said, still sounding reluctant—as though it were private. Or maybe that he didn't really expect her to truly understand, no matter what he said. "There are churches thinking Yainko commands smaller powers with personalities. That they act out His will on Earth. Angels, they say."
"Angels..." Brenna said. Angels. She'd never gone for the whole angel craze herself, not the cutesie ones or the New Age ones or the sappy ones on TV. But angel was just a term; the various modern perceptions sprang from the culture dealing with them. Angels were messengers and conduits...and if they'd been present in a culture not yet exposed to a One God, then what would keep people from considering the messengers to be gods themselves? To name them and discover their likes and their affinities...to touch them, and give them an easy way to touch back.
Mars Nodens, in her pasture.
Part of her wanted to weep with relief.
Eztebe looked like his brother then, watching her with tight scrutiny, his eyes even taking on the hooded gaze Masera took on when something struck him as significant—or when he was about to offer some subtle dare or challenge. Eztebe, she thought, was daring her to say something to belittle his comments, his people...his mother.
"Thank you," she said, her voice low and edged with the emotion he'd brought her. Given her, really, like a g
ift.
He looked away, once again non-confrontational—and from his smile, gratified. "You should meet my ama—my mother—maybe."
Brenna grinned. "She should see my pasture, maybe."
"Maybe." He slid back inside the car, so she had to bend to the open passenger window to hear him. "I hope you'll tell me if you learn anything. Maybe with the two of us, we can stop Iban from his trouble."
"I don't think he'll ever tell me anything he doesn't specifically choose to tell me," Brenna said. "But I'll let you know. It'll be worth it, don't you think, to see the look on his face if I call and ask to speak to you?"
"I promise to describe it to you."
Brenna stepped away from the car and watched it pull away, waiting until it was out of sight before reaching for her backpack. Eztebe had eased her mind on some counts...and roiled it on others.
Then again, where Masera was involved, there was nothing new about that.
~~~
Life got quiet.
Almost too quiet, with such an absence of the strange events that had so bombarded her life that she began to doubt herself—what she'd experienced, the conclusions she'd been struggling toward. If it had all been real and true, would it suddenly have stopped?
On the other hand, with the grooming schedule she was holding down, having quiet in the rest of her life was undeniably a mercy. She arrived from home work each day exhausted in body, mind, and soul, and with nothing left over for inexplicable crises, though she rescheduled her dinner date with her mother, enjoyed her Aunt Ada's recent adventures in flirtation on a short bus tour of the Finger Lakes country, planted tomatoes in indoor flats, and put peas into the ground. Sunny's death receded to a poignant ache and Druid became her shadow. More importantly, he stopped having fits. He whined as he chewed his bones, he stood in the middle of the den and whined when there was nothing to whine about, but he didn't have fits.
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