Tears of the Shaman

by Rebecca Daniels

  Mallory closed her eyes. She didn’t even want to think about that, even though that thought had plagued her since this whole thing started. Still, Graywolf had told her to trust her feelings, and despite her fears and the evidence to the contrary, her feeling was that Marissa was still alive. They were sisters, they had shared so much, they had always been so close. It just seemed impossible that Marissa could be dead without her somehow knowing it.

  Mallory opened her eyes, staring at Graywolf as he sat behind the wheel of the car. Marissa wasn’t dead—she couldn’t be. He wouldn’t be sitting there like that if she were. She had to admit there were times when she thought Graywolf had been leading her on a wild-goose chase. The idea of Marissa driving out here to the middle of nowhere seemed so crazy, so senseless, so hard to believe.

  She looked again at her sister’s dirty, mud-spattered car. And yet, believe she did. She didn’t know how he’d done it, nor did she care, but somehow Benjamin Graywolf had led them to Marissa’s car, and she didn’t doubt that sooner or later he would lead them to Marissa, as well. She just hoped it would be soon. Even though some instinct or feeling told her Marissa was still alive, she knew all too well that no one could survive out in this harsh, unrelenting wilderness alone for long.

  Just then Mallory’s heart leapt into her throat. Graywolf had gotten out of the car, and was motioning for her to come.

  Chapter 8

  SUZIE CHARLEY: finished Charlotte’s Web. Shows continued improvement, but still having difficulty with hard r sounds (pronounced as w). Speech therapy referral sent to reservation clinic 2/5—second request mailed 3/25. Loves Laura Ingalls Wilder and E. B. White (note—find The Trumpet of the Swan)

  TOMAS NEZ: still under task. Attention span limited. Behavior problems increasing—home problems. Gets bored easily (note—try comic books, Ann Can Fly, videos?). Check eyesight/hearing. P.S. Loves red vines.

  Mallory stared down at Marissa’s neat, precise handwriting and felt emotion thick in her throat. She quietly closed her sister’s journal and slipped it back into the box of school supplies Graywolf had found in the back of the car. Except for the box, and the normal contents of the glove compartment—box of tissues, car registration, candy wrappers and several gasoline receipts—the car had been empty. There had been nothing to give them a clue as to where Marissa was, or why she’d driven to that spot. Feeling hot tears slip down her cheeks, Mallory pushed the box aside. It was more than she could take right now to look through the rest of Marissa’s things, not in the desolate canyon with its hot, dry wind and glaring sun.

  “Anything interesting in there?”

  Mallory glanced up, swiping quickly at the tears on her cheeks. Graywolf stood with a hand braced against the open hatch of the station wagon, peering down at her. “Just her notes. School supplies,” she said with a careless gesture of her hand. “I thought you said you’d looked through it?”

  He had. She’d just looked so sad sitting there he hadn’t known what else to say. “Just a quick glance,” he lied.

  Mallory reached back inside the box and picked up the journal again. “I just don’t understand,” she said, looking up at him helplessly. “I mean, look at this. All her stuff is here—books, reports, papers, supplies. But nothing else—no sign of anything, no tracks—nothing. What could have happened to her? Where did she go?” Mallory shook her head again, frustrated. “What did she do, vanish into thin air? People just don’t disappear without a trace.”

  “Oh, there are traces,” Graywolf said matter-of-factly, pushing himself back away from the car. He couldn’t take any more of that soft, vulnerable look of hers. It made him feel awkward and inept. She was hurting, and in pain, but he wasn’t about to be cast in the role of her comforter. It wasn’t his job to console her, he wasn’t being paid to bring solace.

  “What do you mean?”

  He gestured to her. “Follow me.”

  Mallory slid off the tailgate of the car and trailed after him to the driver’s side of the car. At the door, he stopped.

  “There,” he asked, pointing to the roof near the car’s luggage rack. “See that?”

  Mallory did her best to follow the line of his hand, studying the car’s roof, but could see nothing. Bewildered, she turned to him. “See what?”

  “Beneath the dust,” he said, pointing again. “They’re faint, but look.”

  Mallory examined the area again, this time realizing there was a large smudged area in the center of the roof, buried beneath a dense blanket of dust. Turning, she looked up at him. “What is it?”

  “Not it,” he corrected. “Them. They’re prints. Lots of them.”

  “Prints?” Mallory murmured, looking back at the car’s roof and feeling gooseflesh rise on her arms. “You mean Marissa was up there? She was on the roof?”

  Graywolf shrugged, taking a deep breath. “Well, someone was. If you bend down just a little and look over here...” he said, bending close and positioning her just right with a hand on her shoulder. With his other hand, he carefully pointed to an area in the middle of the roof. “You can make out a handprint here. And—” repositioning her, he pointed again “—another over here.”

  At the angle he had placed her, Mallory could make out a faint outline of first one handprint, and then another, in the dust. “Handprints, I see them.” She turned and looked up at Graywolf excitedly. “She left her handprints.”

  Graywolf saw her excited smile, saw the exhilaration in her misty blue-green eyes that had replaced the sorrow, and felt a warming in his belly. Only then did he realize just how close they were standing, how delicate and small her shoulder felt beneath his touch. A picture flashed in his brain of her standing beneath the waterfall—hair wet and skin glistening—and the warmth in his belly became an inferno. He stepped back, awkwardly lifting his hand from her shoulder. “Well, someone did.”

  The smile faded from her lips. “You mean you don’t think they’re hers?”

  “One of them could be.”

  Mallory cocked her head to one side, confused. “I don’t understand.”

  “The prints,” he said, pointing to them again. “They’re from two different people.”

  An icy chill hit Mallory’s spine, and she shivered. “You can tell that just from looking, or is that something you’ve...seen?“

  “Something I’ve seen?” Graywolf repeated, almost welcoming the anger. It put things back into perspective, made him forget about the troubling images of water, and wet hair, and smooth, silky skin. “You mean when I gazed into my crystal ball?” he snapped.

  Mallory stepped back a pace, surprised by his sudden burst of anger. “Look, I’m sorry.”

  “You know, I do have some experience in tracking,” he pointed out. “You don’t have to be a shaman or have second sight to draw conclusions or make assumptions.”

  Mallory squeezed her eyes shut tight. It had been a stupid thing to say. After all, it had been more than psychic perceptions and impressions that had brought them this far, and yet she was treating him like her genie in a bottle. “I really am sorry. I wasn’t thinking. It’s just...” Her voice faded, and she gave him a helpless look. “I’m sorry.”

  Graywolf drew in a deep breath. He felt petty and small. What was he doing? What was it about this woman that seemed to bring out the worst in him? This wasn’t the time to get touchy and overreact. She was terrified for her sister’s safety, not trying to insult him, and he was acting like a jerk concerned about a bruised ego. “No, I’m the one who’s sorry.”

  Mallory risked a small smile. Tensions were strained enough between them; the last thing she wanted was to make them worse. He could be so hard, so cold to her, and yet she trusted him as she never had anyone else in her life.

  “You believe someone’s with her,” she said after a moment, unconsciously taking a step closer to him. “You think someone made her drive out here.”

  “It’s something we need to consider,” Graywolf said, even though every instinct he had t
old him Marissa Wakefield had not driven alone into the desert. “Someone, or something.”

  Mallory turned and stared at the prints again. “But on the roof? What was she doing on the roof?”

  Graywolf motioned her to follow him again. “Come over here.” He led her past the car, to a flat, dry spot in the sand. Kneeling down, he pointed to the ground. “See the rippled marks in the dirt along here?”

  She knelt down beside him, poking at the dry, crusty clay. “Yeah. It feels like dried mud.”

  “It is,” he said, slowly rising to his feet. “From a flash flood that flowed through here.” He kicked at the dirt. “Probably four, five days ago.” He nodded his head, gesturing to the car. “That’s what she got stuck in—the mud that formed when the water started to flow down here.”

  “Oh, my God,” Mallory gasped, clasping her hands over her mouth. “And she crawled up onto the roof because the car was sinking?”

  “It’s been known to happen,” Graywolf pointed out. “The water can rise pretty fast in those floods, turn everything to mud—it can get scary.”

  “So you think she...they climbed out onto the roof and left the car?”

  “That would be my bet.”

  “Yeah,” she murmured, turning all this over in her mind. “That makes sense.” She rose quickly to her feet. “So you think they’re on foot now?”

  Graywolf nodded. “Looks that way.”

  She looked around them, shaking her head. “But where? Where would they go? There’s nothing out here—there isn’t even a road anymore. I don’t see any footprints.”

  Graywolf scanned the area with squinted eyes. “The flood destroyed what was left of the road, the water obliterated any tracks they might have left.”

  Mallory turned to him, bewildered and confused. “So what do we do now?”

  Graywolf turned to her, the slightest of smiles parting the hard line of his lips. “I guess we bring out the crystal ball.”

  Mallory’s eyes widened. “I was right, then. You have had a vision. You know something about Marissa.”

  “Slow down, slow down,” Graywolf cautioned, reluctant to describe the shadowy images and sensations he’d picked up from the inside of the car as a clearly defined vision. “There was nothing specific. Just an...impression, a hunch.”

  “Tell me,” Mallory pleaded, waving off his caveat impatiently. She knew better than to ignore hunches. “What was it? Where do you think they went?”

  Graywolf turned and pointed to the mountains rising up out of the canyon floor. “I think they went that way.”

  Mallory followed the line of his vision, staring up at the rugged towers of earth and stone. They seemed to go on forever, stretching to the very doorstep of heaven. “We’re going to climb the mountain?”

  “We’re not. I am. You’re going to take the Jeep back to Rawley’s and wait for me there.”

  “What?” Mallory turned slowly, staring up at him. “What are you talking about?”

  “Mallory,” he said reasonably, trying to ignore the look of betrayal in her eyes. “This is a whole new ball game here. Driving around the desert is one thing. But these mountains are rough, they can be killers. I can’t take you with me.”

  “No, no, no,” Mallory said, shaking her head and refusing to listen. “We had a deal.”

  “The deal has changed. This is different—”

  “No,” she said again, cutting him off. She felt betrayed and angry. He knew how important this was to her, he knew how much it meant to her to be a part of the search. How could he think she could sit back and just wait? “This is not negotiable,” she said in a low voice. “I’m coming with you.”

  “It’s too dangerous,” he insisted.

  “We had an arrangement,” she argued, her chest rising and falling with huge gasps of emotion.

  “And I’m changing it.” He stood with his hands on his hips, staring down at her. Why couldn’t she be reasonable just this once? Why did everything have to be an argument with her, a power play?

  He braced himself for her fiery response, prepared himself to do battle. He expected her to rage at him, expected her to rant and rave and wrestle it out. Only, as she stood there looking up at him, it was as if all the fight had drained from her. She looked small and exposed, and Graywolf cursed violently beneath his breath.

  Mallory gazed into his black, unyielding eyes, feeling exhausted and alone. She couldn’t fight him, and all her fears as well. He was her only hope, her only chance of finding Marissa. He just had to understand.

  She took a few steps forward, reaching out and placing an unsteady hand onto his arm. “I have to go,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “My sister’s out there, she’s in trouble and she needs me.” The hand on his arm gripped desperately. “You promised me, Graywolf. You promised to take me with you.”

  Graywolf felt the cool touch of her hand along his arm and cursed again. Damn her, he swore beneath his breath. Damn her to hell. He’d been prepared to handle her anger and her arrogance, he was all set to deal with her demands and her insolence. But this helplessness, and the defeated, defenseless look in her eyes, was more than he could take. He felt himself caving in, acquiescing to feelings and emotions he’d been fighting from the moment he’d laid eyes on her.

  “It’ll be a rough climb, and I can’t let you slow me down,” he warned, turning away. After a few steps, he turned back. “If you can’t keep up, you get left behind—got it?”

  “Got it,” Mallory murmured, watching as he stalked back across the hardened clay toward the Jeep. There were a lot of things she could have pointed out to him just then—the fact that she hadn’t slowed him down yet, the fact that he hadn’t shown her so much as a whit of consideration since they’d left Sedona, and like that he had yet to hear a complaint from her—but she didn’t. Arguing would only alienate him more, and the strain between them was bad enough already. The important thing was that he was taking her with him, and they were going to find Marissa.

  She glanced back up the steep mountain pass as it rose up from the canyon and twisted through jagged rock and rugged stone. Marissa was somewhere on that mountain—Mallory wasn’t sure just how she knew it, she just did. And she didn’t care how steep the trail was or how harsh the conditions became, she was going to find her sister—even if it meant climbing that sucker all the way to the top.

  * * *

  “Ready?”

  Mallory shifted her weight, adjusting the pack on her back to a more comfortable position. Growing up in Jackson, she and Marissa had done their share of hiking through the California foothills, so the prospect of steep trails and harsh terrain wasn’t exactly a new one for her. Last summer she’d even accompanied friends on several backpacking trips in the mountains of Virginia and Maryland. Of course, the trails she’d followed then were tame compared to the rugged Arizona landscape, and the bulky, unwieldy pack Graywolf had strapped to her back was a far cry from the expensive, state-of-the-art equipment she had used then, but she was determined not to complain. Graywolf would like nothing more than to find an excuse to leave her behind, and she wasn’t about to let that happen.

  She adjusted the shoulder straps of the pack, jostled the load into place and smiled up at him sweetly. “Ready.”

  After leaving Marissa’s car, Graywolf had driven the Jeep as far as he could up the mountain pass. But the narrow track and steep terrain soon made the route impassable. They unloaded what supplies they needed and distributed them between the two packs, then it was time to strike out on foot.

  “Stay close, and don’t go wandering off,” Graywolf instructed, reaching for the buckle on her shoulder strap and giving it a yank. “And for God’s sake watch your step,” he added irritably as he turned and started up the narrow pass. “The last thing I need is you with a busted ankle.”

  Mallory waited until his back was to her, then made a face, mimicking his grouchy expression. If he was trying to hide his displeasure, he wasn’t doing a very good job. B
ut he could bully her all he wanted, it wasn’t going to work. He might think she was nothing more than a weak, delicate white woman unaccustomed to the ways of the West, but he was about to have a rude awakening. Marissa needed her, and there was nothing—not some sorehead Navajo mystic, not some cumbersome backpack, and least of all not some damn Arizona mountain—that was going to keep her from her sister.

  The afternoon was already drawing to a close, but Graywolf had told her he’d hoped to get in a couple of hours of hiking before they lost the light. Mallory dutifully kept pace behind him, taking a curious pleasure in placing her boots into his footprints. She liked to see the easy, effortless movement of his body. It had symmetry and balance, with the graceful sway of his shoulders and the athletic motion of his legs. He was a man used to physical activity. The way he made his way up the steep incline was literally like watching poetry in motion.

  She smiled. Symmetry and balance. She’d read enough about Native American traditions to know that both were important to the Navajo. They liked balance—harmony, both in life and in nature, and Graywolf seemed to fit that perfectly. He was physically strong, to which his powerful body could attest. But there was a spiritual strength to him as well—a perfect balance.

  But she cautioned herself. She might have come to trust him, might even have come to depend on him, but that didn’t mean she had to like him. He was too hostile, too angry, and he’d made it very clear just how little he thought of her and what she did. So instead of focusing on his tall frame and muscular physique, she concentrated on keeping pace, on watching her step and on staying out of his way.

  Compared to the long, arduous hours of riding in the Jeep, the ascension up the mountain was almost as exhilarating as it was strenuous. Mallory seemed to forget about the bulky backpack and the strain of overworked muscles. The sheer act of physical movement was a rare treat after the days of confinement in the Jeep. Several times she was aware of Graywolf’s backward glances—checking on her, seeing if she was falling behind. It was silly, but it pleased her that she could keep pace with him, pleased her to show him he was wrong about her—again!