9
Ashanti and I hit the road around eight the next morning, heading west under bright blue skies. She’d slept soundly and seemed to be in good spirits, watching the passing scenery with the window down. She also looked a little fresher since I’d loaned her a change of clothes. The yellow dress, which had seen better days, had been swapped for a pink t-shirt and faded jeans. She was one size bigger than I, so they looked small on her, but the white sneakers we’d swapped her high heels with seemed to fit her just fine. Luckily, we wore the same shoe size.
Glancing over, I realized she looked just as regal in such casual clothes as she had in her dress and heels. She didn’t have any makeup on, but her face was just as beautiful as it had been the day before with a full palette of cosmetics.
“Have you heard from Sheriff Briar yet today?” she asked after a while.
“He texted me,” I told her as I swung the Highlander in a hard left turn.
“Is there any news? About the cases?”
I shook my head. “He said he’ll let us know if anything breaks.”
Ashanti nodded. “Do you think he can solve these crimes?”
“He’s a great cop,” I said. “He helped me solve my best friend’s murder and get out of a very bad situation.” I left out the part about helping me save humanity from annihilation; it wasn’t something I talked about with people I didn’t know that well.
“Is that when the two of you got together? Became a couple, I mean?”
It surprised me a little that she’d asked, but I answered anyway. “Yes, as a matter of fact. That’s when it happened.”
“Good for you, Miss Glow.” Ashanti smiled. “Good lovers are hard to find.”
I felt myself blushing behind my sunglasses and changed the subject. “Why do you call me that? Why ‘Miss Glow?’”
“Because of the glow, of course.” She turned and scrolled her hand through the air alongside me. “Right there. So bright.”
“Is that so?” I darted a glance her way from the corner of my eye.
“Oh my, yes.” She poked a finger at the air a few inches from my shoulder. “All around you. Glowing and flowing all the time.”
If she was telling the truth, it was news to me...though as the avatar of planet Earth, I couldn’t rule it out. If it was there, why wasn’t I aware of it, though?
“It’s there right now?” I asked. “You can see it?”
“Don’t worry.” She reached over and lightly touched my upper arm. “It’s a good glow, I’m sure of it. I’ve seen bad ones, and yours isn’t like that at all.”
“That’s good to know, I guess.”
“Why do you think I let you help me? Why do you think I trusted you? Why do you think I’m in the car with you now, though you haven’t told me where you’re taking me?” She gave my arm a squeeze. “Because even without my memory, I can recognize a good person with a good glow when I see one.”
I felt a little awkward and kept my eyes on the road. Just in time, I spotted a sign for our destination, announcing it was just a mile up ahead on the left.
“That’s where we’re going,” I said as we zipped past the billboard.
“‘Doc Yowg’s?’” It wasn’t a shock she mispronounced it; most folks got it wrong the first time.
“It’s ‘Yock,’” I told her. “As in Doc Yough’s Bar and Grill.”
“What’s to see at Yock’s Bar and Grill?” She said it like it tasted funny.
“More than meets the eye,” I said. “That’s for sure.”
A twenty-minute drive from Confluence, Doc Yough’s Bar and Grill was smack in the heart of whitewater rafting country. Ohiopyle State Park, home of the Youghiogheny River with its famous rapids, was literally right across the road.
During peak rafting season in the summer, hordes of people roared into Ohiopyle and hit the wild Youghiogheny...but only a select few knew that Doc’s was the real star attraction. Only those in the know had a clue that the true natural wonders lay inside that building with the log cabin front and the cedar shake sides.
As we rolled in off the road, I saw there were only three other vehicles in the gravel parking lot—a battered red pickup, an old Lincoln Town Car that was half burgundy, half gray primer, and a black BMW. The high-end coupe didn’t surprise me at all; Ohiopyle was far enough south that it drew rafters, fishermen, and other outdoor lovers from as far as Washington, D.C. There were plenty of upscale lodgings and eateries to cater to them, too, though Doc’s was more of a mid-range kind of joint.
As I led Ashanti inside, the place looked the way I remembered, which was much brighter than the average bar and grill. Pale wood, polished brass, gleaming mirrors, and white tablecloths filled the room, awash in light streaming in from expansive skylights and windows. It was like a dingy country bar had died and been reborn as a heavenly hangout for an angelic clientele.
As I’d expected from the looks of the parking lot, there were only a few customers on hand—a well-to-do middle-aged couple eating breakfast at a table on the far side of the room, a grizzled old man alone in a booth along the wall, and an old woman at the bar with a beer in front of her.
“Is one of them who we came here to see?” whispered Ashanti.
I shrugged and headed for the bar. “You never know in this place.”
Just as I hopped onto a stool at the end of the bar, the door at the opposite end swung open, and a familiar face lunged out of the kitchen, a skinny young guy with two glass coffee pots in hand—one with a black spout, the other orange. His sunken-cheeked face was lost in a bushy forest of black hair and matching chest-length beard.
“Hey, Ashanti.” I pointed at the man with the coffee pots. “Tell me, do you see a glow around him?”
She stared across the room, then smiled. “Not as bright as yours, but yes! Can you see it, too?”
“Just had a hunch,” I told her.
As the bearded guy poured coffee for the couple at the table, he looked downright scrawny to me. Cords in his neck and forearms twisted and squirmed like snakes under the skin. His red plaid flannel shirt hung loose around his upper body, which was stuck in the waist of his jeans like a lollipop stick in a giant hoop skirt.
He noticed us in a general sense and rushed over without taking a closer look. He was in high gear, to say the least, not really paying attention to what to him were unnecessary details.
He was already looking over his shoulder when he spoke to us. “Coffee?”
“Thanks,” I said. “I could go for a cup of mud.”
“Regular or decaf?”
“Neither,” I told him. “I want actual mud. A cup of wet dirt from the bed of the Youghiogheny.”
Suddenly, he snapped to full alertness and really looked at me. “Gaia?” His eyes instantly lit with twinkles of sheer delight, and a bright-toothed smile parted his shaggy beard.
“Hi, Mahoney.” Though he wasn’t quite the man he used to be, I was still thrilled to see him, and then some. “I brought a friend.”
Still smiling, he turned to Ashanti...and his mouth fell open in a look of pure shock. He dropped the decaf coffee pot from his left hand, but I jumped and caught it before it could hit the floor. The other pot shook, sloshing coffee all over as he stumbled back a step.
“Great Lady!” His voice trembled. “What are you...how could you...?”
Ashanti just sat there, confused and transfixed.
“I am so honored.” Mahoney bowed his head. “You are most welcome here, Great Lady of the Canyon.”
Ashanti shot me a look. “Is he talking to me?”
“I’ll do everything I can to make you feel at home,” said Mahoney, “though you are so very far from your own magnificent homelands.”
“Mahoney?” I shoved the decaf coffee pot in front of his face to get his attention. “What the hell are you talking about?”
He looked at me like I was nuts. “But you’re with her, and you’re...” He lowered his voice. “You’re Mother Earth. You have to know.�
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“Let’s assume I don’t.”
“Really?” He looked like a wild-eyed prospector as he peered around the coffee pot at Ashanti. “You mean you haven’t told her?”
“Told her what?” asked Ashanti.
“Okay.” He took a deep breath then, and let it out slowly, regaining his composure. “All right.” He nodded. “Excuse me if I overstep my bounds.” He bowed his head to Ashanti, then turned to me. “Gaia...this woman is one of my kind. She is Landkind...and one of the greatest among us.”
“I am?” said Ashanti.
He stared at her in disbelief, then shook it off. “She is the Great Lady of the Canyon,” he said. “Though how she came to be here, I couldn’t guess.”
“Canyon?” said Ashanti.
“What canyon?” I asked.
This time, he didn’t even try to hide being dumbfounded. “Which one do you think? The Grand one, of course!”
10
Doc Yough’s was understaffed that morning, so we didn’t get a chance to talk at length with Mahoney right away. While we waited, Ashanti and I sat at the bar drinking coffee and played a version of the game Twenty Questions, which was more like Ten Thousand Questions.
“What was Mahoney talking about, Miss Glow?” she asked. “What did he mean, I’m the Great Lady of the Canyon? What’s Landkind? Why did he call you...”
“Whoa.” I waved my hands to slow her down. “It’s a long story. I don’t even know what he means about the Grand...”
“How could I be the Grand Canyon?” she said. “It doesn’t make any...”
“Listen.” I smacked the palm of my hand on the bar to cut her off. “There are special people in the world, okay? They contain the essences of places...the souls of mountains and rivers and valleys and islands...and canyons. They are a merging of landforms and humankind, otherwise known as Landkind.”
“Mountains in the form of people?” Ashanti scowled. “That doesn’t even sound real.”
Leaning around, I gestured at Mahoney as he hurried into the kitchen. “Mahoney Wells is one of them. He encompasses the region known as Ohiopyle State Park. Youghiogheny River is his very heart and soul.”
“But it’s just dirt and water,” said Ashanti. “Dirt and water can’t think and feel.”
“You’d be surprised,” I told her. “Anyway, he wasn’t always Landkind. When I first met him, he was just a human being who owned a travel agency. While helping me deal with some bad people at a place called Parapets—lunatics who wanted to wipe out mankind—he lost his humanity.”
“And became Landkind?” asked Ashanti.
“More like a warped hybrid of man and rock.” Remembering Mahoney in his Crossbreed form made me feel sick inside. The merging of human and mineral hadn’t gone well in his case and had left him deformed and in perpetual agony. “I lost track of him in the chaos as we brought down Parapets. I gave him up for dead, in fact, but he turned up weeks later. Some friends of mine were able to undo most of the damage by giving Mahoney a fresh start as Landkind, replacing the original Ohiopyle avatar and owner of Doc Yough’s, Owen Harkins.”
She shook her head slowly. “And I’m like Mahoney? According to him, I’m Landkind, too.”
“Apparently.” I swigged the cold coffee in my cup.
“And I’m filled with the spirit of the Grand Canyon somehow.”
“That’s what Mahoney said.”
For a long moment, she stared at the bar’s polished surface. “Seems like something I ought to remember, doesn’t it?”
“It does at that,” I agreed.
“Then why don’t I?” she asked.
It was a good question. “No idea.”
Just then, Mahoney charged over and flung his arms open wide. “Finally caught up, ladies! We have a window of opportunity, so let’s not let it go to waste.”
“You’re just in time,” I said. “Ashanti needs someone to explain why she doesn’t remember being the Grand Canyon.”
“Good question.” Mahoney walked behind the bar and stood facing us as he poured a glass of beer from a tap shaped like a boulder. “All I know for sure is, she’s lucky her memory is all she lost.”
“What are you talking about?” I said.
Mahoney filled the glass halfway and put it down for the head to settle. “There have been disappearances. Didn’t you know, Gaia?”
I shook my head. “I guess I wasn’t paying attention.”
Mahoney nodded. “There’ve been quite a few who’ve gone missing over the past month or so. They just disappeared, leaving behind their geologic vessels—and those vessels are emptied out. It’s like there’s no presence bound to them anymore...no mind inhabiting the shell of the mountain or lake or what have you.”
“I didn’t know any of this,” I told him. “Why didn’t anyone reach out to me about it?”
“Landkind takes care of its own,” he said. “At least we try to. But what’s happening now...” He pushed his fingers through his bushy hair, leaned his bony elbows on the bar, and hung his head. “We need help, I don’t mind telling you.”
“I’m so sorry.” I felt awful for not keeping better track of him after helping him heal and find a new life. I’d let so many people down, and they had ended up paying the price for my neglect.
“We’ve already lost Blue Knob Mountain, Deep Creek, and Rocky Gap,” said Mahoney. “Their geologic vessels are empty, and their human forms are nowhere to be found.”
“That’s terrible.”
“Why do you think I was so amazed when she walked in?” he said, looking up at Ashanti. “Not just because she’s so far from home, but because she’s the first Landkind to return after going missing. It’s a miracle she’s here at all.”
“I don’t understand,” said Ashanti. “How do you know who I am if I don’t even know?”
“Because we’ve met before today,” explained Mahoney. “I visited the Grand Canyon once, and you rolled out the red carpet. It was a wonderful, wonderful visit.”
Ashanti smiled. “I wish I remembered it, too.”
I frowned as I tried to wrap my head around the facts we’d been given. “Mahoney, you said Ashanti was the first Landkind to return after disappearing. How did you know she’d gone missing in the first place?”
Mahoney sipped his beer. “There’s a kind of network among the places of the Earth—channels through the rock and dirt and water, carrying messages in vibratory, chemical, and electrical form. When something happens that concerns us all, the alarm is sounded. Word is passed among us, and we know. In this case, we knew that the Grand Canyon and others across the country had vanished without a trace.”
“How many others?” I asked, playing with my braid.
“Dozens,” said Mahoney. “And those are just the ones we know about.”
I felt awful as the news sank in, as if the plight of the missing was my responsibility. I was Mother Earth, after all, and they’d disappeared on my watch. Could they have been saved if I’d paid closer attention to their lives?
Could they still be saved? “With so many missing from so many parts of the country, surely someone has tried to find them,” I said.
“There’ve been a lot of search parties,” said Mahoney. “In fact, a group from this area went out a few days ago. The same thing happened to all of them: gone without a trace.”
“The local search party,” I said. “Do you know anything about where they were going?”
“They were looking into a fracking site near Shawnee State Park,” said Mahoney. “Run by a company called EarthSave Unlimited.”
“EarthSave.” The name made me sick. Was there any lie people wouldn’t use to mask their environmentally destructive activities? “What did they say about this place?”
“Just that Deep Creek and Rocky Gap had talked about it before disappearing,” said Mahoney. “Some kind of new ultra-fracking technique was secretly being used at the site, and they were worried about the damage it might cause.”
&nbs
p; Already, this was smelling distinctly clue-like. “Was the same ultra-fracking technique involved in any of the other disappearances?”
Mahoney frowned. “I don’t know.”
“Could you find out on the Landkind network?” I asked. “While Ashanti and I go do some research in Confluence?”
“I can try,” said Mahoney.
“Good.” I grabbed his beer and had a swig of it myself, then clomped the mug back down on the bar. “We’re going to get to the bottom of this, Mahoney. We’re going to find our people and bring them back.”
“I hope you’re right, Gaia.” Mahoney smiled faintly but looked doubtful. “We’ve lost too many good ones already. I’d hate to think I’ll never see Phaola again.”
At the mention of the name, a wave of despair washed over me. Though I hadn’t seen Phaola for some time, she was someone whose friendship I’d grown to treasure.
“Phaola led the local search party to the fracking site?” I said.
Mahoney nodded. “Laurel would have been proud.”
“Phaola’s the one who found me,” Ashanti told him, “and sent me to Gaia. I was wandering in the woods with no memory, completely lost, and she found me and put me on the road to finding her.”
“You don’t remember anything before that?” asked Mahoney. “Anything about why you were out there in the woods to begin with?”
Ashanti shook her head. “Not really.”
“Then I wonder how you got there,” said Mahoney. “And how you’re mixed up in all this.”
“Mixed up?” said Ashanti.
“You must be,” said Mahoney. “It isn’t every day the Great Lady of the Grand Canyon wanders the Pennsylvania forest without any memory and gets directed to seek out the Earth Mother by the Lady of the Alleghenies.”
11
I was tempted to go straight from Doc Yough’s to the fracking site and let loose. After all, time might be running out for Phaola and the rest.
But I ended up driving back to Confluence with Ashanti instead. The Landkind who’d disappeared were not pushovers; Phaola, especially, was extremely powerful. Marching half-cocked into hostile turf that had claimed them might not be the smartest plan in the playbook.
Earthbreaker Page 5
