by Alex Gordon
Lauren looked down at herself. “I’m not dead?”
“You never were.” Mullin eyed her sternly. “But if you keep passing back and forth as you do, one day you’ll find you’ve left too much of yourself behind in one place or the other, and you will have to make a choice.” She pointed again to the light, like a teacher ordering off a wayward student.
“Wait.” Lauren dug through her pockets, swore under her breath, excused herself. “I just had it—” Her hand closed over the small, cold thing, and she pulled it out, then held out her hand. “I got this from Amanda Petrie. An ancestor of hers somehow got hold of it after the fire.”
Mullin stared at the locket dangling from Lauren’s fingers, raised her hand over her mouth.
“Did I do the wrong thing?” Lauren closed her hand. “Maybe you didn’t want it, because of the memories—I’m sorry—” She quieted when Mullin held out her hand.
“Thank you.” Mullin held the locket up by the chain, then fastened it around her neck. “I now feel as complete as I possibly can.”
“Did you ever see him again?” Lauren nodded toward the locket. “I don’t mean to pry, but I opened it and—”
Mullin shook her head. “I lived too long. If I had died within a few months of him—and I admit I was tempted to help matters along more than once—I would have. But if too much time passes, paths diverge. You travel so far in one direction that you can never find your way back.” Her eyes dulled. “His name was Tom. He’s in a different place. I pray he is content.” She took Lauren’s hand, and squeezed it. “You will never see your Mr. Corey again. I’m sorry.”
“Is he in a bad place?”
“You make your choice, and you pay the price. On both sides of the divide.” Mullin looked up at what passed for the sky, the tempered light like the inside of a lampshade. “You should go, Lauren Mullin. This isn’t your place.”
Lauren started for the horizon. As she walked, she scanned the hills, the paths, searching for the man in the denim shirt. But her father was nowhere to be seen, and she realized why he had said good-bye.
Paths diverge . . .
Lauren picked up her pace, her eye on the horizon.
CONNIE PETERSBURY LOOKED up at the sky. It flickered, like lightning behind cloud, and she felt the charge in the air. Ashley had vanished at the first sign of the light, screaming into the trees like the beast she had become. Then all had gone quiet.
She put her hand in the water, and felt a swath of warmth like she had never felt. It swirled around her knees and popped and danced as though a school of fish boiled past, tickling her toes. She laughed, and then she quieted.
She had gotten to know this river. She knew an invitation when she felt one.
Then she paused, and listened. Not just an invitation. A plea.
Connie slipped off her glove, her coat, and they fell atop the water and floated downstream for a time before vanishing beneath the surface. She looked down at her hands, and saw skin clear and smooth, like a young girl’s. The water bubbled, warmer than it had ever been, and she felt the pain in her knees fade to nothing. Her right hip.
Oh, she liked this. She liked this a lot.
She plunged in, like she hadn’t done since childhood. The water washed away everything it didn’t need, and she flitted, mirror sides glinting, a shift of light and current.
Gideon. She could feel it drawing closer. She plunged deeper into the water, followed it into cracks and crevices and pipes old and new, underground caverns that no human had ever seen or dreamed existed, as other shifts of light and shadow greeted her and called her friend.
She refilled a cistern old as time, then pushed through dirt and rubble, layer after layer, as though they weren’t even there.
Then she sensed it, all of it, the heat and the flame and the huddled figure in the midst of it all.
I know you! I know you! Connie pushed ahead, drilled upward, floor after floor, dousing flames that hissed and sparked as she drew close, swept them into nothingness with the back of her hand.
She was still Constance Petersbury. But she was also so much more.
She was the river.
Lauren felt it. Heat. Like standing in front of a bonfire.
Then she heard a roar like wind. All about her shook and the brightness changed to cool gray and silver, tiny mirrors, a million reflections of a single sun. She felt herself lifted, buoyed, carried along, around and across and down.
Hello. A quiet voice. Familiar. Don’t worry. It’s just me.
Light blared, so bright it struck like a blow. Lauren felt cold now, road roughness through her clothes. She opened her eyes. The Cateman house filled her view, a sodden wreck, charred and smoking.
Then she heard the pounding of booted feet, drawing closer. Voices.
“What in the name of hell—?” Zeke bent over her, stared at her, then at the house. “Whatcha been up to?”
Lauren sat up. Phil had already joined Zeke, and they stood over her, as Virginia Waycross and the others pelted toward them. “You’re not dead.”
Zeke nodded. “That’s right, we’re not.”
“You’re alive?”
“That’s the opposite of dead, last I checked. Yes.”
Phil grabbed her under the arm and helped her stand. “They almost caught us, just off Old Main by the intersection, and then we heard this roar like a tornado touching down and they all screamed and the sky sort of opened up like a clamshell kinda and all this light flowed out and pushed away the dark or ate it or some damned thing.” He looked up at the sky, now normal, blue with a scattering of cloud. “And then it got all quiet and we looked around and we were the only ones there.”
“Well.” Waycross looked up at the Cateman house. “Looks like you’ve been busy.”
Lauren started to smile. To laugh. To gaze up at the sky and wonder at the blue, breathe air free of murk and tension and the acrid taste of a warped soul.
Then she turned and headed up the walkway of the Cateman house and up the steps onto the porch. Found what she was looking for, and stopped.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Waycross ran after her, grabbed her by the arm. “It’s not safe in there—you could fall through the floor and—” She fell silent, and stared at the thing resting on the doormat.
Lauren knelt beside the sodden remains of Nicholas Blaine, fingered charred flesh rendered soft and pliable by the water of Gideon. “Memory of fire burn you. Let air feed the flame.” She reached into the planter next to the door, took a handful of dirt. “Memory of earth bury you.” She sprinkled the dirt over his face. “Let water erase your name.”
Waycross knelt beside her. “I thought you didn’t know the words?”
“Sometimes they just come to you, I guess.”
“I guess.”
“Wow.” Zeke had crept up behind them, and removed his hat. “They’ve got a wood chipper for rent at the hardware store.” He rocked his head back and forth. “Doubt anyone else is using it now.” He flinched as a bird swooped down and landed on the porch railing. The crow regarded them first with one eye, then the other. Then it leaped down to the porch, walked to Blaine’s corpse, and pecked it.
“Use the chipper.” Lauren stood. “Scatter him for the crows.” She turned and headed back down the stairs.
Been one helluva week.” Rocky stuffed the bundles of cash and credit-card receipts into a zipper bag, then closed the register. “I’ll miss all these reporters when they’re gone. Eat like there’s no tomorrow. Good tippers, too.”
“I won’t. Damn snoops.” Virginia Waycross took a seat in a booth in the near-empty diner, caught in the midafternoon lull. “They keep trying to talk to me, and I don’t have time.”
“It’s in all the papers. They’re calling it the Gideon Freeze.” Brittany hefted a stack of plates under the counter. “One of the snowplow drivers said we showed up as some weird blob on the radar and folks just went crazy.”
Lauren took her coffee and left her seat at th
e counter to join Waycross. The two of them sat in silence as Rocky and Brittany bickered about a meat order and tinny music sounded from the radio.
Waycross stared down at her cup, then set it aside. “Half the town is gone. Over a hundred souls. Somebody’s going to want to know what happened to the bodies.”
“Maybe there weren’t so many.” Lauren scribbled atop the table with her finger. The Lady’s sign, again and again. “Maybe folks managed to get out before Blaine closed us off.”
“I think we both know that’s not true.” Waycross drained her cup, then stood. “I need to get going. Plow finally cleared the road to my place. I’m going to borrow Lois, check and see how things are.”
“You want some company?” Lauren followed her outside, grabbing her coat off the rack along the way and putting it on.
“No, you stay put and rest up. I can handle my own—” Waycross fell silent, and stared in the direction of Gideon’s square.
Lauren turned in time to see a horse amble across the bare lawn. Soon after, another followed, at a pace all its own.
“Oh, my Lady—oh my—” Waycross broke into a run, past a reporter heading up the walkway toward them. The man turned, spotted the horses, then waved to a nearby van and set off after Waycross.
“At least she got Bert and Ernie back.” Brittany stood in the diner entry, dish towel in hand, as Waycross embraced one horse, then the other, and the reporter and camerawoman circled at a safe distance. Then she stepped outside, let the door close behind her. “I never said—” She blinked, kept glistening eyes locked on the scene in the square. “I tried to hurt you, and then you saved me, and I never said thank you or apologized or—”
Lauren shook her head. “It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not.” Brittany threw her arms around her, hugged her tight enough to hurt, then let her go and backed away. “So many people gone.”
“We’ll be okay.”
“Promise?” Brittany tried to smile. “I need to get back.” She looked back over her shoulder at the reunion in the square, then went back inside.
Lauren watched as Waycross took hold of one of the horses and ordered the reporter to grab the other. As they headed toward the cul-de-sac, she set out in the opposite direction.
“We survived the Gideon Freeze.” Lauren tucked her hands in her pockets. “A lot of good people didn’t.” She hoped to visit one of them now.
THE WOODS HAD the clean smell that settled after a rain. The sense of dread had vanished, and the shadows were just shadows. Lauren walked until she came to the bend in the river, that place where she first saw the ruins of her father’s house. Stood for a while, and imagined, and remembered.
Then she heard a horse nicker. As she walked, a small bay emerged from the trees and paced her along the other bank. He looked real enough, well fed and gentle. But scar tissue crisscrossed his flanks and marred the corners of his mouth, and though he seemed tame enough from a distance, something told Lauren that she had best not try to get too close. “Kermit?” His ears perked at the sound of the name. Then he shook his head and vanished into the brush.
She walked along the bank, stopping every few steps to get a sense of the place. When she felt warmth drift through the chill, she sat on the nearest rock, and waited.
After a few minutes, she sensed movement in the air. A flicker of light.
“Hard to tell the difference between your world and mine now.” Connie Petersbury sat on the rock next to Lauren. “It’s the sun—it’s leaking over.” She squinted up at the sky. “Not complaining. Just not used to it.” She squinched her toes into the snow, then buried her feet to the ankles.
“Aren’t they cold?” Lauren shivered on general principle.
“It’s all water to me.” Connie shrugged. “Hot or cold don’t make no never mind.”
Lauren took off her earmuffs so she could listen to the crows, and heard rustling as Kermit rummaged among the low branches of an old apple tree. “Is he alive or—”
“He’s here, with me. That’s what’s important. When you tell Virginia, tell her that.”
“I will.”
“Not his fault, poor thing. He’s been demon-rode. He’ll recover eventually, go back where he belongs, but it will take a while.” Connie shrugged. “In the meantime, folks walking through the woods might sometimes see a horse following them. Better than some of the things that we’ve had follow us around here.”
“True.” Lauren spotted a crow eyeing her from a nearby oak. Dug in her pocket for a few of the peanuts that she and the others now carried as a matter of course. “We can try to bring you back, if you want. Mistress Waycross thinks it’s possible because you never went over all the way. There’s still a part of you anchored here. Like with Blaine, but in reverse. In a way.” She tossed the peanuts into the shrubbery; the crow graced her with a head-cocked side eye, then glided to the ground and hopped in after them.
Meanwhile, Connie sat quiet, and pondered the dappled water. Then she shook her head. “On thaw days, heat days, the sun shines, and it’s calm. On ice days, I can shelter beneath, and it’ll be quiet and still. Most peace I’ve ever known, being a river. And you know, I can get in places you couldn’t imagine.”
Lauren smiled. “I bet I could.”
“Oh, no, I am found out.” Connie’s grin wavered. “I can look after him here. Kermit. Tell that to Virginia. Make up for the way I hurt him before.”
“I never got the impression that she held that against you.”
“Virginia blames herself. That’s her way. I think knowing he’s here and getting better might ease her mind.” For the first time, sadness touched Connie’s face. “When the sense is right, I can just see Jim, wandering. I like to keep an eye on him. Make sure he can return to the Lady, someday.” She pulled her feet out of the snow, crossed her ankles, swung her legs like a girl. “I’m the last Petersbury. Ain’t no more, after me. I like the thought that I can close out the family on my terms. Just dyin’, that’s the Lady’s terms. Life’s terms.” She looked out over the river like a landowner regarding her domain. “These are mine.”
Lauren didn’t argue. If there was one thing she understood now, it was finding one’s place. “I’ll visit sometimes, if that’s okay.”
“I’ll be here. Ain’t going nowhere.”
Lauren stood, and held out her hand. “Thank you. For saving my life.”
Connie stared at the hand. When she finally took it, she watched Lauren as if she expected something to happen, for her to blow up and vanish or melt. Eventually, she smiled. “You’re strong.”
“I’m a child of Gideon. I learned from the best.”
“Lady keep you.”
“Likewise.” Lauren headed out the way she had come. When she looked back, she saw Connie still seated, her arms and legs outstretched, like a child drying off after a swim on a summer’s day. The next time she looked back, the woman was gone.
Lauren wandered back into Gideon along the Old Main Road, past the bustling hardware store, the diner’s overflow parking lot. Across the square to the cul-de-sac, enjoying the smell of the sweet, sharp winter air, the warmth of the sun on her back. As she reached the Pyne house, the front door opened, and Zeke hobbled down the walk toward her.
“Mistress?” He touched the brim of his cap. “I think you need to take a look at some of Leaf’s, well, things. There’s books that didn’t burn that we—well, Phil wanted to bring them into the house but I told him ‘no the hell way’ and so they’re setting out in the driveway behind the house. Old. Big leather—” He inscribed a large square in the air. “Phil looked at one, and well, his daddy used to tan back in the day, hides, you know, and he said the book feels . . . not right, if you know what I mean.”
Lauren shook her head. “I’m not sure I want to.”
“Well, seeing as you’re Mistress now—”
“I don’t think that’s been decided.”
“Oh yes, Mistress, yes it has.” Zeke bobbed his head. “Anyways,
we think you should have a look, if it’s not too much trouble.”
Lauren nodded. Watched for a time as across the street the first bangs and rumbles of demolition sounded, backed by a chorus of crows.
“Mistress Mullin?” Zeke waited on the porch. Held the door open for the Mistress of Gideon, and followed her inside.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I did take some liberties with the terrain and history of north central Illinois. Gideon is a fictional place; the River Ann does not exist. In addition, while the Sudden Freeze of December 20, 1836, did occur, details of the weather conditions in Gideon differ from those noted in historical accounts. I don’t believe the sun shone anywhere else in Illinois on that day. It shone in Gideon so that the subsequent temperature crash would have that much more of an impact.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book was years in the writing, and there were times when I thought it would never be finished. Along the way, a number of friends and colleagues offered their support. Particular thanks go to Kate Elliott, Patricia Bray, and Michael Curry, who read and provided comments on the very first versions of the story, and to David Godwin, best beta reader ever. And finally, a special shout-out to Julie E. Czerneda, who provided moral support, critique, and encouragement every step of the way. Book buddies are the best.
Many thanks to my agent, Jennifer Jackson of DMLA, and my former editor, Diana Gill, for providing support above and beyond the call, and to my current editor, Kelly O’Connor, who helped me realize that sometimes the darlings do have to die and that the story is the better for it.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALEX GORDON resides in the Midwest. She is currently developing her next book, and is having too much fun doing research. When she isn’t working, she enjoys watching sports and old movies, running, and playing with her dogs. She dreams of someday adding the Pacific Northwest to the list of regions where she has lived.
