Sally looked at Hethy. She had thought the girl was crazy at first, but now she found Hethy fascinating. She could see into people’s hearts. She could build a fire on the prairie. She set traps to kill marauding coyotes. She was tough and honest and kind.
“Where are you going to go?” Sally asked.
“I don’t know,” Hethy sighed. “I ain’t got no family left. I hear there’s work in Chicago for those that want to work for the big Expo there. Or I could take a job root working. I know a bit from Granny Sip. How to heal and how to behold people. But that’s what got Granny killed, so I don’t know where folks would look kindly on that kind of work.”
The girls sat for a time watching the fire send sparks up to mingle with the stars. Then Hethy began chuckling.
“What?” Sally asked.
“I was just thinking how funny it was, I thought you was a coyote and I jumped out under that blanket with my hatchet to chop your head off. I ain’t never figured it’d be no little girl like me.” She erupted into laughter. “Thought … I thought … you was a coyote!”
Watching Hethy’s face, her expressive mouth curling wide, her bright eyes flashing in the firelight, Sally was grateful to have found her. She felt Hethy was glad she had found Sally, too. Sally began laughing, laughing with relief, laughing with joy, laughing with puzzlement over how strange and terrible life could be.
“Coyote girl,” Hethy said, pointing at Sally.
“Lumberjack!” Sally said, pointing at the hatchet.
The two girls laughed for a long time.
* * *
In the morning there was no discussion of whether the girls would part ways. They simply hoisted their packs to their shoulders and set off together, west across the empty prairie.
Hethy was nearly a head shorter than Sally, though they were the same age. But trudging along in the warm sun, Sally found it hard to keep Hethy’s pace. “Slow down,” she said. “You’re walking too fast.”
It was nearly midday, and Hethy stopped to let Sally catch up. “I’m thirsty and I think I seen something sparkling up ahead. Might be a creek or something.”
As the girls headed on, Sally looked at Hethy. She hadn’t noticed it the night before in the dark, but now in the full daylight, she saw how oddly gray Hethy’s skin was tinted. It was still brown, but faintly, as if the color was fading from it. And her hair. It should have been black, but it looked as if it had been dusted with flour.
“Hethy, why’s your skin look like that?”
Hethy turned her hand before her. “We’re all like this. All that lived in Omphalosa. That’s how come Granny Sip gave me that bat-looking pod. If I ain’t had it, my skin would be gray as a river stone.”
“Do you know Mister Bradshaw?” Sally asked.
Hethy’s lips pursed a moment. “Can’t say as I do. He from Omphalosa?”
“Yes,” Sally said. “He came to Shuckstack. He was awfully sick. Ray said the Darkness made him sick.” Sally hesitated before saying, “He died.”
Hethy cocked her chin at Sally. “I ain’t sick. Granny Sip’s pod’ll make sure of that. So don’t go on trying to scare me like that, Yote. I’ll be all right.”
“Yote?” Sally asked. “Why’d you call me that?”
“Like a coyote,” Hethy said with a grin.
Sally laughed and put a hand to her brow as she peered around at their surroundings. A big blue sky. An ocean of green. There was not so much as a windmill or sod house in sight. Nothing between the girls and the distant horizon but miles and miles of windswept grass and the black drifting specks of faraway birds.
“Okay. Where’d you think you saw that water?”
“Just over that hill, Yote.”
Soon they found a small pond, tucked into a depression and bordered by tall grass. The girls dipped their flasks and drank. The water had a funny, salty taste, but they drank anyway.
“So how much food do you think you have left?” Sally asked.
“Maybe for a few more meals if we’re skimpy.”
Hethy took a corn cake out for each of them, and when they had finished them a moment later, they looked at one another, still hungry. “Want to eat another?” Hethy asked.
“No, we’ll wait until supper.”
When they stopped that night, Sally looked through the Incunabula again, hoping to find some reference to wild foods. It mentioned medicinal herbs and roots that could be ground up for potions, but they were mostly found in the eastern forests back home. There was little more than grass out here. And she did not recognize any of the plants growing around the ponds they continued to pass.
Sharing the spoon, Sally and Hethy passed the pot back and forth until they had finished a small batch of beans they had cooked from the remaining sack. Sally continued reading the Incunabula, hoping to find a way to cross into the Gloaming when she reached her father.
Hethy leaned back against her pack with her hands cocked behind her head. “What’s that book you’re always reading, Yote?”
The sod fire crackled and gave off a pungent smoke.
Sally closed the page, her eyes sore, frustrated that she had found nothing helpful. “Do you read?”
“I learned my letters a bit.”
“This book was my father’s. Have you ever heard of the Ramblers?”
“You mean like in the old stories about John Henry and such?”
“Yes!” Sally said. “My father was Li’l Bill.”
“John Henry’s shaker? Those stories ain’t true, are they?”
“They are. Mister Nel, that root worker who takes care of us back home, he was once a Rambler, too. He and my father and John Henry and all the other Ramblers, they destroyed the Gog’s Machine.”
“Gog?” Hethy asked. “Ain’t heard that part of the story. I heard it John Henry beat a steam drill.”
“No. It wasn’t a steam drill.” Sally told Hethy the story of the Gog and how her brother and Conker and the others from the medicine show had destroyed the Gog and his train. “But they never found the Machine,” Sally said at last. “That’s really what my brother’s looking for in Omphalosa. He thinks the Darkness is because of the Machine.”
“Hum,” Hethy wondered, her expression darkening.
“What?” Sally asked.
“Granny Sip used to say she reckoned there was something in the mill that caused the Darkness. A wicked and enormous clockwork buried beneath the town. She’d know if there was.”
“So maybe my brother will find it,” Sally said excitedly. “Maybe he already has and—”
In the distance, they heard a howl.
Sally looked nervously into the shadows. “Was that a wolf?” Sally asked.
Hethy cocked an eyebrow at Sally. “You scared?”
“Aren’t you?”
Hethy waved a hand dismissively at the dark. “Nothing out there’s going to hurt us. We’re all right. It’s just a coyote or something is all. There ain’t no wolves left in these parts. They’ve all been shot or run off.”
The girls lay down beneath their blankets.
After a time, Hethy rolled over on her elbows and asked, “You reckon that noise could have been a Boo Hag?”
Sally flipped over to look at Hethy. “What’s that?”
Hethy narrowed her eyes seriously. “An old witch, except she ain’t got no skin. She’s just blood red. She catches you, she’ll tear your skin off and wear it.”
“That’s not true,” Sally said. “Is it?”
Hethy kept her brow lowered but couldn’t hold it for long and gave a wide smile as she rolled onto her back. “People tell about them Boo Hags though.”
Sally laughed, scooting a little closer to Hethy. “Have you ever heard of a Wampus Cat?”
“Never. That some kind of bobcat?”
Sally told the story she had heard from Mattias and Dmitry about the half-panther, half-woman. Then Hethy told her about hodags and the Tailypo and the ghosts of Pony Express riders who haunted the prairies. Soon they wer
e out of stories, and Sally lay listening for wild animals or Boo Hags or whatever it was they had heard howling. After a time, she curled closer up against Hethy and fell asleep.
The girls continued to follow the rabbit’s foot. It led them further into the desolate expanse of great grassy dunes. Hethy had been making their campfires by cutting sod from the earth, but this soil was too sandy and too moist to burn. Sally did not mind sleeping without a fire as much as she did the meager meal. Without a fire, there was no way to cook Hethy’s beans. There was little more left in Hethy’s bag than a few pieces of dried beef and some rubbery carrots, which the girls nibbled at sparingly.
Fortunately there was plenty of water. Some of the ponds were as big as lakes and thick with ducks and swans and strange birds she’d never seen, with red eyes and black tufts on their heads. If they could only catch one, Sally thought. But then she remembered they had no way to make a fire, and besides, it was hopeless; she couldn’t catch a bird. She wasn’t Ray.
Sally pored through the Incunabula for some charm to help ease their rumbling stomachs or produce a fire. She found nothing helpful, but she did come across a passage she had not read before. It concerned sacred stones used by some medicine men. The stones could locate misplaced objects of importance or lost horses and even missing people. In the margin, her father had written “lodestone” in his scrawling cursive.
The lodestone!
Sally looked back at the Incunabula. More writing in her father’s hand was further down the page: “Place what is lost in your thoughts and follow.”
What had she been thinking when the foot led her to Hethy? She hadn’t been thinking of Hethy. She hadn’t even known her then. She’d been cold and hungry and tired and wanted nothing more than to find …
Sally gasped. She had wanted to find someone out on the prairie who could feed her. This was like when she and Ray were in the city and the lodestone often led them to food or helpful things. Could she think this again and would the rabbit’s foot lead them to a homestead or town or even a bramble of blackberries growing mysteriously on the dunes?
The sun was high overhead, and Hethy was splashing water from a pond on her neck.
“Hethy!” she called. “Come here quick.”
Hethy ran back with her hatchet out. “What? You seen a rattler or something?”
“No! I think I’ve figured out how to find food. This rabbit’s foot. It’ll lead us!” Sally held the golden foot in her palms, trying to calm her excited mind. Food. Lead us to food, she thought.
The rabbit’s foot turned until it indicated the west.
“Is it telling you, Yote?” Hethy asked, watching Sally with wide eyes.
“I don’t know. It’s pointing the same direction it has been.”
“Well, maybe there’s something up yonder. Let’s go!”
The hope that a hot meal was just ahead brought new energy to the girls’ legs. They ran up and down the dunes, across flatter expanses and around ponds. But they soon grew tired and resumed their original pace. When the sun set and nothing had been found, the girls ate another piece of the dried meat and found a spot to sleep for the night.
“You think that foot’s pulling your leg, Yote?” Hethy asked.
“It doesn’t do that,” Sally replied. “I don’t know why it’s not working. Maybe we’re not there yet.”
But Sally remembered how the rabbit’s foot had begun to vibrate urgently when it led her to Hethy. The foot was not doing that now. It would turn to point out the right direction to go, but otherwise the rabbit’s foot remained motionless.
The next day, they trudged with hard, angry stomachs. As the afternoon grew late and they came over a ridge, Sally realized that Hethy had stopped several steps behind her. She was staring at some point far in the distance to the east.
“What?” Sally asked. “What is it?”
Hethy kept staring. “You see something back there?”
Sally narrowed her eyes. The undulating plain was as wide and empty as an ocean. But then she saw it. A form—dark against the green and gold landscape—moving their way. Sally had no sense for distance and could only assume it was several miles perhaps.
“What is that?” she wondered. “Is it a buffalo?”
“Ain’t no buffalo left,” Hethy murmured. She squinted and then looked at Sally with tight, fearful eyes. “I’d swear that’s a wolf.”
“Can’t be a wolf,” Sally said. “It’s too big. Besides, you said all the wolves are gone from the prairie.”
The creature was loping at a steady pace and then disappeared in a dip in the prairie. But in that last moment before it was gone from sight, Sally knew Hethy was right. Those ears. That tail. It was a wolf, but enormous and monstrous.
Hethy looked at Sally, worry tensing her mouth. “You reckon it’s following us?”
“No,” Sally said, hoping that if her voice sounded brave it would make the two girls brave in turn. “Why would it be following us?”
She looked back once more before walking on. But nothing was there.
17
LONE WOLF
AS THE GIRLS CONTINUED THE NEXT MORNING, THEIR eyes constantly scanned the prairie for the animal. The last two pieces of dried meat made a paltry lunch, and without wood for a fire, they had no way to cook the beans.
“How long do you think we can go without eating, Yote?” Hethy asked.
“A while, I think,” Sally replied. “If we have water, and there’s plenty of creeks and ponds and such out here. We’ll be okay a little longer.”
“But we’ve got a lot of walking to do, and I’m hungry already.”
“Me too. Don’t think about it.”
Hethy walked silently for a time. Then she huffed, “If I don’t, I start thinking on that wolf or whatever that big thing was.”
“Don’t think about him either.”
“I can’t help it. Hey! Ain’t those trees ahead?”
The girls ran across the plains, the tips of green branches growing larger as they came over several more rises. Soon they reached a shallow river, with a thin band of cedars and cottonwoods running along the banks.
Exuberant at finding wood, the girls threw down their packs, broke off dead limbs, and lit a fire. Hethy quickly cooked the remaining beans, and, almost as quickly, the girls ate them, their stomachs growing full and content.
The girls sat in the tall prairie at the edge of the trees to rest before setting off. Sally worked on lacing together prairie sunflowers and prickly poppies into a necklace, while Hethy ran her ashen-gray finger along the worn stitching on her shoe.
“Yote,” Hethy said.
“Hmm.”
“What do you think’s going to happen when you find your daddy?”
Sally didn’t look up from the flowers. “Well, if I can figure out how to get into the Gloaming …”
“Sure, if you can do that,” Hethy said.
Sally continued lacing together the flowers. “He’ll help Ray destroy the Machine.”
“But what then?” Hethy asked.
Sally shrugged. “We’ll go back to Shuckstack.”
Hethy looked up from her shoes. “You think Mister Nel would let me live with you all at Shuckstack?”
Sally smiled. “Oh, you know he will.” But then she saw that Hethy actually had been worrying about this. Hethy had lost her only living relative and had no home left. Sally had a home, and she was looking for her father. She had so much to be happy about and hopeful for. But Hethy did not.
She tied off the end of her flower necklace and put it over Hethy’s neck. “Don’t you worry, Hethy Smith. You’re coming back with me to Shuckstack. You’re going to like it there, with Si and Buck and all the others. You’ll just love them.” Sally laughed with remembrance and said, “Once, when Ray was off learning from some root doctor up in Virginia, I went out with Rosemary and Oliver to pick dewberries—”
Hethy squeezed Sally’s hand with a painful clutch, her eyes locked on the opposite side o
f the river.
“What is it?” Sally asked, swiveling her head around.
“Over there.” Hethy pointed. “What’s on that other bank?”
Through the thin wall of trees on the other side, Sally could see the dark form lying on the earth.
“It ain’t moving,” Hethy said.
“Come on,” Sally said nervously. “Let’s go see.”
The girls scrambled down the embankment and took off their shoes to wade across the river. As they came out on the other side, they laced back up their shoes and peered up over the edge of the embankment.
Several yards beyond the trees, the tall grass had been trampled and torn up in a wide swath. In places, the prairie earth was laid bare, exposed and torn apart in clumps. Blood darkened the ground in spots.
A wolf lay in the center, motionless and toppled to one side. Its fur was silver, with highlights that looked nearly blue where the sun reflected from its coat. Black blood, crusted and tar-like, covered much of its hide and face, and its tongue hung limply from its scarred jaws in the dirt.
“It’s that wolf we seen,” Hethy said.
“He’s huge!” Sally gasped. “I had no idea wolves got that big.”
“I don’t think they do.”
“Is he dead?” Sally asked.
“Must be,” Hethy said. “Something done him bad.”
Sally pulled Hethy by the hand as they ascended the bank and walked over to the edge of the circle of trampled grass several yards from the dead monster.
“What do you think done that to him?” Hethy asked.
Sally squinted her eyes at the bare earth around the wolf’s body. “There are prints. Let’s go a little closer and look.”
“That ain’t a good idea,” Hethy said.
“We’d better know what got him so we can watch out for it,” Sally said, taking a few cautious steps forward.
“Come on, Yote,” Hethy pleaded, but she followed Sally as she crept near the wolf’s body. His skin was torn across his hip and at his neck. One ear had been nearly severed. Little streams of blood still ran, but most had congealed into thick black blobs matted into his fur. He had older scars, too, healed but crisscrossing his hide as if from a hundred past battles.
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