by Ruth Wind
Josh found the name and dialed it on his cell phone, and outlined the situation to the person on the other end. The judge obviously asked for clarification several times, and Josh offered facts. There was a short period of "yes," and "no" and "not that I know of."
Finally he said, "Thank you, Your Honor. Right. I'll call you later."
He hung up. "He's going to do what he can, he said. He thinks he can get her out on Monday, anyway."
"Good." Only two nights more. It was misery, Juliet knew, but it was better than a week or two or ten.
"Still want to hike?" Josh asked.
"Yes."
"Let's go." He'd brought a small day pack with him, and they headed straight west, to the box-end of the box canyon. Snow melted with dizzying speed, making pattering noises as it melted off the trees and ran into the creek. They crossed it on a little wooden bridge. When they got to the middle, Juliet had to stop to admire it for a moment—the blue-white snow piled up in the shadows, the rushing stream in its rocky bed, aspen coins gleaming through wherever the snow had melted. The air smelled of earth and pine and something elusive, that note that always said, simply, mountains to Juliet.
As she stood there, sunlight spilling over her head from that brilliant sky, something in her eased. "When we came here to camp, I loved that smell. I loved coming to camp," she said to Josh, breathing in the scent of the water. "Well, maybe not at first, because I was afraid, but I got to the point where I loved it. All three of us did. We always said we were going to grow up and come live here."
Josh said, "And Desi did it." He gestured up the sunny side of the canyon. "That way."
"And this is her home. I hate it that this has happened to her. She was so happy to be here."
"We're going to make this work. I promise."
They climbed on a gravel path, not terribly muddy, thanks to the gravel, but it was slippery enough Juliet was glad to have the hiking boots with their good tread. A signpost made of wood read simply, Shrine, 1.4 miles, and pointed the way.
"Do you think she killed Claude?" Josh asked.
Juliet jerked her gaze up to his face. "Do you?"
He pursed his lips. "Honestly, I don't know."
"Me, either," Juliet admitted. "The case against her is circumstantial, but it's a pretty strong circumstantial case."
"I do know that she will die if she goes to jail."
"I know. We have to get her out." Their feet crunched on the snow. "My gut says she didn't do it. That she might be really mad and she might have shot him if he'd tried to take something from the ranch, but I don't think she would ever kill anyone."
Josh took her hand. "We'll find the right guy."
She squeezed his hand. Let go. "Thank you."
"So, what did you like about camp, back in the day?"
"Everything." Juliet grinned. "Well, no, that's a lie. I loved a lot of things, but not all of it. There were a lot of bugs. I was afraid of the spiders in the cabins and the possibility of rattlesnakes and afraid of lightning and afraid of drowning in the lake." She gave him a rueful look. "Scaredy-Julie, that was me. Still is, I guess."
"You're not a scaredy-cat. You're brave. Very fierce, fighting for your sister."
"Really?" She looked at him.
He half chuckled. "You sound so surprised."
"We were supposed to find totem animals at camp. There was this whole process we went through, making a medicine bag, listening to the stories of the elders, writing down our dreams. There were even elders who came in from the Mariposa Utes, now that I think about it."
He nodded. "There's an education and outreach arm of the government. I'm sure that's who it was."
"Probably." Juliet flung her hair back from her face. "Well, we were all supposed to be open to animals who came to us, and I was so worried it was going to be something stupid for me, you know? Like a rabbit or something, all timid and shy."
"All animals have their places," he said.
"Yeah, but I'd had enough of being a rabbit. And there were my sisters—Desi was a wolf, surprise, surprise, and Miranda was a dragonfly, which is at least beautiful. But nothing came to me. I didn't have any dreams, didn't find feathers. I was a total failure at the whole vision quest thing."
He laughed.
"So, just before the end of the season, I was out in the woods and I found this skull and a claw. I was so excited and ran it back to camp to show my counselor who didn't really believe I'd found it, that somehow I'd planted it, because it was—ta da—a mountain lion."
"No kidding!"
Juliet shook her head. "No. Everybody was jealous and it seemed like a big joke because I really was so afraid of everything that a rabbit would have been a lot more accurate."
"But the mountain lion chose you."
"That's what the elder said. That your totem finds you."
"I see that lion medicine in you, Juliet."
"Thank you."
"Now you should be brave enough to let life in."
She paused. "I'd like to try."
"That's all a man can ask."
They walked along in the warming day, and Juliet noticed the most curious sense of well-being spreading through her. It had to do with the sunlight and the woods, the quiet and the birdcalls, the scent of pine trees and the scent of Josh. All of it. She liked it that they could walk together in silence, without having to fill it up with chatter. She liked the feeling of safety she had in his company, and the way he'd felt around her last night.
Sneaking a glance at his profile, she let that memory come rushing back through her, along her skin and the nape of her neck and the backs of her knees—he'd held her close all through the night. As if she were precious. As if she were beloved.
She'd never had that feeling before. It scared her.
And yet, she wasn't alone in risking things, was she. Tentatively, she reached out and slipped her hand into his. When he looked down, she gave him a little smile. His lips quirked slightly.
He didn't let go. They walked up and up, around a switchback and another, beneath aspens with fluttering leaf-coins spinning around over their heads, beneath pine groves, along open spaces where the snow from the night before had melted.
"What do you know about the shrine?" Josh asked.
"Not a lot, really. I know a lot of people come to see it, that there was some sort of miracle attached to it. Aren't there hiking tours that bring people to it in the summertime?"
"Yep. One path, actually, goes right over the corner of Desi's land."
"And what's the miracle?"
"There was a young girl—"
"Is there always?"
He grinned and related the story of a young girl who'd been born with club feet who promised the saint that she would walk to the falls if her feet could be transformed. It had taken her three days to make the trek, but she'd done it, and when she got there, ten thousand butterflies had swirled up out of their sleep and touched her all over. The girl was healed.
"And now," he continued, "every year, people make pilgrimages here, usually at a point of transition in their lives."
"That's beautiful."
He paused, catching his breath. "And now, we're here."
"Where?"
With a secret little smile, Josh led a few more steps and turned the corner, and the path dead-ended in a small, open meadow surrounded by trees.
"Oh, my!" Juliet sighed.
The shrine sat at the foot of a waterfall, which splashed into a hot springs that send up a steamy spray. A mist covered the ground in a thin layer. Stationed above the hot spring was the shrine, a large, old statue of the Virgin Mary, but not like any Juliet had ever seen. This one had the sweet, somehow robust face of a Guadalupe, with the lush, curvy body of a siren. Her arms were spread wide, and a faint smile curled up her lips. Flowers, real and artificial, were scattered at her feet, and a plethora of candles and candleholders stood in a sheltered little glass building, like a small greenhouse.
But most breathta
king were the butterflies. Thousands of them, attached to the trees and rocks in a thousand different ways; butterflies made of cloth and embroidered with beads and braided out of ribbons; painted and carved and fashioned from rocks; tiny and large. Expressions of gratitude and petitions for intercession. For a moment, stunned into silence, Juliet thought she could hear whispers, of praises, prayer, petition, thanksgiving.
"It's so beautiful!" she cried.
"In the summertime, there are thousands of mourning cloak butterflies," he said. "It's unbelievable."
"What do they look like?"
"They're black, with a little ribbon of yellow around the edges of their wings, and a blue spot on each wing."
Just then, as if called by his description, a butterfly looped upward on a warm draft from the hot springs, its wings shimmery and beautiful.
"How is that possible?" Julie cried.
"They can last over the winter," Josh said. "Hold out your hand."
"I'm afraid! It'll feel weird!"
"It's half asleep. They have to warm up their wings before they can fly."
"No, no. You do it."
He chuckled and extended his hand. The butterfly lazily circled and landed on his finger, wings working. "Now you," he said. "Hold out your hand."
Juliet obeyed. The creature swooped and landed, as if a benevolent spirit were visiting, and to her surprise, she felt some intense, unnamed emotion rise in her throat. "It's beautiful!" she whispered, afraid to so much as breathe for fear it would fly away again. So close, she could see butterfly eyes and the pattern of scales on his wings and the long feelers.
Amazing.
In a moment, it lifted off and swirled lazily upward, as if carrying prayers toward heaven. Juliet swallowed. She didn't meet Josh's eye as she moved forward, and took a candle from the box by the little housing. Josh stepped away and Juliet was grateful for the privacy as she lit the candle and put it inside the safe house. Looking up at the sweet face of the saint, she whispered an urgent prayer. "Let her get through this safely. Please."
After a moment, Josh came forward. "My turn," he said, and Juliet gave him the same privacy. As she stood beneath the trees, waiting, she couldn't help but sneak a small glance backward at him, at his tall, sturdy frame, his walnut-colored skin, his beautiful cheekbones. An arrow went through her chest—I'm falling in love with him!—and then she turned away.
He came up behind her. "Are you ready to go back to town? I'm going to have to get Glory home pretty soon."
"Sure." She looked at the heavily dripping snow. "I wonder if I should go up to the cabin tonight. It looks like it will be fine up there, doesn't it?"
He met her eyes. "I can take you if you like, but the cabin is above 9000 feet. There will be a lot more snow up there than there is down here."
"You're the expert." She cleared her throat. "I was thinking, in part, of Glory. Like giving her the wrong idea."
"It'll be all right." He raised his chin, scanned the horizon. "It's not like we're all over each other or anything."
Again she had the sense that his feelings were wounded. There was a faint stiffness around his jaw and mouth. "Josh, I'm not sure what—"
"Don't worry about it, all right?"
Stung, she said, "Fine."
* * *
Josh was aware of a knot in his chest the size of Montana as they went through the rest of their errands. They stopped in the drugstore so that Juliet could get some hair rollers, then by the store where they'd stashed their things from earlier. Only then did they walk to Helene's house to pick up Glory.
His mother had obviously been cooking, and the house smelled of her trademark corn fritters and potato soup. She came out, wiping her hands on a cup towel, rangy and lean, and not at all a grandmotherly-looking sort. "Hello, Juliet!" she cried. "What a nice surprise."
Josh bent down and kissed his mother's cheek, handed her a bag of supplies, and called out, "Glory, I'm here!"
"I'm looking at a book right now!" she yelled from the kitchen.
Helene lifted an eyebrow. "She might not have had as much sleep as usual, spending the night with her friend."
"We're gonna have a talk about that," Josh said gruffly.
"No, we are not," his mother replied serenely. "You're too protective. Time to lighten up."
"Glory!" Josh yelled. "I brought somebody who knows how to curl hair."
"She wants her hair curled?" Helene asked. "Why didn't she ask me?"
"Because you have short hair, Grandma!" Glory said, coming out of the kitchen. She carried a book, with her fingers stuck between two pages. She would be five in six weeks, and he was pretty sure she had taught herself to read quite some time ago, but she pretended she didn't know how if anyone asked. She always said was just looking at the pictures with Pink and Ink.
"Silly me," Helene said, plucking at her thick, cropped hair. "I still know how to curl hair."
"I've never seen you with a curl."
"True." Helene waved a hand good-naturedly.
Glory had not caught sight of Juliet yet. Juliet waited by the door, looking oddly nervous, her mittened hands smushed together. As Josh looked at her, his senses were slammed again, a winding depth of memory, yearning, desire, braided together. Her lips were a little swollen from their kissing last night, and he only had to look at her to remember the way she tasted, when they'd—
"Princess!" Glory squealed. "Hi!"
"Hey, sweetheart." Her low, well-modulated voice poured like butter into the room. "I'm so happy to see you."
"You haven't been to my grandma's house before! Are you going to curl my hair?"
Juliet smiled and held up a plastic bag from the grocery store. "I've got the rollers right here."
"Can we do it right now?"
"Wait until you wash your hair, kiddo," Josh said. "After supper. Juliet is going to stay with us until tomorrow because she's not used to being all alone in the mountains, and Desi is—" He scowled "—away for the weekend."
"You're going to stay in my house?" Glory said.
"Just for tonight, if that's okay?"
"Yes! We can read stories, maybe. Or if you want, we could watch Snow White or Cinderella or—" she leaned on Josh's leg "—what other ones do I have?"
Her face was awash with light and excitement. Josh put his hand on her silky head. "We have a lot of DVDs," he said. "I'm sure we can find one to watch together."
Juliet looked up, and he saw for the first time the slight bruising beneath her eyes, the weariness and strain of the past few days starting to show. "I'm really looking forward to it."
"First, we're going to eat some of the best corn fritters you've ever tasted," Josh said, and picked his daughter up. "Who makes the best?"
Glory raised her hands above her head, a cheerleader move. "Grandma!"
"It's not ready for a little while," Helene said. "Maybe another twenty minutes on the soup."
"No problem." Josh wiggled Glory in his arms. "Whatcha want to do?"
"Wash my hair."
"Then we'd have to go home with it wet. Not a good idea." He shook his head sadly. "Your hair would turn into icicles and fall on the ground and break into pieces. Not great."
"Na-uh!" She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "That sounds like a story."
"Let's go read the book, kiddo."
"Okay. You want to read with us, Princess?"
Josh spoke up before Juliet had a chance. "The princess is going to hang out with Grandma."
"I am?"
He nodded firmly. When she just stood there, awkwardly holding the bag of drugstore hair rollers and barrettes and such things, he took it from her, nudged her shoulder. "Go on in there and sit at the table, Princess. I'm going to let you borrow my mom for a little while."
* * *
As Juliet stripped off her coat and sat down at the big wooden table in Helene's roomy kitchen, she suddenly felt exhausted. Not just a little bit tired, or stressed, but absolutely, bone-deep demolished. Everything seemed t
o catch up with her at once—Desi's arrest, the emotional storm from last night, the sudden and surprising connection to Josh and all that stirred up. Not to mention all the purely physical things they'd been doing—hiking, making love, walking all over town. "You look all done in, honey," Helene said, touching her hair. "Can I get you a cup of tea?"
"That would be wonderful."
From the doorway, Josh said, "Ma, remember my friend Agatha, from the Ute School?"
"Sure."
Josh looked at Juliet, significantly. Nodded.
Juliet scowled. "Don't make secret gestures around me," she said irritably.
He half grinned. "The princess needs a nap."
Helene shooed him out of the kitchen. "He's my one and only," she confessed as she poured water into a red enameled teakettle. "I might have spoiled him a little. He thinks he knows what's best for everybody all the time."
Juliet couldn't even muster up much of a smile. She nodded, was caught by a massive yawn, and covered her mouth. "Sorry! We hiked up to the shrine so I could light a candle for Desi. I think I'm pretty tired."
"Have you seen your sister this morning?"
"Yeah. She's not doing well."
Helene said, "She's a wolf—jail will kill her. We have to make sure she gets out. We're going to drum for her tonight, her sisters and I."
"Sisters?"
"Spiritual sisters, I guess you'd call it. We sweat together. To heal ourselves, each other, the earth."
Juliet could think of nothing to say to that. "I see."
"Maybe you'd like to come sometime."
"Maybe." She wasn't sure what it entailed and it seemed a little bit intimidating.
"You can think about it." Helene sat at the table, her kind, strong face as calm as a mountain morning. Her hands, long-fingered and graceful, were very much like her son's, and she folded them in front of her the same way. "I am a healer, Juliet. May I take your hands?"
"Um. Okay." Juliet put her hands on the table, and Helene enfolded them in her own. Her fingertips were cool at first, but as she held Juliet's hands in her own, Helene's hands warmed up, getting hotter and hotter with every passing second. When it seemed it would be uncomfortable and Juliet would have to pull away, the heat suddenly stabilized and Juliet let go of a breath.
