Lifting the Sky

by Mackie d'Arge

  No wonder. It wasn’t as easy as I’d thought, making furniture. Especially trying to get all four legs to touch the ground, and making it strong enough to actually use. The hardest thing was trying to keep things more or less square.

  I thought I’d weave some feathers into the backs to pretty them up, and some treasures too, like a few white bones or some of those shiny smooth stones from the hill where I got my chink. I still had a lot to do.

  And the chinking was really coming along, although you could tell where I’d started, not sure of what I was doing, and where I’d finally more or less figured it out.

  I slopped water into my purple-clay-bits-of-straw-chink-mix and stirred. Only half a wall left to do! But why hurry? We’d stay at Far Canyon until I finished the room. That’s what Mam had said, right?

  I should take my time, then. We’d been here six weeks plus a day—but then, who was counting? I wondered if not wanting to let Mr. Mac down was enough to make her stay on. “It all depends,” she’d said. “No promises.” Each time we’d left in the past, she’d given me not one word of warning. I knew better than to count on promises. Frankly, I’d thought she’d been really lucky to get this job like she had, and if I’d been her I’d have hung on to it tight as I could. It was a wonder any ranch ever hired her, what with no references and no recommendations at all. Sometimes, from the sideways glances we got when she drove into a ranch looking for work, I suspected the word had been passed along that she was a fantastic hand but not one to be depended on for the long haul.

  I wiped at the dribbles on the line of chink I’d just finished. On the radio the flute music stopped and a steady fast drumming started. I threw down my trowel and skipped barefooted outside. The sun was just peeking over the hills and the sky was the color of raspberries.

  “Wake up, world!” I shouted. “It’s the summer solstice, the first day of summer, and the longest day of the year!”

  “Part of the world has already been up for hours.” It was my mom, tromping around the corner of the house wiping her forehead with her sleeve and looking as if she’d already done a day’s work.

  “We’ve got a fence down,” she said. “I’ve already put out six strays and brought back a few of our own that got out. I put them in at a gate, but I suspect the break’s up at the top of that hill.” She pointed toward the hill where I’d found the clay for my chink. “Get your chores done and we’ll head up there. I’d like to ride but that’s not a hill for a horse.”

  Pretty quick we were winding our way up the hill, me clutching fencing pliers and a sack of staples and Mam hoisting a small roll of barbed wire and the stretchers. I’d never climbed this hill. Trees lined the top of it, but on the side nothing grew. It looked like a moonscape with its steep twisted slopes and purple-and-cream-colored clay. I skipped ahead, drumming a tune on the staple sack with my pliers.

  “You look like you’re floating on a cloud,” Mam said as she scrambled up the hillside behind me.

  And I was. I was in heaven, up here in the Winds, as these mountains are called, as if they’re some wispy place in the sky.

  “Always do some detective work when you’re out fixin’ fences,” I said when we got to the top and spied the downed fence. By the look of the hair in the wires and the scat, a big herd of elk had passed through.

  I whistled and Mam hummed while we worked, while Stew Pot sniffed about trying to scare up some rabbits and chipmunks. We gathered up the broken ends of the wire and spliced them together. I handed Mam staples and she hammered them into the wood posts as we tightened the drooping wires. We strung out more wire where the old fence couldn’t be mended. The sun scooted halfway up the sky and then seemed to sit there, not moving. All around us the world glistened and glowed.

  We got the job done and were halfway down the steepest part of the hill, checking the fence that ran practically straight up and down, when I suddenly stopped. I looked around at the ground and then pried out two staples from a wood post and loosened two wires instead of making them tighter.

  Mam glared at me as if I’d lost my mind. “What on earth are you doing?” she asked.

  I pointed to the bare earth. A trail used by wild animals passed along the steep hillside and then under the fence. “I’m just making it easier for the animals to get through,” Isaid.

  “We’ve got a fence that didn’t need fixin’ and here you’ve taken it apart.”

  “But the trail here glows!” I said. “Don’t you see the way this trail is different?” A hazy line of light floated on top of the trail like the silky thread of a spider, only thick and gauzy and the color of a smoky crystal. It stretched out straight past my hill and on into the mountains. Other straight silvery trails joined with it, and they all met and formed a shimmering star. Other lines headed west and I lost them, though from a faraway canyon I could see light shining up from what appeared to be a huge star. Whatever these lines were, the animals knew about them because some of their trails closely followed the lines.

  Mam scratched her head as she stared at the animal trail. “Can’t see a thing,” she said, “except for that fence you just mangled.”

  “It’s like fairy trails across the landscape that meet up and make a big star. I don’t know why I’ve never noticed them before,” I said, waving my hand. “Maybe these lines can be seen only under special conditions. Maybe it’s something about the light today on the summer solstice….”

  Mam rolled her eyes. “What I think is that you’d better fix that fence back like it was, young lady,” she said.

  Somewhere, I remembered reading about something called “ley lines.” They were lines of energy that led to power centers, or to ancient sites. I stared at the place in the mountains where the lines all met up. If I never got to see them again, at least I’d remember the high pink sandstone cliff near where the lines formed a silvery star. A gray landslide scarred the pink cliff. In my head I marked where the star blazed up from the valley off to the west.

  Now, even as I looked at them, the lines lifted and faded like fog in the sunlight.

  That afternoon clouds gathered and hovered like spaceships over the badlands. Pot and me, we squeezed through the fence like old pros. It was late, but it was the longest day of the year. We had oodles of time before dark.

  Ravens exploded from my tree as Stew Pot loped up the hill. I picked up their gift of a long blue-black feather and stuck it into my pocket. I had my feelers out for Shawn as I climbed, but they only picked up my tree. I was glad. Today I just wanted to sit on my hill and think.

  I’d searched through the old encyclopedias and found out that the word “ley” was connected to light, or to a meadow open to the sun and therefore filled with light. It said that the ley lines were series of straight lines that linked all of the Earth’s various landmarks into a network of ancient tracks. So I wasn’t the only one who’d ever seen them. Maybe I really wasn’t plumb out of my mind….

  The lines had reminded me of the bluish white light that streamed out of my fingers. As I’d loosened the fence wires up on the hill I’d noticed a faint, cool, smooth-feeling energy pushing up against my hands. So even if I could only see the lines when the light was just right, I figured I might be able to feel them if ever I wanted to explore this some more. Those lines had to mean something.

  I sighed. For sure the lines led to special secret places. I’d probably never get to explore them, since all I’d seen just happened to be on Indian land….

  The ley lines were long. I wondered how far my own light could reach. I stuck out my hands and pointed my fingers toward the badlands. I concentrated as hard as I could on making my light stretch out farther and farther. After a while I could see the light from my hands stretching out in a line toward the horizon.

  I was so intent on waving my hands about and watching the light that I didn’t hear Shawn come up behind me.

  “You doin’ some kind of sign language?” he asked.

  “Cripes!” I yelled. “You ’bout scared
the living daylight outta me!” Then I slapped my hand to my forehead. Ohmygod! Living daylight was what I’d just seen!

  “What kind of sign language was that?” Shawn asked.

  “None of your business,” I snorted. “Maybe I was just talking to the hills and the trees. Maybe I was signing to those alien spaceships hovering over the badlands.”

  Shawn didn’t answer to that. He twisted his mouth in a smirk and reached down and scratched Pot’s ears. Who of course acted as if he’d never gotten a pat on the head in his whole entire life.

  “What do you do all day out in the hills when you’re not busy sneaking up on people?” I snorted. “You and your horse. What’s his name?”

  “Tivo. We just ride. Look about.” Shawn scratched at the dirt with the toe of his boot and then reached down and picked up a rock.

  I picked one up too. We looked at each other. Shawn took a step toward the ridge and stretched his arm back. I did the same. He nodded, and we lobbed the rocks as hard as we could. They arced in midair and nearly collided and then hit the ground with just inches between them.

  I reached up a hand and we hung a high five.

  For some reason I could feel a happiness fill up inside me. I swallowed it down and then asked in my most serious voice, “You look about. For what?”

  Shawn shrugged. “Nothing. Well, okay, something.” He scratched around for another rock. Swooped it up. “A rainbow, okay? I’m looking for a rainbow, if you gotta know.”

  “Oh, right. You’re out there looking for rainbows. Of course. And a pot of gold, maybe?”

  “I shouldn’t have said anything. Forget it.” He dropped the rock like a hot potato and turned and walked toward the ridge.

  “Because,” I said quickly to his back, “if you’re looking for rainbows, I see them all over.”

  “Yeah, right,” he said, and kept walking.

  “Really. Like you, for instance. You’re a rainbow. For such a grump you’re amazingly bright.”

  But then he turned and stared at me. I could see him weighing this. Wondering if I was making fun of him, or what. “What do you see?” he asked.

  “You really want to know?”

  “I asked, didn’t I?”

  “Well, I see lights. Mostly around people, but they’re everywhere—trees and rocks sending up fat waves of light….” My voice trailed off. I’d never talked to anyone except my mom about them.

  Shawn had gone still as a fence post. “Auras,” he said. “You actually see them? You’re kidding.”

  “I’ve always thought of them as just the ‘lights.’ They’re everywhere. Seeing them is nothing special.”

  “The living daylight …,” Shawn said almost to himself.

  I gave him such a big grin that my cheeks hurt. “That’s exactly what I see. What do you know about it?”

  “That’s the name my great-grandmother gave me. ‘Sees the Living Light.’ But I don’t. I don’t see any kind of light, living or dead. She—” Shawn stopped.

  I could sense that he was close to clamming up, so I made a big fuss about finding the right place to sit, trading a big rock for the ground and then for a twisted juniper root. Then I sat really still, just looking up at him.

  Shawn lifted his shoulders and let out a huge breath. “Whew,” he said. “I’ve never talked about this.”

  “Well, me neither, so we’re even,” I said.

  “Okay. My great-grandma,” he said slowly, as if choosing his words very carefully, “she was a full-blood Shoshone who married an Irishman. She used to tell stories. Before she died, when I was six, she told me…” He stopped and sucked in his breath, as if he’d suddenly realized he was telling all this to a white girl. He searched my eyes.

  “It’s a long story, okay?” he went on. “So my great-grandpa was a white man, a sheepman, but also an amateur geologist and archaeologist. He and my great-grandma would go and camp out with their sheep. He’d climb and explore the mountains while she gathered herbs for her medicines. She knew all the plants, and what to tell people to take if they were sick. People would come from all over to see her. She could tell at a glance where they hurt and see what was wrong with them.”

  I nodded. “You probably won’t believe this, but I can do a little of that too,” I said. “See where there’s a hurt place, I mean. I don’t know a thing about herbs.”

  “I wouldn’t tell you this if I didn’t believe you,” Shawn said.

  I nodded. The silence grew until I could almost hear the grass growing.

  “My great-grandma went places most of us don’t,” Shawn finally said. “The places where spirits live. We don’t go there out of respect. White people go there because they don’t understand or respect these places.” He frowned at me, but I didn’t say anything. I knew this was true.

  “So she went with her husband, and he’d go exploring and sometimes they discovered things she’d later tell stories about. Sometimes she’d have dreams and see into the future. There was one story she told only to me. It was about my name. She said one day I would see the same way she did. But it wouldn’t happen, she said, until I came to a certain place of power, a place of the spirits, she called it.”

  I was so stuck on his words my eyes must’ve been huge as an owl’s. “So that’s what you’re looking for?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Shawn said. “It’s a rainbow. A petroglyph of one, actually. But even the elders don’t seem to know of it, or if it really exists.” He glanced quickly at me and then down at the ground. I could tell by the way his lights had flared and then shrunk back close to his body that already he was thinking he shouldn’t have opened up like he had.

  I didn’t know what to say, all I knew was that I felt as if I’d been hit in the chest. I was half scared I’d cry. Cripes, why’d I get snivelly at the least little thing? Actually, it wasn’t little—it was huge, what he’d told me. For sure the biggest secret his heart held … I sniffed and wiped my nose on my sleeve.

  A shadow had inched over us as we talked. The clouds over the badlands now looked like triple-decker scoops of peach ice cream.

  “I’d better be gettin’ back,” Shawn said.

  “Yeah, me too,” I said.

  I pulled the raven feather out of my pocket and held it up to him. “Ravens fly all over these mountains. They must know things we don’t,” I said. “I don’t understand what this rainbow is that you’re looking for, but if it’s out there, you’ll find it.”

  Shawn took the feather from my hand and studied it as if it really might hold some secrets. Then he carefully tucked it into his shirt pocket. He gave me a “thank you” kind of nod, scratched Stew Pot under the chin, and turned and walked to the ridge.

  “Catch you next time,” he said. “Friend.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Brandings don’t just sneak up on you. I should’ve suspected something was up when I came down off the hill and found Mam practicing roping. She’d made a steer’s head out of a tin can stuck on a stick and jammed into a hay bale. After supper she whipped up a batch of fresh, hot, melt-in-your mouth peanut butter cookies, handed me two, and packed the rest into a sack. But my head was so full of what Shawn and I had talked about on the hill that somehow none of this set off alarm bells.

  So I was caught totally off guard when, first thing the next morning, Mam spouted out, “We’re branding today.”

  I clomped my elbows on the table and screwed up my face.

  “I didn’t tell you last night,” she said as she spooned out three bowls of oatmeal and put one on the floor. “I knew you wouldn’t sleep if I did.”

  “Yuck,” I muttered. In my head I was screeching, No way! I’ve got plans! The beavers have gotten ahead of me—I’ve got dams to undo! The weeds are taking over the garden. I should clean up the mess in my room. And besides, this is the day I was going to let Light of the Dawn go….

  Not one bit of this hit the sound waves.

  “Mr. McCloud is sending a crew, but an extra hand’s always han
dy,” Mam said into my thoughts.

  I looked wildly around the kitchen as if some excuse to escape would pop out of a cupboard. Then suddenly out of nowhere I got this incredible thought. I could use light to heal things. Maybe I could be a veterinarian or a doctor one day… or maybe even something that doesn’t yet have a label. It was almost as if I heard a voice booming out of the sky saying, “Okay, Blue Gaspard. Now’s your chance. Get out there. Prove you can do it.”

  “Count me in,” I said.

  Mam’s eyebrows shot up in surprise.

  “But I’ve got a few things I’ve got to do first.”

  Her mouth twisted. She’d expected excuses.

  “No, really, I’ve got to feed the calves and let the fawn out….” I stopped. She was right. With my history, she knew I’d find a way to get there when they’d just about finished. The fawn could wait. The calves couldn’t.

  I whizzed out to the mudroom, dumped milk starter into the calves’ bottles, dashed back, poured water into the bottles and shook. Pot’s eyes zipped up and down with my hands—sometimes the nipple popped off and he got the spilled milk, but not this time.

  “Don’t be long. We’ll be short-handed, I reckon. Mac…” Mam didn’t go on. She rinsed out her cup and carefully sponged off the counter and then picked up the sack of cookies. “He’s bringing lunch for the crew,” she finally said. “I’m taking these down for a snack. I’d better go saddle up.” Her lights flushed the rosy pink color of sunrise as she slipped out the kitchen door. Pot padded after her, but she’d closed the door without even looking at him.

  I rolled my eyes. “Now, don’t go getting your feelings hurt,” I said. “I can’t remember when she ever lighted up like that just at the thought of someone.”

  I tried to picture lights the color of sunrise around her back when she’d been with my dad, but somehow all I could remember were the colors of dark rainy days.