“I took it off Gunther while he was sleeping.”
“Give it to me.” Jorn stepped toward her.
“No!”
He stopped.
I put my hands up to placate our deranged Barbie. “Do you know how to use that?”
“How hard can it be?”
Make that Deranged and Untrained Barbie. Jorn took a step back and slightly in front of me.
“Okay, okay. I’ll take you to the tree, just don’t hurt anyone. Let me get the diary from my bag.”
Sasha considered us for a moment then nodded. I reached into the suv, rummaged in my satchel, and pulled out the diary. I clutched it to my chest and sent a prayer to Spirit: Lead me to the biggest white pine in this whole place. If there was one still left. I had to make this look good for Sasha. Then I turned down the sidewalk toward the closed log-and-stone visitor center.
Passing the center, I took the path toward the Upper Falls. Jorn fell in beside me, and Sasha brought up the rear.
Jorn mumbled, “You got a plan?”
“To lose Lunatic Barbie?”
He nodded.
“Still thinking here.”
“Think faster.”
I saw a crow in a pine up ahead. It flew ahead of us, swinging from one tree to another, down the path.
“How’s Ray?” I asked, keeping the crow in sight.
“He’ll live.”
“You don’t sound too happy about it.”
“He dragged me all the way there to give me this.” Jorn pulled something from the pocket of his denim shirt. It was a small red stone carving of a turtle. “Ray was adamant: ‘the Spirit’ said I had to have this. I couldn’t get much else out of him. He was pumped full of painkillers.”
“He probably needed the turtle more than you,” I said.
“Why?”
“In Native American culture, the turtle is sacred. It represents Mother Earth and signifies good health and long life.”
“With Armed and Deluded back there, we might need this,” Jorn said, shoving the pipestone turtle back into his breast pocket.
We were about to step off the paved path and onto the rocky trail when we heard running footsteps behind us. All three of us whirled around. Sebastian and the Twins had found us. Jorn stepped closer to me.
“You tricked me again!” I yelled at Sasha.
She appeared bewildered. “No, I didn’t. I swear. How did they find us?”
“They must have a tracking device on the car,” Jorn said.
“What?” Sasha looked at us with shock. She was terrified. She spun around, lifted the gun, and fired at the approaching men. Click. Click. Click. It was empty. Apparently, they had meant for Sasha to escape with me. Sebastian knew greedy Sasha wouldn’t just flee, that she would go after the Tree of Life for herself. And lead them to the prize.
With a scream of rage, Sasha threw the gun at the men and ran past us, tottering on ridiculous, ankle-breaking heels over the rocks and tree roots. Jorn and I tore after her. When Sasha fell, Jorn helped her up. We rounded a bend, momentarily out of sight of our pursuers, and Sasha scurried up an incline and into a small opening in the rock wall rising over us. It was a shallow cave. I started to follow.
“Get your own hole,” she growled, pushing back further and further, making herself smaller.
Jorn grabbed my arm, and we ran higher. Above us the giant Highway 61 bridge loomed. I passed under it, dodging around trees, scrambling over the rocks, and turned toward the small footbridge and the trail that would take us north to the Fifth Falls. Just beyond the footbridge was the Superior Hiking Trail. There was no doubt in my mind we could lose Sebastian and company on the trail. As I crossed the bridge, I realized Jorn wasn’t behind me. I stopped, gasping for breath, and turned. He’d halted at the Upper Falls and stood looking at me, a strange expression on his face.
He waved. “Go,” he shouted. “I’ll hold them off.”
“What?” I could see Sebastian and the Twins advancing. They were nearly to the spot where Sasha was hiding. One of the Twins handed Sebastian something shiny, which he stuck in his pocket. Then Sebastian motioned to the side, and the Twins split off. They were looking for Sasha. Sebastian wanted Jorn to himself. He ran toward us.
I started back over the bridge to Jorn. “Come on!” I shouted.
But Jorn shook his head.
Then we heard Sasha scream. Sebastian stopped. All of us turned toward the ruckus below. Down the hill, one of the Twins pulled Sasha, kicking and thrashing, out of her hiding place. She beat at the man’s face, Eric, probably. He wrapped her in a hold that lifted her off the ground. Pinned from behind, Sasha kept kicking out in front of her, stabbing at Gunther with her stiletto boots. Gunther stepped around her and stunned her. Sasha stiffened then went limp in Eric’s arms.
Eric threw Sasha’s body over his shoulder and carried her back in the direction of the car. Gunther followed him.
Sebastian continued toward us, smiling. This showdown with Jorn had been coming since their tumultuous college days. Sebastian stopped in front of Jorn.
Jorn said, “You can’t really believe this Tree of Life bullshit.”
Sebastian laughed. “You know your problem, Peter? No imagination. Everything has to be black and white for you.”
“What about Sasha?” Jorn nodded toward the departing trio.
Sebastian cast a glance my way. “I understand Superior’s quite cold this time of year.”
Apparently, Sasha was headed for a terrible accident. We heard two cars firing up in the parking lot: one to serve as Sasha’s watery tomb and one to serve as the Twins’ getaway car. I prayed to Spirit: Help her. Please.
In moments, the two cars rumbled over the Highway 61 bridge above us. Sebastian shrugged and stepped closer to Jorn. “Bye-bye, Sasha.”
“You bastard,” Jorn growled, throwing the first punch. Sebastian’s head snapped back, and he went down. Jorn shook his bruised hand, then raised both fists in defense near his chin and rocked back and forth. Sebastian was slow in coming up, wiping the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand. He was taking too long. He was planning. I shouted, “Watch out,” but it was too late. Sebastian rose in a flurry of trained moves, pain whirled out of his hands and feet, all battering Jorn’s right side, the side that had been injured in the mountains of Afghanistan.
Jorn blocked, took a hit, blocked again. He moved away, and Sebastian advanced. Jorn landed a punch to Sebastian’s solar plexus that both surprised and stunned Sebastian. Jorn bounced away to catch his own breath, tripped, and tumbled down an embankment into the cold Gooseberry River. He pulled himself up, his chest heaving, and stumbled back onto a rocky ledge in the middle of the river. Sebastian leapt across a narrow spot in the river onto the ledge after Jorn, but slipped on the wet rock. He went down on one knee, and Jorn pounced on him.
They rolled over and over. Closer and closer to the edge of the falls. I held my breath. I ran to the river’s edge. The rocky island where they battled was only a few feet away from me, but I couldn’t figure a way to help Jorn. There was no opening in the jumble of arms and legs.
Jorn seemed to be gaining the upper hand. He was straddling Sebastian and pounding him. Sebastian’s hand was trapped under him, tangled in his coat. Out of the corner of his eye, Jorn must have caught a glimpse of me, pacing up and down the riverbank, looking for a way to help. He shouted, “Stay out of this!”
Then the struggling Sebastian went still. His eyes closed, and his bloody head rolled to the side. Jorn stopped and leaned back, breathing heavily. He’d beaten Sebastian. We waited for Sebastian to stir. Nothing. Finally, Jorn turned, gave me a tired grin, and joked, “Didn’t want you to mess up your karma.”
I started to smile . . .
Then a gunshot echoed off the walls of the surrounding forest.
I looked around to s
ee where it came from.
As I turned back, Jorn dropped face first into the river.
“Jorn!” I screamed.
I hurdled the cold, dark water and landed on the slippery rock beside Jorn’s body, which was half in the water and half out. I dragged him onto the rock ledge and rolled him over. His wet face was pale and his eyes closed. Kneeling, I clutched at his clothes, whispered his name over and over. There was so much blood. I pressed my cheek next to his mouth searching for a puff of breath. Nothing. I laid my hand on his chest. I felt no rise and fall. “Don’t you dare die on me,” I whispered, running my hands over his face.
Sebastian poked me with the gun. “Get up.”
I looked up at him, confused, unbelieving. Moments ago, he’d been out cold and now he was standing over a dying Jorn. From this mix of emotions came a flood of rage—at Sebastian, at the diary that started all of this, at my own ineptitude. I rose slowly, and he stepped back, keeping the gun leveled at my chest.
I swept up the diary that I’d dropped beside Jorn and shook it in Sebastian’s face. “Is this what you want? Is it? Then go get it!”
I turned around in a circle, my ears filled with the crashing cascade of water, and flung the diary over the falls like a shot putter. For a moment, I thought Sebastian was going to jump in after it.
“Are you mad?” he screamed at me.
The thunder of the falls encased us as we glared at each other. The air around us was electric with fury. I have never wanted to hurt someone so badly. With shock, I realized this feeling inside me was hatred—and I don’t do hatred. My upbringing, my yogic beliefs, all screamed against it.
Sebastian stepped back from the edge. I had shaken him. He looked at me as one would any crazy woman—with wariness. He raised the gun again to my chest and said, “Take me to the tree. Now.”
I lifted my chin.
And from the corner of my eye, I saw a black blur, swooping toward us; death cawing, crying; sharp beak and diving wings, knocking the gun from Sebastian’s hand. He cried out as the gun flew into the water.
I didn’t hesitate, didn’t think. I whirled and caught his head with a roundhouse kick, knocking him off-balance. My follow-up punch glanced off his shoulder. He backhanded me. I went down, my face on fire. Sebastian kicked me in the ribs, in the thigh, and I rolled away. I staggered to my feet. From the corner of my eye, I saw him slowly advancing. I waited until he was nearly upon me then lashed out with a side kick to his knee.
The moment I connected I knew the knee was gone. I’d caught him just right. I saw him windmill in the air, over the water, a look of surprise on his face.
As suddenly as that, the fighter in me faded and the yogi was back, the one who believed in ahimsa, do no harm to any creature. I sprang to catch his hand. But I was too late.
His body spread its wings over the air, and he was swallowed by the mists of the falls. I stared into the churning waters, into the pool below.
Sebastian Winter was gone.
Hugging myself, I limped over to Jorn, lying so still on this rocky island. I collapsed beside him and stroked his face. He felt cold. I couldn’t give up on him. I was impulsive, prone to landing in trouble, and probably would never get close to enlightenment, but I wasn’t a quitter. I never lost hope. I cleared my mind, took deep breaths, placed my hands over the bullet hole in Jorn’s chest. I waited. Nothing.
“Come on,” I whispered.
Jorn’s body was not drawing energy.
For reiki to help, the recipient had to cooperate, had to want to live. I continued to press, searching for that familiar warming, that tingling of a being still desperate to stay in this world.
Nothing.
I raised my face to the sky and screamed, “Help me!”
I tried to pray to Spirit and Tum, but I couldn’t think of the words. The river roared around us. The wind picked up, carrying the fall’s mist up and over us. I shivered. And then I felt it. Energy.
Jorn was taking energy.
My hands came alive, prana sparking. The wind grew stronger. I held on. My hands were aching. I held on. The pain flashed up my arms, stronger than I had ever known it. I held on.
To Jorn.
Chapter 28
Honest, That’s How It Happened
WITH SASHA’S PHONE, I called nine-one-one. The paramedics came and the sheriff and the park rangers. When they got there, Jorn still hadn’t regained consciousness. They took him to the hospital. I didn’t get to follow immediately. The sheriff had a notebook full of questions, and he asked every one of them while the rangers and deputies looked for Sebastian’s body.
They didn’t find it.
Sebastian Winter could have survived the thirty-foot drop over the Upper Falls of Gooseberry. He could have ridden the Gooseberry River like a sled over the Middle and Lower Falls, over sharp rocks and hidden ledges, through deep pools, along the River View Trail, out past Agate Beach, and into the endless cold of Lake Superior. And lived. The sheriff and rangers, however, said it was unlikely. They maintained that, at this very moment, Sebastian’s body was probably at the nethermost regions of the largest freshwater lake in the world, making friends with the bottom-feeding carp.
But I wasn’t counting on it.
A deputy plucked Sebastian’s gun from the shallow waters at the top of the falls. In the end, ballistics would match its bullets to the one in Jorn, and Jorn’s own statement would support my wild story.
As the paramedics drove Jorn away to meet a talented surgeon who would dig out the bullet, repair the damage to Jorn’s broken body, and exclaim that it was a miracle Jorn was even alive since the bullet nearly nipped the edge of his heart, I searched the shores of Gooseberry River.
I did not find Sebastian Winter either.
As I wandered up and down the riverbanks, the voices of the rescue workers mixed with the rushing sound of the water. They would search for Sebastian until dark, according to the sheriff. If they still hadn’t found Sebastian, they would come back tomorrow. I was free to go, the sheriff said.
But I wasn’t.
I had left the Down Dog Diary out of my account to the sheriff. With a toothpick in the corner of his mouth and a Minnesota Twins baseball cap pulled low over his neatly trimmed hair, the sheriff didn’t look like the type who believed in mythological trees. He had long ago stopped being surprised by life or the stupidity of humans. He was the man you called when a deer leaped through your windshield or your ice house was burning down. I thanked him, turned away from his knowing eyes, and scanned the river. It was calling me. Where was the diary? I had lost it. Again. Just threw it away in a fit of rage. That was what Evie would call “a rash moment.” I have learned, on more than one occasion, that rash moments come back to bite you.
Sure, pitching the diary to the depths of Gooseberry River was a crazy thing to do, but it also had been sound strategy. I had reacted without thinking, practicing the lessons of Tum: find a way to throw your opponent off balance. Sebastian had never expected me to destroy the diary.
I looked upriver at the white water spilling down the rocks and tried to gauge where the current would take some traveling item. My eyes followed the river’s edges and nooks and crannies. Somehow, I knew the diary was out there, waiting for me. Maybe it would be better if a rescue worker stumbled upon it and tossed it in the trash. Maybe it needed to be buried deep in some rural landfill. It had inspired such heartache, and not just my own. And yet, I couldn’t give it up. So I wandered the river, pouncing on every scrap of flotsam riding the rippling current.
The light was leaving and the sheriff department’s searchers were packing it in for the day, when I spotted the diary. It was wedged between two round river-smoothed stones. I let out a cry and splashed into the water. The cold current tugged at my knees as I plucked the soggy book from the water and wiped the old leather cover on my jacket. The rubber band had hel
d the pages together, secured tightly. There was a chance the water hadn’t crept too deeply into the diary’s heart. Maybe when I had dried it out, there would be only a few irreparably faded and rippled pages.
I waded slowly back to shore, sat down on a boulder, and hugged the diary to my chest. I took a deep breath, carefully slipped the rubber band from its place, and opened the diary.
The scent of peace greeted me.
Chapter 29
Turtle Wins, Again
NEAR THE KIVA OF James Tumblethorne, shaman, rises a pine of splendid proportions and grandeur. The light sparkles through its branches, and when I squint my eyes and look into its boughs, I can see prana, colorful energy zipping and bouncing around. Now, I am not saying that it is the Tree of Life. However, evergreen trees, like Tum’s pine, are a symbol of undying life, of immortality. And this tree reaches so high, its limbs plunge into the clouds.
“It is said,” I told the bird perched beside me, “that the Tree of Life connects the earth and the heavens, a ladder between worlds.”
The crow remained still, which I took to mean it wanted to know more.
“In India, there are stories of the cosmic tree called Asvattha. It is the world spirit. This tree, however, reverses the usual order. Its roots are in the sky, and its branches grow downward to cover the earth.”
“Tough tree to climb.”
I looked up from my seat inside the kiva and saw Jorn above me, leaning on a cane at the lip of Tum’s ceremonial home. He was still pale. Two months ago, he was lying lifeless on a slab of rock. He was supposed to be in bed, back in Minnesota, healing, having his meals nuked and delivered by the guy next door. I’d left a freezer full of soups and pasta dishes. He had no business being in New Mexico.
I was here to meditate. The events of Gooseberry Falls still haunted me. Every day with every atom of my being, I yearned for inner peace, and yet I kept hitting these bumps. It wasn’t just that I had taken part in the death of Sebastian Winter, but that I had wanted it. I had hungered for revenge. Patanjali, the father of yoga, would have had something to say about that.
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