His sister Gillian had never had an interest in anything esoteric. Always afraid of standing out or being different, and deeply embarrassed at the image her family presented to the world, she made it her life’s work to cling to style and the swift vagaries of fashion. It still puzzled Jamie that she’d left Sara in his care. The only solution that came to his mind was that it was the one time she’d allowed some Tamsonishness to come to the fore and intuitively understood that for someone like Sara, even as a toddler, life in the House would be far more beneficial than the life Gillian had chosen for herself.
So, because Gillian was what she was, it was Jamie who inherited the House and a safety deposit box filled with securities—and other objects more curious and more valuable—while Gillian received the bulk of Nathan’s considerable wealth. Neither of them found fault in their father’s wisdom.
Combining her inheritance with the Kendell family fortune, Gillian and John’s financial worth had had to be measured in terms of nine digits and employed the better part of Sourial & Landeau, Chartered Accountants, on a year-round basis simply to keep solvent. Much of this had been left to Sara upon their deaths who, tending more to Tamson temperament than the matter of fact business acumen of the Kendells, was baffled by it all. When she turned twenty-one she gained legal control of the Kendell empire, but she only went in to the offices a couple of times a year to put her signature on this or that form. Sizable payments appeared in her bank account on the 5th of every month in return for that small effort.
Now in the Postman’s Room, Jamie’s eyes glittered with interest as he studied the motley collection of objects that was Sara’s find. He picked them up, one by one, and carefully scrutinized each for a long moment before going on to the next. At last he set them all down and began to refill his pipe.
Tea steamed in mugs on a low table between their chairs. Sara waited patiently, busying herself with the makings of a cigarette. She knew there was no rushing Jamie once he started pondering something.
The Postman’s Room lent itself to contemplation. The walls were cloaked behind bookshelves, except for the west where a hearth and a mantle shared space with a sideboard and a rolltop desk, and part of the east where a window overlooked O’Connor. Set in the back of the desk was the viewscreen of Jamie’s computer and, in front of it, the terminal with which he communicated to that mass of circuitry and micro-chips. Inside the desk, where the lefthand drawers had been, the main body of the computer hummed quietly through air vents, reviewing its storage perhaps, muttering to itself like an old man.
“I don’t know what to make of this,” Jamie said, once he had his pipe comfortably going again. “This alone is remarkable.” He tapped the frame of the painting with the stem of his pipe. “Together with the contents of the medicine bag . . .” He shook his head and sent a stream of smoke drifting upward.
Sara sighed. She looked out the window and wondered, not for the first time, why she couldn’t hear any of the street traffic from outside when the window was open. “There are some odd acoustics in this place,” Jamie’d told her once, “and some odder rooms, when you come right down to it. I’m never sure when I open a door whether the room that’s supposed to be there will be there. Though over the years I’ve learned to deal with it. Usually, or so I’ve found, the room you find yourself in is the one you really wanted in the first place.”
Looking away from the window, she picked up the ring from the table and returned it to her finger.
“I suppose it’s just a collection of curios,” she ventured.
Jamie shook his head again. “No. There’s more to them than that. It has the feeling of—I don’t know—meaning, I suppose. The painting seems to draw one into it.”
“That’s exactly what I felt! Only it was more like the painting becoming more real than the store—just for that moment.”
“So you said.” Jamie puffed steadily at his pipe. “I suppose,” he added, “I could take it ’round to Potter’s in the morning. He might be able to identify the artist—or at least date it. I wonder, though. . . .”
“How so?”
Jamie raised his eyebrows. “A blue-eyed Indian? Sharing a pipe with what, to all intents and purposes, seems like a Celtic bard? While it would make a great illustration for one of Barry Fell’s books. . . .” He frowned to himself. “I’m just not sure if our mystery painter has used some artistic license in his subject material, or if he was painting from life. You see—and I can’t explain why I feel this way—to my mind, it seems as though it was painted from life.”
A shiver of excitement played up Sara’s spine.
“Who’s Barry Fell?” she wanted to know.
“An American with the interesting theory that the Celts discovered North America long before even the Vikings did.”
“And you think that somehow this artist—”
“Went back into time to capture a meeting between an Indian shaman and a Celtic bard?” Regretfully, Jamie shook his head. “I know it has the feel of both age and truth about it, but I’m afraid that’s a little too farfetched—for all that it appeals to my sense of mystery. No. It’s more likely he was at something like a Renaissance Faire and got a couple of fellows to pose for him. Let’s wait and see what Potter says about it before we go scrabbling about for theories.”
“What about the ring?”
“We’d have better luck with the bone disc,” Jamie replied. “I can take that to the museum to be carbon dated. The ring hasn’t a jeweler’s mark. Nothing. Just that design.”
Sara twirled the ring around on her finger and looked thoughtful.
“Why do you think,” she asked, “that someone’d go through all that trouble to hide it in a ball of clay?”
“Perhaps it was a ritual of some sort.”
“I think it’s a weird thing to do.”
“That depends,” Jamie said, “on your outlook. If the pouch is, in fact, a medicine bag, then everything in it is a charm of some sort. The other objects are reasonable enough in that respect. And as for the ring, well, I’ve never heard of anything like it. I’d have to do some research on it.”
“What would you look under? Gold rings hidden in clay?”
“Lord knows.” Jamie laughed and tapped the ashes from his pipe bowl. “I’ll look into it after I’ve seen Potter and taken a run by the museum.” Returning the bag’s contents to their container, he added: “Want to have a look at my article?”
When she was done, Sara straightened the sheets and laid them on the table. “It’s very good. Very tight. Informative.” She grinned. “I loved the bit on page six where you were talking about ‘mushrumps.’ Adds a bit of piquancy. Or was that a typo?”
Jamie laughed. “You’re an incorrigible snippet and I’ll get you back for this. If you ever publish a book, I’ll slip the publishers that photo of you with your crewcut for the dustjacket.”
“You wouldn’t dare! Besides, I burned the negative.”
“But not all the copies, I have one, hidden away for an occasion such as this.”
“Oh, God! I give up. I confess. I’ll do anything. Just throw it out, okay?”
Jamie put his article away and shrugged noncommittally.
“Perhaps,” he said. “Let’s go down to dinner and see what culinary delights Blue’s concocted for us.”
“About the photo, Jamie . . .”
“Did I tell you I ran into Russell today? He got that grant and starts rehearsals on Monday. I’ve been thinking of instituting a Tamson Grant, you know, and—”
Sara stamped her foot. “The picture!”
“I don’t have a copy.”
“You . . . ?”
Jamie grinned. “But I wish I did. We’ll not see the likes of that again for a long time. How long did you wear that scarf on your head?”
“Oooh!” Words failed her.
Jamie attempted a repentant expression.
“Temper, temper,” he murmured.
“I d
on’t think I’m talking to you anymore,” she replied and huffed out of the study, but by the time they made it down to the Silkwater Kitchen, they’d decided to settle their differences in a game of Go after dinner.
They found Blue busy at the stove, stirring the contents of a frying pan that filled the kitchen with a spicy smell. Sally Timmons, the Ohio artist, was busy setting the table. Sara stifled a grin at the incongruous picture Blue presented at the stove. He stood six two in his boots, wore faded grease-stained jeans with a T-shirt that said “Harley Davidson” pulled tight around his big shoulders, had a pierced left ear, six o’clock shadow that was about three days old, and long black hair pulled back in a ponytail. In contrast, Sally was petite, about Sara’s size. She had shoulder-length brown hair, with bangs that touched her eyebrows, a heart-shaped face and what Sara called artist’s eyes—shadowed and haunted-looking. She was wearing a print dress with an off-white smock overtop.
“Want to get the beer from the fridge?” Blue asked over his shoulder. He put the finishing touches on his hamburger in hot sauce and brought it to the table.
“Sure,” Sara said. “Is there any juice?”
“Some pineapple on the second shelf. Behind the apples.”
Then Fred and Sam showed up and they sat down to a dinner of tacos and spinach salad. Tacos were one of Blue’s specialties, picked up when he lived on the Texas/Mexico border in the early seventies. The filling was so spicy that besides the beer and the juice they killed a big pitcher of ice water. Jamie insisted, as he always did, that he’d have scar tissue in his throat for the rest of his life, but they all agreed the meal was fabulous.
It was Sara’s turn to wash up. Afterwards, she and Jamie had their game of Go. Sara had the white stones, Jamie the black. The game took almost three hours and ended with Sara forcing Jamie into a position where he could only give up his stones and not attack.
“I want a five-stone handicap next time,” he said and Sara laughed.
Fred and Sam had returned to their own rooms and Sally and Blue watched an old Bette Davis movie on the TV that ended about the same time as the Go game. While Sally went up to the Firecat’s Room and Jamie to his study, Sara accompanied Blue on his rounds. Having accepted the position of Security Chief on his own initiative (it wasn’t really necessary, but if it made him happy), Blue took his self-imposed duties very seriously. Every night before he went to bed, he went around the House to check things out.
“You don’t know how easy a place like this would be to burgle,” he told Sara.
“But if someone really wants to,” Sara said, “a locked door or latched window isn’t going to stop them. And besides, anyone’s welcome here anyway.”
“Not anyone,” Blue insisted.
“Well, Jamie’s never turned anyone away.”
“The House makes its own decisions about who stays and who goes,” Blue said.
It really seemed that way sometimes, Sara admitted to herself, but she took the opportunity to pounce on Blue’s logic.
“Then there’s no real need for you to do your rounds, is there?” she asked.
“Yeah, well . . . it makes me feel like I’m contributing something, you know? And if there ever is any trouble. . . .”
In recent memory, there’d only been trouble once. But Blue had handled it with frightening efficiency. An English woman had been staying with them—one of Jamie’s literary contacts in London. She’d gone out in the evening and been followed back to the House by a couple of men who gave Darwin’s theory of evolution undeniable credence. They’d hardly had a chance to lay a hand on her before Blue was there to convince them of the error of their ways. Both of them ended up in the hospital. The most surprising thing was that, for all Blue’s biker image, he was normally as gentle as a lamb. Until something he cared for was threatened.
Sara thought about Blue as she got ready for bed. It was kind of scary knowing there was that capacity in him, even though he kept it in check. She’d watched him working out with his weights, the sweat glistening on his tattooed arms and his broad chest, the way his muscles corded and knotted as he worked the bench press. When he went at the punching bag, she was sure it was going to split under his blows. But scary or not, it was comforting to have him there should the need ever arise for his particular talents. And besides, she loved him like a big brother.
She’d had some of her best times with him, sitting around and talking, or watching a movie. He loved movies, from the old silent screen gems to Raiders of the Lost Ark. There was a true artistic streak in him as well. Whenever Sara took one of her courses with Julie, she ended up tutoring him as well, which helped her grasp the techniques better herself. There’s nothing like teaching someone to see how much you know about something, Sara discovered. He’d tried everything from macrame to soft sculpture. He’d made the floppy-eared rabbit for her one Easter that was her favorite plush toy next to Mr. Tistle who now guarded The Merry Dancers for her.
He’d settled on watercolors as his best medium of expression, which probably explained why he and Sally got along so well. It was an odd sight to see the big galoot hunched over a delicate watercolor, the paintbrush looking like a toothpick in his big hands. His painting of the fox that hung in her room was as good as any professional could do.
She looked at it now, then remembered this afternoon’s find. She’d forgotten to show it to him. Well, tomorrow was soon enough, she decided, and a huge yawn settled the matter. She went around flicking off the lights in her sitting room and the washroom, and headed for bed. Pulling the comforter up to her chin, her head no sooner hit the pillow than she was asleep.
Sara didn’t dream often, or if she did, she rarely remembered more than the odd snatch. People who had long interesting dreams and remembered every detail the next day were a source of envious irritation to her. Julie was like that.
Be that as it may, she was no sooner asleep that night, than she was smack dab in the middle of one. She found herself in the glade depicted in the painting she’d discovered that afternoon. But where the painting was sharp-edged in its clarity, her dream had a murky texture to it and she moved through it in the way a swimmer might move through molasses.
The two men from the painting weren’t present. In their place was a piece of brightly woven cloth, perhaps a foot square in size. There were designs woven into the material and, making her way slowly against the heavy air that dragged at her every movement, she finally stood close enough to crouch down and investigate it.
Dead center was a large circle with a symbol in it that she recognized as a Celtic motif. She tried to think of what it was called. She even had an album cover with that design on it—some Breton group. An . . . An Triskell. As the name came to her she smiled. The symbol was a triskell, or triskellion, three curved branches radiating from a central triangular shape, enclosed by a circle. On the cloth, four bars came out of the circle making the whole thing look like some elaborate Celtic cross. A border of ribbonwork went around the edge of the cloth with intricate knotwork in each corner. She nodded to herself. It was like the ribbonwork on her ring.
In the way of dreams, Sara felt that she had all the time in the world, and yet not a second to spare. Strangely enough, she knew that she was dreaming as well—something she’d never experienced before. Weren’t you supposed to wake up when you realized you were dreaming? At least that was what happened when she was daydreaming, an exercise that she had a lot of experience with.
The sense of calm urgency lifted her attention from the cloth to look around the glade. Empty, it still had a presence to it, as though the two figures from the painting were there, only not visible to her. Trying to recall the details of their features, all she came up with was a stag’s head for the bard, and a bear’s for the shaman. And no sooner had she pictured them, than they were on either side of her, oblivious to her presence, intent on each other.
Sara felt the first premonition that she might be in some sort of danger. It had nothing to d
o with the two men. (Men? Did you call things men when they had the heads of animals on top of their bodies instead of their own?) It was something else that set her nerves on edge. She searched the glade, but could find nothing. As her gaze returned to the men, she saw that the bear-headed one had taken a bag from his belt. He drew out a handful of small bone discs that were exact replicas of the one that Sara had found that afternoon.
The bear/shaman knelt by the cloth and, setting the bag aside, held the discs in his cupped hands. As Sara watched, he let them fall onto the cloth. They tumbled and spun, around and over, slow as drifting leaves, not a handful, but hundreds of yellowed bone discs. They filled her sight—a long tumble of ivory flickers, a never-ending stream that blurred into brown-grey, and she found herself standing alone in a featureless place.
There was nothing but mist all around her, above and below her feet. She heard the click and clack of the tumbling bones still, and then she too was falling, head over heels, over and over like one more bone disc dropped from the shaman’s hand.
Her early premonition exploded into fear as an animal’s features suddenly reared out of the mist in front of her. She thought it was the bear/shaman, but although it had a vaguely ursine quality to it, this was some more terrible mutation of a bear—streaked like a grizzly’s broad brow, sleek like a martin or a weasel. A rank odor filled her nostrils, choking her. The creature opened a gaping mouth filled with long rows of yellow teeth and lunged at her.
Screaming, Sara backed frantically, but there was no purchase for her feet. Freefalling, the brown-grey mist stuck to her like spiderwebs and she couldn’t get away from the creature. The open jaws filled her sight. Its breath was hot on her face. She could feel the jaws closing on her, snapping shut, the teeth tearing into her face, crushing bone—
She awoke, bolt upright in her bed, pulse pounding like a jackhammer, her nightgown plastered to her goosebumped skin. She stared wildly around her bedroom, needing the familiarity of it to bring her back down to earth. The moon shone through the latticework of her windows, throwing strange shadows across the floor and walls, but they were familiar shadows. She’d seen them a thousand times before. There was nothing hidden in them except for her furniture and her books and her guitars. No gape-jawed monsters. No Indian shamans with bear heads superimposed over their features. No bard/stags.
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