“It wouldn’t be allowed! Do you think I want to leave little Honeybee and Raina and Tanisi and not see them grow up? Do you think I won’t miss Cooper? That I’m ready to leave my mother and father? I’m not! It’s my only chance.”
“Why this time? Why not next time? You’re so young, Eden. Eighteen is an adult by law. But not really. What if James isn’t the one? What if you leave everyone and it goes wrong?”
“It won’t go wrong.”
Mallory pleaded, “No one thinks anything could go wrong when she’s in love, Eden!”
“James was offered a full-time job in Santa Fe, with tuition benefits. I can take the HSED and start college. He says he’ll come back for me, but what if he doesn’t? A high school girl compared with the girls he’ll meet at New Mexico State? He’ll find someone else. And I’ll be alone.”
“Eden, don’t you trust him? You’re giving up your whole life for him, and you’re afraid he’d find someone else?”
“Mallory, I’m just a kid from Ridgeline. I’m trapped in a life I can’t stand anymore! At least if I lost James there, I’d still be free.”
“What about me?” Mallory asked. “You and Drew are all I have.”
“My Mallory, my little Mallory,” Eden said. “You’ll have a full and lovely life. You’ll be happy. There are two of you. You have people to depend on who understand and care.”
“So do you.”
“No, Mallory. They depend on me. Now it’s my turn.”
Mallory had no idea what to say and less of what to do. Everything Eden said was right. Eden did owe way too much to her family. So much shouldn’t be placed on one girl’s shoulders, no matter how level or strong those shoulders were. But the danger to James and Eden in her dream came . . . from James and Eden. It wasn’t turning on her family. It wasn’t taking off at eighteen. Other people had done that and made lives for themselves. It was the heavy, unshakable sense of menace in the dream of James alone in the glade, beneath the cliff, the lion watching him from above—when something unspeakable happened.
SISTERS
That afternoon, when Mallory got out of Eden’s car, she tried to wave good-bye brightly, but no sooner had she opened her backpack than a small white card fell out. This was like Edie. Anyone else would have sent a text message. But Eden would give Mallory something to hold in her hand, on all the long nights to come. She wanted to hold it against her heart. She wanted to rip it up.
Finally, she opened the envelope.
Mallory read:
Little Sister of the Dark,
You know the love I have for you as a friend and as one like me. I know you understand this choice, but you fear for me, just as I would fear for you. Mallory, always choose your life no matter what your destiny is supposed to be. If I go soon enough, this destiny won’t find me. And so, my dear friend, I won’t see you again for quite a while. If there is a way that whatever I have been given lets me look over you, I’ll do that from afar, Little Sister of the Dark. And I’ll write to you from the high desert, where I’ll be safe with my love.
XO,
Eden
Mallory crushed the note in her hand.
No!
This was now! Not spring break, now!
What was Mallory to do with no notice?
Did she have even a night to spare? There was nothing she could do before morning, and until after church. Her father would be suspicious.
And so, she stayed awake until sleep weighed her down, only to wake in a sweat, shivering. She paced her room until she could no longer bear the sight of the walls, then padded softly down to the living room couch. Sleep came and went, with dreams that chased each other—dreams of wide brown eyes and almond golden eyes, teeth and claws and caves. At one A.M., Mallory sat up and texted Eden: ?4U. To her relief, Eden answered, 411? The information that Mallory wanted was simple: LEMENO WEN. Please, please answer, Eden,Mally thought.
And after a long interval, Eden wrote, PCKING. 2MORRO.
Tomorrow.
CU, Mally texted.
The location would be James’s camp behind the Cardinal farm. Not far from where Mally had walked with Cooper on the night of the powwow. That meant Mallory had at least the morning to try to change . . . to change what?
The future? Forever? And how? And why? Why would she condemn the friend she loved to a life Eden didn’t want?
But the danger.
The danger.
Merry had felt it too.
143, Mally texted back. Love you.
Mass next morning had never been longer. Mass seemed to lengthen in direct proportion to the proximity of Easter, until Good Friday, when it was moving but intolerable. Mallory fidgeted in her seat.
At least, she thought, paying no attention to the homily, having been all over the state-park land behind the Cardinal farm, Mally knew the most direct path to the glade, where a circle of land surrounded by trees and boundaried on three sides by caves opened under the brow of the ridges that led, more than ten miles back, toward the reservoir.
On Sunday morning, after a brief phone visit with Campbell, Mallory cornered Merry in the kitchen.
“Did you talk to Mom?” Merry asked. “Now she’s saying she’s going to name him Angus.”
Mallory waved away the chat. She said, “Listen, Ster. This is urgent. You asked me to be you, once, at David’s funeral, so no one would know who was up on the ridge with him. Today, I want you to be me. It’s for Eden. It’s crisis time.”
Meredith didn’t blink. “Okay. Nobody even noticed at Neely’s party. I can’t figure that. We looked so much alike when we were little but not now . . .”
“To other people, we do.”
“Well, of course I’ll do it.”
“I have to go somewhere and you need to work for me at the store. It couldn’t be easier. Just don’t talk so much and do what Dad tells you. He’ll never notice. I won’t be all day and all night.”
“Eden . . . Is this what we saw?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Shusha,” said Merry, using their old twin word for “take care.” “Ster, I don’t care how long it takes. Just don’t get hurt, okay?”
“I won’t. But if I were to get hurt, you’d be the first one to know.”
Tim had no idea why Mallory was so tense when he picked the twins up for a swing past the hospital. And it would have never occurred to him that Mallory was going to pretend to “be Meredith.” (“It’s harder for you to pretend to be me than for me to pretend to be you,” Merry told her twin. “All I have to do to be you is stop talking and look mad all the time.”) They all sat in the room while Campbell ate her lunch and did the obligatory inspection of her drum of a belly.
“That’s something right there!” Adam shouted, pointing. “That’s some kind of body part.”
“I would think it’s a foot, from where I can feel it,” Campbell said, prodding a spot just under her ribs. The pretend “Meredith” could see the outline of some definite little appendage too, but her eyes were pulled back over and over to the clock on the wall.
Tim had said he would come back at one. But now it was two, then 2:30. “Meredith” felt like crawling the walls. She loved her mother and her little sibling-to-be. But she had to consider matters so huge and harmful; she pushed away the phrase that occurred to her: “Matters of life and death.”
Finally, her father came trotting through the door.
“You’re late!” the pretend-Meredith said sharply.
“That’s almost the first word you’ve said all day, Merry. You’re acting like your sister. Apologize now,” Campbell said. “Dad’s not your taxi service.”
“It’s just that I want to go skiing, and now it’s going to be hard to get a couple of hours in before it gets dark.”
“I’m sorry,” Tim told her. “Ton of inventory came in and I didn’t expect it. I just forgot everything else when I saw how much winter stuff we still have left to push. Mallory’s all confused today.” Campbell was tired, so
Tim agreed to take Adam back to the store. He stopped at the house first to load the ski things and a backpack that Mally filled with water and sandwiches.
“Going on an expedition, huh?” he asked. “Well, darn it all. I was going to ask you if you’d come back and give me a hand. Rick’s off, and I thought one of you could start opening up all those spring things. Guess it’ll be double duty for Mallory.”
To Mally’s disbelief, Tim insisted on a quick stop at the store before driving her out to a ski path. “I just want to check on your sister. I have to keep telling her to get off the phone.”
Thanks, Mallory thought bitterly. Thanks, sis. It’s life and death and you can’t miss a single detail of the planning for Neely’s pre-party for the girls-ask-boys formal.All the cheerleaders had agreed to wear white—a detail that Mallory found nearly intolerably absurd.
“Dad, please. It’s such a nice, warm day and pretty soon I’ll be back on the field . . . I mean in the gym . . . and with choir . . .”
“Just give me a minute.”
But every minute counted. And relentlessly, they piled up. Tim took a phone call. Tim signed for a few more boxes. The closer it got to the end of the day, the less time she would have to talk to James, whatever good that would do. Even if she could find his camp, he and Eden might have left by the time she could get there.
She was slumped on a skateboarding ramp display when Tim was finally ready to leave. “Don’t be grumpy. Plenty of daylight left. This new outdoorswoman you’ve turned into takes some getting used to,” he said as they got into the van. “Where do you want to be dropped off?”
“Oh, out past Eden’s farm, Dad, if that’s okay,” Mallory said, trying to sound as vague as her sister always did. “There are some great trails back there in the state park, and I can always rush over to Eden’s house if I need a bathroom or I get tired. I’ll call you as soon as I’m done, or just come get me after you close up. Six is fine.”
As the van pulled away, Mallory tucked her hair up under her cap.
She “heard” Meredith say clearly, Careful, careful.
DUEL
It took nearly an hour for Mallory to find James’s encampment—a clearing in the snow ringed by rocks and spread with straw, a deep layer of it as insulation under his tent. The setting was neat to the point of compulsiveness, his gum boots tied high and hanging from a rope, his food bag even higher.
Unable to find him or Eden, even after she gave a shout, Mallory sat down to rest and unwrapped her PB&J and her bottle of ginger water. Her muscles ached from the top-speed jump across the snow, as the shadows grew ever longer. She heard the hiss of snow before she saw a tall figure on skis crossing the trail she had just taken. He was slim and agile, more than 6’3” at least. He seemed alarmed but not unduly frightened to see her sitting on a sawn-off log outside his tent.
“James, I’m Mallory Brynn. I’m Eden’s friend.”
“James Sabot. I would know you anyplace. Eden describes you perfectly. I’m going to make some hot choc. Want some?”
“Sure. Never turn down hot choc,” she said.
James efficiently measured water from the hanging bags, or “dromedaries,” that woodland travelers used when the streams were frozen. Mallory wiggled on her log. It wasn’t a subject she could plunge into. Wait,she told herself. Be patient. Patience and waiting went to war with her every instinct. Once his tiny stove was burning low, James turned on his haunches and brushed back his curly white-blond hair. James had a wide-open and invitingly friendly face. Though Mally supposed she now preferred her guys dark-haired, James was handsome in a bluff, Viking sort of way. And his gem-blue eyes were soft with concern.
“You’re fidgeting. I think I know why,” he said. Mallory tensed. “You’re worried about Eden, aren’t you?”
“It’s none of my business.”
“But if somebody’s close to you, it’s hard to just stand back.”
“She’s only eighteen. I know that’s technically an adult. But no matter how smart she is, Eden has been pretty protected. From the real world. Do you know what I mean?”
James handed Mallory her mug. “It’s one of the things I love best about her. She’s not like any other girl.”
“And her family! It will just break their hearts. You don’t know them. Her little tiny sister and the rest. I know she loves you, but this is so sudden.”
“You don’t have to convince me,” James said, pulling off his scarf and taking a long drink. “I tell her that nothing, I mean nothing, will change the way I feel. I’ll come back. But she says if we don’t go ahead and get married . . .”
“Married?” Mallory gasped.
“Yes. I want that too. At least I think I do. She’s only eighteen, and I have two years or more of school. People can change a lot. But she says if we don’t do this now, we might as well . . .”
“James, do you know why? Do you know about Eden’s tribe?”
“I know some of their traditions. I know some of their stories. What she’s told me and what I’ve read. Is that what you mean?”
“Do you know about the shaman in the tribe?”
“Sure. It’s the woman or the man who brings the medicine . . . the good luck, right? Sort of the CEO,” James said. “Eden’s told me that.”
Mallory was panting. Deliberately, she took a swallow of hot chocolate and tried to slow her breathing. She had lived so long in the world of impossible-as-normal that it was difficult to remember how slowly ordinary people had to work through the extraordinary. Hadn’t it taken her most of a year to force herself into the facts of her new life? And yet time . . . time was short. She began again, “Did she tell you that’s her?”
“Her? She’s a kid.”
“She’s a kid but she’s the medicine woman.”
“Mallory, she’d have told me.”
“That’s why I’m here. She won’t tell you. It would scare you away, and you’d be right to be scared. Because of that old tradition.”
“Okay,” James said reasonably. “She’s a big deal in their clan. Why is that a deal breaker? And why do you look so scared?”
Mallory thought, I can’t say this.Then she thought, I have to say this.“Did you ever hear that a clan’s shaman, the medicine woman, could be a shape-shifter? Did Eden tell you the story of the white cougar?”
“The legend? Sure. She loves that story. It’s good luck for the tribe but not for hunters who run into the shape-shifter? It’s an ancient myth. I’ve even heard it before, from other Native Americans in New Mexico,” James said. “Eden is fascinated with that kind of social anthropology. I see her doing something with that someday.”
I hope you don’t see it,Mallory thought.
“Some Indian people believe that it’s real,” Mallory said.
“What?”
“That shape-shifters are real.”
“Some people believe little gray guys are locked up in an airline hangar in New Mexico.”
“It’s not the same thing. I don’t know all about it, but tribal traditions are handed down from generation to generation.”
James agreed, “Sure. Like the stories in the Bible. They’re huge. They’re guides to life. They don’t have to be literally true to have power.”
Both of them froze as they heard a cough, not quite a low growl, but definitely not human.
“Stay still,” James said quietly, not quite looking up but glancing from under his eyelids. “She’s a small black bear and she’s interested in the food, not in us. If you don’t mind giving me the rest of your sandwich.” Mallory picked it up and handed it over. James threw it lightly over the top of the tent. “I’m hoping if I can make a little noise and we’ll walk away quietly, she’ll lose interest. If I can and if there’s time, I’ll let the food bag down. I’ll toss over some of these granola bars I have. The only thing that worries me is she probably came out of one of those rock caves, and if she did, she has cubs. But they’d be with her. I don’t see any cubs. And she’s not skinny eno
ugh to be a spring bear.” James got up slowly. “She’s not satisfied with that sammie. I’m going to let the bear bag drop.”
He undid the series of knots that held the bag fourteen feet above the ground and let it fall. The bear looked up, its close-set eyes blank of emotion, with no interest in the food bag. She laid her ears back and soundlessly popped open her jaws. “Oh. Wow. Now she’s letting us know we’re too close, and we’re going to start backing away. If she follows, we’re going to be loud and show our teeth and say, ‘Go away! Go away!’ Don’t look her in the eyes. But we’re not at that point yet,” James said softly.
The bear shambled a few feet toward them.
James and Mallory backed up.
“Take off your skis, because now we’re at that point,” James said. “Get behind me.” He began to shout and wave his arms in huge circles. “Go! Go away, bear! Go away!” But the bear came closer and looked larger. She shuddered and scrabbled at the ground. “I don’t know what’s with her. She’s acting too strange.”
Mallory began to back up quickly.
“Don’t! Go slow,” James cautioned, looking back over his shoulder at Mallory. The bear trotted a few steps closer, forcing James and Mallory against the cliff wall.
It was at that moment that Eden came out of the trees just to Mallory’s right. Carrying a large duffel over her shoulders, she wore her fringed shawl tied over a white parka and dark jeans. On her feet were her beautiful lace-up boots of white deerskin. When she saw James, her smile lit the gathering dusk in the gloomy clearing. Their red sleeping bag, hanging on the line, caught the last sunlight like a beating heart. Eden rushed forward, then stumbled to a stop. She dropped her duffel in the snow.
Mallory saw her shake her head once, and a grimace of pain creased her face.
Although she would never forget what she saw next, Mallory also would never quite be able to describe it.
Eden virtually melted and re-formed, like a tall and beautiful candle. Her dark hair swept up into thick pointed ears and a ruff of russet-tipped fur above the broadening pale sweep of forehead. Instantly, the white parka dropped away as powerful shoulder muscles and a massive, graceful feline chest formed. A thick and sinewy haunch appeared from Eden’s strong, slender hip. The tang of the cat rose on the wind as did its inquisitive, otherworldly yowl. As the white puma sprang, time slowed to an unbearable suspended arc.
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