by Terry Brooks
Nest watched those secrets dance as shadows on her ceiling.
Was John Ross her father? If he was, why had he abandoned her?
The questions repeated themselves over and over in her mind, suspended in time and wrapped in chilly, imperious solitude. They whispered to her, haunting and insidious.
If John Ross was her father, why was Gran so bitter toward him? Why was she so mistrustful of his motives? What was it that her father had done?
She closed her eyes, as if the answers might better be found in darkness. She stilled herself against the beating of her heart, against the pulse of her blood as it raced through her veins, but she could find no peace.
Why was her father such an enigmatic figure, a shadow barely recognizable as being a part of her life? Why did she know so little about him?
Outside an owl hooted softly, and Nest wondered if Daniel was calling to her. He did that sometimes, reaching out to her from the dark, a gesture she did not fully understand. But she did not rise to look this night, locked in her struggle to understand the doubts and confusion that beset her at every turn. Like a Midwest thunderstorm building out on the plains and working its way east, dark and forbidding and filled with power, a revelation approached. She could feel it, could taste it like rain and smell it like electricity in the air. The increasing boldness of the feeders, the deterioration of the maentwrog’s prison, and the coming of John Ross and the demon signaled a shift in the balance of things. In a way Nest did not yet understand, it was all tied to her. She could sense that much from the time she had spent with John Ross. It was in the words he had used and the secrets he had shared. He had taken her into his confidence because she was directly involved. The challenge she faced now, on thinking it through, was in persuading him to tell her why.
When it was nearing midnight, the time reflected by the luminous green numbers on her digital clock, she rose and walked to her open bedroom door and stood listening. The house was dark save for the single lamp that Gran always left burning in the front entry. Nest moved back across the room to turn down the bed and place the extra pillows under the sheet to make it look like she was sleeping. Then she removed the window screen from its fastenings and slipped through, put the screen back in place, and turned toward the park.
In the distance a dog barked, the sound piercing and clear in the deep night silence, and Nest was reminded suddenly of Riley. Riley was the last dog they had owned. A black lab with big feet, sad eyes, and a gentle disposition, he came to her as a puppy, given to her by her grandfather on her third birthday. She had loved Riley from the moment he had bounded into her arms, all rough pads and wet tongue, big ears and squirming body. She had named him Riley because she thought he just looked like a Riley, even though she had never actually known one. Riley had been her dog all through growing up, there for her when she left for school, waiting for her when she came home, with her when she went down the road to visit her friends, at her side when she slipped into the park. He was there when she saw the feeders, Pick, and even Wraith, although he did not seem to see any of them as she did. She was almost twelve when he developed a tumor in his lungs. Inoperable, she was told. She went with her grandfather to have her faithful friend and companion put down. She stood watching, dry-eyed and stoic, as the vet injected Riley and his sleek body stiffened and his soft eyes fixed. She did not cry until later, but then she did not think she would ever stop.
What she remembered most, however, was Gran’s reaction. Gran had stayed behind and cried alone; Nest could tell she had cried from her red eyes and the wrinkled Kleenex wads in the waste basket next to the kitchen table where she had begun to take up permanent residence with her bourbon and her cigarettes. Gran said nothing on their return, but at dinner that night she announced in a tone of voice that brooked no argument that they had acquired their last dog. Cats were sufficient. Cats could look after themselves. Dogs were too dependent, required too much, and stole away your heart. Ostensibly, she was speaking of Riley, but Nest had been pretty certain that in an odd way she was speaking of Caitlin as well.
She stood now for a moment in the darkness of the summer night, remembering. She missed Riley more than she could say. She had never told Gran this. She knew it was something Gran did not want to hear, that it would only suggest to her how much she, in turn, missed Caitlin.
Nest glanced at the silent house, thinking Gran might appear, that she might somehow know what Nest was about. But there was no movement and no sound from within. Nest turned away once more and crept through the shadows of the backyard, eyes searching. Miss Minx slunk from beneath a big oak, low to the ground and furtive. Another cat, a strange striped one, followed. Out in the park, beyond the wall of the hedge, moonlight bathed the open ball fields and play areas with silver brightness. It was her secret world, Nest thought, smiling at the idea. Her secret world, belonging only to her. No one knew it as she did, not even Gran, for whom it was now distant and foreign. Nest wondered if it would become that way for her someday, if by growing she would lose her child’s world as she would lose her childhood, that this was the price you paid for becoming an adult. There was that gap between adults and children that reserved to each secrets that were hidden from the other. When you were old enough, you became privy to the secrets that belonged only to adults and lost in turn those that belonged only to children. You did not ever gain all of one or lose all of the other; of each, some you kept and some you never gained. That was the way it worked. Gran had told her that almost a year ago, when Nest had felt her child’s body first begin its slow change to a woman’s. Gran had told her that life never gave you everything or took everything away.
She slipped through the gap in the hedgerow, and Pick dropped onto her shoulder with an irritated grunt.
“It’s about time! What took you so long? Midnight’s the appointed time, in case you’ve forgotten! Criminy!’ ”
She kept her eyes directed forward. “Why are you so angry?”
“Angry? I’m not angry! What makes you think I’m angry?”
“You sound angry.”
“I sound the way I always do!”
“Well, you always sound angry. Tonight, especially.” She felt him squirming on her shoulder, leaves and twigs rustling, settling into place. “Tell me something about my father.”
He spit like a cat. “Your father? What are you talking about?”
“I want to know something about my father.”
“Well, I don’t know anything about your father! I’ve told you that! Go ask your grandmother!”
She glanced down at him, riding her shoulder in sullen defiance. “Why is it that no one ever wants to talk about my father? Why is it that no one ever wants to tell me anything about him?”
Pick kicked at her shoulder, exasperated. “It’s rather hard to talk about someone you don’t know, so that might explain my problem with talking to you about your father! Are you having a problem with your hearing, too?”
She didn’t answer. Instead, she broke into a fast trot, jogging swiftly down the service road and past the nearest backstop, then cutting across the ball diamond toward the cliffs and the river. The humid night air whipped past her face as her feet flew across the newly mowed grass. She ran as if she were being chased, arms and legs churning, chest expanding and contracting with deep, regular breaths, blood racing through her in a hot pulse. Pick gave a surprised gasp and hung on to her T-shirt to keep from falling off. Nest could hear him muttering as she ran, his voice swept away by the rush of the air whipping past her ears. She disappeared into herself, into the motion of her arms and legs, into the pounding of her heart. She covered the open ground of the ball fields and the playgrounds, crossed the main roadway, hurdled the chain dividers, and darted into the trees that fronted the burial mounds. She ran with fury and discontent, thinking suddenly that she might not stop, that she might just keep on going, running through the park and beyond, running until there was nowhere left to go.
But she didn’t. She r
eached the picnic benches across the road from the burial mounds and slowed, winded and shot through with the heat of her exertion, but calm again as well, distanced momentarily from her frustration and doubt. Pick was yapping at her like a small, angry dog, but she ignored him, looking about for Two Bears and the spirits of the dead Sinnissippi. She glanced down at her wristwatch. It was almost midnight, and he was nowhere in sight. The burial mounds were dark and silent against the starry backdrop of the southern horizon where moonlight spilled from the heavens. The park was empty-feeling and still. Nothing moved or showed itself. Even the feeders were nowhere to be seen.
A trace of wood smoke wafted on the still air, pungent and invisible.
“Where is he?” she asked softly, turning slowly in the humid dark, eyes flicking left and right, heart pounding.
“Here, little bird’s Nest,” his familiar voice answered, and she jumped at the sound of it.
He was standing right in front of her, so close she might have reached out to touch him if she had wished to do so. He had materialized out of nowhere, out of the heat and the night, out of the ether. He was stripped to the waist, to his baggy pants and worn army boots, and he had painted his face, arms, and chest in a series of intricate black stripes. His long hair was still braided, but now a series of feathers hung from it. If he had seemed big to her before, he looked huge now, the coppery skin of his massive chest and arms gleaming behind the bars of paint, his blunt features chiseled by shadows and light.
“So you’ve come,” he said softly, looking down at her with curious eyes. “And you’ve brought your shy little friend.”
“This is Pick.” She introduced the sylvan, who was sitting up straight on her shoulder, eyeing the big man.
“Charmed,” Pick snapped, sounding anything but. “How come you can see me when no one else can?”
The smile flashed briefly on Two Bears’ face. “Indian magic.” He looked at Nest. “Are you ready?”
She took a deep breath. “I don’t know. What’s going to happen?”
“What I have told you will happen. I will summon the spirits of the Sinnissippi and they will appear. Maybe they will speak with us. Maybe not.”
She nodded. “Is that why you’re dressed like that?”
He looked down at himself. “Like this? Oh, I see. You’re afraid I might be wearing war paint, that I might be preparing to ride out into the night and collect a few paleface scalps.”
She gave him a reproving frown. “I was just asking.”
“I dress like this because I will dance with the spirits if they let me. I will become for a few brief moments one with them.” He paused. “Would you like to join me?”
She considered the possibility of dancing with the dead Sinnissippi. “I don’t know. Can I ask you something, O’olish Amaneh?”
He smiled anew on hearing his Indian name. “You can ask me anything.”
“Do you think the spirits would tell me who my father is if I asked them? Do you think they would tell me something like that?”
He shook his head. “You cannot ask them anything. They do not respond to questions or even to voices. They respond to what is in your heart. They might tell you of your father, but it would have to be their choice. Do you understand?”
She nodded, suddenly nervous at the prospect of discovering the answer to this dark secret. “Do I have to do anything?”
He shook his head once more. “Nothing. Just come with me.”
They crossed to a small iron hibachi that sat next to a picnic table. A gathering of embers, the source of the wood smoke, glowed red within. Two Bears removed a long, intricately carved pipe from the top of the picnic table, checked to see that the contents within its charred bowl were tightly packed, then dipped the bowl to the embers, put the other end of the pipe in his mouth, and puffed slowly to light it. The contents of the bowl ignited and gleamed, and smoke curled into the air.
“Peace pipe,” he declared, removing it from his lips and winking at her. He puffed on it some more, drawing the smoke deep into his lungs. Then he passed the pipe to her. “Now you. Just a few puffs.”
She took the pipe reluctantly. “What’s in it?” she asked.
“Herbs and grasses. They won’t harm you. Smoking the pipe is ritual, nothing more. It eases the passage of the spirits from their resting place into our world. It makes us more accessible.”
She sniffed at the contents of the bowl and grimaced. The night around her was deep and still, and it felt as if she were all alone in it with the Indian. “I don’t know.”
“Just take a few puffs. You don’t have to draw it into your lungs.” He paused. “Don’t be frightened. You have Mr. Pick to watch over you.”
She considered the pipe a moment longer, then put it to her lips and drew in the smoke. She took several quick puffs, wrinkled her nose, and passed the pipe back to Two Bears. “Yuck.”
Two Bears nodded. “It’s an acquired taste.” He inhaled the pungent smoke, then carefully placed the pipe across the rim of the hibachi. “There.”
Then he moved out onto the open grass and seated himself cross-legged facing the burial mounds. Nest joined him, sitting cross-legged as well, positioning herself next to him in the dark. Pick still rode her shoulder, but he had gone strangely silent. She glanced down at him, but he was staring out into the night, oblivious of her. She let him be. Overhead, the sky was crosshatched by the limbs of the trees, their dappled shadows cast earthward in a tangled net by the bright moonlight. Nest waited patiently, saying nothing, losing herself in the silence.
Two Bears began to chant, the words coming in a soft, steady cadence. The words were foreign to Nest, and she thought they must be Indian, probably Sinnissippi. She did not look at Two Bears, but looked instead where he looked, out over the roadway to the burial mounds, out into the night. Pick sat frozen on her shoulder, become momentarily a part of her, as quiet as she had ever seen him. She felt a twinge of fear, wondering suddenly if what she was doing was somehow more than she believed, if it would lead to a darker result than she anticipated.
Two Bears continued to chant, his deep voice steady and toneless. Nest felt the first stirrings of doubt mingle with her uneasiness. Nothing was happening; maybe nothing would.
Then a wind blew off the river, cool and unexpected, carrying with it the smell of things forgotten since childhood—of her grandmother’s kitchen, of her sandbox, of Riley, of her cedar toy chest, of Wisconsin’s lakes in summer. Nest started in surprise. The wind brushed past her and was gone. In the stillness that followed, she felt the hair on the back of her neck prickle.
Small glimmerings of light appeared at the edges of the burial mounds, rising up into the night, flickering and fading again, moving with rhythmic grace against the darkness. At first they were nothing, simply bright movements that lacked definition. Slowly they began to take shape. Arms and legs appeared, then bodies and heads. Nest felt her throat tighten and her mouth grow dry. She leaned forward, peering expectantly, trying to make certain of what she was seeing. On her shoulder, she heard Pick utter a faint, surprised exclamation.
Then up from the darkness rose the Sinnissippi, their spirits taking form, coming back into a shadowy semblance of their lost bodies. They lifted free of the earth to hang upon the air, twisting and turning in small arcs. They were dancing, Nest could see, but not in the fashion she had expected, not as Indians did in the television shows and movies she had seen, rising and falling in that familiar choppy motion, but in another way altogether. Their movements were more balletic, more sinuous, and they danced free of one another, as if each had a story to tell, each a different tale. Nest watched, awed by the beauty of it. After a time, she felt the dance begin to draw her in. She thought she could sense something of what the dancers were trying to convey. She felt herself swaying with them, heard the sounds of their breathing, smelled the sweat of their bodies. They were ghosts, she knew, but they were real, too. She wanted to call out to them, to make them turn and look at her, to
acknowledge her presence. But she stayed silent.
Suddenly Two Bears was on his feet and striding forward. He reached the dancers and joined in their dance, his big, powerful body swaying and weaving as smoothly as their own. Nest marveled at the ease with which he moved, smiled at his grace. She felt the heat of his body fill her own, as if his pulse had mingled with hers. She watched in shock, then with a glimmer of terror, as his flesh-and-blood body began to fade into the darkness and turn as ghostly as the spirits of the dead Sinnissippi. There were drums now, their booming rising out of the night—or maybe the sounds were only in her mind, the rhythm of her heartbeat. She watched Two Bears become one with the dead, watched him become as they were, translucent and ephemeral, ghostly and unreal. She stared transfixed as he danced on, the sound of the drums heightening, the movements of the dancers quickening. She felt the summer’s heat flood through her, causing her to blink against sudden flashes of crimson and gold.
Then she was on her feet as well, dancing with Two Bears, moving through the ghosts of the Sinnissippi. She did not feel herself rise or walk to him, did not know how it came to pass, but suddenly she was there among the Indian spirits. She floated as they did, not touching the earth, suspended on the night air, caught between life and death. She heard herself cry out with joy and hope. She danced with wild abandon and frantic need, whirling and twisting, reaching for something beyond what she could see, reaching past memories, past her own life, past all she knew …
Like a fever dream, the vision appears to her then. It comes out of nowhere, filling her mind with bright colors and movement. She is in another part of the park, a part she does not recognize. It is night, black and clouded, empty of moon and stars, a devil’s night filled with pitch. Dark figures run through the trees, hunched over, lithe and supple. Feeders, she sees, dozens of them, their yellow eyes gleaming in the black. She feels her stomach knot with the realization that they are certain to see her. Across the grassy stretches and along the pathways they bound, swift and certain. A woman leads them, young and strong, her shadowed face smiling and wild-eyed, her long, dark hair streaming out behind her. Nest blinks against the sight—a human at play with feeders, running with them, unafraid. The woman spins and wheels, and everywhere she goes, the feeders chase after her. She teases and taunts them, and it is clear that they are infatuated by her. Nest stands spellbound within the darkened park, staring in disbelief as the woman rushes toward her, all wicked smiles and laughter. She looks into the woman’s eyes, and sees there the lines that have been crossed and the taboos that have been broken. She sees the woman’s life laid bare, sees her soul unfettered and her heart unafraid. She will dare anything, this woman, and has. She will not be cowed or chastened; she will not be made ashamed.