“It will be all right,” she assured Floris. “Tonight we’ll find some of the answers we need. Perhaps even from Deirdre herself, if she is allowed to come through.”
This time, however, Lili had gone too far for Floris. She dropped the needlepoint on the floor and jumped up from her chair. “I don’t aim to stay. I don’t go for all this mystical stuff, and I never took part in anything that happened. Not anything! I shouldn’t have come here today.”
Her eyes following Floris’s nervous movements, Lili drew her knees under her chin and clasped her hands around them. “You believe more than you know,” she told her softly. “You talk to your llamas, don’t you?”
Floris paused on her way to the door. “Most everybody talks to animals.”
“But the way you talk to them is different, isn’t it? You have a gift. When you talk to them it’s sometimes in your head, as well as in spoken words. And you can hear them responding. Isn’t that true?”
Again Floris flushed with emotion. “How’d you know that?”
“Perhaps I have my own gifts. I’d like to use them tonight, if I’m allowed. But the circle mustn’t be broken, and you are part of it. So please don’t run away.”
“Spooks!” Floris said scornfully.
Lili smiled. “I really don’t think it was spooks who planted Deirdre’s needlepoint in the llama pen. I don’t believe it was Deirdre, either. Though perhaps someone who placed it there was trying to make you think that.”
Floris gave in grudgingly. “Okay, I’ll stick around. But right now I’m going for a walk. Fresh air is what I need.”
“Of course.” Lili rose with fluid grace. “Nona, I’d like to rest awhile before it’s time to dress for dinner. The bedrooms are downstairs, I believe.”
“Right,” Nona said. “Go ahead.” She turned to Floris. “I’ll come with you for that walk. Want to join us, Christy?”
Before she could answer, Lili put a hand on her daughter’s arm. “Stay here, Chrystal. It’s necessary for you to be here—though I don’t know why. Just be careful, dear. Be very careful.”
Lili waited until Nona and Floris had gone and then picked up Deirdre’s stained embroidery. Christy sensed what she intended and backed away.
“No—I don’t want to touch that!”
When her mother had gone downstairs without insisting, Christy went out on the balcony and stood at the rail, pushing away all that was disturbing and saddening, letting her mind empty. Why she must wait here she had no idea, but Lili was too often right to be disputed.
Unfortunately, her mind would not focus on the view or stay empty for long. The thought of Hayden filled her too easily, so that he seemed close and real. Yet she didn’t hear him when he knocked on the outer door, or sense his presence when he walked through the house.
“Hello, Christy,” he said from the balcony door. “You’ve gone pretty far away—out across the valley?”
She whirled about, startled, and flushed as darkly and foolishly as Floris had done. His sudden appearance—out of her very thoughts!—brought a rush of emotion she didn’t know how to handle.
He seemed not to notice her confusion. “Where is everybody?”
She explained, and he gestured toward a metal and canvas sofa, upholstered in green stripes, that stood at the far end of the balcony. “Come and sit down, Christy. I’m glad everyone’s gone—we need to talk.”
Christy sat down uncertainly and he sat beside her. “Leonie told me what happened with Donny, and that he’s been searching for Deirdre’s needlepoint. Can you make any sense of this?”
She was glad he was matter-of-fact and not really paying much attention to her.
“It’s pretty complicated,” she told him. “That piece of needlepoint has just turned up in Floris’s llama pen. It’s a bit worse for wear, but Floris doesn’t think it was there until this morning. She brought it up here with her to see if anyone could explain it. No one could.”
“Did this tell you anything?”
“I didn’t touch it,” Christy said. “I didn’t want to.”
“Will you do it now? Please.”
There was no way to refuse him, however much she wanted to. “All right—I’ll try. But nothing’s likely to come through, the way I feel right now.”
They returned to the living room, where Floris had put the needlepoint back in her bag before going out. For a moment Christy hesitated, and then reached in and pulled it out. To her relief, the only impressions that came to her were of the animals who had trampled Deirdre’s beautiful work so heedlessly.
“There’s nothing human left,” she said. “This has been with the llamas long enough to erase everything else.”
Nevertheless, as she held the square of cloth and turned it about in her hands, a strange picture began to form in her mind—not of a place but of something faceted and shiny that gleamed where sunlight fell upon it.
“I don’t know what I’m seeing,” she told him. “I don’t think it’s connected with the needlepoint. It’s something like a crystal, but different. I’m not able to see it clearly. I just have a sense of something I’m not able to identify.”
Hayden stared at her for a moment in surprise and then drew something from his jacket pocket and held it out. “Is this what you’re sensing?”
What he held on the palm of his hand was a roundish, chunky crystal, an inch or more in diameter, with clustered points and facets. White sand had caught in its crevices, and there was a trace of red earth on the flat base. She knew what it was at once.
“That’s a Herkimer diamond. It could be what was coming through. They’re powerful stones.”
As she stood beside him, she was intensely aware of more than the crystal. She was aware of him. They stood so close that, if she moved the hand she’d reached toward the stone, she would touch his fingers—and there was a longing in her to do just that. But if Hayden was in the least aware of her as a physical presence, he didn’t show it, and her hand fell to her side.
“Victor Birdcall let me borrow this,” Hayden said. “What is a Herkimer diamond?”
She spoke almost by rote, thinking more of the way his hair grew over one ear than she did of the stone. Hair that would feel springy to her fingers, with one lock that would cling if she touched it. “Herkimers are one of the oldest formations of crystal—hundreds of million of years—and they’re found in Herkimer County in New York State. They’re based in anthracite—coal. The same type of formation. What was Victor doing with this?” As though she really cared!
Hayden moved restlessly. He never liked the confinement of walls. “Let’s go for a walk too, Christy. I don’t care for all this synthetic atmosphere. There’s a place not far away that you might enjoy. And we can talk more easily outdoors. I’m not comfortable here.”
She was eager to go with him—just to be with him. A walk at least would be a sort of shared experience. They went outside together and followed along the winding lane for a short distance, and then turned up a path that climbed roughly over rocks and tree roots and ran between stunted oaks that had taken the full effect of high winds on top of Wintergreen. Their twisted trunks and gnarled branches all leaned in the same direction the gales had blown. Wooden steps opened to the view ahead, and they climbed to a platform built over a huge outcropping of rock. Planks formed the floor, and wooden rails zigzagged in geometric patterns and angles. On one side Christy could look down a cliff of tumbling rocks to the ravine far below. On the other side, the Shenandoah Valley spread away to the horizon, while overhead white cloud shapes piled in high floats against a blue sky.
Just a little while ago she had been thinking that beauty like this should be shared. But such a sharing was for lovers, and she and Hayden were as far apart as though they stood on opposite banks of the river that flowed through the land down there.
“I like to come up here,” Hayden said
. “There’s a restful quality, and walls are a long way off. It was strange, but Deirdre, who often seemed about to take flight on her own, was afraid of heights. Sometimes she had dreams of falling—nightmares that made her wake up screaming. So she seldom came to Wintergreen. She even avoided high places around Redlands. That’s one reason I couldn’t accept what your mother said about Deirdre dying up there on top of that pile of rocks. She would never have gone there in the first place.”
Christy didn’t want to talk about Deirdre now. “Tell me about the Herkimer and Victor Birdcall,” she said. Leaning on the wall beside him, she was all too sharply aware. She didn’t want to think of the way his dark hair blew over his forehead in the wind, or the look of his chin and nose in profile. She’d never noticed before, but his nose had a little dent on one side of the bridge—somehow endearing, softening the stern outline.
“Yes—I want to tell you,” he said. “Though it’s pretty strange and it concerns Deirdre too.”
When he’d left them this morning, he explained to Christy, he’d been without a car, but he’d caught a lift to the nursery and had gone to work loading plantings into a truck, enjoying physical effort that kept him from too much thinking that led nowhere. Nevertheless, he kept remembering their curious encounter with Victor Birdcall, and the memory wouldn’t let him be. Finally, he got into the Jeep, drove back to Redlands and up along the dirt road that led to Victor’s log cabin.
“When I got out of the Jeep, Victor wasn’t out in front, so I walked around to the back and saw something that had been constructed behind his cabin. I knew at once that it was Deirdre’s work, though I hadn’t known it existed. She’d wished she could make a Sun Wheel at our place, but she wanted a large one, and there wasn’t enough level ground. So Victor had let her build this one behind his cabin. Neither of them had told me about it—though I’m not sure why. Perhaps only because Deirdre loved her little secrets, and Victor is closemouthed about everything.”
Hayden looked out over the pattern of sunlight and cloud shadow that filled the wide valley. Against a patch of clear sky, contrails streaked white ribbons across miles of space.
Christy waited in silence until he went on.
“It must have taken her a long while to build that wheel. I know now that sometimes when she would disappear she must have been working on it at Victor’s. He never gave her away. Donny must have known too, since he is everywhere, but she must have asked him to keep her secret too. Now I’ve been wondering if there was something else up there that she didn’t want me to know about.”
Christy had learned about Sun Wheels through Nona, though she had never seen one. “Some of the stones that made it up had to be special, didn’t they?”
“Yes. It must have taken her weeks, months sometimes, to find exactly the stones she wanted. She’d rimmed the whole thing in white sand, with special rocks set into it around the circumference. The whole thing was perhaps fifteen feet in diameter, and she’d divided the enclosed area into four segments with a cross of white stones. The big central stone was white too, with other rocks inside the rim representing the colors of the rainbow.
“While I stood there looking at the Wheel, Victor came outside and told me how Deirdre had hunted for those rainbow stones. Sometimes a lump of quartz would show a streaking of purple. Or a rock with iron in it provided the red. Victor helped her find some of them himself. There were other rocks inside the circle that represented all human life and all religions on earth. Each quadrant marked off by the stone cross apparently has different qualities attached to it.”
“The Herkimer diamond was part of the Wheel?” Christy asked.
“It was a stone someone had given her, Victor said, and she’d placed it in the circle. From time to time she borrowed it from the Wheel for some purpose of her own. Herkimers have their own special qualities, Victor told me, and he said that Deirdre would sometimes sit in one of the quadrants and hold that stone in her hands—as though it had some special protective virtue that helped her. But she never told Victor what she needed to be protected from.”
Again, Hayden was silent at the rail beside her and Christy waited until he was ready to go on. When he spoke again, he held the stone up to the light as though it would tell him something.
“There’s more. Victor’s an early riser and he went out one morning before daylight—about a week before Deirdre disappeared. He found her sitting inside the Wheel on a straw mat, with a blanket around her shoulders. She was holding this same stone, and she was looking at the sky, watching the dawn spread across the hills. It was especially beautiful and filled with color that morning, and Victor watched it with Deirdre. When full daylight came, she replaced the stone in the Wheel and told him some of its virtues. She said it was often given to the dying to hold because it calmed and helped them to an easy passage.”
Hayden drew in his breath sharply before he went on.
“Victor said she wasn’t unhappy that morning, but quite serene. She thanked him for letting her build the Sun Wheel and allowing her to use it. Victor realized that she wasn’t sitting in an east, west, or south segment, all of which are supposed to have benign qualities. Instead, she’d chosen the north quadrant, and he told me that north stands for black light, for the unconscious, for dreams and death—for all those mysteries that men can never know or understand until they cross over. Yet before she left, she told him happily that she was a child of the rainbow and that she would be safe. At the very last moment, before she stepped out of the circle, she picked up a small black stone from the north and took it with her. He didn’t ask why. He said she’d moved away into her own mystical place and probably wouldn’t have heard him.”
Christy was aware that the hand that didn’t hold the stone was grasping the rail tightly, revealing the emotion that tore Hayden apart and wouldn’t let him rest. She wanted to reach out to touch one strong, tanned hand—just to offer human comfort. But she didn’t dare. If she touched him she might reveal too much of her own feelings at that moment.
When he continued, his voice was tight, controlled. “This, morning when Victor went outside, he noticed that the Herkimer was missing from its place in the Wheel. Later, when he started breakfast, he found the stone on his counter top. He had no idea how it got there.”
Hayden held out the chunky stone to Christy. “Victor said I should give it to you and see what it told you.”
Once more, Christy moved away from the test. “I’ll take it if you want me to, but give me a little time. Why do you suppose Deirdre trusted Victor with any of this, when she was so secretive otherwise?”
“Perhaps because of his Indian heritage. Perhaps the Sun Wheel is related to the medicine wheel of Western tribes. Victor said Deirdre never really talked to him much, but sometimes she would come into his cabin for a cup of his herbal tea. He knows how to be quiet, and that was all she seemed to need. Just to be still. But he sensed how troubled she was—sometimes even afraid.”
Hayden’s voice changed.
“I could have done more if I’d paid attention. She could be like a child—a child who lived in her own imaginary world. And I let her alone and didn’t concern myself. I only noticed when she came out of that mood to throw some unreasonable tantrum, and then I was impatient with her. We didn’t have much of a marriage any more, and I just let her go her own way.”
So now, Christy thought, Hayden would carry his own guilt because he’d never reached Deirdre or truly tried to understand. Guilt like that could be carried forever, unless Deirdre was found and all the questions answered. Christy turned her back on the view, looking into the green of mountain laurel, still showing a few blooms. It was time now and she held out her hand.
“Will you give me the stone, please?”
He placed it on her palm, and at once all her uneasiness evaporated. The Herkimer had given its allegiance to someone who was good. Perhaps a loving dreamer, not wholly of thi
s world, but who meant harm to no one.
Christy turned the stone in her fingers, touched its planes and tiny protruding points that stood up like little mountain peaks—miniature ice cliffs of crystal. The stone was rather heavy, and it possessed none of the grace of the phantom crystal Deirdre had treasured. Yet it too was filled with mysterious light. Pinpoints of light sparkled at its heart, and she could look through flat planes as if through windows and see the inner life of the stone. Here and there, as she turned it in the sunlight, she caught a tiny glint of green, a hint of rose—the rainbow that hid its colors deep within. At another point the light was golden with no trace of any other color. She could imagine Deirdre sitting in her safe, beautiful Sun Wheel, protected and happy, holding this stone and allowing it to comfort her.
That last morning, when she’d watched the dawn with Victor, perhaps she had known that it was the last dawn of her earthly life. Perhaps she’d felt that death was coming, though she hadn’t seemed afraid.
But now something else had happened to this stone. Someone driven by malice or mischief had played this trick. Or had this, perhaps, been a cry for help?
There was no easy answer, and Christy’s power was too weak to seek deeply into the stone. Yet before Hayden could be free of his own haunting, all these questions must be answered. She gave the stone back to him regretfully.
“I wish I could help, but while this tells me some of the good qualities Deirdre possessed, it doesn’t give me any other lead. Perhaps Lili will understand better than I do. You must show this to her tonight, Hayden. Has Victor any notion as to whether it was a man or a woman who put this in his kitchen?”
“He didn’t say. It seems a bit too playful for most men—but rather like Deirdre herself.”
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