Nine of Stars

by Laura Bickle

  “Will do. See you fellas later.”

  Mike sometimes got irritatingly protective, but he had a bat to fuss over now. He climbed up to the rafters and was poking around for a good nook into which to install the bat. “Whaddaya think, buddy? Here? Or here? The furnace duct is over here . . .”

  “Little dude needs a name, you know,” Sam suggested from the bottom of the ladder.

  “You’re right. I think he looks like a Norbert . . .”

  Petra grinned and ducked out of the station. Life was going on as usual, and that cheered her.

  She cranked the Bronco’s engine and arranged Sig’s blanket for maximum heat-vent exposure. As she wound her way through the park, she passed a tour of snow coaches, looking like vans on tank treads, churning away. A handful of skiers and snowmobiles dotted the landscape, which was mostly silent. Petra expected that her work would depend on snowmobiles later in the winter. If . . .

  She would not finish that thought. She turned on the radio and sang with it, to Sig’s irritation, as they drove to Mammoth Hot Springs.

  The boardwalks around the terraced springs were closed. She parked as close as she could at the Upper Terrace. After rummaging around through her gear, she decided that the snow wasn’t yet deep enough to warrant snowshoes. Her winter boots were knee-high with gaiters, and she thought she could gather her samples without too much trouble. She grabbed her cleats, hip waders, and her sample bag. Sig climbed out of the truck and rolled around in the fresh powder, shaking it off like a dog in a bath. Winter didn’t seem to bother him, but he’d spent most of the fall growing a luxuriously thick coat. Petra dreaded spring, when she expected he’d blow it all out in the trailer.

  The Mammoth Springs complex was full of motion and color, even in the dead of winter. On a terraced hill of travertine, hot water gurgled from more than twenty miles underground. Snow faded immediately upon contact with the warm, moist air in this area, never touching the ground. Petra checked her footing as she hiked to the lip of Canary Spring, which had taken on a vibrant yellow color. The cyanobacteria in the water were full of life, contributing to the ever-changing color. The shapes of the terraces were forever in flux, owing to the reaction of limestone and carbonic acid, depositing travertine. She filled her sample bottles, warning Sig that if he took a dip, he’d be regretting it on the rest of the trip, after burning himself and then drying off in the bitter cold. Sig seemed content to stay on firm land, digging for rodents beneath the snow-crusted boardwalk.

  She continued on to New Blue Spring. The surrounding new stone was rusty, but a blue pool stretched in the middle, the color of the sky on a perfect summer’s day. Petra hadn’t seen blue sky for weeks, but she could imagine it, looking at that spot of color. She waded out with her hip waders as far as she dared, scraping samples into her bottles.

  This wasn’t terribly challenging work for a geologist, but minding her footing and figuring out the logistics of the sample distances was enough to keep her mind occupied. Still, in the back of her head, she didn’t know what she’d do without something to occupy her thoughts during treatment. Without something to do, except stare at the television in a treatment room . . . she was certain she’d go batshit within a day. Maybe she could write a paper, or ask USGS for a paperwork assignment coding data. She was pretty sure she’d signed up for disability insurance when she took the job, and the money would be welcome. She hadn’t been in the job long enough to have much leave banked. She’d need to be at the university for weeks at a time, and she’d likely be too exhausted after treatments to do much but push paper.

  She mulled her options as she went off trail, walking up toward Minerva Terrace. The dove-grey stone had split into a steaming series of terraces that looked like the surface of another planet, alien and gorgeous. She poked around the perimeter while Sig meandered in the snow. He’d found some rabbit tracks and was busily amusing himself with trying to figure out where the rabbit had gone to ground. She frowned, wondering how she’d take care of Sig while undergoing treatment. Maybe he could stay home with Gabe, or he could go to her friend Maria’s. Both of which would necessitate difficult conversations. And . . . no matter how much Sig acted like a dog, there wasn’t any boarding facility or veterinarian’s office that would take a coyote.

  Sig yipped, and she turned, thinking he’d found the rabbit. But he was halfway across a snowfield, trotting northwest.

  “Sig!” she called, but he didn’t turn. Not that the coyote always came when called, but something had clearly captured his interest.

  Slinging her sample bag over her shoulder, she struck out after him. His furry feet skimmed across the crust of snow, while her boots plunged through. She waded through the broken snow and the crust of ice that had formed on top, wondering what the hell he’d found.

  Sig had clambered up a hill to the edge of a pine forest. It was the highest point for miles around. He parked his ass down on the snow and looked up. Petra struggled to catch up, winded as she reached him.

  “What the hell—” she began, but broke off as she followed his gaze. “Oh.”

  The skin of an animal had been strung thirty feet up in the pine tree. As she squinted, she could see that it was a wolf hide, a white one, suspended and filled out with a bristling mass of sticks like a malformed puppet. It was a display, something clearly meant to be seen.

  Tears bristled in her eyes. That poor creature. At her feet, Sig whined and thumped his tail on the ground.

  She reached for her radio. Whatever had happened here, Mike was not gonna be happy about this.

  Chapter 4

  Free Advice Isn’t Free

  He dreamed of flying, as he did every night.

  Gabe dreamed that he was soaring in a summer sky, surrounded by ravens. His consciousness had been poured into many of those light bodies. He could see from many vantage points and many eyes, skimming above the earth, feeling the sun on his wings. It was one of the few true joys he’d experienced as a Hanged Man. When he was in the sky, he felt as if he were still a part of nature. He often wondered what would happen if he’d decided to stay in raven form—could he live forever as a bird, even a flock of them? Would he forget what it was like to be human, and eventually fade into the teeming life of the backcountry?

  He knew that he’d forgotten a great deal about what it was like to be human.

  Gabe had grown accustomed to sleeping in the underground embrace of the Tree of Life, the Lunaria, over the last hundred fifty years. He’d dreamed in the artificial sunshine dripping from the tree, listening to the crackle of the Lunaria remaking his bones and knitting his flesh as it restored his injuries. He’d sometimes hear the murmur of the thoughts of the other Hanged Men intruding upon his sleep. It was like sleeping in a hive, a buzzing dream within a dream worming tunnels in his psyche.

  That was all gone, now. The Lunaria had been burned to the ground, replaced by a tiny sapling with no power. The Hanged Men were gone. He was the sole survivor. In the darkness and silence of night, he couldn’t fully apprehend the transformation that had stripped his cells of magic and rendered him human.

  Human. Gabe had wished for this, many times over the years. But the price had been too high.

  He had been responsible for Sal’s death, just as much as any of the Hanged Men. More so, as their leader. He’d let them string Sal up and snuff him out in a shimmering rage, after Sal had burned the Lunaria. He regretted none of that. Sal was a terrible man, and he deserved death, many times over, many times more horribly than he had actually suffered.

  But the Hanged Men deserved better than the sad end they’d gotten. It had been Gabe’s decisions that led to Sal burning the tree. Gabe had underestimated Sal’s blind stupidity, and it had come crashing down on all of them. They’d gone to sleep one last time under the burned roots of the tree, and Gabe had been the only one to wake up. He was the last man standing, and that was the most unjust thing of all.

  Out here, in the snow-swept field behind Petra’s trailer, the r
avens, once his familiars, ignored him. Despite the strings of pop can tabs, caches of coins, buttons and wads of aluminum foil he’d gathered to attract their attention, they treated him as if he didn’t exist. As they swept up into the sky after stealing a bit of cat food from the ground—never from his hand—Gabe would close his eyes and imagine what it was like to fly. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t so much as sprout a feather from his ordinary flesh. He was forever earthbound now, and he knew it in the marrow of his heavy bones.

  He’d awoken this morning to find Petra gone. She had been giving him space to process this transformation, he knew. She’d silently put plates of food before him and brought him books to read. When he’d fled from the Rutherford Ranch, he’d taken his few earthly possessions with him: a coat, a hat, and some battered boots. It had been a long time since he’d had things that might have the possibility of gathering dust. The books she’d brought him were paperback thrillers from the gas station and a box of dusty classics from the pawnshop. She clearly had no idea what he liked to read, and he didn’t really either. He found that he was most enjoying a science fiction tale about a man marooned on a planet with three suns, a world with no night.

  There was another book he was working through, examining it as closely as if it were the Emerald Tablet of alchemy itself. It was a children’s picture book, The Velveteen Rabbit. It had been at the bottom of the box of dirty books, and he’d initially flipped through it to see the pictures. But something about it drew him—the simple line drawings and the contemplation of what it meant to be real. The toy rabbit became real because of the love of a boy, hopping away into the forest on real feet to be with the other real rabbits.

  It seemed facile, the transformative power of love. Gabe knew that Petra loved him, and he loved her right back, as much as he remembered how to. But he doubted that even her love could make him real. Whatever “real” was anyway.

  What was real was the fact that he was irrevocably human. He’d spent weeks staring at the ravens in the sky and wallowing in the guilt of loss. His life had changed. And all that remained for him to do was to put one foot in front of the other, to figure out what to do with the forty or so years of natural life that remained to him.

  He struck off down the gravel road leading toward town, his hat pulled low and his hands stuffed in his pockets against the cold. He could feel it seeping into his bones now, an ache that he’d long forgotten. He would have to deal with it, like the grief, and get on with things.

  And the first thing in that order of business was to find some work. He couldn’t putter around Petra’s backyard, chasing birds, for the next four decades. He knew ranches and horses; there had to be someone around who had need of a guy who would work uncomplainingly under the table. He was conscious of the fact that he had no references and hadn’t paid taxes since the 1900s. His last legitimate work had been as a Pinkerton agent, solving occult cases. There wasn’t much demand for that kind of work, he was quite certain. But cheap manual labor was cheap labor, and it would always be in demand.

  He headed instinctively to Temperance’s social hub, the Compostela.

  By the time he reached the slushy main street of Temperance, there were a few trucks parked before the bar that had formerly been a church. The stained-glass windows were dim in the winter gloom, paint peeling away on the gothic arches under the force of a winter wind that could skin the hide off a buffalo.

  Gabe ducked inside, his toes and fingers numb. A dusting of snow slid off his hat to the scarred wood floor. The pews that had been converted to booths were steeped in darkness, where a few old-timers sat and muttered.

  Gabe made his way to the bar, a polished surface of what had once been a single massive tree. He could remember that tree when it was cut, seeing it dragged down the street to be made into an altar. He slid into a bar stool at the end, his back to the wall, and waited for the bartender to approach. He reached into his back pocket for his wallet, which contained a residue of cash that Sal had given him for an errand months ago.

  The bartender arrived, dressed in a black shirt buttoned up to his neck. He had been here for many years, much longer than one would have thought by simply looking at him. The blond man was of indeterminate age, but he seemed to have hovered around his fifties for as long as Gabe had been paying attention.

  “Didn’t expect you around here,” the bartender remarked.

  “Been busy.”

  The bartender made a noncommittal noise, poured him a dark beer from the tap, and passed it to him. Gabe tasted it and examined the glass carefully. “New brew?”

  “Nah. It’s your usual.”

  Everything tasted different now. Sharper. A little more bitter. Gabe took a long draught of it, trying to figure out how to savor the sensation. The bartender seemed to watch him closely.

  “You’ve changed.”

  Gabe froze. Was it that obvious?

  “Things are slow,” Gabe said nonchalantly. “Wondered if you heard of anyone with work?”

  “Not lately. Is your boss outta town?”

  Gabe rubbed a bit of foam from the corner of his mouth with his thumb, eyes narrowed. “Dunno where he is.”

  “Folks are looking for him.” The bartender had lowered his voice and leaned forward. The guy was never what Gabe would call exactly trustworthy, but he knew that he had no love for Sal Rutherford, so that was something. And he was discreet. Likely had to be—when Gabe had been a Hanged Man, he’d been able to sense a low-key miasma of magic about him. Just a glimmer, like the shimmer of heat mirages on pavement in summer. Try as he might, now, as a human, he couldn’t detect such a thing. Frustrating. He hadn’t realized how much he’d taken that extra sense for granted.

  “Folks?” he echoed.

  “Folks like Sheriff Owen. He’s been circling around town like a buzzard, asking questions and shitting in nests.”

  Ah, great. Gabe maintained a neutral mask of expression on his face as he drank. He hoped that laying low for a couple of weeks would chill law enforcement into looking for other things . . . especially since Owen Rutherford stood to control everything Sal once had. If Sal was gone, that was good news for Owen. A rational guy wouldn’t spend a whole lot of time looking that kind of outrageous fortune in the mouth. But, in Gabe’s mind, Owen was completely batshit. No telling if he was counting his newfound money and doing a pro forma investigation . . . or if he was out for vengeance.

  “I’m sure Owen will find him soon,” he said. Hopefully, not until spring next year, but “soon” was a relative concept in Gabe’s long life. He reached for his wallet and tossed some bills on the bar.

  “You want some advice?” The bartender’s eyes gleamed in the half-darkness.

  “Is it free?”

  “Always.”

  “Shoot.”

  “You’d better get out of town while the getting’s good.”

  Gabe nodded and drained his glass. He tipped his hat. “Thank you, sir.”

  The bartender nodded and turned away to stack glasses.

  His hat low over his brow, Gabe sidled out of the bar. He waited on the street corner while a car passed through the one streetlight in Temperance. He scanned up and down the road. The sheriff’s deputies rarely came to Temperance; they stayed in the county seat an hour away, where they kept their cars spotlessly clean behind a fence. He weighed the bartender’s warning against what he knew of the deputies’ own laziness.

  His gaze paused on a nearby telephone pole, and his breath quickened. He took two quick steps to it and scanned a sign, printed on eight-by-eleven-inch copy paper.

  WANTED FOR QUESTIONING: GABRIEL MANGET

  HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN? CONTACT THE SHERIFF’S OFFICE. DO NOT CONFRONT—ASSUMED ARMED AND DANGEROUS.

  Below the lettering was an artist’s rendering of a face that looked a helluva lot like Gabe and a grainy copy of his driver’s license photograph.

  “Shit.” He snatched the flyer down, stuffed it in his pocket, and walked briskly away.r />
  “Well, it’s not poachers.”

  Mike examined the wolf’s skin, turning it over in gloved hands. Rangers had come with tree spikes, marked the area off for evidence, and cut the wolf down. Petra squatted beside Mike in the snow, looking over his shoulder at the skin. It had been stretched over a skeleton of sticks and a thin stuffing of leaves, like a child’s effort at taxidermy.

  “What makes you say that?” she asked, her stomach turning.

  “Poachers would have taken the skin—that’s worth good money. Especially an unusual color of fur, like this.” Mike ran gloved fingers over the edges of the skin and the white fur twitching in the cold breeze. “But this is someone who knows how to field dress a carcass.”

  “Was it shot?”

  “I don’t see any shot in it, but we’ll know for sure when we take apart this . . . whatever it is.” Mike peered at the nestlike structure inside the wolf. “It’s a fresh kill—not yet cured.”

  Petra could tell that much. The interior of the skin looked wet and pink. The chill had kept the skin from smelling too badly, but she was stymied. “Who would have done this?”

  “Wolves sometimes go missing on the edge of Yellowstone and ranch land. I tried to get Sal Rutherford charged a few years back with luring a couple of wolves out and shooting them. He claimed they were harassing his cattle, and they well might have been. There’s not much love for wolves outside of the park. But this wolf is squarely within park land, and most ranchers who want wolves dead dispose of them quietly, without this much . . . pomp and circumstance.”

  “Was this wolf tracked by any scientists?” Petra wanted to know. She knew that many packs were tracked by radio collars and their movements closely monitored. There was give and take with the wolves in Yellowstone; their movements and habits could change anything. She’d seen a documentary in which wolf predation on ungulates caused increases in river shore vegetation, which ultimately changed the flow of rivers. They were pretty powerful creatures.