Indigo Moon

by Gill McKnight

  “Thanks.” Joey’s uncertainty passed, and he hopped over beside her and eased himself down on a bale. Beside him, Mouse guzzled as if she’d never seen food before, though she still managed to keep a wary eye on both of them.

  Joey shuffled and shifted. It was clear his hip and leg caused him pain. Finally, he propped his crutch on the bale beside him and straightened out his bad leg.

  “Hey.” He turned his attention back to Isabelle, his cheerful smile back in place. “You’re Ren’s—” Mouse made a strange little spitting sound and Joey shut up with a confused look.

  “You’re Ren’s houseguest, yeah?” he said, this time with a sheepish grin. He rubbed his hip and thigh. She wondered what he had been about to say before Mouse had shushed him. She had a good idea, and it made her uncomfortable. What were the preconceptions about her and Ren?

  “Sort of. I’m staying at her cabin for a while. I’m Isabelle, and you’re Joey, right?” Isabelle was just as canny back. She was unsure what she was to Ren, but if she was careful, these two might provide her with some concrete answers. “What happened to your leg, Joey?” She might as well ask since he was constantly drawing attention to it.

  He gave a mirthless barked laugh and received another warning look from Mouse.

  “Hunting accident,” he muttered and looked everywhere but at Isabelle.

  “Oh no,” Isabelle said. “What happened?”

  Joey warmed to her interest. She decided he wasn’t used to getting much attention and gloried in it when he did.

  “I split my spleen and crushed this hip, and the thigh bone broke in two places, see? And I cut a nick out of my kidney. All down this side, it was.” He wobbled to his feet and lifted his shirt. His left side was a rash of livid yellow and purple bruises, and freakish Frankenstein stitches. She winced, suitably impressed. Her shoulder wound was trite compared to his mangling.

  “Oh, Joey. That looks so sore.” She paid due respect to his wounds. “When did this happen?” Lord knew how many operations the poor guy had to undergo.

  “Last week. Tuesday I think it was,” he said. Mouse gave a frustrated hiss and he glared at her. Isabelle managed to bite back her smile. It was nonsense; his wounds were healing well, so they had to be months old at the very least. Nevertheless, she decided she liked Joey, with his open expression and childlike exuberance. It was obvious he wasn’t the brightest match in the box. And he was certainly emotionally immature compared to his sharp-eyed little friend, who at nearly half his age was so censorious of him. She watched the interplay between the two, how Joey accepted Mouse’s directions with a minimal amount of grumping.

  “Well, it was.” He glared back at Mouse, then dropped his head and fell into a massive sulk. Isabelle ignored the little contretemps and filled her voice with sympathy and understanding.

  “I’m very glad to see you’re on the mend, Joey. You’re one tough guy.” She tried to soothe him. This was greeted with silence. Joey was still huffing, but he did turn in her direction, head still down and his back to Mouse.

  Mouse watched it all with a shrewd intelligence well beyond her years as she continued to stuff her mouth with her fingers. Isabelle frowned. The child’s behavior was positively feral. Why was she here? Who looked after her?

  “Do you stay out here often, Mouse?” she asked.

  “She’s a barn rat,” Joey butted in good-naturedly and sat up straight, his bad mood evaporating in an instant. Mouse stopped eating and watched intently, as if trying to figure out Isabelle’s next line of approach.

  “She’d stay out here all the time if she could,” Joey said. “I have to smuggle her food out of the cookhouse, and that ain’t easy because Jenna’s got eyes in the back of her head and I’m already in her bad books because of the mess in the floor which wasn’t my fault.” Joey was determined to share the minutiae of his daily struggles. “Jenna’s very house proud, and it was only a little spill.”

  “Ah.” Isabelle nodded wisely, noting the new name, Jenna. “And I thought Mouse stayed out here because Patrick and Noah snored,” she joked with him. Mouse’s eyes widened and Joey fell into hoots of laughter.

  “They do! They do! They’re great big honkers!” His shoulders shook with laughter, and huge smile lit up his face. “But that’s not why. She says that, but she wants to sleep out here anyway. All the time. Most of us sleep here when we can. It’s way more cool to wake up in the nest after a night out on the furry. I—”

  “Shut up,” Mouse said, her voice a high, worried squeak.

  “It’s true. It is. You don’t like the bunkhouse. You only sleep there when Ren makes you.”

  Mouse reached over and poked him hard on his bruised side. He yelped.

  “Hey, fish lips, quit flapping and shut up.” The snipped words came from directly behind Isabelle. She spun around, startled, to face Patrick. She hadn’t even heard him enter the barn.

  “I don’t have fish lips,” Joey muttered but didn’t look at Patrick. He rubbed his poked side and gave Mouse a woeful stare. She had the grace to look contrite and threw a quick downcast glance in Patrick’s direction. As Isabelle watched, a slight smile twitched the corners of Joey’s mouth. Mouse might have hurt him, but they shared a secret communication about Patrick. She had saved him from a lot worse than a sore side, judging by the glower on Patrick’s face.

  Patrick turned on Mouse next. “I told you, you eat with the rest of us.”

  She shrank back into the straw and gazed at him in childlike innocence. A total contrast to the beady-eyed suspicion she’d cast Isabelle’s way earlier. It didn’t fool Patrick for one minute.

  “You don’t eat with us, you don’t eat at all.” He snatched up the tray with her partly eaten breakfast and pushed it into Joey’s chest. “Take that back to the kitchen, dumbass. Jenna’s been bitching in my ear all morning about you and your messes.”

  Isabelle bristled at his rudeness. It was bullying behavior and there was no need for it.

  “And you shouldn’t have left the cabin. Ren won’t like it.” His tone to Isabelle was reined in but still cold and curt. He did not like her at all. She already knew this from his snub at their initial introduction, and it would become a mutual dislike if he didn’t mind his manners. She could feel Joey’s empathy flow toward her in big, sloppy waves. He was familiar with this tone, too.

  “Ren told me nothing of the sort. In fact, she even left out clothes so I could explore.” She was just as curt back. There was no denying she wore Ren’s clothes. She was acutely aware of her scent clinging to everything. She had no idea what Ren’s intentions were when she left out the clothes, and as she hadn’t the decency to hang around and explain, then Isabelle would do whatever she damned well pleased in them. And no cocksure boy, barely out of his teens, was going to tell her what to do either.

  “What exactly is the problem?” She pressed at his supposed authority over her. His face darkened and his right hand twitched as if he ached to slap her. Mouse scurried deeper into her hidey-hole and Joey sat wide-eyed holding his breath. There was a sourness in the air. Isabelle was very aware of it and knew it came from Patrick. Curdled and bitter, like milk on the verge of going off, and it matched the expression on his face.

  So Patrick was not used to people standing up to him. Well, he’d better understand right from the start that she didn’t think much of him and his self-styled authority. She had seen him scuttling off to do Ren’s bidding, and though she didn’t fully understand it, she knew she held sway with Ren and it would not do to let this young man try to boss her around.

  She nodded at the tray in Joey’s hands. “There’s a cookhouse? I’ll take that and drop it off to Jenna. See what’s on the menu.” She threw Jenna’s name out casually to see how Patrick would react.

  Patrick spun on his heel. “The cookhouse is closed. Jenna will bring food up to the cabin so you can cook for yourself.” He strode off, his back rigid with anger.

  “Joey, follow me. You got chores. Mouse, go wash. You sti
nk,” he yelled over his shoulder, not slowing his pace. His barked orders were a stand-down, a compromise until he discovered where he stood with her, how far he could push—and they both knew it. As far as Isabelle was concerned, Patrick would not be pushing her at all. He had just met an immovable object.

  “See ya.” Joey hobbled past, trying hard to catch up with Patrick. Mouse slithered back into the depths of the straw and left Isabelle standing alone.

  Isabelle’s stomach growled louder than ever. She thought about Ren’s kitchen with its little heater and roomy old stove and the pleasant odor of drying herbs. A second breakfast sounded like a fine idea, and she would be happy to cook it if there was food in the cupboards. The tray was already in her hands. It was the perfect opportunity to visit Jenna and the cookhouse and to finish her exploration of the rest of the outbuildings.

  “Mouse?” There wasn’t so much as a twitch from the straw nest. “Mouse, I know you’re in there. Come show me the rest of the place,” she said. “Where do you wash?” The straw heaved, but only because Mouse was burrowing deeper. She was obviously a law unto herself around here.

  “All right, young lady. Get out here right now. Time to clean you up,” Isabelle ordered, and wondered where such a commanding tone came from. It worked. Mouse stuck out her nose, then her head, and gave Isabelle a look of consternation.

  “Right now, missy. Patrick’s right about one thing, you are a disgracefully dirty little girl.” Isabelle’s inner mom was on a roll. She pointed to a spot on the floor beside her where Mouse was to report immediately.

  Reluctantly, Mouse disentangled herself from the straw and hoary old horse blankets and crept out to stand before Isabelle. She was even smaller than Isabelle had first thought, and she revised Mouse’s age down to maybe nine or ten. One look at those world-weary eyes made it impossible to guess. Mouse was a scruffy little preteen who channeled the Wisdom of Solomon through a pink sweater with appliquéd ponies.

  “Where are your folks, Mouse?” Isabelle asked in a gentler tone.

  Mouse shrugged. “Ren looks after me,” she said.

  Ren was her caretaker? The news intrigued Isabelle. She looked at Mouse’s tatty clothes, filthy sneakers, and mud-encrusted hair. She needed more than a good scrub; she needed care and attention and someone to make sure she didn’t spend the night under a straw bale. Isabelle clucked her tongue disapprovingly and held out her hand. Ren needed to do better.

  “Come on. Show me where we go.”

  Mouse looked at the offered hand suspiciously. Her nose twitched with a surreptitious sniff before she took Isabelle’s hand in her own small, cold one. Isabelle allowed herself to be led from the barn out into a bright and bitter morning.

  Chapter Eight

  They trudged across the yard toward what looked like an old, wood-clad storehouse. Smoke billowed from a tin chimney. Isabelle was certain it hadn’t been smoking before. She would have noticed the acrid smell of burning greenwood as she came down the track.

  “Bathwater,” Mouse muttered darkly. She let go of Isabelle’s hand to bounce up the porch steps and bang the plank door back on its hinges.

  “Jenna,” Mouse bellowed. “I got the girl stayin’ at Ren’s.” It was more a warning than an introduction.

  Isabelle followed and found herself in the bunkhouse. Rows of narrow cots lined the wall, head to toe, all tucked up with thick woolen blankets. Ten cots in all, five on either side of a narrow walkway that led to a straggle of hard-backed chairs around an ancient wood stove. She could see why Mouse preferred her nest. This was a stern, comfortless barracks of a room.

  A young black woman bent over the monstrosity of a stove and pushed a log through the top plate. She straightened and stared over at Isabelle. It wasn’t a friendly or even curious look, nor was it hostile. Jenna’s gaze was steady and assessing, as if she had been waiting for Isabelle to turn up. Isabelle guessed her recuperation at Ren’s cabin was of high interest to this little community, if she could call it that. She wasn’t sure what this collection of young people in the middle of nowhere was all about.

  Though she didn’t feel threatened by Jenna’s stare, she didn’t relax under it either. Isabelle guessed Jenna to be in her late teens, about the same age as Joey. She was shorter than Isabelle, about five foot six, and was comfortably plump, though there was a definite steely strength in her eyes and attitude. Isabelle decided Jenna was likely generous by nature, but once a line was crossed then all hell would break loose. She wondered if she lived up to Jenna’s expectations. She hoped so.

  They cannily took each other’s measure.

  “She’s called Isabelle and she tugged Patrick’s ear hairs real hard.” Mouse was unaware of the adult weighing-up going on over her head. Pleasure bubbled under her words.

  “I bet he appreciated that,” Jenna said with a wry grin, more for Mouse than Isabelle. Her gaze leveled on Isabelle, and her grin deepened until her cheeks creased into a smile of genuine welcome. She came forward and took the tray from Isabelle, then held out her hand. “Hi, Isabelle. I’m Jenna, but I guess you heard that already.” Her words were followed by a little cough she concealed behind her cuff.

  Isabelle shook hands. Jenna’s grip was firm and she held on a little longer than was necessary, and Isabelle realized this initial touch was important to her. She was being delicately and deliberately scrutinized, and she wanted to pass muster.

  “Joey and Mouse have been praising your cooking,” she said, and cast an eye over to the wood stove. Its top plates were bare, and her disappointment grew that Patrick was right and breakfast was indeed over.

  “I’m heating the water for Mouse’s bath. Look at you; you’re a dirty little troglodyte.” Jenna scolded Mouse, ignoring the face pulled back at her. She turned her attention to Isabelle. “The cookhouse is across the way. Once I get this one in the tub, I’ll take you over.”

  “I only need a loan of some groceries,” Isabelle said. She didn’t want Jenna thinking she had to make her breakfast. She was more than capable of doing that herself, if she could restock Ren’s larder. “There’s no food at the cabin.”

  Jenna snorted. “I’ll bet.” She set the tray aside and began ushering Mouse toward a door by the stove. “Come on, you. I’ve already started running your bath. Hop in, and I’ll top it up with more hot water.”

  Isabelle followed them to a large bathroom covered from floor to ceiling in thick white industrial tiles. It looked clinical and cold despite the billowing clouds of steam that hung from the ceiling. To one side she saw a long shower stall that held four showerheads and no partitions in between for privacy. Beside that was a single toilet stall and then a double basin. Mouse was heading straight to a large tub on the other side of the room, under high, steamed-up windows. She shed her soiled clothing as she went, dropping it at her feet, with no show of modesty or tidiness whatsoever. Her skinny little body was as filthy as her jeans and sweater. Jenna followed, clucking and fussing over the discarded clothes. Once she’d seen Mouse safely into her bath, she dumped the lot into a washing machine tucked into the farthest corner and started a wash cycle.

  The bathroom was charmless but practical, and together with the rows of cots in the other room gave an austere, institutional feel to the bunkhouse. Isabelle longed to ask Ren about this place and its young inhabitants, but she had no idea when she would next see her. Ren’s constant comings and goings were beginning to irk her. Which was another strange thing. She wanted to know where Ren was every minute of the day and became anxious when she didn’t. What was all that about?

  The steam encouraged Jenna into a fit of coughing. She struggled to catch her breath, but finally pointed at Mouse.

  “Scrub hard and I’ll come back and do your hair. And don’t forget behind your ears and under your nails.” Jenna left Mouse splashing contentedly in the bath. Despite her earlier complaints, she was happy to play in the big, suds-filled tub.

  “Come on with me.” Jenna brushed past Isabelle, collected her tray
, and led them out of the bunkhouse and back into the yard. The wind had dropped away and the midmorning sun had warmed the air by a few degrees.

  Wind chill had to be a major factor in the valley, Isabelle thought. She looked up at the peaks that surrounded them. In the summer it must boil in its own little microclimate. She remembered the tractor in the barn and wondered what crops they managed to grow on these steep slopes and how long their season ran. Her brow knit. Once again, she was surprised such questions dropped into her head from nowhere. It confirmed once more that she somehow knew this region, or a place much like it. That she was in some way connected to the land to consider crops and growing seasons, or even the topographical lay of the valley for farming.

  As Jenna led her across the yard, their boots scraped through the mud-streaked snow to the loose gravel beneath. The tire tracks were melting away.

  “How many vehicles do you have here?” Isabelle asked. She was still on a mission to find out all she could for herself.

  Jenna shrugged. “Three or four bikes and a few quads. Ren and Patrick have trucks.”

  Isabelle kept fishing.“Oh, I saw a bike in the barn, but it was in bits.”

  “Joey and Noah are fixing it up between them. It’s an old bike Ren found for them to work on.”

  “Was the tractor a project, too?”

  “We’ve always had it. I think Ren fixed that up herself. It was here before I arrived.”

  It was the opening she’d been waiting for. “Where do you come from, Jenna? What do you all do around here? Apart from fix machinery.”