“Look what Maria brought us.” He held out the starter.
Cheryl clapped. “I told you, Alex.”
Another smile, this time with a tinge of beneficence. “You did. I’m pleased you were correct. Would you put this in your cold room with the rest?”
“Would I? You bet. Maria, he means the special niche in our cellar lined with two layers of stone. My husband engineered it because he said the new world needs my bread.” She glanced at Alex. “Is there room in the schedule for Maria to take a quick peek?”
More beneficence. It practically radiated from him, like a stylized icon of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
“Certainly there is. Besides, it’s time to begin supper prep, isn’t it?”
Cheryl leaned into the living room area. “Right as always. We’ll take it from here.”
She led Giulia into a kitchen exactly like the kitchen in Audrey’s house. “We have an old-fashioned pull chain clock in our living area. I haven’t yet mastered telling time by the sun like Alex.”
Cheryl’s house was fluffy. The gingerbread scrollwork on the eaves and porch outside repeated on every possible surface inside. Her house was also bigger than Audrey’s. It had to be to accommodate four people.
“My boys made the clock. They both created the mechanism. Jim carved the wood and Tim painted it.”
“They’re very talented.” Maria Martin’s blandness was making Giulia itch.
“They are, aren’t they?” Cheryl beamed. “I won’t apologize, because parents always brag on their children. It’s in the rule book. You wait until you have kids of your own. You’ll see.”
She opened a trap door in the pantry off the kitchen and climbed down. “Come on. There’s plenty of room for two in here.”
Giulia descended the ladder and stood in a miniature version of fruit cellars she’d seen in regular houses. Supplies filled openwork metal shelving on all four walls. Canned goods and nut butters. Boxes of granola, bouillon cubes, and macaroni. Bags of beans and jerky. Cheeses hung from the ceiling in one corner, reminding Giulia of the provolone in her grandmother’s fruit cellar.
Cheryl pulled one of the shelves away from the wall and opened a square door.
“It looks like a wall safe,” Giulia said, thinking it also looked like a Tabernacle door.
“We got the door and the frame with hinges from an old wall safe. We don’t lock it or anything in case someone needs to start bread and we’re busy. See the beautiful flat river rocks my husband found for me?”
Giulia was able to make sincere compliments about the compact structure. Perhaps a cubic foot in total width, it held several glass jars of bread starter exactly like Giulia’s.
Cheryl placed the new glass container in the front row. “Now a little part of you belongs to the community.”
And with that Giulia was officially creeped out.
Thirty-Nine
If the community hadn’t been technology-free, Giulia’s first time milking goats would’ve become a YouTube “best of” video. Demon-possessed goat udder squirting warm milk up her nose? Check. Pointy goat horns stuck in her jeans? Check. Little goat hooves tripping her so she landed on her butt to the delight of her new friends? Check.
But none of those were reason number five why she’d never make it as a Prepper. Dinner prep was. Manipulating squishy hunks of venison wrapped in soggy brown paper gave her a new appreciation of meat in Styrofoam and plastic wrap in neat rows at the grocery store.
On top of that, the Fair Folk—an Irish tradition taught to her by Frank’s grandmother—did not oblige her at supper. Joanne was not present. Instead, Giulia tested her ability to remember and match names to faces.
At the tables sat the accordion player and the clothes mender, Wild-Eyed Alex, Cheryl and her twins Tim and Jim, the goat milker and his wife the cheesemaker, plus two new couples, both in their early twenties. The first dressed and walked like seasoned outdoors enthusiasts. The second could have dropped into the compound from a 1969 wormhole. Tie-dye shirts, bell-bottom jeans, long hair. All of it perfumed with weed.
The outdoorsman possessed the community’s whetstone. Supper conversation began with knife sharpening. It shifted to issues with a different water purifier. Giulia remembered this same discussion from her last visit. If the new world community had a weak link, their giant water treatment gizmos had been cast in the role of chief suspect. Tim and Jim talked technical machine jargon with the male half of the hippie couple. Alex presided over both tables, but didn’t sit at the head of either. Everyone asked his advice or opinion about their topic of discussion. They queried him with deference but not reverence. Giulia chewed a piece of flat bread and wondered if this bolstered her theory of Alex’s unseen twin being the real group leader.
No mead tonight, for which Giulia offered a silent prayer of gratitude. She didn’t have the “driving home” excuse to avoid alcohol consumption. At least her admiration of the Celtic designs on the drinking horns from which they quaffed water was sincere. After supper, Cheryl and the hippie brought out coffee with the honey cakes. The twins passed around honey and goat milk for the coffee.
In the spirit of trying anything once, Giulia added both to the coffee and took her first sip with several pairs of eyes watching her.
It was vile.
She swallowed it anyway.
“Interesting,” she said to the eyes.
Tim laughed. “Ma, that’s exactly what you said.”
“Exactly how you said it, too,” Jim said.
Cheryl said, “It’s an acquired taste. Once you get used to the goat milk, you’ll be spoiled for cow’s milk forever. Goat milk tastes so much richer.”
“It’s the mouth feel,” said the hippie husband. “I work in advertising for now,” he said when Giulia raised an eyebrow at the jargon.
She gave an honest compliment to the honey cakes and seized the opening. “I know this wonderful cake baker from a local discussion group about post-cataclysm cooking. She’s an absolute magician with frosting. She once made a cake look like a swimming pool complete with a tiny person on a float.” Giulia sipped more coffee to appreciate the next bite of honey cake. “I haven’t heard from her in a couple of months.”
Jim said, “You have to be talking about Phoebe. Ma, you remember Phoebe. She tried to show Alex a better way to make firecracker pickles, right Alex?”
Alex’s smile seemed a little forced. “Phoebe knew her strengths. She wasn’t always tactful in expressing them.”
“I’m waiting until the bad weather hits so we can have a pickle competition,” Tim said.
Cheryl kicked both her sons under the table. As a unit, they said, “We apologize, Alex.”
Alex’s forced smile became forgiving.
Two ideas fought for Giulia’s attention. First, she rolled “Phoebe” around in her teacher’s head until her memory pulled up Greek and Roman mythology. Joanne à Diane à Diana à Artemis à Too conspicuous a name for someone starting a new life à Scroll down the list of major gods and goddesses à Scroll down the list of minor ones à So much information squirreled away in her head à Try the Titans à Ah. Phoebe. So Joanne did drop out and start a new life. Sorry, Diane.
Alex said, “Phoebe’s pistol skills were not up to the standards of the community. However, her rifle accuracy and genius for cooking more than made up for that lack.”
Thus cementing the second idea: Alex wasn’t simply their equivalent of an office manager. He was their priest. No wonder he’d asked Giulia about her religious affiliation. Casual observers, like she’d pretended to be, could be ripe for his cool new religion—Alex-worship.
Giulia sipped more goat and raw honey flavored coffee-like substance. She didn’t want to push for the exact date Joanne left the community. Tomorrow for that, over breakfast. Food and Joanne were natural conversation compani
ons.
If only Alex’s use of past tense meant Joanne left here on her own and not in pieces for the coyotes to eat.
Supper dragged on until twilight when everyone gathered up their dishes. Giulia relinquished the rest of her beverage without a qualm. Jim winked at her. As Giulia carried and washed and stacked alongside everyone else, she tried to predict what test Alex would throw at her next. Knife sharpening? Sheep herding? No one had yet handed her a shovel for her turn at manure collecting.
Speaking of Alex…She looked around, but he apparently bailed on the dish drying portion of cleanup, and no one had called him on it.
George Orwell was right: All Preppers are equal, but some Preppers are more equal than others.
Cheryl jogged between houses, whistling and calling “Rana! Lassie! Boris! Pepin!”
Pepin the moose led the galloping herd to Cheryl’s feet. Cheryl lured them into the houses with bone-shaped goodies.
Giulia followed the rest of the gathering to the central fire pit. The outdoorsy couple lit the flame and nursed it with twigs.
Cheryl returned. “All the dogs are in for the night.”
Everyone seated themselves around the fire, not too close since the night was warm. Someone passed around long pipes with bowls carved in the shape of a humanoid head with six-point buck antlers.
Giulia’s first thought was: They’re all Lord of the Rings cosplayers.
Her second: Smoking’s bad for the baby.
Her third: Lord of the Rings didn’t mention antlers. Pan, then? No, Pan had nubs of horns. Come on, mental storehouse of fiction and mythology, cooperate.
The goat milker opened a drawstring bag and stuffed loose herbs into the bowl of his pipe. He passed the bag to the accordion player, who did the same and passed it to his wife. Tim packed his own and his brother’s bowls and passed the pouch to Cheryl.
Giulia cursed her inability to take incriminating pictures.
Cheryl handed the pouch to Giulia, who said with perfect truth, “I’ve never smoked.”
“Don’t worry. This is mild as can be. We grow it in the herb garden out front. I’ll show you how this works.” She stuffed herbs into Giulia’s bowl with a practiced thumb. Giulia passed the pouch. The mixture didn’t smell like weed, thank Heaven.
The cheesemaker took enough spills from the fire for everyone to light their own pipe. Cheryl got hers going, then turned to Giulia. “Suck in now, while the flame is on the herbs. Again. Once more.”
Giulia got a nose full of smoke and coughed. Her nose was not having a good time at this overnight stay. She closed her throat and inhaled, holding all the smoke in her mouth.
“That’s right,” Cheryl said.
The instant Cheryl turned away, Giulia opened her lips a millimeter and let all the smoke stream out. Lavender and something bitter coated the inside of her mouth.
The fire puffed and shot sparks. Pine, cedar, and juniper mingled with the lavender in her nostrils. Something else too, something her students used to use when they thought the nuns didn’t know about the school’s unofficial weed-smoking areas.
The accordion player began to chant. The twins picked it up followed by all the men except the outdoorsman. All four women added harmony. Last, the outdoorsman came in with a bass drone.
The smoke from the pipes, the smoke from the fire, and the smoke from the incense enclosed the group in an undulating gray cloud. A fitful breeze swirled the mingled smoke among them for a chorus and Giulia could see only Cheryl and the red hair of the clothes mender. Where were Alex and the twins? The breeze shifted and she glimpsed Tim and Jim. She blinked. Her contacts clamored for eye drops.
The eyelids of every single person around the fire drooped. The twins began to sway, the others following their lead. Giulia too, even though she was freaking out inside. Little Zlatan was still in his first trimester and his mother was inhaling a concoction of who knew what kind of drugs. For the first time in her life, she wished she knew what opium smelled like.
She fought the encroaching mellowness and listened to the chant:
“By the circle and the flame
O Horned One
By the smoke and the oil
O Horned One
Come to us, live in us
Show us your power
Horned One, Great Horned One.”
Standard invocation language. Simple call and response. Designed on purpose for mellow drugged worshippers, Giulia had no doubt.
Cradle Catholicism came to her rescue. Almost thirty years of daily Mass attendance made her an expert at worship planned for non-singers. She picked up the melody of the response and swayed in time with Cheryl.
Across the circle from her, the hippies took drags from each other’s pipes. Tim and Jim’s voices started to slur. The smoke slithered between them all, slipped away, and blew over their heads. The chant continued, not louder but more intense: Worshippers invoking their god.
Giulia stifled a yawn and saw him. A man with antlers. She didn’t see where he appeared from, only between one “O Horned One” repetition and the next there he was within the circle. The flames picked out red and gold highlights in his long black hair. The polished antlers gleamed in the light. His skin, good Heavens so much skin, glistened when he moved. Oil of some kind. Giulia thanked God for the favor of the cosplayer’s fringed loincloth.
He danced behind his worshippers. No lighthearted “let’s have a good time after a hard day” frolic; a stately dance conveying power and authority. The triple layers of smoke gathered around him like a mantle. It made him grow larger in Giulia’s eyes; stern yet protective; a leader to follow into the wild, uncertain future. He was their future.
Giulia reached out to the stones surrounding the fire pit and clamped her hand on a rough edge. Her head cleared. Her eyes stung. She remembered to keep singing along with the rest.
The cosplayer’s voice began a counter-chant with the men. The women’s harmony clashed against it, but in an odd way the accidentals were pleasant to the ear.
Or it was the drugged smoke. Giulia had to breathe clean air, but Maria Martin wouldn’t leave this special event for any reason including nuclear war.
The cosplayer stopped dancing and walked around the circle, placing his left hand on each person’s left shoulder in turn.
A ring of adults playing duck-duck-goose. Welcome to the future. Giulia bit both lips closed—don’t laugh don’t laugh don’t laugh—before opening them again and picking up the women’s part of the chant.
The antlers stopped behind the hippie’s wife. His left hand rested on her shoulder. His right hand tilted up her chin. He slid his right thumb across his stomach and drew a four-pronged antler symbol on her forehead. It shone in the firelight. He helped her to her feet and they walked through a hole in the smoke into the woods.
The chant wound down after one more verse. Tim and Jim curled up next to each other on the ground and started snoring. The outdoorsy couple staggered to their house, undressing each other on the way. The hippie’s husband imitated the twins.
Cheryl touched Giulia’s arm, a loopy grin on her face. Giulia stood, her stagger not all put on for the community’s benefit. Cheryl led Giulia to the absent Audrey’s house. Giulia unrolled her sleeping bag but her fingers couldn’t manage the zipper. Maybe it was warm enough tonight to sleep on top of it.
Forty
Giulia woke with a clear head and a throat dry enough to light matches on. A three-quarter moon shone on her legs. That window wasn’t her bedroom window. Her nose was all stuffed. Weird. She had no allergies. She squeezed her nose between her finger and thumb and smelled lavender.
The Horned One ritual.
Her body jackknifed off her sleeping bag. She fumbled open her backpack and with her phone still inside it to hide the light, pressed the home butto
n. Seventeen minutes after two. Panic surged into her Sahara-like throat. What had she inhaled? What would it do to the baby?
Stop.
She took a long, deep breath.
Think.
Panicking was a waste of energy. She needed the residue from her pipe and ashes from the fire and a gallon of water. First the water. She unlaced her boots and padded to the kitchen. From his bed on a throw rug in the living room, Pepin opened one eye and thumped his tail. Giulia patted his head and he was snoring a minute later.
The absent Audrey got a thank you from Giulia, because a clear stream of room-temperature water flowed into Giulia’s cup when she held it under the gigantic water purifier contraption’s spigot.
Giulia filled and drained the cup over and over and over, stopping only when her bladder threatened to go on strike. The toilet took up ninety-eight percent of the minuscule bathroom, but Giulia didn’t care about her knees knocking against a wall.
Now that the emergency needs were handled, Giulia returned to the bedroom and tucked her phone into her jeans. She would’ve preferred writing a bullet list to help her snoop more efficiently, but the smart PI left no physical evidence.
She turned the back door handle without making a noise and squeezed through minimal openings in the house and screen doors. The moon shone on the entire compound. Fortunate for her. If she’d needed her phone flashlight, she wouldn’t have been surprised to learn the dogs had been trained to raise an alarm around technology.
The hippie’s husband and the twins were still asleep on the ground next to the fire pit. The twins’ positions proved there was such a thing as womb memory. Before she stepped away from the space between the houses, she stretched her neck to see as much of the central area as she could. No lights shone anywhere. Hurricane lamps would be bright enough for her to see them through a window. She hoped. If someone was spying on the newbie, she could claim a need for fresh air after the smoke without adding it to her confession list for Father Carlos.
Nun But The Brave (A Giulia Driscoll Mystery Book 3) Page 19