The Ancient One

by T.A. Barron

  Yet it was less the lore than the telling itself that Kate so loved. There was an air of elemental peacefulness in Aunt Melanie when she told some of those nearly forgotten stories, customs, and recipes, an air she seemed to inhale and exhale in deep drafts. More than once Kate had wished that some of that peaceful quality might enter her own being and choose to stay, at least for a while.

  This week, however, there had been no time for Halami lore. Whatever was on Aunt Melanie’s mind, it crowded out almost everything else. She was more relaxed right now than she had been since Kate’s arrival. Maybe whatever was in the brown envelope had solved the problem, or at least made it better.

  “So tell me, what was in the envelope?” she ventured, trying her best to sound casual.

  Aunt Melanie, who was looking at the fire, started. “Oh, just some papers—legal papers.” She worked her jaw for a moment. “I really don’t want to talk about it, dear. Maybe another time.”

  Sensing it would be fruitless to push, Kate forced herself to rein in her curiosity for the time being. She took one of the still-warm oatmeal cookies piled on the plate on the knotted spruce table in front of the fire, dunked it deep into her mug, let it drip into the tea for a few seconds, then took a hearty bite. “I love dunking,” she said through a mouthful.

  “You definitely have Scottish roots,” observed Aunt Melanie, her expression more relaxed again. She reached for one of the peppermint candies resting in an abalone shell next to the cookies. Pulling off the plastic wrapping, she popped the red-and-white striped sweet into her mouth. “No doubt about it.”

  Placing her mug on the table, Kate gazed across the room to the rickety bookshelf behind Aunt Melanie. In addition to notebooks, articles, and unpublished treatises about the Halamis, it was stacked haphazardly with books on trees, edible plants, and forest ecology. Her eyes followed the lines of the warped living-room window, its sill crowded with a small painted drum, a slab of bark from a Douglas fir, a bag of twisted roots, and a delicate miniature basket that conjured up the image of a Halami woman skillfully weaving it long ago. The room seemed more like the local natural history museum than part of someone’s house.

  Next to the fireplace rested the walking stick, the deeply carved markings on its shaft reflecting the shifting light of the fire. For the first time, Kate noticed that the face of the owl’s head looked oddly human from a distance. The beak could almost pass for a jutting nose; the mouth was more like a man’s than a bird’s. Only the enormous eyes, yellow and unblinking, were unmistakably those of an owl. They seemed to be watching her closely, observing her every movement.

  Just then, a gray cat with white paws padded into the room. Athabasca (called Atha for short) had lived with Aunt Melanie for nearly a decade and was still limber enough to catch an unsuspecting bird on a low-hanging branch. As she passed the fireplace, the cat made a wide detour around the walking stick, as if sensing some secret danger. In two bounds, she leaped to the piano bench and then to the top of the old upright that had never been in tune as long as Kate could remember.

  Kate turned in her high-back chair so that the crackling fire could warm her other side. She could almost see steam rising from her damp jeans under the quilt.

  “How do you do it?” she asked suddenly.

  “Do what, dear?”

  “You always seem so, I don’t know, so comfortable being in lots of different places, or really times, at once. In this house things that are centuries apart feel so natural together. It makes me feel—well, amazed.”

  Aunt Melanie crunched down on her peppermint and eyed her pensively. “Is that all you feel?”

  Shifting her position under the quilt, Kate said slowly, “I guess…I guess it also bugs me a little. Maybe because there’s part of me that would like to be that way too. Connected. Part of something. I mean, I don’t even really feel at home in my own town, in my own time. About the only time I feel like I belong there is when I’m shagging balls to somebody behind the house for a few hours. Pretty weird, huh?”

  Aunt Melanie stroked her chin, considering the question. “No,” she said finally. “It’s not weird. Maybe your hometown just isn’t big enough to hold you. The world is a big place, you know, full of all kinds of connections. You might find that you’re one of those people meant to touch many different times and places. That requires certain gifts, you know.”

  Kate shook her head. “Whatever they are, I’m sure I don’t have them.”

  “Don’t be so certain.” A slight grin formed at the corners of her mouth. “Maybe what you need is a vision quest.”

  “A what?”

  “A vision quest. The Halamis, when they got to be your age—aren’t you thirteen or so already?—would go off to some remote place in the mountains, sleep alone, fend for themselves for a while. They’d come back with a new understanding of themselves, of their own power.” Observing Kate’s glum expression, she added, “Forget that. All you really need is a little more humor about yourself.”

  Again Kate shifted, drawing the quilt closer. “I suppose I have a lot to laugh about.”

  “We all do.” Aunt Melanie leaned back in her rocking chair, which creaked loudly. “I hope you at least appreciate how much it’s meant to me to have you here this week. I’m afraid I’ve been rather distracted.” Her expression clouded. “But there never was a time when I needed good company like I do right now.”

  Kate lowered the quilt and leaned forward, her long braid coiled upon the tabletop. “Aunt Melanie, why is some lawyer sending you mail? And why did they want to steal it? Seems like something pretty strange is going on.”

  Aunt Melanie’s already wrinkled brow wrinkled even more. “You’re right about that, dear. Stranger than you know.” She sighed, and her dark eyes concentrated on Kate. “But I don’t want to get you involved. The kind of help I need is more than any human being can give, I’m afraid.”

  “But—” protested Kate.

  “No buts. That’s all I have to say.” A sudden idea came to her. “I’ll let you help with one thing, though.” She found Kate’s knee beneath her quilt and squeezed it gently before reaching for her walking stick. “How would you like to come give me a hand in the kitchen? I’ve got all the makings of a good salad set out. You do that while I do the salmon. It’s getting on toward supper time.” She set her mug on the table with a thump of finality.

  Pouting, Kate protested: “Are you sure there’s nothing else I can do?”

  Aunt Melanie started to say something, then caught herself. “You can peel the avocado.”

  Kate shook her head. In a beaten tone, she muttered, “You share another thing with Grandfather. Total, complete, absolute stubbornness.”

  Feigning a frown, the woman asked, “What’s the matter? Don’t you like avocados?”

  “Sure I do. I just—”

  “Enough,” said Aunt Melanie, raising a weathered hand. “I know you’d like to help, dear, but you can’t.” She rose from the rocking chair, leaving her quilt crumpled on the seat. Then, forcing a smile, she added, “I’m glad you like avocados. Me, I can’t get enough of them.”

  Kate stared at her blankly.

  Her brow again deeply furrowed, Aunt Melanie whispered, “Don’t worry about me, dear. I’ll be fine.” She pivoted on the walking stick and started toward the kitchen.

  Just then they heard a loud banging on the front door.

  3

  visitors

  TWO sodden figures faced them on the porch. Closest to the door was an older man, tall and gaunt, whose torn gray jacket hung on his body like a loose sack. His crystal blue eyes, though strangely sorrowful, looked as if they belonged to a much younger man. Behind him stood the red-haired boy who had tried to steal the brown envelope. He shifted nervously, peering down at his shoes.

  Aunt Melanie regarded them solemnly. Finally she said, “Good day, Frank.”

  “Wish it was,” the man replied, his voice joyless. “Hasn’t been a good day in this town for near on eight y
ears.”

  Kate moved closer, so that her arm was lightly touching Aunt Melanie’s. Several seconds passed with no one willing to speak. Then Frank broke the silence.

  “Look, Melanie,” he began. “We’ve been friends a long time, you and me. Helped each other out a few times. More than a few, in fact. I didn’t come over here today expecting to change your thinking, but I wanted to warn you. The temperature in town is getting hot. Real hot. People are bound to do almost anything to keep the sawmill running.”

  Aunt Melanie studied him without emotion. “Including stealing other people’s mail?”

  The red-haired boy lifted his head. As his eyes met Kate’s, they narrowed with anger. She returned the favor, staring back icily.

  “I’m not excusing that,” said Frank earnestly. “But you’ve got to remember what it’s like for all the folks who work like hell beating tan bark just to get through the day. When you start bringing in some fancy lawyers, they get mad. And for good reason.”

  “They were my last resort, Frank. I hate lawyers as much as you do, and you know it. You and the others wouldn’t listen to reason, no matter what I tried. You were about to destroy the whole crater, before we even know what’s up there. The injunction gives us all a little time, that’s all.”

  “People don’t need time, they need jobs.” His face reddened. “For heaven’s sake, Melanie! Sometimes I think all you care about is owls and trees. Not people.”

  Aunt Melanie stiffened. “Of course I care about people. Why else do I spend all my days laboring with youngsters?” She shot a glance at the red-haired boy, who avoided her gaze. “But you can’t just keep on destroying the forest without giving something back. Look around, will you? Clear-cuts everyplace. If we’re having tough times, the fault belongs to all of us—me, you, and everybody else who let the forest get cut faster than it could grow back—not the folks who want to save the few remaining scraps.”

  “I’m not disputing that,” retorted Frank. “But people have to eat somehow.”

  Aunt Melanie’s voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. “Those old trees were God’s first temple, and now they’re almost gone.”

  At that, Jody spoke, though without looking at Aunt Melanie. “The preacher says trees weren’t made in God’s image. But men were.”

  The white-haired woman looked at him sadly. “I wish, Jody, you’d use your own good head instead of just repeating whatever Reverend Natello says. Then maybe you could decide for yourself what’s right.”

  Jody continued to stare at his shoes.

  “You might try to ask the reverend a few questions,” added Aunt Melanie in a gentle voice. “Ask him whether God made all the creatures of the earth, including the ones we’re wiping out. Or you could remind him of the Psalm that says the righteous shall flourish…like a cedar in Lebanon, and then ask him why there aren’t any cedars left in Lebanon now. Ask him why the people cut them down so fast they never grew back.”

  “I wouldn’t waste his time,” snorted the boy.

  “That’s enough, Jody,” snapped Frank. “I didn’t bring you along to act rude.”

  “Then why did you bring him along?” demanded Aunt Melanie. “To hear you spout the same old wisdom that got us into this holy mess in the first place?”

  A pained look crossed the logger’s careworn face. His shoulders sagged from his drenched clothes and something still more weighty. “Understand me, Melanie. I’m only trying to do what I can to keep this place from becoming a ghost town.”

  For an instant, she regarded him with unmistakable tenderness. Puzzled, Kate pondered this. Then Aunt Melanie’s jaw tightened and she asked, “But why steal my mail, Frank? What good does that do?”

  “Some of the boys thought, well…They thought it might put things off. I tried to talk them out of it, but they wouldn’t listen.”

  “Whatever are they thinking, Frank? The injunction starts on Monday whether I get my mail or not. The crater’s off limits. There’s no way to change that now.”

  Jody raised his head and started to say something, when Frank suddenly cut him off. “That’s right,” he agreed. “No way to change that now.”

  Aunt Melanie eyed him suspiciously. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  The crystal blue eyes peered at her. “Nothing, nothing at all. I just wanted to warn you that you’re best off staying at home for the next few days, until this whole thing blows over.”

  At that moment, Chuck and Chuckles came waddling up the driveway, quacking proudly in duet. They hopped up the stone step and walked single file between Jody’s legs. While Chuck continued on his way across the porch, Chuckles chose to linger momentarily by the boy’s left boot. Jody, watching Frank’s face, paid no attention until, with a loud quack of satisfaction, the duck made an unceremonious deposit of greenish-brown matter on his toe.

  “Hey!” the boy exclaimed, kicking the duck down the step. Quacking and fluttering in protest, Chuckles quickly collected himself and started to waddle back toward the mailbox. Hearing Kate’s snickering, Jody glared at her. Then he turned back to Frank and declared, “I’m leaving.” Thrusting his hands in his pockets, he wheeled around and walked off.

  Frank lingered on the porch, studying Aunt Melanie closely. He started to speak, hesitated, then shook his head, spraying some water from his rubberized hat. He turned away, moving off into the rain. Soon he was nothing more than a misty shadow.

  Slowly Aunt Melanie closed the door, leaning heavily on the handle of her stick. The normal ruddiness had drained from her cheeks. Facing Kate, she said simply, “Something’s wrong.”

  4

  lost from time

  NOT until supper had been prepared, eaten, and completely cleared did Aunt Melanie choose to speak again. Kate had been waiting, it seemed endlessly, for the silence to break. She had hardly tasted her salmon.

  Laying her thin hands firmly on the dining table, a wide slab of richly grained fir resting against the kitchen wall, Aunt Melanie drew in a deep breath. “You’re about to get your wish.”

  Before Kate could respond, Aunt Melanie reached for a weather-beaten roll of paper resting on the row of teacups above the table. With the mud-stained paper in one hand and her walking stick in the other, she started down the hall toward the living room. “Come,” she said distractedly. “We’ll light the fire first. Bring the pie and the plates.”

  Soon the fireplace was crackling and orange-tinted shadows flickered across the walls. The room seemed very different to Kate now that the sun had gone down. Firelight now played upon its contents, coaxing out textures and colors less visible in the harsher light of day. Facing Aunt Melanie, she asked, “What’s wrong?”

  Aunt Melanie didn’t answer, but began to unfurl the roll of paper. Using her walking stick to hold down one end and two plates to anchor the other, she flattened it across the knotted spruce table.

  It was a map of southwestern Oregon. Amidst the many shades of green that indicated national, state, or private forest lands, Kate could see dozens of winding river canyons flowing westward to the Pacific Ocean. Between the coast and the rugged chain of mountains that ran forty or fifty miles inland, there were several small towns. Kate found herself searching for the name Blade.

  “There,” said Aunt Melanie, pointing to one black dot, about ten miles inland from the coast, surrounded by a wide swath of green. “That’s us.” Moving her finger in a wide circle around the spot, she added, “Most of this area’s been logged at least once.”

  “What’s this?” asked Kate, pointing to a place a few miles east of town marked Cronon’s Crater. A large blue lake sat in the middle, ringed by densely packed contour lines that were broken only by a single high waterfall spilling into a rugged river canyon.

  “That’s the crater Frank and I were talking about. It’s called Cronon’s Crater by the mapmakers.” Aunt Melanie paused, weighing her words carefully. “But I call it Lost Crater.” She swung her eyes toward the fire. “Why it had to appear just now, I’ll never
know.”

  “I don’t understand,” Kate said. “That crater must have been there for ages.”

  Aunt Melanie turned from the fire, light from the coals still playing on her face. “Not so long, really. In geologic terms, I mean. It’s what’s left of an ancient volcano that appeared, oh, maybe eight or nine million years ago. Then, about seven thousand years ago, it exploded so violently that the summit collapsed completely, leaving nothing but the huge crater—technically, a caldera—that you see there on the map.”

  She reached toward the abalone shell of peppermint candies that had been pushed to the edge of the table and then, thinking the better of it, withdrew her hand. “Got to cut back on those,” she muttered. “Such a bad habit.” Her gaze fell to a cozy gingerbread house that had rested on the bookshelf behind her rocking chair since Christmas, and her eyebrows suddenly lifted. Pinching one of the striped peppermints from the row upon its roof, she said somewhat sheepishly to Kate, “But first I have to finish these or they’ll go stale.” She popped it into her mouth. “Now, where were we?”

  “The crater. You were starting to say why it’s such a big deal.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Aunt Melanie, biting into the peppermint with a hearty crunch. “You’ve got to understand something first. Lost Crater is so steep it’s literally unclimbable. It rises a good three thousand feet from the forest floor, much of that straight up. The only way anyone’s even known there’s a lake inside is from aerial photographs. But since the crater is almost always filled with fog, even those are rare.”