“Wait, if she keeps him, doesn’t that make her a horse thief?” Nancy teased. “Do we get to hang her?”
“I think they only hang horse thieves in Texas,” Sue said.
With an effort, Lynn kept any reaction off her face at the mention of Texas.
“So tell me about him,” Sue prompted. There was nothing better than a new horse to talk about.
“Blocky, nice square build, looks like he has some quarter horse in him. About fifteen hands,” she added. Sue made an Oh well face. Like Lynn, Sue was tall. In the horse show world, anything less than sixteen hands for a tall girl didn’t look good in the show ring.
“After all this, you’ve bought him, I think. I wouldn’t worry about the owners coming forward,” she said.
Nancy rang up Sue’s purchases and said, “Are you off to perambulate?”
“Indeed I am,” Sue said. She caught Lynn’s confused expression. “You youngsters. Don’t you know what a perambulator is?”
Lynn shook her head, half laughing. “A baby carriage?”
Nancy pushed over the receipt and said, “It’s a fancy title for people who don’t do anything except hike,” she teased.
“Hush, you. We do more than hike. We walk the town borders between Connecticut and New York and make sure that the borders are secure.”
Lynn felt her mouth drop. “Wait . . . you what?”
Sue stowed her packages in a big canvas tote with a jumping horse cross-stitched on it and chattered on, oblivious to Lynn’s reaction. “It dates back to the Colonial era. All of the Connecticut towns used to have them. Now we call ourselves the perambulators, but we haven’t been official for, goodness, twenty or thirty years. As Nancy says, we just hike.”
“So, you’re like . . . guardians, right?”
Sue considered that. “I hadn’t thought of that, but that would be a good way to put it. Well, I have to run. Oh, and Lynn, let me know what happens with that horse of yours and if you find his owners. I’d love to give them a piece of my mind.”
“Wait!”
Sue turned around with a quizzical expression at Lynn’s urgency. Nancy waited with Lynn’s purchases, also as surprised.
“Sue, this is really important. Where do you hike, exactly, and have you been in the woods recently?”
Sue was smart; Lynn had always known that. The woman’s expression changed from quizzical to sharp. Lynn held her breath.
“If you aren’t busy today, why don’t you come out with us, and I’ll show you. I’ll swing by the farm and pick you up.”
Lynn nodded, watching her go. The door tinkled behind Sue, and Nancy finished bagging her purchases. Remembering, Lynn turned to her and took the bag.
“I just wish I knew what was going on, but no one ever tells me anything,” Nancy groused. She gave Lynn a sharp look of her own. “I’ll tell Jim to schedule you for a shipment.”
“Thanks.”
Lynn got into her car, heading home on autopilot. So there were guardians in the area. Who knew—especially since they didn’t seem to know themselves. How much did perambulators know about the woods in the area? Did they know anything at all about Gordath Wood? From what Sue said, it was a Connecticut tradition, not a New York State one, but in this part of the region, it could be hard to tell where Connecticut left off and New York began, especially on the trails. She supposed that was the point of having perambulators, in pre-satellite-mapping days. What if those long-ago selectmen had established perambulators in Connecticut not to guard against border encroachment from New York but to keep an eye out for something more dangerous?
On the other side of Gordath Wood, they had guardians who knew what they were doing and how to keep the gordath closed so it wouldn’t consume the worlds. Over here they had old folks who liked to hike in the woods. She didn’t know how much she could tell Sue. She didn’t know how much the older woman would believe her. But maybe it was time for the perambulators to know what they were really up against.
Lynn looked through the binoculars across a forested tract in Connecticut at what Sue Devin had said was the border with New York State. She couldn’t tell. The woods were divided by roads and houses, and one great empty field swooped up toward the sky as if it wanted to meet the clouds. Next to her Sue consulted with her fellow perambulators over maps and binoculars. They were a hearty group of a half dozen middle-aged and older enthusiasts, all amiable, with water bottles, bird books, hats, hiking boots, and walking sticks. Lynn was the youngest by about thirty years, and they treated her with good humor and a touch of pity—the latter, she suspected, because she could barely keep up. She wasn’t used to walking, she wanted to protest, but instead saved her breath. She needed it. They hiked some steep and rocky hills in their duty to patrol the borders of Connecticut towns.
The summer air was still under the trees, their leaves hanging limply in the midsummer heat. Cicadas buzzed rhythmically. The sound was soothing and peaceful. If she had a hammock, she would have wanted to swing easily and fall asleep.
The last time she fell asleep in the woods, things hadn’t been so peaceful, she reminded herself. She lowered the binoculars and handed them back to Sue.
“So is that High Hollow?” she asked Sue, gesturing toward the sweep of open space.
Sue nodded. “And over there is Stone Brook,” she said, pointing to the west. “And behind that—”
Hunter’s Chase. And Gordath Wood.
As promised, Sue had come by to pick up Lynn, who had brought along a filled water bottle, some granola bars, and her old sneakers from the back of her closet. She had wanted to fill a backpack with provisions, just in case, but she’d held back. They wouldn’t be hiking anywhere near the gordath, after all.
They didn’t keep to a trail, exactly. “Too easy to get lost,” Sue quipped, and the rest laughed. “We have to be careful though; we stick to trails where we know there are endangered species.” She pointed out several on their walk: here a salamander in a damp swale, there a kind of fern. There were flowers and other plants as well, and plenty of invasive plants, which caused a fluster of consternation and some ruthless weeding that left the bad species pulled up by their roots and drying in the sun.
“And up here is a special treat,” Sue told her. She accepted one of Lynn’s granola bars. “If you look over here, there’s a glade of old-growth forest tucked away. Whoever logged this area hundreds of years ago left a nice little swath.”
Lynn felt a prickle go down her spine. This is what she had come for. “I’d love to see it,” she said casually, and Sue led the way. They picked their way off the trail down a rocky slope. The rocks in the area were legion, brought by glaciers, left behind when the ice retreated. The morrim in Aeritan had been one such boulder, and so was the morrim in North Salem.
She saw immediately what Sue meant when they reached the little swale, and she knew at once that she looked at a piece of Gordath Wood. A glade of six huge trees, ancient and gnarled, squatted in a semicircle, one, the tallest, almost split in two by an old lightning strike—or some other force. It had sheared off a half of the trunk and several branches, but it did not kill it entirely; that cloven branch rested on the ground, but it still carried green leaves and life. Thin grass threaded between the trees and around a fat, squat boulder that hulked in the center of the little clearing. Soil and leaves mounded around its base.
Bet it’s supported by smaller rocks, if someone wanted to dig under it to find out. The shiver down her spine increased, and she felt a momentary dizziness. She took a few steps closer, then stopped. Was it whispering to her? She didn’t want to hear it if it was. To turn her thoughts, she said to Sue, “What do you know about it?”
“Well, it’s hard to say. These trees are old oaks, and their DNA suggests they are related to trees in Gordath Wood itself. That’s not so unusual, but those trees are singular; there don’t seem to be any oaks in the area that have the same genetic code. It’s like they came up through acorns from—from, well, I don’t know. We
also know there are these pocket ecosystems that you find in odd places where the surrounding conditions don’t usually support these species, and yet here they are. It’s odd that this little glade is here, so close to Gordath Wood. Maybe a long time ago all these woods were the same forest.
“I like it,” Sue finished, still gazing at the little glade. “It’s a mystery. It makes me a little homesick.” She laughed a little. “Well, nostalgic anyway.” She straightened herself up briskly. “And then I remind myself that I have better things to do than think about the past. But I wanted you to see it.”
“Thanks,” Lynn said. “Is it okay if I—I mean, there aren’t any endangered species around it, are there?”
“Oh no, no. Tread as you wish. I’m going back up to the overlook, and we’ll come and get you when we’re done.”
Lynn was about to say, Wait! when Sue headed back up the trail, leaving her face-to-face with the old morrim. It didn’t mutter or sing. It looked just like a big rock that was half-buried in the composting woods. The feeling of peace and silence in the woods deepened, and she felt the same melancholy again. She looked back once, but she couldn’t see Sue and the others, though occasionally she thought she could hear their voices.
Or the morrim’s? she wondered. No, the sound was too prosaic. It didn’t carry the same menace as the last time she heard the muttering of a live morrim. She walked forward, her sneakers scuffing through the grass, and laid a hand on the cool, rough, lichen-covered rock. She felt a faint tremor, and then the rock went still.
She gasped. For an instant the morrim had responded to her touch. Energy had zinged into her hand as if she had touched a live wire. She turned around and looked back up the trail to the ridge, trying to imagine the sight line to Hunter’s Chase and Gordath Wood on the other side of the New York State line. In between, somewhere, there was the gordath . . .
Wait a second. This morrim wasn’t attached to the one in New York. That morrim was Balanced Rock, and it anchored the gordath between itself and the old morrim high up on a ridge in Gordath Wood in Aeritan.
So what gordath did this morrim connect to?
“Shit,” Lynn said out loud to the empty glade. “There’s more than one.”
As if her recognition sparked something in the gordath, she felt the tremor again, only this time it shocked her from toes to head. The old oak trees rustled, and the grass bent with a shiver from a wind that came from nowhere. The hair lifted at the nape of her neck. In an instant Lynn had an impression of a flare that ran from the morrim straight into the woods, like a line of underground lightning. Then it was gone, and the atmosphere subsided.
“Lynn!” Sue called her from the trail. “Are you ready? Henry thinks a storm might be brewing . . .” She trailed off. “Are you all right?”
Lynn backed away from the morrim and began to run back up the trail, her breath coming hard.
“We have to go,” she said. “Get everybody together, Sue. We have to get out of here.”
Sue gave Lynn a strange look, but she said nothing to the others as they hastened down the hill from the old morrim. The strange weather had blown over, and no more was said about an impending thunderstorm. Lynn kept looking back as if she could see the morrim behind her, but it was hidden in its little glade.
When they got to the parking area, everyone said their good-byes and got into their cars with promises to meet again. Sue and Lynn faced off in the empty lot. They were both sweaty and grimy and tired.
“Goodness, Lynn,” Sue said finally. “What on earth is going on?”
Lynn drank the last of the water in her water bottle and carefully tossed out the last drops onto a dusty Queen Anne’s lace poking up at the edge of the lot. “Sue, why is it called Gordath Wood?”
“Lynn—”
“Everyone always said the woods were named that because some Colonial guy in the sixteen hundreds called it God’s earth. But what if it wasn’t? What if the name of Gordath Wood came from the same place the oaks come from? Somewhere else?”
“Well, I don’t know how that could be, although anything is possible, I suppose.”
Sue was humoring her. Lynn smiled and screwed the cap back on her water bottle. “Yeah, you’re right. Listen, as long as you think I’m crazy, can you do me a favor?” Sue began to protest, and Lynn waved her off. “I mean it. A promise even.”
“I’ll try.” Sue sounded dubious.
“Stay away from that little glade. In fact, maybe you and the rest of the perambulators can find other borders to patrol for a while.”
She half expected the older woman to protest. Instead, Sue just said, “You know, that’s what Joe told me. Last year, after you disappeared. Stay off the trails. I didn’t understand then, and I certainly don’t now. But Lynn—I think that’s not such a good idea.”
Now it was Lynn’s turn to look confused. Sue went on. “Whatever happened last year, with the earthquakes and Balanced Rock coming off its supports, and my goodness, that was more frightening than the earthquakes, I think—” She paused and got herself back on track. “What I mean is, that we perambulators guard the town borders and make sure they are safe and sound. If something is going to happen, like last year, we need to be here.”
In Aeritan they were called guardians, and here they were called perambulators. Whatever they did, it protected the borders. She couldn’t force Sue or the others to leave their post, and she knew Sue was right; it might be a mistake to try.
“Just be careful,” Lynn said finally, and Sue gave her a smile.
“We always are, my dear.”
When she got home, the day had become humid and gray, the sunshine washed out. Everything drooped under the heat, from the horses in the fields, standing head to toe to brush flies from each other as they grazed, to the flowers and shrubs that Mrs. Felz had coaxed back to health. All of the clients had gone home for the day, now that it was too hot to ride.
Lynn parked her little car and trudged up to the house. Mrs. Felz sat on the front porch, fanning herself and rocking slowly, iced tea condensing in a glass on the table.
“Oh, that looks good,” Lynn said.
“Plenty in the icebox. By the way, be careful in the kitchen. You’ve got another stray.”
The scrawny dog lay in a makeshift bed, a cardboard box that was lined with newspapers and an old frayed towel from the ragbag in the mudroom. A bowl of cat food—all the kib ble they had was for the barn cats—and of water was set next to it.
The dog looked up at her and thumped its tail shyly. It was filthy and matted, its longish fur patchy in places. It was a gingerish color, and its tail had once been a plume, but this dog needed a bath, plenty of food, and some patient brushing.
“You’re kidding,” Lynn said out loud. The dog wagged harder, hopefully. “I don’t want you,” she told it, getting herself ice and pouring tea from the pitcher in the fridge. “I don’t want any more strays.” First Mrs. Felz, then Red Bird—might as well name the place Bleeding Heart Barn.
The dog got up unsteadily to greet her with the innate politeness some animals had: horses, too, will rise to their feet when someone comes to their box, not out of fear but out of courtesy.
“Oh, come on,” Lynn said in despair, but her words trailed off. The dog had something wrapped around its neck; she hadn’t noticed it earlier because the rope blended in with its fur. Lynn set her glass down on the kitchen counter and knelt. The dog licked her hands and strained for her face, but she moved its head aside and looked at the rope.
Twisted around the rope was a piece of T-shirt. It was frayed, stained, and faded, and it had once been black with the name of a long-ago band on it. She recognized it because of all the time it spent on the floor of the barn apartment where Joe stripped it off after a day’s work.
He had sent her a message from Aeritan.
“Joe,” someone whispered, shaking him. “Hey, Felz. Get up.”
When did Arrim learn his last name? Joe thought grog gily. He opened his eyes a
nd tried to focus. It was dark, the sky midnight blue, dotted with stars. The air was chill. He had a fever and shook with ague.
Inside him the gordath hummed. It was closed, but his nerves still felt hypersensitive, as if his skin could not stop feeling things. Memory came back. Who had closed the gordath? Had Arrim managed it? Because I sure couldn’t.
“Felz. Jesus. Wake up.”
He turned his head with great effort. Mark Ballard loomed over him. At least he thought it was Mark.
“What do you want?” he managed. Of all the people he didn’t want to see, Mark was up there.
“Just get up, okay?”
Joe sat up, stiffly and in great pain. He looked around when the world stopped spinning. The forest was still in the darkness. They were alone, or at least it looked like it. He couldn’t see much in the forest. He listened, but he couldn’t hear the sounds of men sleeping. There were only the dead horses and the fallen trees. I must have been out of it, if I could sleep through the smell, he thought.
“Where’s Arrim?” he whispered.
“Who? Oh. He’s over there. Don’t worry about him. We gotta go.”
Not without Arrim, Joe almost said. “Why aren’t there any guards?”
“Never mind. Listen, you gotta do this thing. You gotta open the gordath. We have to go through.”
Something was wrong. The last thing he remembered, he had opened the gordath—well no, more like the gordath had burst open inside him.
“Who closed it?” he said.
“Forget about that. You opened it once. You have to open it again. Listen, let’s just get out of here.”
Yeah, he had remembered that. So why was it just him and Mark? Had everyone else died when the gordath burst open? Had Arrim died?
“Listen, you open it, and you go through, too. You can close it from the other side. Come on man. I know you don’t trust me, but you got to do this. Do it for yourself.”
The gordath waited, trembling, wanting to be open. God, Joe thought. He could, so easily. He didn’t need Arrim. He could open the gordath, and he could go home.
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