Someone was leaving the Turner Ranch in a hurry, sending a line of dust up the soft dirt of the main road, and turning up the two track toward our house.
“Can you tell who that is?” I asked.
“It’s not Cal. The horse is too dark.” He offered me his jar of whiskey. “I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough.”
I considered taking a sip, but I couldn’t get past the burning smell. I closed it up and returned it to his hiding place, rechecking the hasps on the doors as I passed.
The sun was just starting to set over the ridge, giving the clouds the pink color of the underbellies of piglets. I opened my mouth to share my observation, but realized for the hundredth time in half as many days that we were way too old for that sort of thing.
“You know, those clouds look exactly like that birthday dress you had when you were little,” Len said.
I threw my arms around him in a smothering hug. Glad that he’d noticed the sky. Glad there was a sunset. And we laughed all the way back to the house until we recognized the Bishop’s giant, sable gelding being led to the guest stables out front.
Len grimaced. “There goes our night off.”
“Don’t be like that,” I said. “He means well.”
He gave me a look—one I was starting to get used to. Len wasn’t adjusting well to being an adult Acolyte. He had started to disappear, more and more often nowhere to be found. I knew he was spending his time with Al Truax—not a serious relationship, Len said, just figuring some things out. When they weren’t making whiskey, they played poker in the Truaxes’ abandoned barn far to the other side of the Basalt River, drinking up all the liquor they made. Len said things were better with the whiskey, said his terrible nightmares went away, and if he drank enough, he could sleep through to morning.
I figured our nightmares were part and parcel of the visions the Spirit had given us. The power to see what was to be, and the grace to accept our fate. Who was I to balk at the darker images within our dreams?
There was only one dream that really bothered me, one that I hadn’t told anyone—not even Len. One where the Bishop came to ask for my gift. I told myself that particular night terror was a recurring mistake: wine burning in my stomach from dinner, the pickled beets from the cellar.
On the surface of things, I understood Len’s searching for what he truly wanted. It was a natural progression of growing up. But still I hated it. It was strange, involuntarily learning to be my own complete person instead of the half I’d always been. Losing Len was like losing my own personal moon.
“It will all be okay,” I said, more to myself than him.
“If you say so.”
I left Len at his bedroom and was almost to mine when Mama appeared, seemingly from nowhere.
“Casandra Willis, please tell me you are not wearing your boots on my clean carpet?”
I stepped on the heel of my right boot and then hopped up and down while I pried the left boot off, not pointing out that it had been years since anyone besides Amita had cleaned the carpets. “I was just trying to hurry. Sorry, Mama.”
“What did you get yourself into today? I have half a mind to keep you out of that damn barn until you can learn to stay on your horse.” She thumbed my chin and her finger came away dirty. I glanced over my shoulder to see Len’s head bobbing out his door.
“I left some dresses on your bed.” Mama shooed me toward my door. “Len, your new shirt will look real nice. You two get along, now. The Bishop is waiting, so don’t dawdle.”
“I can pick my own dinner outfit,” I said under my breath.
“I heard that,” she said, her heels clumping down the hall.
Len slumped in his doorway, still laughing. “Well, pretty princess,” he managed. “Better go see what she left you.”
I let the door slam hard behind me, feeling like I was about to explode. Soon I’d have a vein like Mama’s in my forehead, I was sure of it, pulsing ugly like an alarm clock.
On my bed, three new black dresses were laid out. I placed my hand on the one closest to me, and a vision knocked me back against my dresser. A funeral. Rocky ground shoveled on top of a pine box casket. I pried my hand away before I could see whose. I’d never hear the end of it if I walked in to dinner all red-eyed from crying.
I ran a washcloth over my face and under my armpits and twisted my hair into something resembling an updo. I was pulling the third dress on the bed over my head when Len started pounding on the door.
“Did you see something?” he stage-whispered through the door. When one of us had a vision, the other usually felt it if we were nearby.
I yanked the door open, and he stumbled inside. “What’s with your hair? Is that like rooster-chic?”
“Have I ever told you how helpful you are?” I asked, pitching the bobby pins across the room.
“So, what was it?”
“Go ahead,” I said, pointing to the dress. “A funeral.”
“Who?”
I was midshrug when Len grabbed my hand and placed his other on the dress. Together we could see things more in depth, and he hadn’t drank enough whiskey yet that evening to nullify his Foresight.
This time it was easier to slide into the vision, but the tone was darker, too. We were quiet as we searched out the crowd. It was a silent service, devoid of the usual sweet song—instead, the Deacon, Cal’s brother, who would have been leading the music, was doubled over in tears, their best friend, Sheriff Jayne, stony at his side. I swallowed back a sob, not having considered the casket could have belonged to Cal. Len squeezed my hand and the vision shifted forward in time—maybe a couple of weeks—with a sickening jolt.
A small woman, her back to us, sat white-knuckled in the driver’s seat of a modified sedan as the vehicle climbed rough sections of pavement and scree. Over the sound of the motor, she was belting out a song I’d never heard in a voice akin to that of a raccoon caught in a trap. The vision jolted forward again and she was sleeping, circled by the wild animals of the night, and guarded by starlight. And again: the woman exiting the off-ramp of the interstate—a highway Len and I had never been more than twenty miles down in either direction—and her car belched a cloud of something gray and crept to a halt. This time, we could see her face. I gasped.
“Syd,” Len said. “Poor, poor Syd.”
Syd had loved us back when we were children, but we were different even then. When we’d talk about the Spirit, she’d screw up her face and wave us off. Once, when still the best of friends, I asked her to tell me where she thought our visions came from. I think maybe I wanted her to come right out and call me a liar. But she only said she didn’t know. She said it like she wanted to believe me. What would she say now, all these years later, when I told her I’d seen her coming from miles and days away?
“I can’t believe she’s coming back,” I said. “Do you think we should ride out for her?”
Len nodded. “Probably not a bad idea.”
“We have to. What if that Survivor camp finds her?”
“Cas, she is a Survivor.”
I was silent for a minute. “It won’t be the same, will it?”
“They say you can never go home again,” Len said, shoving his hands in his pockets.
“Guess it’s a good thing we never left.”
Mama’s lips pursed at our arrival into the parlor. She looked me up and down and sighed. On the other side of the room, the Governor and the Bishop had their heads bent together. Our oldest brother, Perry, had his nose buried in a musty-looking copy of The Art of War, while Troy bobbed, aimless, between the two sides of the room. Len turned traitor and left me to Mama.
I tried to sail past her, but her hand shot out around my wrist, and yanked me to her side. “Land sakes, child, did you even think to brush your hair?” She pulled a bobby pin from her own chignon, and after a few yanks and twists had made my ponytail into something more flattering. I let out a whimper as she jabbed a last pin into my head.
She sighed. “You may b
e the baby in this family, Casandra, but you needn’t act like one.”
When I was younger, I tried and tried to explain my love of the dirt and the sun and Windy and all the rest of it. She had said, “A lady can still be a lady on a ranch.” Being a real lady wasn’t in the cards for me, but it didn’t matter much, because there we all were, shoved up on this shelf where the mountain meets the prairie, and me, shoved up on the shelf where a girl met what her mother wants her to be.
“When are the services?” I asked her softly.
“Honestly, Casandra. Patience. That is what the Bishop is here to tell us.” She groped the mantel for her cordial glass. “My goodness, what a shame. Deacon Pious must be a confounded wreck.”
“Mmm,” I said. I had already seen how the Deacon was taking things, though I wasn’t about to share that with my mother, who felt that men who cried were about as useful as flat shoes.
Unsurprisingly, my mother with all her ladylikeness had adapted well to being the First Lady after my father declared New Charity its own entity. Before the troubles, there were rules about that sort of thing, but everything was different now. Our history books had been packed away for a good long while. We were supposed to be proud in our roles as “new pioneers.”
I didn’t understand why that meant we had to forget about the years things didn’t grow and the winters we survived by working together before the Spirit poured its blessing through the Bishop and our collective gifts.
“The dress looks nice, though,” Mama said, adjusting the neckline. “You can wear one of the others to the funeral.”
“I’ll have my robes on.” I could be plain and pure in the service of the Spirit. It wouldn’t matter what I wore beneath, and I’d be far more comfortable in my old jeans.
“I want you at the social hall afterwards. I’m tired of everyone thinking something’s wrong with you.”
“No one thinks that,” I protested, although if I was honest, I had no idea. What I did know was that my being at the social hall wouldn’t magically fulfill Mama’s hopes that I’d be snapped up by one of the available men in town.
I remember thinking way back when that Mama might have loved me more if I were a little more like Syd. She was lithe where I was strong. Dark-haired instead of washed-out blonde. Fine features and dark eyes where I was blunt-nosed and freckled and gray-eyed, collecting all the most mundane features of the Willis clan.
Mama hadn’t seen the other parts of our friend. The strange, odd parts. Syd was always early, always pacing. Studying things. Opening drawers, lids, doors. Talking to herself. Biting her nails. She was as sharp as the electric fence for the stallion’s pen—the one we kept on with the generator. On our fourteenth birthday, the last before Syd left for the City, Len made us all hold hands and touch the fence. I was the last in line, and the current was so painful I almost wet my pants. I called him a name so loud and so terrible the adults heard it and blanched. Mama sent me to spend the rest of the night in my room. Syd was the one to talk Mama into releasing me from banishment. Chalk it up to countless favors owed. Syd was always working an angle.
I wondered if she’d be working one still.
My father and the Bishop finally finished their conversation, and we mercifully sat down to dinner. There was salad and pleasantries and wine pouring. Over the roast the Governor got down to brass tacks.
“Cas. Len,” said the Governor. “The Bishop shared some sad news before dinner. It seems Cal Turner passed on this morning.”
I nodded. “We saw.”
“As I expected,” said the Bishop. “Very well then. Deacon Turner has asked that the funeral be held immediately, so I’d like you to prepare yourselves for service tomorrow.”
“One of the town’s finest,” the Governor said.
My mother batted her eyes at her peas, as if my father were talking about hay yields or inches of rainfall instead of death and sorrow.
Len frowned. “Doesn’t he want to wait for Syd to get here?”
The Bishop wiped the corners of his mouth and glowered at us from beneath his grizzled eyebrows. “It could take weeks for word to reach her. Even then, I understand they have not heard from her in some time. Unless you know something that we don’t?”
Len kicked me under the table. “No,” we said in unison.
“Just the funeral,” I lied.
“She wasn’t there,” Len added.
The Governor shifted in his seat. He hated it when we babbled.
“If she decides to come sort through her inheritance, the Sheriff, your father, and I have agreed to allow Cressyda through the gates due to exigent circumstances.”
“That’s magnanimous of you,” said Perry, not bothering to hide the contempt in his voice. He and Syd had always butted heads, though the worst was during their last encounter—one of Perry’s rare visits home from his fancy boarding school. This one had something to do with Troy and Syd’s burgeoning preteen romance. Troy had tried hard to mend fences with Perry once Syd left, but no matter the olive branches extended to him, Perry insisted on being a miserable, grudge-holding jerk.
The Bishop smirked. “The Sheriff and I don’t quite see eye to eye on this issue. But the final say rests with your father.”
Len gave me a look that said yeah, right.
The Governor, though, was unsatisfied by our silence. “I thought you’d be showering me with thanks. She was your friend, was she not?”
“Of course. Thank you,” I said.
Len cleared his throat. I shook my head at him and his damn principles. He continued anyway. “She deserves to be here, regardless of our friendship.”
“She doesn’t deserve anything; she’s the enemy,” Perry said, harsh and nasal.
“Stop,” Troy said, gripping the arms of his chair. “What our father is saying is that he would like some gratitude for defending our friend. I, for one, am thankful.”
“I bet,” snorted Perry.
“She was only a child when she left. Still”—the Bishop looked to Len and me—“we must be diligent in protecting what the Spirit has blessed us with.”
“So if Syd shows up you want Cas and me to babysit her?” Len asked. “Maybe you should babysit her yourself.”
The peas rolled off my mother’s fork as everyone in the room froze. The Bishop required careful handling, and the whiskey Len had drunk in the parlor had overloosened his tongue.
“Well, now,” the Bishop said, amused by our discomfort. “If and when Cressyda responds to her uncle’s invitation, doing what I ask is your responsibility as Acolytes, as agents of the Spirit.”
Len raised his eyebrows. Acolytes were called on to be a lot of different things outside of our duties at services. We corresponded with townspeople about their worries. We attended weddings and funerals to shake hands and say nice things about the future. But standing guard hadn’t ever been a part of our job description.
“Don’t you think this puts us in a pretty awkward position?” Len asked.
“I am merely asking you to ensure her motives for returning are pure.”
“The only thing pure about Cressyda Turner is her ability to be a complete pain in the ass,” Perry said.
“Perhaps,” the Governor said, his voice sharp with that edge we all hated, “we should continue this conversation later.” We were all too big for him to use his belt, but it wasn’t as if he didn’t have other methods to remind us to stay in line.
“I think we should have the conversation now,” Perry said. His voice shook. “No one gets in who wasn’t here during the outbreak, right? Why bend the rules?”
“They let you in after the outbreak,” Len said. “Maybe that wasn’t the best idea, either.”
Chuckling lightly, as if to clear the air, the Bishop turned to Len. “As your father has pointed out, showing compassion will go a long ways toward proving to the Survivors that their only way forward is through the Spirit.”
“Well, now,” Mama said. “All this dander up for something that might
never even come to pass. I think it’s best if we cross this particular bridge when we come to it.”
Everyone stared at her in disbelief.
She beamed, once again the center of attention. “Now who wants dessert?”
The rest of the evening was spent in surly and uncomfortable terseness. The Bishop rose and stretched expansively, and Mama tasked Len and me with walking him to the door, where Amita bustled around the coat closet, holding out his hat and riding gloves, her eyes large and reverent.
It was normal for us to walk the Bishop out. What wasn’t normal was for Len to stumble over the bootjack in the hallway.
He was trying his half-drunk best to be solemn, but we were both antsy, and anxious to get the Bishop out the door. The foyer felt smaller and smaller as the years passed. And as we’d gotten older, the Bishop had decreased the personal space with which he’d once orbited us. He spoke close and low, with breath bitter from the herbs he claimed kept him from the accelerated aging that was part and parcel of his gift of Hindsight. No one knew how old he was, but in the time since he’d arrived in New Charity, he’d aged maybe five years to our fifteen.
Despite his distaste for personal space, he never touched us without his thick gloves on. We chalked this up to his many oddities—his mercurial temper, his lack of New Charitan blood, his thin gray beard, his billowing black robes.
When we sat in his small office, passing candles and books and letters, the gloves came out. When we were in public helping to pass out hymnals, the gloves were there, too. While dishing up the casseroles the women in the Sanctuary kitchen made for the community after services. While comforting the lost. While celebrating the found. And though we brushed the gloves time and time again, they perpetually guarded us, and only us, from his mottled skin.
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