“Felt my location?” Felicity finished.
Dynah nodded, her eyes widening. “What is happening to us?” Her voice came out a whisper.
“I wish I knew.” They looked at each other a moment. “Your sister isn’t coming?”
Dynah’s face darkened. “She didn’t seem to know what I was talking about. We got in an argument.”
“Oh,” Felicity said. She felt both surprised and strangely… satisfied. Maybe she and Dynah alone shared these powers. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
A shrug. “My sister and I—we don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things. Nothing new there.” She sounded sad, though, which belied the gesture.
“How is your father doing?”
“Much better,” Dynah said. “It seems he’s going to pull through.”
“Well, that’s wonderful news!” Felicity smiled.
“Yes. I’m so relieved.”
Silence fell between them. After several long moments, Felicity said, “So, what do we do? Should we try to talk to Willow?”
Dynah made a face. “She doesn’t like me much. I’m afraid I might get a similar reaction from her.”
Felicity wasn’t sure what to say next. Where did they go from here?
Movement on her periphery caught her attention. She turned her head to see a woman step out of one of the merchant’s tents not far off. The woman stared in their direction and then gestured for them to come over. Or at least, it seemed she did. Felicity looked over her shoulder to see if the woman was signaling someone else.
Dynah followed her gaze. “What are you looking at?”
“That woman.” Felicity pointed, then ducked her head when she realized her rudeness in doing so. “It looked like she waved for us to come over.”
“She probably wants to sell us something.”
They both turned back to the woman, who gestured for them again. She appeared to be a fortune teller or something of that sort. The type of woman that Felicity’s mother always warned her about: wavy black hair held back in a colorful scarf, a long red dress, lots of jewelry. Felicity’s mother said women who dressed like that cavorted with demons.
“I don’t know. Fortune tellers are known for their knowledge of the supernatural. I think we should go see,” Felicity said, surprised at her own boldness. “After all, what do we have to lose?”
“You do have a point,” Dynah said, though she looked dubious.
Felicity didn’t wait for her to change her mind. She nudged Music forward. Dynah followed on her gray and they approached the back of the woman’s tent. The fortune teller stood waiting for them, the flap of her tent held open.
“I can sense fellow women in need,” she said, her dark eyes grazing over each of them. Her voice sounded of smoke and steel.
They tied the horses to a post at the back of the tent and stepped inside. It was not the sort of place Felicity’s mother would have approved of in the least. And there was also, undeniably, some sort of magic afoot.
For starters, the tent looked four times as large on the inside. What appeared from the outside to be a small, ordinary tent now soared over their heads, spacious and grand. A cluster of colored glass lanterns hung from the apex, emitting thin curls of herbaceous smoke. On the left side of the tent, against the wall, stood an altar covered entirely in black crystals. Mirroring it on the right side stood an altar holding clear crystals. Two bay horses stood on one side of the tent, snoozing in a circle of flickering candles. Feathers and colored threads and beads were braided into their manes and tails. Thick, woven rugs carpeted the ground. Near the front of the tent stood a table and two chairs.
The fortune teller eyed Felicity. “You can see it all, can’t you?”
Felicity nodded, as did Dynah, whose eyes were wide as she took everything in.
“I knew there was something about you girls,” the woman said with a wave of her hand. “I am Davania. What do I call you by?”
Felicity introduced herself first, offering her hand and dipping into a brief curtsy, but the fortune teller simply touched a knuckle to her forehead. “I cannot touch your skin until I am ready to see everything.”
Dynah frowned and looked over at Felicity before sharing her name as well.
Davania led the way to the table and chairs in the front of the room. With a wave of her hand, one of the chairs duplicated, and now three chairs stood before them. Davania smiled as she took in the astonished expressions of the two girls.
“You already saw through my glamour,” she said. “No point hiding anything, eh?”
Felicity sat down and folded her hands neatly in her lap, realizing that her life up to this point made her vastly unprepared for the strange things happening to her now. She became overly conscious of her spotlessly clean lavender dress and the white bonnet strapped over her hair. The tiny golden cross over her heart, beneath the tight buttons running all the way up to the base of her chin.
“What’s a glamour?” she blurted out. She really had no idea what was happening, and things were so far beyond her ken she feared she’d never get back to normalcy again.
Davania looked at her, really looked at her good and long. Felicity thought she could see swirls of something moving in the dark depths of the woman’s eyes.
“It is a spell I put on my tent to make it seem…to meet expectations,” she said. “Normal folk want to see a humble fortune teller with little in the way of personal belongings. They want to see a little pizzazz, but nothing too far outside of their comfort zone.”
“A spell…” Dynah murmured. “Like, a magic spell?”
Davania looked at Dynah now, as she had looked at Felicity. And Dynah, who no doubt had been stared at every day of her whole life, fidgeted beneath the gaze.
“Magic,” the woman said, and her lips curled around the word like a lover. “The two of you have been touched by it as well. That’s what I felt when I invited you inside. That’s why you can see through my glamour without even trying. But neither of you seem to know the first thing about it.” She cackled then, as if it were funny.
“Can you help us, then?” Felicity asked.
“I don’t have much money on me,” Dynah said.
Davania waved a hand. “I charge the sheep who live in the towns I visit. I do not charge fellow women touched by the mysteries.”
The woman reached her hand out across the table between them, palm up. “I will look now. Who will go first?” She issued it like a challenge, a dare. But then a shiver went over her, and she shook her head. “No. Both, together. Your fates are intertwined.”
Felicity looked over at Dynah, whose blue eyes seemed to glow in the dim lighting of the tent. Dynah nodded, and in unison, they reached out to touch the fortune teller’s hand.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Dynah
Dynah and Felicity’s fingers touched the weathered palm of the fortune teller, and the woman stiffened as if zapped with electricity. Her eyes looked through them, beyond them, into something Dynah couldn’t see.
Davania opened her mouth and spoke, but her voice had changed, deepened, as if it came from the earth below them, deeper even, from the roots at the center of the earth, from the dark places where sunlight did not reach. “Two of the four, four of the four.”
A brisk wind picked up inside the tent, swirling the smoke, making the horses snort and shimmy in place.
“The four shall ride… and darkness follows…darkness and fire and wings…wings…wings…”
Davania jerked again and her eyes rolled back in her head. Felicity squeaked, her eyes wide with horror. Dynah could only imagine a similar look marred her own features.
Then it was over, and Davania was Davania again. She jerked her hand back from the girls.
“What did you see?” Dynah asked, her voice shaking. She didn’t want to know, not really, but the words escaped her mouth before she could stop them.
Several long moments passed before the fortune teller answered. “Things I have never seen bef
ore. Things I have never even dreamed of. And I have seen nightmares.” She shivered in remembrance of whatever she referred to.
And then, abruptly, she stood. “I need to be going. I will see you two out.”
“Wait, what?” Felicity stammered. “Tell us what you saw. We need help.”
Davania drew in a deep breath, pulling herself up tall as she did so. “I am not sure that I can offer you anything to help, child. I help ward away evil. It is much harder when evil has already taken hold.”
Dynah felt like she’d been slapped in the face. “Us? You’re saying we’re evil?”
In her mind she saw the black aura around the doctor, felt the call of the dead in the graveyard. She knew the truth already. Something inside her began to crumble. The careful control of her life, which she kept in a deadly grip behind her bright smile, a constant tension no one ever saw or knew.
Davania cocked her head to the side. “I see the world burning in your eyes. It’s already begun.”
Felicity sucked in a sharp breath, and Dynah saw a tear trickle down her cheek.
“However,” the fortune teller said. “We all have a choice. Darkness may be sitting at your dinner table, but you don’t have to share a meal.”
“I don’t understand,” Dynah whispered. She could feel her own tears stinging the corners of her eyes, and she dug her fingernails into her palms.
“There will come a time. Soon. Your choice will have to be made.” Davania made a gesture in the air before her, like a spiral.
The fortune teller walked to the back of the tent and lifted the flap for them. Felicity looked like a beaten dog as she walked toward her, head bowed. Davania frowned, looking as if she debated something in her head, then dropped the tent flap and walked over to her horses. She took a single brown feather from the tail of each, one hung from a black thread, one from a silver-gray. She handed the black one to Felicity, and the gray one to Dynah.
“Those might help. A little. To help you remember who you are.” The woman opened the tent flap once more. “I’m sorry to deliver such terrible news.”
Felicity nodded and stepped out of the tent. Dynah followed, but when she reached Davania, she stopped. “Where will you go?”
Davania’s mouth tightened. “As far from Hawk’s Hollow as I can travel.” And she dropped the tent flap in Dynah’s face.
Dynah untied Moon’s reins from the post, fingers trembling. Her thoughts spun as if swirled with snow, growing colder and slower with each moment. She was going into shock and she knew it. Simply too much to process at one time.
They walked a few dozen paces beyond the tent before Felicity finally spoke. “I’m sorry.”
Dynah turned. “What?”
“You didn’t want to go, but I thought we should, and—well, it was awful.” She sniffled and wiped her nose on her white gloves in a very unladylike gesture. “What do you think she meant by all that?”
“I don’t know,” Dynah said softly. The ice moved into her bloodstream now, winter taking over her lungs, her heart. Quiet. Dark. Felicity was saying something else, but she couldn’t make out the words.
“Dynah!” someone yelled. A male someone.
She looked up to see Billy. Golden-haired Billy. Golden like the sun. He stood off behind the arena with a few friends.
“There’s my favorite Rodeo Queen!” He waved. “Come over here!”
And Dynah wanted his warmth. She needed it, or else this chill inside of her would consume everything. Davania had said she had a choice to make, and this was it: she didn’t have to believe a damn word of any of this. She would go back to living her normal life. She would forget the blackness and the dead and the feeling of lightning running through her veins. She would make herself forget.
Which meant one thing for certain.
“Bye, Felicity,” she said.
The other girl’s doe eyes widened. “Don’t we need to talk about this? About what just happened?”
Dynah jerked her head from side to side decisively. “No. I think we should both do our very best to forget about it. That lady was clearly a quack.”
“But the windstorm, the strange happenings, the sparks…”
“Just leave it alone,” Dynah said, and she could hear the whiplash in her tone. “That’s what I’m going to do. I suggest you do the same.”
She turned then, leaving Felicity agape behind her, eyes shimmering with tears, and she left the winter behind her.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Willow
The devil himself couldn’t have asked for a hotter day. Even at eight o’clock in the morning the sun burned furiously, vindictively. A sadistic jailer torturing its captives.
Willow couldn’t have been happier.
Race day had finally arrived, and nothing on this earth could keep her from it. From her victory. Her ticket out of Hawk’s Hollow. Her escape route into a new life.
Bullet pranced beneath her, and a hot wind kissed her skin. About two dozen other riders lined up next to them, all in a row. They stood a few paces from the arena, facing west. The mayor of Hawk’s Hollow, a squat little man with a handlebar mustache, stood on the wooden stage at the head of the arena. Pretty much the whole town had gathered, along with travelers from far and wide. Everyone came to see the start of the race. It kicked off the three days of the annual fair, competitions in every form between horse and rider. An unrivaled moment each and every year.
And this was her year.
“Riders, are you ready?” called the mayor.
A chorus of yells and hats flung into the air answered him.
“On your marks, gentlemen!”
And lady, Willow thought with a swell of excitement in her gut. Next to her on his buckskin, Zane shot her a look that made her insides burn.
“Get set!”
The mayor raised his Remington pistol overhead. Bullet was a thunderclap beneath her, about to explode. Willow’s heart pounded hard enough to crack her ribcage.
“Go! And good luck!”
The pistol fired into the sky, a crack that split the clouds. Bullet let loose beneath her, true to her namesake, shooting out across the plains. The wind whipped in Willow’s eyes, across her cheeks, and poured down her throat. She nearly lost her hat as they tore across the wide yonder. She couldn’t see any other horses in her periphery; Bullet had jumped out ahead of them all. Willow felt her heart soar into the sky above them.
She was free.
They kept their lead for a mile before Willow slowed Bullet to a lope, then a trot. This race was about endurance. She and Bullet could both run forever, run until they died, but that wouldn’t win the thing. And win it she would. She imagined Penelope’s surprised face at her incredible restraint, and that made her smile.
Zane pulled up alongside her, his gelding nosing Bullet, which elicited a squeal of protest from the mare. “That was some sprint.”
Willow patted Bullet’s sweaty neck. “She bears her name for a reason.”
“Well, I’d better move off. Don’t want the other cowboys to think we have an arrangement or something.” Zane grinned and veered off into the plains.
The miles passed and so did the hours. Nothing but red earth, blue sky, puffs of cloud like gun smoke, and the occasional eagle high above. Willow alternated between trotting and cantering, stopping at any creeks they passed (there weren’t many) to let Bullet get water and to refill her water skin.
Morning slipped away into afternoon. Afternoon slid toward evening. Red buttes rose up from the desert floor like ancient warriors stretching between earth and the sky. Willow caught an occasional far-off glimpse of another cowboy, but she was mostly alone. Well, alone except for Bullet. She’d heard more than enough tales of the tricks and outright cheating some of these men would resort to in an attempt to knock out the competition. Their suspicion kept big swaths of space between them.
Of course, out here in the open there wasn’t a whole lot you could do other than shoot someone. Cactuses provided the o
nly cover. But once they swung north and hit the mountains, an abundance of opportunities for sabotage revealed themselves. Rockslides. Downed trees. Soured water. And ambushes, of course, which Willow was all too familiar with.
Before the mountains, however, she had to reach Devil’s Eye Peak, the western checkpoint. It stood at the halfway point, fifty miles from Hawk’s Hollow. The northern checkpoint would be reached on the second day, and sat roughly halfway back to town. The rules were simple: it didn’t matter how you got there and how you got back. But they had to see you at those checkpoints in order to claim victory.
Willow planned to hit the first checkpoint before nightfall, then head up into the mountains. It would be tricky after the sun set, and sabotage would be all the easier to accomplish, but she’d have to slow down in the mountains, which required some travel after dark if she wanted to ensure her win. That’s where her Colt came in handy. Any cowboy who tried to cheat would meet the business end of her iron real fast.
The sun was melting like candlewax toward the horizon as Willow arrived at Devil’s Eye Peak, a huge red butte that jutted up from the desert floor like a medieval fortress. Two men sat in the back of a covered wagon at the base of it.
“Will Bullet,” she said to them.
One of the cowboys wrote her name on a piece of brown paper. She glanced down and saw that it was blank otherwise.
“I’m the first one to come through?”
“Yes’sir,” said the one.
“But don’t get cocky,” said another. “Tomorrow will be harder.”
They took a clockwork raven from the wagon, which Willow recognized as Harvey’s handiwork, and placed another scrap of paper bearing her name in a compartment in its mouth. Then they wound it up and released it towards Hawk’s Hollow. Willow imagined the raven arriving at the arena, the crowd waiting in excitement as the mayor opened the message and read her name aloud. She’d been one of those people in the crowd each year before, remembered the palpable thrill of each name being called. Now it was her name.
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