Valley of the Moon

by Bronwyn Archer

  An errant ray of light broke through the clouds and hit the first line of the psalm carved into my grandparents’ marble headstone.

  My dove in the clefts of the rocks.

  Then, I remembered in a rush—my French midterm last fall. We’d had to translate that horribly difficult Rimbaud poem. I got an A- because I missed a few words.

  Colombe was one of them. I pictured it, circled in red on my test.

  It meant dove.

  Georgette wanted me to look for the dove. And Alexander had asked me about a dove! But there were no doves in my house. What dove?

  I pounded my fist into the dirt. Why hadn’t I bothered to ask him when I had the chance?

  I needed a little more to go on. I needed a map.

  A map.

  Maybe I had a map.

  I crouched in front of my Abbott plot and pulled the diary out of my backpack. I flipped to the drawing.

  The little rainbow curving over the word “Mommy.” The sun, some tall trees.

  The little cross in the ground with purple flowers growing next to it, and a small bird perched on it.

  I took a step back and scanned the gravesite.

  Parts of the drawing matched perfectly. The rainbow could be the curved arch of Bart and Caroline’s headstone. The trees were in the right places.

  But there was no cross sticking out of the ground anywhere. I did see purple flowers, but they were growing out of a chink in the wall closest to their grave.

  I examined the drawing again.

  The cross was pretty crooked. In fact, it looked more like an X.

  X marks the spot.

  My eyes swiveled back to the purple flowers. I crept over to the wall and bent down to look at the flowers. My ribs cracked. Leaves blew down the hillside as the wind picked up, skittering off the top of the stones.

  The flowers were growing out of a mossy crevice that ran from top to bottom, splitting the some of the stones in half. I wiggled the rocks on either side of the wildflower plant, but nothing budged. It’s just a drawing. It’s not a map. Now get out of here before Nastia comes back and sees your car.

  I tried to pick some of the wildflowers to leave on my mother’s grave, but they refused to cooperate. I pulled harder, and the entire plant popped away from the wall, along with its root ball.

  A chunk of gray stone tumbled to the ground. I dropped to my knees next to the fresh chink in the wall. There was a layer of dark soil in the newly revealed hole in the wall. I brushed it off to get a better look, and as my fingers raked across the dirt, they brushed against something wedged between the stones. I dug my fingers into the damp soil and scraped. A bit of damp paper came off on my fingers. Paper? I dug in deeper and could feel something. I tugged and dug until I unearthed it.

  The buried mystery object sat in my palm. It was just a wet, muddy lump, but when I started brushing off the mud, bits of wet paper peeled off on my fingers. It looked like newsprint. I tore at the edges and more soft paper melted away.

  It wasn’t newsprint—it was lined paper. Just like the paper in my mother’s diary.

  Then something glittered in the pile of damp pulp.

  I brushed away more mud and pulp until I saw a brilliant flash of white. A fine silver chain spilled through my fingers. I caught it with my other hand and pulled it up. The object was attached to the chain. Finally it burst from the pulpy mess in my hand and swung free.

  It was a dove. Hidden in the cleft of the rocks, all these years. I wiped off remnants of mud and paper and held it up. Dappled sunshine streamed down through the tree boughs and the pendant caught the light, sparkling brilliantly. A kaleidoscope of rainbows sprayed the pale headstones behind it.

  The pendant was made entirely of jewels. The body was a huge oval-shaped diamond, cut with a thousand bevels. The wings, tail, and head were inlaid with what looked like hundreds of tiny white diamonds. Its eye was a perfectly round emerald. It clutched a tiny gold branch in its silver talons. Three teardrop-shaped emeralds hung loose at the end of the branch, like leaves.

  It was exquisite. I lowered the pendant into my palm and marveled at it.

  “I found you, dove,” I whispered. “Thank you, Mom.”

  A breeze blew across the hillside and a tremendous chill drove through my body. A ribbon of blood rolled down my arm. I tucked the dove into my jacket pocket, put the broken stone back in the chink, and grabbed the flowers. I brushed some dead leaves off my mother’s headstone and rested my hand on it. A drop of blood fell onto the pale stone. I dropped the flowers on my mother’s grave, picked up my backpack, and hiked down to the road below.

  ***

  The ladies room at the gas station looked like a prison cell that hadn’t been cleaned in a hundred years. The battered mirror was smeared with unknown substances. I knew that no one had ever smiled in it. It was the kind of bathroom fugitives used to dye their hair and hide from the cops.

  I was a fugitive, too.

  I shrugged my jacket off to look at my arm. Then I wished I hadn’t.

  Using wet paper towels, I cleaned the wound a little and wrapped it with the gauze and tape I’d pilfered from the hospital. It didn’t hurt much anymore, but I had to get the bleeding under control. I held my arm above my head and put pressure on the cut until the bleeding stopped. Once it did, I bandaged it up using only one hand.

  There was another little problem: I had no idea where Barstow was. With no cell phone, I relied on a cheap road map from the gas station. Barstow looked so far away from Glen Ellen. It was going to cost me my life savings in gas to get there.

  I put $50 worth of gas into the ravenous tank and headed east to the 395. Somewhere in the mountains of central California I stopped to fill up again and bought a ham sandwich, a packet of Advil, and a huge bottle of Gatorade. I devoured the sandwich in my car as the Ferrari guzzled my savings.

  I drove for hours before I realized the guy at the first gas station had given me directions to Bishop, not Barstow. When I finally got to a small town called Independence, it was dark and I could barely see straight.

  Barstow would have to wait until morning.

  ***

  The pasty, pink-haired girl behind the motel check-in desk had penciled-on eyebrows and a pierced lip. “That your car out there?” She gestured to my filthy Maranello visible through the front windows.

  “Uh, no, my boyfriend’s.” I didn’t want to deal with any questions.

  “He sounds nice.” She arched an anorexic brow and shot me a skeptical look. “Where you headed?”

  “Los Angeles.”

  “Oh, lucky you.” She scowled and slid a key across the worn linoleum. I reached for it and caught her staring at my raw knuckles. “Room 8,” she said. “Next to the ice machine. There’s no phone. But you can use the one up here. Dollar a minute.”

  ***

  I drank about six glasses of musty sink water while I waited for the shower to heat up. You get thirsty when you lose a few gallons of blood.

  My makeshift bandages had slid down and exposed the ugly gash in my arm. My grimy t-shirt was glued to the wound, where it had formed a hardened cotton seal on my skin. I tried to peel the fabric off, but it hurt too much. Finally, I pulled off my jeans and underwear and got into the shower wearing my t-shirt. In the warm water, the fabric came unstuck from the cut. I pulled off my shirt and bra as the wound started bleeding again. Using one hand, I soaped and shampooed my body and quickly dried off.

  Standing in front of the mirror, I let the towel slide from my body.

  A massive purple bruise bloomed on the right side of my chest where I had fallen to the floor in my kitchen. I had trails of blue bruises up and down my legs. A slow trickle of blood ran down my left arm from my shoulder to my elbow. I touched the red skin near the cut. It was hot and tender. I wadded up a piece of gauze and secured it in place with a strip of my stolen bandage tape. You probably need stitches. You definitely need a doctor.

  But a doctor would mean questions. Questions I didn�
�t want to answer and it would cost money I didn’t have to spend. The bathroom spun around me. White flashes appeared in the fringes of my vision. I was desperate for sleep, but first I had to call Maya.

  ***

  The girl at the front desk handed me the phone and disappeared into her lair behind the counter, but not before she got a good look at the bandage on my arm.

  I dialed Maya’s cell. She picked up before I heard it ring.

  “Lana! Where are you!”

  “Hi. My phone’s dead and I don’t have a charger. I’m in a lovely motel in Independence. I was a little too tired to drive to Barstow tonight. Are you okay? Is my dad okay? Did you find Alexander?”

  “He’s right here! We’ve been trying to reach you all day! Hang on.” I had a flash of them lying poolside at the Carneros Hotel in bathing suits.

  “There’s my little runaway,” he said. That voice—low, clipped, masculine. Despite my condition, my nerves tightened. Too bad I’d never get a chance to get to know him. Instead I was going to die in a filthy motel, alone. “I’m so sorry about all this. You picked a bad time to come find me,” I said.

  “More like the perfect time. Just tell me where you are.”

  “Is my Dad okay? Is he safe?”

  “Yes, he’s fine,” he said. “His doctors agreed to let me transfer him to UCSF, where he’ll have a guard. That okay?”

  Tears of relief welled up in my eyes. “Yes! Oh, Alexander, thank you!” I gave him the motel’s name and address.

  “Listen—you’re not allowed to stand me up just because some Slavic douche bag has a beef with your dad,” he said. I was officially a huge fan of my new cousin. “Now write down my number.” I grabbed a pen from behind the counter and wrote it on the back of my hand as he told it to me. “I’ll meet you at that motel tomorrow. Do not—I repeat—do not leave. Stay there and wait for me. You promise?”

  “Yes, yes I promise.” But what if they find me, Alexander? What then?

  Back in my room, I fell onto the lumpy bed, utterly spent.

  Just make it through the night and you’ll be okay.

  He was on his way, and I could stop running at last.

  ***

  The old lady and I sit at our usual park bench. A flock of white doves swoops across the sky and darkens the sun. She grips my hand and peers into my eyes. Her mouth moves, but I hear my dad’s voice. “Run, Lana. Run!”

  20

  Mare Vaporum ~ Sea of Vapors

  The ANCIENT clock said 7:20 a.m., but it didn’t look like it deserved to be trusted. The room hadn’t been redesigned—or cleaned—in years. I just hoped Alexander would get there soon. My left arm was swollen and stiff from the shoulder to the elbow, but at least the cut had stopped leaking blood.

  I decided to call him and check in, but without a charger, my phone was a useless hunk of metal and glass. I dragged my aching body off the bed and got dressed.

  ***

  “Excuse me, can I please use your phone?” The pink-haired girl emerged from her lair behind the front desk, along with a cloud of smoke. She had a cigarette in one hand and a can of orange soda in the other. The TV blared from her room.

  “Local?”

  “San Francisco.”

  “Close enough.” She put a tan rotary-dial phone on the counter. “Press 8 to get an outside line.”

  “Thanks.” Alexander’s phone rang and rang until I got his voice mail. I didn’t want to leave him a message in front of the girl, who was watching me. She took a drag off her cigarette and ashed it into the mouth of the soda can. She snapped her fingers.

  “Oh hey! A little while ago, some guy called here. He wanted to know if I’d seen a girl with reddish blonde hair driving a Ferrari.”

  “Oh, must have been my boyfriend.” I turned to leave.

  “I didn’t tell him you were here, don’t worry,” she said, gesturing to my bloody knuckles.

  I froze and looked back at her. “You didn’t? Why not?” Alexander will think I left. Darn her and her pink hair!

  She gave me a sympathetic look. “I figured you didn’t want him to know where you were. After what he did to you.” She glanced down at my hands. The knuckles on both hands looked even worse than the day before. I stuffed my hands into my jeans pockets. She shook her head, a look of disgust on her face, and pulled a water-stained tabloid magazine out of a basket on the floor and slapped it onto the counter. “My ex was an asshole, too. He hit me once. Once.” She shot me a knowing look and flipped the magazine open.

  “I need to use the phone again.”

  “It’s your life,” she said, handing me the receiver. “I guess it’s hard to break up with a guy with such a sexy accent.”

  My fingers froze mid-dial. Panic rose in my throat.

  “What did you say?” I almost choked on the words.

  She studied a page in her magazine. “He’s French, right? There was this French couple here last week. Pee-yoo,” she said, waving a hand in front of her nose. I turned and bolted down the hallway towards my room.

  After shoving all my stuff into the duffel bag and grabbing my backpack, I sprinted back to the reception desk, panting hard. The pink-haired girl was gone, and the door to her lair was shut. But I heard her TV blaring. I ran behind the counter and pounded on her door.

  “Miss? Excuse me, Miss?”

  She cracked it open. “Changed your mind, huh?” she asked, rolling her eyes. She had a fresh cigarette in her hand. She eyeballed my bags. “Checking out already?”

  “That guy—the one who called for me. If he shows up, you need to call the police, okay? He’s not my boyfriend. He’s . . .”

  She glanced out the front windows. “Does he drive a fancy car like yours?” I turned to see what she was staring at. Through the dusty front windows we both watched a black Lamborghini Aventador pull into the parking lot.

  I dropped to the floor, my body shaking. They found you. Somehow, they found you.

  “Call the police now!” The girl took a slow drag off her cigarette.

  “Hide in my room and stay quiet.” I did what she said, scuttling behind her like a crab, dragging my bags behind me.

  “If they offer you any money, I’ll double it,” I whispered. “I swear.”

  “Shut up and stay in there.” She shoved me into her lair with her foot. “I’ll handle this douchebag.”

  The room was a dingy, windowless lounge with a beat-up brown leather couch, a battered coffee table, a mini fridge, and ashtrays everywhere. The only light came from her TV and a lava lamp on a stand in the corner. I crawled under the table.

  Two car doors slammed outside.

  A minute later, the bell over the front entrance rang.

  The girl’s voice called out, “Good morning, gentlemen! Can I help you guys?” One of them barked something in Russian. “Hey, asshole!” she snarled. “You can’t just barge in there!”

  I braced myself for the door to fly open.

  But there was a scream, a loud bang, and then silence.

  After a few seconds, I mustered my courage and peeked out of the room. The girl had disappeared, along with the Russians.

  Breathless and trembling, I crawled out. Pink hair fanned out on the stained linoleum floor. She was out cold, but breathing. Blood trickled from her nose.

  I started to cry. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered to her, over and over. I knocked the phone off the hook and dialed 911. Once I heard it ringing, I grabbed my bags and fled.

  ***

  They were tracking me, but how? All I could think of was some kind of GPS device they’d stuck to my car. I decided to dump the car in the first parking garage I could find.

  I saw a sign for Las Vegas and decided a city was my best bet. More hiding places.

  When I pulled into a tiny gas station outside Death Valley an hour later, I had sweat all the way through my t-shirt. The sun was bright and blinding and the air outside was like a furnace. The granola bar I forced myself to eat tasted like carpet.

 
While I was filling up, I made a phone call. I stood in the baking heat at a filthy pay phone. Piper is in Paris by now. Maybe on a beach in Greece.

  The metal buttons burned my finger as I dialed.

  He didn’t pick up. “Alexander, where are you!” I muttered.

  I used the last of my coins to call Maya. She picked up on the first ring.

  “Lana! Thank God. Did Alexander find your motel yet?”

  “I had to leave. Those Russian guys found me. They…I think they want to kill me, Maya.” I choked back a violent sob. “You have to call him right now. Tell him to stay away from the motel and away from me.”

  “Oh my God. Just go to Barstow! My cousin is expecting you. I’ll tell Alexander—”

  “I can’t. They’re tracking me somehow.” My voice broke. “Maya, they hurt this girl at the motel and it’s my fault.” A trucker coming out of the bathroom zipping his fly gave me a funny look. “Just keep trying him, okay?”

  Maya sounded hysterical. “So where are you gonna go? I’m freaking out, Lana!”

  “Vegas. I’ll call you from there. Don’t tell him where I’m going, do you understand! Do not—”

  The phone went dead before I could finish.

  ***

  I counted at least six Lamborghinis as I cruised past the huge casinos on the Las Vegas Boulevard. The sun hurt my eyes without Ramona’s sunglasses, which I’d left back at the motel. My fingers were swollen and tingly, and the red, angry color in my shoulder was starting to streak down to my elbow. The heat outside was oppressive, and the air conditioner had given up.

  I glanced in my rearview mirror and watched a black Lamborghini change lanes and get right behind me. I couldn’t see the plates. There’s no way it’s them. You have a fever and have barely eaten in 24 hours. Calm down.

  I made a quick right into a huge parking structure, without using my turn signal. I took a ticket from the parking machine.