by M. K. Hobson
“Twenty dollars for the hair,” she said. “That’ll feed you to New Bethel, at least.”
“Your … hair?”
“I’d appreciate a thank-you.” She frowned at him. “You needn’t look so shocked.”
Stanton said nothing. His eyes were trying to negotiate a peace with the suit, with no apparent success. He gestured to it hesitantly.
“And this?”
“I couldn’t ride in a dress,” Emily said. “And you have to admit, it’s a perfect disguise. The Maelstroms will be looking for a man and a woman, not a man and a—”
“Tablecloth?”
Emily crossed her arms and looked at him coldly.
“I know I’m hardly a plate of fashion,” she said, “but one must be ruthless when exceptional odds are arrayed against one. You said it yourself.”
Stanton took a deep breath, then let out a heavy sigh. He took the wad of greenbacks between thumb and forefinger as if they were soiled.
“At least they could have paid you in gold,” he muttered. Then he fell silent, shaking his head. There was a look on his face, a look that was both sad and amused. It was a look that she didn’t quite understand and didn’t particularly like.
“What?” Emily snapped, uncrossing her arms.
He was silent for a long time before he spoke. Then he fished in his pocket and pulled out the ten-dollar coin she had given him. He pressed it into her hand.
“Your hair was very pretty,” he said, finally.
CHAPTER TEN
Basket of Secrets
They wasted no time riding out. Dawn was approaching and they wanted to squeeze whatever advantage they could out of the cover of darkness. They did not, however, ride down to the ferry terminal at the end of Market Street. Instead they rode along Second Street until they reached the silent, jagged wharves. Full-bearded, heavy-bodied men arriving for their day’s work regarded them curiously.
“One of the men at my stables has a brother who’s a stevedore on China Basin,” Stanton explained in a low voice. “He has made arrangements for us to cross tonight on a freight barge.”
They led the horses down an old, rickety-looking pier, where the aforementioned brother hailed Stanton, his subdued call sounding abrupt and out of place in the predawn silence.
They and the horses were loaded onto a flat black scow that brooded on the dark water. Grunting, monosyllabic men pointed them to a cargo hold, where Emily and Stanton were left to make themselves comfortable among piles of burlap bags and rough wooden crates. Romulus and Remus whuffed discontentedly, nosing at the sawdust that covered the floor.
“All right, I’m ready for an explanation,” Emily said. “Somehow you managed to save my money, which means you didn’t pay your stabler. But he was still willing to ask his brother to smuggle us aboard a barge?”
“Oh, I paid him,” Stanton said. “You’ll never guess what he wanted.”
“What?”
“Apparently, there’s a certain young lady who works in a shop up the street from his stables. He asked if I could fashion a charm that might help win her affections.”
Emily squealed with sudden laughter, and despite the tightness of her linen bindings, it felt surprisingly good. “You mean he wanted you, Dreadnought Stanton, the great Warlock, to make him a love charm? So what did you do?”
“I braided together a straw poppet for him to give to her. I imbued it with some general powers of attraction. I was careful not to make it too strong.”
Emily thought of Dag, and sobered abruptly. This unhappy turn of events meant that it would be weeks—at best—before she could return and remove the spell. And what if the worst happened? What if they were captured or waylaid or betrayed again? What if, by some horrible machination, she was never able to return to Lost Pine? Contemplating the sad fate this would mean for Dag, she came to an abrupt understanding of the sad fate it would mean for her. Coldness suffused her. What if the man … or men … who were after them were willing to kill to get the stone?
She swallowed hard, aware of an unpleasant lump in her throat. Stanton would help her. He’d protect her, and …
… and what if he gets hurt, or even killed? There’s another man’s fate on your conscience.
Three times what thou givest returns to thee.
She was hardly aware of her hand plucking at the frayed edge of some sacking, until she saw that it was trembling. Stanton must have noticed it, too, for he clapped her on the shoulder in a particularly manly way.
“Buck up, Elmer,” he said. “Always darkest before the dawn.”
Whether it got darker or not Emily could not confirm, for she drifted off into an uneasy sleep and when she woke, the sky over the misty wharves of Oakland was bruised purple and orange. After retrieving the horses, they rode about an hour into the little town of Walnut Creek, where they stopped to purchase supplies. To Emily’s dismay, she found that her money bought less than she had hoped it would.
“If we ride hard, we can make it back to the Miwok settlement by nightfall,” Stanton said, slicing himself a chunk of dry sausage to eat in the saddle. “I’m sure Komé will give us shelter and allow us to rest the horses.”
Emily nodded. “And I have a few questions to ask her regarding acorns.”
Emily was glad when they finally glimpsed the smoke from the Miwok camp. She wanted nothing more than a place to stretch out and sleep—the cramped dugout now seemed a paradise of luxury, and a bowl of stewed raccoon meat didn’t sound half-bad either.
But as they dismounted and led their horses into the camp, her eager anticipation of food and rest was buried under a sense of gathering dread. Everything was different. There were no children or dogs playing now, no sounds of industry or amusement. A leaden pall seemed to have quenched every hearth fire. The air smelled of tears. No one greeted them; in fact, most stared with dark belligerence. The man in the black felt hat, the one who had cared for Stanton’s horses, spat at Stanton’s boots as he passed.
In front of Komé’s longhouse, they found a large group of women clustered together, slumped. The women rocked, moaning softly; their heads were powdered with fine white ash.
They sat in a loose circle around a jumbled bed of mesquite tinder. On the unlit pyre was laid a small human form, bound tightly in deerskin.
Lawa knelt before the swaddled body, carefully arranging charms, chanting in a broken voice. Emily’s legs trembled, and she had to catch herself against Romulus’ side to keep from falling to her knees.
“Mother,” she whispered, the word passing from her lips involuntarily.
Lawa’s eyes jerked up, glittering.
“How dare you come back here, devil?” She fairly spat the last word.
“I am … I am sorry … we were … not knowing …” Stanton’s stumbling grammar grated on Emily’s ears. But Stanton was not speaking English. He was speaking Miwok.
“Komé is dead?” The words rolled from Emily’s tongue in clear Miwok. Stanton blinked at her, but Lawa’s lips twisted in a bitter mockery of amusement.
“Yes, you can speak now, can’t you? Now that you have taken my mother’s tongue.”
“I … I didn’t take anything,” Emily said.
“You took her spirit,” Lawa keened, her voice echoing. She wrapped her hand around the smooth wood of her mother’s feather-tipped staff, pulled herself up its length. Thus supported, she was able to stand almost upright. “And a body cannot live long without a spirit.”
“The acorn,” Stanton muttered in English. “She must have done the same thing that Haälbeck did with his doors. Metempsychosis. Spirit transfer.”
But Emily didn’t need Stanton to tell her. The terrible truth of it was clear. She stepped forward, into the circle of mourners, coming to stand face-to-face with the girl.
“Why did she do it?” Emily had to force herself to stare into Lawa’s eyes, to remain upright against the hatred in them. “Why didn’t she tell me?”
“Ask her yourself,” Lawa hissed, s
hooting out a hand and striking Emily a hard blow on the chest, where the acorn rested in the silken pouch. “She said nothing to me, her true daughter. She left me with nothing more than a body to burn.”
“I’m sorry,” Emily whispered.
A small, bitter smile twisted Lawa’s lips.
“You will be sorrier, Basket of Secrets,” she said, her voice exultant and despising. “Sorrier than you can possibly imagine.”
Emily and Stanton did not speak for a long time after they rode out of the Miwok camp. They rode in silence as sunset gilded the flanks of the high, jagged Sierra and the waning half-smile of the moon crept slowly up the northern horizon. As night gathered, Stanton rode a little ahead, kindling a magical brand to light the way. She heard him whistling absently to himself.
After midnight they stopped in a sheltered copse well away from the main road. It was cold, and Emily sorely missed her buffalo coat. It wasn’t safe to light a fire, so all she could do was wrap her arms around her knees and shiver.
“Here.” Stanton dug into his saddlebag. He unscrewed the top from a small silver flask and handed it to her. Sniffing it, she discovered it contained whiskey.
“Strictly medicinal,” Stanton said. “It will help keep the chill off.”
Emily lifted the bottle to her lips and took a drink. It burned like hell going down, but it was a better class of spirit than she’d tasted before. It warmed her from the inside out and blunted the edge of her weariness.
“Not too much.” Stanton took the flask from her when she went to raise it again. “Medicinal, remember?”
He tipped the flask to his own lips, then returned it to the saddlebag. Then, taking one of the horse blankets, he came to sit down next to her, his side pressing against hers. He wrapped the blanket around them both. She basked in his warmth, ignoring the fact that the horse blanket smelled, without a doubt, far worse than the buffalo coat ever had.
“Not exactly proper,” he said. “But propriety won’t do us much good if we freeze to death.”
Emily suddenly remembered Mrs. Lyman’s words about not drinking anything Stanton gave her. And Mrs. Lyman certainly wouldn’t have approved of Emily cozying up under a horse blanket with him. Emily blushed at the thought. She was suddenly very aware of the feeling of his body against hers. It wasn’t an unpleasant feeling. All in all, more pleasant than she would have expected. She put her arm through his and curled closer. Just to avoid freezing to death.
Stanton cleared his throat, but made no move to remove her arm from his. “Well. Let’s review. You are in possession of an acorn into which a Miwok holy woman has transferred her spirit. You’ve also gained a complete mastery of the Miwok language, which almost certainly is not coincidental.”
“Indeed, it is one useful little nut,” Emily said. The whiskey and Stanton’s warmth were already working in tandem, making her head heavy with sleep. Her hand drifted to the silk pouch around her neck, to touch the hardness of the acorn there. How could something as large as a soul be encompassed in such an infinitesimal place? “Do you really think that Komé’s spirit is … here? With us?”
“I don’t think Lawa was being metaphorical,” Stanton said, after some consideration.
“But she was alive when we left,” Emily said.
“Bodies and souls are surprisingly autonomous things,” Stanton said. “Some men can live a long and healthy life without any soul at all.”
Emily pondered this, then discarded it as not particularly pertinent.
“How long can she stay in there?” Emily said.
“The acorn is alive,” Stanton said. “The tiniest spark of life, but life nonetheless. She can live as long as the acorn lives. A few months, a year perhaps. But the human spirit, especially the spirit of a powerful practitioner like Komé, is far too large to fit inside an acorn for long.”
“And then what?”
“Then she dies,” Stanton said.
“But couldn’t she go to another acorn?” Emily asked. “Or into a flower or a tree or something?”
“She could,” Stanton said, “but it is dangerous magic. Repeated metempsychosis results in terrible degradation, both intellectual and moral. The more times a spirit is transferred between vessels, the more of itself it loses.”
Emily stared at him blankly. He rubbed a thoughtful thumb against his lower lip and tried again.
“Once a spirit is emancipated from the body to which it was originally bound, it loses much of its sense of … well, of responsibility, I suppose. The commonplace morals and ethics that guide us in our human lives become meaningless. In the most extreme cases, an emancipated spirit may lose all sense of right and wrong and become a Manipulator.”
“A what?”
“A Manipulator is an emancipated spirit that transfers itself from body to body, heedless of the damage it causes to the vessels it inhabits. They are the worst kind of criminals. They are, thankfully, quite rare.”
“So Komé is stuck in an acorn,” Emily said, “because leaving it could cause her to lose her humanity?”
“Close enough,” Stanton said.
Emily sighed. “Since we’ve dispensed with propriety for the moment, why don’t you dig that whiskey back out?” If her head was going to be addled anyway, at least the addling could be of a more pleasant variety.
“I don’t think we’ve dispensed with propriety quite that far.” Stanton looked down at her. “Sleep will help more. And you might be able to do that more comfortably if you put your head on my shoulder.”
Emily doubted the offer would be extended twice, so she laid her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes.
“Sangrimancers willing to kill us to get the stone,” she said. “Indian holy women willing to die for it. I’m beginning to think, Mr. Stanton, that this stupid mineral is more important than either of us guessed.”
“I believe you’re right, Miss Edwards.” Stanton leaned his head back against the tree and tilted his hat down over his brow. But he did not close his eyes, not until long after.
When Emily woke again, the first thing she was aware of was how cold she was. Her cheek was pillowed against the rough horse blanket. Stanton was sitting on a broad shelf of granite a little ways off.
He had put handfuls of grain into his hat and was watching Romulus and Remus nose each other aside trying to get at it. She had never imagined he could look so sad. She did not move, afraid of making the moment worse by intruding on it.
But then his gaze stole over to where she lay. When he saw that she was awake, his face hardened with familiar guard.
“Good morning,” he said briskly. “Sleep well?”
“I dreamed about acorns and sangrimancers all night,” Emily yawned, as if she’d just opened her eyes. She stretched her stiff muscles. “I rather wish you’d let me have the whiskey instead.”
“Before we get on the road, I want to try something. I want to try to contact Komé.” He paused. “We’ll conduct a séance.”
“We can’t do a séance,” Emily said. “The stone won’t let us.”
“A séance is very small magic, and we know that the stone is less likely to absorb small magic. Furthermore, Komé seems to have the ability to mitigate the stone’s interference—after all, she sent you the vision about Caul and Mrs. Quincy. If we reach out, maybe she’ll reach back.”
Emily was silent. There were so many questions she wanted answers to, it was worth a try. Wiping her hands on the back of her trousers, she came to sit across from Stanton, who shifted to make space.
“I’ve never done a séance before,” Emily said.
“And I don’t suppose you’ve ever done any power work either …” He caught himself and softened his tone. “Have you?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Well, it’s simple. Put your hands over mine, without touching.” He extended his hands toward her palm-side up. Emily let her fingertips hover a few inches above his, felt the warmth radiating up from his skin. “The aim is to run t
he power in a circuit between your hands and mine.”
“Oh, healing hands!” Emily said. “We used healing hands to knit broken bones and such.”
Stanton nodded. “But instead of directing your will to knit a broken bone, concentrate on your memories of Komé … the way she looked, the way she moved. Concentrate on making her absolutely real in your mind.”
“All right,” Emily said. She remembered Komé’s small plump body, her face like a dried apple, the tattoos on her chin, her luminous sparkling eyes.
A glow started around Stanton’s fingers, and the stone in her hand tingled with warmth. And almost instantly, Emily could hear the Maien’s cracking-old voice, chanting low and cadent.
Emotion washed over her. Flashing memories of Komé’s life splashed on her skin like warm raindrops, each drop a moment of the woman’s existence. Smoke and mud, laughing children, laboring women. Death and anger, happiness and despair. And love. Love for the broken child whose feet had been set on such a difficult path. Her daughter. Emily and Komé, each a reflection of the other—a daughter who had lost a mother, and a mother who had lost a daughter. Their sadnesses interlocked as precisely as two halves of a broken bowl.
Releasing a trembling thread of breath, closing her eyes, Emily surrendered herself to the washing sounds of distant song. Fingers of power threaded around her body, trickling over her skin. She felt as if she were floating, warm breezes from below buoying her up.
In the center of her mind Emily saw the form of the Maien, kneeling, radiant. The old woman had something in her arms, and she was wrestling with it. Sometimes it looked like a baby, sometimes like a wildcat. The Maien crooned to it soothingly, but still it struggled ferociously against her.
“Komé?” Emily whispered.
The Maien’s head came up quickly, her eyes black as pitch. And Emily suddenly saw the thing she was holding. It was a huge ball of blackness, writhing and foul, bubbling and boiling and churning. It wanted to swallow her, Emily realized with horror. She could not hold it for long …