The Hummingbird's Cage

by Tamara Dietrich

  He turned and left the barn, making for the pasture. I followed, and we both stared at the three horses grazing there.

  Three horses. Not four.

  Tse—the big roan, Rock, Laurel’s horse—was gone.

  “She couldn’t have,” I said.

  “She knows well enough how to do it,” said Olin. “It’d take some effort for a mite like her, but she could do it.”

  Relief pulsed through me till I thought my head would burst. I tried to laugh but I huffed instead, catching my breath.

  So Laurel hadn’t been kidnapped after all. Jim hadn’t snuck in while my guard was down and snatched her up.

  “But why?” I said. “And where?”

  Once more I scanned both ends of the valley, east and west. Then north at the foothills darkening under the setting sun, this time looking for a rider.

  But Olin was peering up.

  Up at the Mountain.

  “I figure,” he said, “she went a-lookin’ for that little dog of hers.”

  * * *

  Simon arrived by the time we’d saddled the three remaining horses, but supper would have to wait. It was decided Jessie would stay behind in case Laurel came home on her own. Simon would take Yas.

  The three of us made for town at a canter, pulling up once we hit the asphalt. There we could see another rider waiting in front of the general store, watching us approach. It was Faro LaGow on a big Appaloosa.

  “Heard your little gal went up the Mountain,” he told me as we pulled up. “Figured to help out.”

  I didn’t ask how he’d heard—he was one more pair of eyes on a good horse, and a cold night was falling fast.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  At the far end of town where the main road and the secondary splintered off, we stopped to carve out a plan. While the men briskly sorted it out, I glared up at the Mountain, impatient to be off.

  This time there was none of the old, fearful reluctance. Its magnetic pull was just as sharp, but this time I wasn’t resisting it. This landmass was a barrier between me and my daughter, and as far as I was concerned it had lured her there under false pretenses. Played on her affection for a dog that was long gone. This time I couldn’t assail it soon enough.

  It was decided that Olin and Faro would take the steeper main road that switchbacked up the side, while Simon and I took the narrower one that rounded it at a lower pitch and led to his cabin and beyond. I knew both routes also had any number of trails leading off into the forest.

  I half expected someone to raise an objection about the futility of searching in the dark, especially with no clear sense of where to start and so much ground to cover. I thought someone might even suggest waiting to fetch some hunting dogs to try to sniff out a proper trail. If I’d been in my right mind, I might have suggested such a thing myself.

  Olin wheeled Kilchii around to fall in beside me. His slight smile was meant to be comforting.

  “Young’uns have lit out on their own before, up the Mountain or down the valley,” he said. “And we always find ’em safe and sound. We’ll find your girl, too.”

  There was a choking lump snagged in my throat. I nodded.

  Then Olin and Faro trotted off to the left without a backward glance, disappearing into the gloom and the first bend in the road.

  I turned to Simon, who was watching me with sympathy.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  Again, all I could do was nod, flick the reins and kick off.

  * * *

  Simon rode ahead where I could barely make him out in the darkness. But I could hear him plainly enough, calling Laurel’s name. I called, too, our voices carrying into the dim woods on either side of us. Now and then I’d hear a dry rustle in the distance or the call of some creature or other, but never Laurel’s voice calling back.

  After an hour or so, Simon pulled up and handed me a canteen. It was coffee, still hot. He offered a sandwich Jessie had packed, but I had no appetite. Laurel was out there somewhere. Likely hungry and scared. Had she taken her jacket with her? Her mittens? Had she even thought that far ahead? Or had she just figured to point Tse in the general direction of that barking dog and be back with Tinkerbell in time for supper?

  “How cold is it expected to get tonight?” I asked.

  Simon was tucking his canteen back in his saddlebag. “Try not to worry.”

  “Freezing?” I continued, ignoring him. “Even if it doesn’t drop that far, hypothermia can set in well above freezing.”

  I ran a guilty gloved hand down the arm of my warm sheepskin coat. The moon was slipping out from behind a bank of clouds; it was still a few days from full but bright enough now that I could make out my breaths hitting the chilly air in puffs.

  I heard a voice then, calling from farther up the road. But deep—the voice of a man, not a child. “Hello up ahead!”

  Simon and I turned as one toward the sound. “Hello!” Simon shouted in return.

  Out of the darkness appeared two riders at a hard trot. They were nearly upon us before I recognized them—Reuben and his father, Morgan Begay.

  They reined in as they reached us. They didn’t offer pleasantries or explanations about how they, too, had joined the search.

  “Nothing on the road this side,” Begay said in his clipped voice. “We’ll double back. Hit some trails.”

  Simon nodded. “We’ll take some trails, too. She’s headed up—we know that.”

  “She kept hearing a barking dog,” I said to Begay. “Any idea where it might be coming from?”

  Begay shrugged. “Hard to tell. Lots of dogs here.”

  “You find her, fire off three shots,” Simon advised him. “And we’ll come fetch her.”

  He said it as casually as if they were talking about a child who’d wandered off in a supermarket: You find her in aisle three, give a holler.

  “She won’t be lost long,” Reuben said gently, watching me. “Tse has a mother spirit.”

  A mother spirit? What on earth did that mean? That made as much sense as Simon telling me to “try not to worry.”

  I wanted to light into both of them, kicking and punching. When your daughter runs off God knows where into the freezing cold, lost and alone, you try not to worry.

  We divided again, each pair returning the way we’d come. Except this time we didn’t go far before Simon pulled up beside the barrel-sized trunk of a nearly leafless oak tree. It stood next to a narrow path I hadn’t noticed the first time we passed.

  “Started out as a deer track,” Simon explained. “Hunters use it mostly.”

  My heart dropped.

  “We must have passed dozens of these,” I said. “We don’t have time to check them all.”

  “Farther up the Mountain, a lot of them join together, like a big tangle,” he said reassuringly. “But the layout makes sense, once you know what you’re dealing with. And I’ve been here awhile. I know what we’re dealing with.”

  The track cut up the Mountain at a steep, snaking incline—so steep in places that Nastas and Yas had to strain to climb as we stood in the stirrups, leaning forward for balance.

  On either side, trees towered over us, many of them bare and black as woodcuts, others shaggy pines; together with the clouds snuffing out the moon, they made it impossible to see far in any direction. Now and then we’d stop and call, then keep still for a response, ears pricked, the horses under us panting from their effort in the thin air. Morro already sat at high altitude—more than a mile high. This mountain was taking us higher still.

  Finally we stopped to call out again, and this time I heard something in the distance.

  Not a voice. Not a human voice, anyway.

  But a whinny.

  I held my breath and waved for silence.

  There it was again.

  “Over there!” I said excitedly. />
  “I heard it,” said Simon. “Wait here. I’ll check it out.”

  “Like hell,” I said, wheeling Nastas toward the sound and kicking off.

  The forest was thick, and Nastas had to maneuver carefully, picking his way on slim legs through a natural obstacle course of dead tree trunks toppled at weird angles, over brush and limbs and large rocks. I could hear Simon and Yas close behind. But Yas had surer footing in rough terrain and soon lunged around us, Simon urging him on. I tried not to think Simon was worried about what I might find if I got to the source of the whinnying first.

  But soon there it was, in a clearing some fifty yards off.

  It was Tse.

  Riderless.

  Her saddle was empty and slightly askew, as if it hadn’t been cinched tight enough; the reins hung loose from the bridle. She stamped and whinnied again as we neared.

  Simon was well in front then, and I could hear him murmuring, “Whoa, girl,” as he got to her and reached from Yas’s back to gather up the reins.

  It was then that Tse—gentle Tse—reared up, lashing out with her hooves. It startled Yas, who reared up, too, then landed and bucked.

  It wasn’t a hard buck, but it caught Simon just as he was leaning to the side, off-balance, and pitched him to the ground. He landed with a cry of pain.

  I dismounted and ran toward him. He waved me off.

  “Get the horse,” he said with a gasp.

  I saw that Yas had turned to launch himself back through the brush, leaping and hurdling toward the track we’d just come from. Fleeing faster than I could possibly manage, even on Nastas.

  “No!” Simon cried. “Get Tse!”

  I turned in confusion toward Tse, who wasn’t hurdling headlong anywhere, but standing almost motionless at the edge of the clearing. She appeared to be watching me.

  I approached carefully, murmuring, unsure if she would rear up again. But this time she was her familiar gentle self. I took the reins and led her back toward Simon, who had propped himself up to a sitting position but seemed unable or unwilling to get up. I tied Tse’s reins around a low branch and went to him.

  “It’s my leg,” he said as I knelt down. “Twisted a bit. Not broken, though.”

  “Can you stand?”

  “We can try,” he said.

  “Here—put your arm around me.”

  He slung one arm around my shoulders and pushed off with the other, and together we managed to get him back on his feet.

  “Son of a—” he muttered with a grimace.

  “Can you put any weight on it?”

  “Not without doing some serious damage to your eardrums,” he said.

  “Hang on.”

  I left him balancing on his one good leg to search the ground for a branch straight and strong enough to bear his weight. When I found one, I helped him limp to a seat on a nearby boulder.

  “Wait here,” I told him.

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  I hitched a deep breath and walked deliberately to the edge of the clearing, nearest the spot we’d first seen Tse. I scanned the dark undergrowth for a flash of color, of pale skin glowing in the shank of tepid moonlight. Then I began to call Laurel’s name.

  I circled the clearing as I scanned and called. I heard nothing in return. When I ventured deeper into the woods, Simon called me back.

  “You won’t see your hand in front of your face in there,” he said. “You’ll only get lost. Then we’ll need two search parties.”

  “You can’t ride,” I said. “And I can’t just stay here.”

  He patted a spot beside him on the boulder. “Sit down,” he said. “Let’s think this through.”

  Even thinking seemed like a luxury of time I couldn’t afford.

  “I can’t sit,” I said, gazing almost longingly at the dark woods. “I have to do something.”

  “Then get me some coffee. Jessie packed some in your kit.”

  I stared at him, mutinous.

  “Please,” he said firmly.

  Nastas was still under a tree branch I’d hitched him to, chewing on his bit. I dug around in the saddlebag and pulled out a thermos. I returned and tossed it to Simon.

  “You can’t understand,” I told him as he caught it. “You’ve never had a child.”

  “True enough,” he said.

  “You can’t—” I stopped short.

  He couldn’t possibly know—the guilt, the loaded gun with a hair trigger that always seemed trained on your daughter. And all you could do was try to keep her, if not absolutely safe, at least blissfully ignorant.

  “I failed her enough,” I said. “I won’t fail her this time.”

  “I believe you.”

  “This . . . Mountain can’t have her.”

  Simon gave a slight smile. “You talk about it like it’s alive.”

  “I know—it’s crazy.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “How rich,” I said, suddenly deflated. “If all that time with Jim she never got a scratch, but a few months alone with her mother she ends up—”

  “Here’s an idea,” Simon said abruptly. “Take Tse and give her her head. Let her go wherever she wants. There’s a chance she’ll go back to where she left Laurel.”

  “Simon, there’s an even better chance she’ll head right back to the warm barn. Why would she take me to Laurel?”

  “You might ask her to.”

  I shot him an angry look, expecting he was making light of an unspeakable situation. But even in the thin moonlight I could see he was dead serious.

  * * *

  Tse stood quietly while I readjusted the loose saddle and tightened the cinch. I lowered the stirrups to fit me. I leaned in close to where Tse could hear, but Simon, still seated on the boulder, could not.

  “Come on, girl,” I whispered. “Take me to Laurel.”

  I mounted up.

  “I’ll be back,” I called to Simon.

  “I’ll be here,” he said.

  * * *

  The climb began in earnest as Tse—the reins slack, no guidance from me—picked her own path up the Mountain. There were moments when, just as Simon had said, I could barely see my hand in front of my face. But Tse seemed to move as if she were on a mission.

  As the way grew steeper, the trees began to thin out. They were mostly pine by then, and aspens with their slim white trunks and quavering yellow leaves. A half hour or more we climbed, till I was standing almost steadily in the stirrups and Tse was grunting from the effort. Soon her hooves began to slide out from under her.

  I dismounted and led her to a young aspen, knotting the reins about its banded, chalky trunk. I patted her neck.

  “I’ll take it from here, old girl,” I said.

  Before I left, I took the signal pistol from the saddlebag and slipped it into my pocket. I had no idea where I was headed, only that Tse had tried to get me to some fixed point on the Mountain. She hadn’t tacked back and forth to make the way easier. She hadn’t turned and headed for the warm barn. She’d plowed on with what looked like purpose. And so would I.

  The snowpack didn’t start till much higher on the peak, but the air already felt glacial. I was panting from the climb, and my lungs felt chilled, too. The effect wasn’t debilitating, but oddly bracing. On the ground, thin patches of snow glistened almost preternaturally bright in the moonlight.

  What had felt before, from far below in the valley, like the magnetic tug of the Mountain had become at this altitude not just a pull, but also a push. As if now there were also a wind at my back, like an unseen hand.

  But this time, I wasn’t resisting. Not a whit. Not if it might get me closer to Laurel.

  Suddenly I caught a flash of movement out of the corner of my eye. Something small and nimble darting through the trees. I turned toward the movement, an
d it was gone.

  I held my breath and listened, and heard nothing but the rasp of aspen leaves.

  Still, I’d seen something. I was sure of it.

  I changed direction, heading toward the movement. It hadn’t looked big enough to be a seven-year-old child, but then again, I hadn’t caught a good, full-on look. And if it was a wild nocturnal creature, I expected to either flush it out or make it scurry off.

  “Laurel?” I called tentatively, scanning the woods as I moved.

  No response.

  “Laurel!” I shouted, then paused, listening harder.

  Snap.

  I swiveled at the sound, and there it was again to my right, vanishing behind a giant ponderosa pine—a flash of what looked like fur. Four legs. A tail. It might have been a large raccoon, but for what looked like patches of white on its body. White fur, maybe. Or snow crusted to the animal’s hide.

  Either way, I could feel the hair bristle on the back of my neck.

  As I stepped toward the pine, I stripped off my gloves and felt for the signal pistol in my pocket. I drew it out and switched off the safety.

  The pine trunk was so big it would have taken two of me to wrap my arms around it. Its scaly bark was the color of oxblood in the dark and had that familiar faint scent of vanilla.

  I rounded it carefully, eyes pitched toward the ground.

  But there was nothing on the other side of the tree trunk. Nothing but a thin, crusty patch of snow. I knelt and looked closer. The snow was unbroken. No paw prints.

  I glanced around. I had the uncanny sensation I was being led somewhere. Lured.

  A copse of aspen trees, white and reedy as ghosts in the moonlight, lay up ahead, snow gleaming at their deep roots.

  And there it was again among the trunks. A flash. White and dark together, in a quick, sylphlike movement.

  Then it was gone.

  My heart began to race, and it had nothing to do with the altitude or the thin air or the cold. Even under my wool sweater and my warm coat, the skin on my forearms was contracting painfully. My palms were so slippery with sweat, I had to rub my gun hand against my jeans to get a dry grip.

  I knew—somehow I knew—there was something in those trees that I didn’t want to see.