“Where are you going?” Sally asked.
Buck kept walking, but Si stopped. “We’ll be up at the Clingman’s Dome for a few days.”
“You’re seeing Mother Salagi?” Sally asked curiously.
“Carolyn’s in charge,” Buck said. “She’s the oldest.”
“What about Mister Nel?” Rosemary asked.
“Leave Nel be,” Buck grunted over his shoulder as he continued toward the trail. “He’s got tonics to make to trade for a new wagon.”
Si began following him. “Don’t cause any trouble.”
“We don’t cause trouble,” Sally said with a huff.
“Don’t let Noah and George cause trouble,” Si said. “We’ll be back within the week.”
Sally watched them go. As she returned to the garden, her eyes followed a circle around the yard. All the children were busy with tasks: Felice and Naomi hanging up laundry, Dale and Adam cleaning out the chicken coop, Carolyn boiling lye and bear fat in a big cauldron for soap, Preston and George carrying in wood to the kitchen stove and the fireplaces.
“Why’s Si and Buck always thinking we’re going to make trouble when they’re away?” Sally grumbled to Rosemary.
“We can handle things without them, can’t we?” Rosemary said, scattering seeds over the damp earth.
Sally brought her hoe back to the soil with a quick swipe. “They keep us too busy to do anything we want to do.”
Rosemary laughed. “You just want to get back to your room so you can read that book from your pa.”
Sally frowned as she brought the hoe down again and again.
When supper was over and the dishes were washed, Sally sprinted up to her corner of the loft and lit a candle.
She set the candle on the windowsill and pulled her chair close to it. With The Incunabula of Wandering in her lap, she opened the book and the page fell to the Verse of the Lost. She had not had a chance to read it again since Ray had left. The poem mentioned the Elemental Rose, whatever that was. It would not normally have made her curious. The Incunabula was filled with strange references: the Haymaker’s Flute, the Toninyan, Marse Turnage’s Due, and all manner of bizarre names.
But the Elemental Rose. Why had Father needed it? Sally tilted the book to the candlelight and began reading it once more:
When the storms of winter billow
at the coming of the night,
Memories shall be harvested
like the fruits of day’s long light.
Lost is the potent passage.
Gone the stick of yew.
Forsaken is the wanderer’s compass,
until spring returns anew.
Sealed in gold or silver vessels,
yea the taken goes,
Until the placing of the four
creates the elemental rose.
But even restoration might
in time extract a cost,
As the vessel can be made
a beacon for the lost.
In the margin, Sally saw her father’s scrawling script. The lost will be restored. She looked up at the cobweb-cornered ceiling, thinking hard.
What was lost? she wondered. Her eyes drew up to the fifth line. “Lost is the potent passage.”
She knew vocabulary well enough, and potent meant “powerful.” What’s a “potent passage” mean? She blinked hard with the inkling of an idea forming.
A passage. Like a path someone follows. Like the Rambler path. Potent passage. Yes, she thought. Being a Rambler is like following a path of power! What if the lines were like this, some hidden meaning if she could just unravel the words?
She pulled the book closer, her eyes boring into the first two lines. “Storms of winter. Coming of night.” She said the lines over and over under her breath. Winter storms sounded bad, she thought. And night could be a scary time.
She kept reading. “Memories shall be harvested….” Harvested, she thought. “Harvested” was like collecting crops. But harvest also meant to take something away, didn’t it?
The meaning came to her, like several pieces in a puzzle suddenly taking shape. Ray had said that their father’s memory of his Rambler powers had been taken from him. Harvested. And the attack by the Hoarhound that had severed his hand, that had to be scary, something awful like a winter storm striking at night.
And wasn’t the Hound what caused her father to lose his Rambler powers, what had kept him from returning to her and Ray? He had lost his “potent passage.”
She read once more the sixth and seventh lines. She had no idea what the poem meant by a stick of yew, but “forsaking the wanderer’s compass” … A compass guides you. Her father’s Rambler powers guided him. So maybe she didn’t need to figure out what the stick of yew meant. They all were just saying basically the same thing. They were talking about the Rambler’s powers being taken away.
She was getting it!
Sally read the ninth and tenth lines. “Vessels,” she murmured. That’s like a cup or something, she decided. She wasn’t sure what it meant by gold and silver, or placing four of something, but “the taken,” that had to mean the lost powers again. “Sealed,” she mused. “Sealed in gold or silver vessels….”
Her father’s golden rabbit’s foot.
Nel’s silver fox paw.
Were they vessels? she wondered. Did they hold something? But of course they did. Her father’s powers. What if his powers were trapped in the golden rabbit’s foot she was now keeping safe for Ray?
Was she understanding this right? If she placed these four things—whatever they were—it would create the Elemental Rose. And the Elemental Rose could restore the lost … the lost Rambler powers. Was this what the poem was saying? Could his powers be restored?
She leaped up from her chair, pacing before the candle with the Incunabula in her hands.
She scanned the last lines. She did not know what it meant by restoration exacting a cost. Maybe there was something you had to give up to make the Elemental Rose. But the final line: As the vessel can be made a beacon for the lost.
Yes, the vessel, her father’s hand. It had been a beacon for Ray. It had led him to her father. Maybe the cost was losing the lodestone’s powers. Either way, she was certain now. The Verse of the Lost was talking about her father losing his powers. And for that matter, Nel’s powers as well …
She gasped as she lowered the Incunabula.
If Nel had his leg back, his powers would be returned. If he was a Rambler again, he could cross into the Gloaming. He could destroy the Machine. Ray could come back, and he wouldn’t be in any danger from the Darkness in Kansas. Maybe then Nel could help find their father.
Voices echoed from the stairs as the children came up, calling out “Good night” to Nel. Sally knelt to push the Incunabula under her bed.
“Mind if I read?” Rosemary said, pulling back the covers and climbing over with a book of fairy tales.
“No,” Sally said, climbing into the cold linens beside her.
Sally lay back, staring at the ceiling until Rosemary fell asleep. She took the book from Rosemary’s chest and leaned over to blow out the candle.
She lay in the dark thinking. She could help Nel. But she was missing the biggest piece to this puzzle. What was the Elemental Rose?
The weather continued to warm, and with it, the list of spring chores grew. Carolyn issued Sally—along with the other Shuckstack children—a busy schedule of tasks that would undoubtedly fill the day from dawn until after sundown. Patching the garden baskets. Inventorying the remaining potatoes, squash, and yams in the root cellar. Bringing out the rugs to beat the dust from them with brooms.
“What’s got you in a rumple?” Rosemary asked, as she and Sally carried a heavy rug back up the stairs into the lodge.
Sally blinked, her thoughts returning to their chore. She realized Rosemary had been talking for some time as they whacked at the rug, but Sally hadn’t heard a word she’d said.
“Nothing,” Sally said. “Just thinking i
s all.”
She hardly slept that night. Over in her corner of the loft, she sat up reading until long after the other children were asleep. She searched through every passage on flowers in the Incunabula, desperate to find something on the Elemental Rose. But when the candle melted down and flickered out, she had found nothing in the tome on roses of any sort. She crawled under the quilt beside Rosemary and stared up at the dark, her mind awhirl.
The following morning after breakfast as the children began scattering from the front porch for their daily chores, Carolyn said, “Rosemary and Sally, we need a new garden plot tilled.”
Sally’s shoulders sank. “We just got the seeds all planted in the other one. We’ll have more vegetables than we can possibly ever eat.”
Carolyn tied her bonnet under her chin, her cheeks already turning brown from the days spent outdoors again. “Not one for vegetables. We need an herb garden. For Nel’s tonics. I think it’ll save a lot of time in the end if we grow most of the herbs here rather than going out on foraging expeditions.”
Sally opened her mouth to complain, but Rosemary grabbed her arm. “Where should we dig it?”
Carolyn started down the stairs from the front porch. “On the south side of the barn. That way it’ll get the best sunlight.”
Sally slumped down the stairs after Rosemary, heading for the barn. “When’s a person have time to rest,” Sally grumbled.
“If you didn’t stay up all night reading, you wouldn’t be so crabby.” Rosemary smirked.
Sally rolled her eyes as she followed her inside the barn. They took down a pair of hoes and walked back out into the yard. “So which side is the south?” Sally asked.
Rosemary looked up at the sky, to where the sun was rising over the ridge beyond the millpond. She scratched a cross in the hard dirt with the edge of the hoe’s blade. Kneeling down, she touched a finger to one of the points. “Well, that way’s east,” Rosemary said, making a little E with her fingertip.
Sally’s eyes bore down at the dirt drawing. She gave a little gasp.
Rosemary marked the other points of the compass to indicate north, south, and west. She stood again, letting her eyes extend from the S to the barn. She pointed. “I guess that way’s south.”
Sally dropped her hoe and ran for the stairs leading up to the lodge.
“Where are you going?” Rosemary called. “What’s the matter, Sally?”
Sally was through the door. A compass! As Rosemary had drawn it in the dirt, understanding burst in Sally’s mind.
She took the steps up to the loft two at a time. Running past the neatly made beds, she fell to the floor at her corner of the room and yanked the Incunabula out from under the bed.
The Elemental Rose. It wasn’t a flower at all.
She flipped through the pages furiously, stopping on some to run a finger down the lines before leafing further and further through the book. At last she found the page, the page she had seen many times but never considered long enough to figure out what purpose the diagram served.
“A compass rose!” she gasped. She set the book open on the floor and traced a finger to each of the points: north, south, east, and west. They corresponded to one of four colors. And written below the colors were four other words:
Water, earth, air, and fire. The four elements.
A note next to it, written in her father’s hand, said: Four objects are needed for the ER. Each is a stead for the four. Each brings the powers of the four into one when they are in their proper place.
ER. Her father had written ER. She was certain now this was the Elemental Rose. But what were the four objects? She scowled in frustration. The Incunabula could be so confusing and unhelpful sometimes!
She flipped back to the Verse of the Lost and read it once more. Yes, the tenth line said that placing the four objects would make the Elemental Rose.
But how was she to use the Elemental Rose if she didn’t know what the four objects were?
The floorboards creaked at the steps, and Sally turned around.
“What in the world are you doing up here?” Rosemary asked. “If Carolyn finds out—”
“Please, Rosemary,” Sally pleaded. “Just a few minutes more.”
Rosemary marched across the room and scowled as she saw the Incunabula open on the floor. “That book is an obsession with you, Sally. Gracious sakes, we’ve got work to do! It’s bad enough you’re tired and grumpy from staying up all night reading it, but now you’re shirking your chores to sneak away up here—”
“Okay! Okay,” Sally snapped, shoving the Incunabula back under her bed and stomping to her feet. “You just don’t understand what I’m trying to figure out.”
“And I don’t really care either,” Rosemary said. “Now, come on before Carolyn gets after us.”
Rosemary kept an irritable silence as the two girls began digging away the grass and weeds to clear the plot for the herb garden. Sally visualized the drawing of the Elemental Rose as she worked. What could the four objects be?
Sure, earth could be black and fire yellow, but how could air be red or water white? Well, ice was white. That could be the object for north. She supposed the sky turned red at sunset and sunrise, but that wasn’t an object like dirt or flame or ice that she could use.
At that moment, Nel’s voice carried across the yard as he spoke to Carolyn and Oliver. Sally set her hoe against the side of the barn.
“Where are you going?” Rosemary asked.
“I’ll be right back,” Sally said, ignoring Rosemary’s frown.
She jogged over to Nel.
“… Mattias and Dmitry are still out hunting,” Carolyn was saying. “But they should be back today or tomorrow.”
“Very good,” Nel said. He smiled as he spotted Sally. “How are you today, my dear?”
Sally nodded. “Good.” She watched as Carolyn and Oliver picked back up the baskets of cabbages and potatoes. Sally waited until they were nearly to the cellar kitchen door before she said, “Mister Nel, there was a Cherokee man who was at your party.”
“Baxter Lowell,” Nel said, taking out his pipe to light.
“He said he knew Father,” Sally said. “He said something about his uncle helping Father figure out what the Elemental Rose was.”
“Hum,” Nel murmured as he shook out the match and drew on his briarwood pipe.
“Do you know what the Elemental Rose is?” Sally asked tentatively.
“Can’t say that I do, my dear,” Nel replied. “Why do you ask?”
“Just something I found in the Incunabula,” Sally said. “I looked it up after the party and I’m trying to figure out how to make the Elemental Rose.”
“What does it do?” Nel asked.
“Sally!” Rosemary called, holding up Sally’s hoe.
Sally looked back at Nel. “Can I show you what it says? It will only take a moment and then I’ll get back to my chores.”
Nel cupped a hand to his mouth and called, “Rosemary, Sally will resume her onuses with you momentarily.” He gestured with the pipe to the lodge. “Grab the book and meet me in my workshop.”
Sally smiled. “Thank you, Mister Nel.” She ran for the front steps.
In a few minutes, she was down in Nel’s room with the Incunabula beneath her arm. She could hear Carolyn, Oliver, and Felice working on lunch in the cellar kitchen across the hallway. Bottles and containers with Nel’s assorted roots, powders, and herbs were spread out across his table, and he cleared a little space on one end for her to put down the book.
Sally flipped through the Incunabula until she reached the page with the drawing of the curious compass. “It’s a sort of spell, I think. Four colors. Four objects.”
Nel bent over the book, inspecting the drawing.
Sally pointed to the side of the page. “And see here, my father’s note. ‘Four objects are needed for the ER. Each is a stead for the four. Each brings the powers of the four into one when they are in their proper place.’ Do you know what the four
objects would be?”
Nel chewed on the end of his pipe before saying, “Well, the note doesn’t give us much to go on, does it?”
“I think each object has to be a certain color and be made of the element listed. Like the north point. It has to be something made of water and white. Ice, maybe?”
Nel shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. Look what the note says. ‘Each is a stead for the four.’”
“What’s a stead?”
“A representative. I see this all the time in hoodoo lore. It’s an object that stands in for another but isn’t actually that object. See, that white object represents water, but as a stead. That means it’s not actually water, but some object that symbolizes water.”
“So what could it be?” Sally asked.
“You’ve got me,” Nel said with a shrug. He picked the book up, reading the compass drawing again. “Hum … Very interesting. It’s certainly a puzzle.”
“I really need to figure it out!” Sally urged.
Nel’s eyebrows leaped up. “But why?”
Sally hesitated. Should she tell Nel? Surely he would want to have his powers back. But what if he didn’t, what if he tried to stop her from making the Elemental Rose?
“It’s just … well, because of my father … I think the Elemental Rose can help find him.” Sally felt this was in fact true, even if she was leaving out a few steps in her reasoning.
Nel set down the Incunabula, his wooly eyebrows lowered thoughtfully.
Sally met his gaze with pleading eyes. “Can you help, Mister Nel? Do you think you could help figure it out?”
Nel turned and went to a cupboard. Opening the little doors, he rummaged inside until he brought out a tin. “It occurs I might have figured out the south point on the Elemental Rose,” Nel said, still flexing his brow curiously at Sally.
“What is it?” Sally asked.
“You need a yellow object representing fire.” Nel pried the top of the tin open with a fingernail.
The Wolf Tree Page 7