AS I GOT OUT of my car in front of Julia’s sleek glass house, I heard a piano. It was her husband, Jean-Luc, stirring soft jazz into the evening air. The spring evenings in Gabriel’s Garden continued to grow, creeping toward the summer solstice. I couldn’t wait. In all the places I had traveled, I loved summer nights in Minnesota the best. Crickets and birds singing in the soft light, such evenings were nearly meditative, until the mosquitoes found me.
I followed the fieldstone path to the back of the house, which looked out upon its own lake. One corner of the house jutted into the backyard like a modern ark of glass. I passed in front of the two-story windows of the living room. Jean-Luc, sitting at a black baby grand with a glass of wine, waved to me from the bow of the ark. He was a dreamy man, and I understood perfectly why Julia had fallen for the French lawyer. I smiled at him and joined Julia on the patio. On this cool evening, there was a fire in the outdoor fireplace, which was large enough to roast a boar.
A bottle of white wine and a glass stood on the wicker table beside Julia. She smiled and motioned me over to the rattan sofa, and I sank into the plush red cushions. “I’ll get another glass,” she said. She knew me so well. When Julia returned from the house, she poured a glass of Reisling and handed it to me. For a few moments, we sat there immersed in Jean-Luc’s music and the serenity of the lake.
“Where have you been?” asked Julia, adjusting her silk pashmina against the cool of the evening.
“I went to New Mexico.”
“New Mexico’s nice this time of year.”
“I went to Tum’s place.”
Julia’s eyes softened. “Are you okay?”
I nodded. The descending sun scattered diamonds across the water, jewels so bright it almost hurt to look at them.
Julia knew of Tum. When she was researching a biker hero for one of her books, I’d told her some of Tum’s stories from his days on the road. “Women love men in leather,” she’d told me.
We sat in silence, watching a snowy white egret fishing along the edge of the lake. With a deep, happy sigh, Julia said, “Well, it’s been fairly quiet around here with Sasha gone.”
“She’s left?”
Julia shook her head, tendrils of soft brown hair swishing against her cheek. “Not completely. Her things are still here. I think she’s taking a short vacation.”
Sasha had arrived on her sister’s doorstep, unannounced, in March, and here it was May. It seemed like a rather long visit to me. “Is this type of extended stay normal in your family?” I asked Julia.
“Sadly, it is,” Julia said. “Honey, I once had an aunt who came to visit for half a year. Aunt Valeria was a poor relation and just made the rounds in the family. We had a big old house. We could forget she was there for days at a time.” Once Julia had described her southern home as antebellum anarchy and the perfect playground for seven children descended from passionate Russian émigrés.
“Did you like her?”
“She was interesting, in a carry-a-screwdriver-in-your-purse way. The Danilov family is never boring. Where do you think I get half the characters in my books?”
“Except the heroes,” I said. “They are all Jean-Luc.”
“We Russians have romance in our soul, but the French . . . they created the word, baked it into a croissant, and served it naked.” Julia gave me a knowing grin, then swirled the wine in her glass and stared out at the lake. Sometimes I envied Julia. For all her angst about writing and her occasional homesickness for her mother’s blini, she was content with her place in the universe—or she had been before Sasha moved in.
“Do Sasha and Jean-Luc get along?” I asked.
Julia lied to me through gritted teeth, “We are one big happy family, Maya.”
I laughed.
Her face dissolved into a sheepish grin. “Sasha likes to flirt. She can’t resist trying her tricks. Jean-Luc treats her like a puppy dog. Patting her on the head.”
“But still it bugs you.”
“There is a reason I refuse to have any of the heroines on my book covers in pink dresses,” she said. “I won’t give Sasha the satisfaction of thinking she was the model for one of my covers. It infuriates her.”
The secret revenge of sisters. I understood this. When we were kids and Heart got too bossy, I would sneak into her underwear drawer and mess up all her carefully folded little stacks and rows.
Julia topped off her wine. “Actually, I feel sorry for Sasha. I don’t know if she will ever find her Jean-Luc. Her soul mate. All the women in my books find their soul mates.”
“Sounds rather sentimental for Sasha,” I said.
“Don’t kid yourself. Sasha loves being in love. And she truly believes she is. Each time.” Julia got a far-off look in her eye.
I cleared my throat. “So what’s this vacation about?” I asked.
Julia frowned. “That’s it. I haven’t a clue. I don’t know of any upscale retreats where she’s headed.”
“Really?”
Julia jumped up and walked into the house. She trailed her fingers along Jean-Luc’s shoulders as she passed him, disappeared up the stairs, then came back down with a large sheet of paper. It was a map of Minnesota. When she spread it out on the wicker and glass coffee table in front of us, I saw three large circles in pink ink.
“I found this in her room. She apparently logged her itinerary into her smartphone then tossed this aside. Sasha never likes to appear a tourist. I don’t know of any classy pampering places in those areas.”
Julia was right. The circled spots were all rural or wilderness areas—one in the west practically hugging the South Dakota border, one in the central part of the state, and one on Lake Superior in the northeast—nothing near a big city. Not one suitable “ladies’ day” venue where one could be tormented with mud and seaweed.
“Are you worried about her?” I asked.
“Not really. Sasha can take care of herself.” Julia started to refold the map, made a hash of it, and swore in Russian, I think.
The music stopped. We both turned toward the window to see Jean-Luc holding up his empty wineglass with a grin. Julia pushed the crumpled mess of paper into my hands, “Here,” then grabbed the bottle of wine and went inside. As Jean-Luc slipped an arm around Julia’s waist, I refolded the map and tucked it into my purse.
I LEFT JULIA’S ARK and drove straight to my parents’ octagonal house. The energy of both places was similar—calm water energy at Julia’s and balanced mountain energy at Evie’s. On the way, I called Jorn, told him Sasha had disappeared, and asked him to meet me. I rapped once on my parents’ door and walked in. Evie met me in the foyer with a warm hug. Larry came loping down the stairs from his office a few minutes later, just as Jorn arrived. Jorn was dressed like a burglar who had just rolled out of bed: black T-shirt, black jeans, messy hair. Maybe he was adopting Tum’s monochromatic fashion philosophy. I eyeballed his feet. One sock purple, one white. He could rob me anytime.
We gathered around the dining room table and spread out Sasha’s map. Having been fed for most of my life in a dining hall full of spicy yet musty camp smells, surrounded by the hum of chattering people and scraping chairs, I have grown to love the intimacy of this room in my parents’ house. Family meals are cozy and personal here, and when Evie brings out a tray with hot chocolate and homemade shortbread, a feeling of being cared for overtakes me.
“Look at the places circled,” I said, reaching for a square of shortbread. “Why would Sasha Danilova mark them?”
Evie immediately saw the problem. “Not Sasha’s usual territory.”
“Why?” Larry asked.
Larry probably had never even noticed Sasha around town. Unless it has something to do with computer code or an electronic thingamabob, Larry is not observant. He would be unable to describe the chandelier over the table, a charming bit of illumination crafted by one of the Whisp
ering Spirit artists. It would be the same with any object in this house, except for his office. Evie was the nest builder, not Larry.
“Sasha prefers a more civilized lifestyle: designer handbags, fine restaurants, Mercedes mentality,” Evie explained. “She’s always in pink: from pretty pastels to Pepto-Bismol puke.”
“I think I have seen her,” Larry said with a wrinkle of the nose.
Jorn said, “She scares the hell out of me.”
I turned back to the map, my glance rambling down roads, pausing on towns hardly bigger than a pinprick. Something dodged on the edges of memory. What was it? Why was there a familiarity about these locations? What did they have in common?
Evie and Larry got it at the same time. “Vortexes!” they said in unison.
Larry smacked his hand on the table. “She’s hunting vortexes.”
I shot Jorn a glance. The doors of his open mind were clanging shut.
Evie sank back into her chair, her hands wrapped around the mug of hot chocolate, as if trying to ward off a chill. “But why? Sasha is hardly a spiritual person. She carries a lot of disruptive energy.” She turned to me. “Does this have something to do with New Mexico?”
I shrugged. “How could it?”
“Let’s go back to this vortex thing,” Jorn said.
Larry placed a finger on a spot near the Minnesota-South Dakota border. I could tell he was excited. We’d picked up a scent to this mystery, and his mind was already racing down dark alleys and through foggy nights.
“A vortex is a whirling mass, which draws in whatever’s around it,” Larry said. “Think of a whirlpool. A tornado. A dust devil.”
I tapped the cuff on my arm. “It can be represented as a spiral,” I said.
Larry continued, “In this case, what is being drawn in is energy, a spiritual hot spot. We’ve been to several: Stonehenge, Tulum, Sedona.”
“We hit a lot of vortexes when we were kids,” I said. “Family vacations. Heart thought they were creepy.”
“But Maya loved them.” Evie couldn’t resist adding, “She is a Tulum baby.”
“Conceived in a spiritual super-center,” Larry said proudly.
Jorn put his mug down with a thump. “Okay, let’s pretend there are spiritual vortexes. Why does Sasha want one?”
“For the energy, man,” Larry said, leaning forward. “Spiritual vortexes are cross-points between energy fields in the earth’s grid system. Intersecting ley lines.”
Jorn held up a hand. “What’s a ley line?”
Larry tossed a where-has-this-guy-been look at Evie. She patted his hand. “A ley line joins two prominent points in a landscape. Ancient tracks that align places of geographical, historical, or spiritual interest,” Larry said. “When ley lines intersect, they create ‘hot spots’ of energy.”
“Hot spots?” Jorn wrinkled his forehead.
“Vortexes produce certain effects: spiritual healing and psychic enhancement,” Evie said.
Larry was beginning to enjoy this newbie’s initiation to the New Age. “Some even believe they’re portals to other realms,” he said with the eagerness of a spooky storyteller about to make every kid around the campfire wet his pants.
Jorn dragged his hands down his face. “Are we sitting on a vortex now? Wait. Don’t answer that. I don’t want to know.”
Evie sipped her hot chocolate. “A vortex is like a magnet for energy, Peter. When you visit a vortex, you can feel it. When I’m near one, the hairs on my arm rise. Vortexes are Nature’s free adjusters. A vortex can help align your personal vortex, bringing your spiritual properties into balance and harmony. That’s why people seek them.”
“My personal vortex?” Jorn wasn’t having any of it.
“Your chakras,” I said.
“I defy you to x-ray my spine and find a single chakra,” Jorn said.
“Chakras are mini-vortexes in the human body,” I continued, “energy centers that power our life force. In Sanskrit, chakra means ‘wheel’. I think Sasha wants energy.”
“Energy for what?” I had Jorn’s full attention now.
“If those guys killed Tum and she is connected with them, she is connected to the diary.”
Jorn nodded. “She probably has it.”
“The diary is a spiritual artifact. It belonged to shamans. But, as Evie said, Sasha is not really a spiritual creature.”
“She thinks she can get an energy boost from these places to help her find what she is looking for in the diary,” Jorn said. “She’s smarter than I thought.”
Larry was ready to charge out the door. “We can’t let this pink chick loose on an unsuspecting population.”
“Larry’s right, Peter,” Evie said. “Even if you don’t believe that the diary is special, Sasha does. She’s on the hunt for something. What about the people who get in her way?”
“Someone’s got to stop her,” I said. “That will be my job.”
“You’re not doing this alone,” Jorn said.
There was silence around the table. Evie and Larry exchanged looks. All my life, they have understood me, often before I understood myself. The look said: This is her thing. We can worry, we can help, but we can’t interfere.
Larry gave a sharp nod and got back to business. He stretched a flannel-clad arm across the map. “Okay then. I’d start here, at Pipestone, near South Dakota. I haven’t a clue if it’s energy central for the diary, but it is considered a sacred place by native peoples.”
Evie nodded. “There are petroglyphs near Pipestone, art carvings in the stone. Some vortex hunters believe that the spirals drawn by early peoples signified the presence of a vortex.”
“Like a billboard. All whackos exit here,” Jorn said.
Evie laughed. “True, any whacko can claim they’ve found a vortex. They feel a concentration of energy in a certain area. They see a strange geological formation. They notice animals acting in a particular manner in a particular place. It is subjective.”
“And unprovable,” Jorn said.
Chapter 22
Peace Be with You and Pass the Pipe
WE FOUND HIM SITTING by the clear waters of Pipestone Creek, communing with the tallgrass prairie and a half-eaten peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I apologized for interrupting his lunch, and he said he didn’t mind. He introduced himself as Ray Grayfeather, and even though he appeared as old as the blood-red rock around him, his handshake was strong from more than sixty years of swinging a sledgehammer at Pipestone.
Here, native peoples of all tribes have come for centuries to pull the red rock from the earth for their ceremonial pipes. Although it is a national monument now, it is still worked by Native American carvers. Only fifty-six quarrying permits are issued each year at Pipestone, all to native peoples. Ray has one of those permits.
Jorn liked Ray immediately, and the feeling was mutual. I saw Jorn sliding into reporter mode, pulling out his small leather-bound notebook, digging for information just as Ray digs for the sacred stone. Jorn had a way of mirroring the people he was interviewing; when Ray hunkered down and swept his work-creased hand over a carving in the face of a rock, Jorn did the same. It was as if he were trying to experience this place through Ray’s eyes, ears, and hands.
“Petroglyphs,” Ray said, pointing to the stone art. “Not the best time to see them—noon. It’s better when the sun’s light slants at the end of the day and the shadows draw around the edges. You come back then.”
Jorn nodded.
I followed, silent, as we walked the serene trails of the Pipestone National Monument. The conversations of birds, the wind, the rumble of a waterfall (a rare sight in these flatlands) mixed with the voices of the two men. Both in frayed baseball caps clamping down their longish hair, they were communicating on a level beyond words. This was a different man from Jorn the complainer in yoga class and Jorn the doubter. This Jorn
was lighter of spirit, hanging on every word, smiling, connecting. He was curious, intrigued, and utterly charming.
Pausing at Winnewissa Falls, Ray pointed south. “I was born just over that ridge. Mother was Dakota and my father Ojibwe. They started bringing me to the quarry when I was just a baby. While they dug the pipestone, I played in the prairie grasses, pretending to be a great hunter on the trail of the buffalo. When I was old enough, they taught me to carve pipes from the sacred stone.”
“How many pipes?”asked Jorn.
“Thousands,” Ray laughed. “I quit counting.”
“It must be hard work,” Jorn said, and from the fascination in his voice, I knew Jorn was imagining what it must feel like to lure the shape of a buffalo from a chunk of rock, an art men like Ray had been practicing for three thousand years.
“Digging the stone, yes; the carving, no. Dreams flow from my fingers.” Ray pointed to a white-barked birch on the bank of the creek. “I could carve while napping under that tree.”
Jorn laughed, a sound I liked and wanted more of. This was why Peter Jorn had become a truth seeker. He loved people’s stories, and to Jorn, everyone had a story.
“Why is the stone red?” Jorn asked.
“It is said that the red stone is the blood of our ancestors, deposited here by a great flood.” Ray waved his arm at the red cliffs. “This land was created by my people, and only we work the land, cut out the stone for our pipes. It has always been a place of peace. For thousands of years, this site was used by people of all tribes—even enemies laid down their arms before quarrying side by side. To this day, we only use hand tools in the pipestone quarries.”
Hacksaws, hammers, wedges, files, and bars. It takes months of pounding on the hard quartzite to persuade it to give up a seam of catlinite or pipestone. The sacred stone is soft yet durable enough to be used in pipes that deliver the prayers of generations to the Great Spirit.
As a cloud momentarily blocked out the May afternoon sun, I listened to Ray’s wonderful stories, which Jorn drew out of him as if pulling on a string, and began to worry. What had Sasha wanted here in this primal place where land and air and man seemed all wrapped into one? I felt at home here, but Sasha would not. There were places where the earth gave up its serenity, but you had to pay attention, be ready to accept the gift. Sasha preferred her gifts wrapped in glitter and delivered with the snap of a finger.
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