Spiritwalk (37 page)

Tim glanced down the hall toward the Postman’s Room.

“Well, heads up,” he said. “Here comes your chance to make things right.”

Tim thought Cal was going to vault across the barricade and just bolt when he saw Julianne approaching them, but he held his ground. A flush colored the back of his neck and he stared down at his shoes.

“Blue needs a hand from one of you guys,” Julianne said.

Tim started to step forward. Talk about your perfect timing, he thought. Maybe somebody could salvage something worthwhile out of all this crap they were going through. But Cal moved more quickly.

“I’ll go,” he mumbled and hurried by Julianne, clutching his rifle against his chest and not looking at her.

Julianne’s gaze followed his retreating figure, then returned to Tim, who just shrugged.

“Guess he just likes being useful,” he said, but he could see in Julianne’s eyes that she knew exactly why Cal had fled.

Julianne sighed and took up Cal’s position on the other side of the barricade. She carried her shotgun with familiarity, but didn’t seem particularly happy about having to lug it around. She looked over the barricade and down the corridor, but things were still quiet. The dead bear remained by the stairs, the buzz of the flies on its corpse getting louder as more and more of them arrived for the feast. The owl still watched them with what Tim couldn’t help thinking was an unforgiving gaze.

His gaze shifted back to his companion. He’d take looking at Julianne over all of this weird shit any time. Long before Cal had shown up at the House, he’d done his own shuffle and dance with her until she made it plain—but nicely—that she wasn’t interested in being more than friends. What she offered as a friend more than made up for his disappointment, but it didn’t stop him from teasing her.

“So,” he said. “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”

She gave him a quick smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes, but Tim could see that she appreciated his attempt at levity.

“I could ask you the same thing,” she said.

“But I’m not a girl.”

“Or nice?” she asked.

She arched her eyebrows as she spoke—trying to get into a bantering mood, Tim thought.

“Depends on your definition of nice,” he said and he launched into a silly description of what he thought the word meant that, by the time he was done, had her smile finally reaching her eyes.

* * *

It took Sara a moment to place the intense young man who joined them in the room directly across the hall from the Postman’s Room. She’d been meeting too many people today to keep them all straight without a fair amount of concentration. His name came to her just a half breath before Judy noticed him.

“Hey, Cal,” Judy said. “How’re you holding up?”

“I’m okay,” Cal said.

Sara didn’t think so. He didn’t look scared, but there was a paleness to his features and a haunted look in his eyes that spoke of some emotional turmoil. She couldn’t have said why, but she didn’t think it had anything to do with their all being trapped here in the Otherworld.

“Have you ever done any rope climbing?” Blue asked him.

“Some—back in high school.”

They were all crowded around the window overlooking the garden. Blue and Judy had removed the sliding windows from their grooves, passing them to Sara and Emma, who stacked them up against the wall out of the way. What they were doing now was lowering a rope out the window to check its length. The rope had been made by tying sheets together—something that Sara didn’t think was ever done except in the movies.

“We’re trying to keep this low-key,” Blue said, “because we don’t want to get people’s hopes up.”

Cal nodded, though it was obvious to Sara that he didn’t have a clue as to what Blue was talking about.

“We’re trying to get down to the garden,” she explained.

“Sara’s got a friend there,” Blue went on, “who might be able to take us back to Ottawa where we can deal with the sucker who’s got us trapped here.”

“You’ve really got it figured out who’s responsible for all of this?” Cal asked.

“We’re working on it,” Blue replied. “We’ll know better once we get back to Ottawa—if we can get back.”

“And this friend of Sara’s... ?”

“He’s a manitou,” Sara said. “One of the little mysteries that make their home here in the Otherworld—but he’s shy, so we can’t go in a crowd.”

“Oh... kay,” Cal said.

He was obviously still confused, Sara thought, but seemed willing to go along with things until they started making sense.

“So what do you want me to do?” Cal added.

“What we need,” Blue said, “is someone without a whole lot of weight to go down this rope and stand guard until Sara and I get down. I’d go myself, but we’re not so sure that the rope’s going to hold me, so I’m going last.”

“No problem,” Cal said.

“The thing is,” Blue went on, “if the rope breaks when any of us are going down, you’re going to be stuck in the garden—cut off from everybody else.”

“Why can’t I just go with you?” Cal asked.

“Pukwudji knows Blue,” Sara said, “but if anybody else is with me, he might not show up at all. He really is shy—almost to the point of it being a phobia.”

“I was going to do it,” Judy said, “but Mr. Big Shot here”—she nodded her head toward Blue—“says he wants me to stay.”

“I don’t want to sound crass,” Blue said, “or to belittle anybody else’s talents—including your own, Cal—but if something happens to us, if we don’t make it back, you’re going to need her mechanical expertise.”

“Julianne seemed to know her way around the bikes,” Judy complained.

Sara noticed the way Cal flinched at the mention of Julianne’s name and then she knew what was bothering him. She remembered the way he looked at Julianne and then put it all together. There was nothing worse than a one-sided love affair.

“Julianne knows how to use them and maybe change a spark plug,” Blue was saying to Judy, “but she can’t take things apart and put them back together again the way that you can. That—and any kind of medical knowledge—are going to be primo skills if you guys are stuck here.”

“And Esmeralda seemed to think that Julianne knows a lot of herbal lore,” Emma said.

“So you should take care of the both of them,” Blue said.

“Get him,” Judy said. “Like we’re only as good as the services we provide. Sounds pretty cheesy to me.”

Blue gave her the finger.

“Why don’t you just go down the stairs?” Cal asked. “It seems quiet enough now.”

Blue shook his head. “There’s things moving around on the ground floor. How many or what, we don’t know, but we can hear them from Sean’s side of the corridor. Haven’t you guys heard anything on your side?”

“Like I said, it’s been quiet.”

“Well, we’ve been watching the garden for a half hour now,” Blue said, “and there’s nothing moving out there. Seems to me it’s the better risk. So what do you say—are you up for it?” When Cal nodded, Blue offered him a pair of cloth garden gloves that had coarse gray leather on the palms and fingers. “These’ll help you keep from slipping.”

Emma took Cal’s rifle and attached a shoulder strap to it while Cal put on the gloves. With Judy and Sara’s help, Blue shifted a big walnut dresser over to the window to which they’d attach the rope. When they had it tied and flung it back through the window, Blue peered down.

“Okay,” he said. “We’re ready to roll.”

Sara studied the nearest trees over Blue’s shoulder. The forest had marched almost right up to the House, filling the garden with its tall outgrowths. There didn’t appear to be anything of a threatening nature hiding under the boughs, though it was hard to tell because the light from the windows only went as far as the first few trees. There could be any number of the forest’s motley army of creatures hiding down there, just waiting for them to touch the ground.

“It looks clear,” she said, “except for those damn owls.”

She was sick of the birds. They were everywhere, watching, staring, prying. If she leaned out the window and looked up on either side of the window, she would see a half-dozen of the bloody things, perched on the eaves, staring back at her. Emma might think they were manitou drawn here by the magic that was being used to keep the House in the Otherworld, and she was probably right, but they weren’t acting like any of the manitou with which Sara was familiar. There was something profoundly disquieting about their silent scrutiny, as though they
knew
something....

“Let’s do it,” Blue said.

He stood aside so that Cal could swing his leg over the sill. Sara watched as Cal tentatively tested his weight on the makeshift rope, then began his slow descent.

I’m next, she thought.

The idea of having to make her way down two stories on that flimsy sheet-rope made her feel a little queasy. The way the Kendell luck seemed to be running these days, she’d probably lose her grip about halfway down, fall and break her neck.

Don’t think about it, she told herself and concentrated on watching the shadows under the trees, looking for movement. Beside her, Blue was going over last-minute instructions with Emma for the umpteenth time.

“Just hold everybody together up here,” he was saying. “Keep the guards rotating so that nobody gets too bored or tired and misses something.”

“I know, Blue.”

“And if things do seem real quiet for much longer, you might try to get a work detail together to move some of those corpses out past the barricades. They’re already drawing flies; when the smell starts to hit—”

“Enough already,” Emma said.

Cal had reached the ground, dropping the last few feet and landing, awkwardly but safely. When he’d regained his balance, he unslung the rifle from his back and hung it over his shoulder where he could bring it up quickly if he needed to. Keeping an eye on the forest, he steadied the rope for Sara.

Sara took a deep breath—
Chin
.

Store up the inner strength like a drawn bow.

Focus.

—and swung her own leg over the sill. She grabbed hold of the rope, her hands sweating inside their gloves, and glanced inside. Judy gave her a thumbs-up. Emma was kissing Blue. She stepped back and pushed him toward the window.

“Be careful,” she said, including Sara in her caution.

As soon as Sara started her own descent, the muscles of her back and shoulders tensed and started to cramp. She drew on the focused energy of her taw and forced herself to ignore the cramping muscles. Bracing her legs against the wall the way that Cal had, she slowly made her way down. The end of the rope came far sooner than she expected it to. Cal stepped aside to give her room and she let go, landing as awkwardly as Cal had, but all in one piece.

“Everything still seems clear,” Cal told her.

He spoke over his shoulder, his attention concentrated on the forest in front of him. Sara moved out from under the rope. She looked up, frowned at the owls, then held the rope for Blue as he made his descent. Just as he landed on the ground, knees slightly bent to absorb the shock, there came the crashing sound of a large body moving through the underbrush.

Cal brought his rifle up to his shoulder. Blue scrambled to get his own unslung. Sara stood frozen, expecting she didn’t know what—another bear, another boar, maybe a dragon for all she knew—but it was a stag that came bounding out from between the trees. It skidded to a halt on the grass, antlers glinting white in the light that spilled from the House’s windows as it turned its head back and forth.

“Hold your fire,” Blue said softly.

They waited a long moment. Sara wondered if this was the same stag that Ohn and Sean had confronted inside the House.

Don’t let it attack, she thought. She hated the idea of their having to shoot anything that looked so beautiful.

The stag held its ground for a few heartbeats longer, then turned and walked slowly away, following the thin strip of lawn that still lay between the garden’s forest and the House. Sara let out a breath she hadn’t been aware of holding.

“Let me give you a leg up,” Blue said to Cal.

“You sure you don’t want me to come along—just in case you need an extra gun?”

Blue put his hand on Cal’s shoulder. “We need you here more,” he said.

He cupped his hands. When Cal stepped onto them, Blue gave him a boost up. He and Sara waited to make sure Cal reached the window; then Blue turned to her.

“Which way do we go?” he asked.

Sara just pointed straight ahead to where the shadows lay thick in the tangled undergrowth.

Blue stepped forward. “Man. How’re we going to get through that?”

Let’s see if Pukwudji’s trick works for a
herok’a
, Sara thought.

She moved ahead of Blue. Laying her hands upon the nearest tangle of boughs, she closed her eyes and reached out to the forest with her heart, asking it for safe passage. The strains of the moonheart air sounded in her inner ear; a moment later she sensed a response to that tune that Tal had given her. The twigs and leaves moved away from under her hand. She heard Blue whisper a muffled “Jesus,” then opened her eyes to see a path leading into the forest.

They waved one last time to those watching them from the window; then Sara led the way onto the path.

“Where do we start looking for him?” Blue asked when they’d been following the path for a couple of minutes.

“I guess we’ll just call him,” Sara began; then she paused. “Can you hear that?”

Blue shook his head. “I don’t hear any—no, I guess I do. It sounds like a flute.”

“It’s Pukwudji,” Sara said.

As though trained to see to her needs, the path veered in the direction of the music. The flute-playing grew not so much louder as more present with each step they took—an accelerated process as though somewhere there were a volume knob being turned up.

It was the forest, Sara thought. However far Pukwudji had really been when they’d first heard his flute, the path was using its magic to transport them quickly to where the
honochen’o’keh
played.

It took only a few moments before the path opened up to a space under an apple tree—the Apple Tree Man himself, Sara realized, still here in what remained of the House’s garden. The undergrowth was cleared away from the tree. Leaning against its trunk, sitting on his heels, was Pukwudji. He brought the flute down from his lips as they approached, but the echoes of his music continued for a few breaths longer than it seemed they should have.