The Book of Joby (79 page)

Still, as he and Joby knelt by Swami’s car, stuffing a few last items into their backpacks before hoisting them on and adjusting the straps, Swami was nervous.

“You ready?” he asked Joby.

Joby smiled and nodded. “You sure the car will be all right here, like this?”

“No one will come here,” Swami assured him.

Joby glanced again at the car, pulled not quite out of the rutted dirt road onto a narrow, weedy shoulder against a high embankment, then grinned and said, “I suppose you’re right. I didn’t even realize this road was here until you turned onto it. How does anyone remember where that turnoff is?”

“Anyone doesn’t,” Swami said, forcing a smile. “Let’s go.”

Coming to perch high atop a fir tree, Michael folded his hawk’s wings, and watched Swami lead Joby down the trail toward what very few had any business seeing. Michael had no idea where the boy’s reckless choice would lead, but the angel knew better than to interfere with anything in which Joby was involved. So he watched, contemplating the accelerating disintegration of Taubolt’s carefully ordered existence.

As if yet another reason for concern were needed, something troubling had recently crossed into Taubolt. Michael was not sure how long ago, for it seemed able to hide from him—in itself, reason for apprehension—straying into his awareness only for fleeting instances since early September. It was nothing human, but too full of intelligence to be any mere animal either. The brief glimpses Michael had been allowed were fevered with despair, confusion, or anger. While the Cup’s power still filled the land for such a distance, it could not be a demon, though that is what it felt most like, but whatever it was, Michael felt certain it should not be here.

As Swami and Joby disappeared around the bend, Michael’s mind flew out again across the fields and ridge tops, deep into the forests, along the winding roads, searching for some further sign of . . . And there it was again! In the woods east of town! Much too close for comfort! Michael spread his wings and flew, but even as his mind reached out to pin the presence down, it flinched away from his awareness like a feral, frightened animal, and fled. What on earth could do that to an archangel? With Merlin accounted for, Michael could not imagine.

All afternoon Swami had led him steeply upward over hillsides covered in the usual dry grass and dusty brambles. It had been a hard, hot climb under fully loaded packs, making the few blessed stretches of shady woodland especially welcome. Not until early evening had they finally reached the ridge top, and stopped to gaze out over a breathtaking expanse of coastline stretching north, layer after paler layer, into the mountainous distance. Thickly forested hills of amazing height plunged down to meet the sea far below them, where mist churned up against the rocky shoreline spread into deep ravines giving the view a mythic atmosphere.

From there, Swami had led Joby down into woodland immediately different from any he’d ever seen. The trees here were wind-sculpted into graceful geometric shapes, as if decorations for a fairy tale, and the gargantuan ferns lining their path brushed at Joby’s shoulders as they dropped farther into the gorge. Many of the tree trunks here were easily fifteen feet across, and an almost eerie stillness made the place seem even more primeval. When Swami had invited him to come backpacking for the weekend, one last time before the heat of Indian summer failed, Joby had expected nothing so remarkable.

“Where
are
we?” Joby breathed at last. It seemed no place they should have been able to walk to in a single afternoon. “How come I’ve never heard of this place?”

“We’re on the Garden Coast,” Swami answered, turning back to face him gravely. “This is one of Taubolt’s most guarded secrets, Joby. You must promise never to speak a word of it to anyone who hasn’t spoken to you about it first.”

Joby was unsure what to make of such a strange request.

“I’m serious,” Swami pressed. “Please. Promise me you’ll keep this to yourself.”

“Sure.” Joby shrugged. “Wouldn’t want this crawling with tourists, would we?”

Seeming mollified, Swami turned and continued down the path.

It got darker as they hiked through stands of impossibly huge redwoods and other kinds of trees Joby didn’t think he’d even seen before. No sound but their own footfalls disturbed the evening air. When it had grown almost too dark to see, they came to a small flat patch of grass beside the black glass pools of a gurgling brook, where Swami suggested they make camp for the night.

The place imposed its quiet on them as they prepared and ate a simple meal of tortillas and beans. After that, they sat watching sparks fountain up into the well of stars between the trees above their fire.

“This is real virgin forest, isn’t it,” Joby murmured at last.

“You can’t begin to guess,” Swami replied, his obsidian eyes and swarthy face grown suddenly fey and sad in the firelight. “I’m turning in. Long hike tomorrow.”

“Yeah. Me too,” said Joby and headed for his sleeping bag wondering what kinds of dreams a place like this might bring.

As they packed up their camp after breakfast, a gem-bright bird of red and blue flashed down from the trees above them to snatch a crumb of oatmeal, and fly off again.

“What was that?” Joby exclaimed. “I’ve never seen a bird so beautiful!”

“It’s called a ruby thrush,” Swami replied, hoisting his pack onto one knee and over his shoulders with practiced ease.

“I’ve never even heard of it,” Joby said in awe.

“There are some very rare things living here,” Swami said. “This forest has never been disturbed.”

Soon, they were on the trail again, and in the clear light of day, Joby began to notice all kinds of astonishing and completely unfamiliar plants. They passed beneath arboreal clusters of blue, thumb-size orchids, and crossed a
glade of shiny crimson lilies. Joby stopped to finger a furry, silvery shrub trailing strings of what he assumed were berries, though they looked more like pearls. As the morning wore on, they hiked through glades with leaves that swiveled and shimmered in the breeze like a shower of gold-green coins, passed dwarf maples with leaves as wide as dinner plates, and waded through thickets of fan-shaped foliage the color of eggplant, which smelled of cinnamon and crushed celery.

Nor were just the plants remarkable. Snails with bright purple shells half as big as Joby’s fist crawled up tree trunks. By a muddy streambed, swarms of large green butterflies fluttered into the air at their approach like an upward shower of windblown leaves. He saw two more ruby thrushes; a snow-white sparrow; a yellow frog; bright blue fish, whiskered like carp; a speckled, scarlet salamander the length of his forearm; an orb-weaving spider of pure metallic gold; and a sunning snake tiled in glassy, iridescent scales. Swami had names for all of them, none of which Joby had ever heard.

Joby’s exclamations of surprise and wonder had soon given way to uncertain silence. Something odd was going on. He’d spent lots of time in Taubolt’s woods by now, and never seen any of what they passed with such increasing frequency here.

Weird sounds issued from the hills around them: remarkable spirals of ascending birdsong, melodious strains of something like a high French horn, bursts of clucking chatter like musical monkeys. Even the air here was different somehow, or the light perhaps. Things seemed clearer, more sharp-edged and vivid. It all seemed impossibly strange, yet strangely familiar too. When he finally realized why, chills ran down his arms despite the morning’s warmth.

“I had this dream last night,” he said quietly to Swami, who was walking several feet ahead of him, “full of strange animals who were trying to make me sing a song I didn’t know.”

Swami stopped and turned to gaze at him intently. “What kind of song?”

“I can’t remember,” Joby said. “It was very beautiful. I wanted to sing it pretty badly, but it kept changing all the time. The point is, that red salamander we saw a while back was one of them. And I’m pretty sure that iridescent snake was too. In fact, I think a lot of this stuff we’ve seen was in that dream, but I’ve never seen any of it ’til today.”

Swami smiled for the first time on their whole hike, Joby realized. “Maybe your mind is just inserting all of this into the memory.” Swami shrugged. “Or maybe you were really meant to come here.”

Wondering what he meant by that, Joby said, “You were in it too. Only you had huge eyes, like black glass, and the face of a ten-year-old child.”

Swami’s smile wilted. “What did I do, in your dream?”

“Tried to make me sing, like the rest,” said Joby. “Swami, what is this place?”

“I told you,” he said, turning to resume their hike, “a very old, and undisturbed forest. This is how the forests all were once. How they’d be now if it weren’t for people.”

“I used to study animals,” Joby said to Swami’s departing back. “How can I never have heard of any of these things?”

“Some of them live nowhere else,” Swami said, without slowing ahead of him. “Many have not been discovered by anyone but us.”

“Not
discovered
?” Joby exclaimed. “Swami, shouldn’t someone—”

“NO!”
Swami whirled to face him, angry or afraid; Joby wasn’t certain which. “You promised you’d tell no one!”

“And I won’t,” Joby said, looking around in helpless frustration. “But this many rare species in one place—Swami, do you have any idea how important this is? It’s got to be protected, or there will be nothing to stop someone like Ferristaff from—”

“There would be no protection!” Swami looked panic-stricken. “No matter what they promise, it would be . . .
disaster.
Joby, please listen to me. I wasn’t even supposed to show you this. But—”

“Says who?” Joby interrupted. “Swami, what the hell is going on here? You make it sound like you’re part of some conspiracy to—”

“I am,” Swami cut him off, “part of some conspiracy.”

“What?”
Joby said, taken aback.

“There are . . . people here,” Swami said, clearly struggling to navigate some very fine line, “who . . . protect this.” He looked away, upset. “Please, Joby. I trusted you enough to bring you here. Trust me too. I . . . think we’re going to need your help soon. I don’t know how, but . . . for God’s sake, keep your promise to me and say nothing about this place to anyone, or . . . or I’ve made a terrible mistake.”

Joby didn’t know what to say. He did not make or break promises lightly, but it seemed so wrong to know about this and tell no one. The
right
people, at least, should be aware that there was a veritable zoo of unknown species parked on the California coast. That might be enough to save all of Taubolt from guys like Ferristaff. After what had happened to Rose, Joby would have dearly loved to see the look on Ferristaff’s face when the EPA told him to shut his whole claptrap down and go. And this conspiracy stuff? It gave him
the creeps. “How can you and . . . whoever you’re working with hope to defend this all alone against someone with Ferristaff’s money and power?”