The Shelter Cycle Read online

  The white shape seemed to slide along, to climb, high in the branches of the tree. Colville stumbled, his gaze in the trees—there it was again, whatever it was, winking at him, leading him along. He stumbled, looked down, looked up again. Now he saw nothing. Only more branches, the green bushes far below, the soft sound of wind in the pine needles all around him.

  A shift, a slight movement, and it all came into focus. Thirty feet above him, fifty feet away. A girl. A girl with long black hair, sitting on a branch, staring straight up through the trees at the sky.

  She seemed different from the picture he’d seen—older, thinner—but he knew who she was, recognized her from the poster. She was the girl who had disappeared, the same girl he’d searched for in the foothills of Boise.

  Here she was, wherever they were, and he had found her. Barefoot, in jeans and a dark green sweatshirt. Now writing in a notebook; the white page was what he’d seen flashing.

  And then the trees swayed. The girl shifted, as if on purpose, testing to see if the air would hold her. She hardly seemed to reach out, to try to catch herself, and she was slipping down through the branches, so slow and smooth, her arms at her sides and her body relaxed, silent as she fell, clattering through the high branches and then out from the low ones, the last ten feet with nothing around her. She landed with a heavy, solid sound. Dust smacked into the air; sticks fell rattling around her.

  She was up already, crawling and then running away between the trees, into the bushes and underbrush.

  He tried to move quickly, silently, not to lose sight of the way she had gone. Could he see anything ahead, any movement? He wasn’t certain.

  Kilo led as they crossed a carpet of moss that was every color of green. The ground grew steeper; Colville had to hold on to bushes and tree limbs to keep from falling; he tried not to rustle the branches, to snap any sticks. He leaned his pack against a tree, hardly slowing to set it down as they approached a small clearing.

  He crawled forward and lay flat on his stomach, hidden by the bushes. Only twenty feet away, less than that, was the girl.

  She was walking in the air, across the air. Five feet off the ground, her arms held out straight from her sides. She stared up into the green trees as she raised one foot, then the other, knees high. It was when she looked down to her feet that she began to sway—slowly at first, then one hand loose and circling around, slapping her leg; she bent at the waist, then hopped down, landing on her feet on the ground. The dark rope she’d been standing on snapped over her head, visible now, swinging and settling, hanging slack where it was stretched between two trees.

  And then she turned her head, as if she had heard something.

  In a moment a tall, thick man with a black beard stepped into the clearing. He wore a green jacket with black marker scribbled across it, a kind of homemade camouflage. Smiling, he laughed and stepped close to the girl, put his large hand on her shoulder. She said something, reaching up for the rope in the air, and he nodded, took off his jacket, bent to unlace his heavy boots. The girl helped pull them off; she helped unroll his dark socks from his feet.

  When the man walked on the rope, it stretched under his weight, only a foot or so above the ground. He was graceful despite his size, smoothly stepping all the way across to the base of one tree, his bare toes on the knot where the rope was tied, then balancing on one foot as he spun around and came back the other way.

  Colville could hear his own faint breathing. Kilo, just behind him, hadn’t moved at all, as if he understood that they must not be discovered.

  Now the man knelt and pulled out a bag, then a backpack, from the bushes. Rummaging inside, he held something—books—in one large hand. He opened one and laid it on a foam mattress in front of the girl, then handed her a pencil. Colville could hear the softness of their voices as they spoke but could not make out the words.

  Once the girl began writing in the book—she seemed to be answering a series of questions, or working through equations, or even doing a crossword puzzle—the man crawled around to sit on the mattress also, so their backs leaned against each other. He began to read his own book, holding it open in one hand, close to his face, catching the light. He scratched in his beard with a pencil, underlined a passage, then opened a spiral notebook and wrote something inside.

  The girl looked up. She glanced around as if she had heard or smelled something; then, after a moment, she returned to what she’d been writing. Her arms were bare, her sweatshirt sleeves pushed to her elbows. She wore a large watch, a man’s watch, on her thin wrist. She turned a page; he wrote something in his notebook.

  As the girl read, holding the book open with her toe, she braided her black hair, then pulled out the braid, said something, and the man turned and carefully braided it for her. A French braid, close against her round head. Colville could not hear her, but he could read her lips: Thank you.

  Squirrels ran past, chasing each other. Gnats hung in the air. Sparrows settled amid the ferns and ivy and sumac, darted away.

  And then Colville saw the face. A pale face, in the bushes, across the clearing from him. Forty feet away, another person, also watching the girl. A man’s face. Kilo’s tail slapped the ground once, twice, went silent as Colville glanced back. He looked across the clearing again and the face was gone.

  The girl said something else, then pointed away into the trees, where the face had been. The man turned quickly, his voice sharp and low; he closed his book, and the girl closed hers as well. Without any more words she leapt up, untied the black rope from between the trees, coiled it. The man rolled the mattress, strapped it to a pack, pulled the other bags together. It took less than five minutes for them to pack it all up, to slip out of the clearing, away through the trees.

  Colville crawled backward, struggled to his feet. Kilo followed him to his pack, and then they hurried back up the slope, around the clearing and then into it, across it, trying to figure which way the man and girl had gone. Colville looked at the bushes, uncertain even where he had been hidden. He examined the ground, kneeling, not sure what he was looking for. He would follow them; he would wait until she was alone again, talk to her. But which way had they gone? Between which trees?

  “Colville.”

  Kilo gave a muffled, high-pitched bark at the sound of the voice. Jeremy stepped out of the trees. He had strips of birch bark coiled around his legs and arms, a square of it affixed to his chest so he blended into the stand of trees behind him. It had been him, his face watching from across the clearing—he’d shaved off his beard, and without it he seemed so young, his face more slender and his eyes bigger, bluer. His hair, cropped close to his head, seemed darker.

  “This way?” Colville said, trying to walk around him. “Tell me. The girl—”

  Jeremy put his hand on Colville’s chest, stopping him. “I know,” he said. Bending down, he pulled the bark free; it curled upon itself and rolled away, blown by the wind. Now he wore a puffy down jacket, dark purple, and had traded in his moon boots for shiny brown hiking boots with white gaiters.

  “Did they go this way?”

  “That’s the direction they’ll go, yes,” Jeremy said. “Colville, here, walk with me.”

  “But what about the girl?”

  “She appears to be quite happy, doesn’t she?” Jeremy raised his hand to smooth back his hair, lowered it to grasp where his beard had been; he smiled, as if surprised by the skin of his face. “We can observe and we can learn. Her path is her path.”

  Colville followed Jeremy through a stand of aspens, Kilo running ahead. They walked in silence, Colville trying to figure what to say, glancing back. After ten minutes, they reached a road that stretched down a slope, disappeared around a bend.

  “This way,” Jeremy said, pointing. “Less than ten miles’ walking, to Baker City, but I bet someone will pick you up along the way.”

  “Her path is living in the woods with that man?” Colville said.

  “One thing,” Jeremy said, “one thing the
girl did, on her path, was to bring you to Francine again. That’s the main thing. And the girl’s path, there’s much to be learned from it. Pay attention. She is a young woman of great Light.”

  Colville thought he heard a car approaching, but none came. When he looked back, Jeremy was holding out an apple with a blue sticker on it, from a grocery store.

  “You’ve done well,” he said. “So far. You’ll figure it out as you go, as you have. Just keep paying attention; let your path reveal itself.” He pointed down the highway. “You better use the daylight, though.”

  “And Kilo?”

  “He’s coming with me.” With that, Jeremy squinted up at the sky, nodded once, then turned away. “Kilo!”

  Colville could only stand there and watch as Jeremy slipped deeper into the forest; he moved so smoothly, easily, his close-cropped head hardly rising or falling as he walked in and out between the trees, around deadfalls and boulders, Kilo following close behind.

  The blouses and dresses on the clothesline were mostly shades of purple, blowing hard in the wind, sideways and up and down. A few were pastel blue or green, none red or black or orange, which were unacceptable colors. They symbolized evil. The Messenger taught that even red roses weren’t created by God; they were made out of man’s anger. The rage went into the atmos­phere and saturated the elements or the beings who made the roses. Roses were meant to be lavender, pink, yellow, or white.

  I was trying to help Mrs. Young on this morning. I stretched to reach the line, dropped clothespins in the tall, dry grass. The sun was weaker now, the nights cold. The first snow hadn’t fall- en yet. All along the yellow hillsides and up toward the canyon other clotheslines waved the same colors, like places where the ground had somehow torn open and blue and green and purple were seeping out.

  I could hear heavy machinery, some shelters still being dug, others backfilled. The drills were more frequent now, the preparations more frenzied and anxious.

  Down the slope, the Kletter boys were digging in the hillside, a pile of dark dirt next to the hole. Colville went down there to check on their progress and now returned, climbing fast and on all fours, breathing hard when he reached us. He ran a stick along the trailer’s metal side, shouted something, threw the stick like a spear up toward the clouds. His white-blond hair blew out sideways, like it was rooted in his brain.

  Being close to Mrs. Young made me feel how confused and clumsy and without purpose my own body was. She was talking about the Light she felt, about her baby, about how her body could scarcely contain the energy inside it. She told me about all the preparations she was making, a scrapbook that held pictures of jewels and their alchemical structures along with pictures of cells. The jewels would transmit energy to the baby while Mrs. Young decreed over the book. The diamond would crystallize the baby’s will; the sapphire would provide fearlessness, the amethyst forgiveness and transmutation.

  I reached for more clothespins, careful as I walked wide around Mrs. Young, afraid to brush against her belly. She said my name, reached out to touch my shoulder. There was a shock, there, a jolt from her body to mine.

  20

  THE BABY WAS NAKED except for a diaper and the yellow bracelets at her wrist and ankle, a white blindfold to protect her eyes. Her skin glowed. Wells reached out and touched the clear plastic of the incubator. He leaned close. Her fingers and toes curled, so tiny, her dark hair growing in every direction. She kicked her leg. Her mouth twitched, nursed at the air. His daughter. She was five weeks premature, but healthy—she was only in the incubator as a precaution. She’d been born in the ambulance, on the way to this hospital, here in Livingston.

  He was alone in the room with her. Two empty, dark incubators in the corner, a changing table, a cart of diapers and swaddling blankets. The lights hummed, shone blue. From the hallway, distant voices, passing footsteps. The baby had come last night, almost a day ago. Francine had been sleeping, recovering, during the two hours since Wells had arrived.

  “Mr. Davidson?” A nurse stood in the door, behind him.

  He turned. “Is she awake?”

  “Probably not. It’s hard to know with the eye shields on, though.”

  “I meant my wife,” he said, “whether my wife’s awake.”

  “Would you like me to check?”

  “That’s all right,” he said. “I was about to.”

  The nurse stepped closer, next to him, looking down at the baby. “We’ll take her out to feed and change her in an hour or so,” she said. “You can hold her, then.”

  “Good,” he said. “I’ll be back.”

  The white walls confused him; every hallway looked the same. And then, as he walked along a windowed wall, he saw Maya. She waved to him from a waiting room.

  “I just left her,” she said. “She’s still sleeping.”

  “Am I going the right way? I’ll sit with her.”

  Maya reached out, touched his arm as he turned back toward the hall. “The paramedics from the ambulance last night came by to check on her.”

  “Are they still here? I’d like to thank them.”

  “They got called away,” she said. “But I talked to them. They told me they got lucky—the baby was so blue it was almost purple. And of course Francine wouldn’t sit still. The one guy showed me a bruise on his neck where she kicked him.”

  Behind Maya the waiting room was empty. Muddy boot prints tracked back and forth across the linoleum floor.

  “Also,” she said, “your car’s here. Francine’s car. They said it’s fine, the tow-truck people—it was just stuck in the snow.”

  “Where was it?”

  “Somewhere down near Gardiner, I think. She told me she was trying to drive home, back through Yellowstone, but I think the park’s been closed for the winter, by the storms.”

  “Has she said anything?”

  “About what?” Maya said.

  “I just wish I’d been there, that she’d told me—did she say anything yesterday about what she was doing, or why?”

  “She just wanted to come back for a day or two—that’s all she said.”

  “She should have told me,” he said.

  “Yes,” Maya said. “She should have. But what matters is the baby, and that Francine’s okay.”

  “What’s the room number, again?”

  “One twenty-four. Are you okay?”

  Wells went back in the direction he’d come from, turned right, then paused at the door. Slowly he eased it open.

  Francine slept, ten feet away, the head of the bed tilted up so she faced him. Her bare arms were outside the blankets, an IV running to one arm, the yellow bracelet on the wrist of the other. The lamp on the bedside table shone faintly. He stepped closer.

  She looked tired, and calm. Her hair was spread across the pillow, her eyes closed, her lips faintly twitching. She had done it, and he had been far away, and now he was here. He picked up her hand, held it; she stirred, and for a moment it seemed she might awaken. She settled again. It had been days, only days since he’d seen her. It felt much longer.

  “You’re here,” Francine said, her lips barely moving, her eyes still closed.

  “Yes,” he said. “Maya called me.”

  Francine didn’t say anything, didn’t move. He looked away, at the window, the drawn blinds. He squeezed her hand; she squeezed back.

  “I saw the baby,” he said. “They say she’s doing really well. I haven’t held her yet. She’s beautiful.”

  Francine smiled. She opened her eyes halfway, turned her head to look at him.

  “When can we go home?” she said.

  21

  FROM THE BACK SEAT Francine could see past Wells’s head as he drove, and through the windshield, through the thick flakes of snow that fell sideways, slanting down. Tall drifts on each shoulder narrowed the highway; semitrailers rushed close, coming from the other direction.

  The baby wore a blue stocking cap, her dark hair sticking out one side. Her long eyelashes shifted, and her greenish blu
e eyes opened. She stared at Francine, those eyes halfway focused, as if she knew something, as if she was not at all surprised to find herself here. And then she closed her eyes and slept again.

  They were south of West Yellowstone, now, the Tetons rising on the left. Past Rexburg, heading for Pocatello. Wells tapped a rhythm on the lid of the white plastic bucket in the passenger seat. He still hadn’t asked what was in it.

  “I can’t wait to get home,” she said. “It’ll be so nice to get her settled, to sleep in our bed, to see old Kilo.”

  “Three hours, maybe,” he said. “A little longer if we stop or the weather gets worse. I wish we could have gone down 89. Past where you grew up and everything. I’d have liked to see that.”

  “There’s not much to see anymore,” she said. “And this road is open. This is the way I drove, coming up the other night.”

  “Kilo went missing,” Wells said. “He’s out, somewhere. Probably looking for you.”

  “He didn’t find me.”

  “Once you’re home, he’ll come back.” Wells checked the rearview mirror. “Is she sleeping?”

  “I think so.”

  Francine gazed out at the pines ticking past, her head against the window. She closed her eyes. Highway 89 was the route she’d wanted to take, two days ago, when she’d left the hot springs. She’d felt the pull toward the Heart; she’d wanted to drive close, to see it, for the baby inside her to feel it. And she’d tried—she’d driven down Paradise Valley, powdery snow drifting sideways across the highway, toward Gardiner. She turned off at Corwin Springs, remembering all the times with her family in the station wagon, safe, the cars of others in the Activity in front of and behind them. It felt so close to the same, her anticipation rising—she crossed the rickety bridge, the half-frozen river rushing below; she drove past the blue and purple buildings, past King Arthur’s Court and up into the narrow canyon that led to the Heart. The air thickened around her, the pull stronger, the treetops leaning in above the road. But the snow grew too deep before she could get as close as she wanted, and the car slid sideways into a ditch when she tried to turn around. It was then that her water broke, that the contractions started. She was stranded for almost an hour before the two men—one in a truck, one on a snowmobile—found her. They called the ambulance and waited with her until it came. The men were from the Activity, but she didn’t know them. They didn’t even know anyone she knew.