 
# The Stones of Song

The Complete Series

A Curse-Breaker Series

By William Woodall

## Amazon Kindle Edition

© Copyright 2012 William Woodall

http://www.williamwoodall.org

Cover image by Enya de la Jara.

### Unclouded Day

Book One of the Stones of Song Series

He shall lead them unto living fountains of waters,

And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.

-Revelation 7:17

## Prologue

Among the native tribes of America, it has long been told that deep underground, in a cavern green as emerald at the heart of the world, that the blessed of God might find a fountain clear and cold, and that anyone who drank of that water might live far beyond his years, young and beautiful till the end, and that his dearest wish might come true.

Now the fame and the echo of that story have gone far out into the wide world, and many heroes and great men have searched for the Fountain in vain. It is said that DeSoto himself tried to find it, and Ponce de Leon the Lion-Hearted, and perhaps many another whose name is no longer remembered. But none ever succeeded, for the way is hidden except to those who are chosen, and found worthy.

This is the tale of a boy who found himself chosen, though no one who knew him would ever have suspected he was anything but ordinary. He was no different than any of a hundred other youngsters, except that he had a mind to dream, and faith to believe, and courage to set aside himself for the sake of those he loved.

And although he would have laughed if anyone had suggested such a high calling for him, he learned in time not to wonder at the works of God, who may often choose to lift up the weak and humble things of this world to fulfill His purposes, when the strong stumble.

## Chapter One

Brian found the amulet in an old cigar box in the attic. He wasn't looking for it, or anything in particular really. He just liked rooting around up there sometimes, especially on days when Mama was in a bad mood. He'd learned long ago that it was best to disappear for a while at times like that, if he didn't want a smack in the face. Out of sight, out of mind.

She'd finally passed out on the couch around two a.m. last night, and Brian had known even then that she'd probably wake up with a killer hangover the next morning. That was never something you wanted to stick around for; not if you were smart, so he'd planned to get up early and take Brandon fishing for a while. At least till she had a chance to mellow out a little bit.

But there'd been a cold gray rain falling when he opened his eyes that morning, forcing him to rethink his plans. It wouldn't do, to take Brandon out in the weather like that; the kid was always catching colds. Bran was still two weeks shy of four years old; a bit more than ten years younger than his big brother, and Brian loved him above all things in the world.

So instead he'd come up to the attic, to root around amongst Papaw's old Army trunks for a while. The whole place was full of junk his grandfather had dragged back home from all over the world, and no matter how often Brian dug through it, there was always something new to see.

Not all of it was pleasant, to be sure. Some of Daddy's old things were up there too, here and there, and it always made Brian a little sad when he stumbled across anything like that. He hadn't seen his father since Brandon was a baby, and sometimes that still stung. His name was Crush, and Bran looked very much like him with his deep red hair the color of a ripe cherry. That was memory enough, without looking for more.

But he didn't come across things like that very often, and since fishing was a no-go, then treasure-hunting in the attic seemed like a good backup plan.

So he'd crept out of bed, leaving Brandon still asleep, and tiptoed quietly upstairs. He switched on the dusty old floor lamp before picking a trunk at random, close enough to the door that he could see if Bran woke up and came out into the hall. He'd probably sleep for hours yet after staying up so late last night, but then again you never knew.

But in the meantime, Brian pulled up a chair, threw back the rusty iron latches, and lifted the lid of the trunk he'd picked. It smelled faintly musty inside, and as usual it was full of assorted junk; a baby cuckoo clock no bigger than an apple, a set of ivory throwing knives, postcards, a beeswax candle that still smelled like honeycomb, dozens of other trinkets and souvenirs like that. They were tossed in the trunk carelessly, with no particular order; just a random jumble of odds and ends.

He found the cigar box at the bottom of the trunk under a piece of cardboard, almost like someone had tried to hide it down there for some reason. Probably no one had, of course, but the idea tickled his sense of adventure. He pulled it out and blew dust off the lid, then tore off an ancient strip of duct tape that held it closed. Inside he found some crumpled rice paper yellowed with age, and wrapped up inside it was a silver necklace with a small medallion-type amulet attached. It was badly tarnished in spite of the wrapping, but there was no doubt about what it was.

Brian was delighted; this was _real_ treasure!

There were seven blue gems set in a circle around a carven picture of a flowing fountain on the front of the medallion, and there was a smooth crack that ran all the way round the edge of the back side, as if it was meant to open up like a locket. There didn't seem to be any catch or knob or button that he could push to pop it open and let him see what might be inside, but while he was looking for one he did find an inscription of some sort which he couldn't make out through the tarnish. His curiosity was strong now, though, and he wasn't to be put off by such difficulties. He spit on the edge of his shirt tail and rubbed hard until he could read the writing, but even then he was none the wiser. The words simply said _Thumb Here._

The letters were sloppy and blocky, like someone had scratched them there with the point of a pocket knife.

"Thumb here?" he repeated aloud, thinking to himself what an odd thing that was for someone to put on a piece of jewelry. It was clear enough, though, so he shrugged his shoulders and stuck his thumb where it said, wishing the silver wasn't so gummed up and nasty. It might actually be worth something if he could get the tarnish off.

The instant he touched it, a sharp pain stabbed his hand, and he cried out wildly without thinking. It felt almost like he'd touched a burning hot coal, and he dropped the thing instinctively. He quickly looked at his thumb and saw no visible injury. It didn't hurt anymore either, and his alarm changed quickly to puzzlement. He wiggled his fingers to make sure they still worked. They seemed fine. Then he listened to see if anybody was coming to check on him after that wild cry, but the house was silent. He must not have been as loud as he thought.

He stared down at the amulet suspiciously, and then cautiously prodded it with his big toe. Nothing happened, but he couldn't help noticing that the gummy black tarnish was all gone. Silver gleamed brightly even in the weak light from the lamp, and he noticed for the first time that the flowing water in the fountain-picture was speckled here and there with tiny chips of what might have been diamonds, glittering and beautiful. It looked like someone had scrubbed the whole thing spotless in the blink of an eye.

In fact, it was almost like his wish had come true.

The thought came to him out of nowhere, and he felt a rush of excitement. Brian had always believed that there had to be something more out there than just the dull and humdrum world he was used to. So when something magical was suddenly dropped in his lap, he wasn't at all disbelieving, as some people might have been. When reality is harsh, one learns very quickly to look beyond it.

Eventually he got bold enough to pick up the amulet by the chain and examine it again, this time a lot more closely. A ring of tiny words was now etched sharply into the gleaming surface around the edge, but they were much too small for him to make out what they said and he soon gave up trying.

He thought back carefully, trying to remember exactly what he'd done. His head was full of vague ideas from a hundred fairy tales and movies about how things like this were supposed to work, but he couldn't remember doing anything special except touching his thumb to the medallion.

Well, fair enough. He'd give it a try. It was worth a hurt finger to find out the truth, if that's what it took.

He looked at his shirt tail, where the spit-and-tarnish mixture from earlier was gradually turning into a smudged brown stain as it dried, and decided that would make as good an experiment as any. Therefore he took the medallion in hand, and gingerly touched his thumb to the back. He was braced for the pain this time, and was puzzled when it didn't come. Nevertheless, he forged ahead.

"I wish my shirt was clean," he said distinctly, but this time he was disappointed. Nothing happened. Brian wasn't willing to give up just yet, though. He looked down at an old pair of socks on the floor.

"Come here," he ordered them in a firm tone. Again nothing happened, and Brian was frustrated. What was he not doing right?

He tried to think again what he'd been doing when the tarnish disappeared. He'd been looking at the medallion, thinking about how it would look if it was clean. He hadn't actually said a word, come to think of it. He'd just thought it. Okay then, so maybe he had to visualize what he wanted, instead of talking out loud. He decided to try it again.

This time he didn't say anything, just envisioned the socks rising up off the floor and landing beside him on top of the trunk lid. Now there was no doubt about it. The socks floated obligingly off the floor and came to rest beside his elbow, exactly where he'd wanted them to go. There was still no pain though, and Brian broke into a huge smile.

He was eager to try some more, but then he hesitated. Mama was somewhere downstairs, and he didn't dare let her catch him doing magic, of all things. The first thing she'd do would be to take the amulet away from him, and if that happened. . .

Brian felt a cold chill at the very idea. Mama was nasty enough already, without giving her magical powers to make things even worse. There was no way he could let _that_ happen. What he really needed was a place where he could be sure she wouldn't walk in and catch him, but that was impossible as long as they were both under the same roof.

He glanced outside. The rain had stopped for now, and there was nothing to keep him from leaving the house for a while if he wanted to. Fishing was forgotten for the day, but the creek was still the best hide-out he knew of, far from Mama's prying eyes. He was sorely tempted to go snatch Brandon out of bed and slip away while they still had the chance.

Then a problem came to mind, and he hesitated. Brandon had a really hard time keeping secrets, and it wouldn't do much good to go hide in the woods to do his experiments if the kid came right back home and blabbed everything, now would it?

He thought about slipping away by himself and leaving Brandon at home with Mama for a little while, even though he didn't like the idea very much. He was pretty sure Bran would sleep for hours yet after staying up so late last night, but then again he might not. If he _did_ wake up early, it was a pretty good bet that Mama would end up screaming at him for spilling cereal on the floor, or making too much noise, or some stupid thing like that. Not to mention she'd probably tear Brian to pieces for not watching him, as soon as he got back home.

Not a good outcome, either way.

Nevertheless, he was almost dying with curiosity to find out more about the amulet, and he was blessed if he could think of any other solution.

He decided to risk it, just this once.

He slipped the amulet in his pocket and crept stealthily down the painted wooden stairs, stepping lightly and near the edges to avoid creaks. A thin film of dusty grime had sifted out of the wallboards since the last time he swept, and tiny particles of dirt clung unpleasantly to the bottom of his bare feet every time he took a step. He made a face and wished for the millionth time that it wasn't so hard to keep the old place clean.

He didn't stop on the second floor, not wanting to wake up either Brandon or his mother. He wasn't sure if she'd ever roused herself enough to stagger her way to bed last night or not, but he didn't want to find out the hard way by disturbing her.

The kitchen was deserted when he got to the bottom of the stairs, and he surveyed the wreckage from last night glumly. Glasses half full of unfinished milk from supper stood huddled together on the dull green Formica countertop, and dirty plates were piled high in the sink. An empty vodka bottle lay at a drunken angle against the base of the refrigerator where Mama had thrown it, and a fleet of cigarette butts floated grotesquely in a pool of spilled beer on the floor. A slightly dried-out meatball lay in solitary splendor under Brandon's chair on a thin veneer of splattered spaghetti sauce.

There was more, but Brian had seen enough. The cleanup job would be bad enough without having to think about it ahead of time. He crept a little nearer to the archway that separated the kitchen from the living room, to see if Mama was still asleep on the sofa. She wasn't, but someone had turned on the TV, and presently he noticed muffled sounds of movement coming from the bathroom. It sounded like Mama was brushing her teeth, and before long he heard something clatter on the floor and the sound of cursing. It sounded like she was in an especially nasty mood, and he felt a strong urge to disappear again.

He suffered a fresh twinge of worry about leaving Brandon alone with her, and he glanced upstairs one last time with furrowed brow, half tempted to put off his expedition for another day.

But Brian was fourteen, and the thought of waiting for anything was hard to endure, let alone something as amazing as this. Therefore he tiptoed quietly across the faded yellow linoleum to the back door, reminding himself once again that Brandon was still asleep, and that the quicker he left, the quicker he could get back.

He shut the screen door slowly behind him, careful not to let the rusty hinges squeak too loud. It didn't seem to matter how often he oiled them, that high-pitched squeal always came back in a few days. He listened to make sure Mama hadn't noticed, and then he set off purposefully across the pasture.

He quickly covered the open ground and slipped through the rusty barbed wire fence on the far side, careful not to let his jeans or his shirt get snagged. Ripped up clothes were too hard to replace.

His bare feet crunched wetly on dead vines and pine straw as he followed the little path into the woods beyond the fence, and once or twice he had to wade through a flooded spot. That was all right, though; he knew the way. By and by the trail curved away northward, following the little valley up into the mountains, and before long he came to higher and drier ground again.

At one place, an outcrop of stone jutted out over the creek, with a beautiful view of almost the whole valley to the south and a deep swimming hole underneath where you could cannonball off the rock if you were brave enough, and beyond it there was the wooded mountainside where no one ever went. That's where Brian was headed.

He and Brandon had always called that place Black Rock, though Brian couldn't remember why. It didn't really look black, except when it was wet. It was Brandon's favorite spot when the weather was nice, because there were lots of lizards and bugs to catch while they basked in the sun, and there was a sandy beach beside the creek that was perfect for castle building. Brian liked to go there and read or throw rocks even when Brandon wasn't with him, because it was a good place to be alone with his thoughts, and in the fall he sometimes hunted on the mountainside.

Not always in the fall, actually, although he didn't like to talk about that very much. Hunting deer out of season was always risky, but there'd been several times when it was either that or go hungry. Not much of a choice, when you thought about it.

But for now, the most important thing of all about Black Rock was that Mama absolutely hated the place and never went there. Brian had no idea why she felt that way, but he was glad she did.

A low growl of thunder rolled through the dense pine woods, and he looked up at the sky anxiously. The clouds were still dark and heavy with rain, and he wondered for a second if maybe his expedition hadn't been such a good idea after all.

He hesitated again, not wanting to get soaked, but eventually curiosity pulled him onward. He could always stand under a tree for a while if he had to. It wasn't quite ten minutes later when he finally emerged from the woods and stood on top of the big stone outcrop. All around the Rock was a little meadow maybe a hundred feet across, full of wildflowers when the season was right, although at the moment it held nothing but thistles and sedge grass, most of it dead from the summer heat.

The castle he and Brandon had built last week on the sand bar had melted into a shapeless blob coated with pockmarks from the rain, and there were several fresh deer tracks coming down to the water to drink. Little bits of embedded mica twinkled on the surface of the Rock, which was still dark and wet in most places.

Brian pulled the amulet out of his pocket and toyed with it. The jeweled silver glittered like broken glass, even on such a dreary day. It was a beautiful piece of work, whoever made it. Strangely enough, there was no clasp or catch on it as you would have expected to find on a necklace. The chain was made all in one continuous piece. The only way to put it on was to slip it over your head.

Brian wasn't sure he liked that idea much. He wasn't on good terms with pain in any form, and he still remembered what had happened to his thumb earlier. It had only been just that once, sure, but what if the same thing happened to his neck or chest? He wasn't keen to find out the hard way. But a necklace is meant to be worn, and with a deep breath he whisked the chain over his head before he could change his mind.

It hung lightly around his neck, the silver disk lying flat against his heart. He grasped it in his hand and held it as far away from his body as he could before he tried anything else with it, though. Might as well be as careful as possible.

His legs were coated with mud and dirt up to the knees from the flooded path, and he could feel scattered smudges of thick red clay slowly pulling hair as they dried on bare skin. His face was slick with oily sweat, curling down in streamers from his forehead. He felt grubby, and this gave him an idea for his first experiment.

"I wish I was clean," he said, imagining himself just that way. Again he felt nothing at all, but when he looked down every particle of dirt had vanished from his body. His clothes were cool and fresh, and even his teeth felt newly brushed. Brian smiled with pleasure, more confident now. His eye fell on a nearby rock.

"Come here," he commanded it, holding out his right hand. The rock trembled and then gracefully floated into his outstretched palm. Brian laughed with delight, throwing the rock into the creek and casting his eyes about for more things to work his magic on. Nothing could have knocked a chip off his satisfaction at that moment.

He played with the amulet fondly, dreaming such dreams as would have seemed unbelievable just yesterday. But now! Now all things were possible.

The summer sun had scorched the tall grass around Black Rock into a wide field of standing hay, which not even the recent rains had been able to bring back to life. The dirt was pale and rocky, full of little white stones that looked like the bleaching skulls of field mice, and Brian eyed all these things thoughtfully.

Moving rocks and cleaning off mud was all very well, but surely there was something more dramatic and interesting he could do. The dead grass and gloomy skies didn't seem to offer very many possibilities at the moment, though.

It would have been a much different place in the springtime, full of wild flowers and swallowtail butterflies and sometimes a few deer grazing at the edge of the woods. That was Brian's favorite time of year, and for a fleeting second he wished it was March instead of September.

A wild thought entered his mind, and he began to smile at the very audacity of it. He walked slowly to the center of the little meadow, and his left hand reached up to clasp the amulet curiously. Could he do it?

"Give me spring," he whispered, conjuring up the vivid image in his mind. Before the last word fell from his lips, the meadow began to change before his eyes. The dry grass broke up into wispy fragments quickly swept away by the wind. Dormant seeds burst into new life in a spreading pool of green around his feet, sending up pale tendrils already heavy with the buds of flowers. Lavender stars peppered the ground with a sprinkle of blooms, and chains of golden daffodils appeared across the far side of the meadow.

For a second he was awed by his power, and stood staring at the changes he'd made. He thought about gathering up armfuls of the daffodils and carrying them back home to brighten up the drab old house just a little. Mama liked flowers. She might even. . . well, what _would_ she do, actually?

When he stopped to seriously think about it, he realized he was dreaming with his head in the sand. Mama wasn't a fool. She knew it wasn't the right time of year for daffodils, and at the very least she'd ask him where they came from. And then what would he say?

It wasn't just the daffodils, of course. Anything strange that happened around the house might cause problems. Mama was suspicious, and he knew from experience that it didn't take much to set her off. The least careless remark, the most minor incident; anything could cause an explosion.

It came to mind again that Brandon would probably be the worst problem he had when it came to keeping the secret. He was seldom out of Brian's company, and he was way too curious about things. He just didn't understand the need to keep his mouth shut sometimes.

The cool wind had dried a sweaty trail of hair against the curve of his cheek, and Brian absentmindedly brushed it away. He turned his back on Spring, the thought of his mother having temporarily soured his taste for any more playing around. He unraveled a sprig of honeysuckle which had grown around his ankle and headed back for the downward path, feeling deflated. What good was magic if you couldn't use it?

He walked quietly into the leaf-scented shade of the hickory trees, paying no attention to anything above the tips of his toes. He was lost too deep in thought. Maybe if he was super careful and only did things Mama wouldn't notice, then he might get away with it. That was an unsatisfying compromise, but it was the best thing he could think of at the moment.

He sighed, and decided it was probably about time he headed home; he needed to be back before Brandon woke up, just in case.

While he thought thus, he felt a single fat raindrop land on his arm, and again he glanced up at the sky uneasily. This time dark thunderheads were piled up like play-doh in the west, and the wind was starting to pick up again. From where he stood, he could see rain falling in dark gray sheets maybe half a mile away, and it was moving his direction.

He made a run for it, gambling on the chance that he could make it to the house before the rain did. Brian was a fast runner, and if he'd been wearing his shoes he might possibly have made it in time.

But he was barefoot, and that slowed him down just a bit. He was crawling through the fence when the rain caught him, causing him to rip a long hole in the back of his t-shirt from trying to slip through the barbed wire too quickly. He cussed under his breath and ran across the pasture to the back door, angry at the fence, and the rain, and himself most of all. He didn't have so many shirts that he could afford to tear them up like that.

He quickly got a grip on himself as he reached the house, though. There were worse things in the world than holey shirts, and the slightest display of bad temper was as sure a way to provoke Mama to anger as he knew of.

He scuffed his feet and made sure to let the screen door slam (but not too loudly, of course) when he walked into the kitchen. If he made a little noise he could let Mama know he was there without actually having to speak to her. She was out of the bathroom now; he noticed the back of her head where she sat on the couch watching one of her soaps. On the screen, an actress was passionately kissing a character Brian had never seen before, and Mama seemed rapt. She either didn't notice him or didn't bother to say anything. Brian didn't really care which, as long as she left him alone.

He didn't see Brandon with her, so he slipped upstairs as quietly as possible. A quick touch of his amulet wiped out the creak in the seventh step just as his foot touched it, and a second one swept the dust all clean. Those were things nobody would notice, or if they did then Brian could always say he'd fixed them by hand. Caution, caution was the thing to remember.

He didn't start to worry until he got to the bedroom and found no Brandon there either, and when a quick look in the upstairs bathroom and out the back window also failed to turn him up, Brian reluctantly decided he had no choice but to ask Mama, although he dreaded it.

He almost skipped the seventh step on his way down before remembering that he didn't have to anymore, and then he deliberately set his whole weight on it just to listen to the silence. He was starting to feel a little better about things. He might have to be careful, but his power was far from useless! He fixed two of the worst cracks in the wallpaper and removed a scratch on the banister without missing a beat, and then slipped through the kitchen as quiet as a whisper to stand hesitating at the entrance to the living room. Then he waited carefully for a commercial break before clearing his throat.

Mama didn't look back at him.

"What?" she asked irritably.

"Um, I just wondered if you knew where Brandon might be, Mama," he asked, in the humblest and most respectful voice he possessed. Mama hated disrespect above all other crimes.

"I don't know where he went. Go find him yourself if you want him," she said, in a tone that meant the subject was closed. Brian mumbled something that might have sounded like a thank-you, and then quickly retreated.

He searched rapidly through the house, checking all the places he could think of that were big enough for Brandon to be hiding in. He went back upstairs, looking in the hall closet and even venturing into Mama's room. No Brandon anywhere.

Then he thought of the attic. It seemed unlikely; Bran didn't usually go up there by himself, but there was always a first time for everything.

Brian quickly climbed up the narrow steps and poked his head through the door. It was too dark to see much, so he grabbed a rafter in one hand and felt his way forward, groping for the lamp stand. He couldn't remember switching it off earlier, but he guessed he must have.

When his eyes had adjusted to the darkness a bit, he immediately saw the lamp knocked over on the floor and the bulb smashed into a thousand pieces. He doubted Mama had been up there, so it must have been Brandon who'd done it.

"Great," he muttered.

He explored the boxes and piles of junk one at a time, being careful not to step on broken glass, and finally he found Brandon curled up in a ball in one corner, almost hidden behind a stack of old newspapers. Brian could barely see him at all except when he moved, and he seemed to be making no effort to come out. Then he realized the kid probably couldn't tell who he was in the dark.

"It's me, Beebo. Come out and tell me what's wrong," he said.

That got results. Brian staggered and barely kept from falling backwards into a mountain of rusty gas pipes heaped up behind him, almost bowled over by what felt like a human cannonball. Brandon wouldn't do anything but cry for a long time, and Brian soon gave up trying to ask him anything. It could wait.

Instead, he sat down and held him till he stopped crying before trying to talk to him again. Brandon still wasn't having any of that just yet, though, and the tears threatened to start all over again.

Eventually he calmed down to the point that Brian was able to pick him up and carry him out of the attic, and that was progress at least. It wasn't until they came out into the hall that he saw Brandon's left eye was almost swollen shut.

Brian went cold inside. Black eyes don't come from falling; only fists can do that.

Still, he said nothing, and took Brandon to their room. When he got there, he shut the door and sat down in his old rocking chair by the window. He knew, in a way, that this was just as much his fault as it was Mama's, because he was the one who'd wanted to go off and leave Brandon alone with her. He knew better. He couldn't pretend he didn't.

"Let me look at your eye, Beebo," he whispered. Brandon turned his head, looking up at him with one bright blue eye the exact same color as Brian's own. He couldn't see out of the other one, which gave him a strange, lopsided look.

Brian didn't care about being secret anymore. He closed his eyes, and imagined Brandon's eye the way it was supposed to be, and then kissed it. And when he looked again, there was no trace of the black eye left. Brandon looked at him soberly and laid his head on his brother's shoulder, and then it was Brian's turn to cry.

## Chapter Two

"Where'd you go this morning, Brian?" Brandon asked him finally, when both of them were a little calmer.

"Oh, nowhere much," he replied, still not wanting to say too much about the amulet.

"Yes you did. I saw you cross the pasture and you was gone forever," Brandon contradicted. Brian shook his head and sighed. So much for secrecy.

"I had to go up to the Rock for a little while, bubba, that's all," he said. That was all Brandon really needed to know.

"Well, you stayed gone too long. Mama was mad cause you left and didn't tell her," Brandon told him. Brian tasted a fresh surge of guilt when he heard that.

"I'm sorry, bubba. I won't do that anymore, okay?" he promised. Brian figured a little humility never hurt anybody, and Brandon smiled.

Before either of them could say anything else, they were both startled by the sound of the front door slamming, followed by Mama's old green Monte Carlo spinning out of the pothole it had made in the driveway.

Brian glanced out the window just in time to see the car turn north on the highway, and he knew instantly where she was headed. There was nothing in that direction except a twenty mile drive to the nearest liquor store at the county line, or a little farther to the nearest bar. That meant she wouldn't be back for at least an hour or two, maybe not even for the rest of the day if they were lucky. Brian felt a weight slip off his shoulders as he watched her leave, even though he knew what it probably meant for later.

The rain was falling heavily now, and it looked like it meant to keep on for a while this time. That was just fine with Brian, now that Mama was gone. He meant to catch up on some sleep for a few hours, if he could only convince Brandon to do the same. If Mama came home drunk again later on and started trouble, there was no telling how late it might be before she let them go to bed.

Of course, it was always possible she'd meet somebody interesting at the bar and stay out till midnight or maybe even all night long, but that was no sure thing. Brian knew better than to count on it.

So he found a more comfortable position in the chair, and started rocking while they watched the rain together. Before long, Brandon laid his head down on Brian's shoulder and his thumb crept slowly toward his mouth, a sure sign of sleepiness. Brian slipped an arm around and gently dislodged the thumb, but Brandon wasn't nearly asleep just yet and put it right back.

"Sing me a song, Brian," he asked suddenly. This was a normal request, and Brian didn't mind. Music was a thing that came naturally to a boy who spent so much time alone. He'd found an old guitar in the attic a few years ago and learned to play it by ear, but he had a good singing voice, too; a high treble that hadn't quite started to change yet. He would have died a thousand deaths before letting anybody else hear him sing, but for Brandon he didn't mind.

So Brian sang softly for a while, an old song he remembered from church and which both of them had always loved, especially the last verse:

" _Oh, they tell me that He smiles on His children there,_

And His smile takes their sorrows away,

And they tell me that no tears ever come again,

In that lovely land of unclouded day,"

By the time he finished the song Brandon was asleep. The thumb had fallen out of his mouth, leaving a thin thread of slobber stretching from his lip to his hand. Brian carefully pushed his mouth shut so he wouldn't get drooled on, and that was that.

The back of the rocker was high enough for Brian to rest his own head there, so he did. After a while, the wind shifted around to the south, blowing the rain in heavy sheets against the windowpanes and blocking most of his view. Brian closed his eyes, and before long he was fast asleep, too.

He slept for several hours, until finally the discomfort of sitting in the rocker woke him up. It was still raining a little, but other than that the house was silent. Brian listened carefully for the sound of the TV or anything else that might tip him off that Mama had made it back home, but there was nothing.

He yawned, and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes with balled fists. His neck ached from sleeping in such an odd position for too long, and the rest of him wasn't too comfortable, either. He wanted to stand up and stretch his legs. He carefully got up from the chair and laid Brandon on the bed without waking him, and then rubbed the back of his neck to ease the cramp.

As soon as that was done he padded downstairs to get a drink of water and possibly clean up the kitchen while he still had time. He knew Mama would be furious if she got home and found it still dirty, and she might show up at any moment. She'd been gone for hours already. He almost dared to hope that maybe she really _would_ stay out all night this time. He knew it was almost too good to be true, but you never could tell.

He went to the screen door and peered outside at the rain. It had slacked off to a slow drizzle again while he slept, and there were heavy wisps of smoky white mist drifting across the face of the mountains in the distance. It made them look dreamlike and insubstantial, like a country in some fairy tale he'd never heard before but would have very much liked to hear. They were called the Crystal Range, and the name only made them seem even more mysterious and beautiful than they already were. Brian watched them for a few minutes, eyes unfocused, lost in thought. Many times, he'd looked at those distant mountains and wished he could run away to some shining land where there were no tears and no miseries, where fathers never disappeared, and mothers never gave their children black eyes, and all things were forever bright and beautiful. It was perhaps the dearest and deepest wish of his heart.

He knew it was nothing but a childish daydream, of course, and for a long time he'd told himself it was foolishness even to wish for such things. The world didn't work that way, and it was no use to break his heart with longing for things that could never be. So he'd told himself, many more times than he could ever remember, until he'd come to believe it for the most part.

Still, he was a little sad when he turned away from the mist-shrouded mountains, and no amount of reasoning about the way the world worked could quite shake it loose. He'd never spoken of these things to anyone; it was simply his own private sorrow, always there in the back of his mind but seldom thought of anymore.

He sighed, and turned his attention to cleaning up the mess in the kitchen instead. That was something practical he could think about, instead of empty pipe dreams.

He grabbed a wet dishrag from the sink and mopped up the meatball, which had somehow gotten crushed since earlier and was now smeared greasily across the floor in a long maroon trail. The empty vodka bottle by the refrigerator was quickly thrown in the trash, and he was in the middle of sweeping up the beer and cigarette butts when he suddenly realized there was no reason why he should have to work so hard.

He glanced at the stairs and listened, to make certain Brandon was still asleep. He hadn't seemed to think much about what Brian had done to his eye, but the less he saw, the better. Brian stealthily touched the amulet, then closed his eyes and imagined the kitchen to be spotlessly clean. He wasn't sure whether it was really necessary to keep his eyes shut or not, but it did help him form a clearer image of what he wanted, and surely that helped, didn't it?

When he looked again, no one would ever have guessed the kitchen had ever been messy. Not a speck or a stain was on anything, almost like someone had scrubbed the whole room with a toothbrush.

Brian smiled with satisfaction and then headed back up to his room. It always made him vaguely uneasy to be down there in Mama's territory for very long, even when she wasn't home. Now that his work was done, he was ready to be upstairs again.

The room he shared with Brandon was the second one on the left hand side at the top of the stairs, and besides the attic, it was Brian's only real refuge. Mama did have obscure scruples at times, and one of them was that she let him do pretty much whatever he liked with his room.

On the wall above his bed was a tattered picture of his grandfather, and on the back of the door was a height chart for Brandon and a faded copy of the Ten Commandments. A single goldfish swam lazily in a glass bowl on top of Brandon's toy chest. In the corner was a dirty-clothes box that had once held Washington apples, and just above it a big red crayon scribble that he'd never been able to scrub off the wall. Other than that, everything was as spotless as Brian could make it. He liked order and stability in his world, and this was one of the few places he could make it happen.

Besides the bed and the desk, the only other piece of furniture was the big antique rocking chair. Brian had salvaged it from the dump a few months ago with one of the arms broken in half, but he'd fixed that by binding it tightly with half a spool of yarn, and then he'd wrapped the other arm so it would match. It was still a little wobbly, but not too bad.

Brandon was still sleeping, so Brian sat down in the rocker and soon fell to daydreaming about Spring in the mountain meadow, and all the great things he might do in the world.

He still had the hole in his shirt from climbing through the fence that morning, and it crossed his mind that it might be worthwhile to try fixing it. He wasn't worried about holding the amulet away from his body anymore; he simply let it rest against his chest. The metal had quickly picked up his body heat and lay almost unnoticed against his skin, just a round flattened lump under his t-shirt.

He traced the shape of it with his forefinger, and then with a silent wish he sealed up the hole in his shirt. He reached behind his back to make certain it was really gone, and his hand met nothing but smooth fabric. He nodded with satisfaction.

He glanced again at Brandon, but the boy still seemed dead to the world for the time being. Cleaning the kitchen had put Brian in the mood to try something else, but he was still afraid to be too obvious about it. So, what to do?

A tiny fleck of paint on one of the windowpanes caught his eye, and with a snap of his fingers it was gone. The windowsill was already as clean as he could scrub it, but upon further inspection he decided it still lacked something. He erased the paint off the surface and polished the wood underneath so that it almost glowed. Brian contemplated this change for a second, then dyed the faded curtains a rich midnight blue, at the same time mending every tiny run and spot-hole.

The colorful window was in such contrast to the rest of the room that Brian decided to go a little farther, just to see how it would look. He could always put it back the way it was.

He turned his attention to the wallpaper, which was cracked and peeling in spots. Some of the places were discreetly patched with scotch tape, but Brian thought that looked pathetic now. He soon fixed the problem, restoring the paper to like-new condition. He bleached the fly-specked ceiling to bright white, and polished the hardwood floor, too. He sealed up a rip in the mattress where stuffing was coming out, and fixed the tatters in Papaw's picture. Soon, the brass doorknob glittered like gold, every piece of clothing in the closet became brand new, and the fishbowl turned sparkling clear. Even the goldfish looked bigger and brighter than ever before. Within minutes, Brian had changed the room utterly, and he could hardly contain his pleasure.

He knew it couldn't stay like that, of course, and with a disappointed sigh he changed everything back the way it had been before. Almost. He didn't undo the floor polish or the new curtains, and he didn't dirty the fishbowl or dull the goldfish. He also left Papaw's picture alone. He thought those things were small enough that they wouldn't be noticed, and if somebody _did_ notice then he could explain them pretty easily. In fact, if he was slow and careful enough, he thought he might even fix up the whole house little by little when Mama wasn't paying attention.

He had high hopes.

* * * * * * *

Mama came home at three a.m. that night.

Brian and Brandon were long since in bed asleep by then, but Brian snapped awake when he heard her kick the front door open. Sometimes the wood swelled up a little bit from the moisture when it rained and made it stick against the jamb. All it took was a little extra coaxing, but of course Mama was too impatient for that; especially if she'd been drinking.

Brian was instantly on edge, his heart pounding, and he half sat up in bed. Brandon hadn't stirred, and that much at least was good. The longer he stayed out of it, the better.

Brian knew better than to show his face unless he had to, so he kept quiet and listened instead of getting up.

He heard Mama talking downstairs, and then he caught the sound of someone else's voice too; a man this time. That wasn't good, and Brian strained his ears to see if he could figure out who it was or what they might be saying to each other, but it was too hard to hear.

He debated with himself about the wisdom of creeping to the top of the stairs and trying to figure out who the dude might be and just how drunk Mama really was. If she was already close to passing out then he didn't have much to worry about, but if she was just now getting started then he didn't dare go back to sleep for a while. He didn't like not knowing. But then again, if he got caught spying the consequences could be terrible.

After a while, he decided it was worth the risk. He stealthily got up and tiptoed across the room, where he paused to put his ear up against the crack of the door. They were still downstairs; that was good.

With utmost caution, he ever-so-slowly turned the doorknob, and then opened the door just enough to slip out into the hall on his hands and knees. It was dark except for the light welling up from the stairway, and that was all to the good, too.

Brian crept close enough to the top of the stairs so that he could hear what was being said, and then laid down on his stomach with his chin cupped in his hands. Mama was laughing, and so was the man. Then he heard some other woman's voice, too. They all sounded just about medium drunk, but nowhere near ready to pass out yet. That was bad; it was the most dangerous time of all.

They seemed to be talking about politics, of all things. . . a topic which didn't interest Brian at all. He was pretty sure he'd never met the man and the woman before, but at least they didn't seem like the kind of loud and dangerous drunk that you had to keep an eye on. Brian didn't care how many people his mother dragged home as long as he didn't have to deal with them and they didn't get mean.

Well, maybe on some level he _did_ care, but that was another one of those impossible pipe dreams that did him no good at all to think about.

He listened long enough to make sure there was nothing going on except drunk-talk, and then shook his head in disgust and got back up on his hands and knees to crawl back to bed. Hopefully whoever-they-were would be gone before morning. In the meantime, Brian was glad it was no worse.

He wasn't as careful on his way back to the bedroom as he should have been, and his foot accidentally bumped against one of the little tables that held Mama's houseplants. It teetered over and fell to the floor with a loud thud, spilling dirt and baby spider plants everywhere.

It was too much to hope for that no one down below had heard the noise, and Brian's worst fear came true when he heard footsteps coming upstairs.

There was no chance to hide and precious little time to make up a story, but he tried. He scrambled to his feet just barely before Mama's head appeared in the stairwell, with a furious look on her face.

"What are you doing out of bed, Brian?" she demanded, before she even made it up the stairs.

"I'm sorry, Mama. I was just on my way to the bathroom. I'll clean it up," he promised, trying to sound as sorry and as scared as he could, not daring to meet her eyes. Then she noticed the spilled pot for the first time.

"You clumsy little. . . Get downstairs right _now_ and find something to clean that up with!" she bellowed, and he hurried to obey.

He didn't quite make it past her. She caught him with a punch to the nose that made him see stars, and he stumbled against the stair banister, barely catching himself from falling. He gripped the wood tightly and took a deep breath to steady himself through the pain, and then headed downstairs.

His whole face was throbbing, and he could feel warm salty blood running down his chin and dripping onto his shirt, but he dared not stop to wipe it away.

He made it to the bottom and saw a burly man sitting at the kitchen table with a half-empty bottle of vodka in front of him, and next to him was a woman with stringy gray hair who looked like she'd seen better days. _Much_ better days, as a matter of fact. Both of them were laughing.

"Sometimes you got to teach the little hard heads a lesson, dontcha, Peg?" the man called out, and Mama laughed too.

"All the time," she agreed, and cuffed Brian again to show him she meant it. She only caught the side of his head above his ear that time, but it hurt badly enough to make him stumble again. He grabbed the broom and the dust pan from beside the refrigerator with trembling hands, and said nothing at all while he rushed back upstairs to clean up the spilled flower pot.

He was very good about not letting himself cry in front of his tormentors, not till he got back upstairs and out of sight. But when he heard them still laughing and socializing in the kitchen just like nothing at all had ever happened, then he couldn't hold himself back any longer.

Still, he wept quietly, as he'd learned from long experience to do. And after he'd cleaned up the mess, he went to the bathroom and washed his face and his shirt to get rid of the blood. His nose and his temple still hurt something fierce, and his eyes were still puffy and stung from crying.

"You're really a mess, boy," he murmured to himself, staring at his reflection in the mirror. It wasn't all that funny, but he smiled a little. Then he winced, because the movement hurt his nose. Mama hadn't pulled her punch, that was for sure.

He washed his face again, mostly because the cool water felt good on his hurt spots, and then he swallowed three ibuprofen tablets and went back to bed. Brandon never woke up, and for that at least he was thankful.

He told himself again that it was just the way things were, and he cursed himself for being so clumsy as to knock over the plant, and even for being stupid enough to get up in the first place and try to spy on his mother. Didn't he know better, after all this time? If he'd had a lick of common sense he would have gone back to sleep without even thinking about trying such a foolhardy stunt as that. But he had, and so now he had to pay the price for it. Simple as that.

He found it hard to go back to sleep, partly from the pain and partly because his swollen nose made him snuffly and blocked his breath. Every now and then he heard Mama and her nameless buddies give an especially loud whoop of laughter that startled him wide awake again. They seemed to be having a merry old time down there, he thought to himself.

At that moment, Brian hated all three of them with such a smoldering hatred that anyone who'd seen his face right then might have taken a step backward. But there was no one in the darkness to see, and no one to know it except Brian himself. And God, perhaps, if He was watching.

Brian was ashamed of himself for thinking such a thought, but sometimes he couldn't help wondering why God never seemed to lift a finger to save the people who suffered and didn't deserve it. Brian couldn't decide whether he personally fit into that category himself, but surely Brandon did? Sometimes he didn't know what to believe at all anymore.

"God, if you're really there, please do something to change this. If you don't then I guess you're not real anyway, but I hope you are," he whispered under his breath, and after saying this deeply bitter and disrespectful prayer, he finally slept.

The strangers were gone the next morning when Brian got up, and so was Mama for that matter. She had to work the day shift at the diner that day, Sunday or not. She probably had a hangover again from too much vodka; Brian certainly hoped so.

He felt a little better, himself. His nose was still tender to the touch, but it didn't look swollen anymore and the bruise on his temple was far enough back that it was hidden under his hair. That was good; he would rather have crawled through sewers than to let anybody notice his battle scars.

He told himself it could have been worse; he remembered one particularly horrible night not long after Daddy left, when she'd lost her temper and actually shot at him with the little pistol she kept in her purse. He couldn't remember anymore what it was that she'd been so mad about, that time. Brian had never been so terrified in his life, either before or since, and the memory was seared into his brain like a white-hot branding iron. In fact, there was still a bullet hole in the wall of his bedroom to remind him.

Brandon had been barely a year old at the time, and Brian dreaded to imagine what might have happened if that bullet had passed just three feet lower, through the place where he lay sleeping that night in his bed, totally oblivious to what was going on.

There were times, after an especially painful binge, when Mama wouldn't touch a drop of alcohol for weeks and hardly said a cross word to either of them. But as soon as Brian started to think there might be just a drop of kindness under all that hateful crust, she always fell right back into the same old rut. Brian didn't believe she would ever really change, but at least life was a little easier when she was trying.

A hard and bitter look crept onto Brian's face as he remembered these things, and he touched the amulet without thinking. He'd been caught off guard last night, but never, ever again would he let things get out of control like that. If Mama ever did anything to hurt him or Brandon again then he'd give her a taste of her own medicine, next time. He had the power now to deal with her in such a way as to make her wish she'd never laid a finger on either one of them. He could do that much, and he _would_ do it, if he had to. He swore it on a stack of Bibles and on the heads of everyone he loved.

The oath left a bad taste in his mouth almost as soon as he formed the words, and he hoped it never had to come to that. Nevertheless, he meant what he said. He was no tear-stained and terrified little boy anymore; he had power that was almost invincible, and she had better watch out.

## Chapter Three

He cooked sausage and scrambled eggs for breakfast that morning, and made cereal for Brandon, and after they ate they walked the half mile to church, as they usually did.

He sent Brandon to his preschool group and then sat next to Rachel McCray on the third pew, for lack of a better seat. They were the same age, but not particularly close. She lived on the road to Falls Chapel, maybe ten miles away, and they didn't see each other much except at church or at school. Brian had always thought she looked kind of like a rat; she was too thin, and her nose and chin were a little too sharp, and the Coke bottle glasses she always wore didn't help matters any. He vaguely remembered that there was supposed to be something wrong with her, but he'd never been curious enough to ask anybody exactly what it was.

He didn't particularly like her, but the only other seat he could find was next to Adam Crenshaw and Patti Sue Jackson, whom he liked even less. Adam was a football player and Patti Sue was a farmer's daughter; both of them were popular, good-looking, and fairly rich, and worst of all they both knew it. Brian always got the feeling they were looking down their noses at his raggedy clothes and cheap shoes, on the rare occasions when they talked to each other at all. He was in no mood to deal with all that today.

"Hey, Mad Dog," Rachel murmured when he sat down beside her.

"Hey, Raych," he answered, smiling tiredly at the nickname. His middle name was Madaug, after his great grandfather, and he'd made the mistake of letting that fact slip out a few years ago. It was supposed to be pronounced Madug, not Mad Dog, but people always seemed to think it was hilarious to mangle it like that. Yet another thing he felt like choking his mother for. Or maybe biting her, come to think of it. That might be a lot more appropriate.

"Are you okay? Looks like you've got a pretty good bump on your head," she said.

"Really? Is it that noticeable?" he asked.

"Well, no, not unless you're close up, I don't guess. What happened?" she asked.

"Oh, it was nothing much. I fell down the stairs last night, that's all. Busted my nose, bonked my head; it was just a stupid accident, really," he lied.

"Oh, okay," she said. Then she paused, as if choosing her words carefully.

"Everything's all right, isn't it, Brian?" she asked, awkwardly. It was almost like she knew what really happened, and for some reason that infuriated him.

"Sure. Why wouldn't it be?" he asked, with just the slightest tinge of a hard edge to his voice.

"No reason at all. I'm sorry," she apologized hastily. He hesitated, and then decided it was better to just let it go at that.

"No problem," he said, with a fake smile. In fact he was worried. If blind-as-a-bat Rachel McCray could see that something wasn't quite right, then probably other people could, too. Brian could imagine the gossip all too well, and he suddenly hated Mama even worse than before. The shame was worse than the punch.

He glanced at Patti Sue without thinking, half expecting to see a knowing smirk on her lips. But she was only reading the bulletin and didn't seem to have noticed Brian at all, actually.

He quickly looked away again and told himself to get a grip; just because Rachel noticed he had a bump on his head didn't necessarily mean the whole town was talking about him behind his back. It was crazy to let Mama make him so paranoid.

With some effort, he put on a mild and pleasant face that showed nothing of how he really felt inside, and after a while he managed to put the incident out of his mind.

After church they walked home again, and then Brian fed Brandon and sent him to watch _Tom & Jerry_ cartoons in the living room. He had another project in mind to try out with the amulet that day, and it was one he definitely didn't want any witnesses for.

It had crossed his mind that it would be nice to have some money, and he'd been thinking about ways he could make that happen. He had several ideas he wanted to try, and hopefully at least one of them would earn him some serious cash. That was what he had in mind for his afternoon's project.

The first thing he tried was to pick up a sheet of notebook paper and imagine it turning into a stack of twenty dollar bills. But that turned out to be harder than he thought it would be, partly because he discovered that he wasn't totally sure what a twenty dollar bill ought to look like. Oh, he'd seen them before, of course, but he'd never paid close enough attention to remember all the minor details, and he was uneasy about getting something wrong. That could land him in a lot of trouble, if he made a mistake. He wasn't sure he had it in him to be a counterfeiter.

Well, okay then. If he couldn't print money, then what could he do to earn some? He thought vaguely about diamonds and gold and things of that sort, and he decided that would be his next experiment.

Brandon had a big bag of marbles in his toy box, and Brian quietly went upstairs to fetch them. They were only glass, but they sparkled prettily in the sunlight and reminded him of lost jewels. Maybe, with just a pinch of luck, he could turn them into _real_ jewels. He picked one up between his thumb and forefinger, and tried to imagine what a diamond would look like. He found that rather difficult too, when it came right down to it, since he'd never seen a diamond the size of a marble before.

Still, he tried, and the marble did change into something that looked mighty similar to what Brian imagined a diamond ought to look like. He remembered that diamonds were supposed to be able to scratch glass, and so he tested his new-made bauble on the kitchen window above the sink. It scratched it, all right, but Brian still wasn't satisfied. There might be other things that could scratch glass, too. Besides that, a diamond that big was probably worth a lot of money, and for that very reason it would probably turn out to be hard to sell. There had to be a better option.

He picked up another marble and imagined it turning into gold instead. He knew what gold looked like, and this time the magic worked perfectly. He opened his eyes and saw that the marble was a bit smaller than before, but other than that it did indeed look exactly like gold. Brian nodded, much better pleased.

He didn't want to use up all of Brandon's marbles, though, so he put the rest of them aside and fetched a handful of pea gravel from the flower pot in the bathroom. Mama used it to put out cigarette butts whenever she was in there, and Brian washed the ashes off in the sink before he did anything else.

As soon as he got back to the table, he converted the gravel into a handful of gold nuggets that sparkled and glittered in the light. All the pieces were smaller than before, which he didn't quite understand, but he shrugged it off as unimportant.

After a bit of thought, he went up to the attic and removed a piece of loose floorboard near the back wall, his well-trusted hiding place. Inside was an old Crown Royal bag, and he pulled this out, listening to the coins jingle inside. Brian liked Crown Royal bags. The purple cloth and gold trim made him feel rich, like a king.

Feeling rich and being rich were two different things, of course. Brian's hoard contained not quite forty dollars, painstakingly collected over the past six months. Quarters left over from trips to the store, nickels and dimes salvaged from sidewalks and baseboards, all of it had gone into his hiding place. He'd learned to be tight as tree bark with his money, but now it seemed less important than before. He took out the change and hid it in an old shoebox where nobody was likely to look, and then he filled up the bag with his nuggets.

He didn't fill it up completely, but even so the bag was awfully heavy. He remembered reading somewhere that gold was supposed to be heavy, though, so he wasn't worried about it. He stuffed the bag in his pocket and decided to call it a day.

He thought he could probably sell the gold at the pawn shop that Mama sometimes used. They had a sign in the window specifically saying that they bought gold, and Brian knew the owner well enough to know that he was a greedy man who could probably be talked into making some kind of deal. With a little luck, he could slip away from school at lunchtime on Monday, get his business done, and be back before anybody realized he was gone. If things worked out right, he'd soon be a very rich young man. Let Adam and Patti Sue and everybody else chew on _that_ for a while.

There was still the question of how to explain where he got so much gold, of course. He knew people tended to get mighty curious about things like that, but Brian had a ready answer for them. He'd just tell them he found it amongst his Papaw's stuff in the attic. Everybody in town knew what a pack-rat his grandfather had been, so it wasn't a totally unbelievable story. And even if people doubted it, they wouldn't be able to prove anything. It would never cross their minds to think he was manufacturing it out of pea gravel at his kitchen table, and that was all that really mattered. If they wanted to invent some other story about where it came from, then so be it.

So it was that Monday morning he went to school with a pocket full of gold nuggets and so much enthusiasm that he could barely endure his morning classes. He'd never felt so impatient for anything in his life as he did for the lunch hour to come that day, and when it finally arrived he wolfed down his food in record time and quickly slipped out to the parking lot.

This was technically against the rules if you didn't own a car, but enforcement was fairly spotty. Brian was counting on the fact that nobody would remember he was on foot.

Apparently no one did, because he wasn't challenged when he headed in that direction. Several kids were already out there, sitting on tailgates, talking on cell phones, and occasionally smoking. None of them paid Brian any mind.

He crossed the entire lot and casually slipped into the trees on the far side when he was fairly sure no one was looking. Then he set out for downtown as fast as he could walk. The pawn shop wasn't far from the school, but then again he didn't have much time, either.

There didn't seem to be any customers at the shop when he got there, which was so much the better. He patted the Crown Royal bag in his pocket and fought down the nervousness that threatened to ruin the whole deal. He reminded himself several times that he was a customer, and he had just as much right to be there as anybody else did.

"Hey, Mr. Johnson," he said cheerfully when he walked in the door. Mr. Johnson glanced up from reading the newspaper, and he didn't smile back.

"What can I do for you, son?" he asked, in a bored voice.

"Well, I saw the sign in the window. It says you buy gold," Brian said, a little nervously.

"Yeah, we do. But I'll give you a piece of advice, kid. Whatever you've got, take it back to whoever it belongs to before you get caught with it," he said, in that same bored tone. Brian bit his tongue to hide the surge of anger he felt at the man's casual assumption; he couldn't afford to take offense, no matter how insulted he felt. He took a deep breath and told himself he was there to do business, not to make friends.

"I didn't steal anything, Mr. Johnson, honest," he said.

"Uh-huh. Well, let's see what you got, then," he sighed, putting his feet down on the floor and sitting up straight. Brian quickly pulled out the old Crown Royal bag and shook out a handful of nuggets onto the countertop. Mr. Johnson didn't look impressed.

"Painted pea gravel ain't worth much, kid," he commented.

"Just test it, please," Brian said. He knew Mr. Johnson had chemicals to test for whether gold was real or not; he'd seen him use it on one of Mama's rings a few times. The man grumbled and muttered under his breath, but nevertheless he pulled out a vial of testing acid and dripped a little of it onto one of the nuggets. There was no reaction, proving the piece was real. Mr. Johnson looked up at Brian with wary eyes.

"Where'd you get this, son?" he asked, and Brian lost his patience.

"Where I got it doesn't matter, Mr. Johnson. You can see it's real, and I promise you I didn't steal it, and you can have it for half the usual price if you'll just keep your mouth shut and not ask me any questions," he said boldly. He'd never said anything like that to a grown-up before in his whole life, but he figured if Mr. Johnson could be rude then so could he.

For a second Brian was afraid he'd gone too far, but Mr. Johnson didn't seem to care. He just knitted his brows while he stared at the gold, and Brian could almost watch the wheels turning in his mind as he considered the various aspects.

"I think we can do business along those lines, Mr. Stone," he finally said, and stuck out his hand with a saccharine smile. Brian shook it with a smile of his own, knowing perfectly well that the man thought he was cheating an ignorant kid. That was all right, though. Brian could make all the gold he wanted, and if he had to give Mr. Johnson a cut rate deal then he was ready to do it.

They weighed out the nuggets, and when it was all said and done, Mr. Johnson laid nine hundred and forty-seven dollars into Brian's hand. It was more money than he'd ever seen in his entire life.

"You got any more nuggets like that?" Mr. Johnson asked lightly, after he counted out the money. Brian could almost see the greed in his eyes.

"I think I might could scrounge up some more; I'm not sure," he replied, just as lightly.

"If you do, then you'll bring them to me first, right?" he asked.

"Sure thing. We got a deal," Brian agreed, and that was that.

It turned out to be a sweetheart deal, indeed. Every day at lunch after that, Brian slipped into the pawn shop to deliver another bag of nuggets and carry home another wad of cash. He kept it hidden under the same loose floorboard in the attic where he'd always kept his stash, where Mama couldn't find it. God only knew what she'd think or do if she came across a hoard of money like that. Some of it he spent on things for the house and stuff for him and Brandon, but by the end of the week he still had close to ten thousand dollars stuffed away up there, if he counted right. It was a good feeling, knowing that.

As he grew bolder, he started doing more things around the house, too, gradually ceasing to care very much whether Mama noticed or not. He still feared her at times, but not nearly the way he had just a week ago.

Therefore by Thursday Brian had already fixed most of the subtle things around the house. . . the scratches and cracks, the ground-in grime, the creaky wood and the flaky paint. The place still didn't look all that different at first glance, but the details were already very clear to anybody who looked close enough. Mama couldn't help but notice, but so far she hadn't said anything. Not yet. She surely knew Brian was behind it all, but apparently she hadn't thought it was anything beyond an inexplicable attack of cleaning. After all, he hadn't yet changed anything which couldn't be explained with a lot of elbow grease, and he never changed anything at all unless she was gone first.

But that wasn't all. He used his newfound wealth to do all kinds of things he'd never had a chance to do before. He bought anything he wanted, without even looking at the price. He went places and hung out with people who would barely have spoken to him a week ago. Even Adam Crenshaw started acting like they'd been best buds since kindergarten.

Brian wasn't stupid; he knew the only reason Adam and the others suddenly liked him so much was because he was generous with his money, but for the time being he honestly didn't care. He was enjoying himself too much.

And then there was his main project, the one he lavished more care and love upon than any other, and that one he shared with no one but Brandon.

If anyone had visited Black Rock about that time, they might have noticed something different about the place. Brian remembered what he'd done to the little meadow that first day, and in his enthusiasm he decided to beautify the whole area. He worked unceasingly on the land all round the Rock, until it gradually became a radically different place than it had ever been before. The first thing he did was to kill all the bugs and snakes and creepy-crawlies. He destroyed every thorn and every thistle, every weed and every wasp. Nothing dangerous or ugly was allowed to invade his little kingdom. It was reserved exclusively for all things bright and beautiful, and he set an invisible barrier to keep any new pests from getting in.

About forty acres was the limit of his power to maintain all this, but within that circle the land was becoming like a page from a fairy tale in which every day is high spring and there is no stain to be found on a single leaf or stone. By Thursday evening it was almost perfect, with only a few little touch-ups remaining.

If Brian had thought about it, he might have connected all this with that old, heartbroken longing he'd felt when he gazed at the misty mountains of the Crystal Range after the rain, when he imagined some place where no bad thing could ever come, or when he sang _Unclouded Day_ to Brandon and dreamed of the same thing. But Brian was young, and it never crossed his mind to connect the dots in that way. All he knew was that the place touched his heart and made him happy, and that was good enough.

He spent as much time up there as he could, when he wasn't busy with Adam or other things. Sometimes he didn't even come home till after dark. That wasn't so _very_ unusual, of course, but at first he'd worried that Mama would get suspicious and maybe even come up there looking for him. But she still seemed oblivious for the time being, and if she noticed anything different about the house or about Brian's behavior, she didn't see fit to mention it.

So it was that on Thursday evening he was planting white oaks, setting acorns with one hand and then making them grow into tall trees in less than a minute. He kept one eye on his work and the other on Brandon, who was playing in the dirt not far away. Brian had never left him alone again since the day he got the black eye, and that meant he had no choice but to take him along up to Black Rock, even if it meant partially letting him in on the secret.

He still worried sometimes that the kid might slip up and say something about what he saw to somebody who didn't need to hear it, but so far he seemed to accept it all without question, like it was the most natural and ordinary thing in the world. He hadn't even asked how any of it was possible. Brian told himself that even if he _did_ mention it to somebody, they'd probably just think he was imagining things. Nobody paid much attention to what a little kid said, especially not a wild story like that.

At least he hoped not.

Still, Brian always wore the amulet under his shirt and never said a word about it, just in case. The less Brandon knew, the less he could talk about.

Brian stood up from planting acorns and wiped a trickle of sweat off his forehead. It was hot work, growing trees. But he loved white oaks, and he didn't grudge the effort. It was well worth it.

He looked down the trail at Brandon playing in the dirt, and with a half-smile lifted him up off the ground and dusted him off. Brandon had loved that at first, but he was starting to get tired of it.

"Put me down!" he cried, struggling uselessly against the breeze. The sun was beginning to slant low across the ravine, and it was almost time to call it a day.

"I think I might just carry you home that way, Beebo," Brian replied, teasing him. He wasn't serious, but from Brandon's howl you would have thought he was pulling hair. Brian floated him closer and set him down on his feet.

"I didn't mean it, silly boy," he said.

"Yes you did," Brandon said, crossing his arms and scowling furiously.

"All right, I'm sorry then, okay?" he asked. Brandon thought about that for a few seconds, and gradually stopped scowling.

"Okay," he agreed.

Brian took his hand, and they walked home together with no more ado.

There were limits to his power, of course, and through trial and error he'd gradually figured out what they were. He couldn't affect anything more than about a thousand feet away, and he couldn't create something out of nothing. He couldn't make things with complicated parts that he didn't understand. He couldn't bring things back to life if they were dead, and he couldn't affect anybody's thoughts or feelings. But he could move things, and he could change one thing into another (if he had the same amount of mass to work with), and he could usually heal wounds on living things and make them grow.

He wasn't inclined to complain about the things that were beyond his reach, though. What he _could_ do was plenty awesome enough.

He was sure there was still a lot he didn't know, but that didn't worry him very much anymore either. He looked forward to finding out everything there was to know, little by little. He had all the time in the world, and it was a pleasure he had every intention of enjoying to the fullest. Still, there were times when he wished the amulet had come with an instruction manual.

Mama was working the evening shift that night, so she wasn't home when they got there. Brian cooked a pot of macaroni and cheese and cut up some hot dogs in it to give it a little extra pizzazz, and after supper he gave Brandon his bath and put him to bed. He enjoyed all these normal things very much, perhaps because he associated them with the nights when Mama wasn't home and therefore he had peace and freedom for a little while.

That night, in the simple happiness of his heart, Brian gave up on secrecy. Mama could think whatever she wanted to think; he was determined to fear her no longer.

Therefore he walked through the house with a critical eye, changing anything he felt like changing. He denied himself nothing his heart could wish for, from marble floors in the bathroom to crystal goblets in the kitchen. The place became beautiful as the castle of a king long ago, and Brian was delighted at what he'd done.

There were certain things he could only do with money, so he snatched up some cash from his hiding spot and called Adam to give him a ride downtown into Falls Chapel.

Adam was cruising the streets with Patti Sue when Brian called, but both of them were more than happy to do him a favor. Patti Sue even offered to stay behind and watch Brandon until they could get back from the store. It was truly amazing how things had changed, Brian couldn't help thinking. But that was all right; he appreciated it anyway.

Once they got to the store, he bought a big-screen TV and a high-definition stereo, a brand new computer and a dirt bike, among other things. Adam was suitably impressed, and Brian favored him with a hundred dollar bill just for the pleasure of giving it away.

All these things he set up in the house, and when he was done, he was awed all over again by the power he held in his hands.

He enjoyed it all for a little while, and then quietly went upstairs to bed. Mama could think whatever she liked when she saw it; he could deal with her, if he had to.

He quickly changed into a more comfortable t-shirt and some shorts without switching on the lights, then laid down on the bed beside the already sleeping Brandon, listening to the old house creak and settle for the night.

Brandon made a vague sleepy sound and moved closer to him, not really awake. He settled comfortably against Brian's side and then grew quiet again. Brian reached down and smoothed his soft red hair, just starting to get long again now after being shaved off for the summer back in June. It looked like he was dreaming about something from the way his eyes moved, and Brian felt a gentle wash of love for him.

"Good night, Beebo," Brian whispered, and snuggled close beside him. He wasn't especially sleepy yet, but he knew that would come soon enough, if he lay still for a little while. In the meantime, he said his prayers and dreamed about the future, and his thoughts were good ones.

Brian was happier than he could ever remember being in his whole life, and he foresaw no end to the good times and the good work he could do with the amulet in his hand. He'd barely scratched the surface. He had power and wealth beyond his wildest dreams, and what could he not do now? The amulet had been the greatest thing that ever happened to him.

He smiled again, and then slowly drifted off to sleep.

## Chapter Four

He fully expected Mama to say something to him about the house at breakfast the next morning, because there was no chance whatsoever that she hadn't noticed what he'd done. But she was strangely silent about everything, even dazed-looking, and if he hadn't known better he could have sworn he saw a glint of fear in her eyes when she looked at him.

That was impossible, of course, but still, the very idea of it made him feel awkward and uncertain how he ought to speak to her, or if he should even speak to her at all. He was used to living in fear of her, but to have the shoe switched so suddenly to the other foot left him at a loss for how to behave.

So neither of them said much of anything, and Brian was relieved when the bus finally came to pick him up.

School was uneventful that day, but Adam had invited him to come to a tailgate party before the football game that night, just to hang out and have a good time for a while. Brian had never been invited to such a thing in his entire life, and he was determined to go.

He hadn't asked Mama for permission, nor did he much care anymore whether she liked it or not. She was working the evening shift at the diner again, and Brian had hired a babysitter for Brandon. . . another thing unheard of in all the days of his life up till then. He knew Mama wouldn't have liked that at all, if she'd known about it, but he didn't care much about that either. There was nothing she could do about it either way.

He put it out of his mind and met Adam in the school parking lot as soon as class was out.

"Hey, Mad Dog, you ready to go?" he asked cheerfully as soon as Brian made it to the truck.

"Yeah, but where's Patti Sue?" he asked, looking around. Normally she was stuck to Adam like super glue.

"Oh, she's already home. Her mom came and checked her out early today so she could go to the doctor. But hurry up if you're going, cause she's already texted me twice wanting to know where I'm at," Adam said.

Brian shrugged and got in the passenger seat, not really interested in Adam and Patti Sue's love life. If she wanted to act like a clinging vine and he wanted to put up with it, then that was their business.

The party was supposed to be at Patti Sue's place, down by the river. Her daddy raised several hundred acres of rice and soybeans down there in the flat bottomlands, and he didn't mind if they used one of the empty fields.

Adam turned off the highway onto a rough dirt road that led way back into the soybean fields, and before long Brian spotted the orange glow of a bonfire.

"There it is, Mad Dog," Adam said, smiling eagerly.

When they got there, Adam stepped on the gas and spun his tires in the dirt before he slid to a stop, and Brian heard several people holler and clap appreciatively.

Most of the kids were a year or two older than Brian, which made him feel both slightly uneasy and deliciously grown-up at the same time.

Several people had brought radios and coolers full of Cokes, and Patti Sue was handing out wieners and marshmallows to roast over the bonfire. Brian helped himself, and he was in the middle of roasting his second marshmallow when Adam came up behind him and clapped a hand on his shoulder.

"Come on, Mad Dog, let's go get some mud on the truck," he said.

"Sure," Brian agreed, and climbed into Adam's 4x4 with two other guys he didn't know. Adam revved the engine till it sounded like it might blow up, and then let off the brake. The field was still pretty soggy from the rain a few days ago, and Adam's big tires tore the ground to pieces and sprayed mud everywhere.

"Won't Mr. Jackson get mad if we mess up the field like this?" Brian asked during a lull when Adam could actually hear him.

"Nah, he won't care. Nothing grows down here anyway," he explained.

Brian shrugged. If Adam didn't care, then he sure didn't.

Before long it was time to go to the game, so they doused the fire with river water and cleaned up the empty Coke cans and such. Brian rode with Adam and Patti Sue, but once they got to the game those two disappeared together and left him to fend for himself.

He didn't mind. He just found a place to sit in the front row of the stands and cheered when there was a good play, eating hot dogs and popcorn to his heart's content. He was sorely tempted a few times to make the ball fly just a little bit farther and help the team score a touchdown, but he didn't meddle. It was enough to know that he could have if he'd wanted to.

The game was over at nine, and Brian decided on a whim to walk home for a change. It was only about a mile from the field to his house, and he was in the mood for some solitude after so much socializing all evening. It was more trouble than it was worth to go hunt down Adam, anyway.

The night breezes were cool against his skin, carrying with them the faint scent of late-blooming jasmine from somebody's yard. He felt at peace with himself and the world, and in the mood to do a good deed if anything happened to present itself.

He came to Annie Summerford's house at the corner of Maple and Magnolia, and on impulse he left a crisp hundred dollar bill in her mailbox. Miss Annie had once been the town librarian, but Brian knew she was old and poor now. If anybody could use some extra money, he was sure she could. Leaving that much cash left him nearly empty-handed, but that was okay, too. He had plenty more at home.

Helping Miss Annie made him feel good, and as he went on he kept an eye out for anything else he might do.

He passed the hardware store and the church without seeing anything else worth doing, and then the graveyard. He removed a few smudges of gray lichen from the tombstones near the street, but that wasn't very satisfying. He wanted something more dramatic than that.

A few stray leaves were beginning to turn yellow on the sweet gum trees, more from the heat than the season. Brian was tempted to move things up a bit and see what fall would look like in September, but he decided that might attract more curiosity than he felt like dealing with. So he left the trees alone and told himself he could always try it with the white oaks around Black Rock if he liked. He could turn them green again anytime he really wanted to, if he didn't like it.

He crossed the river bridge, and saw his Aunt Carolyn's place sitting dark and silent beside the river. A few really determined weeds were growing up through the old cattle guard, and Brian quickly killed them for her.

A full moon was shining through the trees behind him, flooding the highway with pools of silver. Brian waded through them, following his footsteps home. On another day he might have been frustrated by the lack of opportunities to do anything meaningful for people. One would have thought there were more needy folks in the world than just one old woman. But he was feeling good that night, and it would have taken a lot to darken his mood. Maybe another day, he thought to himself.

He opened the back door and went into the house. The babysitter was on the couch watching a movie, and he paid her and sent her home. Brandon was already long since in bed, and Mama wouldn't be home till after midnight.

Brian washed the dishes, and then sat down on the big overstuffed couch in the living room to watch a movie for an hour or two until he felt like going to bed. He picked one at random, which turned out to be _Predator,_ with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Brian liked that just fine; anything with that many guns and explosions was always reliable entertainment.

He hadn't been watching long when he was startled by the sound of a key turning in the back door lock, and he turned around just in time to see Mama coming into the kitchen.

This was an anomaly; she shouldn't have been home for at least two more hours yet. But before he could get up or think to say anything, she shut the door behind her and looked at him steadily.

"Brian, we need to talk," she said, in a tone which he couldn't quite figure out. She didn't seem angry, and certainly not drunk. Worried, maybe? Whatever it was, he couldn't put his finger on it.

Mama put down her things and came to sit in the recliner across the coffee table from him. She seemed nervous, and she kept twisting the ring on her finger and picking at the hem of her uniform, like she didn't know what to say.

This was so out of character that Brian had no idea what to expect. But he'd learned from long experience not to rush her, so he sat in meek silence while she gathered her thoughts, whatever they might be.

"When did you find it?" she finally asked.

"Find what, Mama?" he asked.

"Brian, don't play dumb. You know exactly what I'm talking about. The necklace," she said.

He was momentarily shocked that she knew about the amulet, but he quickly recovered himself. It didn't matter anymore whether she knew or not; there was nothing she could do about it anyway.

"Last week," he answered, truthfully enough.

"What _day,_ Brian?" she insisted urgently, and he couldn't help wondering why it was so dadgummed important.

"Saturday. Why?" he ventured to ask. Asking Mama questions was always a risky move, but his power had made him bold. Mama ignored the question.

"Saturday, saturday. . ." she said softly, half to herself, as if thinking hard. He still had no idea what was on her mind, and found himself irritated by her foot-dragging. If she had something to say, why didn't she just go ahead and say it?

"What all have you done with it?" she asked suddenly, looking at him intently.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"I mean I know about all the stuff you did to the house and I know you got some money from somewhere. I don't care about all that. I want to know what else you've done, if you've messed with anything alive or anything that belongs to somebody else," she asked.

"Why do you need to know?" he asked. This verged on downright disrespect, and he knew it, but Brian was determined to stand his ground this time. He could see that his answer angered her, but for once she forced herself to speak calmly.

"Because you don't know what you're playing with, that's why. You could cause terrible things to happen and not even realize it, Brian _,_ " she explained.

"What kinds of things? And why does it matter how long it's been?" he asked.

"Because it only works for seven days, that's why, and if you found it last Saturday then tomorrow at midnight is the end of it all. There's no way to fix anything stupid you already did, but there's still the next twenty-four hours to think about. I don't want you to make any more mistakes between now and then," she said. That sounded more like the old Mama; insulting and high-handed as usual. Still, Brian could tell she was making a real effort to bite her tongue and talk to him reasonably. And somehow that scared him more than any harsh words she might have used, because it meant she was deadly serious about whatever she said.

He was gripped by a sudden terrible fear that she might be telling the truth, and he had to swallow hard to keep his calm. The thought of losing his power was horrible to even imagine, especially when the idea was sprung on him so suddenly that way, and when the deadline was so near. _Tomorrow!_ He could never finish everything he'd wanted to do by then, not even close.

It might be a lie, of course; but even the possibility was enough to make his throat dry and his chest tight.

"How do you know?" he asked. It came out almost as a whisper, and Mama noticed his fear. She smiled a bitter smile.

"Did you bother to read the thing before you went off on your little spree? No? I didn't think so. Stupid boy," she muttered under her breath, and Brian felt hot blood rising to his cheeks. She seemed to have a supernatural talent for making him feel like a complete fool.

"No, I couldn't read it. The writing was too small," he said, surly now.

"Uh-huh. Never heard of a magnifying glass? Even an idiot would have known that much," she said, scornfully.

Brian had had about as much of her attitude as he could take. He looked up at her with smoldering eyes that held more than a little hatred, and when he spoke there was ice in his voice.

"What difference does it make to _you_ if I do something stupid or not? You never cared about me or anything I ever did anyway," he blurted. A week ago he would never have dared to say such a thing to her, and perhaps if she hadn't been speaking to him that way he wouldn't have said it now. But as it was, the cold and bitter words spilled out before he could think to hold them back.

That silenced her, but Brian took no pleasure in it. The accusation left a bad taste in his mouth, and he was almost immediately sorry he'd said it. The words might be true, but that was no excuse. Truth which is spoken without love can be cruel as a punch in the gut. Didn't he know it all too well himself? He could see clearly that his words had stung, but hurting her only made him feel worse.

"I do love y'all, whether you believe that or not," she finally told him. Those were never cheap words from his mother, and he knew he must have cut her deep to make her say them now. There were even tears in her eyes, shocking as that was. Brian didn't have the faintest idea what to say to her. So he said nothing at all, taking refuge in silence as he'd done so many times before.

But the hurt didn't last very long, and his silence seemed to infuriate her.

"Go on, then, rockhead. Don't listen! You'll find out soon enough what happens, and then we'll see how much damage you've done!" she screamed, and then proceeded to curse him with every foul name she could think of and then some.

Brian didn't wait to hear more. He got up from the couch and left the room without another word, and Mama let him go.

He couldn't have gone to sleep just then if his life depended on it, not till he calmed down a bit, so he left the house through the back door and slammed it behind him, not caring if it angered his mother. In fact he hoped it did.

The full moon gave plenty of light to see by, and after a moment's thought Brian set out across the pasture toward Black Rock, not caring how late it was. He needed some time alone, and that was one place he knew he could get it. He couldn't decide how he felt, except that it wasn't good. He wanted to hit something and he wanted to cry while he did it, and what kind of a messed up mood was that?

Nothing disturbed him until he emerged onto the flat surface of the Rock, where he took a seat at the foot of one of his perfect white oak trees. He was a little calmer by then, and the peace and beauty of his sanctuary soon lulled him yet further. The soft breeze in the oak leaves and the quiet gurgle of the creek flowing over stones were sweet balm for his jangled nerves, just as he knew they would be.

He pensively tossed a few pebbles over the edge of the Rock into the swimming hole, lost in thought. Mama had given him a lot to think about, even if he wasn't sure how much of it to believe.

Now and then his fingers chanced across a larger rock nestled among the tree roots, and these he threw hard and fast across the little gorge until they smacked with a satisfying _thwock_ into the old sweet gum tree on the far bank. Its trunk was gnarled and deformed by a thousand previous impacts, silent proof that it had been used as a rock tree since long before Brian's time. He hadn't used the amulet to fix it; it was too much of a landmark.

He wasn't sure who the last stone-thrower at Black Rock might have been, but he could still see the faded craters whoever-it-was had left behind. The only clue he'd ever found was the name _Jack,_ carved with a pocketknife into the trunk. Who Jack might have been was anybody's guess.

Brian couldn't remember anyone ever teaching him how to throw. It just seemed like he always knew how. He seldom missed the mark anymore when he chose to try, so the exercise hardly occupied his mind.

He soon decided that, whatever else she might have said, Mama had a good point about reading the words on the amulet. He really should have done that to start with, if he hadn't gotten so caught up in the excitement of the whole thing. It galled him to admit that she might actually be right about something, but there it was.

All he could do was wait till morning and see if he could find a magnifying glass somewhere. There wasn't one in the house, as far as he could remember. He guessed he'd probably have to get a ride to Wal-Mart and buy one.

That was one thing decided, at least. As for the rest of it, about losing his power after seven days and all that. . . well, he'd know one way or the other soon enough. There was nothing he could do about it either way. If Saturday came and went with nothing happening then he'd have proof that she was a liar and he'd never have to believe her again.

On the other hand, even if he did lose his power, there wasn't much he could think of that still needed doing. He had plenty of money now from the gold, and it wouldn't take long to beef up his nugget stash a bit. Other than that, he'd already done everything he cared the most about doing, if it came right down to it.

There was still the problem of dealing with Mama with no amulet to back him up, but Brian was a lot less scared of her than he'd been before. If the amulet had done nothing else for him, it had at least given him a healthy dose of courage.

He wondered if the seven blue gems on the front of the amulet had anything to do with the seven days Mama was talking about, and then decided it didn't matter.

As he mulled all this over, Brian began to feel the first twinges of sleepiness gnawing at the edges of his mind, and he decided to take a dip in the swimming hole to clear his head.

He stripped down to his underwear and took a running dive off the Rock into the deep pool below it, making a huge splash when he hit the water. The creek was clear as crystal, and he could see the bottom even by moonlight. In fact that was almost what it seemed like. . . swimming in a tank full of liquid moonlight. He liked the image, and when his head popped back up above the surface he shook it to scatter droplets of water out of his hair like a dog. He swam back and forth for a while, and then floated on his back with his fingers laced behind his head to keep his ears above water.

The night was warm and tranquil, and he felt no inclination to go home just yet. So in the meantime, he wished the stars a little brighter and the song of the crickets a little sweeter, and drank in as much of the peace of the place as he could.

After a while, his spirit calmed and refreshed, he climbed out of the pool and used the amulet to dry himself off before he put his clothes back on. He'd certainly miss little things like that if he lost his power, he thought to himself. But he was calm enough now that the thought only made him smile.

When he finished dressing, he made his way back home through the woods and across the pasture.

The house was dark when he got there, and he supposed Mama must have gone to bed already. Just as well; he didn't feel like talking to her anymore at the moment, not even to say goodnight. He tiptoed upstairs as quietly as he'd ever done in the bad old days, to lie down beside Brandon and hope for a better day in the morning.

He was very careful to wear a tight t-shirt that night, and to tuck the amulet firmly inside it so that no one could sneak in and take it from him while he slept.

That done, he prayed for everything to work out as it should, and then closed his eyes.

* * * * * * *

In the morning the goldfish was dead.

The bowl had turned gray with pollution, so dense and thick that nothing could be seen through the murk.

Brian could smell it even before he opened his eyes, and he quickly got up and threw it away before Brandon had a chance to see it. He silently promised himself to get a new one in a few days, whenever he had the chance. He wouldn't try to pretend it was the same one, but when something died it was usually better to replace it quickly.

He didn't give the dead fish much more thought after that, although he was soon to get a nasty surprise that gave him plenty of reason to think about it. But in the meantime, it was a gloriously bright and beautiful day, with the first scent of fall hanging crisply in the air, and Brian was happy with the world. Mama and all her dark and ominous words seemed like no more than a bad dream, to be swept away and forgotten in the morning light.

He changed clothes, whistling softly to himself, and then went to wake up his brother.

"Come on, Beebo, get up! Time to go!" he said cheerfully. Brandon groaned, and Brian tried tickling him. That usually worked, but not today. Brandon just rolled out of reach and pulled the covers back over his head.

"What's wrong with you, sleepyhead?" Brian laughed.

"Don't feel good," Brandon finally said.

"Well what's wrong? Does your stomach hurt, are you bleeding. . . what is it?" Brian asked.

"No, just don't feel good," Brandon answered. Brian touched his forehead, but it didn't feel especially warm. Nothing was wrong, as far as he could tell.

This was a complication. He needed to go get that magnifying glass, and beyond that he had a vague idea that they might go the lake for a few hours with Adam and Patti Sue. Brandon enjoyed things like that, as long as he had something to occupy his attention. But not if he wasn't feeling well.

Brian wrinkled his eyebrows and thought for a while. It was unlikely that he'd be able to find a babysitter for a sick kid on such short notice, but the trip to Wal-Mart was absolutely necessary if he wanted to read those tiny little words on the back of the amulet. He could put off going to the lake, but not that.

The only person he could think of to ask was Carolyn. Fortunately she turned out to be agreeable, and by the time she got there about thirty minutes later, Brian had to admit that Brandon did look sickly. He was pale and had dark circles under his eyes.

Carolyn took him home with her, and Brian promised to come fetch him later that afternoon.

He felt a little bit guilty about going off elsewhere when Brandon wasn't feeling good, but he told himself Carolyn would take good care of him and it wouldn't be for very long anyway.

That done, he put the matter out of his mind and called Adam.

They had to run to Falls Chapel to get to the nearest Wal-Mart, and when all was said and done it took almost two hours before Brian got back. He didn't dare try to read the words on the amulet in front of Adam, so he had to wait till he was home again before he gave it a shot.

As soon as he got there, he sat down at the kitchen table and took the amulet off, then laid it down flat on the tabletop so he could study it. The writing was so tiny that it was hard to read even using the magnifying glass, but after a few minutes he figured it out, and this is what he read:

Seven days you have the power.

Touch no living thing.

If the chain is broken, all is lost.

Brian felt a sudden chill in the pit of his stomach, replaced almost immediately by fear. Seven days. Touch no living thing.

That was the part which laid an icy finger on his heart and filled him with dread. Because he'd touched many living things, in all kinds of ways, and he dared not guess what the consequences might be. His mind jumped instantly to Brandon, and the goldfish, and Mama's warning about terrible things. He swallowed hard.

He abruptly stood up from the table and slipped the amulet back around his neck, telling himself sternly that he had to get a grip. He didn't know anything for sure yet, and panic wouldn't help anybody. The thing to do was to find out, if he could.

He couldn't quite bring himself to check on Brandon first; that cut far too close to the bone for him to face it immediately. But he could check on the trees and things at Black Rock, and maybe that would tell him what he wanted to know.

He hurried across the pasture and through the woods so quickly that he was soon out of breath, so anxious was he to find out whether his worst fears were true.

Almost as soon as he crossed the invisible barrier between his protected land and the everyday world, he noticed that something wasn't right. Many of the leaves on the trees were yellowed and withered, and some even looked dead. In places he noticed a jelly-like brown fungus growing on the branches, and that certainly hadn't been there before.

Brian felt another thrill of dread, but he refused to give in to despair just yet. Whatever it was, he might still be able to fix it. He used the amulet to kill the fungus and make the plants grow healthy new leaves, but there was nothing he could do about the dead ones. He turned those to dust instead. There were only a few of them, so the gaps were not very noticeable. He worked as he walked along, patiently fixing whatever was wrong.

It was strangely silent in the woods that day, a fact which he didn't notice for quite some time. But presently, as he worked his way up the path, he found a dead cardinal on the ground, and Brian's heart came up right into his throat when he saw it. It was brilliant red, even more so than normal. Brian had given it a little extra color at some point, just to make it look nicer. It was hard to say what had killed it. It didn't seem hurt, other than the fact that it was dead. Brian turned it to dust as he'd done with the withered trees, and it was then that he first noticed there were no birdsongs.

Indeed, Brian saw almost nothing living except the trees. He came across several dead or dying birds, and once a dead fox. He'd changed all the animals in his little patch of woods in some way or other. . . brightened their colors, made them bigger, given them blue eyes or softer fur or something like that. All of them had been fine yesterday, but now everything seemed to be dying. Even during the little time he'd spent in the area, the leaves had yellowed and dropped off several more trees. Even the grass was dying.

He fought hard against the spreading destruction that had dropped like a stone into his peaceful kingdom, until he was exhausted from the battle. He couldn't keep up. Barely did he grow a new tree before it began to die too, and within an hour it was a dead trunk like so many others. He tried healing a few of the birds that were still alive and found that it lasted only a few minutes before the bird was dead. Brian was at his wit's end, unable to figure out what was happening or how he could stop it. His beloved sanctuary was beginning to look like a wasteland. By sundown, there was nothing left but dead sticks and bare dust, like a bomb had exploded and destroyed every living thing.

Just as the sun slipped below the horizon, Brian abruptly gave up all hope of doing any more good up there. He ran down the trail towards home, paying no more attention to the dead and blasted region he'd spent so much effort to cultivate.

When he got home, he went directly to the phone. All he cared about by then was getting hold of Aunt Carolyn and finding out whether his worst fear of all might really be true. He got her voice mail three times, and that only made things worse.

He left the house, running down the road to his aunt's place as fast as he could go. There was no car in the driveway, but he hoped against hope that maybe somebody was home, that maybe Carolyn had just gone to the store for something. He came to the front door, still breathing hard from his run, and found a note pinned to the mailbox. He snatched it up, and slowly read what was written there.

Brian, if you read this, we're gone to the hospital. Brandon is very sick. I already called your mother and she's coming up here. Stay home and we'll try to call you later.

That was all it said, but that was enough. Because he knew what was wrong, without a shadow of a doubt. Every living thing he'd touched with the amulet had sickened and died, and he'd used it on Brandon to heal his black eye.

Which he wouldn't have had in the first place, if Brian hadn't been so careless. So whose fault would it really be, if he. . .

Brian couldn't bring himself to even finish thinking that thought, and he sat down on Carolyn's porch and wept for the third time in a week.

Presently he went home and sat in the gleaming kitchen beside the phone, anxious not to miss any calls. He soon found that doing nothing was unbearable, so he fixed a frozen pizza and ate as much of it as he had the heart for. Then he wandered slowly through the quiet rooms in silence, touching things here and there. It was beautiful, yes, but he would gladly have traded all of it just to have Brandon home safe. What were money and things, compared to that?

Eventually Carolyn did call, and the news wasn't good. Brandon was still alive, just barely, but he was slipping fast. Carolyn tried to say that nobody knew how it might turn out yet, but Brian could read between the lines well enough; what she really meant was that nobody expected him to make it till morning.

He stayed calmer at that news than he thought he would. It might have been because he already expected it, or it might have been because he was too numb for words. Maybe both.

He got off the phone with his aunt not long after that. He felt dead inside, and couldn't think of anything else to say. He knew he must have seemed cold, but right then he didn't have the heart to care.

Brian pulled the amulet out from under his shirt and looked at it with hatred, wishing he'd never found it in the first place. If Brandon died then he'd never forgive himself. He studied the medallion forlornly, praying that he might find something to show him a way to save his brother, anything that he might have overlooked. But the only things he saw were the glittering fountain and the seven bright gems, and the flowing script around the edge.

Seven days. _Touch no living thing._ If the chain is broken, all is lost.

He wished bitterly that he'd known those three things a week ago.

Except, of course, he knew he _could_ have known them a week ago, if he'd only made the effort to try. It hadn't been so very hard to figure it out. All it had taken was a crummy dime-store magnifying glass. But he'd been careless about that too, and now Brandon would be the one who paid for it.

He wondered very much about that third line, and what it might mean that all would be lost. Everything he'd done with the amulet? He'd gladly give all that up, if it would help.

Brian seized at the tiny scrap of hope like a drowning man snatches at a life preserver, and prayed to God he wasn't wrong. He took the necklace of the amulet in both hands, closed his eyes, and then, with a hard yank, he snapped the chain.

## Chapter Five

As always, there was no fanfare, nothing to show that the magic had worked. Brian heard and felt nothing except the breaking of the silver chain. But when he opened his eyes, he found a world utterly changed. The kitchen was full of the exact same mess he remembered from last weekend, right down to the spilled beer and cigarettes on the floor. There was no trace of any of the changes he'd made all week. It was almost like he'd stepped back in time.

Brian blinked stupidly, and had a surge of déjà vu so strong that he honestly wasn't sure what was real and what wasn't anymore. He had to pinch himself to make sure he wasn't dreaming. He still didn't believe it and pinched himself again.

After a minute, he noticed that everything wasn't _quite_ the same as before. The wide-screen TV and the computer he'd bought were still there, and so was anything else he'd purchased with money. It seemed to be only the things he'd directly used the amulet for that had disappeared.

He had a fleeting, idle thought of all that gold he'd made, suddenly turning back into pea gravel in somebody's bank vault somewhere, and wondered how he could ever sort _that_ out. He sighed and thrust the idea out of his mind; he could deal with that later. Right now the only thing he cared about knowing was whether Brandon was safe or not.

The sudden reappearance of the nasty kitchen, beer puddle and all, gave him a wild hope that Brandon might even be back home already, just like nothing had ever happened. He'd been forced to believe stranger things lately.

He listened, just in case, but the bottom floor was empty and silent as the grave all around him, so Brian quickly ran up the filthy stairs to check the rest of the house.

He opened his bedroom door slowly, hardly daring to hope. Just like the kitchen, everything was exactly as it had always been before he found the amulet. He hadn't bought anything to put in there; it had all been done directly.

There was a vaguely human-shaped lump under the covers, and Brian crept to the edge of the rumpled bed, trembling. Then he pulled the corner of the blanket down, and found nothing there but a crumpled pillow.

He felt another surge of sickening fear and near-despair, but he refused to give in just yet. He methodically searched the rest of the house until he was certain there was no one else there, and when he was sure, he went back to the kitchen and called his aunt.

She answered on the first ring.

"What is it, Brian?" she asked.

"Is Brandon any better?" he asked immediately, hoping against hope.

"He's pretty much the same as he was thirty minutes ago," she said dryly. For a second Brian was startled that so much time had already gone by, but when he glanced at the clock he couldn't doubt it.

"Okay, sorry to bug you so much," he said.

"It's fine; I know you're worried. But it does seem like maybe he's finally stable, you know. At least there's that much to be thankful for. We thought there for a while. . . ." she said, and then trailed off.

"So they think he'll be all right, then?" he insisted hopefully, and she hesitated again.

"I don't know yet, Brian. It's still pretty bad. He's not breathing on his own, and they're not really sure what's wrong with him, yet. They said we'll just have to take things one day at a time and they'll do the best they can. All we can do now is wait and see," she said.

"Okay. Just let me know if anything happens," he said.

"I will. I promise," she said, and that was that.

Brian went back to the kitchen table and wondered what it could all mean. It seemed like breaking the chain had erased everything he'd done with the amulet, but if so then why was Brandon still sick? He was stable now, and that was infinitely better odds than half an hour ago, certainly, but it was still bad enough. Brian told himself he should have known it could never be that easy.

He buried his face in his hands and wallowed in misery for a few minutes, racking his brain desperately for something else he might do, anything at all he could try. He couldn't bring himself to believe that there was nothing to be done, in spite of all the setbacks and failures in the world.

He looked at the amulet again, and for the first time he noticed that the little crack around the back side had popped open just a bit, enough for him to grab the edge with his thumbnail and open it.

This was something new, although Brian was too miserable to let himself hope that it could possibly mean very much.

Still, he couldn't help but try it. He hooked his thumb nail at the edge of the crack and spread the two halves apart, not sure what to expect.

As it turned out, one side contained something rather like a compass, with a needle that pointed in the same direction whichever way he turned the amulet. The only odd thing about it was that the needle seemed to be pointing northeast instead of north, and no amount of shaking or twisting could convince it to change its mind.

Brian could make little sense of that, but when he turned to the other side he was none the wiser. The back side contained some kind of verse centered across the middle, in the same flowing script he'd seen on the back. It was just as tiny, too.

There was just the barest sliver of hope in that, if the words could tell him anything useful. Brian had nothing else to cling to, so he hauled out the magnifying glass again, and this is what he read:

For the one who loves life more than things,

To whom love is more precious than power,

For the one who has strength of desire,

Who can bear length of days with pure heart,

Come drink, if you will, of the Fountain free-flowing,

At the heart of the world, where wishes come true.

Brian quickly scribbled the words onto a sheet of paper, just in case he couldn't get the amulet back open again later, wondering all the while what on earth all _that_ could mean. He hardly dared guess or imagine.

He shut the amulet and tried to open it again, just to test the matter, and he found that it wasn't at all hard to open anymore. That _must_ have changed when he broke the chain, because it had always been impossible to open before.

Then he noticed another oddity. The chain wasn't broken after all. It was all in one piece, smooth and whole, just like it had always been. That confused him more than anything, because he knew perfectly well that he'd broken it. He'd felt it snap, he'd even _heard_ it.

That was another mystery Brian couldn't even begin to fathom, but in the meantime he was much more interested in that last line of the poem, the part about wishes coming true.

He wasn't sure he trusted the amulet anymore after everything he'd seen. He thought of Brandon, still lying there dangerously ill at the hospital, and he remembered the blasted devastation at Black Rock. Maybe he hadn't been quite as careful as he should have been, true, but still. . . using the amulet was like playing with dynamite. It could do wonderful things, but it could also blow up in your face and kill people, too. He didn't know if he wanted to take that chance again.

But he also remembered wiping away Brandon's black eye, and the light and the beauty that had seemed to glisten from every leaf and every blade of grass before the end came, and when he glanced around him at the poor and tattered room he sat in, his heart broke at the memory. In a way, it was worse to have tasted beauty and then have it snatched away, than never to have known it at all. Surely all that couldn't have been just a trick and a lie, could it? He wasn't sorry for giving it all up to save Brandon, for life was indeed sweeter than anything in the world, and love was more precious than all his powers. There was no trace of a doubt in his mind about those things, and never would be again. He hadn't realized how much treasure he really had, until he almost lost it.

But still. . .

He remembered, all too well, the way things used to be. He might have learned a thing or two and found a bit of courage he'd never known before, but the rest of the world had seemingly gone right back to the way it always was. Mama would still be a drunk, and Daddy would still be gone, and Brandon still might die, and he was pretty sure he'd end up having to give all the money back once people discovered that his gold had turned back into gravel. He might even go to jail for it.

At the very best, nothing would have changed from before. Brandon would come home to the same sad and broken place as always, and life would gradually settle down into the old familiar pattern. There was a time when Brian would have told himself there was nothing better to hope for, but he found that it was hard for him to accept that kind of thinking anymore.

He couldn't help wondering (just a little) what might happen if he really followed the amulet to the heart of the world and drank from the Fountain. Surely that's what the compass-thing was for, wasn't it, to show him the way? Wishes coming true was a pretty strong promise, when you stopped to think about it.

Was he being offered something more than just wealth and power, perhaps? Did he dare to believe that he might, just might, get all those impossible things he _really_ wished for? Might he soften Mama's heart, and bring Daddy back, and make Brandon really well, and turn home into as beautiful a place as ever he'd tried to make Black Rock to be? It was almost too good to be true.

If Brian had been a different sort of person, perhaps he wouldn't have had the courage to believe such a thing for a second time. But as it was, hope and fear both nagged at his heart until he was almost torn to pieces inside.

Then again, what did all the rest of it mean, about bearing length of days with a pure heart, and where exactly was The Heart of the World?

Brian swallowed hard, and tried to judge which way the compass was telling him to go. It seemed to point north and a little east, toward the Crystal Range and whatever might lie beyond them, the land of his fantasies and daydreams since childhood. It seemed fitting, in a way, that that was the direction the amulet would tell him to go. But the question of how he was supposed to get there and what he might find when he did; for that he had no answers at all.

He walked slowly to the back door and looked out through the screen at the distant mountains, and beyond them The Heart of the World. Did he dare to believe? For that matter, did he dare _not_ to dare?

He felt very alone at that moment, and unsure what he ought to think or believe, let alone do. His choices so far hadn't turned out all that well. He would have liked to talk to someone, anyone, but there was nobody he could think of. Mama and Carolyn were out of the question, and somehow he didn't think Adam or his other new buddies would be much better. He needed a friend, and for the first time in a long time he realized that he didn't have any.

That only made him feel worse than ever, though. So he took refuge in a chat room on the Internet, that last bastion of lonely souls.

The room was supposed to contain people who wanted to talk about mythology; Brian's best guess for where he might find some information and not get laughed at for asking such questions. So he posted the verses from the inside of the amulet, asking if anyone had seen them before and what they might mean.

It seemed like a long shot at best, but an hour later he was rewarded with an answer from a girl in Mississippi.

"It reminds me of a story I heard once, about a flowing fountain at the heart of the world, where people could drink from it and stay young and beautiful forever, and have all the wishes of their hearts come true," she said.

"You mean like the Fountain of Youth?" he typed back, thinking immediately of the diamond-crusted fountain emblazoned on the front of the amulet.

"Sort of like that, I guess. But not just anybody could find it. . . only the ones who knew the way. The ones who got invited, you might say," she replied.

"Invited?" he asked.

"Yeah. There was something about having to pass a test of some kind, as to what you'd choose when you really had to. . . power and wealth, or love. That's why that verse you posted reminded me of the story," she said.

"Do you think it's true?" he asked, not stopping to think how flaky that might sound, even on a mythology forum. She didn't answer right away, and after a while Brian thought he must really have put his foot in his mouth. But eventually he got his answer.

"I guess I believe there's nothing too good to be true. If the story isn't real, then it must be because it's not good _enough_ to be true, not because it's _too_ good, and in that case the real truth would be something even better," she finally said.

Brian pondered that, and couldn't decide what he thought about it yet. He'd never heard anyone put things quite like that before.

"Do you know the name of that story, or where I could find it?" he asked.

"I don't remember, but I'm pretty sure you could find it at the library or online, if you searched a little," she told him.

"Okay, thanks a lot," he told her, and again she didn't answer for a few minutes.

"I hope you find it," she finally said, and for a second he was startled at her words, until he realized she might only be talking about the story, not the Fountain.

Brian knew a little bit about how to search for things online, but not so much that he was able to do it quickly or well. It took him at least two hours to find anything, and the story he finally did locate turned out to be very difficult to read. The language was awfully old-fashioned, full of words and expressions that confused him. Nevertheless, he could puzzle it out if he tried. It was pretty much just like the girl had told him, but still, the story was well worth reading, for it mentioned one small but extremely important detail that the girl had left out.

Maybe she just hadn't remembered it, or maybe she hadn't thought it mattered enough to mention, but the people in the story were led to the Fountain by an amulet, which they were warned never to lose or to part with, lest they never find the way and be lost forever.

That was enough to make a believer out of Brian, for he knew that he must be holding that very same amulet in his own hands. And that verse, whatever else it might mean, was an invitation to come and drink. It had to be. So he knew the way, and apparently he was invited, if he had the courage to follow through with it.

He thought again about Brandon, and that decided him.

"All right, I'll come," he said out loud, and once the decision was made he felt a great weight slide from off his shoulders, and he felt calmer and quieter than he'd felt all day.

He put the amulet safely in his pocket and switched off the computer before trudging upstairs to the attic. His money stash was still there, just as he'd left it, and he took a thousand dollars with him, for whatever he might happen to need. He wasn't sure what that might turn out to be, but he knew he didn't want to be broke. On the other hand, he didn't want to take all the money, either. That was just an invitation to get robbed, or worse.

He left a note for Mama, telling her he'd be back soon. It'd probably infuriate her that he hadn't asked first, but it might possibly keep her from calling the cops or coming to look for him herself. For a while, at least.

That done, he kick-started the dirt bike and rode it to the dollar store downtown, where he bought some good shoes and a pair of sunglasses to keep the wind out of his eyes, and also a warmer jacket. The bike wasn't really made for long-distance riding, and it wasn't street-legal either for that matter, but since it was all he had it would have to do. He'd just have to be careful and not go too fast, and ride the ditches and back roads as much as he could, unless he could find something better at some point.

He stopped at the diner where Mama worked and had a hamburger steak with mashed potatoes and gravy before he left town. He thought about going home and getting a fresh start early in the morning, but he quickly decided that probably wasn't a good idea. Mama might come home, and that would make things difficult. It was better to go ahead while he still could.

He soon discovered that he couldn't follow the way the amulet told him to go; not exactly. The road didn't run quite that way, and the best he could do was to pick the road that seemed like it went in more or less the right direction. His best bet seemed to be the main highway that led into Falls Chapel.

He didn't plan on riding that far until morning; his main goal at the moment was to find somewhere other than home to sleep for the night, so he could avoid Mama if she happened to show up.

After a little while he passed a lonely barn in the middle of nowhere with no houses nearby, and he decided that it looked like an excellent choice. It was getting late, and he was more tired than he would ever have believed possible.

He killed the bike and walked it up the lane to the barn, so as not to make so much noise. The place looked deserted and ramshackle, and a bit spooky if the truth was told, but it must have still been used from time to time, because the loft was full of fresh hay. Brian parked his bike in one of the horse stalls and covered it with a ratty old blanket that he found hanging on a nail. Then he climbed up the ladder into the hay loft and found a place as close to the wall as he could, for the sake of getting a little breeze. The late summer night was still warm.

He kicked off his shoes and curled up in the hay as comfortably as he could to wait for daylight, and in spite of the strange bedding he fell asleep surprisingly quickly.

Nothing disturbed him during the night, and nothing looked down on him except a barn owl returning from the fields near morning. Nor did he dream, except the sweet and simple dreams of the pure at heart, of the kind that nourish the soul but are never remembered.

He woke later the next morning than he usually would have, perhaps because the day before had been so full and difficult. It must have been almost eleven o'clock when he opened his eyes, and he might have slept even longer if a finger of sunlight hadn't crossed his eyes just then.

He got up and stretched, yawning while he did so. Then he put his socks and shoes on, and made his way down the ladder to where his bike was hidden under the horse blanket.

He consulted the amulet to make sure he was still headed in the right general direction, and checked his map to make sure the road would keep going that way. All seemed to be well, so far.

It was a sunny, breezy day; good biking weather. Still, by the time he came into Falls Chapel he was beginning to feel cramped and uncomfortable. He wanted very much to get off and stretch his legs for a while.

It was way past noon by then, and Brian felt that it was high time for some food. There was a little grocery store across the street from the city park, and on a whim he decided to get some picnic supplies and have his lunch right then and there. He got cheese and bread and Miracle Whip, some smoked turkey breast, a bag of potato chips, and a two liter bottle of sweet tea. Then he went to one of the tables as far from the street as he could, next to a fountain that splashed and glittered in the sunlight, and there he fixed himself a sandwich and some chips and laid them out on a paper towel. He ate slowly, taking time to savor the food and also to enjoy the warmth of the day.

He wondered if anybody would be looking for him at home yet, and somehow doubted it. He probably still had a while before anybody even noticed he was gone, much less cared.

Still, he took the time to call the hospital and talk to Carolyn for a few minutes to check on Brandon. There was still no change, and Brian wasn't sure whether to be pleased or worried by that news. It sounded good at first, but then again, the longer somebody stayed in bed, not moving or breathing on his own, the worse his chances were. Even Brian knew that much. People got pneumonia after a while, and Brandon had always been worse than most people about that kind of thing. He got chest colds all the time.

Brian told himself not to paint things blacker than they already were, but it made him twice as determined to find the Fountain as soon as possible, before things had a chance to turn bad. One wish would cure everything, and he could never rest easy till it was done.

Beyond telling Brian to go over to her house if he got hungry or needed anything, Carolyn didn't show much interest in where he was or what he might be doing. So much the better, he thought to himself.

Afterwards he sat and had another sandwich and tossed three pennies into the fountain. There were only a few other people in the park, and one of them was a girl who was sitting with her grandmother and tossing bread crumbs to the sparrows. Or at least the grandmother was; the girl seemed more than a little bored. She saw Brian toss the pennies into the fountain, and smiled at him.

"You won't get much of a wish for three cents," she said. The next bench was close enough that she could talk to him without shouting, and he smiled back at her.

"I didn't know this was such a high-priced fountain," he said. It was a mild joke at best, but she laughed.

"Well, no, I guess it's not. So what did you wish for?" she asked. He knew she was just making idle conversation for the sake of having somebody to talk to, but he didn't mind.

"I wished I could find the heart of the world," he said, truthfully. There was no particular reason to keep it a secret; she'd never take him seriously anyway, or even understand what he was talking about. But whatever the girl might have thought about his wish, she never got a chance to answer him.

"Here now, what's all this talk about the heart of the world?" the grandmother broke in, staring at Brian with the oddest sort of look in her eyes. It was almost a hungry look, he thought, like she wanted to eat him alive. He noticed for the first time that she was uncommonly pretty for an old lady, and for a moment Brian stared back at her, curious. She had on a pair of knitted gray mittens and a matching shawl that looked much too hot for the weather, but then Brian remembered that old people were always cold.

"It's nothing. I just heard a story once, about a fountain at the heart of the world where wishes come true, and I thought it'd be cool to find it someday, that's all. It was a silly wish," he said, apologetically. The girl smiled again when she heard all this, but Brian noticed that the old woman wasn't smiling at all.

"Who told you about the Fountain?" she asked, still staring at him.

"You've heard of it?" he asked eagerly, almost unable to believe it. This time she smiled slightly.

"Oh, indeed I have, child. Indeed I have, long ago. I even drank from it with my own lips," she declared. The girl glanced at her grandmother with exasperation, and then gave Brian a pained look.

"You have to forgive Granny; her mind isn't quite what it used to be, I'm afraid," she apologized in a low voice. Brian was crestfallen, and could barely hide his disappointment.

"Oh, I see. It's all right," he said. But the old woman cackled and gave him that hungry look again.

"You have to forgive Janette; she thinks I'm bonkers. But I meant what I said, young man. Come see me, _alone,_ at Pinecrest, room 208, tomorrow, and I'll tell you the whole story," she told him.

"Sure, I'd love to," he said automatically, and Janette gave him another embarrassed look.

"Thanks for humoring her. Come on, Granny, I think it's about time we headed home," she said, turning to her grandmother.

"Bonkers. Nobody listens," the old woman muttered, but she roused herself when her granddaughter stood up and took her hand. Janette never looked back, but the lady gave him one more keen look as she was getting into the car.

Brian wasn't sure if the old biddy was really crazy or if she might actually know something worth hearing, but he finally decided it couldn't hurt to wait till tomorrow and go see her. At worst he would have wasted some time, and at best he might find out some things well worth knowing.

But first he had to find out where he was supposed to go. She'd said Pinecrest, room 208, wherever that was. Brian guessed it was a nursing home, but he couldn't remember hearing of it before. He'd been to Falls Chapel pretty regularly, but only to go to Wal-Mart and sometimes a few other places. Other than that, he didn't know his way around all that well. He'd never needed to.

A quick look at the phone directory gave him the address of Pinecrest Retirement Village, and since the town was fairly small, it didn't take him long to find the place. It was a long brick building with three wings and a flat roof, with a bunch of elderly folks sitting on a patio out front. It looked old and run-down and depressing, and choosing a cutesy name like "retirement village" didn't change the reality of what it was.

But the old lady had said to come see her tomorrow, not today, so there was no point in lingering.

The first thing he had to do in the meantime was to find a place to stay for the night, and he didn't much feel like sleeping in a barn again. Then he'd see what the morning would bring.

## Chapter Six

The first thing he found was Tabitha's House, an old ramshackle Victorian-looking house downtown which advertised itself as a bed and breakfast inn. Brian wasn't fussy, and since there didn't seem to be anything else nearby he decided it would do well enough. He parked his bike in the little parking lot and trudged up the worn concrete walk to knock on the door.

It was opened, eventually, by a bald man wearing jeans and cowboy boots. That by itself might not have been so unusual, except that they were dark green fake alligator skin. Real leather was never that shiny, and never that green, either. Brian was looking down at the man's feet and couldn't help but notice such a spectacle, but he didn't comment on the man's taste in fashion.

"Can I help you?" the man asked. He sounded friendly enough, in spite of the fake alligator boots, and Brian looked at him and smiled.

"Yeah, I'd like to rent a room for the night, please," he said, trying to look as serious as he could.

A skeptical expression crossed the man's face, and Brian wished he could have looked a few years older; it would have simplified things so much. But however skeptical the man might be, he apparently decided to err on the side of caution.

"Of course, sir. We do have a couple of rooms available," he agreed.

"How much for one night?" Brian asked.

"Two hundred dollars, sir," the man said. Brian almost choked with sticker-shock, but he'd learned long ago from Mama never to show anything on his face that he didn't want people to see. Therefore he remained cool as a cucumber, and didn't betray how he really felt. He was tempted to walk away and look for something cheaper, but the thought of the smirk on the man's face if he did was enough to change his mind. He'd been laughed at way too often for being poor.

"Sure thing," he nodded. The man's eyes opened a little bit in surprise; he'd probably thought the price tag would get rid of a kid without having to go to the trouble and risk of refusing to rent him a room. Most times it probably would have worked, too, Brian thought, trying not to smile. But as it was, he'd offered a price and Brian had agreed, and that put him in an awkward position to weasel out of it. He tried, though.

"I hate to do this, sir, but since you don't have a reservation, we'll have to ask for cash before you can check in. Will that be all right?" he asked.

"No problem," Brian agreed, pulling out his billfold and taking out a couple of hundred dollar bills. He took his time about it, making sure the man could see that he had plenty more where that came from.

The innkeeper took the money, somewhat ungraciously Brian thought, but he offered no more objections and stood aside so Brian could come in.

Then he led his guest to a bedroom near the back of the house, on the second floor.

"This is the Tyler Room," he intoned pompously after opening the door, and Brian wanted to laugh again. The place really wasn't fancy enough to deserve having all the rooms with their own names. But once again, he kept his thoughts to himself.

"I hope you'll find everything in order, sir. If you need fresh towels or if you'd like anything from the kitchen, just push the intercom button by the door and we'll be glad to bring it to you," he said. Then he excused himself, leaving Brian alone.

The room was decent, with polished hardwood floors and a handmade quilt on a big four-poster bed. There was a portrait of President John Tyler on the wall, for whatever reason. Maybe the room was named after him, though Brian couldn't have guessed why to save his life.

The window looked out on a street view that wasn't particularly interesting, and there was a private bathroom. It was nice enough, but Brian had halfway expected golden faucet handles and crystal chandeliers for the price he'd paid.

Still, he didn't much care. He could spare the money, and it was a lot better than the hay loft. He'd only have to stay one night, just till he could go visit the nursing home sometime in the morning. In the meantime he enjoyed a hot shower and put on some clean clothes, and after that he felt much better.

Almost as soon as he finished getting dressed, there came a knock on the door, and a girl's voice.

"Room service!" she called cheerfully. Brian was a little bit puzzled; he hadn't ordered anything, and the girl sounded vaguely familiar for some reason.

"Come in!" he called.

She opened the door, and he suddenly found himself confronted with Rachel McCray, standing right there in the doorway with a big smile on her face.

Brian cursed under his breath. Here he was trying his best to keep secret, and right out of the gate he had to run smack into somebody he knew. Could his luck get any worse?

"Is anything wrong?" she asked, seeing the shock on his face.

"Oh, no. . . I just wasn't expecting to see you, that's all," he explained, lamely. She laughed.

"Oh, that. Yeah, I just work here a little bit now and then on the weekends and after school. It's a good job. Helps me make a little money, you know. Anyway I was in the kitchen and I saw you coming up here with Mr. Croydon, so I just wanted to come say hi," she added.

This could be a problem, Brian thought to himself. If Rachel went home and told somebody where he was, then it might get back to his mother and wreck everything. He thought quickly.

"Well, hey, come in for a minute if you want to. I needed to ask you something anyway," he told her.

"Oh, yeah? What?" she asked, coming into the room and sitting down on the bed.

"Um. . . this might sound weird, but I need you not to tell anybody you saw me here, okay, Raych? It's really, really important," he told her. That piqued her curiosity, and she looked at him with her head cocked to the side, like a bird watching bread crumbs.

"How come?" she asked simply.

"It'd be a long story, I'm afraid. Let's just say I've got some things I need to do, alone, and if anybody finds out where I am then they'd drag me home before I could finish," he said.

"You mean you ran away from home?" she asked, wide eyed.

"No, no, nothing like that. I'll be back home in just a few days. Just got some things to do, first," he told her hastily. She hesitated, and he could tell that she wasn't sure whether to believe him or not. That would never do; he had to find a way to get her on his side, no matter what.

"Raych, listen. If I tell you what's going on, will you promise me you won't say anything to anybody?" he pleaded.

"Brian, I don't know if I can-" she started, but he interrupted.

"Just listen first, before you say anything one way or the other. Will you do that much? Please?" he asked.

"All right. I'll listen," she agreed reluctantly.

"Brandon is sick, maybe dying," he told her flatly, getting right to the point.

"Oh, Brian, I'm so sorry. I heard he was at the hospital but I didn't know it was that bad," she said. He had her sympathy, but now came the tricky part.

"Okay. The reason I'm here is because I heard about something that maybe could save him, but I knew nobody would let me go find it if I told them," he explained.

"What are you talking about? Why wouldn't they? What kind of a something?" she asked. Brian took a deep breath; the next part was even trickier.

"They say there's a fountain at the heart of the world, and if you drink from it then all your wishes come true. I think if I find it, then I can save him," he told her. She looked at him skeptically, like she was trying to figure out if he was joking or not.

"You're serious?" she finally asked.

"I've never been more serious in my life. My brother might die if I don't figure something out; I wouldn't joke about something like that," he reminded her.

"Brian. . . " she started, but he cut her off again.

"Listen, I know it sounds crazy, but look here," he told her, pulling out the amulet and opening it up to show her the pointer.

"What's that?" she asked.

"It points the way to the Fountain. All I have to do is follow it," he explained, and read her the verses from the opposite side. Then he quickly told her about finding the amulet and some of the things he'd done with it. He left out the part about Brandon's eye, and Black Rock, and a few other choice things; she didn't need to know all that, not by a long shot. He just had to tell her enough so she wouldn't think he was nuts.

"You really believe all this?" she finally asked. She still didn't look convinced; she looked more like a person who has no idea what to think.

"Yeah, I do. There's an old lady here in town who's been to the Fountain herself, a long time ago. I'm supposed to go see her tomorrow morning," he told her.

"I don't know, Brian. It just sounds crazy, you know. Like a fairy tale," she said, shaking her head.

"I know it does, but what if it's not? What if I _don't_ go, and Brandon dies, and then I have to live the whole rest of my life wondering if he didn't have to," he pleaded. It was his last card, and if she didn't believe him after that then he wasn't sure what else to say to her. But her face softened when she heard those words, and she was silent for a long time, thinking.

"I guess I can understand that much, anyway. I'll tell you what I'll do, okay? I'll keep it a secret, but only if you'll take me with you," she finally told him.

"Huh?" he said, too startled to think of anything else to say.

"You heard what I said. If there's really such a place as that, and it's not just a story, then take me with you to find it," she said, and he could find no trace of anything except sincerity in her eyes. But her attitude mystified him.

"Why?" he asked.

"Well. . . let's just say Brandon's not the only one who needs fixing up," she said cryptically.

"What's that supposed to mean?" he asked.

"It means I'm sick, Brian," she told him simply, with a little shrug. He'd heard rumors about this before, of course, but nevertheless he pretended to be surprised. She might not like it if she thought people were gossiping about her.

"Sick like how?" he asked neutrally.

"It's called Batten's Disease," she said.

"I never heard of it before," he said.

"No, most people haven't. It's a rare genetic thing. But anyway, what happens is that you gradually go blind, and forget how to walk and talk, and then usually you die by the time you're twenty years old," she said. Her tone was offhand and matter-of-fact, like she was talking about the weather or a homework assignment, but somehow that only made it seem even more brutal and horrifying. Brian didn't know what to say.

"You don't look sick," he said, lamely.

"No, not right now. Not yet. Just my eyes, mostly, and I have to take medicine for seizures. But it gets a little worse all the time, and one of these days it'll get bad enough that I won't make it," she explained.

"There's no medicine or anything you could take?" he asked, still in shock.

"Well. . . sort of. There are some experimental treatments to slow it down for a while, but there's no way to cure it. I've got maybe five or six years left, if I'm lucky," she said.

"You're not scared?" he asked.

"Yeah, a little. But I know I'll go to heaven when I die, so I guess it could be worse. Besides, I decided a long time ago I wasn't going to let it ruin whatever time I do have left," she said.

"That's pretty brave," he told her.

"No, it's really not brave at all. I have to be that way, so I won't go crazy thinking about it all the time," she told him.

"Still sounds pretty brave to me," he said, and she shrugged.

"You do whatever you have to do. But I'm not quite as laid back and calm about the whole thing as you seem to think. I'm still snatching at every straw I can get my hands on. Even crazy fairy tales about magic Fountains," she told him, with a small laugh.

"I'm not sure I could be that strong," he told her, humbled.

"Sure you could, if you had to. I try to remember all the things I love to do, and how much there is to live for. That helps a lot, when I feel like giving up," she told him.

There was a long pause.

"So, can I come with you, then?" she finally asked, catching him off guard again.

"But how would you do that? I mean, wouldn't people be looking for you?" he asked.

"Aren't they looking for you, too?" she asked, reasonably enough.

"Well, yeah, I guess you have a point," he admitted, thinking hard.

"Can you. . . I mean, are you up to some hard traveling? I don't know how far it is, and I don't know what might happen between here and there. I've already had to sleep in a barn last night. It's not much fun," he pointed out.

"I can do pretty much anything you can do, as long as I have my glasses and my medicine," she said. He was still doubtful.

"Are you _sure?"_ he asked again.

"Yeah, I'm sure. I can handle whatever I have to handle, and I won't gripe and moan about it, either. Like you said before, if I don't at least try it then I'll always have to wonder what might have happened if I did," she reminded him.

"Well, yeah. . . I see what you mean," he said.

"So you'll take me with you?" she repeated again.

Brian still had serious doubts about the idea, but he had to admit that it would be nice to have somebody to talk to and chew things over with. And, as she herself said, she had an excellent reason not to give up until they found the Fountain.

"Sure, why not?" he finally agreed.

"Good!" she smiled, and then glanced at her watch.

"Got a hot date?" Brian asked, and she laughed.

"No, but I need to get back to work. I've already been up here longer than I should have been, and Mr. Croydon is probably already mad. But I tell you what. Come down to the verandah at supper time and we can talk some more. I'll take my break and then he can't say anything," she told him.

"Okay, that sounds good," he agreed.

"All right, then. Supper's at six. We're having steak tips with mushroom gravy, and I think baked potatoes and green beans," she said.

"Wow, fancy," he said dryly, and she laughed again.

"See you then," she told him, and then she went back to the kitchen.

It was only about three o'clock, and Brian still had a few hours to kill before he had to be back for supper. He went to a secondhand store to buy some fresh clothes while he had time, and while he was there he also got a handful of used books to read and a backpack to hold his things. After that he didn't particularly feel like sitting in the motel room doing nothing, so he decided to take a walk.

Falls Chapel was built on a little bluff beside a rocky riverbed, almost dry so late in the summer. All around was flat valley bottomland, boxed in on three sides by steep mountains.

The downtown was pretty enough, with a lot of old buildings and historical sites. Before long, Brian came to a little white chapel overlooking the river, with a few gravestones off to one side. The grass was neatly clipped and the building itself was manicured, surrounded by a wrought-iron fence with a gate and a graveled path that led up to the front door. There might or might not have been a "falls" below the bluff, but if there was then it couldn't have been much of one, for Brian heard nothing.

On a whim, and out of mild curiosity, he opened the wrought-iron gate and went up to the chapel, where he found a discreetly placed plaque from the historical society, telling about how this place was the namesake for the town and how so-and-so had built it in seventeen-something-or-other and was buried in the graveyard nearby.

The front door was open, and Brian went inside to find three pews lined up in front of an altar, and a stained glass window in a starburst pattern behind it. There was no one there, and he sat down in the front pew for a few minutes to pray for Brandon, and while he was there he added a prayer for Rachel too.

That done, he felt a little more at peace than he had before, and he left the place in a better mood. It was getting close to suppertime by then, so he turned his footsteps back toward the hotel.

The verandah turned out to be a nicer place than he expected. It was full of wicker furniture where guests could sit and relax, and there was a view of a goldfish pond and some woods behind the house. Much better than the view from the Tyler Room, that's for sure.

He took a seat as far from the other guests as he could, and then slouched back in his chair to wait for Rachel. It wasn't long before she came outside and spied him sitting there.

"Hey, stranger. Are you ready to eat?" she asked.

"Yeah, I think so," Brian told her.

"Just one second, then. I'll be right back," she answered. She disappeared into the house for a few minutes, and then returned with two glasses of tea and two covered plates on a platter. She put the food on the table and then sat down in a chair beside him and handed him his glass.

"Whew! Time for a break," she said.

"Mmm. . ." Brian said, nodding.

"So how was your day?" she asked, putting her feet up on an ottoman that sat nearby and making herself comfortable.

"Oh, it was all right. Just wandered around town a little," he said.

"Yeah, dull place," she agreed.

"No, it was kinda interesting, actually. I'd never been downtown before," he said.

"I guess so. But anyway, I thought of something I need to ask you," she said.

"Fire away," he said.

"How are we getting around? We can't just walk all the way to the Fountain, can we?" she asked.

"No, I'm pretty sure it's too far for that. I've been riding my dirt bike, but I'm not sure if that would work so well with two people," he said, doubtfully.

"Yeah, that's what I was afraid of. But I've got an idea, though," she said.

"What is it?" he asked.

"Well, can you drive?" she asked carefully.

"Um. . . maybe a little bit, if I had to. Why do you ask?" he asked.

"Because my sister has a car we might could use, that's why," she said.

"Aw, come on. Your sister would let you borrow her car to go who-knows-where, for who-knows how long, with a boy she barely ever met, when you're not even old enough to supposed to be driving by yourself?" he asked, skeptically.

"I wasn't exactly thinking of asking her first," she said defensively.

"You mean you want to steal your sister's car?" he said, dumbfounded.

"No, not at all. But she's out of town for three months and she told me I could use it now and then while she was gone, as long as I was careful with it," she explained.

"I'm pretty sure she wasn't thinking about something like this," Brian said.

"I'm sure she wasn't. But she didn't say I couldn't, either. All she told me was to be careful with it," she said.

"Don't you think that's splitting hairs?" he asked.

"Maybe it is. But you're forgetting one thing," she told him.

"Which is?" he asked.

"If we really find the Fountain, and it can really do what you say it can, then I don't think my sister will be sorry at all that I maybe took the car a little farther than she meant for me to," she explained.

Oh.

"Yeah, I can see how that might kinda change the way she saw things," he admitted after a while.

"Can _you_ drive?" he asked suddenly, thinking about her eyes and her seizures. It didn't sound like a very safe combination.

"Yeah, I can drive okay most of the time. I've got my learner's license. I never did it by myself before very much except to go to school or to work sometimes cause you can get a special permit for that, but driving is pretty much the same wherever you go, isn't it?" she said.

"I guess so," he agreed, doubtfully.

"I could bring the car over in the morning, if that's what we wanted to do," she offered.

"Sure, let's do it," he agreed.

They didn't talk much longer, because Rachel's supper break ended and she had to get back to work in the kitchen for another hour or so, and then after that she was expected back home.

Brian sat for a while longer on the verandah until he finished his tea, and then he went back upstairs to his room to watch TV for a little while before bed. There was nothing on, so he dropped that idea before long.

He thought about going to bed, and even went so far as to turn his light off and lie down on the mattress. But he found himself restless and full of thoughts, and however hard he tried it was impossible for him to go to sleep.

As he lay there in the dark quiet, he noticed a quick flash of blue light against the white muslin curtains of his window, quickly cut off. He might not have noticed it at all if he hadn't been looking the right way, but as it was his suspicions were aroused, and he got up to see what was happening. He peered out through the curtains without moving them, and down on the street he saw a county patrol car parked in front of the hotel. Mr. Croydon was down there in his fake alligator-skin boots, talking to a cop on the sidewalk. After a few minutes Brian saw the man look up and gesture vaguely toward the Tyler Room.

That was enough to make Brian's heart start pounding, and he quickly put his clothes back on and threw everything he had left into his backpack, ready for instant departure should it prove necessary. As soon as that was done, he went back to the window to look outside again. He might be worrying for nothing, but he'd rather be safe than sorry.

The deputy and the innkeeper were both gone from the sidewalk, and seconds later he heard footfalls on the staircase. The sound of boots against hardwood floor was unmistakable.

Brian wasted no more time. His door was locked, but he knew that wouldn't delay them more than a minute or two if they meant to find him. The innkeeper surely had an extra key. There was no way out; not that way.

He opened the window as quietly as he could and crawled out onto the roof, then shut it behind him so they might waste a little more time wondering where he was. If he left the window open then that was almost a dead giveaway.

The roof was a lot higher and a lot steeper than he would have liked, and he crawled gingerly across it to keep from falling or making noise. He had to find a way down as fast as he could.

He couldn't immediately think of any way except maybe to shimmy down a drain spout, but he doubted seriously whether the frail aluminum gutter work would hold his weight or not. What if it broke and sent him crashing two stories to the ground? If he didn't break his neck or a leg, then at the very least he'd make a horrible racket and get himself caught. There had to be a better way than that.

He thought about crawling into one of the other windows to hide somewhere else in the hotel until they left, but he soon rejected that idea, too. The other rooms in the hotel were the first place they'd look when they didn't find him in his own bed, and there weren't that many of them to start with. Not to mention the fact that he didn't know which ones were empty and which ones had guests in them. The last thing he needed was to break into an occupied room and get shot by somebody who thought he was a burglar.

On the other hand, he couldn't just stay on the roof, either. He showed up like a fly on an ice cream cone under the glare from the street lights. They'd spot him the second they came back outside.

He crept slowly and carefully toward the back of the house, hoping the shadows would give him a little more cover while he tried to think of some other solution.

What he finally found wasn't ideal, but it worked. The verandah at the back of the house was only a single story, which meant he could jump half the distance onto the verandah roof and then the rest of the way to the ground from there, like a giant staircase. Two short jumps was a lot better than a single long one.

The only thing that worried him about that plan was the noise. If he made a huge thump when he hit the verandah roof, they'd hear it inside the house and know where he was almost instantly.

He hesitated, not liking the idea, but finally decided it was the best option he could come up with.

He tried to muffle the sound by lying down on his belly and sliding backwards off the edge of the roof before he let go, but it was harder to hold on than he thought it would be. He slid the last few feet or so, scratching his arms on the gritty shingles and falling heavily onto the roof of the verandah ten feet below. So much for being quiet.

He wasn't hurt except for a few scratches from the shingles. He didn't know if anybody had heard him hit the roof or not, but he dared not hang around to find out. With only the barest nod to keeping quiet, he scrambled to the edge of the roof and jumped the rest of the way down to the grass, being careful not to twist an ankle.

He immediately took off running, trying to lose himself amongst the side streets as fast as he could. The hotel disappeared behind him pretty quickly, but it didn't take him long to realize that he could never hope to stay hidden that way for very long. There was almost nobody on the streets, which made him a glaring target. His only friend at the moment was the darkness.

When he'd made it far enough from the hotel, he took cover inside a belt of hedges that ringed the bottom of a billboard sign by the highway. It wasn't an ideal hiding place, but much better than roaming the sidewalks.

After a while his heart slowed down and he was able to think a little more calmly.

His mother must have come home and found the note he'd left her, and then called the cops to go round him up and haul him back home. That was the only explanation he could think of for what had happened. It didn't surprise him; it was exactly the kind of thing he'd been afraid she might do.

The only thing that puzzled him was how they'd managed to find him so soon, especially in such an obscure little hole-in-the-wall place. The only thing he could come up with was that Mr. Croydon must have said something.

Looking back, Brian realized that going to the hotel had been a mistake, and a stupid one, too. Fourteen year olds didn't do stuff like that, and they didn't usually walk around with fistfuls of hundred dollar bills, either. No wonder the man thought something fishy was going on.

Brian sat down and pulled his knees up to his chest so he could lay his head down, then let out a long breath. A few more stupid moves like that and he'd end up in juvenile detention for a week or two. Mama wouldn't hesitate to have him locked up if she thought it was the only way to knock some sense into his thick head. She'd probably use those same exact words, matter of fact. He knew her too well.

The idea scared him, but not as much as she probably hoped it would. Brian had lived cheek and jowl with fear for an awfully long time. He thought he could probably keep his head down and not get caught, as long as he didn't do anything else dumb to attract attention to himself.

But in the meantime they already knew he was somewhere in Falls Chapel, and that was bad enough. He didn't dare go back to the hotel to get his bike, and even the thought of sneaking back there long enough to wait for Rachel in the morning was enough to make his blood run cold. What if somebody had overheard their conversation last night and they had a squad car waiting for him the minute he showed up? But on the other hand, there was no way he'd get very far on foot, either.

He wished he knew where Rachel lived, or even her phone number, but he'd never thought to ask. Now he had no way to get in touch with her when he really needed to. But then again, maybe it was better he didn't. Calling her at home could make her parents suspicious, too, and that was the last thing they needed.

He drummed his fingers against his knees, thinking hard. The only thing he could do was try to catch up with Rachel in the morning, no matter how dangerous it seemed. He might be able to go back to the hotel and wait for her, _if_ he could find a place to lay hid while he waited. If anybody had been eavesdropping on their plans last night then he might find himself walking right into a trap, but what choice did he have?

But surely tonight's escapade would have changed things, wouldn't it? They surely wouldn't expect him to show up at the motel in the morning just like nothing happened, would they? It would either be incredibly brave or incredibly stupid; he couldn't decide which. Maybe it was both, for that matter.

He chewed on the idea for a while but couldn't come up with anything better. He'd just have to try it and hope for the best.

In the meantime, he decided the hedge was probably a safe spot to stay put for a few hours, at least till they gave up looking for him. He could figure out his next move when he was sure the coast was clear.

His run from the law had left him drained, so he stretched out beside the hedge as comfortably as he could, and did his best to sleep awhile.

He didn't have much luck with that, because the roots kept digging into his back most uncomfortably, and the mosquitoes nearly ate him alive. He was able to doze a little in fits and snatches, but that was about all.

## Chapter Seven

He was back on his feet not long after the first blush of dawn lit the sky, bleary eyed and tired, and wondering what time it was.

He figured they'd probably given up looking for him by then, and he felt safe enough to use the sidewalks without running the instant he saw a car on the road. He made his way as inconspicuously as he could to within two or three blocks of the hotel, and there he stopped, afraid to go any closer.

It was almost full daylight by then, and he felt a strong urge to hurry up and hide. It would have been easier if he'd known which way Rachel would be coming in, because then he wouldn't have needed to go near the hotel at all. He could have just waited beside the street until he saw her.

But he didn't know, so there was no choice but to inch his way closer to the hotel and hopefully find a hiding place which would let him see the street without being seen himself.

That was harder than he expected. He didn't dare lurk too long behind fence rows or outbuildings; there was too much danger of being spotted and reported. Nor did he dare break into an empty building or ask anyone to let him into their house. That was another excellent way to get reported.

He thought about crawling underneath the floor of the verandah at the hotel and peeking out through the trellis, but he couldn't remember if there was an opening he could use, and there wasn't time to hunt for one.

The best thing he could find was a huge, untrimmed magnolia tree growing in the front yard of the house next door to the hotel, with thick branches that grew all the way down to the ground and heavy leaves that might possibly keep anybody from seeing him, if he slipped in behind them. He quickly decided it would have to do.

He nonchalantly dropped to his knees in front of the magnolia tree, and made a show of looking around on the ground as if he'd dropped something. But he knew perfectly well that it was better to be quick than clever, so he wasted no time crawling up under the spreading branches, praying nobody had seen him do it. His luck had been so bad lately that he didn't trust it.

It was almost as dark as night under the magnolia leaves, dark enough that no grass could grow and he found himself crawling on bare dirt. He quickly found a vantage point from which he could peek out through the leaves at the street in front of the hotel, and there he waited.

It seemed like a long time, as it always does when there's nothing to do but wait. The sunlight gradually grew stronger until it was full day outside, but Brian's lair was still dark as a cave. That suited him just fine. The blacker the better.

He kept a sharp eye out for police cars, but saw none. Of course, that didn't mean they might not be there, he thought nervously. It only meant he didn't see them. There was nothing to prevent one of them from hiding somewhere and keeping a stake-out on the place, just like he was doing. He kept telling himself it was stupid to think they cared about finding him that much; he wasn't exactly on the Ten Most Wanted list. Still, it was nerve-wracking.

At eight-thirty, he saw a black Honda Civic pull up to the curb in front of the hotel and park there. He couldn't see who was inside, because someone had put window tint all over the glass. They hadn't done a very good job, either. It was full of bubbles, and it was already starting to peel off at the edges and turn purple. There was a slew of old and new bumper stickers on the back, from _I Love Chocolate_ to _Biker Chick,_ and almost everything imaginable in between.

Whoever was driving the car didn't get out right away, and Brian decided to take a gamble. If it wasn't Rachel and if the cops were hiding somewhere around then he might find himself in serious trouble, but if he dallied too long and it _was_ her then that might be even worse.

He quickly crawled out from under the magnolia tree and trotted over to the car as fast as he could without running. He peered through the purple tint on the window and saw that it was indeed Rachel, and then he wasted no more time. He yanked open the door and slipped into the passenger seat as fast as he could.

"Where were you? I thought you'd never show up," she hissed, as she pulled away from the curb.

"There was some trouble last night. The cops showed up and I had to run. I almost didn't get away," he told her.

"What happened?" she asked, alarmed.

"I don't know. I couldn't sleep, so I was still awake when I noticed blue lights against the curtain. I got up to look and I saw the hotel manager talking to a cop down on the sidewalk and pointing to my room. Then they headed inside, and I thought I better get out while I still could," he explained.

"How'd you get away?" she asked.

"I had to crawl out the window onto the roof, and then I jumped down onto the verandah and then to the ground. I'm sure they knew I was up there, but I lost them in the dark," he told her.

"That was crazy, Brian. No wonder they call you Mad Dog. Don't you know you could break your neck trying to jump from that high?" she scolded him.

"Well, yeah, but I couldn't think of anything else to do at the time," he shrugged, and she sighed.

"I'm sorry. I'm sure you did the best you could. It just scared me when you said the cops showed up, that's all. So what did you do for the rest of the night?" she asked.

"Hid behind a hedge and then under that magnolia tree back there, and tried to sleep a little. Didn't work very well," he added thoughtfully.

"Well, I guess you can sleep in the car for a while after you tell me which way to go," she suggested.

"I can't sleep yet. We have to go see that old lady first and find out whatever she knows," he told her.

"Where does she live?" she asked.

"At Pinecrest Retirement Village, room 208," he told her.

"Oh, okay. I know where that is," she said.

"Let's go, then," he told her.

Rachel threaded her way through town, and eventually came out onto Main Street where it ran along the river bank. As uneasy as Brian was about staying in Falls Chapel even a minute longer, he had to talk to that lady first before he could leave.

"Coming?" he asked Rachel when they pulled into the parking lot.

"No, I think I'll wait out here with the car. I know too many people in there and it wouldn't be a good idea for them to see me skipping school like this. They might say something to somebody. You won't be in there too long, will you?" she asked.

"Hopefully not," he said.

He walked through the front doors like he belonged there, and soon found himself in an open area with an old fireplace and some threadbare couches, from which three wings diverged to the left, the right, and straight ahead. There was an office to the left, but he was reluctant to go in there and ask for directions. They might want to know who he was there to visit, and then what would he say? He had no idea what the old lady's name might be, just the room number she'd given him.

It turned out not to be all that difficult, though. He soon noticed that all the room numbers that started with 2 were on the middle wing, so he quietly made his way down the hall until he reached 208, where he found the door shut. There was a handwritten name beside the door: Sadie Jones.

He hesitated before knocking, remembering that some people did like to sleep late, but he figured he might as well give it a try. So he knocked, not very loud.

"Come in," someone said from inside. The voice was a little muffled, but he thought he recognized the sound of the old lady from the park. He turned the knob and went in, and there indeed she was, sitting in a leather chair beside the window, with a pink afghan spread across her lap and a cup of black coffee in front of her. She was wearing the same pair of knitted mittens and matching shawl from yesterday, and she seemed to have been looking through the curtains at something outside. He caught a glimpse of roses through the dirty window before she dropped the curtains and turned to face him with a smile.

"Come in, young man, come in! I knew you'd come. Shut the door behind you so we can have a little privacy, and then come over here and sit down so we can talk," she said, waving toward another leather chair in front of the window. She didn't seem the least bit nutty, at least not this morning, and Brian relaxed. He shut the door behind him, as he'd been told, and sat down in the other chair.

The old lady studied him for a while after he sat down, as if she might read all the secrets of the universe in the shape of his face. The intense look made him a little uncomfortable, but he endured it for as long as he could. At last he cleared his throat and spoke.

"Um, I was hoping you could tell me-" he began, but she interrupted him before he could finish the thought.

"All in good time, child, all in good time. We haven't even been properly introduced yet. My name is Sadie Jones, and you are?" she said.

"Brian. Brian Madaug Stone, that is," he told her.

"Pleased to meet you, Brian Stone. What an unusual name you have," she commented.

"Yes, ma'am, so I've heard," he said dryly. As long as she didn't call him Mad Dog, they'd get along just fine.

"I imagine so. But tell me now, how did you hear about the Fountain, and why are you looking for it?" she asked, getting right to the point.

So Brian briefly told her about finding the amulet in his attic and some of the things he'd done with it, and how he'd broken the chain to save Brandon, and how it popped open and showed him the verses. He told her about the girl in Mississippi who first told him the story, and how he'd looked it up and decided to find the place.

She listened to all this without comment, and when he'd finished she asked him only one thing.

"You still haven't said why you want to find it, child," she told him.

"But I told you why," he said, confused.

"You told me how it happened, child, not why you want it. There's a difference," she pointed out mildly.

"Well. . . I guess the main thing is that I want to make sure my brother is okay. I thought it could probably do that much, if it makes wishes come true," he said.

"I see. Is that really your only reason?" she asked, keenly. He was tempted to say yes, partly for shyness and partly because it seemed churlish to care for anything else at a time like that, but something held him back.

"No, that's not all," he finally confessed, looking down at the floor.

"Ah, I thought not. So what might the rest be, then?" she asked.

"I want my mom to stop drinking and be nice again, like she used to be when my dad was with us. I wish he'd come back home, too. Things haven't been too good at home, the past few years," he said. It was hard for him to admit all this, especially to a complete stranger, but he forced himself to do it.

"Hmm. . . anything else?" she asked again, and Brian was surprised at the question. Wasn't that enough? He glanced at Miss Sadie, who was looking at him with a very solemn expression on her face. She really wanted to know.

"I'm not sure," he told her, uncertain what she wanted to hear.

"Are you not?" she asked, raising one eyebrow. This forced him to think, and Brian found that hard, with Miss Sadie watching him.

"I don't know what you want me to say," he finally said.

"I want you to tell me what you most dearly wish for, Brian Stone. Think, now. What did you do, while you had all that power? What did you try to make happen? What mattered to you more than anything else?" she asked. Brian had to think again, and it made his head hurt. What had he done, except make the house nice and make some money? There wasn't much else he could think of, except his silly project up at Black Rock. He might have loved that the most, but it sounded foolish and stupid, even to him. Surely she didn't want to hear about that, did she?

But he was at a loss to think of anything else, and so he fumblingly tried to tell her about it.

"When I grew the white oak trees, and made the stars shine brighter, and the cardinals redder, and all those things; that's what I loved the most, I guess. I wanted to make the whole world beautiful like I did up at Black Rock. I wanted to make it so there were no bad things ever anymore," he said, almost in a whisper, not daring to glance at her face to see what she might be thinking. If he had, he might have seen a faraway smile on her lips, and something very like a tear at the corner of her eye. She dried it away before he could notice, and when she spoke her voice was serene.

"That's what I wanted to hear, Brian Stone. That's a good wish, and a strong one too. But I still have to ask you one more question. Do you love this world enough to live far beyond your years, and to spend your whole life for that wish, pouring light into the darkness? Be certain before you answer me, because it'll be harder than you think. There's always a price to be paid," she said.

"Do you mean if I drink from the Fountain, I'll really live forever?" he asked, wide eyed.

"No, child, not forever. That's forbidden. But you could live for a hundred and twenty years, or perhaps a little more, and that's far beyond most. And for most of that time you'd keep your youth, and your health, and you'd be just as beautiful and perfect as Adam was when he took his first breath before the Fall. How could it be otherwise? For you will have drunk from the Fountain that was put here at the beginning of days by God Himself, the life-giving Life and the Beauty that makes beautiful," she said, in a sing-song kind of voice, as if she might be repeating something she'd learned long ago.

Brian was left speechless at this, and knew of nothing whatsoever that he might say. It wasn't what he'd expected at all.

"I thought it just gave you wishes," he said weakly.

"Oh, but it does, child. It does! It gives you the deepest desire of your heart, and nothing less. . . but only if your deepest desire was already for the one thing it can give you," she said cryptically.

"I don't understand," he told her, confused.

"You will, someday," she said. It was an unsatisfying answer, but there was one thing he had to be sure of, though.

"So does that mean I'll be able to make Brandon well again?" he asked.

"Among other things, yes. But that's the least of it. Let me show you something, child, and then maybe you'll understand," she said, raising an arm toward the grimy widow. Brian looked up, and saw nothing unusual except the flower garden outside.

"What am I looking for?" he asked.

"This," she said softly, and pushed open the glass.

A faint breeze blew in, carrying with it a scent of roses so sweet that they might once have bloomed in the meadows of Heaven. They were so bright and so red that they almost seemed to glow from within, and every dew drop glittered like gold in the morning sunshine. Brian thought he'd never seen anything on earth more beautiful. It reminded him of Black Rock, and he stared, wide-eyed, while Sadie Jones watched him.

"Yes, that's what it's like. You can take away every sickness, every scar, and every stain from anything in the world, and make it to be what it always ought to have been if the world was never broken. That's what you really always wanted, Brian, just like I did. And if you don't give up, then very soon you'll have it," she told him.

"You did this?" he whispered, still staring at the roses.

"God did this. But I was the one who touched them, if that's what you mean. The gift has faded away, these last ten years or so, along with everything else I got from the Fountain. But it's still enough for these few little bushes, if I tend them every day," she told him.

"But what about the amulet?" he asked, still staring at the roses.

"What about it?" she asked.

"Why couldn't I do this before? I mean, I know sometimes I did, but why was I not supposed to? Why did it have to turn out so bad, if that was what I was supposed to end up doing anyway?" he asked.

"The amulet only lasts seven days, child. Living things can't stand the shock of going back to normal again, once you touch them like this. It makes them sick, and usually they die. That's why you weren't supposed to touch them. But the Fountain is forever," she said.

"Then why not just show me the way to the Fountain to start with, instead of letting me make such a mess of things with the amulet?" he asked.

"The story was always out there, for anyone who wanted to look. Would you have believed it enough to be sitting here right now, without that amulet?" she asked.

"No, I guess not," he admitted.

"Well, then. One reason was to make you believe. The other was to test you," she said.

"Test me?" he repeated.

"Yes. If you'd used your power just to get rich or to hurt people you hated or anything like that, then you wouldn't have been the right kind of person to drink from the Fountain, and the amulet would never have opened for you. Seven days is a mercy, to limit the harm if a wicked or a foolish person found it. But there's no way of knowing what kind of person someone will be, till he's put to the test," she told him.

"But I _did_ use it to get money," he pointed out, remembering the gold.

"Yes, you did, but that was never what you cared about the most. And when it came down to a choice between keeping all those things and saving the life of someone else, you didn't hesitate," she reminded him.

Brian thought about this for a second.

"But could I really have kept all that stuff anyway, if I hadn't broken the chain? Or would everything have just disappeared no matter what I did, after the seven days was up?" he asked.

"That I don't know, child. I passed the test, and so did you. I couldn't say what happens to a person who chooses wrongly. It may be that those people get to keep whatever it was that they loved more than love. . . empty and pitiful as that is. Or it may be that it all turns to dust and ashes on the stroke of midnight and leaves them with nothing but a broken heart. I have moods when both those things seem likely, but I'd only be guessing if I tried to tell you which one is the truth. And it doesn't matter, anyway. Would you really have let your brother die for the sake of some riches, even if you'd known for certain that you'd get to keep them all?" she asked.

"Not in a million years. Not for all the money in the world," he said quickly.

"That's what I thought," she agreed.

"But how did it end up in my attic in the first place? Why me?" he asked.

"Now you're asking questions that nobody can answer, Brian Stone. But I believe you were _meant_ to find that amulet, just like I think I was meant to find it, and that's why it ended up in your attic the way it did. Everything happens for a reason," she told him.

There was a pause while he considered all this, and Miss Sadie seemed content to watch her roses and let him think in peace.

"So what do I do now?" he finally asked, and she laughed.

"What silly questions you ask, child! Follow the pointer all the way up into those mountains yonder, till you come to the heart of the world. You'll know when you get there, trust me. You'll find a gushing fountain of cold, clear water and a golden cup beside it. Then drink, if you have the courage. I did, and that was ninety some odd years ago, my boy, and I've never aged a day in all that time, not till these last ten years or so," she explained.

"What did you do for all that time?" he asked, wondering.

"I went to school and became a nurse, ordinary as that sounds. But it was a good choice, though. All I had to do was lay my hands on the sick to make them well, and so that's what I've mostly done all these years. It was what I cared about the most," she said.

"But that's faded away too, now?" he guessed.

"Yes. . . it's like my roses. Now and then I can still do a little bit, but not much. There's a lot of pain in this place, and I soften it when I'm able to. It's part of the reason I agreed to come live here last year. Everybody thinks the reason the people at Pinecrest are so healthy is because they take such good care of us, but I know better," she said, with a small chuckle.

"Yeah, that's what I thought," he sighed.

"I can guess why you asked me that question, child. I know you're still thinking about this brother of yours that you love so much. But he was far gone by the time you broke that chain, and I wouldn't have the strength to heal something like that anymore. But _you_ will. If you make it to the Fountain, then you'll have the power to undo any hurt in the world, including his. Remember that, whenever you're still afraid for him," she told him.

"I'll do my best," he agreed, heavily.

"Shh. . . have faith, child. Everything will work out the way that it should," she told him.

"I hope so," he said.

"Don't hope; believe," she said, looking at him earnestly, and then she opened the top drawer of her bureau and took out a pair of scissors.

"What's that for?" he asked.

"Take this, to help you remember what you're working for," she told him, and then snipped off one of the brilliant red roses. Brian took it from her without thinking, and put it in the inside pocket of his coat.

"Thanks," he said automatically, not sure what he would do with such a gift. But Sadie Jones only smiled.

"You may find it more use than you think. Now go, child, while time is," she said.

He left the nursing home not long afterward, with many thanks and a humbled heart, not to mention a sense of fresh urgency to find the Fountain.

"Did you find out anything?" Rachel asked as soon as he got back in the car.

"Yeah, lots. But let's get out of town first and then I'll tell you all about it," he promised.

"Okay, which way do I go?" she asked. He consulted the amulet, which still pointed northeast.

"That way," he said, pointing across the river toward the highest part of the mountains.

They stopped to gas up the car at the edge of town, and while they were there Brian took the opportunity to call Carolyn to check on Brandon again, and while he was at it to see if he was right about Mama finding the note. This time she didn't even let him get a word in.

"Where are you, Brian? Everybody's been worried sick, trying to find you since last night," she said.

Yeah, just like he'd thought.

"I was with a friend, that's all," he said.

"And you couldn't have called and told somebody that? Like things are not bad enough already right now with your brother maybe dying, and you have to go pull some crazy stunt like this. What's _wrong_ with you?" she scolded.

"I. . ." he began, but she cut him off before he could say another word.

"Where _are_ you, Brian? Wherever it is, you better get home as fast as you can get there," she finished. This was the moment he'd been dreading.

"I can't do that yet, Aunt Carolyn," he said firmly.

"What do you mean, you can't do that? Why not?" she demanded.

"I can't explain it right now, but I've got something I have to do for a few days. I'll be home as soon as I can, though," he said. Carolyn must have been shocked beyond words, because it took her almost a full second to think of anything to say.

"Have you lost your mind, boy? What could possibly be so important that you've got to drop everything and go do it at a time like this?" she asked.

"I can't tell you, but it matters a lot," he said.

"Nothing could matter that much, Brian. Go home, _now._ Your mother already has the police out looking for you, do you know that? And if they find you first then she's mad enough she might just let you sit in jail for a while till she decides to come get you," she said, and there was a hard edge to her voice that he didn't like at all.

"I know. Tell Mama I'm sorry, and tell Brandon I love him. I'll be home as soon as I can," he told her, and then hung up the phone before she could answer him.

It wasn't five seconds before the phone started ringing, and Brian knew it was Carolyn without needing to answer. But he had no time to argue with her anymore, and if she was angry, then she'd just have to be angry.

On the other hand, it probably wouldn't be too hard for her to call information and find out exactly where he was, using the number from the pay phone. It was time to go, before they got busted.

"What is it?" Rachel asked when she saw his face.

"Oh, nothing. Just my aunt, freaking out. I called her to check on Brandon and she said my mom's got the cops looking for me now, like I didn't already know that after what happened at the hotel last night. I didn't even get to find out how he's doing. Same old drama," he said bitterly.

"I'm sorry, Brian," she told him.

"Oh, well. Let's just not get caught, okay? Drive back the other way for a couple of blocks if you can, just in case the cops come by here and ask the people at the gas station which way we went," he said.

"Sure thing," she agreed.

This they did, and after the gas station was out of sight behind them, Rachel turned onto a side street and made her way back onto the highway with no more problems. Soon they crossed the big steel bridge that took them out into the open farm country beyond the river, and he heard her give a little sigh of relief. Brian's heart was still too bitter from the phone call to do anything but stare moodily at the empty fields and wonder how bad things would have to get before they ever started to get better.

"So we're out of town now. What did the old lady say?" Rachel finally asked. Brian almost told her he didn't feel like talking for a while, but then he thought better of it; she was just trying to help.

"She said a lot of things," he said, and then proceeded to tell her everything Sadie Jones had told him. Rachel listened quietly to the whole thing, only rarely asking a question.

"And then she gave me this," he finished, pulling the rose from his inside pocket. A few of the petals were crumpled, and he thought it might already have faded just a bit, but it was still a thousand times more beautiful than the fanciest rose on earth. Rachel's eyes opened wide when she saw it.

"Is that real?" she whispered.

"Yeah. She said this is the kind of thing we'll be able to do, after we drink from the Fountain," he said.

"So it's really true after all," she said, still staring at the rose.

"Surely you didn't think I was making it all up, did you?" he asked, surprised at her reaction.

"No, it's not that. If I hadn't believed you then I wouldn't be here right now," she said, shaking her head.

"Then what is it?" he asked, mystified.

She didn't answer right away, and he watched her chewing on her lip while she thought about it.

"It's hard to explain. I guess till now there was still a little part of me deep down that kept wondering what if you're wrong, or what if we can't find the place. . . stuff like that. See, the first thing everybody told me when I found out I had Batten's Disease was not to believe in miracles, ever. All it does is break your heart when they don't come true, and things are hard enough already without that. They always told me to make the best of the time I've got, and if I don't hope for too much then I'll never get disappointed. I guess it's just hard to get over all that and start believing there's really a chance things could change," she told him, glancing back at the road.

It sounded like something he might have said himself not all that long ago, he couldn't help thinking. Not about dying, of course, but about Mama and the way she acted. He knew exactly what it felt like when hope seemed too good to be true. He couldn't really blame Rachel for having some doubts about the Fountain. He probably wouldn't have believed it himself, without the amulet.

"It's okay. I know exactly how you feel," he told her, thinking about his own impossible wishes.

"Really?" she asked.

"Yeah, I think so," he said, and then hesitated. He wasn't sure how much he wanted to tell her, honestly, but then he bit his lip and took a deep breath.

"Uh. . . you remember last week at church, when I told you I fell down the stairs?" he finally asked.

"Yeah, I remember," she agreed.

"That's not really what happened. Mama came home drinking Saturday night, and we got in a fight," he confessed, watching her closely to see her reaction. But she only nodded.

"I thought it was something like that," she said. She didn't seem shocked or upset at all, and she didn't look at him like he was a lost puppy, either. He hated it when people did that.

He decided maybe it was worth the risk to tell her a little bit more.

"She does stuff like that a lot. To me and Brandon both. She blacked his eye the same day she punched my nose. It's been that way for a long time," he said, keeping his voice flat and steady.

"I'm sorry, Brian. I always wondered a little bit but I never thought. . ." she said, and then trailed off awkwardly.

"I never told anybody before," he said thickly, and swallowed hard.

"It's all right; I won't tell anybody, I promise," she told him.

"Anyway, I used to think it was just something I had to live with, you know. Something that wouldn't ever change no matter what I did. But then I found out all this stuff about the Fountain, and I started to wonder if maybe things could really get better. I didn't want to believe it at first, because it seemed like it was too good to be true," he told her.

"Yeah. . . that's exactly what I meant," she agreed.

There was a pause while neither one of them said anything, and Brian took the chance to pull himself back together.

"So what made _you_ decide to believe it enough to go looking for it?" she finally asked.

"Well. . . I'm not sure I would have, if it wasn't for Brandon. But it was the only thing I knew of that maybe could save him, you know. He's pretty bad off, and then like I said earlier, things are not too good at home even if he makes it back. I don't want him to have to grow up that way, Raych. It hurts too much. I just want him to be happy and safe, you know. I always have, and the Fountain is the only thing I ever heard of that maybe could make that happen. Even if it's only a maybe, I have to try. I couldn't take a chance on letting him down. Not a second time," he said.

"A second time?" she asked.

"Yeah, the whole reason he's in the hospital right now is because of me," he said, and then quickly told her the story of the amulet again, with nothing left out this time. She shook her head when he finished.

"Brian, none of that was your fault. You didn't know what would happen," she said.

"Yeah, it was, though. I knew better than to leave him with Mama when she was in a bad mood, and it was stupid of me to use the amulet on his eye when I didn't know if it was safe or not. I'm not saying it's completely my fault, but some of it is," he said.

"Well. . . yeah, all right. I can see what you mean. But don't keep beating yourself up over it, okay? I don't think Brandon would want you to do that, anyway. Just try to make it right, if you can. That's all anybody can ask," she said.

"I guess so, but what if we don't make it back before it's too late?" he asked, remembering Carolyn's words about Brandon maybe dying. He hadn't paid too much attention at the time, but that was a pretty high-voltage expression for her to use, now wasn't it? He hoped it didn't mean anything except a bad choice of words, but who knew?

But just then they came to the foot of the first hill and Rachel had to turn most of her attention back to driving, so he never got to hear her answer. Maybe there wasn't one.

The road was steep and crooked for several miles after that till they reached the summit, and then in front of them the mountains marched on, ridge after ridge, as far as the eye could see. It seemed to Brian like he could see for a thousand miles, till the air grew hazy and blue with the distance. Ahead was the wide world, and behind them was everything he'd ever known. For a second he was almost homesick, and he glanced back at the valley without thinking. There was Falls Chapel, like a little city of ants far below them, and somewhere in the hazy distance beyond it was the house where he'd spent his whole life.

He couldn't help wondering how much farther they'd have to go. If they kept going this direction, they might eventually end up. . . where? Missouri? Canada? Some island way out in the middle of the ocean, even? The Fountain couldn't be _that_ far, could it? Because if it was, then that was impossible.

Or if not strictly impossible, then at least it would take so long that there was no point in even thinking about it. But Brian had no way of knowing; the pointer only told him which way to go, not how far it was or how difficult it might be to get there.

"Are you sure you'll be okay if I go to sleep for a while?" he asked presently.

"Yeah, no problem. I'll be careful," she promised.

"Wake me up if anything happens, okay?" he asked.

"Sure," she agreed, and he curled up in the passenger seat to sleep.

Hours later, the sunlight shining in his face woke him, and he sat up and rubbed his eyes.

"Where are we?" he asked sleepily, shading his eyes.

"Somewhere on the highway, that's all I know. Did you have a good nap?" she asked.

"Yeah, I feel better. Hungry though," he added.

"I guess we could get something whenever we pass another place. Are we still headed in the right direction?" she asked.

"Yeah, looks like it," he told her, after checking, "How long do you think it'll be before somebody starts looking for this car?"

"I'm not sure," she said, glancing at the rearview mirror in spite of the fact that there was absolutely nobody else on the road.

"Did you say anything to anybody before you left?" he asked.

"Yeah, I told them I was late for school this morning and that's why I needed to drive Sissy's car, and that I'd probably just go directly to work after class. They didn't say much about it," she explained.

"So how long have we got before they'll be expecting you home?" he asked.

"Maybe nine o'clock. Supposed to be eight thirty, but now and then I have to work a little bit late if the kitchen was busy that night. They won't think anything of it till at least nine, I'm sure," she told him.

"That's still not very long," he fretted.

"I'm sorry, Brian. It was the best I could do," she said.

"No, it's all right. I wasn't blaming you. I was just wondering what they'll do when you turn up missing tonight," he explained.

"Probably have the National Guard out looking for me, if I know them," she said, giggling a little. Then she saw the look on Brian's face and sobered.

"I guess that wasn't really funny, was it?" she said.

"Do you really think they would? Seriously?" he asked.

"Well, maybe not that, but I'm sure they'll call the police and report me missing, and I'm sure they'll tell them to be looking for this car. They may even go out and look for me themselves. They'll find out pretty soon that I wasn't at work or at school today, and that'll scare them. Mr. Croydon will probably tell them I was with you last night at supper, so you'll get connected to the whole thing pretty soon, too. I'm not sure what all they might do, but they won't just sit still, I know that much. They might even think you kidnapped me," she told him.

"That's a fun thought. We can't keep driving this car, then, if that's the case. At least not for long," he told her.

"Yeah, I thought of that, but how else will we get anywhere?" she asked.

"We'll have to think about it for a while. Maybe we can find something else," he said, wishing he'd brought more money along.

Not long afterward they came into a little town whose name Brian didn't notice, and stopped long enough to have a cheeseburger and some fries at a local diner. It made them both nervous to be in such a public place, but Brian reminded himself that nobody had any reason to be suspicious just yet. Rachel and the car wouldn't be missed till that evening, and as for him. . . well, he was a hundred miles from home and there was nobody to recognize him. He hoped.

Still, they didn't linger any longer than they had to. They ordered a few extra burgers for the road so they wouldn't have to risk stopping anywhere else that evening, and then they got back under way.

They drove for hours like this, crossing the Arkansas River at Dardanelle and then climbing the steep southern face of the Ozarks.

After a while, Brian noticed that the pointer had slowly veered around to the northwest, and he realized immediately that it wouldn't have done that unless they were getting pretty close.

## Chapter Eight

"I think we're getting close," he announced, trying his best not to sound too excited about it.

"How do you know?" she asked.

"The pointer is moving. If the place was still a long way off then a few miles wouldn't matter much about the direction we needed to take. But the closer we get, the more it affects it. So it's got to be pretty close," he explained.

The effect became more and more noticeable as the day wore on, until Brian was certain they had to be very near indeed. Eventually, just outside the town of Snowball, they found themselves forced to turn onto a gravel road, because the highway was actually taking them farther away at that point.

"You're sure we won't get lost?" Rachel asked worriedly.

"We can't get lost. We've got the amulet," he reminded her.

"Yeah, I know that. But I meant what if we get way back here on one of these dirt roads and can't find one that goes the right way? We don't know our way around up here, or at least I don't," she clarified.

"Neither do I, but we'll just have to do the best we can," he shrugged, pretending the idea didn't bother him. They drove on like this for another hour or two, working their way ever deeper into the mountains. In places the road was so steep and narrow that Brian was afraid the car would never make it, or even worse, never make it back out. There were rocky creek beds that had to be crossed, and deep washouts, and now and then humps of limestone that nearly blocked the way completely. But they crept ahead, slowly and carefully, always trying to keep following the pointer as best they could.

At last they reached a place where they could go no farther. A huge pine tree had fallen directly across the road, blocking the way completely.

"There's no way we can drive past that," Brian said, as soon as he saw it.

"Then I guess we'll just have to walk from now on. How close do you think we are?" she sighed.

"I don't know. Hopefully not too far," he said.

"Well, let's get with it, then," she said.

"Wait a minute, first. Is there anything we need to take with us from the car?" he asked.

"I don't think so. Just the keys, maybe," she said.

"Is there a flashlight anywhere? It'll be getting dark soon," he pointed out.

"Yeah, there's a little one in the glove box," she said, reaching inside to grab it.

"I don't guess your sister keeps a gun in here, does she?" he asked without much hope. He didn't really expect to need one, but it might be better to be safe than sorry.

Rachel laughed.

"Nope, no gun, but there's supposed to be a tire tool in the trunk, if you think we might need to bash somebody in the head _,"_ she told him, amused.

"No, it's not that. I was thinking more about wild animals," he said, getting out of the car to fetch the tire tool. She watched him with a smile on her face.

"You're crazy, Mad Dog, you know that?" she finally said, obviously amused.

"Maybe so, but if we meet a bear I'd just like to have something to fight with, that's all," he said defensively.

"Well. . . okay, point taken," she agreed.

They gathered up the remains of their lunch and their water bottles, and then Brian looked at the amulet one more time.

"That's the way," he said, pointing to a bluish peak far in the distance. It couldn't have been more than five miles away, but it looked like a walk to eternity.

"Do you think we can make it?" she asked doubtfully, gazing at the peak.

"We have to," he said simply.

They struggled on through the woods for a long time, following the pointer as best they could. At times they had to detour around deep gorges or sinkholes in the rough limestone, and this often led to long delays before they could get back on track again.

Perhaps an hour after they left the car, the sun slipped down below the mountains in the west, and it quickly began to get dark.

"I don't think we'll find it tonight," Brian said, stopping to take a drink of water.

"Yeah, I guess we need to think about making camp somewhere," she agreed.

"Oh, joy," he muttered, thinking how uncomfortable that was likely to be. He wouldn't have minded if they'd had a tent, or even sleeping bags, but lying on the bare ground was no fun at all.

"It'll be all right," Rachel said, and he was ashamed of himself for griping. If she could tough it out, then so could he.

They went on for a little longer, keeping an eye out for likely spots.

"I think this'll do," Brian finally said. It was nothing but a dense grove of pine trees, where the needles had fallen down for uncounted years and made a deep drift. It softened the bare ground, at least, and the trees would shield them from any unfriendly eyes that might come along.

There didn't seem likely to be any eyes at all, unfriendly or otherwise, but it never hurt to be careful.

The leaf litter was more comfortable than Brian had thought it would be, so they sat cross-legged on the ground to eat leftover burgers and drink water.

"This is nice, Brian," Rachel said at last.

"It is?" he asked, surprised.

"Yeah, it really is. Here we are, maybe getting close to the Fountain, doing something that really matters. It makes me feel ten times more alive inside than I would if I was just sitting at home right now watching TV or doing homework. Don't you think so?" she asked. He considered it.

"You know, you're absolutely right. I _do_ feel that way," he agreed, and she laughed.

"You sound so surprised," she told him.

"I guess I never thought of it like that before," he admitted.

There wasn't much else to do, so they turned in early on their pine-needle beds, hoping they'd reach the Fountain before noon the next morning.

Unfortunately, they didn't. Most of the next day was spent very much like the previous afternoon, pushing their way through dense woods and avoiding obstacles, until they began to despair of ever making any progress.

"I hope it's not much farther," Rachel finally said, early in the afternoon. It was the first time she'd even mildly complained, but Brian couldn't blame her. He was tired, and dirty, and hungry, and this endless walk through the woods was wearing them both down.

"Surely it won't be," he said, as much for his own benefit as for hers.

They sat down on a fallen log beside a little creek to eat the last scraps of food and drink some water, and neither of them had enough.

"I'm worried, Brian. If we don't find the place soon, we'll have to turn back just for food," she said glumly.

"Yeah, we definitely can't go on like this," he agreed.

"Any ideas?" she asked.

"No, not really. I've still got some money, but that won't help us out here," he said.

"Do you think we could catch some fish? We've passed a few creeks now and then," she asked hopefully.

"What would we catch them with?" he pointed out.

"Well. . . I don't know. Can't you tickle them out of the water with your hands? I saw them do that on TV once," she asked.

"Do you know how to tickle fish?" he asked, raising one eyebrow.

"No," she admitted.

"Well, neither do I. So scratch that idea, then. I don't think I can go deer hunting with a tire tool, either," he said. The words came out a little sharper than he meant for them to, but Rachel ignored him.

"I bet we could gather some mussels and crawdads, if we had to," she finally said.

"That'd be pretty nasty, Raych," he pointed out.

"Not if we cooked them. We could make some soup, you know. . . put some clover in there, maybe some other stuff," she insisted, and Brian had to laugh.

"Clam and clover soup. Now I've heard everything," he said.

"We could _try_ it, at least," she shrugged.

"Even if we wanted to, we still don't have anything to cook it in," he reminded her.

"We could use one of the water bottles, if we cut the top off," she suggested.

"It's plastic. It'd just melt if we put it over a fire," he said.

"True, but we could heat up rocks and drop them into the bottle. That'll heat up the soup," she pointed out.

"I guess we could try it," he agreed, doubtfully.

"Okay. You go get the mussels and whatever else you can catch, and I'll start a fire and gather some greens," she said.

"Sure, why not?" he shrugged.

He went down the slope to the creek and found a place where there was a gravel bar, and then started digging for mussels. It turned out to be a time-consuming process, and by the time he'd filled both his pockets full his stomach was starting to grumble about the long wait. There were no crawdads to be found, and he finally decided that the mussels would have to do.

He carried them back up the hill to where Rachel had built a fire, and saw that she'd gathered two or three handfuls of clover greens.

They carefully cut off the top of one of the bottles and heated water in it with hot rocks, as Rachel had suggested. The process seemed to work, and in the end they had a steaming bowl of food.

"Well, it smells pretty good," Brian admitted.

"Yeah, it does. I just hope it tastes good, too," she agreed.

"I'll taste it first, just in case it's nasty," he volunteered, eyeing the bottle. It might smell good, but it certainly didn't look very appetizing. In fact it looked more like dirty dishwater than anything else he could think of.

"Go for it," she told him.

He grimaced and took a small sip.

"Not too bad. Tastes kinda weird, but it's okay," he said.

They took turns sipping the hot soup from the bottle, since they had no spoons to eat it with, and when they were done they made sure to put out the fire before heading out again.

"That was a good idea, Raych," Brian told her as they walked along.

"Thanks," she smiled.

"There's just one problem with it, though," he added.

"What's that?" she asked.

"Too much time. We spent hours collecting all that food, and building the fire, and cooking, and then cleaning up. We've got to make better time than that or we'll never get anywhere," he said, hating to say so. The smile faded from her lips and she sighed.

"Yeah, I guess you're right. We'll just have to think of something else, or do without for a little while," she finally agreed.

"I'm sorry," he told her.

"Sorry for what?" she asked.

"For not thinking about this. We should have bought some supplies back when we went through that last little town. Then we wouldn't have this problem," he told her.

"I didn't think about it, either. Don't worry about it. We won't starve, even if we have to go hungry for a few days," she said grimly.

"I guess so," he agreed, unsatisfied, and then he thought of something.

"I do have one other idea," he suggested.

"So spill it. I'm listening," she said.

"What if I gave you the amulet? Then you could do everything I did, for seven days. Then we'd have plenty of food. You could turn a piece of driftwood into a steak, if you wanted to," he offered.

"Hmm. . . " she said.

"Hmm? What's that supposed to mean?" he asked.

"It means I'm not sure that's such a great idea, nice as it sounds," she told him reluctantly.

"Why not?" he asked.

"Because yeah, it might solve the food problem, but then what if the amulet went back to the way it was with you at first, when you couldn't open the back of it? If that happened then we'd lose the pointer and all this would've been for nothing," she explained.

"Yeah, I guess you're right. I hadn't thought of that," he admitted.

"I don't know for sure that's what would happen, but I think it's too much of a risk. Don't you?" she continued.

"Yeah, I'm just afraid the more time goes by and the hungrier we get, the less we'll remember that and the more we'll want to take the risk, even though we know what it might cost us," he told her.

She stopped dead in her tracks when he said that and turned to face him.

"No, Brian. We will _not_ do that, no matter how hungry we get or whatever else might happen. We can't. Now swear to me you won't give me that amulet, even if I ask for it. Even if I beg for it. No matter what I say, or what I do, you keep that chain around your neck till this thing is done. Okay?" she asked, grabbing his hands in hers and looking at him intently.

"All right, I promise," he said.

"Good," she said. They kept looking at each other for a moment after that, then she dropped his hands and they started walking again.

"How long do you think we can hold out with no food?" he asked. He knew what it was like to go on short rations for a week or so; there'd been quite a few times when Mama was broke and a school lunch was the only food he had for the day. But he'd never gone completely hungry, and he doubted Rachel ever had, either.

"I guess we won't know for sure till we give it a shot. We'll either make it or we'll die trying," she said.

"It might get really bad," he said.

"I'm sure it probably will. We just have to remember what the price will be if we crack, that's all," she said grimly.

It did get bad as the day wore on, bad enough that Brian was tempted again to bring up the idea of giving Rachel the amulet. Only the fear of what she might think of him if he did kept him from saying it.

These thoughts kept him too preoccupied to pay much attention to the world around him, other than to check the pointer from time to time to make sure they were still going in the right direction. But near dusk, Rachel suddenly stopped and whistled.

"What is it?" he asked, startled.

"Look there," she said, pointing through the trees to their right. Brian looked in that direction and immediately saw what she was pointing at. It was an old house or a cabin of some kind, unlikely as that seemed. The place looked deserted.

"Let's go check it out," she suggested.

"Might as well. I doubt we'll find anywhere better to spend the night," he agreed.

They made short work of the distance, and soon emerged into a ragged clearing. The cabin had a rusty tin roof and some of the boards had rotted around the foundation, but when they went inside they found that the floor was still solid enough. It was just one room, with a table and chairs and an old creaky set of wooden bunk beds by the wall near the door. There was a rock fireplace against the opposite wall, and a few shelves with various items sitting on them. Everything was coated in a thick layer of grime and dust, as if nobody had been there in a hundred years.

"What do you think this place was? Deer hunter's cabin?" she asked.

"Yeah, if I had to guess. Looks like nobody's been here for a long time, though," he said.

"Well, I guess it'll do for one night. Better than sleeping in the woods," she said, looking at the place.

"Yeah, no doubt," he said.

"Well, hey, why don't we look around a little bit? We might find some things we could use," she suggested.

"Sure, why not?" he agreed.

So they poked through the stuff on the shelves and looked under the bed and even outside in the yard. Brian found an ancient hammer with a rusty head, and then, much to his delight, an old guitar with a broken strap shoved into the closet.

But it wasn't till they went back outside that they found the pear tree.

"Look!" Rachel cried, spotting it first. Brian turned his head and saw it immediately. The branches were heavy with ripe fruit, some of it already fallen and rotting on the ground, but there was still plenty left on the tree. Rachel was already headed for it.

Brian hurried after her, and as soon as they reached it they helped themselves to several fruits apiece. Then Brian put a hand on Rachel's arm.

"Stop. Don't eat too much or it'll make you sick," he warned her.

"True," she sighed.

"Come on, though. Let's pick some and take them inside. We can eat some more later," he suggested.

They each collected a double armful of fruit, putting it down on the table inside the cabin. The fragrance of the pears soon filled the little room and made it seem almost cheerful.

"We should carry some with us when we leave tomorrow. I know they'll get old after a while but they're a lot better than nothing," Rachel said.

"Yeah, I'll empty the backpack and we'll fill that up, and maybe we could use one of the t-shirts as a sack, if we tied the arms and the neck closed," he suggested.

"Yeah, that'll work," she agreed.

Brian lit a fire in the old hearth, more for something to do than because there was any real need. It was a warm night. Then they both pulled up chairs and watched the dancing flames lick the wood. After a while, Brian picked up the old guitar to strum it thoughtfully. It was still in pretty good tune, surprisingly enough.

"Do you play?" Rachel asked, watching him curiously.

"Just a little bit," he admitted shyly.

"Play me something," she asked.

"I don't know, Raych. I'm not all that good," he said, and she laughed.

"Oh, come on. You're better than me, I'm sure. I promise I won't laugh," she said.

Brian thought about it, and decided he could make an exception just this once. If she laughed it wouldn't kill him.

"All right," he agreed. He took a minute to consider what she might like, and found himself at a loss. He didn't know enough about what she enjoyed. Then he decided to go with _Unclouded Day._ If he didn't let himself think about it too much, maybe he could pretend he was playing it for Brandon. That would make things a lot easier.

He started out uncertainly, his voice soft and his fingers slow, but after a while he got the feel of it and almost forgot she was listening. He shut his eyes to focus on the music, and when the song was done he opened them to see her crying.

"Is something wrong?" he asked, alarmed.

"No, I'm just sappy, that's all. Songs like that always make me cry," she said, smiling through her tears.

"I hoped you'd like it," he said, still uncertain.

"I loved it, Brian. I'm surprised you don't join the band. You're good," she told him.

"You really think so?" he asked, absurdly pleased.

"Yeah, I really do. Play some more," she asked.

So he did, all the songs he could remember, and for a while she even sang along with him, their voices blending together in almost perfect harmony. It reminded Brian of the bonfire party before the football game, only better. Sharing something he loved with a friend was a rare pleasure for him. Happiness was the last thing he'd ever expected to find on a journey like this, but there it was, popping up in the oddest place and time he could possibly have imagined.

Not long afterward they climbed into the bunk beds for the night. It was still fairly early, but they were tired and had another long day ahead in the morning.

"You can have the top bunk," he offered, feeling generous, and she laughed.

"Mighty kind of you. Thanks," she said, and climbed up.

* * * * * * *

He woke some time later, with the smell of smoke in his nose. He coughed, and opened his eyes to the sight of flames. The cabin was on fire!

The smoke was already so thick that it burned his throat and made his eyes water, and probably the only reason it wasn't worse was because of the open windows and door. Through the smoke, he saw that almost the whole wall and part of the floor near the chimney were already engulfed in flames, and the fire was spreading fast.

It was already so hot inside the cabin that Brian was in danger of passing out, and he stumbled frantically for the open door close by.

He staggered outside, coughing and gasping for air, and quickly realized that Rachel must still be inside.

"Raych!" he cried, but there was no answer. He doggedly took a deep breath and plunged back into the house, looking through bleary eyes to see if she was still on the bunk.

He could see nothing, and in desperation he reached into the top bunk to see if he could feel her instead. His groping hand met her shoulder, and he shook her violently.

"Come on, Raych, the cabin's on fire!" he yelled, but there was no answer.

He grabbed hold of her arm and pulled her off the bunk, not caring about gentleness anymore. Her dead weight was more than he expected and he fell to the floor with her body on top of him, skinning his left elbow against the floor planks and nearly twisting his ankle.

He struggled out from under her and got to his feet. He couldn't carry her like that, but he was pretty sure he could drag her. It wasn't that far to the door.

He grabbed her hands and hauled her outside, choking and gasping, but he dared not stop so close to the house. He dragged her as far as the pear tree before his legs gave out, and then he collapsed onto the ground beside her, unable to get up or even to do anything except gasp for air like a beached whale.

Presently his head cleared slightly, and he was able to sit up and look at back at the burning cabin. His eyes stung and his cheeks were running with tears from the smoke. He could still feel the heat from the flames, even this far away.

He checked Rachel, and saw that she was still breathing at least. He turned his face away and hacked up a wad of black mucus into the grass, and he felt sick and exhausted.

After a while, Rachel opened her eyes and coughed up her own wad of smoky snot. Her hair was singed by the heat, and they both smelled like they'd just been wrestling in a giant ashtray.

After burning fiercely for a while, the fire had consumed most of the cabin and started to die back down. Brian and Rachel sat there and watched it burn, all too aware that they could easily have died. She reached out and grasped his hand, and he clasped it back, numbed by the almost-disaster.

"Thanks," she murmured.

"You would have done the same thing," he told her.

"Yeah, but thanks anyway," she said.

"Well. . . you're welcome," he said, for lack of anything better to say.

"Do you think it was the fireplace?" she asked.

"That's all I can think of. It must have had a crack in it, or maybe a coal popped out on the floor," he told her.

"It's a good thing you woke up when you did, or both of us would have been toast by now," she said.

"No doubt. But it's not over yet, though. What if somebody saw this? I bet you could see that fire for miles in the dark," he said.

"Does it matter? Even if somebody did see it, we'll be long gone by the time they could get here to check it out," she pointed out.

"I'm not so sure about that. We might not be as far from other people as we think. We better get gone pretty quick, if we don't want visitors," he said.

"I don't know if I can make it very far, at least not yet," she told him, apologetically.

"I'm not sure I can either, till we rest for a little while," he confessed.

"Then I tell you what. Let's pick some more pears to take with us, like we talked about earlier. Then maybe by the time we're done with that, we'll be rested enough to move on for a little bit," she suggested.

"We'll see," he said.

They both staggered to their feet and started reaching for pears, quickly filling the backpack as full as they could stuff it. Then Brian took one of his extra t-shirts and tied off the arms and neck, and they used that for a sack to hold more.

"All right, then. We better get a move on. Are you up to it, now?" he asked. He wasn't at all sure he was up to it himself, but it had the proper gallant sound.

"No, but if you can do it then I can do it," she said, setting her jaw firmly.

"Let's go, then," he said, and after consulting the amulet again, they moved off through the woods.

They were forced to go slowly, both because of the darkness and because of their recent ordeal by fire. But nevertheless, it didn't take long to put the cabin far behind them.

"You don't think it'll catch the woods on fire, do you?" she asked after a while.

"No, I don't think so. It's been pretty rainy lately, so it ought to just die down and not spread anywhere," he said.

"Do you think we're far enough away from the place so we can sit down and rest awhile longer?" she asked.

"Yeah, I think so. Let's start looking for a place," he said.

Eventually they came to a creek flowing beside their path, with a wide sandbar near the water. It wasn't much, but it would have to do.

"This is good enough. Let's stop here for a little while," she told him.

They hollowed out body-shaped depressions in the powdery sand to make it more comfortable, and then lay down.

Brian slept like a log for the rest of the night, perhaps not surprising after what he'd just been through. By the time he woke, the morning was already far spent, and the sun was halfway up to noon. Rachel still lay sleeping in the sand, and for the moment he let her be.

He felt horribly grungy from the sweat and the smoke, and he decided it was high time for a bath while he had the chance. He went a little downstream out of sight of the sandbar, stripped off his clothes, and dived into the water. He quickly scrubbed himself from head to toe, and then washed his filthy clothes before wringing out as much water as he could.

He put them back on still dripping, knowing the sun would dry them out soon enough. Then he went back to the sandbar and woke Rachel.

"Hey, Raych. Wake up," he said, shaking her. She took a deep breath and sat up, rubbing her eyes and reaching for her glasses.

"Slept late this morning," she said, with a weak smile.  
"Yeah, me too. But I guess we needed it, after last night. You want a bath? There's a pool down the creek a little way. I already had one," he told her.

"I'd love one. You have no idea how nasty I feel right now," she said.

"Yeah, I've got some idea," he replied dryly, and she laughed.

"Yeah, I guess you probably do, at that. Wait just a sec and I'll be right back," she said, and quickly disappeared around the bend in the creek.

It didn't take her long to finish, and she returned in her dripping clothes looking much fresher than when she left.

"That was fantastic," she told him.

"Yeah, I think it was the best bath I ever had in my whole life," he agreed.

They both ate another pear for a late breakfast, and then got back on their way. Nothing interesting happened for the rest of the day, and they saw no one. If the burning cabin had attracted any attention, then they were far enough away from it to be safe from whoever showed up.

Brian was beginning to think they'd never find the Fountain, or that they'd have to walk through the woods for a hundred miles before they ever saw any sign of it. So far there'd been nary a clue.

But eventually they came to a rocky place in the side of a steep slope, and here they found a hole in the ground not much bigger than an oven door. It was almost hidden behind a clump of wild blackberry vines, so that Brian would probably never have seen it at all unless he'd been following the amulet.

His heart sank, but no matter which way he walked or turned, the pointer always swung around to point straight to the hole. Their journey through the woods was over.

## Chapter Nine

"You've got to be kidding," Brian muttered under his breath. He was no caver, and he hated small enclosed spaces. Especially ones where you couldn't see where you were going or what might be down there with you.

"Have you ever been in a cave before?" she asked him, her eyes fixed on the hole.

"Yeah, a long time ago when I was little. Papaw took me somewhere that had a guided tour of one; I'm not sure where it was. All I remember is that it was dark and creepy and it scared me. I've hated them ever since," he said.

"Well, we've got a flashlight, as long as the batteries hold out. We haven't used it much so far," she said hopefully.

"That's a really cheerful thought, Raych," he said, laughing grimly, and she couldn't help smiling.

"I didn't mean it like that. But seriously, all we can do is try, you know. It's either that or turn back," she pointed out.

"I know," he sighed.

"Surely we won't be down there long enough to run the batteries dry," she said, trying to cheer him up, and maybe herself too.

"Yeah, I guess it'll be okay," he agreed grudgingly.

There was nothing else to be said, so they plucked up their courage and crawled headfirst into the hole, hoping it wasn't as bad as it looked.

The hole quickly led them into a small chamber about the size of a car, with a bit of leaf litter scattered on the floor. It was packed down in places, like something big and heavy had been sleeping on it. Brian had a vivid image of a bear hibernating there, right where his feet stood. Did bears sleep in their dens during the summer? He wasn't sure, but he glanced nervously at the opening and felt a strong desire to crawl right back outside.

"Scared?" Rachel asked, watching him.

"Yeah, a little. Don't want to run into a bear down here," he admitted.

"Me neither. Maybe we should hurry and get deeper inside, just in case," she agreed.

So Brian choked down his fear and consulted the amulet again, to see which way they needed to go. There were two passages that led deeper into the ground from the bear's den. One of them was big enough for a man to walk through, and the other one was so small and narrow that he seriously doubted if they could squeeze through it at all.

Naturally, that was the one the amulet wanted them to take. Brian sighed and wondered why nothing could ever be easy once in a while.

Still, he got down flat on his belly and wormed his way into the hole as best he could, holding the flashlight between his teeth so he could see where he was going. It was a tight fit, and it didn't seem to get any better further ahead. As soon as he got far enough inside, Rachel followed him.

Brian's fear of bears was now replaced by the fear of getting stuck in this narrow crack in the ground until they died of hunger and thirst. It was almost certain that no one would find them in time to save them, if that happened. Would some casual explorer stumble across their skeletons years and years from now, and wonder what on earth they'd been doing down there?

It did him no good at all to think of such things, so he tried to focus on the Fountain instead, or Brandon, or anything at all except how narrow and tight the passage was. He squirmed and wriggled and inched his way along for what seemed like a week, until eventually the wormhole started to widen out again.

In a way, at least. He emerged into a place where the walls completely disappeared on both sides, but the floor and ceiling stayed uncomfortably close together. It felt like there was an enormous block of stone floating above his head with nothing to hold it up, and he kept imagining that it was about to fall at any second to crush him like a bug under a boot heel.

"Are you okay back there?" he called to Rachel, stopping to wait for her to come out of the passage he'd just left.

"Yeah, I'm fine," she said, emerging beside him.

They stopped to rest for a few minutes and give Brian time to check the amulet again. There hadn't been any need for directions while they crawled through the wormhole, but now they could go ahead almost any which way they pleased.

"Which way?" she asked, after he looked.

"That way," he said, nodding straight ahead and somewhat to the right.

"I'm sure glad we've got that pointer with us. We'd be lost for sure without it," she commented nervously, and he agreed wholeheartedly.

"Ready to head out?" he asked her.

"Yeah, let's go. This place is creepy," she told him. He couldn't have agreed more.

They passed through dozens of randomly shaped chambers and tunnels which meandered any which way, with no rhyme or reason that Brian could tell. The whole mountain seemed to be honeycombed with passages, most of them rough and wet and cold. Whenever they came to a fork in the way, Brian stopped to check the amulet. It never showed the slightest hesitation about which way they should go, but he was reminded every time of how completely dependent on it they really were. As Rachel had said earlier, they would have been totally lost without it.

Some of the passages were so tight he actually had to knock pieces of stone loose with his hammer before they could squeeze through, and others were so huge that they couldn't see the walls or the ceiling even with the flashlight. In a way Brian hated these places even worse than the tight ones, for there were absolutely no landmarks at all. It felt more like being lost in outer space than underground.

In one of these large chambers they came across a rushing stream that blocked the path, and the amulet showed in no uncertain terms that they were supposed to cross it. The current looked swift even in the weak glow of the flashlight. And deep, and cold, and therefore dangerous, too.

"Have we got to cross that?" Rachel whispered, wide eyed. Brian liked it no better than she did, but there was no hiding the truth.

"Yeah, it looks like it," he told her, reluctantly. He hesitated, and played the flashlight beam across the water to try and make out the farther shore.

It was there, but it was hard to make out any details except for a strip of sandy beach. The inky, pitch blackness had a way of playing tricks with your eyes if you weren't careful, and it seemed to soak up the light like a beach towel.

"I think it's about thirty yards to the other side," he told her, peering as hard as he could into the darkness as if that could help him see better.

"That's pretty far to swim, with a current like that," she said.

"Hmm. . . Let's see what it feels like, just in case," he said, sitting down on the floor to take off his shoes and socks. He dipped one foot in the water before quickly jerking it back.

"Cold as ice," he muttered.

"Is it really?" she asked.

"Well, no, maybe not quite that bad. But probably cold enough to take your breath away if you jumped in, and maybe freeze us to death if we stayed in there too long. Current's really strong, too," he told her, seriously.

"Let's look and see if there's any other way across it, then," she suggested.

They explored the stream bank for a while, trying to find a better place to cross. There didn't seem to be any, for at one end of the chamber the stream gushed out of the solid rock over a low waterfall just as swiftly as ever, and at the other end it formed a kind of pool backed up against the wall of the cavern. But that end was even worse, because Brian knew the water had to be escaping somewhere, probably through an opening below the surface. It would have to be one big monster of a hole to swallow a river as full and as fast as that one was, too. The surface of the pool was covered in swirling eddies and upwellings that seemed to confirm his guess.

Brian suppressed a shudder; what if they got sucked under by the whirlpool and carried off into some cavern where the water extended all the way to the ceiling? No, they dared not risk that at all. But the waterfall wasn't much better, and that left them with a problem. They had to get across, but how?

He looked again at the place where the stream gushed out from the wall, and after thinking about it for a few minutes he had an idea. The stream flooded out over a lip of stone, and the limestone below it was undercut slightly by the backsplash of the water. This formed a small space between the falling water itself and the rock behind it, and there at least the water was fairly calm.

It'd still be unbelievably cold and there was dangerously little room to maneuver, but he thought if they kept hold of projecting rocks and were very, very careful, and extremely lucky, they might just possibly make it across.

On the other hand, he didn't even want to think about what might happen if either one of them slipped. The falling water would snatch them under almost instantly, and they might be carried a long way downstream very quickly. Maybe even all the way into the whirlpool at the bottom of the cavern. Brian knew what that would mean, and he shivered at the thought. But there was no other way.

"I think maybe we could pick our way along that shelf behind the waterfall," he finally said, reluctantly.

"I knew you'd say that," she sighed.

"You did?" he asked, surprised.

"Yeah. Anybody can see it's the only way where there's any chance at all to make it across," she told him.

"So why didn't _you_ say something, then?" he asked, confused.

"Well, you looked like you were thinking pretty hard over there, you know. I figured you'd probably come to the same conclusion yourself in a minute if I left you alone. Which you did," she added hastily, and in spite of his fear he laughed.

"So you thought I might like to figure it out by myself, is that it?" he asked.

"Sometimes people do," she shrugged.

"I don't think this is the time to worry about being proud, Raych. If you've got an idea from now on, just spill it," he told her, and she smiled.

"Okay, then. I'll try to remember that," she agreed, and then there was a pause while they both tried to think of something else to say, to put off the moment when they actually had to get started. Neither of them wanted to set foot in the water, but finally Brian sighed.

"I guess we might as well get going," he said, pointing out the obvious.

"Yeah, I guess," she agreed unenthusiastically.

He put the amulet in his pocket and zipped it up to keep from losing it, and peered across the river again to find a place where the other shore seemed closest. Then he tucked his socks into his shoes and threw them as hard as he could across the river. He didn't dare keep them on while he crossed, just in case he did fall in and had to swim. He couldn't afford to have anything dragging his feet down.

They landed somewhere on the gravel (he thought), and then he threw Rachel's shoes across, too. Then he picked up the backpack and hesitated.

"I don't think I can throw this all the way across, Raych. It's too heavy," he told her.

"Could you take some of the pears out and throw them across one at a time, and then throw the pack across when it's lighter?" she suggested.

"I can try," he agreed doubtfully.

He started lobbing pears across the river like baseballs, suddenly glad for all those years he'd spent rock throwing. He couldn't tell where they landed, but he didn't hear any splashes. He left about half of them in the pack, just enough to give it a little weight, and then he zipped it up and threw it with all his strength.

The pack sailed far out across the water, and then landed in the river with a huge splash, barely short of the far shore. The swift current carried it off in an instant, and Brian knew there wasn't a prayer of getting it back. He cursed out loud and kicked the ground in frustration. That was half their food and all their clothes and other stuff, gone in the blink of an eye. They had nothing left except the flashlight, the amulet, the money, and however many pears had made it across to the far bank.

"It's all right, Mad Dog. We'll make do without it," Rachel told him, doing her best to sound cheerful.

"I guess we'll have to," he admitted with clenched teeth.

"It'll be all right, I promise," she repeated.

"What makes you so sure? It looks pretty bad to me," he said, staring at the spot where the pack had landed.

"I don't think we made it all this way just to have it end like this, because we couldn't cross a stupid river," she said, and he couldn't help smiling a little.

"Maybe so. Sorry for losing my temper," he said.

"No problem. Happens to the best of us sometimes," she told him.

There was nothing else to wait for, so Brian looked at the river again and took a deep breath to steady himself before he waded out. The first few steps were stinging cold against his bare feet, and he was already shivering when the water was no more than knee deep. By the time he reached the edge of the waterfall he was in up to his chest, but most of him was too numb to feel much by then. The river was leaching the heat out of him, fast, and he knew there was no time to waste. With no more hesitation, he crawled in behind the curve of the waterfall.

It was worse than he'd thought. There was no more than two or three feet of space between the rock and the water. He could touch bottom with his feet, but he could also feel the edge of a drop-off. The roar of the falling water so near was loud enough to deafen both of them and make speech impossible, and even the slackwater they were wading through was full of cross-currents and surges of bubbles coming up from below.

Brian ignored all this and crept along as steadily and surely as he could toward the far shore, although it was rather like trying to ignore a rattlesnake in his bed. He dared not do more than glance back now and then to see how Rachel was doing, but she seemed to be getting along about as well as he was.

It was slow, scary business, but they did make progress, and after a while they made it perhaps three quarters of the way across, as best Brian could judge without being able to see past the curtain of water in front of him. Then they met a problem.

A boulder blocked the way forward, and there was absolutely no way around it except to plunge into the waterfall itself. Brian halted, appalled.

He'd barely been able to hold back his fear as it was, and the thought of swimming the raging torrent terrified him. The cross-currents swirling around his legs were just a feeble reminder of what the main flood would be like. His body was already so cold that he doubted he could swim very far, even with no current at all. True, there shouldn't be _that_ much farther to go before they reached the other bank, but what if the river pulled them right back out to mid-stream? They'd drown, that's what. He didn't have a shred of doubt about _that._

But there was no other way, unless they decided to turn back. And if they did that, then Rachel would most certainly die. So might Brandon, and even Brian for that matter, because the amulet offered them no help at all in finding a way back out of the cave system. All it did was point to the Fountain.

Brian had never been more frightened in his entire life than he was at that moment, not even on that awful night when Mama put the bullet hole in his bedroom wall. Any choice he might make seemed terrible.

He took deep breaths to calm his pounding heart. They'd have to swim and hope for the best; that was the only option. Anything was better than wandering the endless caverns until they starved to death alone in the darkness.

As gingerly as possible, he turned to face Rachel, who couldn't see past him to tell why he'd stopped. There was no way he could make her hear him over the roar of the falls, but he got as close as he could and put his mouth to her ear.

"There's a boulder up ahead, we can't get by this way!" he said, yelling so his words were loud enough for her to understand.

She grasped the situation instantly.

"Can you swim?" she asked, putting her mouth up to his ear. In this way they were able to talk, somewhat.

"Yeah, can you?" he asked.

"Yeah. How much farther is it?" she asked.

"I can't tell. I don't think very far," he said.

"Then we have to swim. It's no use going back," she said.

"Yeah, I was afraid you'd say that," he said, and for a second he thought she actually smiled at him.

"You better put the flashlight in your pocket and zip it up so we won't lose it," she reminded him, and he nodded. He switched off the light, plunging them into utter darkness, and quickly put the flashlight in his pocket with the amulet.

"Listen, the water will push us under when we jump into the falls, maybe a long way. Hold my hand, and before long we ought to pop back up top again. Then swim, _hard,_ the same direction I do. Okay?" he asked.

"Okay," she agreed. She reached out to clasp his left hand, and he was glad to feel some strength in her grip. He gripped right back. They took a deep breath together, and then jumped.

The river snatched them at once, and the weight of the falling water pushed them far under the surface. They plunged so deep that Brian felt his knee scrape against the bare rock bottom. He was dragged helplessly along for a short while, and then found himself caught in the upwelling below the falls. After that, he was launched quickly back to the surface. His head suddenly popped free into open air, and he took a deep gasping breath, fighting panic. He still had a grip on Rachel's hand, but that was the only point of contact he had with anything. He couldn't see a thing in the pitch black darkness, although he was conscious of being carried along at a rapid pace.

He knew he had to swim at right angles to the current to reach shore, but which way? He was too disoriented to remember. One of the banks was probably nearby, and the other one impossibly far. A wrong choice would probably be fatal, and he had only seconds to make up his mind. In desperation, he swam left.

It seemed like forever, but really it couldn't have been more than a minute before his hand struck bottom. Scant seconds after that he was crawling out onto a gravelly beach, but it was anybody's guess which side it might be. He wouldn't know for sure till he was able to get out the flashlight and look.

But for a while he lacked the strength to do even that much. He lay there and shivered violently, and then threw up what felt like a gallon of river water that he must have swallowed at some point, although he couldn't remember doing it. His head spun, and if he hadn't already been lying down he might have fallen. He felt someone patting his back and vaguely realized it must have been Rachel, but he was too far gone to care. The river had almost killed them both.

He could feel her body shaking violently from the cold, just as his was, and he quickly decided this was no time for modesty.

"We've got to get warm," he told her, between chattering teeth, and when she didn't answer he put his arms around her and pressed his body as close up against hers as he could. She didn't object, and they lay there together sharing body heat as best they could.

After a while, they both recovered enough strength to sit up and take stock. Brian unzipped his pocket to get the flashlight, and when he switched it on the first thing he discovered was that it didn't work.

"Just give it a little time to dry out. It'll be all right," Rachel reminded him, still shivering.

He did, and presently when he tried it again he was rewarded with a weak glow. The first thing he noticed was that they were dangerously far downstream, almost at the very lip of the whirlpool. Another ten seconds and they would both have been lost.

That scared him all over again, but he reminded himself sternly that they were safe now, and he needed to get a grip. The next thing he saw was his left shoe, and not long after that, his right one. They'd made it to the far bank after all.

They took a little while to wring some of the water out of their clothes and to rub some warmth back into their arms and legs, and when they felt halfway human again, Brian consulted the amulet to see which way they needed to go. Both of them were anxious to leave the underground river far behind as soon as possible. Brian had never been so close to death before, and he hoped he never would be again.

They found only seven of the pears that he'd thrown across the water, and they stuffed these into their pockets glumly. It wasn't enough food to last more than a day or two at the most.

But there was worse to come. It wasn't long after they left the river behind that Rachel put a hand on his shoulder and stopped him.

"What is it, Raych?" he asked, turning to look at her.

"My medicine bottle is gone, Brian. I guess I must have lost it when we crossed the river; I just now noticed it was missing," she told him, sounding scared.

"Are you sure?" he asked.

"Yeah, I'm sure. It was in my shirt pocket and I thought I had it buttoned shut, but it must have come open," she told him.

"Can you go without it for a while?" he asked.

"Maybe a few hours. Not very long, though. I'll start having seizures," she said.

"What should I do, if you have one?" he asked grimly.

"Just leave me alone. There's nothing you can do except wait for it to be over. I'll probably chew my tongue to pieces and I'll have to rest for a few hours before I can walk again, but I'll be okay," she told him.

"We'll just have to do the best we can, then," he said, hiding his own fear.

Again they went on for what seemed like days, although in reality it couldn't have been more than a few hours at the most. Sometimes they talked quietly, but more often than not they were both silent.

Then they came to the bat colony.

"What's that sound?" Rachel whispered, grabbing his arm again. Brian hadn't noticed anything, but when he stopped and listened carefully he could hear faint skittering noises above his head. It reminded him of rats.

He didn't like this at all, and quickly shone the light up above them. The ceiling was alive with bats, packed together in clumps like sardines in a can. Brian took the light off them immediately, but it had been there long enough to disturb a few of them already. These dropped from their perches and flew around the cavern noisily, until they finally disappeared somewhere.

"Cover up the light so maybe they'll settle down," Rachel whispered.

"Yeah, but then we can't see which way to go," he pointed out, also whispering.

They finally decided to cover the flashlight with one hand, and pick their way through the bat cave by the faint red light that welled up between their fingers.

This wasn't easy, because the floor of the cavern was piled deep with bat droppings, slick and greasy and fouler than Brian would ever have imagined it was possible for anything to be. It reminded him of wading through thick, sticky mud. At every step they sank in, sometimes thigh-deep, and more than once they slipped and fell. It was a slow and disgusting business to make their way across.

The filth was bad enough, but even worse was the thought of the bats swooping down to attack them. Didn't they carry rabies? Brian was almost sure he remembered reading or hearing that, somewhere. He could just imagine a long series of rabies shots if one of them bit him.

But that didn't happen, and just when he thought he couldn't possibly survive a single more step through bat crap, they reached the end of the colony and passed into a new tunnel.

Several hours later, still filthy and stinking, they sat down to rest for a while in one of the drier and sandier caves they'd come across. They had no way of telling what time it might have been in the world outside, but judging from how sleepy they both were it must have been late.

"All this sand gives me an idea about how to clean up a little, if you want to give it a try," Rachel said presently.

"What is it?" he asked, curious.

"We can take a sand bath. Take some of this sand and rub it all over the dirty spots. It'll help a little," she suggested.

"Yeah, I think I've heard of that somewhere before, now that you mention it," he agreed. Nothing but soap and water would get them completely clean, of course, but anything was better than smelling like a sewer all night. So they tried it, and found that it was slightly better than nothing. But not by much.

After the sand bath they both ate a pear, and Brian tried to ignore the fact that he was still gnawingly hungry even afterward. But they dared not eat any more. Five pears was all they had left to last them however much longer they had to stay underground, and who knew how long that might be? The caves seemed to go on forever, and Brian had kicked himself more times than he could count for overlooking the food problem. He'd assumed the Fountain was close, stupid as that was. He didn't know how much longer they could go on, if it didn't turn up soon.

He glanced longingly at the pears, unsatisfying as they were, and then he lay down on the sandy floor with a still-growling stomach. But nevertheless, he was so exhausted that even hunger couldn't keep him awake for long, and he was asleep almost before he could shut his eyes.

## Chapter Ten

He must have slept for a long time, because he woke up feeling better than before. His body was so cold he thought he might never feel warm again, but he knew exercise would soon cure that. He was also hungry enough that he thought he might try eating a rock soon, if nothing better showed up.

He clicked on the flashlight and immediately noticed that Rachel was in a different part of the cave than he remembered. She lay crumpled in an unnatural heap on the sand, not at all like any normal person would choose to sleep. But asleep she surely was, and that puzzled him. He crawled over to shake her awake.

"Wake up, Raych," he said, and she only groaned.

Brian was uneasy. Rachel had been true to her word and never once complained about anything they'd had to do, no matter how dangerous or disgusting or difficult it might be. It wasn't like her to start doing it now.

"Is something wrong?" he asked, anxiously.

"I think maybe I had a seizure, Brian," she finally told him, her voice thick and heavy.

"You do?" he asked, stupidly.

"Yeah, I bit my tongue really bad, and this is always how it feels after it's over. Being really bone tired like this, like my whole body's made of lead," she said dully.

"Is there anything I can do?" he asked.

"No, there's really not. I knew it was coming, with no medicine. But you're right, I need to get up. You may have to help me, though; let me lean on you when I need to," she said.

He helped her struggle to her feet, and she seemed frail and weak in a way he'd never yet seen her. She had to grip his shoulder for support, just to stand.

"Can you make it?" he asked, worried.

"I've got to. I'll be all right, I promise. Just don't let me fall," she told him.

In this way they staggered and stumbled along as best they could, and after a while she seemed to recover enough so she didn't have to lean on him so much.

He was glad, but what if it happened again? He was afraid to mention it, for fear it might somehow make it happen. That was stupid, of course, but he couldn't shake the feeling. The possibility hung like a black cloud over his head, weighing him down. But as bad as that was, he soon had something even worse to worry about.

Before long, he started to notice how weak the flashlight batteries were getting, and he knew it was only a matter of hours before they died completely.

That was such a horrible thought that he stopped in mid-stride and switched off the light completely.

"What's wrong?" Rachel asked.

"The light's starting to get dim. We need to keep it off as much as we can," he explained.

"Yeah, I guess. But we better hold hands if we've got to walk in the dark, so we don't get lost," she pointed out. Brian shrugged and grabbed her hand, doing his best to feel his way along the walls by touch. But he was haunted by the fear of missing a turn, or stepping blindly off the edge of some yawning pit that might open up at their feet at any time, or who-knew-what else. Therefore he compromised, using the light in brief spurts to let them see what was ahead, and then groping their way through the darkness until he thought they needed another glimpse. Now and then he checked the pointer, but there seemed to be no turns in this region.

After a while, he felt Rachel's body suddenly go rigid as stone beside him, and before he could think to ask what was wrong she fell heavily to the floor like dead weight, her arms and legs thrashing violently while spit and snot flew everywhere. For a second he panicked, until he realized it had to be one of her seizures. Then he stood beside her helplessly, remembering what she'd said about waiting it out.

It wasn't very long before the convulsion was over, and when he was sure she was finished, he wiped the foam and blood off her face with the cleanest part of his t-shirt that he could find. There was nothing else he could do for her.

A minute or two later her eyes opened for a moment, and then closed again as she seemed to settle into a deep sleep. Brian sat beside her and ate another pear while he waited, thinking darkly of what might happen to them if things kept getting worse. After an hour or two she woke, and when he switched on the light he noticed that she had tears in her eyes.

"What's wrong?" he asked, bending down beside her.

"I can't go on anymore, Brian. I just can't do it," she said in a thick voice, and then started to sob uncontrollably. Brian awkwardly put his arms around her shoulders and shushed her like he might have done with Brandon, not knowing how else to comfort her.

"It'll be all right," he soothed, patting her back.

"No it won't. You have to leave me here and go get somebody, or else bring me some water from that Fountain and then we'll see if it can really do anything. But I can't go any farther," she said.

"You know I can't leave you here," he told her.

"Then you'll die too," she told him, with brutal directness.

"No I won't. Nobody's going to die, Raych. I know you can't walk right now, but can you hold on to my back and let me carry you for a while?" he asked. The very thought was exhausting, and he was already bone tired. But he'd never admit it until he collapsed on the floor. Until then, he'd try to make sure they both made it out of there.

She considered the idea.

"Yeah, I guess I could probably do that. For a while," she agreed.

"Then climb up," he told her, squatting down so she could get on his back. She did so, painfully slowly, and he had to hunch forward a little bit so she wouldn't slide off. She put her arms around his neck, and thus arranged piggy-back, they went on.

Several times, Brian was absolutely certain that he couldn't possibly take a single more step, but somehow he always did. He had to stop and rest several times, but he wasn't ready to give up yet.

He could feel Rachel's body twitching and jerking now and then and he was afraid she might have another seizure at any moment, but it was still the dying flashlight that terrified him more than anything else. No matter how carefully he tried to conserve the batteries, the light grew steadily weaker, and at last it winked out completely, leaving them in utter darkness.

Brian was strangely unmoved by this, by the time it happened. Perhaps he'd finally blown every fuse in his fear circuits, or maybe he was simply too worn out and too close to despair to care anymore. It would have been easy at that moment to simply sit down on the floor beside Rachel, curl up in a ball, and wait for the end to come. But he found that somehow he couldn't give up until the bitter end, if bitter was how it had to be. So he kept on doggedly putting one foot in front of the other, not willing to quit until he lacked the strength to keep going. The tunnel never divided anymore, although it twisted and turned repeatedly.

Rachel had two more seizures, one of them really bad, and each time he had to put her down on the floor of the cave and wait for her to revive enough to climb up on his back again. But each time she got weaker, and he could tell that after a few more episodes like that she wouldn't have the strength even to hold on to him anymore. Even if she did, he didn't know how much longer he could carry her. He was nearly at the end of his rope.

After a long time, a pale greenish glow began to filter into the cavern. It was so faint that he almost thought he was imagining it at first, and he wouldn't have been able to see it at all if his eyes hadn't been accustomed to pitch blackness for so long. But the light grew gradually stronger, until soon there was no mistaking it.

"I think there's something up ahead," he whispered to Rachel.

"Are we coming back outside?" she asked.

"I'm not sure. Maybe," he said, doubtfully. It didn't look like daylight, but what else could it be?

Still, it gave him hope, and along with that hope came a fresh surge of energy that he hadn't known he possessed. He straightened up and hurried forward, and though he staggered he didn't fall.

At last he rounded a final twist in the passage and stepped out into another immense cavern, almost full of water except for the sandy white beach where he stood. The water itself was the source of the light he'd seen, for it was somehow lit up from below and seemed to glow a bright, clear, emerald green. Small ripples cast dancing light across the ceiling and across Brian's face.

"What is this place?" Rachel whispered.

"I don't know," he confessed, staring at the emerald green water with wide eyes. Then he suddenly felt her shaking with laughter on his back.

"What's so funny?" he asked, confused.

"You, that's what. And me too, I guess, standing here staring at that pool of water like it's something spooky. It's just daylight, that's all, reflecting up from the limestone on the bottom. There must be a cave that leads outside, somewhere down below the surface," she explained.

"Yeah, I didn't think of that," he agreed, feeling foolish.

"It's beautiful, though," she said.

"Yeah, I guess it is," he agreed heavily, thinking to himself that neither one of them was in any condition for another swim. He shuddered at the very idea.

He could hear the sound of water flowing somewhere not too awfully far away, and he walked a little farther out onto the sandy fringe of the pool so he could see better. As soon as he did, he immediately noticed a flowing fountain to the left built of jet-black rock, quite thoroughly out of place amongst the white limestone.

From the fountain there gushed forth a stream of cold water, clear as glass, which overflowed the top and soon lost itself in the emerald depths of the lake. That was the source of the splashing sound.

"Is that the Fountain?" Rachel asked, in a hushed voice. Brian glanced at the amulet, and found that the pointer aimed straight for the black stone.

"I think it might be," he told her, hardly daring to believe it.

"I think I could stand for a little while now, if you put me down," she told him, and he allowed her to get off his back. She was still unsteady, but the rest seemed to have done her good, and she was able to stand on her own two feet by leaning on Brian's shoulder.

Neither of them said a word, but by mutual agreement they crept forward toward the Fountain together. And when they came near enough, they saw carven letters cut deep into the black rock, hard to make out until they got very close.

Then Brian was lost in wonder, for upon the stone lip of the basin were written these words:

The strong of heart shall drink of Me,

The life-giving Life, and the Beauty that makes beautiful.

Upon the edge of the Fountain there sat a golden cup, and Brian with trembling hand reached out to grasp it quickly, and dipped the cup in the gushing Fountain to fill it.

"Here, drink," he said, and offered the cup to Rachel first.

"No, say a blessing first. It wouldn't be right to just drink," she said. He nodded, and after a moment of thought he spoke aloud.

"To God Most High, may our taste of this Fountain give you glory forever," he said, holding the cup aloft with both hands. Then he lowered it and glanced at her, to see if he'd spoken too grandly and if she might laugh at him. It seemed the kind of solemn moment for which no less of a blessing would do, but he would have blushed bright red if she'd laughed. But she only nodded with perfect seriousness, so perhaps she felt the solemnity too.

She took the cup from him with hands that trembled, whether from illness and exhaustion or from awe, he knew not which. She closed her eyes and murmured something under her breath, then she lifted the cup to her lips and drank.

Nothing happened that he could see immediately, but she handed him the cup.

"Now you, Brian. Drink," she told him.

He dipped the cup again into the Fountain, but then he hesitated for a moment with the cup full to brimming in his hand, remembering Miss Sadie's warning. Did he love the world enough, and God enough, to live his life for nothing else, however long that might be? He wondered if anyone had ever stood before the Fountain like this, and then decided not to drink after all. The responsibility that came with it was a huge one.

Then he made his choice, and lifted the golden cup to his lips. The water was icy cold, as if it came indeed from the very heart of the earth, and he shivered as he drank deep, but he felt nothing else unusual. Just as with the amulet, there was nothing to tell him if it had worked or not. Nevertheless, he knelt down in that sacred place and gave thanks, and Rachel beside him.

When they were done with that, Brian reverently replaced the cup on the lip of the Fountain, and looked at Rachel.

"Do you feel any different?" he whispered, looking earnestly at her. Both of them were still filthy and exhausted, and then again the green light made everything look magical and half unreal, so that he couldn't tell for certain if she looked different or not.

"I feel stronger now, almost like I could walk again if I needed to, but still very tired. What about you?" she asked. He considered the idea.

"I guess I don't feel much different, but then I wasn't sick to start with," he finally admitted.

"So how can we tell for sure if it worked or not?" she asked.

"You can't tell if your eyes are better, or your tongue?" he asked. She thought about this for a minute, and then slowly took her glasses off.

"I can see without my glasses," she said wonderingly, and then broke into a huge grin.

"I think it worked, Raych," he told her.

"Yeah, I think so too, but surely there's some way we could tell about you," she said. Brian thought about this, and then he smiled.

"I think I know a way. Miss Sadie told me we'd be beautiful and perfect after we drank the water, didn't she? I have a scar from where I got cut with an axe pretty bad on my left foot one time, splitting wood. Maybe it's gone now," he suggested. He quickly stripped off his filthy left shoe and exposed the place. It was smooth and clean as a baby's foot, with no trace of the scar at all.

He quickly checked other spots. . . the chicken pox scar on his elbow, the deep scratch on his knee from a thorn bush last fall; they were all gone.

"Do you have any scars?" he asked, looking up. She nodded.

"Yeah, I have one on my side, where I had my appendix taken out," she agreed, lifting the edge of her shirt to show him the place.

It was gone, too.

They looked at each other with delight, and Rachel was the first one to break the spell.

"What do we do now?" she finally asked, and for some reason the question tickled him, though he couldn't have said why.

"Go home, I guess," he laughed. She smiled too.

"True. But how do we get out of here? I'm not sure we can find our way back the same way we came," she pointed out.

"No, not without the pointer to show us the way," he agreed.

"Well, _does_ it show the way out?" she asked.

It was a good question, and Brian immediately looked at the amulet to see. In the back of his mind, he'd always had a vague hope that the pointer might perhaps swing around and lead them back out from the place of the Fountain again, once they'd found it and drunk from the water. But when he looked, he found that the back of the amulet was shut again, and nothing he could do would reopen it.

"I think we're on our own now, Raych. I can't get it open at all anymore," he told her.

"I guess it's done its job, now that we're here. We'd never make it back through all those caves with no light, anyway, even if it did show us the way. Not to mention we'd have to cross the river again," she reminded him.

"Yeah, I forgot about that. We'll just have to think of something else," he admitted.

Brian eyed the emerald green lake thoughtfully. There was definitely sunlight coming in from somewhere, so there had to be a way out beneath the lake, if they were brave enough to look for it.

He still had vivid memories of their near-drowning in the river yesterday, and he wasn't happy with the idea of going back in the water again so soon. He thought wryly to himself that he'd become awfully good at getting himself into situations where there was no way out except by doing something he hated.

"I think we could maybe get out through the lake," he finally told her.

"Yeah, I was afraid you'd say that," she agreed, with a humorless smile.

"I know; I don't like it either. But there's got to be a way out, down there. The light has to come in from somewhere, and it can't be all that far or it wouldn't be so bright," he said, talking just as much for his own benefit as for hers.

"What if it's too deep for us to swim, though?" she pointed out, and all he could do was shrug.

"Maybe it is, but do we have any other choice?" he asked.

"No, I guess we don't," she agreed.

"Okay, then, I tell you what. Let's rest for a little while to get our strength back, maybe sleep a couple hours if we can. Then we'll try it," he suggested, and she nodded.

"All right, but at least let's scrub some of this filth off, first. We've got water now," she said, waving a hand at the lake.

"That's a great idea," he said.

So they went to the edge of the emerald lake, stripped off their shoes and socks, and left them in a pile on the beach. There was no way they could take them along when they left the cavern. If someone else ever found his way to the Fountain, then maybe he'd come across two pairs of filthy Nikes and wonder who'd left them behind.

Then they walked barefoot out into the lake. Brian had been braced for freezing cold water like what he'd felt in the underground river, and he was all the more ready to expect this after drinking the icy water from the Fountain, but it wasn't so. The lake was no worse than cool, not even enough to make them shiver.

"At least it's warm," he commented.

"Yeah, at least. No current, either," she agreed, and he knew she was thinking about the underground river, just like he'd been doing.

There was a wide shelf of limestone near the beach, and then a sudden drop-off about ten feet out from shore. Brian couldn't tell how deep the water might be after that, for it was so crystal clear that it was hard to judge distances very well. Still, when he looked down he could see a jumble of white boulders, and vaguely make out the opening of a tunnel mouth through which reflected sunlight poured. There was no telling how far the tunnel itself might stretch.

But that could wait, and in the meantime, Brian and Rachel scrubbed themselves as clean as they could without soap. Then they sat down on the beach together and leaned their backs against the stone wall near the Fountain, quietly eating the last two pears while they rested. They both needed to get some strength back, before they tried a swim like that.

"I think you really do look different, Brian," she commented after a while.

"Like how?" he asked. He'd been thinking the same thing about her, but it was hard to put his finger on what the difference might be.

"Well. . . I know it'll sound weird to say it like this, but you're beautiful. Perfect, like one of those statues of a Greek god a long time ago. I couldn't tell what it was at first because the difference isn't much, and the dirt and the bat crap didn't help, but I'm sure, now," she told him.

"And it took you this long to notice that?" he asked her jokingly, trying to make light of it.

"I always thought you looked like that, Brian. It's just a little bit more, now," she told him. She seemed perfectly serious, although he noticed her knotting her fingers together like she was nervous to be saying it.

Her words embarrassed him, and he couldn't think of a good way to answer her. He suspected she was probably every bit as uncomfortable as he was, but unfortunately they couldn't just drop the subject. If the change was real, then they needed to be sure.

He studied her face carefully, and decided she might be right. The difference was a subtle thing, hard to notice at first, but it was definitely there. He could remember, vaguely, that he'd once thought she was something less than beautiful. But now she was just. . . perfect, like she'd said. She reminded him of Sadie Jones' roses, or one of his animals at Black Rock; flawless, with not a spot or a stain of any kind.

"You're beautiful, too," he finally told her, and she smiled like a girl who hasn't heard such a thing very often.

"Do you think other people will notice, when we get back home?" she asked, and he shrugged.

"If we can tell the difference then I imagine other people will probably see it, too. But I don't think it matters if they do. It's not enough to make us look freaky or anything," he said.

"Yeah, I guess you're right. It'll just take some getting used to," she agreed. They were silent for a while after that, thinking their own thoughts, until she spoke again.

"Brian?" she asked.

"Yeah?" he answered.

"Thank you for showing me this place. Even if we drown in the lake tomorrow, it was worth it, just to come here with you and see all this," she told him.

"I think it was worth it, too," he agreed, and reached out to clasp her hand. She squeezed back, and they said nothing more for a long time. Eventually they both slept.

When Brian woke, Rachel's head was lying on his chest, and his face was buried in her hair. He could almost have sworn it was softer and thicker than he remembered, and he couldn't help noticing the burnt spots from the fire and the sewer-smell from the bat cave were gone. He wondered what else the Fountain had done to them.

They must have been asleep for at least several hours; his body was rested enough to feel almost human again. He blinked his eyes and decided it was probably time to get moving.

"Wake up, Raych," he whispered, shaking her. She took a deep breath and sat up.

"How long did we sleep?" she asked, yawning.

"I'm not sure, but I think I'm strong enough to swim, now. What about you?" he asked. She considered.

"Yeah, I'm up for it if you are," she agreed, nodding.

They took a few minutes to stretch their arms and legs and get fully awake, and then they waded back into the green lake together, stopping at the edge of the drop-off. They both took several deep breaths, and then held the last one before they dived for the bottom.

Brian's ears popped as he went down, and he could feel the pressure building up all around him as he swam deeper. It reminded him unpleasantly of the underground river, and he shoved the thought aside. If he started thinking about that too much, he'd panic for sure.

He opened his eyes so he could find the tunnel mouth, and quickly entered it. He was already beginning to feel the need to breathe, but he didn't let himself think about that, either. He swam along the cavern wall, using handholds to pull himself along a little faster whenever he could. Then the cavern turned a corner, and he saw real, honest-to-goodness daylight streaming down from somewhere up ahead.

By the time they exited the cavern, Brian's lungs were bursting for lack of air, and he looked up to see the surface far above his head. There were several other cavern mouths all around them which might have led almost anywhere. Rachel was close beside him, and together they rushed for the surface.

Just when he thought he couldn't stand it even one more second, Brian's head broke out into open air, and a second later Rachel's popped up next to him a few feet away.

He took deep, gasping breaths of late afternoon air, treading water and unable to think of anything else except the blessed oxygen for a while. Only after he'd satisfied his body's craving for breath did he glance around to see where in the world they might be.

They seemed to be in a lake, very small but deep and clear, with steep cliffs all the way around, almost like a sinkhole. Of houses or boats or other traces of men, Brian saw nothing at all. They seemed to be in the middle of nowhere.

"Where are we?" Rachel called to him.

"I don't know. I guess we'll find out soon enough," he said.

The shore was close by, and as soon as Brian pulled himself out onto the rocks, he checked to make sure the amulet was still in his pocket. Then he looked at the cliff face above them. It was only about a hundred feet high, if that, but it might as well have been a thousand if they couldn't find a way to climb it.

He noticed there were breaks and cracks in the limestone all over the place. They shouldn't have a problem finding handholds, but the whole thing looked dangerously crumbly.

"I'm not sure we can climb that wall without a rope," he said worriedly.

"Do we have a choice?" she asked.

"Well. . . no, not really. Maybe if we tried to climb it over there where the cliff rises right out of the water, then it might be a little bit safer. That way, we'd just fall back into the lake if we slipped," he said, thoughtfully.

"That would hurt bad enough, if we were very high up," she said.

"Yeah, but at least it wouldn't break any bones and it wouldn't kill us. Not like landing on these rocks," he pointed out.

"Let's try it, then," she sighed.

They got back in the water and swam a short distance to reach the bottom of the almost sheer cliff. Then Brian reached up to grab hold of the lowest crack in the rock.

"Here goes nothing," he said, and heaved himself up, scrambling to get a foothold. Almost immediately, the weak limestone broke off under his weight and he fell backwards into the water with a huge splash. He came up sputtering and coughing, and Rachel laughed.

"It's not funny," he told her, when he could talk.

"I'm sorry, Brian. You just looked silly, that's all, falling backwards and grabbing air like that," she said.

"No doubt. Nothing to do but try again," he said, and moved toward the cliff again.

"Wait just a minute. I think the cliff leans backward a little bit, over there on the far side. I know it's not much, but it might help some," she told him, nodding her head toward the far shore.

Brian looked, and the cliff did in fact look a little less imposing over there. There was just enough slope to give them a decent chance of making it to the top without ropes. Of course, it also meant there was just enough slope to send them bouncing and rolling and smashing their skulls against rocks all the way back down to the water if they fell. Not long ago, Brian would never have dreamed of trying to climb such a thing. But then again, he'd been forced to do a lot of things lately that he never would have tried before.

He gazed at the steep slope uneasily, not liking the idea but unable to think of anything better.

"Let's try it," he shrugged, and took off swimming in that direction.

He reached it first, and grabbed hold of a rock just like he'd done before. This time he was able to pull himself up and cling to the stone without falling, and soon Rachel was up beside him.

"I think we can make it this time," she said.

It was a ticklish business, and they both had to climb slowly and carefully, testing the holds to make sure they wouldn't break. More than once they knocked loose stones that fell down into the water far below, and the higher they got, the scarier it looked.

But eventually Brian threw one hand over the top and grabbed a tree root to pull himself up the last few feet. He laid himself flat on his stomach and reached down to give Rachel a hand up, and for a few minutes they both sat there at the edge of the cliff, exhausted but happy.

"No wonder nobody ever found this place before," Rachel commented, looking down. The emerald-green water far below them was set like a jewel in the bottom of the little sinkhole, betraying no trace of the Fountain that lay hidden beneath it.

"For sure. It just looks like any old sinkhole, dime a dozen," he agreed.

"Do you think we should leave a mark, so we can find it again if we need to?" she asked, and he thought about that for a while before he answered her.

"No, I kinda think anybody who's supposed to find the Fountain, they won't need any help from us to get there. Let's leave it the way it is, and let it be," he finally said.

"All right," she nodded, and they both paused to look down once again into the green depths.

"Let's go, then," he finally said, and they both got up and walked together away from the cliff's edge. Neither of them looked back.

"Do you have any idea where we are?" Rachel finally asked, after they'd walked for a little while.

"Nope, not a clue. I'm just headed west so we can follow the sun and not get lost," he admitted, and she laughed.

"Sounds like we're already lost, but hey, it's a good enough plan for me," she agreed with a shrug.

They walked for several hours without seeing a single soul, and several hours after dark, they suddenly stumbled across an old timber road. It looked like it hadn't been used in a hundred years, but it had to go somewhere.

"That looks promising," Rachel said, eyeing the road. Brian knew how she felt; his feet were sore from trudging barefoot through the woods for so long, and he was ready for some easier walking.

So they took to the road and kept walking, and eventually they passed an old wooden bridge where they found a place to crawl up underneath and spend what was left of the night. It was a rough bed, but they were both so tired by then that they couldn't have cared less.

## Chapter Eleven

Late the next morning they emerged onto a paved blacktop highway, and not long after that they caught a ride from a farmer in an old Ford pickup truck. Within fifteen minutes, they found themselves dropped off at a gas station in Jasper.

"Well, here we are, back in civilization," Rachel said, rubbing her hands together.

"Yeah, sort of. But we're still a long way from home, and we've got no way to get there," he pointed out.

"Well. . . let's get some real food for a change, and we can think about that while we eat, okay? I'm starving," she suggested.

"Absolutely. I don't ever want to see another pear in my whole life," he agreed, laughing.

They bought some cheap flip-flops at the gas station so they wouldn't have a problem getting inside a restaurant barefooted. Then they walked down the street a few blocks till they found a pizza joint and ate to their heart's content.

Brian was eager to get home, now, but he was having a hard time thinking of a way to make it happen. The car was still lost out there on some forsaken dirt road in the middle of nowhere outside Snowball, but he wouldn't even begin to know where to look for it. Nor did they have the time.

"Do you know anybody we could call?" Rachel asked around a mouthful of pizza.

"Not that I can think of. If I call my mom or my aunt then that'll probably just get me locked up for a while, and I can't let that happen till I make sure Brandon's all right, at least. Do you know anybody?" he asked.

"Not that I'd want to call just yet," she admitted.

"There's always Adam, I guess. He's got a truck," he suggested doubtfully.

"You mean Adam Crenshaw _,_ the football player?" she asked, raising one eyebrow skeptically.

"Yeah, that's the one. You don't like him or something?" he asked.

"No, it's not that. I guess I just never realized you and him hung out together all that much," she explained.

"We didn't used to," he said wryly. Adam was the best friend that money could buy, but he was embarrassed to tell Rachel something like that.

"Would he come this far? And what would his mom and dad say about it?" she asked.

"Oh, he'd do it if I gave him enough money. And his family lets him do anything he wants, pretty much. No worries about that," he told her.

"How much have you got left?" she asked.

"About five hundred dollars, I think. I'm pretty sure he'd do it for that," he told her.

"I guess we could ask him. I can't think of any better plan," she admitted.

"He's at school right now, but I could still text him," he said, thinking out loud.

"You could if you had a phone," she pointed out.

"Yeah, true, but I bet we can find a cheap one somewhere in this town, don't you think? Let's ask the waitress when she comes back. She ought to know," he said.

They asked, and the waitress gave them directions to the Family Dollar store on Court Street. As soon as they left the pizza parlor they went directly to the store to pick up a cheap phone, not to mention some clean clothes. Brian didn't bother buying a charger for the phone; he didn't expect to keep the phone for very long anyway.

"There you go. I knew we could do it," Rachel told him after they left the store. Both of them had changed clothes in the bathroom, and thrown the old ones in the trash. Both of them still needed a real bath, but at least they didn't look like homeless people anymore. Brian stood in the parking lot and fiddled with the phone until he got it activated, then he looked up at Rachel.

"Guess I better text Adam and see what he'll do. What do you think I should tell him? He'll want to know how we got here and what's going on, I'm sure," he said.

"Just say you'll tell him about it when he gets here. I'm sure we can think of a good story between now and then," she said, and then Brian focused his attention on typing the text message.

"Okay, he said he'll come," he said after a few minutes of back-and-forth.

"Great!" she said.

"The only catch is, he can't leave till after school, so he won't be able to get here before probably seven o'clock or so. We're supposed to meet him at the courthouse, cause he can find that on the map without too much trouble. And he _did_ ask what was up, just like I knew he would. So he's expecting the whole story as soon as he gets here," he said.

"We'll think of something before then," she repeated.

After that, Brian gathered up his courage and called Carolyn, reluctantly. He didn't think she could figure out where he was if he called her on a cell phone, and he was anxious about Brandon. A lot could have happened in three days.

"Hey, how's Brandon?" he asked when she picked up the phone. He half expected her to start yelling at him the second she heard his voice, but she must have decided to take a different approach this time.

"He's not doing very well, Brian. He's got pneumonia. If that matters to you at all, and if you want to see him, come to the hospital tonight, if you can. He's in room 328," she said. She sounded tired beyond words, as if she didn't even have the energy to care whether Brian showed up or not.

"I'll try," he told her, not liking the news at all.

"Do you need me to come get you somewhere? Nobody's mad anymore, Brian, I promise. Just come home. Please," she asked him.

"It's okay, I've got a ride. I'll be home tonight as soon as I can," he promised.

As soon as he got off the phone, he looked at Rachel.

"Would you mind too much, if we stopped to check on Brandon first, before we go home? Aunt Carolyn says he's not doing too well. It'll be on the way, more or less," he told her.

"Sure. I'm in no hurry at all, if you think Adam won't mind waiting," she said.

"Adam would wait for ten hours barefoot in the snow, if he thought he could make a buck doing it," Brian said dryly.

When Adam finally got there at 6:45 that evening, Brian was so eager to leave that he had the door open almost before the wheels could stop moving.

"That much of a hurry, huh?" Adam asked, laughing a little. Patti Sue was with him, of course, even though he hadn't bothered to mention it earlier. It was a tight squeeze to fit all four of them in the seat.

"Yeah, I guess so. Let's blow this place," Brian agreed, and so that's exactly what they did.

"So what happened to you the past few days, buddy boy? You got no idea what kinds of things people been saying," Adam said as soon as they were out on the highway.

In fact, Brian had a pretty good idea what kinds of things people had probably been saying, but he didn't much want to think about all that. He'd find out soon enough without guessing.

But in the meantime, he told Adam the story he and Rachel had cooked up about deciding to run away from home together and getting lost in the woods for several days after her car broke down. It was true enough as far as it went, and if Adam wanted to think there was some secret romantic thing going on behind the scenes, then that was his own fault.

He must have believed it, because he didn't question anything. But after a while Patti Sue said something that made Brian's skin crawl with uneasiness.

"You look different, Mad Dog," she said, looking him up and down.

"Different? Like how?" he asked, pretending he didn't know.

"I don't know, exactly. You're just. . . I can't quite put my finger on it. Did you cut your hair, or something?" she finally asked, lamely. Brian laughed.

"No, I'm just the same as I always was," he told her.

"No, she's right. Something's different about both of you," Adam said, glancing at him and then at Rachel for a few seconds before turning his attention back to the highway.

Brian shrugged and said nothing to this. What could he tell them, after all? That he'd drunk from the Fountain of Youth and had power and life they'd never dreamed of? He could imagine exactly what they'd say to that. All things considered, it was best if he simply let the subject drop.

But Patti Sue kept glancing at him from time to time, and it was hard to keep pretending he didn't notice. She was trying to be discreet about it, but she was getting more and more obvious. After a while even Adam started to notice it. Brian saw the scowl developing on his face, and he could see the way his hands were gripping the steering wheel. He was angry, and sooner or later he'd say something, if Patti Sue didn't stop it.

Adam was doing the same thing, though, for he kept stealing glances at Rachel when he thought no one was looking, and the only thing that kept him from being as brazen as Patti Sue was the fact that he had to pay attention to the road.

Brian had no idea how to handle the situation. If he said anything, then that would only cause a fight later on between Adam and Patti Sue; in fact at this point they'd probably already have one anyway, even if Brian kept his mouth shut.

But he was blessed if he could think of anything to do about it, and he found himself forced to endure the increasingly uncomfortable ride for almost another two hours. He was glad when Adam dropped them off at the courtyard of the hospital.

"Hey, thanks for coming to get me, buddy," he told Adam, and gave him three hundred dollars.

"No problem, Mad Dog," Adam said, still glaring at Patti Sue.

"Uh, why don't you and Patti Sue go ahead home, Adam. I'm not sure how long we'll be here, and I'll just get a ride the rest of the way with my aunt or something," he suggested. He didn't think he could stand another hour with those two.

"Sure thing, bud. See you at school tomorrow," Adam said curtly, and left. Patti Sue couldn't resist looking back at Brian through the rear glass one more time before they pulled out of the circle drive, though, and he groaned inwardly. Was she really that stupid?

"That'll cause trouble. Just wait and see. I bet they're fighting already," Rachel commented, and Brian laughed.

"You think?" he agreed.

He shook his head and put it out of his mind. No doubt he'd soon hear all about whatever mini-scandal resulted from it. . . who called whom what names, and when, and whether it resulted in a break-up or not, and so forth. The gossipy details of such things were the bread and butter of social life at school, the juicier the better. But Brian had more important things on his mind at the moment than whether or not Adam and Patti Sue had the nastiest fight in the history of junior high schools everywhere. They could deal with their own problems.

"Come on, Raych, let's go," he told her, turning away from the drive and heading for the front door.

They entered the building, and it didn't take long to navigate the busy halls and elevators to reach Brandon's room, but here they hit a snag. There was no one there.

"Where is he?" Rachel asked, looking at the empty bed.

"I don't know. We better ask," Brian said, not liking this at all.

They walked back to the nurses' station, and Brian put both elbows on the counter.

"Can I help you?" one of the nurses asked.

"Yes, ma'am, I hope so. I went to my brother's room but he's not there anymore. Can you tell me if maybe they moved him somewhere?" he asked.

"What's the patient's name?" she asked, reaching for a binder full of papers.

"Brandon Stone," he told her. As soon as she heard that, the nurse looked hard at him, and then seemed to be at a loss for words for a few seconds.

"You're his brother?" she asked.

"Yes, ma'am. Can you please tell me where he is?" he asked, beginning to be a little scared.

"I know I shouldn't be the one to tell you this, but your brother passed away a little over an hour ago. I'm so sorry," she said, laying a hand on his arm.

It was Brian's turn to be speechless now, and he could hardly breathe past the hard lump in his throat.

"Would it be possible for us to see him, anyway, just for a minute? They were very close," Rachel asked, and the nurse hesitated again.

"I think they already took him down to the basement. I'm not sure what they'll say, but you could go down there and ask them," she finally said.

"Okay, thanks," Rachel told her.

Brian heard all this without really taking it in, so lost in his own grief that nothing else seemed to matter. But when he felt her grab his elbow and start pulling him down the hall, it roused him from his stupor just a bit.

"Where are we going?" he asked, dully.

"Down to the basement, to ask them if they'll let us see him for a minute, of course," she explained. Brian dug in his heels and made her stop.

"No, I don't want to go see him like that, Raych. I want to remember him like he was, not like. . . that," he said, unable to force his lips to form the word _dead._ It seemed too final, too real and ugly a word to utter.

"I understand how you feel, but come anyway, okay? Please? I need you for this; I can't do it alone," she told him.

"Need me for what?" he asked, confused.

"You're his brother, and you didn't know. They might possibly let you in to see him, but not me. I've got to have you with me," she said urgently, pulling him along again.

"But _why?_ Why do you need to see him so bad?" he demanded, still refusing to move. She looked him in the eyes and sighed.

"Remember Lazarus, Brian," she told him, somewhat cryptically. It took him a minute to grasp what on earth she was talking about, and when he did, his jaw dropped.

"Do you really think. . . " he started, and then trailed off.

"I don't know. We can only try. Now come _on,"_ she told him earnestly, yanking on his arm again. This time he followed her, all the way down to the morgue.

There seemed to be no one nearby when they got there, and they found the heavy steel door slightly ajar. Rachel knocked, and they heard a muffled voice from inside.

"Come in," it said. She pushed the door open and went in, followed quickly by Brian. There was a man in green scrubs sitting at a desk filling out paperwork, and he looked up when he saw them come in.

"Oh, I'm sorry. Only hospital staff is allowed down here. You'll have to leave," he said, getting up from the desk. No doubt to usher them out.

"Please, sir. They brought a child down a little bit ago, his brother, and he didn't make it to the hospital in time to say his goodbyes. Could we see him, for just a minute? Please?" she asked, putting a hand on the man's arm and looking pleadingly into his eyes.

He must not have been an unkind man, for his face softened, and he hesitated.

"I could get in trouble, if anybody knew I let you down here," he explained, apologetically.

"I promise we'll never tell anybody. Please, sir," Brian said, and the man hesitated again.

"All right, but just for a few minutes," he agreed, reaching past them to shut and lock the door so no one would walk in and find them there.

"Thank you so much. You have no idea how much it means to us," Rachel told him, and Brian nodded.

"You're welcome, and I'm sorry," he told Brian, patting him on the shoulder. Then he went to one of the drawers, and they followed him.

"There he is, right in here. If you'll promise me you won't touch anything, and you won't answer the door if anybody knocks unless it's me, then I'll take my break and give you just a few minutes with him. If you decide to leave before I get back, just shut the drawer and close the door on your way out," he told them awkwardly.

"We promise," Brian told him, and then the man quietly excused himself.

As soon as he was gone, Brian braced himself and reached up to turn the handle and pull the drawer out, unsure if he could handle the sight. He hadn't been lying, when he told Rachel he'd much rather remember Brandon the way he used to be.

But he found the courage somewhere, and pulled open the drawer.

There indeed he was, pale as milk and cold as the water that flowed from the heart of the world. Tears filled Brian's eyes then, and though he tried to be strong, he couldn't help himself. He put his arms around Brandon, and pulled him close, and wept.

Rachel let him alone for a few minutes, although there were tears in her eyes too, but at last she interrupted him.

"Brian. . . we don't have much time," she urged him quietly. Brian saw the sense of this, of course, and pushed his pain deep inside. He laid Brandon partially back down, enough for Rachel to get close to him as well.

"I'm not sure how to do this," she confessed, swallowing hard.

"Just do the best you can," he whispered.

She put both her hands on Brandon's face, and then he heard her praying, though he couldn't make out the words. Then she put her head down, and kissed him on the lips, and blew her warm breath into his cold body. Then Brian did the same.

"The life-giving Life, and the Beauty that makes beautiful," he whispered to himself, repeating the words from the Fountain.

For an agonizing few seconds, nothing happened. Then Brandon coughed, and took a deep breath. Then his eyes fluttered, and he started to cry, and to shake from the cold.

Brian snatched him up and quickly wrapped him in his own shirt and held him tightly against his chest. Then he looked at Rachel, his heart too full for words. She came close, to add her body heat to his, for Brandon's sake, and then he tried to tell her what he was feeling.

"There are no words I can ever say to thank you for this," he whispered.

"Thank God, not me, Brian. I didn't do anything but pray," she told him.

"I know He's the one who did the miracle, but it was you that thought to ask for it and believed it could happen. I never would have come down here, without you," he told her.

"And I wouldn't be alive today without you, and I never would have drunk from the Fountain, and I never could have got in here by myself. You had a big part in all this, too, Brian," she reminded him.

She was about to say something else when the door opened and the man in the green scrubs came back in, holding a can of Coke and a half-eaten Butterfinger.

"What-" he started, and then froze when he saw Brandon turn his head to look at him. The coke can clattered to the floor, spilling soda pop everywhere.

"Oh, my God," the man said, wide eyed, and he grabbed the edge of a table to keep from fainting.

Rachel disentangled herself and hurried over to help him, and Brian pulled up a chair so he could sit down.

"I think we should call the doctor back down here, don't you think?" he told the man.

This they did, as soon as the morgue keeper had sufficiently recovered himself. The news of Brandon's incredible "recovery" spread like wildfire through the hospital, so that he and Brian and Rachel soon found themselves minor celebrities.

It was a role Brian didn't relish at all, and he found himself forced to describe the entire event over and over again, from arriving at the hospital too late, to the part about he and Rachel breathing into Brandon's mouth. Most of the doctors seemed to think he'd lapsed into a near-death coma, from which the two of them had woken him just in the nick of time. There were, they told everyone sagely, several examples of such things in the medical literature.

Brian smiled and nodded, letting them think whatever they wanted to think, if it made them feel better. He knew it was a miracle, whatever they might believe, and told them so. Most of them smiled and nodded right back at him when he said this, but that was all right too.

They put Brandon back in another patient room, and Brian knew well enough that Mama and Aunt Carolyn would show up soon enough. He wasn't looking forward to that. But it would be at least an hour before they could possibly get there, and in the meantime the three of them found themselves alone. Brandon was still weak and felt awful, so it wasn't surprising that he fell asleep almost as soon as he had the chance.

Brian watched him sleeping for a little while, too happy to care much about anything else.

"Do you think he'll be all right, now?" Rachel asked after they were alone, speaking quietly to keep from waking him.

"Yeah, I think so. I'll stay here with him just in case, but his breath sounds fine, now. I think the pneumonia is all gone, too," he told her.

"Yeah, it sounds like it," she agreed, and then they were both silent for a few minutes.

"So what do we do now, Brian?" Rachel asked.

"About what?" he asked, not sure what she meant.

"I mean about things like this. We can't just go around raising people from the dead all the time, can we? I have a feeling life won't ever be the same again, since we've got this power now," she explained.

"Well. . . there's no hurry about anything, is there? I'll probably just go home, and go to school tomorrow, and see what happens from there. What about you?" he asked.

"Same thing, I guess. I don't want to do anything stupid. I'm not even sure what I'll tell my family yet," she confessed.

"Tell them the truth," he shrugged.

"You're crazy, boy. They'll never believe it," she told him.

"If they don't, then I think your next doctor visit might convince them," he pointed out.

"Yeah, there's always that. As far as I know, I'm the only person in the world who ever recovered from Batten's Disease," she said soberly.

"There you go," he agreed.

"I guess we'll find out soon enough. I'll probably be grounded for a while, but after things settle down, I think maybe I'll go see Miss Sadie and ask her how _she_ managed it all," she said, thoughtfully.

"Yeah, I might go with you. I'm sure she could probably give us both some good advice," he agreed. There was a pause, and it was by no means an uncomfortable one.

"Didn't she tell you that the Fountain was just a way of making things beautiful and perfect, like God always meant for them to be?" she asked after a while.

"Yeah, something like that," he agreed.

"Okay, so maybe the reason we're supposed to do all these things is to touch people's hearts and pull them closer to Him when they see what might have been. I think that's what the Fountain is really for, to help people remember that," she told him.

"Do you really think so?" he asked. He hadn't thought of it quite that way before, but it made sense once she explained it for him.

"Yeah, that's what I think. But I'm just guessing right now, of course. I didn't know for sure that we could do anything for Brandon tonight; I just remembered Lazarus, you know. But we did, and maybe we could do that again. There might even be other things we could do, too. Maybe. . . we might even bring peace to a storm that would kill people, like Jesus did on the Sea of Galilee," she said.

"Maybe we should move to Oklahoma and become storm chasers," he agreed, poking fun because the thought of so much responsibility made him nervous.

"I'm being serious, Brian," she scolded him.

"I know you are. I'm sorry. It's just kind of a scary thing, you know," he said, apologetically.

"Yeah, I know. It is for me too," she agreed.

"It's good to know I'm not alone," he told her.

"No, never that," she promised, and kissed his cheek. He smiled, and reddened a bit.

"What will you do with the amulet, now?" she finally asked when he said nothing.

"I'm not sure. It's really no use to me anymore, but then again I don't want the wrong person to end up with it. A bad guy could do a lot of harm in just a week. I think I'll hold on to it for a while, just to keep it safe. Maybe someday I'll give it to Brandon, see what he does with it," he said, glancing at his sleeping brother.

"Well, if he turns out to be anything like his big brother, then I think he'll do just fine," she told him, and Brian laughed.

"We'll see," he said softly.

At that point the conversation was cut short by the door swinging open, and Mama and Aunt Carolyn came spilling into the room with two nurses behind them.

No one paid Brian or Rachel any attention, so completely focused on Brandon as they all were.

"I think it's time for me to go; I'll call you later, okay?" Rachel whispered in his ear, and he nodded. No one seemed to notice her leaving, and Brian figured that was just as well.

But eventually things settled down, and then Mama turned her attention to Brian.

"You did this," she said, with a severe look on her face which he found difficult to figure out. He wasn't sure exactly what she was talking about, and he was afraid to ask. But she must have seen his confusion.

"You brought him back," she clarified, in a gentler voice. Then she did the last thing he would ever have expected, and threw her arms around him and held him tight.

"I thought I'd lost both of you," she whispered, and he was too stunned to say a word. She didn't seem to expect any answer right away, though, just wanted to hold him and make sure he was really there.

"You look different, Brian," she finally said, stepping back a little bit to examine him curiously.

"Yeah, I've heard that a few times today," he agreed, with a sheepish smile.

"Where have you been, these last three days?" she asked.

"Would you believe me if I told you?" he asked. For a second she showed a flash of her old annoyance, but then she checked herself.

"I think I would, Brian. I'll try," she told him. So he told her, and she listened, and then she looked wistful.

"I believe you," she told him when he was finished.

"You do?" he asked, skeptically.

"I'm inclined to believe almost anything tonight," she said, and he shrugged, not wanting to meet her eyes. She was being too nice, and he didn't trust it.

"Brian, there's something I want to say. I know I haven't been a very good mother the past few years. I know that's why you won't look at me right now. But all I can do is tell you that I'm sorry," she told him. He was almost as shocked by this apology as he'd been by the hug.

"I guess so," he shrugged, still looking down at the floor.

"It's all right if you don't believe me yet. I guess I can't blame you for that. But I promise you, I want to try to do better from now on," she told him.

"Really?" he asked, glancing up at her. She seemed to be sincere, incredible as that was to him.

"Yeah. I know I've said that before, but I really mean it this time. I don't know if I can do it, but I'll try," she promised. He took a minute to digest this.

"What changed things?" he finally ventured to ask.

"Well, sometimes when it seems like you might lose everything, it makes you remember just how valuable those things are," she said.

"I see," he said.

"I'm not the only one who thinks so, either," she said, mysteriously.

"What do you mean?" he asked, unable to guess what she was talking about.

"Somebody told your dad about Brandon, and he came by to see him yesterday," she told him. Brian's jaw dropped at that news. He'd thought he couldn't possibly be any more shocked than he already was, but that did it.

"Really?" he asked again, unable to think of any other reply.

"Yeah, he really did. I almost fell out in the floor at first. But we talked for a long time, and he said he was sorry for some things, and so did I. We both promised that if Brandon lived, we'd try to start talking more and maybe even doing some things together as a family, you know. I don't know how it'll all work out, but I thought you'd want to know," she finished.

"I don't know what to say," Brian said.

"No, I didn't think you would, right away. You and him have a lot of things to work out together, just like me and him do," she agreed.

"Do you mean. . . " he started, but she guessed what he was about to say and put a finger on his lips to stop him.

"No, I don't mean we're getting back together, if that's what you were about to ask. We're just talking and trying to do better for you and Brandon, that's all. Don't think it's more than what it is," she warned him.

Brian nodded. That was more than he'd ever dreamed possible just two weeks ago, and perhaps, in time. . . he smiled, faintly.

"I know what you're thinking, Brian, and put it right out of your mind," she told him, a bit crossly.

"Okay, Mama," he told her lightly. Maybe sometimes wishes really _did_ come true.

It crossed his mind that none of this would have happened if Brandon had never gotten sick. At the time, he'd thought that was the most awful thing that could ever happen, and yet it had turned out to be the key to everything. Who could have guessed it?

True, not everything had worked out quite the way he hoped it would; not yet, anyway, but he was content now to wait and see how things unfolded for a while.

He had all the time in the world.

## Chapter Twelve

Time passed, and summer faded slowly into fall. The miracle of Brandon and Rachel's healing faded gradually into the realm of old news, as people found fresher things to talk about during the long evenings. Brian was glad to see it; he'd never liked being a celebrity in the first place.

By the time October rolled around, things had settled back into a calm and familiar pattern, for the most part. Mama quit drinking, and she was nicer in a lot of ways. True, she still had a tongue that was sharper than cats' claws now and then, but at least she didn't use her fists anymore.

The first few times his father came to visit were so awkward that Brian almost wished he could slink under a rock and hide, but after a while even that got a bit easier. There were still certain subjects that nobody was willing to mention, let alone talk about, but Brian was almost sure he could sense a slow thawing and loosening, and maybe eventually things would be better. Brandon seemed to take the whole thing in stride and never blinked an eye, but then he didn't remember very much.

Brian and Rachel both had problems with their newfound beauty. Adam and Patti Sue were only the first in a long line of jealousies and fights, and the two of them finally got to the point that they told everybody they were going out with each other, just to stop the headache. Neither of them really thought of the other like that, but at least the pretense gave them some peace.

Brian remembered what Miss Sadie had said about having to pay a price for all their powers and wondered sometimes if the constant flirting and jostling might be part of it. He strongly suspected so.

All the while, he was also gradually discovering just how amazing those powers really were. They were nothing at all like using the amulet; he found out quickly enough that there would be no more turning pebbles into gold, no more moving things around, no more growing full-size trees in thirty seconds flat. All that had disappeared forever.

But he didn't mind the loss of those things; not too much. For he found that when he laid his hands on any living thing, he could do wonders. Scars disappeared, and sickness was cured, and even colors and textures became more subtly and variously harmonious than before. The roses grew redder, and the fireflies brighter, and even the grass under his feet turned greener and softer, flawless and perfect down to the tiniest blade.

More than anything else, it reminded him of what happened to him and Rachel when they drank from the Fountain. He brought beauty to everything he touched. It was almost like he had the power to pull a grimy, obscuring film off the world which no one had ever noticed was there because they'd never seen things any other way. Without it, everything looked fresh and bright and new.

He noticed other things, too. Animals that came near him turned tame, even wild ones. If he called them, even squirrels and birds and stray dogs would come sniffing at his fingers and eat from his hands without a trace of fear. He wasn't quite sure how that would work if he tried to tame a rattlesnake or a mountain lion, and he wasn't quite brave enough to try it yet, but so far he'd found no reason to think it wouldn't work.

But that was another marvel that came with a cost. Brian had always loved to hunt ever since the first time Papaw took him out in the woods with a gun when he was five years old, but this year he found himself uneasy with the idea for the first time. It seemed too much like betraying a sacred trust, when any deer in the woods would walk right up to him and nuzzle his face. So he sighed and shook his head and laid his rifle aside, and wondered how many other unexpected things he'd have to give up.

Besides all that, he found that he could blunt the edge of a storm so that no harm was done, he could take dirty water and foul air and make them clean again, and he suspected he might even be able to do other things he hadn't thought of trying yet.

He discovered all these powers gradually, in the course of going about his everyday life. He'd had enough of glitz and grandeur for a lifetime, and usually he wasn't consciously trying to do anything at all. It just happened, although the changes were always gradual and they always took a few days before they showed up. After a while, he took to wearing gloves so he wouldn't touch things accidentally.

Now and then he discussed all these things with Rachel and compared notes. They were officially supposed to be going out, after all, so no one thought it was strange that they spent so much time together.

"It's weird, Raych. It's nothing like having the amulet at all," he told her one day not long before Halloween. It was the first chance they'd had for a really good talk ever since they'd got home from Snowball.

They were sitting on the edge of Black Rock together after school, and Brandon was playing in the sand down below, too far away for him to hear what they were saying.

It was a beautiful Indian summer afternoon, with a light breeze playing in the sweet gum leaves. It was still Brian's favorite place, in spite of everything. All of his white oaks were gone except one or two that he'd never touched with the amulet, but the gnarled old rock-tree was still there like always, and he'd found that fresh green grass had started to come back where everything had seemed completely dead not very long ago.

"Well, I wouldn't know since I never had the amulet anyway," she pointed out, and he laughed.

"No, I guess you wouldn't. But it's different, trust me. You know Gina Powell?" he asked her.

"The girl with the really bad zits?" she asked.

"Yeah, that's the one," he nodded.

"Um. . . kind of. Not very well, though," she said.

"Well, I have science class with her after lunch, and a few days ago I had to take my gloves off during class, and I accidentally touched her hand with mine. So now her face is all clear as can be. I don't think anybody noticed it yet except me, but I bet they will," he told her.

"I bet _she_ noticed, even if nobody else did," Rachel pointed out.

"Yeah, that's what worries me," he fretted.

"You mean she might figure out it was you that caused it, right? Honestly I don't see how she ever would. It's not like it happened instantly," she said.

"I know. It just worries me a little. Mama told me to keep all this stuff a secret as much as I can. She said if the wrong people found out, they'd just try to use me for their own purposes and then I'd never have a chance to do anything good in the world like I want to," he said.

"Your _mom_ said that?" she asked.

"Yeah, believe it or not, she did. She's a lot different now than she used to be," he added thoughtfully.

"It doesn't sound like her at all," she said.

"No, and I wouldn't have believed it myself if I hadn't seen it with my own two eyes. She still has her bad moods sometimes, but it's nothing like it was when she used to drink all the time," he told her.

"She really quit this time?" she asked.

"Yeah, so far. She told me she doesn't even want it anymore, and she's never said _that_ before. Sometimes I think maybe when I touched her it took away the craving, you know, like it took away Gina's zits. I'm not sure," he admitted.

"Maybe," she agreed, nodding.

"I think my dad being around has helped some, too," he added. He hadn't told this to anyone else, but Rachel was his best friend.

"Do you think so?" she asked.

"Yeah, he's been coming over on Sunday afternoons since Brandon got home, like he promised he would, and him and Mama talk on the phone a lot. I don't know what they say to each other, but it seems like it helps her," he said.

"Does he not talk to you?" she asked.

"Yeah, but that's been. . . weird, I guess. I always said I wished he'd come back, but after he really did then it was hard to figure out what to talk about anymore. Three years is a long time to be gone," he said.

"Did he give you a reason for why he was gone so long?" she asked.

"Well. . . yes and no. He said he had too many problems of his own, back then, and he just couldn't deal with Mama anymore, and then later on he just thought it was best to let sleeping dogs lie and all that," he said.

"What kind of problems?" she asked.

"That's the part I'm not sure about. He wouldn't say. But I guess people do things they're sorry for, sometimes, and I probably shouldn't hold it against him when he's at least trying to make things right," he explained.

"Yeah, true," she agreed, and there was a pause.

"What about your family?" he finally asked.

"I think they're too happy to ask many questions, honestly. It's almost like they think if they push too hard, it'll turn out not to be real after all," she said.

"They didn't say anything at all?" he asked, finding it hard to believe.

"Well, yeah, sure they did, at first. But that was before they realized I was cured. I think they're still in shock over that," she said, smiling.

"What about the car?" he asked.

"It's still up there in Snowball somewhere, far as I know. Your guess is as good as mine," she said.

"Nobody went to get it?" he asked, surprised.

"Nobody knows where to look. There are a lot of old dirt roads up there, and it's a long way off. It's like looking for a needle in a haystack, if you don't know which way to go. Sissy says it was just an old beater anyway and she doesn't care anything about it, as long as I'm all right," she explained. Then she looked down at the beach where Brandon was playing.

"How's the little guy doing?" she asked, nodding her head at him.

"He's fine, I think. No worse for the wear, it seems like," he told her, looking down at his brother with a faint smile on his lips.

"I'm glad to hear it," she murmured.

They both watched Brandon for a while, who seemed oblivious to the whole conversation.

"It's pretty up here," Rachel commented after a few minutes, looking around.

"Do you think so? I've been working on it some more since we got back. It was awful at first, pretty much nothing but dirt and rock. I had to plant some grass seed just to cover it up. It'll take a while to be as nice as it was before, but I think maybe in a year or two it will be," he told her.

They sat in companionable silence for a while after that, feeling the warmth of the sun and watching Brandon slowly build his sand castle. Brian was happy, and it didn't matter to him if they talked or not. He was content just to sit there in his favorite spot, with the people he loved the best, and let things be.

"You're still wearing that amulet, I see," she pointed out after a while, nodding her head at his chest.

"Yeah, for now, until I can think of what to do with it," he shrugged.

"I thought you wanted to save it for Brandon," she asked.

"I do, but that'll be a long time off, you know. I need to keep it safe in the meantime," he told her.

"You couldn't just put it back up in the attic?" she asked.

"Yeah, but I'm not sure that's such a great idea," he said, reluctantly.

"Why not?" she asked.

"Because. . . well, I'm not sure what Mama might do if she found it, honestly," he admitted.

"I thought you said she was doing better," she reminded him.

"Yeah, she is, but she's still got a temper like a Tasmanian devil, and she already knows what this amulet can do. She's not. . . she's not the kind of person you'd want to trust with that much power. Not even for a week," he said, looking down. It was hard for him to admit this, even to Rachel, even after everything his mother had done.

"Yeah, I see your point. But that's something else that I never understood. How did she know about it in the first place?" she asked.

"Oh, that. Yeah, I wondered about that, too. But she told me about that. Her brother found this thing, a long time ago when they were kids, and I guess he didn't use it very well. Some really bad things happened. I don't know exactly what all, but bad enough that he didn't live through it, and neither did my grandmother. Mama won't really talk about it very much," he said.

"That's awful! I'm so sorry," she told him.

"Yeah, I never even knew Mama had a brother. His name was Jack. That's his name over there, carved on the rock tree. I always used to wonder who that was. But anyway, Mama said Papaw took the amulet after Jack died and she always thought he got rid of it. But I guess he didn't. He just stuck it up there in one of his trunks and never said anything about it to anybody," he said.

"I wonder why he didn't get rid of it?" she said.

"Who knows?" he shrugged, "Maybe he was afraid somebody might find it and he thought it was better to keep it up there and watch over it."

"Maybe," she agreed.

"I don't know for sure, but I think it's a good guess. Papaw was like that, you know. He was always really protective. He would've done whatever he thought he needed to do to keep some other kid safe from finding it. Especially after what happened to Jack," he explained.

"Do you remember your Papaw much?" she asked.

"Yeah, pretty well. He died about five years ago but I was always real close to him before that," he said.

"So what _will_ you do with the amulet, then?" she asked, after a pause, and he considered the question.

"I don't know, Raych. I can't carry it around with me all the time, but like I said I don't think it's safe to leave it at home. Or anywhere else I can think of, for that matter. Any ideas?" he asked.

"Well, I'd keep it at my house, but I'm not sure it'd be safe there, either. My parents are bad about poking through everything. I'm not sure it'll ever be totally safe, though. There's always a chance the wrong person will find it, no matter what you do with it," she told him.

"Maybe I'll just put it in a box and bury it," he muttered.

"Buried treasure?" she teased, and her smile drew a reluctant response from him.

"Yeah, I guess so," he agreed.

That was the end of their conversation, and after spending a few more days in thought, Brian finally decided that burying the amulet was probably the safest thing he could do with it.

It took him a while to think of a good spot, but after considering the matter he decided to put it under the meadow near Black Rock. Nobody ever went there except Brian and Brandon; not even Mama. He'd always been curious why that should be, and then a week ago she'd let slip the fact that it was where Jack had died.

It was too long ago and too abstract of a thing to affect how Brian felt about the place, especially since he'd never known Jack. But he could understand why it might make his mother not ever want to go back up there.

He couldn't help wondering what it was that Jack had tried to do with the amulet that had turned out so terribly, but that was one thing he could never get Mama to talk about. Whatever secrets she had, she meant to keep them a mystery.

Still, there was some good in the whole thing. If he wanted to make certain that the amulet wasn't found by accident, then Black Rock was probably the closest thing to a perfect spot that he was likely to think of.

He waited for a time when no one else was home, and then fetched the very same cigar box from the attic where he'd found the amulet in the first place. Then he wrapped it in rice paper and sealed the box with duct tape, and finally he put the whole thing inside a Ziploc bag with all the air squeezed out of it.

As soon as that was done, he grabbed his package and a shovel from the garage and headed out.

The leaves were in all their autumn glory that day, more brilliant and colorful that year than Brian could ever remember. At least, all the ones he'd touched since he got back from the Fountain were like that. He noticed a few that he'd missed, and they seemed lackluster and dull in comparison. In spite of his hurry, he took a few minutes to fix that as he walked by, if the trees were close enough. Nothing changed immediately; not like before, but he knew that within two or three days the new ones would be just as dazzling and beautiful as the others. The thought made him happy.

He reached the Rock before long and looked at the meadow with a critical eye. He needed a place where there was some kind of landmark to let him find the amulet again whenever he decided to dig it up, but he also needed something that wasn't too obvious.

There didn't seem to be any good options at first glance, but then his eye fell on a white oak tree at the edge of the woods. . . one of the very few that were still left from the old days. He'd touched it since he got home, of course, and it was as perfect and beautiful as any of the other trees now. There was nothing to mark it as unusual, except that it was the only oak nearby. He decided it would do.

He quickly got to work with the shovel, digging a foot-deep hole between two big roots and then placing the plastic bag containing the amulet at the bottom. He took one last look at it before filling the hole back in, and then he carefully tamped down the loose dirt and scattered dead leaves over the top so no one would notice that he'd been digging. He scattered and scuffed the leftover clods into the ground as best he could, and that was that. One good rain would wash away all traces of his work.

Satisfied, he headed back home with the shovel to put it back in the garage before anybody noticed it missing. He stopped to wash it clean with the water hose so it wouldn't be obvious that anyone had used it, and then he was careful to put it back in exactly the same spot he'd taken it from.

He knew he was probably being a little bit extreme, but he figured it was better to be safe than sorry.

When all that was done, he went inside and happily went to work on his newest project of repainting the stairs. No one had ever come around to ask about the disappearing gold, so Brian had finally decided it was all right if he used the money. There was no way for him to give it back even if he tried. So he'd bought some things and started fixing the house the old-fashioned way, with his own two hands. It was hard work and it took a lot longer than using the amulet, but it was satisfying.

He'd already replaced all the worn-out wallpaper and put in some new carpet here and there. It would take a while, and he might not end up with marble floors when he was done, but that was all right. He was still enjoying himself in the meantime.

He hummed under his breath while he worked, a tuneless melody that he'd heard the day before on one of Brandon's cartoons and couldn't seem to get out of his head.

He was still painting when Mama and Brandon came home two hours later, and he looked up and smiled.

"That's really nice work, Brian," she told him, admiring the stairs.

"Thanks, Mama. What's for supper?" he asked. It was, of course, the most important question of the day.

"Ham hocks, mashed potatoes, and I think peas," she said.

"Sounds good to me," he said, putting down his paint brush. He quickly took a shower to wash the paint off and changed into some fresh clothes, and then he took Brandon and went outside to sit on the porch and wait for supper. Mama didn't like anybody else in the kitchen while she was cooking.

He could see the Crystal Range off to the north, green and mysterious as ever in the last light of the setting sun, and he smiled to himself.

"What are you smiling at, Brian?" Brandon asked, looking at him curiously.

"Nothing, Beebo. Just thinking how lucky I am, that's all," he said, and kissed him on the cheek. Brandon quickly rubbed it off like it was toxic waste.

"You left spit on me," he said, half disgusted and half laughing.

"Yeah, well; get used to it, kid," he told him, then he did it again and tickled his ribs for good measure. He loved to hear him laugh, partly because he still hadn't forgotten what it was like to lose him. Brian knew he'd never be able to forget that terrible moment when they opened the drawer to see him lying there dead. It was the most awful thing he'd ever experienced. But then again, he'd _also_ never forget the moment when Brandon first opened his eyes. From blackest despair to joy sharp as needles in five seconds flat.

He often thought that Brandon hadn't been quite the same after that day. The change was so slight that sometimes he thought he must be imagining things, but other times, like now, he was almost sure of it again.

He could almost swear that Brandon's eyes were somehow _deeper_ than he remembered, and sometimes he had a faraway look in them that made Brian wonder what on earth he was thinking about. He had that look in his eyes now, gazing out at the far mountains.

"What are you thinking about, Beebo?" he finally asked, curious.

"The green place," Brandon said absently, still gazing out with his deep blue eyes.

"The green place?" Brian asked. It was the first he'd ever heard of it.

"Yeah. There's water, and it glows green, and there's a cup to drink from," he said, as if Brian ought to know this already.

Brian furrowed his brow. It sounded like the cave where the Fountain was, but there was no way Brandon could know anything about that unless maybe Mama had said something to him about it. It seemed doubtful, but Brian himself had certainly never mentioned it.

"Where's that?" he asked lightly, not to make too much of it. Brandon turned and looked at him curiously.

"Don't you remember?" he asked, and at first Brian didn't know what to say. Then he decided there was no point in pretending, and so he smiled and pulled Brandon close.

"Yeah, Beebo. . . I remember," he said.

"Someday I'll go drink that water, too," he declared calmly, and again Brian wasn't quite sure how to answer.

"You think so?" he asked.

"Yeah, he promised," Brandon said.

"Who promised?" Brian asked, confused.

"The one who woke me up in the hospital that night. He said he wanted me to drink that water someday, but he needed me to do some other things first. That's what he said, and he promised," the boy said, with conviction.

Brian would have liked very much to ask him more, but he didn't get the chance. Just then, Mama came to the door and called them both inside to eat.

In the days that followed, Brian tried several times to bring up the subject again, but he never learned much more. Brandon's memories were vague and confused, and the only thing he seemed sure of was that he'd know what to do when the time came. Brian was mystified, but he had no choice but to be content. There was no more information to be had.

It didn't keep him from wondering, but he kept his thoughts to himself and finally decided it was nothing he had any business meddling with. It would either happen or it wouldn't, and in the meantime there was nothing to be done about it anyway.

He took to roaming the town as quietly as he could and touching things here and there. Trees in the park, azalea bushes around the courthouse, songbirds and squirrels that came to him, things like that. He was pretty sure Rachel was doing the same thing over in Falls Chapel, although she rarely mentioned it. As always, the effect was subtle and it always took a few days to take hold, but little by little he knew they were changing the valley. How much they might change it was still in doubt, but he knew it was happening.

He was much more cautious about handling people, for fear of getting found out. But still, whether it was curing Gina Powell's zits or getting rid of Mama's thirst for vodka, they were surely having an effect in that realm, too, and he knew the longer they stayed in one place the more emphatic that effect would be.

Brian never spoke of these things to anyone except Rachel and Brandon, and not often even to them. But he was happier than he could ever remember being in his entire life, even when he'd had the amulet and thought that things couldn't possibly get any better. He was living out all the dearest wishes of his heart, just like Miss Sadie had told him he could do, and there were times now when he could look back and be thankful even for the hard days when he'd thought there was no hope and no chance. It was part of what had made him who he was, and he didn't think his new life could ever have tasted so sweet, if there had never been any bitterness to compare it to.

He visited Miss Sadie at the nursing home now and then with Rachel, and once he tried to explain to her how happy he was, but she only smiled and shushed him.

"That's exactly how it ought to be, child. The world has taught you to think it's not safe to be too glad, and that tears are more real than laughter. But that's not so. Joy is what the whole world was made for, even if people don't remember that very often nowadays. But you of all people should never forget it," she told him.

And Brian never forgot.

## Epilogue

Brian always remembered Miss Sadie's words, and did his best to use his powers wisely. In time the whole valley became beautiful as Black Rock had been, for the ravages of time held no power there. Few people seemed to notice, except perhaps a stranger now and then, passing through on business of his own.

There were still, to be sure, the ordinary ups and downs of life to be faced and dealt with, for no one on earth can escape from pain completely. Yet if the stars shone a little brighter, and the grass was a little greener, and the music of the birds was more sweet than in most places, that was only to be expected.

And if, perhaps, there were fewer pains and less sickness among the people than before, then no one seemed to notice anything unusual about that, either.

Yet there was a price to pay for all this, as Sadie Jones had warned him so many years ago. For there came a time when Brian and Rachel had to leave the valley behind, lest anyone begin to notice that they never aged.

Therefore they married and traveled the world, and now and again they would stay in some place that seemed good to them for a few years, and they did their best to fill it with joy for a time. But they could never stay for long, and after they departed the blessing gradually faded from whatever place they had brought it to. For nothing lasts forever in a dark and fallen world, and the best they could do was to plant memories of Heaven, to turn men's souls in that direction. . . not to make a heaven on earth.

But neither of them were sorry for this, and they labored long and gladly to do as much good as might be, even if they knew that it was only for a little while.

Brandon grew up, and many years later made his own journey to drink of the Fountain, for his own reasons and with his own burdens to carry. But that's another story, which may be told another time.

And so it may really and truly be said that they all lived happily ever after, and no words in a book could add more to their blessing.

And that was the best magic of all.

The End

The story of Brandon, his half-sister Lisa, and the rest of the Stone family continues ten years later in:

### Many Waters

Book Two of the Stones of Song Series

Many waters cannot quench love,

Neither can the floods drown it.

-Song of Solomon 8:7

## Prologue - Cody

Love has a way of sneaking up on you sometimes, especially when you least expect it.

So does evil.

I certainly never expected to find both of those things in the space of a single summer, but sometimes life is really strange that way.

I was mucking out the horses' stalls when it all started. Every now and then I had to stop and wipe the sweat off my face with my shirt-tail, and I think I would have traded my firstborn child for a cold Dr. Pepper right then. If you've never shoveled horse manure for two or three hours under a blistering Texas sun, then you've missed out on one of life's truly memorable experiences, buddy.

I wasn't expecting visitors that morning, so when I saw a black truck come bouncing across the cattle guard I was understandably curious. Strangers can be good or bad, but they always have to be watched carefully till you know which kind they are. I put down my shovel and started walking toward the front drive to meet whoever-it-was, secretly glad for the chance to take a break for a few minutes.

When I got close enough I noticed that the truck had Louisiana tags, and even though that's not _such_ an oddity, it was unusual enough to elevate my curiosity another notch.

I was just in time to see a young man getting out of the driver's seat. He looked to be about two or three years younger than me, maybe eighteen or so, but I'd never seen him before in my life. He was wearing ratty jeans and a chocolate colored t-shirt that matched his hair and eyes, and he had the athletic build of a dude who runs or swims a lot.

"Can I help you?" I asked, when he was near enough to use a normal voice.

"Yes, sir, I think you can. My name's Matthieu Doucet, and I'm looking for the owner of the Goliad Ranch," he said. He had an ever-so-slight Cajun accent that marked him as coming from somewhere a lot farther south than Shreveport, and I wondered again what he could possibly want.

"Well, that'd be me. Cody McGrath," I said, offering my hand. Matthieu nodded and shook it, with a surprisingly strong grip.

"Pleased to meet you, Mr. McGrath. I'm afraid my business might take a little bit of explaining. May I come in for a few minutes?" he asked politely. I couldn't think of any reason not to hear him out, so I took him inside to the kitchen table and sat down. It's the place I always gravitate whenever there's a serious conversation afoot.

"I know you're probably busy, Mr. McGrath, so I'll get right to the point. We think your family might be in danger," he said.

That put me instantly on guard, of course, just like it would anybody, but I didn't let it show on my face.

"What do you mean?" I asked carefully, and Matthieu looked at me for a second, like he was sizing me up. I hate it when people do that; it almost always means they're trying to figure out how to get me to do whatever it is they want. I braced myself to be even more wary than usual, but what he said next totally blew me away.

"Mr. McGrath, do you believe in magic?" he finally asked.

Well, now _that_ was a question I wasn't expecting. I _did_ believe in it, of course; the Scriptures are chock full of stories about real-life witches and sorcerers. But they're also full of warnings about how we're not supposed to have anything to do with those kinds of things, so Matthieu's question alarmed me to say the least. I don't mess with stuff like that, and I don't allow it in my house, either.

"I think it's real, if that's what you mean," I said carefully.

"Well, then, maybe you can also believe it when I tell you that my job is to track down evil things like that, and put a stop to them whenever I can. That's why I'm here. Your name happened to come up recently during a fight with some especially cruel and powerful sorcerers, and that could mean you're a target. I don't know that for _sure,_ but I'd be careful with strangers for a while, if I were you. Evil may not always look like you think it will, so please keep your eyes open," he said, cool as a cucumber. He seemed absolutely earnest and serious, like it was the most ordinary thing in the world.

"I see," I said, unsure what else to say.

"I'm also here to offer you some help if you _are_ attacked at some point, but that's entirely up to you. I hope you never need to call on me, but if you do, please feel free," he said, offering me a business card which I took without thinking. It was cream colored, with shiny dark blue upraised italics that said _Matthieu Doucet, Avenger,_ with a phone number listed at the bottom. I didn't know quite what to say to that, either.

Matthieu saved me the trouble of having to think of an adequate answer, because he got up from the table with an air of finality.

"Anyway, that's what I came to tell you. I hope you'll take it to heart, Mr. McGrath. Good luck, and God be with you," he said, offering his hand. I shook it, and that was that.

I stared at the dust trail from the disappearing truck, thinking to myself that I'd just experienced one of the strangest conversations of my entire life. I slipped the business card inside my billfold just in case, but honestly I hoped never to see or hear from Matthieu Doucet the Cajun Avenger ever again.

I went back outside to finish mucking out the stalls while I still had time, uneasy and full of foreboding. Mostly because Matthieu's warning wasn't nearly as much of a surprise as he probably thought it was.

You see, for as long as I can remember, I've had dreams.

I don't mean the kind that everybody has. I'm talking about _true_ dreams. Visions. Glimpses of things yet to come. Most of the time they're incomprehensible; strange, vivid, unbelievably realistic tales that leave me baffled as to what they mean. Only rarely do I get a clear look at the future. But you better believe I pay close attention either way, just in case. Mama has always told me they're a gift from God, like the prophets in olden days used to have. All I can say is, if that's really true, then sometimes gifts are hard to bear.

Oh, not always, of course. I remember one time when I was eight years old and Mama lost her wedding ring while she was cleaning. That night I dreamed I saw it up under the dryer, and sure enough, when we looked the next day, that's where it was. It was a little bit uncanny, maybe, but nothing exceptional. That's how things were for a long time. I rarely dreamed at all, and even when I did they were usually fairly ordinary things like that.

But lately my dreams had turned dark and grim, full of monsters and blood. I didn't know quite what to make of them, but it didn't take a genius to figure out that whatever they meant, it was nothing good.

That's why Matthieu's warning was no shock to me. He was a little more specific about it, maybe, but I'd already known for weeks that I had some kind of ominous danger hanging over my head.

And then purely aside from the spooky stuff, it hadn't rained a drop since March, and the drought was killing us. We were losing money hand over fist, in fact, and even though you can run a business at a loss for a little while and still have a chance to make it up later, you can't do that forever. If something didn't change soon, I didn't know what I might have to do. Thinking about all that was enough to keep me awake at night sometimes, even if I didn't dream at all.

So what with one thing and another, I guess you could say I was pretty stressed out and preoccupied right then, jumping at shadows and inclined to think there were monsters hiding behind every tree. When you don't feel safe even in your own bed at night and you're also teetering on the brink of financial disaster, you tend not to care too much about other things.

Including girls.

In fact, I can safely say that I needed romance right then just about as much as a rooster needs a pair of socks. Maybe even less.

Which I guess goes to show what a really strange sense of humor God must have sometimes.

Mama came outside about ten-thirty to bring me a glass of tea and to make sure I hadn't collapsed from manure inhalation, I guess. It wasn't quite a Dr. Pepper, to be sure, but I was way past caring about that.

I drank the whole thing at one pull, then used the cold glass to wipe my forehead.

"Thanks, Mama, that was really good," I said, handing the glass back to her.

"Well, I thought you might need something cool to drink, it's so hot out here. Are you just about done?" she asked.

"Yeah, I'm finished now. Fixing to go load up some cows to take to the sale barn, as soon as Marcus gets back with the trailer," I said.

"Oh, all right. I don't guess you'll be back in time for lunch, then, will you?" she asked.

"No. Marcus said something about going over to his sister's place, and I'll probably stop in Ore City and grab a burger at the Dairy Dip on the way home. Don't worry about cooking anything," I said.

"All right. I hope you do good with the cows," she said, and I nodded. I hoped so too; God knows we needed the money.

I crossed my fingers and prayed for a good day, and never had the faintest clue how that prayer would be answered.

## Chapter One - Lisa

I didn't recognize Cody at first.

The lunch crowd had finally trickled out from the Dairy Dip, and I was sitting at the register for a while to rest my aching feet and read a little bit of my brand new Scarlett Blaze romance novel. It was only my third day on the job, and it takes a while to get used to standing up so much.

It had been one of those days when it's hot enough to make the devil sigh, when nothing wants to move but the flies against the window panes and the dirt devils on the empty highway. It was hot even with the air conditioner on full blast, and I remember hoping there wouldn't be any more customers to have to deal with before I went home at three. I was ready for a shower.

All that changed when Cody walked in. All I noticed at first was a particularly handsome young cowboy, with the broad shoulders and lean muscles that come from a lifetime of ranch work. He was wearing boots and dusty Wranglers, with a white straw hat and a horsehair belt with a silver buckle that had a golden letter C in the center of it. He had close-cropped dark brown hair and bright blue eyes like a Siberian Husky, and that's when I knew him; no one has eyes like Cody. . . bluer than gas flames or corn flowers, blue as the lupines that blossom in spring. I hadn't seen him since I was twelve, but I'll never forget those eyes.

" _Cody?"_ I asked, getting up so fast I almost dropped my book. He glanced at me carelessly for a second, and then his face lit up with recognition.

" _Lisa!"_ he cried, and immediately swept me up in a ferocious bear-hug. He smelled like sweat and horse manure, but I was too glad to see him to care about that. I hugged him back, and then stood back and looked him up and down again.

"So where have you been, boy? You've changed a lot," I said. And he had, too; he was nothing like the thin, rangy kid I remembered.

"Oh, same old place, you know. But what about you, Miss Stone? I bet it's been eight, ten years since I saw you last time," he said.

"Well, we just got back in town about three months ago. Mama dragged us off to South Carolina for a while, and then Florida. But we're back now, as far as I know. Jenny's working down in Tyler and I'm going to nursing school and working here part time," I said.

"That's awesome. Well, listen, why don't you give me a call sometime? We can catch a movie or somethin', catch up on old times," he said.

So we traded numbers, and after he left with his cheeseburger and coke, I thought to myself that the world can be a really small place sometimes.

There was a time when I used to think I was in love with Cody, back in seventh grade when we both thought the whole meaning of the word was to hold hands in the hallway and keep pictures of each other on our phones. But still, he was the first boy who ever kissed me, at the fall dance that year, and when we had to move away at Christmas I thought I was heartbroken forever.

But time passes and you tend to forget about such things after a while. My childhood love was long ago and far behind, and life tends to be a lot more complicated at twenty-one than it ever was at twelve. But the memory of loving him was still sweet, and I was unattached at the time, and I confess the thought did cross my mind that there might still be some lingering embers between us. Maybe it was silly to think so, but then again I'd never know unless we spent some time together.

So I went with him to the movies in Longview on Friday night, mostly just for fun but also out of curiosity to see if anything might develop. I don't remember what we watched; a forgettable creature feature with enough of a love story to make it interesting for me and enough explosions to make it interesting for him. We brushed fingers in the popcorn tub now and then, and I could almost-but-not-quite swear he lingered a fraction of a second longer than strictly necessary whenever we touched. I don't think he was even aware of doing it, but I smiled to myself.

He took me out for frozen yogurt afterwards, something I hadn't done in years. I got a single scoop of mint chocolate chip (my favorite), and he had two scoops of strawberry vanilla swirl.

"So what did you think of the movie?" he asked.

"Eh, it was pretty good. The monster looked fake, though," I said.

"Yeah, I agree. No real monster would look anything like that," he agreed, and I laughed.

"You know what I meant, silly," I said.

"Sorry, couldn't resist," he said, taking another bite of his strawberry vanilla.

"I bet not," I said.

"So what brings y'all back to town after all this time? Any special reason?" he asked.

"Well, yeah. Mama had a stroke a few months ago, and things got hard after that. Grandma's old house in Ore City was just sitting there empty, so we decided to move back home to be closer to family and cut down on expenses and things like that," I said.

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that," he said.

"It's all right. She's doing a lot better now, but she still needs somebody to help her out with things," I said.

"Well that's good, at least. So you think you'll be around for a while, then?" he asked.

"Yeah, for the foreseeable future. It's good to be back home, though. No place else is ever quite the same," I said.

Cody smiled a little, and I knew what he was thinking. He's always been the kind of boy who had dirt in his blood, as they say; he loved the land almost the way you'd think a hickory tree might love it, with roots planted deep in one spot and limbs reached out to taste the sunshine and the rain beneath a sheltering sky. He was strong that way; full of life and sure of where home would always be. It was one of the main things my younger self had always loved him for, and I was glad to see it hadn't changed.

We talked for a long time that night about all kinds of things, sitting on the tailgate of his truck and eating our yogurt till it got too drippy to be any good. After that we just talked. I told him about how I liked to do landscape painting with oils and watercolors, and he told me about his calf-roping days on the high school rodeo team. But the most interesting thing I found out was that he had a band called the Mustangs along with two other boys.

"What kind of stuff do y'all play?" I asked, curious.

"Red-dirt mostly, sometimes southern rock or gospel," he said.

"That's so cool. You really get paid for it and everything?" I asked, suitably impressed.

Red dirt music is basically homegrown Texas country, just in case you never heard of it before. The kind of stuff local bands like to play on small-town summer evenings, mostly for love of music and home. There's nothing better than a good red dirt band and some spicy beef barbecue at a Friday night tailgate party, and a case of cold Dr. Pepper to wash it all down with. What's not to love? Maybe I'm letting my southern country girl roots show, but hey, that's who I am.

"Yeah, sometimes we get paid a little bit, but we mostly play for tips. We have to take whatever we can get, pretty much. Coffee houses, county fairs, things like that. Sometimes even bars and honky-tonks if that's all we can find. And then we do the music service at church every Sunday, but we don't get paid for that. You ought to come listen sometime," he said.

"Where at?" I asked.

"At the cowboy church in Avinger. Starts at eleven, if you want to come. Just wear jeans or whatever; it's not formal at all," he said.

"I'll see what I can do," I agreed.

And so it was that I found myself driving out to Avinger on Sunday morning, dressed in nothing fancier than a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. Mama would have died a thousand deaths before setting foot inside a church in anything but a dress, and I have to confess I was more than a little uneasy with the idea myself. I had to keep telling myself I'd been specifically told to wear jeans.

I'd never actually been to a cowboy church before, even though I'd seen them often enough. The one in Avinger looks more like a barn than a church, although I have to admit it's the only barn I've ever seen that had stained glass windows. It helped when I got there and saw that everybody else was wearing jeans and such, too, and when I got inside I soon found out the reason. The church was built like a barn on the inside, too. Everything was rough wood and bare concrete with sawdust sprinkled on the floor. People were sitting on bales of hay rather than pews, and the only modern-looking spot in the whole place was the podium and the altar. It was quite a sight, to me at least.

I spotted Cody and a few others up on the stage area behind the podium, setting up sound equipment and fiddling with instruments. I waved at him when he glanced my way, and he smiled and bounded down off the stage.

"Hey, Lisa. I'm glad you could make it," he said, giving me a quick hug.

"Aw, I wouldn't have missed it for anything," I said.

"So what do you think of the place?" he asked, sweeping his arm around at everything.

"It's definitely different," I admitted, and he laughed.

"Yeah, that's what everybody says at first. I guess it seems ordinary to me by now," he said.

"When are y'all playing?" I asked.

"In just a minute. We'll go first, and then preaching, and then some of us at least will go out on the trail ride for an hour or so. Want to come? I know you don't have a horse but I guess we could ride double if you want," he offered.

"Sure. Wore my jeans, didn't I?" I said.

"Yup, that you did," he agreed.

He had to get back up on stage after that, and then they played for about thirty minutes. They were pretty good, as far as I could tell. They played several songs I'd never heard before, and a couple of hymns straight out of the hymnal.

Cody came down and sat next to me on the hay bale when the music was over, and from then on out the service progressed more or less like I was used to.

After church he led me out the back exit doors to the corral; another anomaly. I'd never been to a church that had a corral before. It was full of horses, and Cody seemed to know exactly which one he was after.

"Be right back," he told me, climbing up and over the metal pipe fence and landing on his feet. It didn't take him long to catch a pretty brown-and-white splotched horse, which he led up to the fence by his halter.

"This is Buck," he said, as if introducing me to an old friend.

"Buck?" I asked.

"Yeah. Short for Buckwild. I named him that because he was so crazy when I first went to break him. Threw me in the dirt more times than I can remember. He's my buddy now, though," he said, stroking the horse's mane affectionately.

"How long have you had him?" I asked, reaching out to pet the horse's soft nose and being careful not to let him nip my fingers.

"I got him when I was fourteen. We went to a place where they let you adopt abused and neglected horses. He was an orphan so I had to bottle feed him for a little while," he said.

He led Buck outside the corral and quickly and expertly slipped his bridle on.

"I think we'll ride bareback, if that's okay. Not really good for his kidneys to ride double with a saddle on there. Just hold on tight to me and not him, and sit as far forward as you can, okay?" he said, and I nodded.

He got on first and helped me up behind him, and I laced my fingers together around his stomach and stayed as close to him as I could, just like he told me. I could feel his taut muscles and smell the clean scent of his skin through his t-shirt, and I won't deny that I enjoyed it very much.

We rode along a dirt track that wound through the wooded hills behind the church along with a group of several other people, and it was hot even with the breeze that day.

"Y'all played really nice today. I really liked that song about _Nebo's Crossing,"_ I said after a while.

"Thanks. Me and Cyrus wrote that one, actually. I think I've got some demo disks out in the truck, if you'd like one. That song's on there," he said.

"I'd love one," I said.

"Okay. Just remind me about it when we get back so I don't forget," he said.

It wasn't all that much longer before we did get back, and he swung me down with one arm before dismounting himself. He took Buck's bridle off and turned him out in the corral while I waited beside the truck.

"So what about that disk you promised me?" I asked when he got back.

"Hold on a second and I'll see if I can find one," he said, rummaging through the console.

"Here you go," he finally said, handing me a disk in a paper sleeve. The name of the group was written on the disk itself with a black marker, along with a website address and a phone number.

"I'll listen to it later sometime. I'm fixing to have to get home and check on Mama, but you can stop by about one thirty and have lunch with me at work anytime you want to. That's my break time," I offered, and he nodded.

"We'll see what we can do," he said, with one of his little smiles, and then he gave me another hug before I left.

On the way home I found myself thinking a lot about the way his muscles felt under the thin cotton of his t-shirt, and the deep but musical drawl of his voice, and a dozen other things like that. He was no boy anymore, and I couldn't deny there was definitely still some chemistry there. I couldn't help wondering if he felt it too.

I suppose I've always had a certain romantic streak. My father was like that; he loved poetry and music, and I remember him telling me he hoped I might find such a love as that someday, so fiery and strong that naught on earth could ever break it. Those were the very words he used, too. He fed me on Marlowe and Coleridge from my earliest memories, and after that, how could I not be an idealistic dreamer?

Unfortunately he wasn't exactly the faithful type himself, and he finally disappeared completely when I was twelve; that was the main reason we moved away that year. I had a hard time with it for years, but Mama always told me to love the good in him and forgive the bad, and never to drink the poison of hating him. I've been grateful to her many times for that, for casting aside her own pain and showing me by example that we live for God and not for the world. She's my hero, and always will be.

Another thing she's always told me is that whenever I meet a man who seems interesting, the very first thing I should do is to pray about the situation. Cody was definitely appealing, so I murmured a silent prayer that God would touch his heart and inspire some interest in return, if that was something which would make both of us happy and if that was what He wanted for both of us.

No, I wasn't exactly thinking about running down to the church to get married before the sun set; I'm not that silly. But it's always something to consider, at least in an abstract, long-term kind of way. I certainly didn't want to end up as one of those frumpy, starchy old spinsters who talks to her tomato plants and lives in a run-down house with forty cats.

On the disk, Cyrus was singing _Nebo's Crossing,_ a verse about how Moses stood up on top of Mount Nebo at the end of his life and saw the Promised Land across the Jordan River, and how God is always faithful to keep His promises even though it might take longer than we like, sometimes. Very true, and good to remember.

As soon as I got home, I went out to the back yard to weed and water the garden, but my mind was a million miles away from such a mundane chore. We'd had a vegetable garden for as long as I could remember, no matter where we lived; mostly tomatoes and squash and a few other things, and cabbage and broccoli in the winter. It was a quiet and satisfying kind of hobby, even though I was having to keep a close eye on things to make sure the plants didn't burn up in the heat.

But the whole time I was busy digging and weeding, I kept thinking about Cody; the sound of his voice, the roughness of his hands, and perhaps what his lips might feel like, pressed up to mine. A little bit of bare skin contact on a hot afternoon goes an awfully long way, when it comes to putting thoughts like that in your head.

But in the meantime, I was content to wait and see.

## Chapter Two - Cody

Old flames die hard, it seems.

I could tell Lisa still liked me, just from the way she held me a little closer than she really had to, and the way she put her face against the back of my neck once or twice. You can always tell about things like that, if you pay attention.

That was bad.

Even worse, I enjoyed it myself. She was pretty and sweet and fun to spend time with, and I swear the way she pressed the tips of her fingernails up against my stomach muscles that day was enough to make me forget my own name. If circumstances had been different, I might have taken the bait, so to speak. No, scratch that; I _know_ I would have.

But as it was, I knew better than to take even the first step down _that_ path. She didn't have a clue what she was getting herself into, but I did, and so I owed it to her to keep my distance, much as I might regret it. I had too much going on in my life to think about getting close to anybody.

Ominous dreams and business headaches were bad enough, but there was yet a third issue that bothered me when it came to forming any kind of potential relationship.

It so happens that I like to study my family history. A pretty harmless hobby, for the most part. But one of the things you start to notice after a while is what killed everybody. Not to sound morbid or anything, but you can't help seeing patterns if there happen to be any. I guess I was about sixteen when I first noticed an odd pattern in the way my father's family died. Not a single one of them ever lived to see his thirtieth birthday. It wasn't obvious at first because it didn't seem to affect people who married in; only the natural-born members. But once you _did_ notice, it was plain as a pikestaff.

My father drowned at twenty-five. My Aunt Linda was killed in a car wreck at eighteen. Grandfather died of cancer at twenty-nine. And the list went on, and on, and depressingly on. It was always something different every time, but always something commonplace like that. Nothing you could put your finger on and say it was anything unusual.

At first I thought I was imagining things, that it was just a string of nasty coincidences which didn't really mean anything. But when the list gets as long as your arm and there are still no exceptions, then you have to start wondering if there might be something else at work.

In fact, in my darker moods I was almost certain the McGraths had our own private version of the Mummy's Curse, and I was the next one whose head was on the block. Sometimes I felt like I might as well have an expiration date stamped on the bottom of my foot, like a carton of milk.

Of course I didn't _know_ that. I couldn't prove it, the way you'd prove something in a book. But I'd seen the dates on the tombstones. I watched my father drown. I drove past the spot where Aunt Linda died, every time I went to Longview. It was hard not to at least semi-believe it, after all that, and Matthieu's warning about evil sorcerers only inflamed my fears even more. I never talked about it much, but it was always there in the back of my mind, a dark suspicion that I didn't really want to think about too often.

But suffice it to say, I believed it enough to take it seriously. And that along with everything else made me hesitant to get involved with Lisa, or anybody else for that matter.

I've always believed it was cruel and selfish to knowingly drag another human being into danger and heartache, if you have any choice in the matter. Least of all a person you claim to love. I'm not that selfish, or at least I hope I'm not. There's such a thing as honor, you know, even when it hurts.

But still. . . I'd be lying if I said I never thought about love and family and all those things. I was always brought up to believe that family is everything, that I have an obligation to the past and to the future, to honor my parents and love my children. In my heart of hearts, nothing would have pleased me better than to find my one and only true love and then settle down to raise corn, kids, and tomatoes at Goliad and live happily ever after.

Sound funny, coming from a young guy? Well, maybe so. But that's who I am and I'm not ashamed of it, and I know well enough that I'm not the only boy who ever thought likewise. You might be surprised how many of us think that way, if you took the time to ask.

But they say you always wish the most for the things you know you can never have, and for that reason among others I could almost wish I'd never bumped into Lisa again at all. I liked her too much, and that made things hard.

I probably should have found something more productive to do when I got home, but I grabbed my guitar and went to sit under the hickory trees in the back yard to play a few songs. They say music soothes the savage beast, or I guess in my case the troubled spirit. I love all music, but besides red-dirt, my favorite is southern gospel, or blue-eyed soul as Mama always likes to call it. Her father, my Grandpa Tommy, used to play in a band called _Southern Psalms_ when he was young, and when me and Marcus and Cyrus Clay decided to start up a band after high school, he gave me his original 1939 twelve-string Martin acoustic guitar as a graduation present. It's from him that I get my love of music, and my middle name, and the color of my hair. On a small bronze plate at the foot was the name _Tommy Lee Grey, Avinger, Texas_ and below it the inscription:

To the Lord God Almighty, the Creator of all Music,

May the Hands that play these strings give You glory.

I always liked that, although I've wondered many times why old folks always seem to want to capitalize every other word that way. Anyway, if you don't know anything about guitars, then I'll go ahead and tell you Martins are the best that money can buy, especially the old ones. At first I'd been so intimidated by such an awesome instrument that I'd been afraid to actually play it much, but Grandpa Tommy only laughed and told me to use it for what it was meant for instead of treating it like it was made of gold leaf. So that's what I did, and ever since then I've hauled that guitar around with me all over half of Texas and parts of three other states. It's one of my most prized possessions.

So I played _His Life is an Open Book,_ and then _Send the Fire_ and _Nebo's Crossing,_ singing the words when I felt like it and sometimes not. I can't sing quite as well as Cyrus, but I've been told I have a nice voice. And just like always, it gave me some peace in the midst of my troubles.

We'd been up till two a.m. the night before, playing a hundred-dollar gig at the _Little Brown Jug_ down on the Longview highway. That's a honky-tonk place where guys get busted over the head with pool cues and beer bottles pretty regularly, and the smoke is so thick it'll make your eyes water and it feels almost like walking through a big bowl of tapioca pudding. I don't much like to play at bars, but when money's tight then it sure does make it hard to turn down a paid gig. At least there hadn't been any fights, but I was still tired from the late night.

So after a while I gave up playing and lay down on the ground instead, looking up at the hickory leaves dancing in the sunlight and using my guitar as a headrest. I pulled my hat down over my face to shade my eyes from the sun, and soon enough I dozed off in spite of myself.

And dreamed.

I found myself standing on a rocky hill under a grove of enormous pine trees, disoriented and not sure where I was. Below me was a stony path under the light of a full moon, and presently I saw a girl in a white gown walking silently along. She was paler than usual, but I recognized her immediately as Lisa.

She passed by me, and I silently climbed down to follow her, till we came to the mouth of a cave in the side of the hill. It was dark inside once we passed beyond where the moon reached, but not quite. A faint gray glow seemed to come from everywhere, just enough to find our way. I followed her down a winding staircase cut out of the living rock, and at last the tunnel opened out into a huge cavern. And here was a wonder of wonders.

The path went on through a forest of trees, but not like the kind I knew. These were of crystal and glass, brittle and glittering even in the weak light. They were exquisitely beautiful, and as we passed by I broke off a twig from one of the crystal branches.

Then we came to a lake with troubled waters dark as soot, and far off on an island in the middle of the lake was a palace blazing with light. A bridge of silver filigree crossed over to the island, and when we arrived I saw a finely-dressed young man awaiting us.

Up till then I hadn't seen anything especially alarming, but when we got close enough I saw that the man was nothing but a skeleton dressed in fine clothes. Lisa seemed not to notice, and she laughed and joined hands with him. Then for several hours I watched them dance, till morning came and she climbed the stone stairway back to the outside world. I couldn't help but notice that she looked even paler then, weak and sickly, indeed almost at the very edge of death. It was only when we reached the sunlit world again that she seemed to revive a little, but somehow I knew the man in the blazing palace hadn't turned her loose for long.

I pulled the crystal twig from my pocket and watched it crumble to black dust in the morning sunlight, and then a voice from above me spoke.

" _Save her from the evil one,"_ it said.

Then I woke up, covered in sweat and gripping the grass with my fists. I hate the ones like that, when I know they mean something really important but I can't guess what it is. Who was the evil one, and what did all the rest of it signify? I couldn't tell, except that like all the others lately it was obviously something really bad. And worst of all, what was I supposed to do about it?

I did _not_ need this. It wasn't like I didn't already have enough of my own problems to deal with.

"What's wrong with you, boy?" Marcus's voice cut through the haze of reverie, startling me.

"Huh?" I asked, still half-dozing. I pulled the hat from my face, shielding my eyes from the light. Marcus was looking down at me, and I yawned and sat up.

"You were twitching and talking to yourself, so I wondered what was wrong," he said.

"Oh. I was only dreaming, sort of. That's all. Sorry about that," I said.

"Dreaming about what? Hot mermaid babes in real estate jackets again?" he teased, and I laughed a little. Back when I was eighteen I had a dream about a mermaid who was also a real estate agent and came up out of the sea wearing an old-fashioned gold-colored Century 21 jacket. I never did figure out what that one was supposed to mean, although I have to admit she was a smokin' hot babe and it sure was entertaining. I told Marcus about it years ago, and he's never ceased to think it was hilarious.

"No, not this time. It was about a skeleton, mostly," I said.

"Dang, boy, you're weirder than I thought," Marcus said.

"Ha, ha, very funny," I said.

"So what do you think it means? Anything?" he asked, and I hesitated. Marcus knows all about my dreams, with good reason. But he also knows I don't like to talk about them much.

You see, on Christmas Eve my senior year, I dreamed I saw a boy about my age sitting in his bedclothes at the pole barn in the Ore City park, fifteen miles away. I never would have had any reason to go nosing around over there ordinarily, and especially not on Christmas morning. But to make a long story short, I went out there to check, and sure enough there he was, exactly like I saw him in my dream, shivering in the cold and wrapped in a blanket with nowhere to go.

You probably guessed by now it was Marcus. Turned out his dad got drunk and kicked him out of the house that morning, so he wandered over to the pole barn and tried to think what to do. Christmas Day is a bad time to be out on the streets; everything is closed, and nobody wants visitors. We didn't even know each other at the time; he went to school at Ore City and I went to Avinger, and we'd never had a reason to meet before then. He was already eighteen, barely, so I guess Mr. Cumby had a right to throw him out if he wanted to, but I thought then as I think now what a sorry thing it was to do.

So I offered him a place to stay for a while and a job helping out around the ranch. I guess I probably should have asked first, but when I brought him home that day Mama treated him like a long-lost son, just like she would have done with any other lost kid who needed a place to be loved. He's been here ever since, and in all that time I couldn't ask for a better friend.

Except when he gets some kind of bright idea in his head, and then he can be stubborn as a green-broke stallion. Like now.

"Cody, I've been thinking. I was listening to the radio the other day and there's a preacher down in Longview that was talking about dreams and visions. Why don't you go see him? Maybe he could help you figure somethin' out, you know?" he asked.

That was actually one of the more sensible suggestions Marcus had come up with lately, and I frowned, thinking about it. The simple and obvious dreams I never needed any help with, but what was I supposed to think about crystal forests and dancing skeletons? I'd tried most everything I could think of at one time or another to help figure out the obscure ones like that, from psychology textbooks on dream interpretation to simply praying for understanding, but so far nothing had ever worked. I knew in the old days there were people who could understand the meaning of dreams and visions, like Daniel did for the king of Babylon, and Joseph did for Pharaoh and others. I'd often wished I knew somebody like that; it would make the whole thing so much simpler. But since I didn't, I was ready to try just about anything.

"Who is he?" I asked.

Marcus gave me the name and address, and I decided it was worthwhile to go ahead down there and see the man.

It turned out to be a non-denominational church over on the east side of town, and of course those are always a gamble when it comes to what they teach and believe, but I figured I didn't have to listen if I didn't want to. It's not that I hadn't asked my own pastor about the dreams before; I had, several times. We'd even prayed together about it. But nothing had ever come of that, and I decided I had nothing to lose by asking somebody else.

So I went inside and sat down in one of the pews to think for a few minutes, not sure what I wanted to say or even who to say it to. The office was empty and there didn't seem to be anybody around, although I knew there had to be, since the building was open.

I hadn't been there five minutes when a janitor appeared from one of the doors beside the podium.

"Excuse me, sir, can you tell me where I can find the pastor?" I asked him, getting up from the pew. He gave me a long look, and then shook his head.

"Nobody here but me, son," he said.

"Oh, all right," I said, disappointed. I was just about to ask him what time I needed to come back, when he got close enough to hand me a folded-up sheet of notebook paper. I took it without thinking.

"What's this?" I asked, looking down at it.

"Go see him. He can tell you what you need to know," the man said.

I looked down at the paper, which had the name _Brandon Stone_ written on it, along with an address in Ravanna, Arkansas. I didn't know who that was, but Ravanna is only about thirty miles from Goliad. I looked up to ask for clarification, but during the second when I glanced at the paper the janitor had already disappeared.

Well, I've had my share of odd experiences now and then, and I guess compared to some of them, a disappearing janitor doesn't amount to much. I looked at the paper again and figured I had nothing to lose by going to see Mr. Stone, whoever he was.

My first thought was to wonder if he might be some relation of Lisa's, unlikely as that seemed. I left the church mighty puzzled, but at least I had something concrete I could _do_ for a change.

There were still a good three or four hours till it got dark, and I decided that was plenty of time to run over to Ravanna. It wouldn't take more than an hour or so to get out there and find the place.

## Chapter Three - Cody

Ravanna sits right on the edge of the biggest cypress swamp in the world, in case you didn't know. It fills up all the wide valleys that drain down into Caddo Lake, but there's still quite a bit of high ground where the towns and things are.

Brandon Stone didn't live on high ground.

He lived in an old school bus at the end of a muddy track that barely deserved to be called a road, amongst a thicket of cypress trees at the edge of a blackwater bayou. A rusty stovepipe stuck out one of the windows near the back, and the yard was littered with trash and three or four rusty vehicles up on blocks. Three mongrel dogs lay curled up under the bus in the shade, watching me. Maybe they were too lazy to bark; it wouldn't have surprised me, if they took after their master.

I went up to knock on the door of the bus, only to find a double-barreled shotgun pushed right out into my face.

I really don't like having guns aimed at me; there's just something that really bothers me about that, you know? But I put my hands up where the dude could see them and backed up real slowly, making sure I didn't make any sudden moves.

The door opened, and there stood a young boy no more than fourteen at the most, barefoot and bare-chested, with nothing on but a pair of overalls that were way too big for him. He looked just like the boy on the Tennessee Pride sausage wrappers, red hair and all, and I might have laughed if he hadn't had a gun pointed right between my eyes. Somehow that killed all the humor in the situation.

"What do you want?" he asked, not even pretending to be friendly.

"I'm looking for Brandon Stone," I said.

"You found him. Now what do you want?" he asked again, and I decided this was no time to beat around the bush.

"I was told you could tell me what I need to know. I have dreams sometimes. True ones. But I don't always understand what they mean. I need your help," I said. I didn't know if he'd believe me or if he'd think I was crazy, but I couldn't think of anything else the janitor could have meant by telling me this kid could tell me what I needed to know.

The boy looked hard at me for a while longer, and then slowly lowered the shotgun to his side. He had intensely blue eyes almost the same color as mine, something I'd rarely seen before.

"I see. Don't know that I like that, much. Who told you where to find me?" he asked.

"A janitor at a church in Longview. I don't know his name," I said truthfully.

"Hmm. Well, you best come inside, then," he said.

I followed him inside, and when I got closer I caught a whiff of body odor so strong it could have gagged a maggot at thirty paces. Not just body odor, either, but _old_ body odor. I wondered when the kid had last taken a bath.

The smell was even stronger inside the bus. Dried sweat, wood smoke, and mildew all combined in a way that made me wish I could stop breathing for at least an hour.

The bus seats had been ripped out and the place had been refitted into a one-room house, sort of. There was a stack of ancient mattresses in one corner which passed for a bed, a table and chairs, a potbellied wood stove, and some canned goods and such on a shelf. Not much else.

I sat down in one of the chairs, and Brandon took a seat on the bed.

"So spit it out. I can't tell you anything if you don't cough up the story," he finally said, with more than a hint of impatience in his voice.

So I told him the dream about Lisa, making sure not to leave out any details whether they seemed important or not. He listened without saying a thing, and when I was finished he did the last thing I would ever have expected. He got down on his knees beside the bed and prayed for at least five minutes, leaving me to sit there watching him.

When he was finished, he got up and sat back down on the bed again, watching me curiously.

"Well?" I finally asked.

"This is what God is saying to you. The cave means a time of doubt and uncertainty, and the crystal forest is a time of happiness that you and the girl will pass through. The silver bridge over dark waters means that you'll face a dangerous time which you'll need money to get through. But when you find it, that will lead you directly into the palace of the worst danger of all. The skeleton means death. Death to the girl, and to you too. But both of you will go willingly to meet it, because it'll be cloaked in beauty. Don't be fooled," the boy said.

"Is that all?" I asked, chilled.

"Not quite. In spite of the disguise, you'll still be able to see the evil underneath the surface, if you pay attention. The bones will still be visible underneath all those fine clothes, so to speak. The evil one will ask you to do something you know is wrong, just like the skeleton asked the girl to dance. Don't do that thing, no matter how minor and harmless it might seem. If you do, it'll cause you more grief than you could ever imagine. Once all is said and done, and final happiness seems to be in your hands, you'll find that it suddenly crumbles to dust before you can stop it. That's the meaning of the crystal twig falling to ashes in your hand," he said.

"It seems awfully gloomy," I muttered.

"I'm sorry to have to give you bad news," the kid said, softening a little bit.

"Yeah, well, I wish I knew what I'm supposed to do, that's all," I said.

"Follow her, just like you did in the dream. That's your job right now. Stick to her like glue. That's all I know," he said.

"Thanks, I guess," I said.

"You're welcome, maybe," Brandon said with a scowl.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that," I said.

"Yeah, whatever," he said.

"So how old are you, anyway?" I asked, changing the subject to something less disturbing. It had nothing to do with what we'd been talking about and it was really none of my business, but finding a kid living alone in the middle of a swamp _is_ a little strange, you've got to admit.

"Thirteen and a half, and before you even ask, yeah, I live here alone, I take care of myself, my parents are gone, and that suits me just fine. Anything else you want to know?" he asked, hostile again.

"No, I guess not," I said.

"Good. And if you're thinkin' about telling anybody I'm here, you better think again. I _will_ come after you," he promised. I stared at the dirty boy across from me, with his twelve-gauge shotgun still within easy reach if he needed it, and somehow I wasn't inclined to doubt he'd try his dead-level best to make good on that threat.

Well, I wouldn't rat him out. Not because I was scared he might hunt me down later, but just because he helped me and you don't betray people who do you a favor. He seemed to be surviving, at least, even though that was no way to live to my way of thinking.

I still had two hundred dollars left in my pocket from selling cows. We needed it, to be sure, but not as much as this strange kid did. Maybe I couldn't help him any other way, but money might buy him food and clothes for a while. Better than nothing. I took it out of my pocket and offered it to him.

"Please take this, so I can thank you," I told him. He eyed the cash, looking from it to me and then back again, like a coon watches a sweet plum in your hand while it decides whether it's safe to grab it or not. Slowly he reached out and took it, stuffing the money inside his dirty overalls without even counting it.

"Much obliged," he said.

"Least I could do," I said.

I left after that, trying not to let it show how sweet the air smelled after that fetid bus. I didn't want to offend Brandon; I might need his help again someday. Dream interpreters are hard to come by.

So I went home, thinking hard about what he'd told me and what all it might mean. I was supposed to stay close to Lisa; well, okay, I could handle that. The rest of it still seemed pretty murky, but if I kept my eyes open and paid attention, then there was a good chance I might spot the signs while there was still time to do something about them.

I hoped.

Lisa texted me later that evening while I was doctoring a cut on Buck's fetlock, and we talked for a while about horses and music and whatever else came to mind.

Over the next few days we took to calling or texting each other now and then throughout the day, and you know, she was really good at cheering me up whenever I was inclined to worry about how dry the fields were and how thin the cattle were getting or whether monsters or evil sorcerers or skeletons dressed in designer outfits were fixing to bash the doors in and kill us all.

I didn't tell Mama about any of it, at least not yet. Marcus I didn't have much choice about since he already knew I'd gone to check on things and he pestered me till he got the story. So I told him about what Brandon said the dream meant, confusing as that still was.

My conversations with Lisa were better. It's not that she talked about anything in particular. She really didn't say all that much at all, honestly. She just asked me what I was doing and thinking and it always seemed like she was interested to hear about anything I felt like telling her. It didn't matter if I was feeding the cows or working on the tractor or practicing music, she never seemed to get bored.

So we talked about herbicides and fertilizer and the best way to handle aphids and a dozen other farming-related topics, and other times we talked about red-dirt bands and playing music at tailgate parties and going mudding on back roads after the rain, when the clay is so thick and sticky you could spread it like crimson peanut butter. Ordinary stuff, sure, but I think sometimes it's that ordinary, everyday kind of conversation that really draws people closer.

I was working in the cotton fields one afternoon when she called me on her lunch break.

"Hey, Cody. What are you doing?" she asked.

"Just spraying the cotton, that's all. Trying to keep the bugs down," I said absently. I had my headset on so I could use my hands to drive the tractor, and that's where most of my attention was focused.

"Oh, I see. Should be close to ripe by now, huh?" she asked.

"Few more weeks. But I'm not sure if it'll make it, honestly. Been too hot lately. Once it gets over a hundred and five degrees outside then it starts killing things, even if they've got plenty of water. All the heat this summer is burning everything up, no matter what I do," I said.

"Maybe it'll break soon," she said sympathetically.

"Yeah, maybe," I agreed, without much enthusiasm. Short of a miracle or a hurricane, I didn't see much chance of a break till fall.

"My garden's doing real good. Got me some really nice watermelons coming on now," she said.

"That's cool. You like melons?" I asked.

"Oh, there's nothing better than a nice, sweet, lusciously succulent watermelon, ice cold and dripping with juice," she said, and I laughed a little.

"I don't think I ever heard anybody talk about a watermelon quite like that, Lisa. Have you got yellow ones or red ones?" I asked.

"Red, of course. I always thought the yellow ones looked funny," she said.

"I'm surprised you've still got any left, with the grasshoppers so bad this year. They pretty much destroyed everything in Mama's garden even before it got hot," I said, sliding back into my worried mood.

"Oh, I've got chickens to handle all that. They get rid of the 'hoppers real well. I'm surprised y'all don't have any," she said.

"We do, but the garden is always fenced off to keep them out because they like to eat the tomatoes," I said.

"Well, yeah, that they do," she admitted.

She was like that. Always keeping my mind on something cheerful when I needed it the most, but always subtle about it. She had this wonderful gift for making it seem like everything would be all right, no matter what. That's a powerful thing, when you stop to think about it. The more we talked the more I wanted to talk, and it got to the point that I looked forward to our conversations as one of the highlights of my day.

I might have worried more about how close we seemed to be getting, but she had that gift so strong that when we actually talked, I wasn't even worried about that either. She was like an addictive drug, and I just couldn't get enough of her.

I didn't totally lose my head, of course. I was careful never to hint that we were anything more than good friends, and she never seemed to expect anything more. As long as things stayed like that, I could handle it.

## Chapter Four - Lisa

I could tell there was something on Cody's mind, some kind of issue that kept him wary and distant sometimes, but I couldn't think what it might be to save my life. There didn't seem to be anything obvious.

I couldn't have put a finger on exactly when my thoughts had changed over from curiosity into wishful daydreams, but at some point they certainly had. I wanted to be more than just friends, and I was almost certain he did, too. I caught him watching me sometimes when he didn't know I could see, and things like that. So his cool and detached behavior confused me, and I wondered if I was doing something wrong that he didn't like for some reason, or if he had some other girl he was interested in. He never complained and he never talked about anybody else, so all I could do was puzzle my brain till I went around in circles.

I thought several times about flat out asking him what he was thinking and why he was being so standoffish. Most people do appreciate forthrightness, after all, even if it stings for a minute. But then I always ended up thinking uneasily about what he might say. What if he really didn't like me at all except as a friend and he was only enjoying having somebody to hang out with? I wasn't quite ready to face that possibility yet. I much preferred to wait a while and see what happened.

Mama always used to tell me that it's the patient girl who gets her man sooner or later, so I finally decided that was the best advice I knew of at the time. I was willing to let him go at his own pace, however much he mystified me sometimes. So I bit my tongue and pretended everything was fine, determined not to worry about it.

Jenny couldn't help but notice my blossoming semi-love affair, of course, and when I got home from church Sunday afternoon she pulled me aside for some serious dirt-digging. She had a new boyfriend who'd been taking up most of her time lately, which meant I hadn't seen her much since I bumped into Cody.

I might as well admit that I've always been a little envious of my sister. Jenny is tanned and blonde and outgoing and she has perfect legs and the guys are always drooling over her. As for me, on the other hand. . . my hair is a dull reddish-brown, and somehow I always look too pale even when I put on blush. Add to that a quiet personality and you get, well, blah. Sometimes I think my sister must have arrived in a gift box while I showed up later on in a paper sack. Everybody tells me I ought not to compare myself to her that way, but it's hard not to sometimes.

Mama always used to tell me I'm beautiful and that still waters run the deepest, but somehow I'd always had trouble believing all those things.

"Okay, spill it, sis. Who is he?" she asked.

"I don't know what you're talking about," I said innocently. I kind of wanted to tell her about him, honestly, but I wanted to make her work for it a little bit first.

"Who's this boy you've been talking to all the time? I've never seen you so ditzed out. So come on, give me the goods," she said.

"Well. . . you might not remember him, but his name's Cody McGrath," I said, drawing it out and relishing the suspense for as long as possible.

"You mean the one that lives out there on the way to Linden?" she asked, and I thought to myself dryly that I should have known Jenny would remember him. She knows everybody in three counties on a first-name basis, it seems.

"Yeah, he's the one," I agreed.

"Sis, I hate to bust your bubble, but Cody. . . he's a little weird, you know," she said, frowning.

"What are you talking about?" I asked.

"Well. . . he wouldn't go out with Sheila Jackson last month, even though she's the hottest girl in town," she said.

"So? Sheila's a tramp, and you know it as well as I do. I don't blame him a bit for not wanting to go out with somebody like her," I said. Not to mention she was a snotty, stuck-up diva who thought the world revolved around her just because her daddy was a bank president and they always had plenty of money. Any male with half a brain would've run from Sheila like she was the Thing from the Black Lagoon. Which I guess goes to show how few of them have that much sense, but I was certainly glad Cody did.

"Well, okay, point taken. But what about Janice Loving? He wouldn't go out with her, either," Jen said.

"I don't know her," I said, shrugging.

"Yes, you do. She was runner-up for Watermelon Queen last summer. Pretty girl, _definitely_ not a tramp, and she's loads of fun to spend time with," she explained.

I did remember Janice, now that she mentioned it, and it was true, she was almost as pretty as Jenny was. Of course, Jenny's idea of "fun" sometimes differed from what a normal person would think, so her recommendation didn't carry much weight as far as I was concerned.

"I don't know what all he likes in a girl, sis. I've never asked him about who he's been out with before now," I complained. Mostly because I preferred not to know, if the truth be told. It was much nicer to imagine that he spent nine years yearning after me and never even looked at another girl, no matter how silly that was. Jenny likes to tell me I live a rich fantasy life sometimes.

"Well, I've got it on good authority that he's never had a steady girlfriend in his life, in spite of the fact that half the girls in the county would die just to go out with him. Now all of a sudden he's got a thing for _you?_ What's the deal?" she asked.

"Thanks for that vote of confidence, sis," I said dryly, but I couldn't keep a tiny sliver of doubt from creeping into my mind in spite of myself. In spite of my private imaginings, I didn't _really_ think Cody would have spent half his life pining over a seventh-grade crush. So why no girlfriend, then? It was kind of worrisome, and I was furious at Jenny for making me wonder.

"We're really more just friends right now, anyway. All we do is talk and go out together sometimes, that's all," I said.

"Uh-huh. You can never be just friends with a guy, honey. Trust me on this. Not unless you're blood kin or he thinks you're ugly as the back end of a gasoline truck. Sometimes not even then," Jenny said firmly.

"Well, we are, anyway," I insisted.

"No you're not. People don't float around in a dream world over somebody who's just a friend. Don't feed me that bull," Jenny said.

"Does it really have to have a label? We like each other a lot and we have fun together. Isn't that good enough?" I asked, not liking how peevish my own voice sounded.

"All right, then, whatever you say. I'm just telling you to be careful, that's all," Jenny said.

"I know. And I will. But you just don't know him like I do. If you did, you'd never think he was anything but the sweetest, kindest, bravest, most handsome and chivalrous man you ever met," I said, and Jenny snorted in disgust.

"Yeah, sure, whatever. I guess you better tell me all about Mr. Wonderful, then," she said, resigned.

"He plays guitar in a band, did you know that? And he runs that whole ranch all by himself, with just his mother and one other boy to help," I began.

"Great, so he's a mama's boy who thinks he can sing. It just keeps getting better and better," Jen said. I gritted my teeth, but plunged ahead doggedly.

"He likes my paintings, too, and he told me I'm different than all the other girls he ever met before," I told her.

"Well, the boy ain't lying about that part, at least," Jenny said.

"He told me I'm beautiful," I said softly, beginning to be hurt by Jenny's invincible cynicism. At first I thought she was about to make another snappy comment about that, too, but for once she didn't.

"Do you think he meant it?" she finally asked.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Has he asked you for anything? Does he mean it when he says all that stuff, or is he just buttering you up so he can take advantage of you?" she asked.

"Take advantage of me how? What's he got to gain? It's not like I'm rich or anything, and he's good looking enough that there's plenty of pretty girls who'd be glad to have a roll in the hay with him, if that's what he wanted. Why would he lie?" I asked. The very thought of it hurt more than I liked to admit.

"I don't know, sis. Some guys like a challenge, you know; a girl who's too easy to get is not worth having, that kind of thing. Maybe he likes a challenge. I'm not saying it's like that, just that it _might_ be," she said.

The idea was plausible enough that it created another disturbing drop of doubt in my mind, and I wished I'd never said anything to Jenny to begin with. She was ruining everything, just like she always did.

"I don't think he's like that," I said, and I could hear how unconvincing my voice sounded.

"Well, maybe not. Maybe he really means every single word he said and he's every bit as wonderful as you think he is. Maybe you're really the one and only girl in Texas who ever won Cody McGrath's heart. Stranger things have happened, I guess," Jen finally said.

"Yeah. . . maybe I am," I said, half to myself, and in spite of all my sister's dark hints and conspiracy theories, the thought brought a smile to my face.

## Chapter Five - Cody

I stopped by to see Lisa at lunchtime a few days after I visited Brandon.

I was already unhappy when I pulled in to the empty parking lot at the Dairy Dip, though I tried hard not to show it. The place was deserted after the lunch crowd, and I found her sitting in the corner booth just about to eat her own lunch. She smiled when she saw me, and in spite of my dark mood I couldn't help smiling back.

"Hey, stranger. What brings you to this neck of the woods?" she asked.

"Aw, I heard there was a pretty girl in here who didn't have a lunch date," I said, sliding into the booth across from her.

"Ha. Wrong on both counts," she said, smiling a little.

"So what's for lunch?" I asked.

"The special today was meatloaf and mashed potatoes; I saved you a plate over there if you're hungry," she said, nodding at the order window. I went to grab it and got myself a Coke before sitting back down at the booth.

"Looks good," I said appreciatively.

"Thanks. Cooked it myself this morning. Anyway, did you get Buck home all right after church the other day? I wondered later, since I didn't see a horse trailer hooked up to your truck," she said.

"Yeah, Cyrus took him home for me. He's got a two-horse trailer, so we didn't see any reason to haul them both out there separately," I said.

"That makes sense. It's good you've got some friends like that," she said.

"Yeah, they're the best. I don't know how I'd ever get all the work done at Goliad if they didn't pitch in sometimes. Me and Marcus usually manage to keep it all covered, but now and then we still need help, like when the peaches are ripe or things like that," I said.

"You never told me about the peaches before," she said, taking a bite of her meatloaf.

"Did I not? Yeah, twenty acres worth. It might not sound like a lot but believe me, it's enough to load you down," I said seriously.

"I bet it is," she agreed.

"Especially at harvest time. You can smell peaches everywhere, then. All through the house and the fields, all over your clothes, every time the breeze blows. I used to like it when I was younger, but nowadays it mostly reminds me how much work I've got to do," I said. That was really a half-truth; I love the smell of the peaches when they're ripe, and I've never minded the work that goes along with them. They're one of the things that means home in my mind, and I wouldn't change that even if I could.

"You sure do have a lot of different things going on out there," she said.

"Well, yeah, but you have to, you know. You can't stick to just one thing because you never know what'll happen with the prices every year. It's safer to diversify a little bit," I explained, and she laughed.

"What's funny?" I asked, mystified.

"Oh, nothing. It just sounded funny to hear you use the word 'diversify', that's all," she said, looking embarrassed. I guess I could have been insulted if I'd wanted to, but it only amused me.

"Is that so? Surely you're not saying you think I'm too much of a yokel to know how to use big words, are you?" I teased, and she dissolved in giggles.

"Nope, I'd _never_ say that," she promised, smiling.

"Humph. Okay, then. Long as we got that straight," I nodded, with mock seriousness.

"Speaking of words, I listened to that disk you gave me. I meant to ask you if there was some special story behind _Nebo's Crossing._ It seemed so much deeper than the rest of them," she said.

That was more of a personal question than it might seem, and it always makes me a little uncomfortable to talk about things like that. I've had more than my fair share of sorrow and loss in life, and I don't relish the memories. But I figured it wouldn't kill me to share at least a little bit.

"Well. . . I wrote it for my dad. I got to thinking one day about how Moses never got to enter the Promised Land, but his people did. Sometimes you can't have the things you want the most, even if it breaks your heart to give them up, you know. Sometimes you have to spend your life like he did, and sacrifice everything so the people you love can have happiness later," I said, scuffing my boot on the floor.

I glanced at Lisa, wondering what her reaction to all that might be. But she only nodded, seemingly mute, and I laughed to lighten the mood.

"It's kind of a double meaning, I guess you could say. Mount Nebo is the tallest mountain in the Land of Gilead, and that's where Moses was buried after he looked out across the Jordan with his last sight. But if you think about it a little bit, Goliad sounds a lot like Gilead, doesn't it? I think my Grandpa Reuben must've thought the same thing when he first settled the place, because there's a big hill out there on the property that he named Mount Nebo, and that's where my father is buried," I said.

"So why didn't he just name the place Gilead, then? Seems like it would've been easier," she said.

"Oh, that. Well, he was a soldier in the Texas Revolution and fought at the battle of Goliad, way down there in south Texas. He was one of the only survivors, actually, so after the Republic was set up they granted him a thousand acres up here. We've still got a copy of the original land patent papers tucked away somewhere, I think. It's been in the family ever since," I said, with what I hoped was pardonable pride.

"That's awesome; I love things like that. Your family is so cool. I wish I knew some interesting stories like that to tell," she said, shaking her head and taking another bite of her meatloaf.

"Yeah, I guess so. I'm the last one, though," I said, and almost immediately regretted saying it. Lisa had a way of putting me at ease and loosening my tongue which nobody else could have matched. Much to my discomfiture, I might add.

"What do you mean?" she asked, and I figured if she knew that much then she might as well know a little more.

"I'm the last McGrath, and Grandpa Reuben set it up in such a way that the land could never be divided or sold outside the family. So if anything happens to me or I don't have any kids, then I'm not sure what'll happen. There's nobody else," I explained.

"That must be really hard for you," she said sympathetically, and I looked deep into her eyes for a minute, searching for. . . something. I couldn't decide what, exactly. Most people who hear that story tend to say something sarcastic like how they wish _they_ had that kind of problem, or something like that. Not many people understand what a heavy responsibility it can be. I didn't used to think of it that way at first, but gradually I came to understand how much this place meant not just to me but to all the people who ever lived there, or ever would. I feel the burden keenly sometimes.

"Most people seem to think I'm a crybaby for mentioning it," I said in a deliberate tone, wanting to see what she'd say to that.

"I haven't seen you crying about it. You're doing what you have to do and trying your best to do what's expected of you, that's all. I know what it's like to have to carry a heavy load on your shoulders when you feel like you never had a chance to live your own life first," she said, poking at her mashed potatoes with a fork.

I looked at her wonderingly; that was _exactly_ how I felt sometimes. I almost told her everything then, dreams and curse and all. But I bit my tongue at the last second.

"How do you do it?" I asked instead.

"How do I do what?" she asked, looking mystified.

"How do you always know exactly what I think and how I feel?" I asked, and she laughed.

"Cody boy, I promise you, there are a lot of times when I don't have a _clue_ what you're thinking or feeling," she said.

"It sure does seem like you do," I said.

"Sometimes I can guess pretty well, maybe, that's all," she said. I thought she was being overly modest, but I didn't argue about it.

"Well, you're one of a kind, Miss Lisa; I can say that much," I said.

"Why, naturally," she agreed, laughing it off.

"So what's your story, then? What's your burden to bear?" I asked, curious.

"What do you mean?' she asked.

"You said you knew what it was like to have to carry a heavy load. Surely you had something particular on your mind, didn't you?" I asked.

"Nothing as interesting as yours, I'm afraid," she demurred.

"No, really, tell me. I'm curious," I persisted, and she glanced around like she wanted to make sure nobody was close enough to overhear us.

"Well, I've always been the one who had to take care of everything, you know. It's been worse since Mama had her stroke, because now I have to take care of her, too. Jenny tries to help, I think, but she's kind of silly and irresponsible sometimes, to tell the truth. I don't mind doing it, really; Mama was my best friend and she always encouraged me and taught me everything I know. I'd never turn my back on her when she needs me like this, but. . . it's hard, sometimes," she admitted, looking down at her plate.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"Oh, it's all right. Just hard sometimes, that's all," she said, and then there was a long pause while we both pretended to eat our food.

"So. . . do you still like poetry?" I asked, grasping at memories. I knew she used to be a Shel Silverstein fanatic back in seventh grade, but it seemed like a good way to break the ice and keep the conversation going. She laughed.

"I can't believe you still remember that. Yeah, sometimes," she agreed.

"So what's your favorite poem these days?" I asked.

"Anything sweet and romantic, but I could never pick just one. I was reading Christopher Marlowe last night, if that tells you anything," she said.

"Never heard of him before," I admitted, and she laughed a little again.

"No, I didn't think you would have," she agreed.

Her lunch break was over not long after that, and I reluctantly let her get back to work. As usual, she had a way of making me wonder how I could ever have worried about anything, at least for a little while.

Later that evening I found myself alone in the barn for a while, working on the tractor and trying not to cuss the stupid thing. It had a short in the ignition system somewhere, and trying to trace down electrical shorts is hard, time-consuming work. It probably didn't help that I was still thinking about Lisa instead of focusing on the wires like I ought to have been doing. But when the phone rang and I saw that it was her, I can't deny I was glad for an excuse to get away from mechanicking and talk to her.

"Hey, Lisa, what's up?' I asked.

"Nothin' much, just fixing some beans and cornbread for supper," she said. I hadn't realized it was so late already, and almost on cue, my stomach rumbled.

"Well, hey, I'm glad you called. Are you busy tomorrow?" I asked.

"No, not that I know of. Why do you ask?" she said.

"Well, I thought it'd be cool if you came over for a while, if you want to. We could grill some brisket, hang out, things like that," I said, not letting it slip how unusual of a question it was. I didn't often have visitors, and certainly not girls.

"I'd love to. What time?" she asked.

"Um. . . maybe five or six would be good," I said.

"Yeah, that'll work. If I get Jenny to run me out there, do you think you can give me a ride back home?" she asked, and the thought actually pleased me very much.

"Sure," I said.

"How do you get out to y'alls place, exactly? I'll have to tell Jen, and I'm not real familiar with that area," she said.

"Well, you know how to get to Linden, right?" I asked.

"Yeah," she agreed.

"Head out that way, and then turn right on the third gravel road on the right after you get out of Avinger. Go down that road for a couple miles till you get to a white wood rail fence, and then you'll come to the gate. You can't miss it," I said.

"Sounds pretty easy," she agreed.

"If you happen to get lost, just call me and I'll come find you," I told her.

"Okay, see you then," she said, and that was that.

* * * * * * *

I got up earlier than usual the next morning, determined to get all my chores done and make sure things looked nice by the time Lisa got there.

The first order of business was to finish fixing the tractor, if possible. I threw myself into it with a will, and by the time the sun was well up I'd found that the ignition module itself was burned out. There was no way to fix that except to replace it, so I put it aside for the time being and climbed up on top of the barn to have a crack at replacing two pieces of sheet metal which had come partially loose. I definitely wanted to get done with that job while it was still early; it looked like it might turn out to be another scorching kind of day later on.

I spent most of the morning finishing the barn, and by noon I was done with that project, too. I climbed down with a sigh of relief and put away the ladder and the metal screws, and then went home to clean the house a bit and wash some clothes; something I normally do only when I run out of socks and underwear.

Mama noticed me unloading the dryer.

"What's the special occasion?" she asked, looking askance at the basket full of clean laundry.

"Do I have to have a special occasion to wash my clothes?" I asked innocently, and she only laughed.

"Yes you do, as a matter of fact. So what's going on? Unless I missed a news flash, I don't think the world is coming to an end today, is it?" she asked.

"Well. . . I kind of asked Lisa to come over for supper tonight," I admitted, knowing full well what kind of response I was inviting. But I couldn't exactly keep it a secret, now could I?

"Really?" she asked.

"Yeah, she'll be here about five or six," I said.

"Well, that's wonderful, Cody! You should have told me sooner. I'll have to put a brisket on the grill and make some fresh tea," she said. I think Mama worries sometimes that I'll end up an old bachelor one of these days, so she's always pleased when she thinks I might be going out with somebody. I couldn't help smiling at her enthusiasm, even if it was completely misplaced.

"We're just friends, Mama, that's all. You don't have to make a big production out of it," I told her.

"I can if I want to," she said, with a touch of asperity.

"All right, then. If that's what you want," I said, and kissed her cheek.

She immediately fired up the grill in the back yard with charcoal and hickory chips, not wasting a second. By the time I got back from taking my clothes home she'd already put the brisket inside to start cooking, and there were two jugs of tea already sitting on the picnic table to brew in the sunshine. Mama can be awfully efficient when she wants to be, and anything that involves my so-called love life is sure to get her energized like nothing else.

I had to get online to order a new ignition module for the tractor, which I did while I finished my lunch. When I was done with that, I idly looked up Christopher Marlowe out of curiosity. I only found a single poem of any importance, it seemed, and I read the words to myself quietly.

Come live with me and be my love,

And we will all the pleasures prove,

That hills and valleys, dale and field,

And all the craggy mountains yield. . .

It went on for a good bit longer, but I finished the whole thing. I don't normally read things like that, partly because poetry is not my thing and partly (if the truth be told) because it makes my heart ache. I don't like to be reminded of impossible wishes.

Mama came up behind me, and I quickly deleted the website so she wouldn't catch me reading such a thing. I'd never live it down in a million years.

"There's a tree limb down on the fence by the gate, son. You might want to go out there and fix it while you've got time, so the cows don't get loose," she said, and I nodded. One more thing to take care of.

I quickly cut up the branch and put it behind the house in the woodpile, and then grabbed a hammer and a bag of nails from the storage shed to get the fence rails put back up. It was blistering hot outside by then, but I consoled myself with the thought that at least I'd get to take a nice cold shower and put on some clean clothes before Lisa got there.

## Chapter Six - Lisa

Ore City is a small enough place, but Avinger is even smaller, with nothing much there but a gas station and a little country school so tiny it doesn't even have a football team. In Texas, that's almost a crime. The McGraths lived several miles even farther out, _way_ out in the country, and if Cody hadn't told me how to find the place I'm pretty sure me and Jenny never would have found it on our own. I'd never been out there before, and all I knew about the Goliad Ranch was what Cody had told me. It's bordered on the east by Black Cypress Bayou, but that's the only boundary I've ever understood well enough to remember.

It wasn't too long before we found the gravel road, and then the white wood rail fence that Cody had said to look for. That's when I first realized how much land a thousand acres really is; that fence seemed like it stretched along the road forever before we finally got to the gate, and there was no telling how far it went on the other side. Cody had mentioned that the road dead-ended at the river eventually, where there was a sandy beach and a swimming hole, but I wasn't sure how much farther that was.

The gate itself was made of wooden posts painted white like the rails, with black letters in an arch across the top that said _Goliad._ When we got there, Cody was up front hammering at part of the fence. It looked like one of the rails might have come loose, but I couldn't tell exactly. He was wearing a plain old white t-shirt, grubby with sawdust and dirt and soaked in sweat from the heat.

"See you later, Jen," I said, waving to her as I got out of the car and shut the door. Then I walked up the graveled drive to where Cody was standing.

"Hey, Lisa. You're here early," he said, looking up to smile at me. He had three sixteen-penny nails in his mouth, which made his words come out a little garbled, but I understood him well enough.

He smelled like a boar hog from working, but I pretended not to notice. Mama had drummed it into my head for years that a gracious and well-mannered young lady should never say or do anything which might embarrass another person or hurt their feelings. And besides that, I knew I'd caught him off guard. No doubt he would have gone in to clean up before I got there if he'd known I was coming.

"Yeah, it was the only time Jenny could bring me. I'm sorry I interrupted you; I didn't know you'd be busy," I apologized.

"Nah, it's all good. Just let me finish this little bit of rail right quick, and then we'll go inside for some iced tea. What do you say?" he asked.

"Sounds good to me," I said.

"Okay. I'll be done in just a sec," he said. He took off his white straw hat, wiping the sweat from his forehead and scratching his buzzed-off hair, frowning just a little. Then he seemed to have a change of heart.

"You know what, I think the fence can hold off awhile. Let's go on in," he said, setting down his hammer and nails.

He offered me his arm, very gentleman-like, and in spite of his sweatiness I smiled and took it without so much as a second glance at how grimy it was. That was another thing I liked about Cody; he's so courtly without being a snob about it.

The house was a big old white Victorian-looking thing, with two stories and a verandah that wrapped all the way around. The driveway was edged on both sides with bright yellow rose bushes, most of them in full bloom. I noticed they were the scentless kind, no doubt to keep from attracting bees and wasps.

"Mama loves roses," Cody commented when we were about halfway up the drive.

"Yeah, I can tell. She must spend all her time weeding," I said.

"Well, no, not really. They're pretty tough little boogers," he said.

"Why so much yellow, though?" I asked, and he laughed.

"Oh, Lisa, please don't get her started on _that._ She'll tell you everything from how they're a symbol of joy and freedom to how they're a memorial of the Texas Revolution, and everything else in between. Believe me, I've heard it all a thousand times. She could go on about those roses all day," he said. I could tell he wasn't really complaining, though; he had a tolerant smile on his face.

Right in front of the steps, the driveway curved into a circle around one of the hugest pecan trees I'd ever seen, and Cody's old Chevy was parked at a rakish angle underneath its spreading branches. It was still hot even in the shade, and when we got to the verandah he opened the front door to usher me inside where it was cool. When my eyes adjusted, I saw that most of the house was done in polished hardwood and rough timber, which I thought was pretty even though it made things a little bit dark inside. There was a red-brick fireplace, and lots of photographs. It was nice, but nothing too fancy. Goliad was a working ranch, not one of those fake little ranchette things people build so they can say they've got a taste of the country.

His mother was washing dishes at the sink when we entered the kitchen, with her long brown hair tied back in a ponytail. She was singing something to herself, but I couldn't tell for sure what it was over the sound of running water. It sounded like _Leaning on the Everlasting Arms._

"Hey, Mama. Lisa's here; she got dropped off a little early," he said. She turned around with a smile, drying the soap suds from her hands before she gave me a hug.

"I'm so glad to finally get to meet you, Lisa. Cody talks about you all the time," she declared.

"He does?" I asked, absurdly pleased with that idea.

"He surely does," she said.

"Aw, Mama, hush," he said. But she only laughed.

"Did you get the fence fixed, son?" she asked, turning to look at him.

"No, ma'am, not quite. I think it'll hold up till tomorrow, though. I didn't want to be working while we had company," he explained, and she nodded like that was the most obvious thing in the world.

"Of course not. Can I get y'all some sweet tea or maybe some lemonade?" she asked.

"Yes, ma'am, I'd love some tea, if it's not too much trouble," I said.

"No trouble at all," she said, and busied herself filling two glass tumblers with ice and then pouring the tea. Cody drank his whole glass in one long pull, but then I figured he was probably dying of thirst after being out in the hot sun for so long. I only sipped mine because I wasn't all that thirsty, but I did want to savor it. It tasted like homemade sun tea, the really good stuff you make by leaving it outside in a big one-gallon pickle jar to slow-brew in the sunshine. It must not have been ready for long, because it was still lukewarm when I took my first sip. That was all right, though; it wouldn't take long for the ice to cool it down.

"Thanks, Mama," Cody said when he finished the glass and wiped his mouth with the back of his sweaty hand. Then he poured himself a second glass and drank most of that one, too.

"Yes, thank you, Mrs. McGrath," I echoed.

"Now, honey, the only people who call me Mrs. McGrath are bill collectors and strangers. Call me Josie," she said.

"Thanks, Miss Josie," I said.

"You're surely welcome. Now y'all run along and let me finish this kitchen while I can. There's more tea in the icebox if you want some," she said. My glass was still almost full, but Cody took her up on the offer and refilled his for a third time.

"If you'll excuse me just a minute, ladies, I'll be right back," he said, ducking out of the kitchen.

It wasn't long before he came back, looking much fresher than when he left. He'd washed off as much sweat as he could in such a short amount of time; his ears were still wet from where he'd splashed his face and been in too much of a hurry to dry off completely. He had on a clean black t-shirt that read _Cowboy for Life_ across the front, and I noticed that he'd even put on cologne; something that reminded me vaguely of Old Spice, even though I was pretty sure that wasn't what it was.

Miss Josie shooed both of us out of the kitchen as soon as he got back, and he led me outside again, through the back door this time.

"Where are we going?" I asked when we got outside.

"You'll see when we get there," he said, sounding very mysterious.

I noticed there were more roses in the back yard, not all of them yellow, and a picnic table beside an outdoor grill. Something must have been cooking, because there was smoke coming out of it. Whatever it was, it smelled delectable.

Cody didn't stop in the yard, though. He opened a gate in the fence and led me across a wide pasture that sloped down to a lake. There was fresh horse manure here and there and a half-full hay feeder next to the barn, but no horses to be seen. I guessed it was Buck's pen, but maybe he was staying inside out of the heat. I couldn't blame him.

"It's real pretty out here in the springtime, believe it or not. The whole pasture is full of bluebonnets, as far as you can see," Cody commented, kind of apologetically.

Maybe so, but you never would have guessed it by looking. There was nothing there now except a little bit of wispy dead grass, and the dirt was so dry it had cracked open in spots. The whole place looked deader than the surface of Mercury.

I think it was hotter than the surface of Mercury, too. I could feel sweat popping up on my skin after the first few seconds, and I was sure Cody's black shirt was soaking up the heat like a beach towel. But thankfully, we soon came to a shady grove of pecan trees at the edge of the lake, and I was glad when we got up under the canopy and out of the sun.

The lake was a little bit low from the drought, but not by much. There was a gazebo beside the water with a porch swing hung from the center of it, and I guessed that's where we were headed. Turned out I was right.

Cody sat down on the swing, and I joined him. There was a breeze coming in off the lake, which was a blessing of epic proportions by itself. On the far shore I could see what looked like a peach orchard on a rise that sloped upwards to a steep hill covered in pine trees, which I guessed was Mount Nebo. It was a pretty view.

"I like your mama," I finally said.

"Yeah, she's somethin' else, I tell you," he agreed, but I could hear the love in his voice when he said it.

"Has it always been just you and her?" I asked.

"Mostly. Daddy passed away when I was six years old, and she never dated or anything after that," he explained.

"I wonder why. She's still a fairly young woman, and she's so pretty and nice, it's a wonder the men didn't beat the doors down," I said.

"Aw, they did, believe me," he chuckled.

"So how come she never. . . " I asked, leaving the thought trailing.

"Well, it's a long story. They got together in junior high, you know, and neither one of them ever went with anybody else. She always says Daddy was the love of her life, and no other man could ever take his place. Life is short, but love is forever," he said.

He said that last part like he might be quoting somebody else, but he also had the kind of expression on his face that a man only has when he's speaking about something he believes with his whole heart and holds so dear that to give it up he'd have to unmake himself. He might ostensibly be talking about his mother, but I suspected I might have touched something deep in his own soul, too.

"Is that what you think, too?" I asked, curious. He didn't answer me right away, maybe considering how much he wanted to say, or maybe just choosing his words carefully.

"Yeah, deep down I guess I do. I want my one and only, someday," he finally said in an offhanded kind of way, looking down and rattling the ice in his glass.

"Really?" I asked, enthralled, and I saw the ghost of a smile on his lips.

"Yeah, if it ever happens. I have my doubts about that sometimes," he said cryptically. It seemed like an odd thing to say, and for once I indulged my curiosity.

"How come? I bet half the girls in the county would love to get their hands on you," I asked. I said it jokingly, even though the question was a serious one. But Cody only laughed.

"Do you, now?" he asked, amused.

"Yeah, I really do," I agreed.

"Hmm. . . well, I don't know. Maybe I never found the right one, yet. I've been out with a few girls now and then. Even kissed a few. But that's as far as it ever went. Never anything serious," he said, gazing out across the lake.

"Really?" I asked again, still finding it hard to believe. But he only laughed again.

"Yeah, really and truly. I've got my reasons, though," he said softly, and I didn't push him any more even though I was dying of curiosity. I was afraid he might clam up again. He rarely talked about things like that or showed his heart so openly, and I wished we could have a thousand talks like that.

"I want my one and only someday, too," I confessed, hoping I wasn't going too far.

"Yeah, I can tell. I read some Christopher Marlowe this morning," he admitted.

"No way," I said.

"Yeah. I was curious, after you mentioned him yesterday," he said, and it touched me that he cared enough to do such a thing.

"Which one did you read?" I asked.

"I don't know the name of it. Started out with _'Come live with me and be my love',"_ he said.

"Oh. Yeah, I love that one. What did you think of it?" I asked, and again he took a while to answer, perhaps thinking.

"Sorrowful," he finally said, succinctly, surprising me. _Sorrowful_ wasn't a word I normally would have picked to describe that particular poem, and I wondered if there was some private reason why it might have affected _him_ that way. He was such a riddle sometimes.

"Not too many guys like poetry. Not even a little bit," I said, choosing once again not to push him too hard. He'd tell me when he got ready, if it was anything I needed to know.

"Well, now, I'm not your typical guy, am I?" he asked, with another one of his little half-smiles, and I had to laugh.

"No, sir, that you're most surely not," I agreed.

They say that a noble heart is more beautiful than the most brilliant of diamonds, and the way Cody talked about love that day touched a very deep place in my own heart. In so many ways, he was tough as nails on the surface and then sweet as peach pie when he didn't think anybody would ever know it.

I think it was then that I first realized I might really be starting to love this boy, or at least that the chance was definitely there. Not just a wash of nostalgia, or a weakness for handsome young cowboys, but the real thing. And that scared me, because so far he'd given me precious little reason to think he felt the same way. I was afraid of getting hurt.

"I don't usually bring girls home to meet Mama, either," he added in that same offhand tone, still gazing out across the lake.

I was quiet for a few seconds, dying to ask him what that meant and too scared of what his answer might be for me to get the words out.

"Thanks," I said, inanely, and he laughed, breaking the tension that had crept in between us.

"You want to see my place?" he asked suddenly, as if the thought had just occurred to him.

"I thought you lived here," I said, confused.

"Well, yes and no. I'm still here on the ranch, but I moved out to the bunk house a couple years ago, so I could be on my own and have friends over whenever I wanted to and stuff like that, without disturbing Mama," he explained.

"I'd love to," I said.

"All right, then. It's close enough to walk, if you don't mind a little exercise," he said.

"Not at all," I agreed.

## Chapter Seven - Lisa

We left the gazebo, and instead of going back the way we'd come, Cody took me farther down the lake shore. He let us through a gate in a barbed-wire fence, and on the other side the pecan trees switched over to white oak and pine, dense and impossible to see through.

Finally we came to a clearing on a broad-shouldered hill above the lake, and a long, rambling white house with a wide porch. It reminded me of the big house in some ways, I think mostly in the way the eaves and windows were made. Probably built to match.

"This place has been here ever since I can remember. It's been used for everything from a guesthouse to a junk barn over the years, sometimes as a place for some of the ranch hands to live. We've got three more of them over there on the other side of the lake, but this is the one I always liked the best because it's got the most privacy. Me and Marcus shared it for a little while, till he moved into one of the other ones. So it's all mine now," he murmured, unlocking the door to let us in.

The second we stepped inside, I felt like I'd entered a scene straight out of _True Grit._ Cody had covered the couch with a whole skin from a Holstein dairy cow, with all the black-and-white-splotched hair still attached. It looked like he'd built most of the tables and furniture himself from rough plank lumber that matched the paneled walls of rough-cut white oak wood. He'd scrounged a few street signs to put on the walls, and there was a Texas flag in the window and a real bear-skin rug in the middle of the floor that still had the claws and teeth on it. It still had the eyes, too, and I almost felt like it was staring at me.

I glanced at Cody, and saw that he was watching me with a proud smile on his face, like he thought he'd done something really special. I laughed a little.

"Did you kill that?" I asked, nodding at the bear, which was still staring at me.

"Yeah, sure did. Way back in a holler up in the Ozarks a couple years ago," he said proudly, and I laughed again.

He gave me the quick tour, such as it was, ending at his bedroom. It didn't take long since the whole place was set up on a fairly simple plan; living room and kitchen combo in the middle, with four bedrooms surrounding it; two on each side. It was pretty obvious he didn't use the extra bedrooms very much, so there wasn't a lot to show me. One of them was full of cardboard boxes and bunk beds taken out of the other rooms and shoved in there for lack of anywhere else to put them. Another one had nothing in it but a forgotten scrap of sheet music on the floor, and the third one was empty. I paid attention to everything as we went along, but of course it was Cody's room itself that I most wanted to see.

It fit the same young-single-redneck-cowboy style as everything else, only more so. He had a big double bed built of rough-cut cedar logs, with a handmade red and blue quilt in a starburst pattern, neatly made. There was a matching dresser with a big mirror on top, and a silver bolo tie in the shape of a bull's head hanging from the corner of it. Another white straw hat was hung from the other corner. On the wall were a few pictures in wooden frames, and a Texas Rangers pennant.

There was a desk with a computer on it, and a handful of reference books about farm business management and soil conservation and veterinary medicine and so forth. The books looked like he used them pretty often.

Besides that, there wasn't much else in there except a little shelf of knickknacks nailed to the wall beside his closet door. A high school rodeo trophy buckle. A horse carved from cedar wood with a pocketknife. A glass ball from Zion National Park. A toy monster truck like somebody might build from a model kit, of all things.

"What do you think?" he asked.

"If I hadn't known you lived here, I think I could have guessed it after seeing this room," I said humorously.

"Yeah, it's me, huh?" he asked, obviously pleased with my reaction.

I walked over to the knickknack shelf to meddle with his things, and saw that he'd won the rodeo buckle his senior year for calf roping. Then I looked at the picture of his parents. Miss Josie didn't seem to have aged much in all those years, and they both seemed very much in love. Sometimes you can tell, even in a picture. It gave me a wistful feeling, to see them like that. Cody didn't really look much like either one of them, but then I guess sometimes kids don't.

"You like to whittle?" I asked, picking up the horse. It was a stallion reared up on its hind legs, eyes wide and nostrils flared. It was exquisitely carved, with amazing attention to detail. I could even see the hair.

"No, but Marcus does. He gave me that for Christmas a couple years ago. It's supposed to be Buck, but I think he flattered the old boy a little bit. He's real good, though, huh?" he said, and I had to agree.

The glass ball was about the size of an orange and solid all the way through, with some desert wildflowers preserved inside. I don't know what kind they were, but they reminded me of the little blue lupines that bloom in early spring. At the bottom was a caption that read _In Beauty be it finished._ A pretty thought, even though I wasn't quite sure what it was supposed to mean.

Then I picked up the monster truck and raised an eyebrow at him.

"Yeah, that's somethin' I built a long time ago. I used to like to go to truck rallies and stuff like that," he said sheepishly, like he was afraid I might think the truck was a stupid thing to have on his shelf. I didn't, really, and besides that I was much more interested in what he said about truck rallies.

"How come you don't go anymore?" I asked.

"No particular reason. Just busy, I guess, and Marcus doesn't really like that kind of stuff much. It's no fun to go by yourself," he said.

"I'd like to try one," I said.

"Would you, now?" he asked, curious.

"Sure. If I had anybody to go with," I added.

"Well, then, I might have to take you sometime, whenever one pops up anywhere close," he said.

"I might have to take you up on that," I agreed.

After that we went back to the gazebo for a while, but that was all we said about serious things for the rest of the day. He told me some funny stories about places where the Mustangs had played now and then; brawls he'd been in and things like that. He told me about a sweetheart gig when they got to play at the Four States Fair in Texarkana two years ago, which they only got because Cyrus's brother was going out with one of the board members' nieces at the time. The power of networking, I guess you could call it.

Anyway, he said the last song they played that night was _Dixie,_ and half the crowd was half drunk by then, and all those rednecks and hillbillies got all teary-eyed and Southern-patriotic and sang half the song with them and gave them a standing ovation at the end and they collected almost nine hundred bucks in tips. We both laughed at that and I kind of wished I could've been there to see it.

He cracked open some of last year's pecans for us with his bare hands while we sat there and swung back and forth, which reminded me of something Daddy used to do when I was little. We always had a butter churn full of pecans and we'd sit around the fire to eat them on winter evenings while we watched TV. He always crunched them in his fists like that. Eating pecans all night is a surefire way to get fat, no doubt, but I was too young to know or care about such things back then.

But I certainly knew _now,_ so I mostly just nibbled even though I enjoyed the memories it brought back. We were careful to throw the broken shells over the railing into the lake; pecan shells hurt when you step on them bare-footed.

When we finally got back to the house, Miss Josie was right in the middle of transferring a warm, steaming brisket from the grill to a serving platter, and it smelled wonderful. Cody hurried to open the back door for her, and together we all went back into the kitchen. She deftly put the brisket down on the dining room table, and I saw that she'd already set out the plates and silverware and everything.

"Miss Josie, you should have come and got us sooner; I would have been glad to help you with all this!" I said, feeling bad that she'd been slaving away in the hot kitchen all evening while me and Cody had been drinking iced tea in the gazebo.

"Aw, now, it was no trouble at all. Now, y'all come eat before it gets cold," she said.

We did, joining hands while Cody blessed the meal, and then Miss Josie served the food. She'd whipped up mashed potatoes and corn on the cob to go with it, and a key lime pie for later.

"Now, Cody, make sure you don't run off anywhere tomorrow till that fence is done, and then Mr. Jackson'll be here sometime in the morning, too. He said he'll need to talk to both of us," she said.

"Okay, Mama," he said, when he swallowed his food. It sounded like he didn't really want to talk about the subject, whatever it might be.

I wondered fleetingly who Mr. Jackson was; the only one I could think of offhand was Sheila's daddy, Howie, the president of Piney State Bank. But I kept my curiosity to myself.

I wanted to help clear the table after supper, but Miss Josie wouldn't hear of that, either. She sent Cody and me back outside to wait for her on the verandah while she finished up in the kitchen. Finally she came out with her camera, fiddling with the buttons.

"Now, y'all go stand against that pecan tree over yonder and let me get some pictures," she said, and Cody laughed.

"Aw, come on, Mama; you want to take pictures _now?"_ he asked.

"Yes, I sure do. Now y'all get over there," she told him, and so we did, standing in between the tree and Cody's truck. He put his arm around my shoulders and we shot as many poses as it took to satisfy Miss Josie. Then we sat on the verandah for a while and drank some more tea and talked about nothing in particular until it got dark and the lightning bugs started to come out.

## Chapter Eight - Cody

I don't know why, but I was happy that day, in a way I hadn't been for a long time. I felt whole and at peace, like I suddenly had something back that I'd never known was missing.

About ten o'clock, I grabbed my truck keys to take Lisa home before it got too late.

"I'm really glad you came today," I said while we walked out to the driveway. The air was full of the mingled scent of mimosa blossoms and wild honeysuckle, the sweet smells of a southern summer night, encouraging both of us to walk slowly.

"Yeah, we'll have to do it again sometime. But next time you'll have to come over to my house," she told me.

"Sure," I agreed, and then we were getting in the truck for the drive back to town.

I walked her up to the front porch when we got there, and then lingered for a few minutes in the darkness, not wanting the evening to end. I just stood there, looking down at her beautiful face while she gazed up at me. I noticed that her lips were slightly parted, and I thought to myself how amazingly kissable they looked.

So I did the most natural thing in the world at that moment. I leaned in and kissed her, soft and sweet and tender, just like it ought to be. I certainly hadn't meant to do it, but I found that for once temptation was irresistible. Almost without thinking, I slipped my hand around her back and pulled her closer, and she pressed up as close to me as she could. Before long, the kiss which had started out so sweet and soft had become considerably more passionate.

"I better go," I finally said, breaking the kiss reluctantly. I didn't want to, and I could tell she didn't want me to, either. But I had to be strong.

"I'll see you tomorrow," she said faintly, and I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.

Maybe it was just a moment of weakness, brought on by reading that sorrowful poem and spending the day talking about things I ought not to have talked about. But even so, whatever delusions I might have had that I could keep things safe and friendly between us were officially blown to pieces, never to be believed again. I was kidding myself if I tried to think otherwise.

I realized with a dull, hopeless kind of ache that I ought to have known better from the very beginning. I'd been flirting with disaster ever since the first time I ever laid eyes on the girl. I should have known there'd come a day of reckoning, sooner or later. Now it had, and I was snared no matter what I did. It didn't matter that I hadn't had much choice but to hang out with her. I still should have been stronger.

I made it home without wrecking the truck, a minor miracle in its own right considering the state I was in. But by the time I pulled in under the pecan tree I knew what I had to do.

The only honorable choice at that point was to tell her everything, to lay it all on the table and try to explain to her the situation I was in, and then see what she thought about it herself. There was no more middle ground and no more wiggle room.

Knowing what to do is not quite the same thing as doing it, though. I went through the motions of brushing my teeth and getting ready for bed, wishing I could bury my head in the sand like an ostrich and make the whole nasty mess somehow go away. But that was impossible, and I soon found that even sleep was beyond my reach. Even after lying in bed for almost an hour, I was still wide awake.

I got up and went to the computer for a while, looking for a monster truck rally like I promised her I would, hoping the distraction would help. But sleep still eluded me even after I found one, so finally I decided to take a walk and maybe think about something else for a while, if such a thing were possible.

I slipped on a t-shirt and some cut-off jeans before quietly making my way barefooted down by the lake and finally to the gazebo, where I sat on the swing and threw green pecans across the lake. The water was lit up by one of the biggest full moons I'd seen in a long time, an especially pretty one with a ring of blue around the outside edge. I lay down on the swing and wondered if maybe Lisa was looking at that same moon and thinking about me, too.

After a long time, I decided there was absolutely no way this could wait any longer, not even till morning. I'd be out of my mind by then.

It was well past midnight at that point, but I decided to give her a call anyway.

## Chapter Nine - Lisa

Cody's kiss left me floating in a warm pool of something very much like love that night, to the point that I almost forgot to take my shoes off before I went to bed. It was exactly the way I'd always imagined it would be, sweeter than honeysuckle, softer than baby's breath. It was a million times better than that awkward smooch at the fall dance all those years ago. I kept replaying it over and over again in my mind, wanting to make sure I never forgot even the slightest detail.

I fell asleep still thinking about it, and my dreams picked up right where memory left off. No surprise, there. Somehow the two of us were somewhere far away; I knew that much, even though I couldn't have said _how_ I knew. A full moon shone down on a sandy white beach, and I stood there barefoot with palm trees all around. It was just like a scene from _Scarlett's Hawaiian Nights,_ one of my favorite stories of all time.

For a second I was confused as to how I got there; it was one of those dreams which seems so real it's hard to distinguish it from waking life. Then I saw Cody standing there in the shadows, watching me, and he put a finger to his lips to shush me when I startled. I saw the glint of a ring on his finger in the moonlight, and I thought with a flood of happiness that we must be married, though I couldn't remember when or how.

He wasn't wearing a shirt, and his smooth skin was pale in the moonlight. He came closer, and then I felt his arms around me, strong and sure, while I buried my fingers in his close-cropped hair and felt the muscles on his back rippling. He kissed me passionately, and then. . .

Suddenly I woke up, the taste of him still on my lips, the smell of him still in my nostrils, my body still warm from the memory of his touch. I cried out in frustration, trying to keep the dream from slipping away. But he was gone, and I was back in my old room, and the phone was ringing.

I thought to myself that if that caller was anywhere within a hundred mile radius, I was prepared to get in the car, drive to his house, and literally beat him to a bloody pulp.

"Hello?" I snarled.

"Hey, did I wake you?" Cody asked, sounding taken aback.

"Oh, no, I'm sorry. I mean, yes, I was asleep, but it's all right. I'd rather talk to you, anyway," I said, my anger evaporating. Dreams were awesome, but the real thing was even better. Even if all I could do was talk to him.

"Oh, okay. Go look outside," he said. It wasn't exactly what I expected him to say, but I was willing to go along with it.

"What am I looking for?" I asked.

"Never mind that. Just go look," he said. I got up and grabbed a robe from the closet, then quietly walked downstairs and out to the patio in the back yard. Just above the trees was the biggest full moon I'd ever seen, wrapped in a blue ring of wispy clouds and flooding the world with silver light.

"Do you see it?" he asked.

I did, and for a second I was reminded vividly of the moonlight through the palm trees reflecting off his smooth skin, and my whole body felt warm at the memory.

"You mean the moon? Yeah, it's beautiful tonight," I said.

"I couldn't sleep, so when I saw it I had to tell you," he said.

If one of Jenny's boyfriends had woken her up at midnight to ask her to go outside and look at the moon, I'm fairly sure she would have cussed him out and told him to call her back in the morning. But as for me, well, I think Cody could have asked me pretty much anything that night and I would have thought it was sweet and romantic.

I laughed a little.

"What is it?" he asked, and I guess my laugh probably made him think he'd stuck his foot in his mouth after all.

"It's nothing. I was thinking about something Jenny said, that's all. Where are you? At home?" I asked him.

"No, I took a walk down by the lake. I'm sitting on the swing at the gazebo," he said.

"Wish I was there with you," I said wistfully, unable to contain myself.

"Yeah, me too. I couldn't stop thinking about you tonight," he admitted.

"Yeah, you've been on my mind tonight, too," I agreed, and smiled to myself. I could tell him that much without seeming disreputable.

"Well, listen. . . I found a monster truck pull in Lufkin on Saturday, if you want to go," he said.

"Sure. What time do I need to be ready?" I asked.

"Um. . . maybe four o'clock? It's kind of a long drive, you know," he said.

"Perfect. I'll see you then," I agreed.

There was a pause, but he made no effort to hang up the phone.

"Was there something else on your mind?" I finally asked, pretty sure there was.

"Well. . . yeah, actually," he admitted, reluctantly.

"Mm-hmm, thought so. What's up?" I asked, and again there was a long pause.

"Do you think you could meet me somewhere for a little while, Lisa? I know it's late, but there's something I need to talk to you about," he said.

I furrowed my brows at that, wondering what could be so important that he'd feel compelled to ask me such a thing. Under the circumstances I wasn't inclined to say no, even though I wasn't particularly thrilled with the idea of going out so late, either.

"Sure, I guess. Where at?" I asked.

"What about the park?" he suggested.

"No, that won't do. If the sheriff comes by and sees us sitting there he'll wonder what we're up to and he'll come harass us. Do you know where Autograph Rock is?" I asked.

"Yeah, I know where it is," he agreed.

"Can you meet me there in fifteen, twenty minutes?" I asked.

"Sure," he agreed, and that was that.

I went back inside, wondering what other strange and fantastic things might happen before daylight. I threw on some clothes and quickly brushed my hair so it wouldn't look too ratty, and then grabbed the keys off the kitchen table. I slipped outside without a peep, letting the car roll downhill into the street before I started it. Then I drove away, still yawning.

Autograph Rock is maybe two miles out of town, on an old dirt road in the middle of nowhere. It's a big block of sandstone, covered in names which people have carved there for generations, some of them so old they're almost weathered away. It's kind of a tradition amongst the old folks that whenever you get married, you go out to Autograph Rock and carve your names in the stone. I guess it's supposed to symbolize that your love will last forever, or something like that. People don't do it quite as much as they used to, but I'd always thought it was a sweet idea and hoped I'd get to follow through with it someday myself. But in the meantime, it was a good landmark where we could meet up and talk about whatever it was that Cody was so tied up in knots about.

He was already there when I pulled in, sitting on his tailgate and looking at the moon. I killed the car and went to join him, trying not to yawn too much.

"So what's on your mind, bubba?" I asked, sitting down beside him. The moonlight softened his features, making him look younger than he really was, and for a fleeting moment I was reminded of my dream again. He seemed ill at ease, taut as a bowstring, and I wondered what could be wrong.

"Lisa. . . do you like me?" he asked.

"You know I do," I agreed, deciding maybe it wasn't the best time in the world for a joke. He didn't seem to be in the mood for light banter.

"I mean like more than just friends," he clarified. That confused me a little; after the way he kissed me earlier it seemed like that would have been obvious. If it wasn't, then something was wrong. So I hesitated, wondering what to say. For once I couldn't read him at all, and every answer I could think of seemed dangerously risky. All I could think to do was speak the truth and hope for the best.

"Yeah," I finally said, unable to think of any way to embellish or clarify it. Cody let out a deep breath.

"Me too. I guess you already know that, after earlier. But I need you to know some things, before we ever let it go any further. If it changes things then I'm okay with that, but I have to tell you," he said.

"What is it?" I asked, uneasy.

"Do you remember when I told you I was the last McGrath?" he asked.

"Yeah, I remember," I agreed.

"Well. . . there's a reason for that," he said.

"Go on," I finally said, when he didn't seem disposed to continue. He ran his fingers through his hair and sighed.

"None of us has ever lived past thirty. My father, my grandfather, my aunts and uncles, all of us. No exceptions," he said.

"So what is it, then? There's like a disease that runs in your family or something?" I asked.

"No, nothing like that. It's always something different. Accidents, diseases, wars; it's never the same thing twice. The only thing we've all got in common is that none of us ever lived to be older than twenty-nine," he said.

"But that's just a- " I began.

"Coincidence? Yeah, that's what everybody says. And maybe if it was only three or four times then I might believe it. But every single family member since 1861? Nope, don't buy it," he interrupted.

"But what else could it be, though?" I asked.

"Maybe it's a curse," he said, watching me carefully.

"I don't believe in stuff like that," I said automatically, and realized almost immediately that it was the wrong thing to say.

"No? Well, I guess it doesn't matter what you call it. I still might not be here much longer," he said.

I understood lots of things at that moment, and felt a gentle wash of compassion for him. I didn't know what to think about his theory of a family curse; I was still inclined to believe it was bosh, honestly. But then again I'll be the first to admit there are a lot of things in the world that I don't understand, and only a fool says _there's_ _no such thing_ about anything. It didn't really matter whether I believed it or not, though. What mattered was that _Cody_ believed it, and that explained a lot.

"That's why you never would get too close, isn't it?" I asked. All those times when he'd been so distant and cool made perfect sense now.

"Yeah. I didn't think it was fair to put somebody through that," he said.

I don't know how else to explain it other than the grace of God, but somehow I had the wisdom not to argue with him over whether the Curse was real or not. That would have ended badly. Cody didn't want a debate over the nature of reality; he wanted an answer for how I felt just in case it _did_ turn out to be true. And that part was surprisingly easy.

"It doesn't matter," I said.

"What do you mean, it doesn't matter?" he asked.

"Well. . . maybe that's not exactly what I meant. I wasn't blowing you off. I only meant it doesn't change anything, that's all," I said.

"It doesn't?" he asked.

"No. Mama always used to tell me you're never guaranteed tomorrow and you can't buy back yesterday. Now is all that matters, cause it's all you'll ever have. Either one of us might die before we make it home tonight. Even if right now was all the time we ever had together, I'd never be sorry for that," I said.

"Really?" he asked, still looking like he didn't quite believe me.

"Yeah, really and truly. Never think of it again," I told him, and grasped his rough hands in my own. His blue eyes were soft and lambent in the moonlight, and for only the third time he kissed me then, holding me tight in his arms and making it last a long, long time.

Oh, I won't pretend his revelation didn't scare me a little bit. I'm not the superstitious type, but nobody is immune to a cold shiver of doubt now and then. No one wants to get caught up in that kind of heartache, either, and I'm no exception. But then on the other hand, the thought of abandoning him because I was afraid of what the future might hold seemed to me to be the most contemptible idea I'd ever imagined. I might not know what was coming, but I wasn't going to bolt and run, that was for certain.

"There's something else, too," he said, when the kiss was over.

"Worse than what you already told me?" I asked.

"Well, no. Not exactly, anyway," he said.

"I guess you better tell me, then," I said, resigned.

"Okay then. Sometimes I have dreams," he said.

"Well, yeah, so does everybody," I said.

"No, I don't mean like that. I mean real ones. True dreams," he clarified.

"I don't know what you mean," I said.

"I mean sometimes I see things that will happen in the future," he said.

"I see," I said. I remembered hearing about things like that at church now and then, so I couldn't exactly say it was impossible, but I'd never met anybody who said it was something that happened to them.

"I know it's a lot to swallow in one night," Cody said, sounding sad.

"I'm sorry. I'm not trying to doubt you or anything. What do you dream about?" I asked, feeling guilty for not believing him.

"You, among other things," he said, and I might have been pleased if I thought that was something good. But as it was, all it did was give me a deep sense of foreboding.

"What about me?" I whispered.

"You're in danger, that's what. Or you will be; I still don't quite understand that part," he said, and proceeded to tell me a crazy story about dancing with skeletons and I don't know what all else.

I think if it had been anybody else but Cody, I might have cut him loose right then. There's only so much insanity a person can deal with at one time. But he already held too big a piece of my heart, and I couldn't have let go even if I'd wanted to.

I remembered my prayer that God would touch his heart and find a way for us to be together, if that would make both of us happy. Now here he was, the untouchable Cody McGrath, spilling his guts and telling me he wanted to be mine. I could only believe that all this was God's gift to me and His will for my life, however crazy it might seem. I couldn't imagine Cody saying all those things otherwise.

I only hoped I was right about all that.

"Never mind. We'll figure it out together," I said.

## Chapter Ten - Cody

From then on, there was no more talk about being just friends. We were officially a couple, and for a little while I think me and Lisa had our fill of happy days. I know I did. I didn't forget about all the things hanging over us, and I didn't forget about Brandon's warning, either, but I did come to think maybe this was our walk through the crystal forest, if you will. Our sweet taste of happiness before the bad times came.

The truck pull was loud and messy and muddy and mean, just like the best ones always are. . . so loud we couldn't hear a word the whole time. I could tell Lisa had never been to one before, because she obviously hadn't expected the noise level. She kept putting her hands over her ears during the especially loud parts, but the rest of the time she laughed and cheered with the best of them.

I took her horseback riding on the road that circled the lake the next afternoon, and we talked about it.

"It was really cool, the way you cheered at the truck pull last night," I told her. We were on a shady part of the road riding side by side beneath the pines and the white oaks, with her on Nikki and me on my trusty Buck. Nikki was Mama's old gray mare, a nice, sensible horse who didn't toss up too many surprises.

"What, you thought I was pulling your leg about wanting to go?" she asked.

"Well, you know, sometimes girls _have_ told me a couple things just to impress me," I said. I was playing with her, of course, but she didn't take the bait.

"I'm sure they have. You're a pretty hot commodity, Coby," she said, and I laughed.

"Coby?' I asked skeptically, and she smiled a little.

"Sure, why not? Cody boy. Coby. See there, how good at nicknames I am? Buck likes it, I bet," she said, reaching over to pat the horse's neck. I rolled my eyes but didn't say anything. I couldn't remember anybody ever calling me Coby before, but all it did was amuse me. Mama used to call me Dock when I was little because I used to like Bugs Bunny cartoons, but that's about it as far as nicknames go. My name's too short to really need one. But I was still buoyed up by that conversation at Autograph Rock, and Lisa could have gotten by with calling me just about anything right then if she'd wanted to.

Words are not my specialty, but the silly nickname made me feel unexpectedly tender towards her, and when we came to a big mimosa tree beside the wooden bridge over Cadron Creek, I saw my chance to do something.

"Are you ready for lunch, yet?" I asked casually, like it didn't matter too much.

"I'm fine, but we can go ahead and eat if you want to," she said.

"Sure. This looks like a good place," I said, nodding at the tree.

Mimosas are also called Formosa trees sometimes, a name which means simply _the beautiful tree,_ and that they surely are. Not only that, but Cadron Creek is named after the brook of the same name that flows near the Garden of Gethsemane, which they say is one of the most beautiful places in Jerusalem. So you might say I picked a sweet and symbolic kind of spot, if you care for things like that. I sure do. I love the way there's so much depth and richness to the world beyond what the eye first sees, if you only take the time to learn about it. A man could live his whole life awash in wonders, if he only knew.

So we got down and sat in the shade of the sweet-smelling blossoms, eating our sandwiches and drinking Dr. Pepper, and while we were sitting there I gathered up a double handful of mimosa blooms and started weaving them together. It was more or less like braiding a rope, and I'd had lots of practice with that. I picked a blade of rye grass from the edge of the water and chewed on it absently while I worked, like I usually do when I need to concentrate. Otherwise I tend to stick my tongue out without thinking, and that's undignified, you know.

"What are you doing?" she asked, watching me.

"Wait and see," I told her, and with that she had to be content. It took me a few minutes because the stems were so small, and I have to admit it was a bit lopsided, but when I was done I had a pink-and-white crown of fragrant powder puffs. I had her lean over, and I carefully pulled a few strands of her hair through to hold it in place.

"There. Now you look like a princess from back when the world was young," I said. It was my best stab at poetry, such as it was.

"I feel silly," she said, but I could tell from her eyes that she really didn't. She leaned over and kissed me then, one of those happy, innocent kisses with nothing behind it but simple love, and I felt warm from the tips of my toes to the ends of my ears.

I took a drink of Dr. Pepper and kissed her in return, my mouth still full of soda pop, cold and sweet. She always laughs when I do that and calls them monkey kisses, from the way monkeys feed each other with a mouthful of food or water. She tells me Dr. Pepper is fine, but if I ever try it with a mouthful of chewed-up broccoli, she swears she'll slap me.

She didn't take off the mimosa crown when we left the bridge, even though it soon wilted from the sun when we came back through open spots.

We passed in front of Marcus's house and came to the big aluminum gate where the lakeside track emerged onto the main haul road beside the peach orchard, and I had to get down so I could open it for us. Lisa rode through while I led Buck by the bridle so I could fasten the gate behind us again and keep the cows out of the peaches.

Then we headed back toward the barn. The haul road passes over the top of the earth dam that forms the lake, and below it the land drops off to the flats near the bayou; cow pasture down there, mostly. The herd was grazing under the cypress trees that grew near the bayou, too far away to see them very well. I rambled on for a while about how black cows were worth more money than any other color because of the fad for Black Angus meat, but I noticed she wasn't really paying much attention.

"We've got a gig coming up next weekend in Dallas," I mentioned after a while, changing the subject.

"Really? Where at?" she asked.

"Aw, just another honky-tonk joint, that's all. But we'll make better money than we do around here, that's for sure," I told her.

"Can I come?" she asked, and I glanced at her skeptically.

"You really want to? It's not a very nice place, you know," I reminded her.

"Sure. I think it'll be fun," she said.

So we took her with us, and she was good about helping to load up the sound equipment and such, and she didn't complain when the two of us had to squeeze into the tiny back seat of Cyrus's truck.

The place turned out to be rougher than I hoped; the kind that has chicken wire in front of the stage. That's always a bad sign. But nevertheless, the four of us quickly unpacked and set up the equipment, and Lisa found a stool so she could sit at the end of the bar and watch. I was afraid she'd be bored to tears, honestly, but if she was then she did a good job keeping it to herself.

She looked awfully nice, to be in such a place as that. Marcus used to joke around that all it takes to turn a bar fly into a beauty queen is if she's still got all her teeth, and after some of the women I've seen in places like that, I don't even think he was joking. But Lisa was pretty in a sweet, fresh kind of way; the kind of way that you don't often see in places like that. It worried me a little, and I hoped the guys left her alone.

Things went pretty well for the first couple of hours, but then sure enough a fight started and pretty soon the whole place was engulfed in it. People were throwing beer bottles and food and even handfuls of sawdust, and chicken wire won't stop all those things. I barely had time to stash Grandpa Tommy's Martin behind the drum set before two men came crashing through the chicken wire and knocked me off my stool, and before I knew it all three of us were sucked into the brawl.

I hate bar fights. There's nothing noble or attractive about them; they're ugly and senseless and mean, and people get hurt really badly sometimes, especially if somebody pulls a knife or a gun. Not to mention a lot of expensive equipment can get busted to pieces in the blink of an eye.

Normally I would've stayed up on stage to defend the equipment, but not with Lisa out there in the very thick of things. I could see her crouched down at the end of the bar, trying her best to stay out of the way. So I bulled my way through the melee and hustled her out the back door as fast as I could. That earned me a busted lip from somebody's flying fist in the process, but I've had worse.

"Are you all right?" I asked her as soon as we were safely out in the alley. My mouth was full of blood and I had nothing to wipe it away with, so I turned my head and spit it out on the pavement.

"Yeah, I'm fine," she said. She sounded fairly cool about the whole thing, actually.

"We'll be going home in a few minutes. As soon as the cops get here they'll shut the place down for the night," I told her.

"No doubt. I never knew you spent so much time in saloons," she said, shaking her head.

"I wouldn't, if I had my druthers. But I guess it grows on you after a while," I said dryly, and she actually laughed.

"Yeah, I can see how it would," she agreed.

"That was a joke, Lisa," I said, wondering if maybe she'd hit her head on something before I was able to get her outside.

"I know. Maybe it's being out here with you and the others that I like. Even if all we do is go to a bar fight," she said. I laughed and kissed her for that, forgetting my split lip until too late. A stab of pain reminded me, and I left bright red blood on her mouth, too, like she'd been kissing a vampire. Not a very pretty picture.

"Are _you_ okay?" she asked, trying to see in the dim light.

"Yeah, it's only a busted lip, that's all. No big thing," I said.

"Okay, then," she said, and kissed me very softly right on my lower lip, not even hard enough to hurt.

Marcus and Cyrus came out the back door right about then, grumbling about how somebody had kicked in a speaker. Marcus had a black eye, but it didn't look like Cyrus had any obvious injuries. It could've been a lot worse.

The four of us loaded up the drums and the amp and I fetched my guitar from behind the stage, and then we collected our money from the owner and went home. Lisa actually seemed like she had a good time, hard as that was for me to believe.

She went with us to several other gigs after that, until we all started thinking of her as our semi-official roadie, and marveled that we were big-league enough to have a roadie in the first place. Marcus and Cyrus thought she was awesome, and never failed to tell me so. Marcus joked around about how if we ever broke up then he wanted first chance to pick up the pieces, and Cyrus asked if she had a sister. It was all good-natured fun, of course, but whenever anybody said something like that she always put her hand on my arm or hugged me or some such thing, just to show the whole world she didn't give a fig about anybody except me.

I couldn't help myself. . . I gloried in it. I'd never tasted that kind of love in my whole life even though I'd wished and longed for it ever since I was old enough to know I wanted anything at all. It's all the sweeter, when you're suddenly handed something you wanted that much and always thought you could never have. The more time passed, the more certain I was that I loved her and she really was my one and only; incredibly, unbelievably, right there by my side. But I never said so, because in spite of everything I still kept worrying that it was all too good to be true, and sooner or later the other shoe would drop and everything would fall to pieces.

"Why don't you sing with us sometime, Lisa? We could always use a girl's part, you know," I asked her one day, after we'd finished a gig in Tyler. It was one of the more upscale places we'd been to; a trendy little coffee house named Sufficient Grounds, where the manager served us complimentary espresso and strawberry cheesecake when we took our break.

"Oh, I could never do that," she demurred, although I could tell she was flattered to be asked.

"Sure you could. I bet you could even help me write some song lyrics, if you wanted to. They're just poetry, after all," I suggested.

"Well. . . sure, why not?" she said.

So we sat down and tried it, scribbling verses and musical notations for hours on the front porch at Goliad. I played the tune to see what she thought of it every now and then, and I'd try to sing the words she wrote. Cyrus could have done that part a lot better, of course, but at least she didn't laugh too much.

"So let me hear _you_ sing something, darlin'. I was serious about needing a girl's part," I finally told her.

"You promise you won't laugh?" she asked shyly.

"Cross my heart," I said, and after hesitating another few seconds she started to sing.

Sleep, my love, and peace attend thee,  
All through the night  
Guardian angels God will send thee,  
All through the night. . .

She started out soft and uncertain, but after a while she seemed to forget about that and became more confident. She grasped my hands, and looked into my eyes, and I couldn't have torn myself away even if I'd wanted to.

If you've never seen love in someone's eyes, you might be tempted to think it's only a figure of speech. I'm here to tell you it's not. I saw it that day, and I knew what it was immediately. I was startled, but not unbelieving. I've always heard that the eyes are the windows of the soul, and I guess I never really understood that before. I think now I do.

"That's beautiful," I finally managed to say, and she smiled.

"My mother used to sing it for me when I was little. It's an old Welsh song. Mama's grandmother was from Caerleon, which they say used to be Camelot, where King Arthur lived," she murmured.

"See, I knew you had some interesting stories to tell. Maybe you're secretly a princess after all," I said, and she laughed.

"Maybe to you, Coby," she said, amused.

"Yeah, definitely to me," I said softly.

## Chapter Eleven - Lisa

I was really nervous the first time Cody came to my house. Going to see him at Goliad was one thing, but having him right there on my own turf was nerve-wracking.

He took his hat off when he came indoors and nodded his head when I introduced him to Mama, proper as could be, and I think that impressed her. She couldn't smile very well anymore, but I saw the light in her eyes that meant the same thing. I don't think he ever knew how much that meant to me.

I showed him the vegetable garden and then took him upstairs to show him my room. I think that was probably the hardest part of all. Your personal space is, well, _personal,_ you know. Nobody had ever set foot in there except me and Mama and Jenny. No guys, ever.

Cody didn't know that, of course, and I didn't particularly feel like telling him.

He came inside and glanced around, his eyes pausing briefly on the seven teddy bears on my bed and no doubt noticing how much I liked pink and white things. Then he saw something that interested him.

"What's that about?" he asked curiously, looking at the painting above my desk. It was a portrait of Queen Victoria on her wedding day, with flowers in her hair and a long white dress.

"That's Queen Victoria. Haven't you heard about her?" I asked.

"No, can't say that I have, honestly," he admitted.

"I've always admired her so much. She liked to paint watercolors, you know, and she loved her husband so much that after he died she still had his clothes laid out for supper every night for the rest of her life, and she was buried in her wedding veil," I said. Cody gave me one of his little half-smiles, and I couldn't tell whether he thought the story was silly or sweet.

"She does sound like a beautiful lady," he agreed.

"Oh, she was. She's my hero," I said.

He didn't seem to think the portrait called for any more comment, so I don't actually know what he thought of it himself. Instead, he went over to the bookshelf and ran his finger along a few of the paperbacks. They were mostly my collection of Scarlett Blaze romances, but not all.

He pulled a book from the shelf and I came closer to see what he was looking at. _Tristan and Isolde,_ by Joseph Bédier. One of my favorite stories of all time, even if it was kind of obscure nowadays.

"What's this one about?" he asked, looking at the back cover.

"Oh, surely you've heard _that_ story before, haven't you?" I asked.

"I've heard of Tristan before, but I don't know anything about him," he said.

"Hmm. Well, it's fairly long in the original but I can tell you the gist of it, anyway, if you like," I said.

"Sure," he agreed.

"Okay, then. A long time ago, there was a young man named Tristan, and he was the most handsome and noble of all the knights in Tintagel. Now it so happened that his uncle, the King Mark, had been at war with another kingdom for many years, and at last they made peace by agreeing that King Mark would marry the daughter of his enemy. But since the ocean was wild and the way was treacherous, Mark sent his beloved nephew Tristan to escort the young lady home. The Princess Isolde was unhappy with the idea of leaving her home, and of having to marry an old man like King Mark, but the herbalist of the king's court had given her a drink which would cause the two people who shared it to fall in love forever. It was meant to be a comfort to her, to help her find some happiness in her new life, and she was told to drink it with Mark when she arrived in Tintagel. The Princess had finally given up and accepted her fate, but on the way across the sea she spoke to Tristan often, and fell in love with his brave and noble heart. Therefore she took the potion that was meant for King Mark, and poured it into a golden cup, and asked him to share a drink with her, as people sometimes did in those days. So then he fell in love with the Princess forever, and he could never take back his heart, nor she hers," I said, speaking with what I thought was the proper storytelling flair.

"I bet King Mark didn't like that very much," Cody said sardonically.

"No, I'm afraid things didn't go so well for them. I'm sure it must have been awful, to be always in love with someone you knew you could never have," I said sadly.

"So what finally happened?" Cody asked. He was trying hard to pretend he wasn't interested, but I knew him too well by then.

"People say different things, so I guess it depends on who you choose to believe," I said.

"What do you think happened?" he asked, and I laughed a little.

"I think somehow or other Tristan found a way to be with his princess, and they lived happily ever after, of course," I said, and he smiled.

"I like that story," he said.

"Yeah, me too. It's one of my favorites," I agreed.

I think sometimes Cody has a certain streak of Tristan in his own heart; a love for honor and chivalry, for glorious last stands and victories won against impossible odds in the very jaws of defeat, and yes, even for the kind of love that lasts forever. It's one more thing I love about him.

In fact, the only thing that marred the whole summer from my point of view was that he never said he loved me. I was pretty sure he did, deep down, but he never would _say_ it, and I was too afraid to be the one who said it first.

Oh, I know how I _felt._ I really loved him, or at least I thought I did. Things might have started out as a sweet memory, colored with daydreams and romanticism, but it was way beyond all that, now. He was all I could think about; all I _wanted_ to think about. If I let myself go there, I'd be lost all the time in gooey dreams about fairytale weddings and babies that looked just like Cody, and the kind of happily ever after stuff that hardly ever comes true in real life.

He was my treasure and the very heart of my heart, whether he knew it or not. I wanted to join together with him like two drops of rain on a window glass. I wanted to become one body with two hearts, like Albert and Victoria, like Tristan and Isolde, and a hundred other couples I'd read and dreamed about all my life.

There was nobody I could talk to, though. Jenny would have thought I'd lost my mind from reading too many Scarlett Blaze novels, and Mama couldn't answer me. I had to keep it all to myself, like it or not.

I would have given my left kidney to be able to read Cody's mind right then, but I didn't dare come right out and ask him if he felt the same way about me. Because if he didn't, then my heart was going to break right in two, and nothing would ever be the same. They say the first cut is always the deepest, and you better believe it's the truth, too. Cody was the first one I'd ever felt that way about in my whole life, and it terrified me to even think about the possibility of losing him.

So I dithered and worried and daydreamed and hoped and prayed and generally lived on an emotional roller-coaster of uncertainty for a while. Then came the night when my life changed forever.

It started out like any other day. We went fishing at the gazebo for an hour or two, and I listened to him talk about how he might have to sell off the rest of the cows if it didn't rain soon. He'd got to where he talked to me a little more about things like that than he used to. I could tell how much it worried him, but short of becoming an expert in cattle futures and commodities trading, or learning how to change the weather with a snap of my fingers, I didn't know of anything I could do to help him or to make things better. All I could do was listen if he felt like talking, and hope that it would take his mind off things.

Miss Josie made supper that night as usual, and when the sun started to go down, I thought we'd probably watch TV for a while or do something ordinary like that. But Cody had something else in mind.

"Come on, Lisa; let's go for a walk," he told me, and I was glad to join him. I thought at first he might be taking me to the bunk house for some reason, since that's the way he headed. But no, he went right on past that, around the back side of the lake and over the wooden bridge where the big mimosa tree grew.

"Where are we going?" I finally asked, when he still didn't slow down.

"Just wait; you'll see," he said, with a smile in his voice.

Back behind the orchard and the lake there was the steep sandstone knob of Mount Nebo, which I'd seen from a distance many times but never climbed, and when Cody turned off the main road onto a narrow track that ran sharply uphill, I began to get some idea of where we might be headed.

Nebo is easily the highest point within several miles, and in spite of the cool air I started to get a little sweaty and breathless on the steep slope. We finally came out onto the flat top of the hill, and immediately found ourselves face to face with a cemetery. It had a wrought iron fence around it and tall, massive headstones with lichen growing on them, and three gnarled old cedar trees that looked like they'd been there since dinosaurs walked the earth. The arch over the gate said _Nebo._

I stopped.

"You wanted to bring me to the cemetery?" I asked, staring at it skeptically. As much as I loved Cody, I couldn't help thinking taking me on a date to a graveyard was more than a little creepy.

"No, not _that,"_ he said, laughing.

"Then what?" I asked.

"This," he said, leading me past the cemetery and up onto a little bit higher piece of ground not far past it, at the very summit of the hill. There was a rocky outcrop, more or less flat, and he sat down on top of it, looking west. The sun was just setting in a blaze of glory, golden and red across the rolling landscape. The bare top of the hill left the view wide open, giving us a breathtaking vista.

"It feels like you can see forever from up here, when the weather's nice. I used to climb up here a lot when I was a kid, whenever I wanted to be alone. It always seemed like I had the whole world down there at my feet," he murmured.

"It's beautiful," I agreed.

"It's my most favorite place in the whole world. I thought you might like it up here, since you love landscapes so much. Maybe you could paint it sometime," he said, and I laughed, because that was exactly what I'd been thinking.

"You know me way too well, boy; you're starting to read my mind," I told him, and for a little while we sat in companionable silence. Neither of us was in any special hurry to leave, so we sat there and watched until the light faded away and the stars came out, thick as diamond dust across the sky.

It's been said that love and beauty are linked forever in the soul of man, and that's why boys always yearn after beautiful things, and know not for what they wish, nor why. Maybe that's truer for some than for others, but I think for Cody it's always been so. I may never know for sure, but I believe that sitting there beside me in that high place under a canopy of shining stars is what finally opened his heart.

"I love you, Lisa," he said after a while, in his quiet, offhanded kind of way.

I almost thought I'd misheard him at first, it was so unexpected. Then I decided that yes, he'd really said it.

"I love you too, Cody," I said, very tenderly. I felt like I'd waited forever to hear those words from him for the first time, and to be able to say them myself.

"Do you really? Not just saying it cause I did?" he asked, half jokingly.

His voice was teasing, but I could sense how serious the question was and how desperate he must have felt at that moment to know that I really meant it. I would have felt the same way myself, if the shoe had been on the other foot.

"I love you more than anything in the world, Cody Lee McGrath, my dearest and only one," I told him, and squeezed his hand. I heard him sigh with a mixture of relief and happiness, and then he kissed me.

"I want you to have something, Lisa," he said, taking his Avinger High ring off his finger and slipping it onto mine. It was too big to fit, of course, but I figured I could put tape around the band or maybe wear it on a necklace if I had to.

It might be only his high school ring, but in some ways a ring is always a ring, poignant with symbolism. I knew Cody knew that just as well as I did. It was an implied promise, of a sort, even if it was a very dim and shadowy one. I knew _that_ wasn't lost on him, either. He could be awfully subtle when he wanted to be.

"I'll never take it off," I whispered, and that was another oblique hint of a promise yet to come. I knew it was a kind of game we were playing, and that in some ways it wasn't a game at all. But the Great Romance always feels like a game, even when the end in view is very serious indeed.

We didn't say much on the way back down the hill, and as soon as we got back to the house, I found some tape in the bathroom and thickened the band enough so I could wear his ring without it slipping off. It was gold, with a dark red garnet; Cody's birthstone. On one of the side panels was a cowboy holding the reins of a horse while he knelt in front of a cross, and on the other side was a Texas flag and a Confederate flag with the poles crossed, and below them the caption _Texas Rebel._ And so he was, in so many, many ways, I thought to myself.

I'm sure Miss Josie couldn't have kept from noticing the ring on my finger, but she was the soul of discretion and said nothing at all about it.

## Chapter Twelve - Lisa

Jenny, on the other hand, was another matter.

"How cute," she said, as soon as she saw my ring the next morning. We were supposed to be going to the mall in Longview together, and true to my promise to Cody, I was determined never to take that ring off my finger.

"Yeah, he gave it to me last night," I said, and Jenny rolled her eyes.

"Come on, Lisa; are we still in high school? Don't you think you're a little bit too old to wear a guy's class ring? Much less with _tape_ on it?" she asked, looking at the band in horror.

"I can wear anything I want to. What are you now, anyway, the fashion police? You're just jealous, that's all," I told her.

"Jealous? Of what?" she asked.

"You're jealous because I've got a boyfriend who really loves me and all you ever end up with are dirtballs, that's what," I said. It was harsh, but there was a grain of truth in it, too.

"You think he loves you, huh?" she asked, ignoring the comment.

"I _know_ he does," I said firmly.

"How do you know?" she asked, and in spite of her attitude I thought I detected a note of something deeper in her question, like maybe she really did want to know. Which might make sense, if she was even half as jealous as she seemed to be.

But on the other hand, what could I tell her that she'd believe? A hundred things came to mind, but I knew Jenny could shoot them all down if she wanted to. Any one of them might be a lie, or a hoax, or whatever the case might be.

"It's no one single thing, Jen. I know he loves me because he shows it in all kinds of different ways, even when he thinks I don't notice. Sometimes you just know," I told her, knowing she wouldn't be satisfied with that.

"Yeah, maybe so. We'll see," she said.

"Yup, we sure will," I said firmly.

"Well in the meantime will you at least take that ridiculous thing off your finger? People are laughing," she complained.

"No, I won't. I haven't heard anybody laughing, and honestly I don't care if they do," I said.

"You're impossible," Jen said.

"You better believe it," I said smugly.

But in spite of Jenny's insinuations that I was being juvenile, I never had anybody else laugh or complain about the ring on my finger.

It was just me and Mama for supper that night, so I showed her the ring and for a long time I sat there telling her all about Cody and the things we'd done together and all the hopes and dreams I had for the future. She couldn't answer me, of course, but sitting there talking to her was almost like old times.

I hauled my canvas and brushes up to Mount Nebo to give it a try, and soon took a real liking to the place. It was an awesome spot to paint. Early mornings were best, when it was cooler. There was something about the way the light struck the trees and the lake, and the color of the sky. Sometimes in really dry years, the dust comes up and fills the sky with brilliant colors at sunrise and sunset, so maybe the drought did have one or two minor good points about it, too. It still hadn't rained a drop, and there was no prospect of it anytime soon.

Sometimes Cody would come up there to watch me work when he could get away from his own chores for a while. He said I had a way of capturing the exact way the light fell and making the picture look almost _more_ than real, which of course pleased me to no end.

He was up there with me one morning when I finished a particularly nice pink and gold sunrise scene with a blue, blue sky, and when I put the final touch on my signature he clapped his hands.

"Beautiful work!" he said.

"You think so?" I asked, flattered.

"Absolutely," he agreed.

"Then it's yours, baby. My first commission," I said, laughing self-consciously.

"That's perfect. I'll get Marcus to make a frame for it and then we'll put it up in the house somewhere," he said.

"It's nowhere near good enough for _that,"_ I objected.

"You're right, it's better," he said, and I could have kissed him for saying it. In fact I _did_ kiss him, but not too lingeringly.

"Well, I guess I'm done up here for today. Want to help me take all this stuff back down?" I asked.

"Sure," he agreed. We gathered up the canvas and the paints and all the other stuff, and slowly made our way towards the path. But when we got to the cemetery I stopped.

"Your dad is buried up here, isn't he?" I asked, glancing at the stones.

"Yeah, back there in the corner," he agreed.

"Can we see his grave?" I said. It was partly just an impulse, for no particular reason that I knew of, but I'd also been thinking about painting a scene with those magnificent cedar trees, and I wanted to walk around the cemetery a little bit and see where I could get the best view of them.

"Uh. . . sure, I guess," Cody agreed dubiously, setting down the canvas. He opened the wrought iron gate and led me way back to a double headstone of pink Texas granite, with the name _Blake McGrath_ on one side and _Josie Grey_ on the other, and below them this epigram:

Many waters cannot quench love,

Neither can the floods drown it.

I noticed there were fresh yellow roses on Blake's side of the grave, and wondered how they'd gotten there.

"Mama brings them up here, every Sunday afternoon," Cody said quietly, watching where my eyes had rested.

"What happened to him, anyway?" I asked, unsure what to say in the face of such steadfast devotion. _Love_ seemed almost too tepid a word for it. Cody had already told me how she felt about him, of course, but I guess seeing it in person makes a lot bigger impression than just hearing about it.

"He drowned. We went camping on the Brazos River one spring at Possum Kingdom, because he always liked to fish for rainbow trout below the dam out there. Anyway, the water level was high and some kids were out messing around in the edge of the river even though you're not supposed to do that because of the undertow. A girl got swept away, and he went in after her. Never made it out," Cody said.

"What about the girl?" I asked.

"Yeah, she made it. We think Daddy might have hit his head on a rock and that's what kept him from swimming, but nobody knows for sure. It was a pretty bad scene, I hear, but they didn't let me see that part, thankfully," he said softly, running his hand along the top of the stone.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"It's all right. Mama always says he died the way he would have wanted to, saving somebody else, and that now he's safe in the arms of God. I know that's why she picked that verse on here, though," he said.

"The one about many waters?" I asked.

"Yeah. . . because he drowned in the river, you know. That verse was her way of promising him one last time that she'd love him forever, no matter what. So she tells me, anyway," he said.

When I thought about the unswerving way that Miss Josie had kept that promise for all those years, it was enough to bring tears to my eyes.

"That's a beautiful story," I said.

"Yeah. . . I always thought so, too," he admitted.

"I don't know how it keeps from breaking her heart," I said.

"Sometimes I think it still does. You know that song she always likes to sing?" he asked.

" _Leaning on the Everlasting Arms?"_ I asked.

"Yeah, that one. Whenever you hear her singing that, she's thinking about him," he said.

"How do you know that?" I asked.

"Because that's what the name of the river means. _Brazos de Dios,_ the Arms of God. She says things like that are never a coincidence, and part of the reason why he died in that particular place was to always remind her that God is love and would never forsake either one of them, even when something terrible happens. She says whenever she thinks of that, it reminds her that everything happens for a reason. So she's loved that song ever since, even though it still makes her cry now and then," he said.

I wondered if I could have had the courage to see things the way Miss Josie did, if Cody had been the one who drowned on a fishing trip and left me a widow at the age of twenty-five with a young child to raise and a ranch to manage all on my own. I honestly didn't know the answer.

All this talk about death and tragedy reminded me uneasily of all that stuff Cody believed about having a curse on his family, and I felt a chill in the pit of my stomach. Yeah, I know I said I'd never let it matter, and to be honest it was easy to blow it off as an old wives' tale most of the time, but standing there in front of Blake McGrath's grave and hearing that story about how he died. . . it suddenly made the whole thing seem a lot more credible.

"So who all else is buried up here?" I asked, not liking the subject anymore.

"Oh, lots of people. My grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, you name it. All family, though," he said.

"What's the oldest one?" I asked.

"Um. . . My Grandpa Reuben is buried up here. You remember him, don't you; the one who fought at Goliad and first settled here? His stone's over here," Cody said, walking across to another part of the cemetery. I couldn't help noticing how young so many of the people were when they died, and that made me even more uneasy. Try visiting a cemetery chock full of twenty-somethings and see how it makes _you_ feel. I guarantee you won't like it.

The headstone turned out to be another double one, with _Reuben McGrath_ on one side and _Hannah Trewick_ on the other. It was marble instead of granite, though, and in the middle between the two halves was a tapering column about four feet high, with a quartz crystal about the size of a peach pit cemented on the very tip of it like a diamond. It was clear and perfect, with no cracks or inclusions, and someone had polished it so the facets were clean and smooth as a jewel.

"Where'd _that_ come from?" I asked, staring at it.

"It's cool, huh? It was Grandma Hannah's. She used to wear it as a brooch, or so I've heard, and she loved it so much she had it put up here on her tombstone. I tried to pull it loose a few times when I was little, because it was so bright and shiny," he said.

"He sure was a lot older than her," I commented, reading the dates on the stone. Reuben was almost thirty years older than his wife.

"Yeah, people did that kind of stuff back then, I guess. I don't think she got along with her family very well, so maybe that was part of it," he shrugged.

"Was Reuben really the only one who survived at Goliad?" I asked, nodding at the monument. I knew Cody wouldn't be able to resist an invitation like that.

"Oh, no, he wasn't the _only_ one," he quickly corrected me, and then he was off to the races.

So I listened while he waxed enthusiastic about Reuben McGrath's adventures in the Texas Revolution and elsewhere, with a smile on my face. Who ever knew that a visit to a cemetery could be so educational?

We did lots of other things, of course. We spent evenings together on the beach at the end of the road, sometimes with Marcus and Cyrus, and sometimes just the two of us. There were several big sycamore trees that leaned way out over the water, filling the air with their strong scent. The boys had nailed little pieces of plank all the way up the biggest trunk to make a ladder to reach the top, and once you got all the way up there, you were nearly thirty feet over the coffee-brown water of the bayou.

Me and Cody jumped off that tree more times than I could count, hitting the water so hard it stung the bottoms of our bare feet. It was a deep enough hole that we didn't have to worry about hitting the bottom, and we'd come up gasping and sputtering after what seemed like ten years down under. Sometimes he'd kiss me right there in the water, still too blurry-eyed to see a thing. I loved it when he did that.

Other times, we'd light a bonfire on the sand and he'd play guitar while we sat on the tailgate till one o'clock in the morning. Cody could play almost anything, I think, and sometimes did. Everything from _Lily of the Valley_ (his favorite hymn) to old Buddy Holly songs, and everything imaginable in between. He particularly liked the ones that took a lot of fast chord changes like _I Fought the Law,_ I guess so he could show off a little.

I remember one night he sang me Jake Owen's _Barefoot Blue Jean Night,_ a wild song about sitting barefoot on the riverbank to watch pretty auburn-headed girls drinking iced tea with their ruby red lips, among other things, and that was close enough to describing _me_ that I laughed and turned a little red.

I think those nights at the river are some of my sweetest memories, actually, full of music and warm kisses and talks that went on for hours. Every time I catch the scent of a sycamore tree, that's always what I think of.

We gradually formed a habit of going to the Dairy Dip for lunch every Saturday afternoon, and before long the corner booth was always "ours" whenever we went there. One day when the place was empty and there was nobody to see, Cody slipped out his pocketknife and quickly carved our initials into the surface of the table.

"What are you _doing,_ you nut?" I asked, watching him in mixed horror and amusement and glancing around nervously. If word ever got back to old Mrs. Gillespie, I'd probably get a good cussing at best and maybe even fired.

"Hush. Nobody's looking," he told me, as he finished the last letter. He carved them deep, too; as long as that table stayed in the Dairy Dip, there was no way those initials were going anywhere either.

Whatever my objections to his vandalism might have been, I relaxed when he was finished with it and finally even laughed.

"You're truly crazy, you know that?" I asked him.

"Yeah, I know, but you love me anyway, don't you?" he asked.

"Yup. Can't help myself," I agreed.

I was so happy that summer I think I could have floated on air. I had the man of my dreams and everything (well, almost) that I'd ever wanted. Yeah, there might have been some clouds on the horizon, but they were faint and far away.

Things were sweeter than honeysuckle dew, for a little while.

## Chapter Thirteen - Cody

On a night in late July, I dreamed again for the first time in weeks.

This time was nothing like the crystal cave I saw before. I saw a pitiless desert scene, harsh and bright, and a white silver plain writhing with copperhead snakes. One of them was larger than the rest and devoured the smaller ones until none were left. Then it looked at me with glittering eyes and would have devoured me too, but in my hand was a shining star which held it back.

The next morning I told Lisa about it.

"I had another dream last night," I said.

"A true one?" she asked.

"I think so. It was weird, but then I guess they always are," I said.

"So tell me about it," she said.

"It was horrible. There was a sandy desert full of copperheads, and one of them ate all the rest and then tried to eat me, but it couldn't because I had a star in my hand. Then I woke up," I said.

"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked.

"I'm not sure, but I know who we can ask," I said.

"Who's that?" she asked.

"His name's Brandon Stone; he lives over there in Ravanna," I said.

"Brandon _Stone?"_ she asked.

"That's his name. I wondered if he was some kin of yours, but I didn't think to ask," I said.

"I don't know of anybody with that name, but you never can tell. My father had more girlfriends than Carter's got liver pills. He might even be my brother for all I know," she said, and I was sure I detected an edge to her voice which wasn't usually there. Not that I could blame her, if that's how things had been.

"You don't have to go, if you don't want to," I said gently, and she sighed.

"Yeah, I know. But I might as well bite the bullet. Mama always told me not to be a mouse," she said.

"All right, then. We'll go see him tomorrow," I said.

So that's what we did, and I don't think Brandon expected to see me again so soon. But at least he didn't stick a shotgun in my face this time when we showed up.

He was still wearing those same dirty overalls he'd had on the last time. He was sitting on a cypress log next to one of those decrepit old wrecks, doing something up under the fender well with a wrench. I couldn't help thinking he was crazy if he thought he'd ever get any of those vehicles running again, but I kept my opinion to myself.

He set down his wrench on the log and watched me come closer, nodding when I got within earshot. I did notice that he smelled a little nicer than before, so maybe he'd had a bath since we last met.

"Cody," he said, a simple acknowledgement and no more. He didn't get up to shake hands or even wave at Lisa, still waiting in the truck.

"Brandon, I need your help again," I said.

"Yeah, I'm sure you do. You wouldn't be here if you didn't. Spill it," he said.

From then on out the ritual went pretty much like before. I told him my dream, he prayed, and then told me what it meant.

"This is what God is saying to you. The snake is the same person as the skeleton you dreamed about before. A deceitful enemy who will destroy you if possible. You'll meet on a white silver plain, empty and lifeless, where your enemy has already destroyed many others before you. Be faithful and true, and your enemy will flee from you for a while," he said.

"But-" I said.

"That's all I know," Brandon interrupted, waving his hand dismissively.

"Thanks," I said, not sure what else to say.

"Uh-huh," Brandon said, picking up his wrench and going back to whatever he was doing to that old truck. I left him some money on the end of his log, held down with a rusty brake rotor to keep it from blowing away. I don't even know how much it was; whatever was left over in my pocket.

"Not a very friendly kid, is he?" Lisa said while we bumped and splashed our way back out of Brandon's driveway.

"Oh, he was an angel compared to how things went the last time I was here. I thought he was fixing to blow my head off with a twelve-gauge," I said.

"Really?" she asked.

"Yeah, really. He's tough as nails," I said.

"What's a kid that young doing living out here in the middle of nowhere like this, though? Where are his parents?" she asked.

"He said they were gone. As to what he's doing here, I couldn't tell you. He seems happy, though," I said. Well, maybe _happy_ was a bit much; Brandon never seemed exactly _happy,_ but satisfied anyway.

"So what did he tell you?" she asked.

"He said the snake was a deceitful enemy that I'll meet on a white silver plain where many others have been destroyed before me, but if I'm faithful and true then he'll flee from me for a while," I said, shaking my head.

"Well, that shouldn't be too hard for you," she said.

"So you think. I just wish he could speak plainly, you know, instead of giving me all these puzzles and riddles," I said.

"I'm sure he gives you what you need to hear," she said, and I guess maybe she had a point about that. Sometimes the simplest answer is not the most useful one, even if it might seem that way at first.

We got to play at a high school chili supper in Linden that night, which was nice since we didn't have to go far. They only paid us fifty bucks, but at least we did get to eat as much free chili as we wanted. So we played them some country dance music since that's what the kids had asked for, and I even had time to dance a few songs with Lisa myself. Those are my favorite kinds of gigs, I think, even if we don't really make all that much. When the crowd cheers and claps and loves what you're doing, that's really an awesome feeling, you know. It reminds me of why I started playing music in the first place.

We finished up with _Lord Have Mercy on a Country Boy,_ one of those old songs everybody and their hound dog knows the words to, so the kids could sing along and end the whole shebang on a high note, so to speak.

We left the parking lot in pretty high spirits not long after that, happy that things had gone so well. I wish every day could be that good.

But things don't work that way, of course, and if the dreams were to be believed then I knew we had to be drawing near to the end of our happy times, and therefore I should expect some kind of trouble with money pretty soon.

_Oh, joy,_ I thought to myself, wondering how things could possibly get any worse in that respect than they already were.

No doubt I'd find out soon enough.

## Chapter Fourteen - Lisa

It might seem like I already had enough on my mind not to need or want anything else right then.

But somehow I kept thinking about that boy out there in the swamp, and no matter what I did the thought kept nagging at me. I kept wondering who he was and how he got there and I had an almost irresistible urge to go see him and find out all those things.

I've learned that sometimes that's God's way of telling you to do something, so finally I broke down and went.

I wasn't sure if I'd be able to find the place at first. There's a big black oak tree with a red X carved into the bark, right next to the Three State Stone where Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana all come together, and I remembered having to turn off the highway right past that. But then things got tricky, because there are a lot of snaky little gravel roads back in those woods, and not too many landmarks to help you remember the way.

It took me a while, and I made a few wrong turns along the way, but eventually I found the mouth of a certain muddy track winding its way back into a cypress bog. I hesitated, not sure whether Mama's car would make it in there and back without getting stuck. It was a lot lower to the ground that Cody's truck was.

I decided it was better to be safe than sorry, so I parked on the side of the road and walked it, just in case.

A cypress swamp is a surprisingly pretty place, believe it or not. Black water, still as a mirror under the big gray trunks and feathery leaves. It was awfully quiet, except for a bird or two, and the sound of my shoes squelching on the wet ground. It wasn't quite mud, but it wasn't far from it.

The only really bad thing was the mosquitoes. They came out of the trees in clouds, and I stayed pretty busy killing them. I'd probably be covered in bites head to toe by the time I got out of there.

It was only about a fifteen minute walk, even with the bugs and having to pick my way around several mud holes big enough to swallow a cow. But finally I glimpsed the old rusty yellow bus through the cypress trunks, and soon came out onto somewhat firmer ground again.

There didn't seem to be anybody around, but as soon as I got within sight the dogs started barking their heads off. I'm not really afraid of dogs, but I know better than to get too close. So I stopped right where I was and let them bark, waiting to see if anybody would come to see what was going on.

In a minute the door opened, and Brandon stuck his head out. He had his gun with him, I noticed, but when he saw me he set it down.

"Hush, Cut!" he yelled, throwing a stick at one of the dogs. She stopped barking and retreated under the bus, still growling at me now and then. Brandon paid her no mind. He came a step or two closer, then crossed his arms.

"What do you want?" he asked.

I took the chance to really look at him this time; he'd been too far away when I was sitting in the truck. The first thing I noticed was what impossibly blue eyes he had; just like Cody's, actually. He was tall for his age, and broad and heavy-set, but it was all bone and muscle, not fat. He had a snub nose and pale skin like me, and an almost invisible dusting of freckles across his cheekbones like Jenny has. He was even handsome, in a youngish kind of way. He reminded me very much of what my dad might have looked like at that age, even down to the cherry-red hair.

"What do you keep staring at?" he asked.

"I want to know what your father's name is," I told him, just as brusquely. If he wanted to be blunt then so could I. I must have surprised him, because he took a minute to answer me.

"Why?" he finally asked, and since there was no way to sugarcoat it, I didn't try.

"Because I think you're my brother, that's why," I said. It was a leap in the dark, and I wasn't totally sure I was right, but I had a strong enough suspicion to want to know the truth.

"No, I don't have any sisters," he said, shaking his head.

"Your dad was gone a lot when you were little, wasn't he?" I asked.

"Yeah, so?" he said.

"Did he like poetry a lot? Tall and red-headed?" I asked.

"Maybe," he said, still not willing to commit himself.

"Is his name Crush?" I asked, losing patience. I know I always used to think Daddy had the stupidest name on Earth, on a par with those poor unfortunate souls with names like Dusty Rhodes or Virginia Hamm, but now I was perversely glad for it. I was ninety-nine percent sure there couldn't possibly be more than one Crush Stone in the world. One was more than plenty.

"Yeah, so what if it is?" Brandon said.

"That's my dad, too," I told him.

"How do I know you're not lying?" he asked coolly, and that infuriated me.

"Oh, for pity's sake! Why would I lie?" I demanded.

"I don't know; you tell me," he said, not ruffled a bit.

"Look, either believe me or don't. I can't force you," I said.

"Why do you care, anyway?" he asked. He seemed to genuinely want to know, so I reluctantly sat down on one of the logs nearby and tried to think what to tell him. I knew well enough what he meant by asking. What he really meant was why should _he_ care, and that was hard to answer.

"Because I want my brother to be part of my life, that's why. I want us to know each other. I want our kids to be able to play together someday. I want all those things families do," I finally said.

"Why?" he asked.

"Bran, you can keep asking why till the cows come home. All I want is to have my brother back. Is that really so hard to understand?" I asked.

"No, I guess not," he said softly.

"So tell me, how'd you end up _here?"_ I asked him.

"That's a long story," he said, shrugging.

"I've got plenty of time," I said.

"Okay, then, fine. You won't like some of it, though," he said.

"Try me," I said.

"Well, everything was fine till last winter. Then Mama got drunk and hit a tree one night, and they said I couldn't live by myself. Nobody could find Daddy or Brian, and my aunt didn't want me. She said I was too much trouble. So they put me in a shelter for a while till they could find somewhere else to send me, but I hated that place. I kept getting in trouble and they finally said they'd have to lock me up if I didn't settle down. So I got tired of being pushed around and I left one day," he said. Then he hesitated, like he didn't want to go on.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"Yeah, well, things happen. I didn't know where to go at first. I knew I couldn't go home. So I figured I'd have to take care of myself," he said.

"So what did you do?" I asked.

"Whatever I had to. I took things. I went to parking lots and swiped the change out of cars that people left unlocked. I went to grocery stores and ate food and then left without paying for it. Got in a few fights, had to run from the cops a time or two, stuff like that. I headed south cause I figured it'd be warmer in the winter, so I walked and hitchhiked till I got this far, maybe three months ago. That's when I found this old place, and it seemed like a good place to set up camp for a while. Nobody's bothered me since then," he said.

"But how do you live?" I asked.

"I fish and hunt, and sometimes I pick up cans for money. It's hard, but I wouldn't change it. I figure I'll be grown in a few years and then nobody can tell me what to do. Just have to slug it out till then," he said.

"That's brave," I said.

"What else could I do?" he asked, shrugging.

"Nothing. I would have done exactly the same thing," I said, wondering if I would have. I guess you never really know what you'll do until you're tested, but that's one test I truly hope I never have to face.

"So, you still want a brother who's such a screw-up?" he asked.

"Yeah, I do," I said softly.

He got a little teary-eyed then, and I saw the misery and exhaustion in his face; he was still only a kid, after all, under a lot of pressure and stress. Exactly how much pressure and stress I was just now beginning to understand. I didn't try to hold him; guys don't always like that, and I didn't want to make him mad. He wiped his eyes and got himself back together again pretty quickly, and I pretended I hadn't noticed.

"Sorry," he said apologetically.

"It's okay. You know, Bran, I really don't think you should stay here. Especially not in the wintertime," I told him.

"I'll be fine," he said fiercely.

"I'm sure you would, but it'd be a lot harder than it has to be. I don't want you to have to go through that anymore," I said.

"What else would I do?" he asked.

"I bet Cody and Miss Josie would probably let you stay at Goliad, if I asked them. You could work a little bit, and you could even go back to school. You might not think you want to right now, but it'll make life a lot easier later on, I promise," I told him. I was pretty sure what Cody and Josie would say, knowing them as I did. And if they didn't, then I'd find some other solution. Either way, I had no intention of letting him spend the winter out there.

"No. I don't need any help," he said.

"Yes you do, Bran. There's no shame in that. It's not like we're strangers, anyway. You're my brother. That's what family is for," I urged. I could tell how much he hated the idea, but his face softened a little. Finally, reluctantly, he met my eyes.

"I'll think about it," he said at last. I could tell that was the best I'd wring out of him that day, so I let it be. He was stubborn as a boot, whatever else he might be.

"All right, then. Think about it. In the meantime I want you to keep this," I said, handing him my phone number on a piece of paper. I would have bought him a phone, but of course there was no way for him to keep the battery charged out there.

"What's that for?" he asked.

"If you decide you want to give it a try, call me and I'll come get you. Or if anything goes wrong, you know. I don't want you out here with no way to reach anybody," I said.

"Thanks," he said.

"I'll come check on you now and then, either way," I said. He nodded.

I gave him a hug and a kiss on the cheek before I left, wishing he didn't stink quite so much. I guess it's hard to stay clean when you don't have any running water, but it's still nasty.

I walked back to the car not even paying attention to the mosquitoes and the mud anymore. I hoped Bran would decide to let me help him, after he thought about it for a while. But even if he didn't, I promised myself I'd go check on him as often as I could and make sure he didn't need anything. I had an uneasy feeling that come winter he'd have a harder time than he thought. But I knew better than to try to force him. He'd just run away again if I did that, and then he'd never trust me again. There are times when you have to use the gentle treatment, like it or not. He was like a wild dog that you had to tame down slowly.

I debated with myself about whether to tell Jenny or not. I didn't know what she'd think, and I certainly didn't want her spilling the beans to Mama. It's not that it was Bran's fault what Daddy did, of course, but he looked so much like him I was afraid he'd be a constant reminder to her.

But on the other hand, did I really have the right to keep something like this a secret?

By the time I got back to the car I decided there was no reason to say anything immediately. I could always tell Jenny later, but there was no putting the cat back in the bag once I let it out.

I just hoped I was doing the right thing.

## Epilogue - Cody

Brandon showed up about week later, walking up the dusty driveway in his bare feet and dirty overalls. I don't know how he got here from Ravanna; hitchhiked I guess, and walked the rest of the way. Lisa had already told me what she said to him, so I guessed why he was there even before he said anything.

"Lisa said you might need an extra ranch hand," he said gruffly when he got within earshot. I didn't smile or let on like it was anything unusual for a not-quite-fourteen-year-old kid to ask such a question. If that's the way we needed to play it for a while, then that was fine.

"Yeah, as a matter of fact we do. Are you interested?" I asked casually.

"I might be," he said.

"Well, you'd have to help with the animals and the crops, and do some carpentry and mechanical stuff now and then, and whatever else we need you to do. And go to school and church, of course. But it comes with room and board and fifty bucks a week," I said.

"That's not much," he said, and I almost did laugh then.

"Put in some overtime and you might get a little more," I said.

"I'll take it," he said.

"Good. Glad to have you," I said, and stuck out my hand. He shook it, and that was that.

I took him up to the main house and turned him over to my mother, who gave him the spare room and sent him immediately to take a shower and put on some clean clothes for a change. She already knew all about the situation too, of course.

"Be careful how you talk to him for a while. Supposedly I gave him a job with room and board and fifty dollars a week to help out around here, so make sure you go along with that. Don't baby him," I warned her in a low voice as soon as he was safely out of range.

"Pshaw. I'll make sure he makes himself useful, no worries about that. There's no shortage of things he can do around here to earn his keep. But he's only a kid, and kids need loving, and if he doesn't like that then he'll just have to get used to it," she said.

"I'm sure he will," I agreed, amused, and then hugged her.

Two years ago, Mama took me and Marcus on a trip out west, mostly to visit the Grand Canyon but also anything else nearby. We ended up going to Zion, Bryce Canyon, and Petrified Forest, and a few other places I don't remember the names of, all around southern Utah and northern Arizona.

But even though the Grand Canyon is amazing and Bryce is like nothing you've ever seen before, we all agreed that Zion is the most beautiful. To stand there staring up at the Great White Throne at sunrise is one of those images that will live in my mind forever. When you first see it, you really could almost imagine that God Himself might sit there at the end of days while heaven and earth fled away at the fire of His eyes and all mankind who ever lived stood silently at His feet while the Book of Life is read. Zion is full of places like that.

Those kinds of thoughts are what led me to buy the only souvenir I picked up during the whole trip. It was a solid glass ball about the size of an apple, with a sprig of preserved wildflowers inside and a caption that read _In Beauty be it finished._ Proverbs are notoriously slippery things, of course, but I'll tell you what that one means to me.

There's a thing called magnanimity, or greatness of heart, and to me it's the most beautiful thing that ever there was. It means courage, but it's more than that. It means to cast aside all thought of yourself for the sake of another, like Moses in Gilead or the martyrs who died with a smile on their face. In its own small way it's a reflection of the Lord Jesus at Calvary, and therefore of God, the Light so beautiful that no one who sees it can ever turn away.

That's how I've always thought of it, at least, and that's why I keep that glass ball on my shelf where I can see it whenever I go by. To remind me to love without ceasing. Whatever else I may do with my life, I hope I can live it as a light in the darkness, and that Goliad will always be a place of peace for the lost and a refuge for the hurting. In the beauty of love may life be finished; to the glory of God may all things come to completion. That's my dearest and deepest wish. I don't talk about it much, and God knows I don't always live up to it, but it's still the one thing that I want most of all.

That's why it was never in doubt that we'd give Brandon a place to live, and in my heart of hearts I loved Lisa all the more for asking me. I don't think she ever knew how irresistibly beautiful she seemed at that moment, and how it was all I could do not to sweep her up laughing into my arms and kiss her till she melted. In fact that's exactly what I _did_ do after we finished talking that day, and never in my life has a kiss ever tasted so sweet.

I still don't know for sure what the future holds. There are times when I lie awake at night and wonder how long it'll be till the next catastrophe strikes. I haven't forgotten what Brandon said, and I don't doubt my dreams. I know there's a storm coming, sooner or later. Probably sooner, if I had to guess.

But for now, the one thing I do know is that I'll always have Lisa to stand by my side, and I'm certain that no matter what happens, we'll both be all right as long as we face it together.

And for now, that's all I need to know.

End of Part One

Part Two of Many Waters

These White Silver Plains

## Chapter Fifteen - Cody

The trouble came not long after Brandon arrived, in the exact way he'd warned us it would. On the second day of August I got a letter from Piney State Bank, with the news that no rancher ever wants to hear.

Foreclosure.

Like a lot of farmers and ranchers, we usually took out a business loan every spring, to cover planting and operating costs for the coming year, and then paid it back at harvest time. It's nothing unusual, and most of the time it works out pretty well. But this year, with no harvest to speak of and a huge loss even from the cattle. . . it was bad.

I'd seen trouble coming ever since the rain dried up in March, and I'd been meeting with Howie Jackson off and on for months, trying to work something out to pay the debts we already owed and get us enough capital to try again next spring. For a while it seemed like he might go along with it.

But I guess he must have changed his mind, because the letter politely informed us there was nothing else he could do. The bank couldn't loan us any more cash, not till we paid back at least part of what we owed. And furthermore, if we didn't bring our account current within thirty days, then they'd have no choice but to seize the property and sell it.

That was the straw that broke the camel's back. I think I could have found a way to cope with the drought and all the other things nature had thrown at us, if only the bank had been willing to work with us a little bit longer. But they weren't, and that left us high and dry with nowhere to turn, pretty much. We had no money to plant next year, no money to rebuild the cattle herd, and soon enough not even a place to live. There was no way I could make enough playing music; there just weren't enough gigs out there, and they didn't pay enough.

The only thing I could do was to find another job that paid better money, but I knew it would have to be a really good one if I was to have any hope of collecting enough cash to save the farm, so to speak. I crunched the numbers a dozen times, in every variation that I could think of, and the results always came out the same. It was either find a high-paying job or lose the place. Numbers don't lie, and a job at the gas station or the hardware store wasn't going to cut it.

The thought that I might actually be the one who lost the home-place after all these generations broke my heart and made me feel like a complete failure in life. Oh, I knew it wasn't my fault the weather was bad, honestly I did, but knowing something in your head and feeling it in your heart are two completely different things, I promise you.

I didn't say anything to Lisa yet, not wanting to worry her. But I knew what I had to do and I resolutely started looking around to see what kind of work I could find.

That's when I thought about Alaska.

My cousin Troy was up there working in the oil fields, and he told me they paid really high wages, much better than anything I could find in Texas. That sounded promising, but even better was the timetable. Normally they worked a schedule of two weeks on and two weeks off, but I soon figured out that if I got two jobs and arranged them in such a way that they didn't overlap, then I could work every day and make twice as much money. When I sat down and worked it all out, I figured I could pay off the bank and get everything back on firm footing in a little less than a year. It was almost a miracle.

The thought of working twelve hour shifts every single day for a whole year with never a break was exhausting even to think about, but then again you can handle a lot of things when you know you have to. And I had to, apparently. Troy told me he knew the lady who did the hiring and he could probably put in a good word for me, if I was interested. A week later he called back and said I had a job, if I wanted it. All I had to do was get myself to Anchorage, and the company would take care of everything else.

At first I was thrilled, and my first impulse was to think I could pay for Lisa to come visit me for a few days every month or so. It wasn't an ideal arrangement, but I guess I could have been content with it for a while. But when I found out there was no housing available for anyone but the workers themselves, and not even any motels except during the summer, then my joy started to cloud over.

In fact, I found myself in an impossible fix. Could I really go away for almost a solid year and never see Lisa at all? Even worse, could I truly expect her to wait for me all that time till I could get back? Long distance relationships are notorious for not working out. I think if she ever traded me in for another guy, it'd probably kill me. Go ahead and laugh if you want to, but I don't think I'm joking. She was my one and only, hoped for beyond all hope, and when I told her I loved her that night on Mount Nebo, I gave myself up and bound my heart forever.

I flirted with the thought of telling Troy I couldn't come, after all. But then again I knew what that would mean, too. And if I lost the ranch and found myself broke and soon enough homeless, then what did I have to offer Lisa except my heart and my hands, let alone all my other issues? She might say it was enough; love has a way of making people think that way sometimes. But was it really?

And that wasn't even counting what might happen to Mama and Brandon and Marcus. I had so many people depending on me for so many things.

I wrestled with myself for days, heartsick over having to make any such choice at all. I tried to ask myself what the kindest and most loving thing I could do might be. I reminded myself that sometimes we have to make sacrifices for the ones we love, and sometimes we have to break our own hearts so that theirs can be whole. I prayed, I agonized, I tied myself in endless knots over the subject. I even went up to Mount Nebo to sit beside Daddy's grave and try to imagine what _he_ would have done.

I don't remember my father very well. One of my clearest memories of him is how he used to lay his hands on my head before bedtime and pray over me, that someday I would find both love and peace. But other than his love and the blessing he gave me, I couldn't remember him well enough to find much guidance there. I missed him more right then than I ever had since I was a kid, and I felt more alone than I ever had in my life, I think.

But time was running short, and as much as I dreaded it, I couldn't put off telling Lisa any longer.

I asked her to meet me at the Dairy Dip for lunch the next day, exactly like we'd done a thousand times before. That was nothing unusual, but she could read my moods too well by then. From the second I walked in, she knew something was up.

"What's wrong?" she asked immediately.

"It's nothing," I told her hastily. I wanted to enjoy one last meal with her, if possible. So I pretended everything was fine, even though I was pretty sure she wasn't fooled.

But the weight of what I had to do was killing me inside, and I couldn't even eat my food. Finally I spilled the beans, after she asked me about it for the third time.

"There's something we need to talk about, Lisa," I said, reluctantly.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"Come on, let's go walk down to the park, okay?" I suggested. It was only two blocks away, and at least then we'd be somewhat alone. Things would be hard enough without a room full of witnesses.

She nodded, and after I paid for our uneaten food, we walked down the street to the park together. The park in Ore City isn't much more than a pasture with a pole barn, honestly, but that was all to the good at the moment; it meant we had the place all to ourselves. We sat under a pine tree by the pole barn, holding hands. I wasn't eager to get started, but she finally prodded me again.

"So what is it?" she asked, sounding worried.

"Well, the thing is. . . I think I might have to go away for a while," I said.

"What do you mean?" she asked again.

"Look, I know I haven't talked about it much, but the ranch is in trouble," I said, wishing I'd explained more of this all along instead of having to bring it all up now.

"Because of the drought, you mean?" she asked.

"Yeah, mostly. It's come to a point where there's nothing left to work with. We lost a lot of money on the cows and the crops this year. The bank won't work with us any more. I can't even pay them back what we owe them, much less borrow anything for next spring. So now I'm kind of between a rock and a hard place. I can either go find work somewhere else, or we can lose Goliad. There are no other choices," I said heavily.

"Where would you go?" she asked calmly, like we were discussing the weather. I was amazed she was taking things so well.

"My cousin Troy got me a job as a roughneck up in Alaska, at Prudhoe Bay. It's the only place I know of where I can make enough money to do us any good. They want me up there by Monday," I said.

"How long?" she asked.

"A year, if all goes well. Just till I can make enough to get us out of debt and get the ranch back on solid ground. It shouldn't take longer than that. Long as we get a little rain between now and then," I added. It was a pretty good bet we'd get some good soaking rain when winter came, but if not then I honestly didn't know what I might have to do. I might even end up stuck in Alaska for another year or two.

"So what happens with the ranch while you're gone?" she asked.

"Mama knows what has to be done, and she's got Marcus and Brandon to help her. She can handle everything down here, till I get back home," I said.

"Will you be back to visit, at all?" she asked. We were edging ever closer to the moment I dreaded, but there was nothing to be done about it.

"Maybe at Christmas for a little while if I can swing it, but I'm not sure yet. Other than that, no," I said.

I don't know what I expected her to say to all that, but it certainly wasn't what she said next.

## Chapter Sixteen - Lisa

"Then I'll come with you," I said immediately, not caring at that moment about school, or how Jenny would manage with Mama, or anything else for that matter. But Cody was already shaking his head.

"They won't let you, Lisa. They only provide housing for workers, not family. I already asked," he said. For a second I was comforted that he'd thought to ask, but then the full impact of what he was saying hit me.

"But you _can't_ go," I said, anguished.

"I have to. I'm supposed to leave Friday. I just. . . I wanted to let you know," he said, and I knew he was hurting, too. I could hear it in his voice.

Mama always used to tell me not to fall to pieces when something bad happens. She said it never helps and it'll just make things harder in the long run. However tempting it was, I knew I couldn't let it happen. I needed to pull things together and be strong, for me and Cody both.

"Well, I guess we can slug it out for a year if we have to. We can talk on the phone, and write letters maybe. It really stinks, but we'll be okay," I finally said, resigned.

"I'm not so sure about that," he said, and my heart froze inside my chest.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"I mean if you found somebody else in the meantime while I'm gone, I wouldn't hold it against you," he clarified, scuffing his boot on the dirt in that way he always did when he was uncomfortable.

"No. Don't you _ever_ think like that. I don't care if you have to be gone for a year. I wouldn't even care if it was _ten_ years. Nobody could _ever_ take your place," I said fiercely, desperate to make him see.

"You say that now. But what about six months down the road, when we haven't seen each other for all that time and you meet somebody else you like?" he asked. That stung, and I felt tears begin to well up in my eyes.

"I never would!" I declared hotly.

"It happens all the time, Lisa. You know that as well as I do," he pointed out, and the fact that I knew he was partly right only made it worse.

"Cody. . . don't you love me?" I asked. It had the expected result; he immediately put his arms around me and held me tight.

"More than anything," he said, kissing the top of my head.

"Then how could you even think such a thing?" I asked, muffled against his chest.

He was silent for a minute.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean for it to sound cruel. I only meant-" he began, but I cut him off.

"Yeah, I know what you meant. You thought you were being all noble and gallant and self-sacrificing. But that's not how it works. We stick together, no matter what," I said.

"Really?" he finally asked, like he still didn't quite believe it.

"Yeah, really," I promised, wiping my eyes on his shirt but not letting go of him.

"I don't deserve you," he said softly, and I hugged him a little tighter.

"Well, you're stuck with me anyway, bubba. So you better get used to it," I said, through the last of my tears. He kissed me again, and I think he wasn't quite sure what to say. He finally sighed.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Nothing. Just thinking how much I'm gonna miss you, that's all," he said.

"Me too," I agreed.

"Maybe I'll get to come home at Christmas. I sure do hope so," he said.

"We'll be all right, somehow or other," I said with conviction.

He still seemed doubtful, but he didn't say anything else.

* * * * * * *

I cried when he left, of course, even though I told myself a dozen times I wouldn't.

I rode home from the airport with Miss Josie in silence, too miserable to talk much. I glanced at myself in the mirror when I got home and realized I looked awful from crying, but I didn't care. I washed my face and brushed my hair so maybe Jenny wouldn't notice the condition I was in, and then lay down on my bed to stare bleakly at the ceiling, hugging the biggest bear I could find. However much I might promise that even ten years apart wouldn't matter, it was still hard.

I thought about lots of things, the next few days. I thought about going after him to Alaska, in spite of the rules against it. I thought about ways to get money so he could come back home sooner. I thought about all kinds of crazy plans. I even thought about trying to get a job with the oil company myself. One by one I realized how impossible and hopeless they all were. Leaving Mama with no one to take care of her except Jenny would be unforgivable, and as for money, well, I'm no trust-fund girl, that's for sure.

I finally came to the conclusion that all I could do was hunker down and wait it out till he came back home next summer, no matter how hard that might be. I meant what I said when I told him he was my one and only, and I wasn't going to give him up no matter what it might cost me.

I knew he was right about how people tended to get wandering eyes after a while, when they were apart for so long. That was no lie. I was determined never even to look at another man, but I guess somewhere in the back of my mind I couldn't help wondering what if _Cody_ was the one who found someone else? What if he met some hot little chick up there in Alaska and decided he didn't want me anymore, and I ended up waiting for him for nothing? It wasn't like he wouldn't have his pick of them, if he wanted to. I could see it happening in my mind's eye, clear and sharp as on a movie screen.

The mere thought of Cody being with some other girl brought up a red-hot surge of loss and grief, and fresh tears spilled out to soak my pillowcase. I told myself to get a grip and not to be ridiculous, but that was hard, too.

My year of desolation had started.

## Chapter Seventeen - Cody

I didn't take much with me except some clothes and razors and such, stuffed in an old duffel bag left over from my high school rodeo days.

"Don't lose yourself while you're up there, son. Come back whole," was the last thing Mama said to me before I left, and at the time I nodded, even though I didn't really understand what she was talking about.

Lisa cried, and that upset me, too, but all I could do was hold her for a while and promise her it wouldn't be as long as it seemed. I hoped that was true.

But soon enough I was in the air, and even though the flight was a long one it really didn't seem like very much time at all before we landed in Anchorage, and then Prudhoe Bay. Troy met me at the airport and helped me get settled in or I would have been completely lost, but still, even with him there I felt cold and small and awfully far from home.

I got used to Alaska soon enough, though, or at least as much as anybody ever gets used to a place like that who wasn't born and raised there. It's always cold, always windy, and always lonesome, and I would have added always boring to the list, too. I had nothing to do except work, eat, and sleep, for the most part. I was on the six am to six pm shift, day in and day out with not the slightest variation. No days off, no changes in the schedule, nothing. It was monotonous to say the least.

I had maybe an hour's worth of daylight left after work, and if I wasn't too tired I usually went jogging for a few miles down the Dalton Highway toward Fairbanks. It kept me in shape, and it was more productive than sitting in my room watching television. I knew I'd get my fill of that soon enough anyway, as the days got shorter and colder when winter moved in.

But in the meantime, I kind of enjoyed the solitude out on the tundra. It was already chilly even in late August, but running kept me fairly warm. Now and then I saw a reindeer or a fox, and once in a long while even a vehicle of some kind. But for the most part, I had the road all to myself. The sound of the wind blowing across all those hundreds of miles of emptiness is soothing, in a strange and lonesome kind of way. The land is flatter than western Kansas as far as the eye can see, with not a single tree or even a bush or a rock to break the monotony. Nothing grows except a little bit of brown mossy stuff on the ground, and it's always wet and soggy when it's not frozen.

It's better than town, though. Almost all the buildings in Prudhoe Bay are prefab trailers built on cinderblocks to keep them up off the ground so the heat won't melt the permafrost. There's exactly one store, with prices three or four times what I was used to paying for similar stuff in Texas, a post office, and the living quarters for the workers which now and then moonlighted as motels for the occasional tourist during the summertime. I had my own private room at a place called the Arctic Caribou Inn, which on the inside looked more or less like any other motel room, maybe a little small. But at least I didn't have to share it with anybody. I was one of the lucky ones when it came to my room assignment; a good number of the guys I worked with had to share space with a roommate.

Troy took me up to the coast not long after I got there, to see the Arctic Ocean and do the traditional Polar Bear Plunge, as they call it. I had to strip down to my underwear and go swimming in the ocean for at least ten minutes. I'm game to try most anything at least once, so I gave it a shot. Even though it was still summer, the water was so icy cold it stung like red hot needles and snatched my breath away. I could literally feel it sucking the life out of my body the whole time I was in there. I hurt in all the places where I wasn't numb, and when I came running back out onto the gravelly beach even the wintry air felt warm. I threw a towel around my shoulders as soon as I could grab one, shivering violently and feeling ten times more alive than I ever had before. I relished the feeling, and I could see how people might get to like it; sort of in the same way as the man who kept hitting himself over the head with a hammer because it felt so good when he stopped, I suppose.

Troy took a picture of me when I first came out of the water, freezing and blue and a newbie member of the Polar Bear Club, and I told him he better save it because that was the last time I was ever setting foot in that water ever again. He only laughed and said he knew exactly how I felt.

I usually called Lisa and Mama every night for a few minutes and sometimes Marcus or Cyrus and even Brandon, partly to check on things back home and partly for lack of anything else to do. It got lonely after a while with nobody to talk to, and I was more than a little homesick, if the truth be told. Troy had his own job to do, and since his schedule wasn't the same as mine that meant we didn't see each other near as much as you might think.

About two weeks after I got there, I ran into Layla Martin during my evening run.

Encountering a woman of any kind in Prudhoe Bay is unusual enough; I soon discovered that men outnumbered women by at least ten to one or more. But Layla wasn't just female, she was young and beautiful, too. That's a combination which is almost unheard of on the North Slope.

It was chillier than usual that evening, even for northern Alaska. There was a dusting of snow across the tundra, turning everything cold and white. But the girl was jogging in nothing but a set of gray sweats. She looked vaguely familiar for some reason, but I couldn't think where I might have seen her before. Prudhoe Bay is a small enough place that I might have caught a glimpse of her a dozen times and never paid attention, I suppose. I couldn't help gaping at her a little bit in spite of myself, and I guess she must have noticed. She stopped running when she came even with me, breathing hard and taking a drink from the water bottle she carried.

"A little cold for sweats, don't you think?" I asked, for lack of anything better to say.

"A little late in the day to be headed south, don't you think?" she asked right back, with a smile.

"Yeah, probably. I was just fixing to turn around in a minute, though," I shrugged.

"Yeah? Do you run much? I think you're the only person besides me that I ever saw out here. I'm Layla, by the way," she said.

"Cody," I said.

"Nice to meet you, Cody. You work here, or are you only a tourist?" she asked.

"Yeah, I'm a roughneck," I said.

"You must be new, then," she commented, and I couldn't help thinking that was an odd thing to say. Prudhoe Bay isn't the biggest town on earth, to be sure, but there are still thousands of people who work in those oil fields. There was no way she'd met all of them. But then again, maybe she only meant she hadn't seen me on the highway before; that would make more sense.

"I just got here two weeks ago," I agreed.

"Well, listen. Why don't you come have supper with me? I always like to meet all the new guys that come in, and I think it's steak night at the cafeteria," she said.

"Are you like a welcome committee or something?" I asked, but she only laughed.

"No, honey, I just like to talk, that's all. And I don't meet too many runners, so when I do I'm always hoping it's somebody worth talking to. It can be awful dull out here, you know," she said.

I thought to myself that truer words had never been spoken.

"Sure, why not?" I agreed.

So we did, and I have to admit the sirloin steak was at least as good as anything I've ever had in Texas. Whatever shortcomings it might have as a place to live, Prudhoe Bay definitely has the best food I've ever tasted, bar none. But I guess if you want to run an oil rig hundreds of miles above the Arctic Circle, then probably the least you can do is to make sure you feed your workers well.

Layla was really nice, and I think I smiled more often that evening than I'd done ever since I first got to Alaska.

"So listen. I've been looking for a running partner for a long time and I never could find one. Want to go jogging with me after work? It sure does make things a lot nicer if you've got a buddy, I promise," she asked.

I thought about it for a while, and decided it might do me good.

"Absolutely. That'd be great," I agreed.

"Cool. I'll meet you at six fifteen out there by the mileage sign on the highway. How about that?" she asked.

"Sounds good to me," I said.

So that's what we did, and I can't deny having a partner made my jog a lot more fun. Layla always had something interesting to talk about, and she was the kind of bubbly, happy person that makes you smile to hang out with. When the days got too cold and too short for running (which happened within weeks), we moved indoors to the gym and used the exercise equipment instead.

Things were fine for several weeks, but after a while I couldn't help noticing that Layla was gradually getting a lot friendlier than I liked. She was always touching my arm or patting my back or things like that. Once in a while at the gym she'd make comments about how handsome I was or how nice my muscles looked. It made me a little uneasy, but at the same time I didn't really take it all that seriously, either. Some people are just flirty like that, and nine times out of ten they don't really mean it. And even if she did mean it, there was zero chance it was going anywhere. So I smiled and nodded, not giving her any encouragement but tolerating it in the meantime till she caught the drift that I wasn't interested and gave up.

Everything came to a head one day when I went to the washateria to get some laundry done. I usually did laundry on weekday evenings, when the place was deserted. There's just something about looking at a complete stranger's dirty underwear which is kind of disturbing, you know? So I went when I wasn't likely to have company, and sometimes I took a pen and paper with me to jot down some musical notations to help pass the time while the clothes washed and dried.

I hadn't done much songwriting since I got to Alaska, but that particular day I happened to overhear one of the guys at work humming an old Buck Owens tune. That got me to thinking about home and red-dirt music again, and after work I went to the store to have them order me a cheap guitar. I hadn't wanted to bring Grandpa Tommy's Martin up there, but I didn't want to get out of practice, either.

So I sat there on the hard plastic seat, scribbling some chords and looking forward to when the guitar would arrive in a few days. I'd barely put my second load of clothes in and shut the lid on the washer when Layla walked in, carrying a laundry basket under her arm, with a bottle of liquid detergent balanced on top.

She was dressed for wash day; old t-shirt and sweat pants. Just about the most unglamorous outfit you could possibly imagine, but she was pretty enough to look nice no matter what she had on.

"Hey, Cody," she said, waving at me when she came in.

"Hey, Layla," I said absently, barely looking up from my notebook.

She got her clothes going, and then came to sit down a couple of chairs away from me. She smelled like soap and dryer sheets, but then so did everything else in the place. We chatted about this and that for a while, and eventually I happened to mention Lisa for some reason. Layla got a faraway look in her eyes, and when she spoke again her tone was different.

"Cody, I was thinking about something today," she finally said.

"Yeah? What's that?" I asked.

"Well, you said you wouldn't be going home till next August, right? That's a pretty long time, you know," she pointed out.

"Yeah, I know," I agreed neutrally, not sure I liked this.

"I guess what I'm saying is, you're a real nice man. There's a lot of girls who'd love to get to know you a little better, if you'd give them a chance," she said.

I'm not stupid. I knew what she was hinting at, and I decided it was time to lay down some firm rules about the way things had to be.

"Layla, I know what you're trying to say, here, and I'm flattered, but I'm not looking for anything like that right now. Let's be friends and leave it at that," I said.

"You mean you wouldn't even think about it? Not even just to grab a Coke and talk for a while?" she pressed.

"Nope, 'fraid not," I said, trying to be kind about it.

Then, before I knew it, she was kissing me. A deep, passionate kiss that tasted like warm vanilla. For a split second I was too startled even to think, and then I gently but firmly pushed her away. I was tempted to say something downright nasty at that point since kindness hadn't seemed to cut the mustard, but the harsh words died when I saw the ashen look on her face.

"What's wrong?" I asked instead. She looked like she might faint from terror at any second. I glanced over my shoulder to see if I had a vampire creeping up on me or something else that might explain her weird reaction, but there was nothing there.

And soon as my face was turned, she jumped up and ran from the washateria like it was an Egyptian snake pit.

## Chapter Eighteen - Lisa

Two weeks after Cody left, I got a call from the school to come pick up Brandon for fighting. That was nothing new, unfortunately. The school year had barely started and he'd already been in trouble three times.

He was sitting there in the office with a tight-lipped scowl on his face when I went to pick him up, but I pretended not to notice.

"Here, Lisa, just sign him out and he can come back in a week. Five day suspension," the secretary said. I wordlessly signed the papers and left, wondering what it would take to knock some sense into the kid's hard head. I don't think I was ever that stubborn when I was fourteen; God knows I hope I wasn't. If I was, then I wouldn't have blamed Mama for killing me.

"What happened?" I asked, as soon as we left. I was casual about it, being careful not to raise my voice or seem upset. I'd already learned from past experience that that didn't help.

"Got in a fight," he muttered.

"Yeah, so I heard. Are you all right?" I asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Broke Brayden's nose, though," he said, and I was sure I detected more than a trace of pride in his voice.

"Hmm. That must have really hurt him," I said.

"Maybe. I hope so," he said.

"Why is that? How come y'all got into it anyway?" I asked.

"He was running his mouth, that's all. Talking trash about Lana," he said. I'd been too preoccupied with my own issues lately to pay much attention to Bran's crushes, and it's never been his nature to volunteer much unless you pry it out of him. But I knew Lana was a Russian exchange student who lived with one of the families at church. Just your typical flash-in-the-pan junior high relationship, no doubt; short, sweet, and intense while it lasted. But if he felt compelled to defend her honor then I guessed they must still be together, if you wanted to call it that.

"I see. And do you think breaking his nose will make him change his mind?" I asked gently.

"I don't care if he changes his mind. He can think whatever he wants to. But I bet you he'll learn not to say stuff like that," he said with conviction. I gave up; there are times when you can't reason with somebody, and this was obviously one of those times.

We rode home in silence, and I guess he must have been thinking about what I said. At least _that_ was a definite improvement.

"You're not mad at me?" he asked after a while.

"No, Bran, I'm not mad at you," I said.

"How come?" he asked. Most people wouldn't have asked such a question, but my brother is nothing if not blunt. I wanted to tell him it was because I knew it wouldn't do any good, but that would have been unkind, I guess. So I chose my words carefully.

"Because I know you meant well, by defending her. I just think you could have picked a better way to handle it, that's all," I said.

"Like how?" he asked.

"Well, you know how in chat rooms and stuff there are always people who like to start trouble by saying nasty things?" I asked.

"Yeah, trolls. What about them?" he asked.

"What do you do with people like that?" I asked.

"You block them," he replied promptly, and I mentally sighed. Of course.

"And if you can't do that?" I asked.

"Then you don't pay them any attention and sooner or later they'll go bother somebody else," he said.

"Right. Never feed the trolls. It sounds to me like Brayden is a troll in the real world, and he runs his mouth just like the others do. So handle him exactly the same way," I said.

"You think I should just ignore him?" he asked.

"I think you might be better off. You can't pay attention to what stupid people say or you'll never have time for anything else," I said.

"Maybe," he said, sounding unconvinced.

I left it at that. He could think about it for a while and maybe he'd decide to give it a try or maybe he wouldn't, but that was the best I could do.

Still, there would have to be some consequences put in place, too. I'd have to talk to Miss Josie about that since she'd be the one who mostly had to enforce them, but extra chores would probably be part of it at the very least. I'd probably have to spend most of the week at Goliad to make sure he did them and didn't go anywhere, even though he'd probably drive me crazy talking about how bored he was.

I really don't know what to do with him sometimes, and over the past few weeks I've come to see very clearly why his aunt didn't want to deal with him. I don't agree with her, mind you, but I do understand. He's a handful if ever there was one. I sent him outside to mow the grass when we got to Goliad; that was something to keep him occupied.

Nobody else was there, and I prepared myself to hang around until Miss Josie got back from wherever she'd gone.

Cody rarely calls except during the evenings, but now and then he'll surprise me at lunchtime. Well, lunchtime for him, anyway; it's three hours earlier in Alaska than it is in Texas. But I was happy to hear his ringtone just then.

"Hey, Lisa, what's up?" he asked.

"Nothin' much, just now had to pick up Brandon from school again," I said, letting a little bit of my frustration show.

"Fighting again?" he asked.

"Yeah, he broke another kid's nose for talking trash about this girl he likes," I said, and Cody laughed a little. He really seems to love Brandon and calls him his little scrapper, which doesn't help things at all, I'm quite sure. I guess I should be thankful those two get along so well, but sometimes they both aggravate me to no end.

"It's not funny. He got suspended for five days," I scolded him.

"Yeah, I know it's not funny. I'll talk to him later, okay?" he said.

"You can try. Maybe he'll listen to you. Where are you, anyway?" I asked.

"Fixing to eat some steak, my love," he said, and as usual that melted me. He knew that, and probably did it on purpose for that very reason, but even though I knew all that the words never failed to make me smile.

"Okay, babe, I guess I'll let you eat, then. I'm glad you called, though," I said, and that was that.

I still didn't hear the mower running, so I went outside to check on what Brandon was up to. He was nowhere to be seen, which irritated me. The mower might have been over at the bunk house or something like that, but it still shouldn't have taken him so long to go get it. I was determined to say something to him about it as soon as he showed up again. He was already on thin ice. But when he still didn't show up for fifteen minutes or so, I decided to go looking for him.

There's a flowing well on the back side of Mount Nebo, where Cadron Creek comes up from underground and flows down to fill the lake. It's always clear and cool, and I suspect that stable source of water is one of the reasons why Reuben McGrath picked this place to homestead. At some point in time, one of the family members had built a rock wall around it to form a pool about thirty feet across. The water spilled out over a low spot in the ledge to flow away down the creek bed like it always had, but on most days the pool itself was smooth as glass and reflected the sky like a mirror. There were a couple of benches in the clearing, and for some reason or other Brandon had loved that place ever since the first time he laid eyes on it. That's where I decided to look for him first.

Sure enough, that's where he was, staring at the water like he might find some wonderful secret there.

"What are you doing, Bran?" I asked, not even trying to hide my annoyance.

"God loves reflections," he said absently, still so intent on the water that I doubt you could have torn his eyes loose with a pry bar. I didn't see anything but clouds and sky.

"What do you mean by that?" I asked, nonplussed. Brandon has his moments like that, when he says things that utterly confuse me and I'm not sure whether he's saying something deep and profound or whether he's lost his mind. Interpreting dreams is one thing; I could accept that as at least semi-normal, if only because I had to. But there are other times when he gets that faraway look in his eyes, like he's seeing something nobody else could ever see, and then he's liable to spout out some weird stuff about how God loves reflections, or something equally bizarre.

"He loves reflections. Hints and images. Things that remind us of something bigger than themselves," he said.

I pondered that for a minute, and finally decided it was probably true. God is indeed fond of things that remind us of something greater than themselves. I've seen it in the way that we love people who remind us of Him, in the way that the moon reflects the sun and the lakes reflect the sky. It's a theme written across the whole face of the world, in letters so large that sometimes we miss them completely.

Which might make an excellent starting point for a sermon, I guess, but I still couldn't fathom why Brandon had said it.

"So what's your point?" I finally asked.

"Nothing," he said.

"All that, to say nothing?" I asked skeptically.

"Well, maybe not nothing. This pool reminds me of something, but I can't remember what it is or why it matters. So I was just thinking out loud, I guess," he said, shrugging.

"I see. Well, you still owe me some mowed grass, kid," I reminded him.

"Yeah, I know. I'll be up there in a minute," he said, and with that I had to be content.

## Chapter Nineteen - Cody

"Hey, Layla! Wait!" I called, running after her.

I barely caught sight of her turning the corner at the end of the hall, and then I was just in time to see the front doors slamming behind her. I ran outside without even stopping to grab a jacket, but by the time I got there she was nowhere to be seen.

I cussed under my breath. It was useless to go searching for her amongst the buildings in the dark. She could be anywhere, and I was already shivering. I kicked the frozen ground in frustration and retreated to the warmth of the building. There hadn't been anyone around to see what happened, so I was able to get back to the washateria without having to explain things to anybody, at least.

Which was good, since I couldn't think of any remotely sensible explanation for it.

Layla's purse and clothes were still sitting on the seat where she'd left them, and at first I thought she'd come back for them in a few minutes.

But time dragged by, and she never showed. By the time my clothes were dried and folded she still hadn't returned, even though at that point it had been over an hour since she left.

I drummed my fingers against the cold steel of the washer, trying to think what to do. I couldn't very well leave the purse unattended, and I didn't feel like staying there to guard it all night either. I finally decided to take it with me; she knew where my room was, and she could go there just as easily as she could go to the lost and found. Maybe that way I'd have a chance to get some answers.

I actually started to worry about her a little bit when she still hadn't showed up by the time I got off work the next day. Yeah, I might have been irritated with her for kissing me, but that didn't mean I wanted her to get chomped by a grizzly bear or freeze to death out on the tundra. I went to her room and got no answer when I knocked on the door, and when I asked around a little bit it turned out nobody could remember seeing her since the day before.

Nobody, that is, until I thought to ask the ticket office at the airport. The man didn't know Layla by name, but like I said there are precious few pretty young women in Prudhoe Bay. A girl matching Layla's description had left that very morning on the first flight to Fairbanks. I didn't doubt it was her, but that only left me even more confused than ever. I started to wonder if she'd lost her mind.

I know it wasn't proper, but I decided that under the circumstances I didn't have much choice but to go through her things and try to find some kind of clue as to what was going on.

With that thought in mind, I went home and quietly dumped her purse out onto my bed, rummaging through it to see if there was anything worth paying attention to. There didn't really seem to be, other than the usual things. Credit cards, lipstick, an expired New Mexico driver's license for Layla Martin, things like that.

Then I noticed an anomaly. The picture on the driver's license was most definitely Layla, but the birth date seemed to be saying she was thirty-two years old. I moved the plastic into the light from the lamp, sure I must have misread the year. But no, there it was, plain as day.

There was absolutely no way the girl I knew was thirty-two years old. Not unless she'd had some incredible plastic surgery in the meantime. She didn't even look twenty. I frowned again and set the license aside, digging deeper into the junk from the bag. But there was nothing else I could find that seemed to shed any light on the mystery.

I stuffed everything back into the purse, keeping only the driver's license. I didn't know what I might need it for, but it was the only proof I had that something weird was going on, even if I didn't have a clue what it was, yet.

That was before I talked to Troy. It was the first chance we'd had to socialize in weeks, and I was glad to see him.

"So what's up, lil cuz?" he asked, sitting next to me at the cafeteria table.

"Not much, really. Somethin' kinda weird happened last week," I said.

"Oh, yeah? What's that?" he asked, shoveling down his steak and mashed potatoes.

"Well, there's this girl named Layla Martin that I met not long after I got here, and she used to run with me down there on the highway after work, you know. But-" I said, and that was as far as I got.

"Bubba, I'm not gettin' in your business or nothin', but you're not, like, _with_ that girl, are you?" Troy interrupted, looking anxious.

"No, but why do you ask?" I asked, curious.

"Oh, nothin', nothin'. Never mind I said anything," he said.

"Yeah, well, you _did_ say something, so now you better tell me," I demanded.

"It's nothin', Cody. Really. I just heard some stuff about that girl, that's all. She's bad news," he admitted reluctantly.

"What are you talking about?" I asked.

"All I know is, she's had a lot of boyfriends, and some way or other they all end up goin' home sick after a while. It's only rumors, you know," he said hastily.

"She really seemed like she had a thing for me," I admitted, hoping that little tidbit might pry some more information out of him.

"Don't, bubba," Troy said, looking dead serious.

"Don't what?" I asked.

"Don't even _think_ about goin' out with that girl. Please promise me you won't," he said.

"You're kinda creeping me out, dude," I said.

"Cody, I used to know one of the boys she went out with. He was younger than you, and healthy as a horse. When he left he looked _bad,_ like an old man. I'm tellin' you, that girl is bad news," he repeated earnestly.

"Well, see, that's the weird thing. I didn't want to go out with her, but I liked her all right as a friend, you know. So I was sitting there in the washateria last week, just talking to her, and she comes right out and kisses me, totally out of the blue. So I push her away, not mean or anything, and she looks at me like she's seen a ghost and runs out of the building so fast I couldn't even catch her to ask what was wrong. Didn't even take her purse with her, and when I asked around a little bit I found out she left town on the first plane she could catch. I don't know what to think," I admitted.

"I think you should thank God she's gone, that's what I think," Troy said solemnly.

"I just wish I knew what was going on, that's all. What's the name of that boy you said you knew, the one that used to go out with Layla who ended up sick? Maybe he might know something," I said, thinking out loud.

"Um. . . Fitch, I think. James Fitch. He was from Memphis, or somewhere close to there. I don't know his number or anything but you might could find him if you dig a little. Give him a call, see what he says," Troy shrugged.

"Yeah, maybe I'll do that," I agreed, and that was that.

It took a little bit of work to find James Fitch's number, mainly because it turned out he was from Memphis, Nebraska, instead of Memphis, Tennessee. But there was no doubt I'd found the right person. I confirmed it with the personnel department at the oil company, and now all that was left was to call him.

I sat beside the phone uneasily, with the number written down on a slip of notebook paper on the table. Then I slowly punched in the buttons, not sure what to say even if I got hold of the man.

"Hello?" the voice on the other end said. He had a strong Midwestern accent, and he sounded awfully old to be the age Troy said he was.

"Hi. Is this James Fitch?" I asked.

"Yes, who's this?" the man said.

"Uh, my name's Cody. I'm Troy Carter's cousin; he said he knew you when you used to work in Prudhoe Bay," I explained.

"Yeah, I remember Troy. What do you need?" James asked. He didn't seem very friendly, but I plunged ahead.

"I need to ask you a few questions about a girl named Layla Martin," I said.

"I suggest you stay as far away from that woman as you can, if you value your life," James Fitch said immediately.

"Why?" I asked.

"Look. I don't know what she did to me, or how she did it. All I can say is that I was nineteen years old when I went to Alaska, and since I got back home the doctors tell me I've got the body of a sixty year old man. My hair's turned gray, and I have to wear glasses when I read. I look like my grandfather, and I feel like him, too. I know it was her that did this. I _know_ it was. But nobody believes me," he said.

"I believe you," I said, and for some reason I really did.

"Do you? Then do yourself a favor and stay away from her," James said bitterly, and hung up. I tried to call back twice, but no matter how many times I let the phone ring, it was never answered again.

The conversation disturbed me, to say the least. I meant it when I said I believed James Fitch's story. I of all people had good reason not to doubt such things, and Troy wasn't the type to get scared over nothing. Quite the opposite, in fact. Evil is very real, and there are times when it can be deceptively beautiful on the surface, like a gorgeous carnivorous flower that will eat you alive if you get too close.

It didn't take too much thought to come to the conclusion that Layla had probably had the same fate in mind for me that she'd already dealt out to all those other young men. It was obviously some kind of sorcery, and in that case it puzzled me why it hadn't worked. By all rights, I should have been on a one-way flight to the nearest nursing home by then, but for some unknown reason it hadn't happened. Maybe that's what freaked her out, if she tried to use her magic on me and it didn't work.

I couldn't figure out what was so special about _me,_ though. Why did I get an exception to the rules, when nobody else did? I was in favor of it, but I sure would have liked to know the reason why.

The thing that really scared me was that I'd never suspected a thing, and I _should_ have. It had all been right there in my dream, plain as day in hindsight. I met her on a white silver plain (that is, the snow-covered tundra), she was beautiful and deceptive, she'd destroyed many others before me, and she'd asked me to do something I knew was wrong (that is, go out with her behind Lisa's back). I hadn't done it, and then she'd run away from me. It all fit the dream, right down to the last jot and tittle, and I'd been too thick-headed even to recognize the signs because a pretty girl wasn't what I expected.

But as soon as I figured all _that_ out, I remembered that Lisa was also supposed to have an encounter with this same evil person, and hers might not turn out so well as mine did.

It was already evening by then, so I called her immediately to let her know who to watch out for. Her cell phone wouldn't ring, but I finally got Jenny to answer the house phone.

"Where's Lisa?" I asked instantly.

"Oh, she went to see a movie. She probably won't be back till late," Jenny said.

"She did?" I asked, frowning. It seemed like an odd thing for her to do, if only because she would have known it would cause us to miss our nightly phone call. But it would've sounded vain to say _that,_ of course.

"Well. . . .listen. Would you tell her to call me whenever she gets home? I don't care if it's late or if she wakes me up. It's kind of important," I said. I was reluctant to say much more than that to Jenny.

"Sure thing, sugar," Jenny said.

The only good thing about the whole situation was that Layla had completely disappeared from Prudhoe Bay. If nothing else, then at least she wouldn't be stalking my friends and co-workers anymore. I didn't doubt she'd probably turn up soon enough in some other obscure place and start working her evil there instead; people like that almost always do. But I was blessed if I could think of a single thing to do about that. The world is a very big haystack, to find a single person in. Layla Martin might not even be her real name for all I knew, and unless she was an idiot then the address on the driver's license was almost certainly bogus, too.

I thought seriously about quitting my job to go home and defend Lisa. But then again, I knew what the consequences would be if I did that, not just for me but for her and everybody else, too.

There was Matthieu Doucet, of course; he'd warned me about this very type of situation and specifically offered to help. But he was several hours away from where the action would be if Layla showed up, so that didn't seem like such an ideal solution, either. Besides the fact that I didn't know him from Adam and he'd told me with his own mouth to be careful about strangers.

I finally decided this was a time when all I could do was depend on Marcus to fill in for me and make sure everybody was protected. He was close, and I knew I could trust him. I didn't like having to lean on him so hard, but under the circumstances I didn't have much choice. Sometimes every option you've got is a bad one and all you can do is pick the one which is least awful.

## Chapter Twenty - Lisa

I spent a lot of time at Goliad during those first few weeks after Cody left. Hard as it was to be apart from him for so long, it made me feel a little bit better to be near the people and the places that he loved. I took to stopping by after work when I could, and sometimes went to the cowboy church with them on Sundays. Marcus and Cyrus still played the music service even without Cody, and I'd usually sit with Miss Josie on our regular hay-bale on the third row. Sometimes Brandon was with us and sometimes he sat with Lana and her host-family. She was short and slight, with longish brown hair and not much of an accent, but I can't say that we ever talked all that much.

Some folks like their hymns, so Marcus and Cyrus always played a few of those every Sunday, and it so happened that one morning they got a request for _Unclouded Day._ Nothing particularly unusual about that. But after a while, I noticed that Bran was crying, and that shocked me. I would have had an easier time believing the government is run by lizard people than that Brandon Stone could cry in public. Let alone over a song.

"What's wrong?" I asked in a low voice, not wanting to embarrass him.

"Nothing," he said, wiping his eyes and trying to hide his face. He didn't do a very good job of it, of course, and I decided this wasn't the right place to talk about it, whatever it was.

We were close to the back door that led out to the corral, and I grasped his hand.

"Come outside with me," I said. He didn't seem enthusiastic, but he didn't argue. We both got up and slipped outdoors without too many people noticing that anything was wrong, and once we were out there I sat down with him on the tailgate of Marcus's truck.

"Now what's wrong? Don't tell me nothing, either. You don't cry over nothing. So tell me," I said.

"Nothing," he insisted, wiping his eyes again. I wanted to either cry myself or choke him.

"Bran, I can't help you if you won't talk to me," I pleaded.

"I told you it's nothing," he repeated.

"So why'd it make you cry, then?" I asked. He was calmed down again now, stoic and iron-faced as always. He looked at me, weighing his words.

"You wouldn't understand," he finally said, looking away. And that, apparently, was all I was going to get out of him.

"Well, I love you, kid. Don't you ever forget that," I told him. He nodded, but I couldn't tell what he was thinking.

Miss Josie came outside right about then, looking uncertain.

"Is everything okay?" she asked when she got close enough.

"Yeah, it's all right. He's fine now," I said. Times like that make me wonder just how true that is, and how deep Bran's cuts really go. I worry about him sometimes, especially when he does strange things like that and won't explain. But there's no way to force it out of him, if he won't talk. All I could do was love him and pray for him and keep my fingers crossed that he'd somehow come out of it one of these days.

But things like that were an oddity, and most times we had fun when I was there. Sometimes on Sunday afternoons I helped Miss Josie cut and weed all those beautiful roses, and I soon found out Cody was right about how much she loved to talk about her flowers. She knew more history and folklore about roses than I'd ever dreamed existed in the world. But it was fun to listen to her because she was so enthusiastic about it.

I found myself talking to Marcus a lot more than I used to, also. He reminded me of Cody in a lot of ways; they were the same age, and he wore the same kinds of clothes and had the same deep voice and rough hands. Other than that I don't guess they really look much of anything alike; Marcus has longer hair and paler blue eyes, and he's a good bit taller and stockier, too. Not a bad looking boy, but still, not nearly as handsome as Cody.

We reminisced about the good old days of running all over East Texas to sing at hokey little street fairs and supper clubs till three am, and laughed about some of the things we'd seen along the way. People are funny, sometimes even when they don't mean to be. All that was a thing of the past, at least till Cody got back. Cyrus had talked about maybe finding another guitarist to fill in for a few months, but so far it was nothing but talk.

"So what's the deal with you and Cody, anyway?" Marcus asked me one day. He was brushing the horses and cleaning the tack out in the barn, and I was sitting on an upended water bucket to keep him company. It was mid October by then, and it was the first time he'd ever come right out and asked me about me relationship status.

I immediately remembered all that loose talk over the summer about how he'd like to pick up the pieces if I ever broke up with Cody, and wondered if Jenny was right after all about how you can never really be just friends with a guy.

So I hesitated, choosing my words carefully.

"We're doing pretty good. I miss him a lot, but I figure we'll take it one day at a time," I finally said.

"But you don't want anybody else, right?" he guessed, looking at me keenly. That made me even more uneasy, to tell the truth. I didn't want to get into a clash with Marcus, especially not over something like _that._

"No. He's my one and only," I said firmly. But Marcus seemed not to notice. He just kept brushing Buck's mane, and it was several minutes before he said anything else.

"You know Cody's got some issues, right?" he finally asked, clearing his throat.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Well. . . he thinks he's got a one-way ticket to the boneyard, you know," Marcus said. It sounded unkind, but I couldn't decide if he was being snarky or if he simply had a strange way of putting things.

"Yeah, he told me about the Curse and everything, if that's what you mean," I agreed, deciding to give him the benefit of the doubt for the time being.

"Did you believe him?" he asked offhandedly. That was a hard question to answer, honestly. I still hadn't quite decided what I thought about the Curse yet, and Cody hadn't said a word about it since that night when he first told me. It had been easy to sweep it under the rug and not think about it much, what with everything else we'd been through since then. I frowned, but Marcus seemed to be absolutely serious about the question.

"Do _you_ believe him?" I asked instead, playing it safe.

"Yeah, I really do," he said.

"I still don't know what I think about that," I admitted.

"I didn't believe it at first, but then I got to thinking, you know. He's been right about everything else he ever said. There might be some truth to that, too," Marcus said.

"Maybe. He never said much about it, except that nobody in his family ever makes it past thirty. I don't think he likes to talk about it much, so I haven't pushed him. Life's been too crazy lately to worry about something like that, anyway," I said.

"Well, you know about his Grandpa Reuben, right?" he asked.

"Yeah, a little bit. He named this place and fought at Goliad and all that," I agreed.

"Okay, so you know he was a soldier most of his life, right? He fought down there at Goliad and then later on at Mesilla and Glorieta Pass out in New Mexico during the Civil War," he said.

"Yeah, I know all that. Fought under Baylor, captured a platoon of drunk and dehydrated Yanks who tried to cross the White Sands Desert after filling up their canteens with whiskey instead of water. Cody goes on about that stuff all the time. But what's your point?" I asked.

"Well, they _say_ Reuben picked up that curse from a witch in Mesilla. He killed her son in battle, so she cursed him and said none of his sons would ever live longer than hers did. And ever since then, none of them ever have," he said, sounding very spooky and mysterious.

"Oh, come on, Marcus. Really?" I scoffed. It sounded like a lurid campfire story that kids told to scare each other before they scampered back to hide in their tents.

"That's what I heard. Honest," he said.

"Heard from who? Cody never said anything like that," I said.

"No, it wasn't from Cody. My grandmother told me," he said.

"And how did _she_ know anything about it?" I asked.

"It's a small town, Lisa. People notice things, even if they don't talk much. There's always been a rumor amongst the old folks about a curse on the McGraths. It's nothing new. They'd never say anything to Cody or Miss Josie, of course, not in a million years. But Granny told _me_ about it when she found out I was working here, because she was worried about me. She made me promise never to tell anybody, though," he said.

"You're telling me," I pointed out.

"Anybody at Goliad is what she meant, so I never said anything to Cody about it. I didn't see any point in passing along gossip, anyway. Especially when it's nothing but a little snippet like that which might not even be true. It may only be a wild rumor, for all I know," he said.

"Okay, fine. But you still haven't said what the point is," I reminded him.

"Well, I got to thinking. If Cody's really got this death curse on him, then don't you think we should try to find a way to break it? He's my best friend and I owe him a lot. I'd save him if there was any way I could," he said, and that softened my heart. He loved Cody too, in his own brotherly kind of way, and I could relate to that.

"What did you have in mind?" I asked.

"I thought I might go out there to Mesilla and see what I could dig up. It's a little town, too. Surely if there was ever a real live witch in a place like that, somebody'd remember something, wouldn't they? Or if not that, then maybe there'd be some records of her somewhere, at least. Seems like it'd be worth a try," he said, shrugging.

"I'm not sure Cody would like that idea much," I said, surprising myself. I was actually toying with the thought of running off on a wild goose chase to some dusty little Podunk town in the middle of nowhere, all so I could find out about a witch who might not exist and a Curse I still wasn't even entirely sure I believed in.

"Nope, I can tell you right now, he wouldn't like it at all. He'd think I was either wasting my time and money or maybe even putting myself in danger for his sake, and that wouldn't set well. That's why I'm talking about doing it now, while he's not here," he countered.

"So I'm guessing there's something you want me to do, right?" I asked.

"Well. . . yeah. You never know what you might run into when you're out there on your own like that. It's best to be careful. So I thought I might text you, maybe once an hour, and if I don't then you'll know something's wrong and you'll know exactly where to find me," he said.

"What if you get a dead battery on your phone or something?" I asked.

"I won't let that happen. I'll call you from a pay phone, if I have to. I _won't_ lose touch, no matter what," he said.

I considered all the various things that might go wrong, and finally admitted that it might be a halfway decent plan. If he dropped out of contact then I'd immediately know it was time to call for help. It remained to be seen whether he'd find anything useful or not, of course, but I figured it was worth a shot.

So Marcus went, and we both agreed that it was a secret to be kept strictly between the two of us. No one could know; not Miss Josie, or Cyrus, or anybody else. And most especially and emphatically not Cody.

That was the hardest part, I think. I usually wrote Cody a letter every night, sometimes pouring my heart out for ten or twelve pages when I missed him especially much. Now and then I rose to such lyric heights that it was almost a kind of poetry, and I never considered the fact that all this might be too much for the poor boy. Thankfully it only seemed to leave him faintly bemused, and maybe a little amused. I could read between the lines of his (much shorter) letters well enough to tell what kind of look he must have had on his face while he wrote them. Once in a while he joked about the post office having to deliver his mail with a forklift, but I knew he was only playing with me.

In his first letter he sent me a picture of him standing on a gravelly beach in nothing but his boxer shorts, soaking wet from the ocean. Somehow it never crossed my mind that they might have beaches in Alaska; it's just not the kind of place you normally think of when swimming comes to mind, you know.

He sent me another picture of him sitting at a metal table holding his lifetime membership certificate to the Polar Bear Club, but at least he was smiling in that one even though he looked tired. He never wrote much, but then he'd always been a man of few words.

We talked on the phone for about an hour or so before bed most every night, and I would have talked longer if I could have. But he was usually tired and his phone service wasn't always that great, especially when the weather was bad. I've always heard that letter writing is a dying art, but there are still times even nowadays when it has its special appeal. When I couldn't reach him any other way, then the most ancient method of all was sometimes the best.

But all this back-and-forth did make it awfully hard to keep secrets. Several times I had to bite my tongue to keep from letting something slip, but somehow I managed to keep a lid on it all.

Things were sweet as soda pop, for a little while.

The first hint of trouble came when Marcus stopped answering my texts.

The hourly text plan worked fine for several days. He made it to Las Cruces with no problems, and found a cheap motel right outside of Old Mesilla. He told me there didn't seem to be anything sinister about the place, so he'd been busily digging up tons of interesting folklore ever since; most of it completely irrelevant.

But then he'd found a book of oral histories at the library and come across something really useful for a change. According to the article he read, a lady named Selena Garza had supposedly been an infamous witch in the area during the middle of the nineteenth century. The most interesting tidbit of information about her seemed to be that she'd been present at the Battle of Mesilla in 1861, which was definitely an oddity for a woman in those days. The book didn't say anything about curses, but it did mention that the information had been provided by a certain Miss Layla Latimer, a lady who lived in White Sands, right outside Las Cruces.

Marcus had decided it was worth going to visit Miss Latimer himself, to see if she might know anything else besides what was in the book. He texted me again right before he headed over to the woman's house, and that was the last I ever heard from him.

At first it didn't worry me too much. In spite of what we said, I didn't want to fly off the handle just because he was thirty minutes late texting me. But after several hours of no word, I started to worry. A _lot._ There was no reason I could think of why Marcus wouldn't have been able to get in touch with me within _that_ amount of time, unless he was in serious trouble.

I fought down a rising sense of dread and tried to grasp at straws. I hadn't really expected much from Marcus's expedition except that he'd find out a lot of useless trivia and then come home empty handed after a few days. Now he was missing, and he was depending on _me_ to do something about it.

I still didn't dare tell Cody. I knew him too well; he'd feel like he had to come running home from Alaska to look for Marcus, and I knew exactly what that would mean. He'd lose his job, and then soon enough he'd lose Goliad. Cody was the last person on earth who needed to know.

But who else could I ask for help? I didn't feel like I knew Cyrus well enough to confide in him, and I wasn't even sure if he knew about the Curse in the first place. The only other person I could think of was Miss Josie, and that was hardly any better.

What I needed was a schemer, and as soon as that thought crossed my mind, I knew the perfect person to help me, if she would.

## Chapter Twenty-One - Lisa

"Jenny, I need your help," I said, sitting down on my sister's bed.

"Oh, really? For what?" she asked, looking skeptical.

"I need you to cover for me a few days, while I go look for Marcus," I said.

"What's wrong with Marcus? And why do you care who knows what you're doing?" she asked. I didn't want to tell her anything, but I knew she'd have to have _some_ kind of explanation or she wouldn't lift a finger to help me.

"He went out to New Mexico for a few days, and he was supposed to keep in touch no matter what, and now I haven't heard from him in hours. Something's wrong," I explained, too distracted to come up with any kind of elaborate story.

"Excuse me, did I hear you right? You're worried 'cause you haven't heard from him in _hours?_ What are you, hung up on _him,_ now?" she asked scornfully.

"You don't understand. It was maybe dangerous, what he was doing. That's why we said he'd text me every single hour, unless he was asleep. No matter what he had to do to make it happen. It's been close to four hours, already. I'm telling you, something's wrong," I repeated.

"What's he doing, drug running?" she asked, and that was enough to break my last nerve.

"I don't know why I even bother to talk to you about anything," I said in disgust, getting up to leave the room. Jenny let me get almost to the door before she called me back.

"Hey, sis. . . I'm sorry. I didn't mean that," she finally said, when she saw I really did mean to leave the room. I stopped in the doorway, hesitating, and then finally turned around and came back to the bed.

"Look. This is no stupid little game. It's _serious,_ and if you don't want to help me then just say so and I'll find somebody else who will. I don't have time to mess around with you today," I said.

"Sure, I'll help. Really. Just tell me what you need," she said meekly.

"Okay. This is what I need you to do. If anybody calls or shows up wanting to talk to me or asking where I'm at, then make something up to put them off. Tell them I'm sick, or I'm in the shower, or whatever you want. Just don't let anybody find out that I went to New Mexico, and don't give them any reason to be suspicious. All you have to do is put them off for a while, till I can get back. That's it," I said.

"What about Cody?" she asked.

" _Especially_ not Cody," I said.

"But how long am I supposed to keep this up?" she asked, and I had to think about that for a minute.

"I'll be back in five days. If I can't find Marcus by then, I might as well come on home, anyway," I sighed.

"Why don't you just call the police?" Jen asked.

"Because I don't know if anything's really wrong or not, and I don't want to make a scene, and I don't want Cody to find out. If I can't find him myself then I _will_ call them, but I hope I don't have to," I said.

"Whatever you say," she said.

"And one other thing. The last place Marcus went was to see a woman named Layla Latimer; she lives in White Sands, which is kind of a suburb of Las Cruces. So that's the first place I'll check. If anything happens to me for some reason, call the cops," I said.

For once in her life, Jenny actually looked a little bit worried, which might have been funny if things hadn't been so serious.

"Don't sit there looking like you swallowed a frog. Will you do it or not?" I asked.

"I said I'll do it," she said.

It was a chancy thing whether Mama's old Ford would make it all the way to New Mexico or not. It's an eight hundred mile drive, and that's hard on any vehicle. I had no choice but to try, though. I wasn't old enough to rent a car, and I didn't have a credit card in the first place. But I babied it along, stopping only for gas, and as soon as I got to Las Cruces I found a cheap motel and collapsed into bed absolutely exhausted.

In the morning I slept in until nine, and then got up with the express purpose of going to see the mysterious Layla Latimer. I had to drive across the dry Organ Mountains to get there, and when I reached the top of the pass I found myself looking out across the broad plain of the White Sands Desert, blindingly bright in the sun. It crossed my mind that Reuben McGrath must have walked on the very road where I was driving, all those many years ago. I couldn't help praying my journey would turn out better than his did.

I found Miss Latimer's address easily enough, and for a little while I stood outside on the porch, trying to control my breathing so I wouldn't seem nervous. When I finally thought I could speak in a normal voice, I determinedly knocked on the door.

"Just a minute," came a muffled voice from inside. It sounded remarkably normal, and that reassured me somewhat. A second later the door opened to reveal a young girl who looked to be maybe nineteen or twenty, and I found myself wondering what on earth I'd been so scared of.

"Can I help you?' she asked, with a pleasant smile.

"Uh. . . yes, I think so. I'm looking for a friend of mine who was supposed to come see you yesterday morning. His name's Marcus Cumby, and he was interested in the article about the Battle of Mesilla that you wrote for the historical society a few years ago," I explained, and the girl laughed.

"Oh, yeah, I know who you're talking about. He did stop by, and we talked for a while. Please come in," she said, and so I did. There was a strong smell of burning incense in the house and a few oddities sitting around; a crystal ball on the coffee table and a dark red dyed-rice curtain dividing the living room from the kitchen. Nothing super weird, though. We sat down across from each other with the coffee table between us, and made ourselves comfortable.

"Do you know where Marcus is now?" I asked, disarmed by how helpful and accommodating the girl seemed to be.

"He's still doing his research, as far as I know," she said.

"He is?" I echoed, unsure what that was supposed to mean and why Marcus hadn't contacted me, if that was the case.

"Yeah. He wanted to know about some things the article didn't mention, so I told him I had all kinds of stuff stored at my brother's house," she explained. Which, needless to say, didn't seem to explain much.

"But is that where he is now? Where does your brother live?" I asked.

"Well, before we get into that, let's talk a little more about why you're really here. Then I'm sure we can work something out," she said.

"What are you talking about?" I asked, even more confused.

"Now, Lisa, let's not beat around the bush. People who come here asking the kinds of questions you and Marcus ask always want something which they can't get anywhere else. And I can almost always give it to them. For the right price, of course. So what is it y'all are really after? Like I said, I'm sure we could work something out. I love to make deals," she said, with another bright smile.

I never told her my name. I was absolutely sure of it, and Layla Latimer was definitely beginning to creep me out again. But it was no time to be a mouse.

"Can you break a curse?" I asked boldly.

"It depends. What kind?" she asked, without so much as a blink.

"My boyfriend has a curse on him that he'll die before he's thirty years old. Can you break it?" I asked, and the girl actually laughed.

"Oh, _that_ old thing. You're talking about Cody McGrath, right? I can see why you'd want to keep him around a little longer; he's a sweet chunk of meat," she said, making it sound like he was a juicy steak she couldn't wait to sink her teeth into.

If any other woman had said something like that to me, I would've had some choice words to give her and they wouldn't have been pretty, either. But it was scary how much this girl knew, and I was afraid if I said something nasty she might not deal with me at all.

"Yeah, that's him," I said tightly, ignoring the rest of her words. If Jenny ever taught me anything, it's how to have a thick skin when I need to.

"Well, I have to say that particular curse has been awfully entertaining over the years, but it does seem to have reached the point of diminishing returns. I tell you what; I'm willing to break it," she agreed.

I felt my heart lift, but I was still wary. I hadn't heard the price, yet.

"What's your price?" I asked carefully.

"Hmm, now that's a good question. I think I'd like to see you break up with him. A really nasty scene that makes him feel terrible and ruins his life. Let's see, maybe we could have you hook up with Marcus, too; that's his best friend, I do believe. A little extra betrayal to spice things up a bit. Yes. That's _wonderful._ Let's do it that way," she smiled, looking pleased with herself.

I sat there on the couch with my mouth hung open and eyes wide, utterly at a loss for words.

"Let's not attract flies, my dear. Will you take the deal or not?" she asked, like it was the most reasonable thing in the world.

"You. . . that's. . ." I sputtered, horrified. She seemed to be enjoying the sight.

"Now, if you do decide to take me up on the offer, I'll want you to wear this little hi-def camera on your lapel, of course, so I can see and hear the whole thing when you break up with him. Just make sure you don't block the lens, you know," she said calmly, pulling a small device from her purse and placing it on the coffee table within easy reach.

"Why would you want something like that?" I whispered, staring at the camera like it was a rattlesnake. Layla smiled broadly.

"Oh, my dear. Pain is sweet. It's beautiful, really. The only truly beautiful thing there is. You're asking me to give up a certain amount of it, if I break that curse for you. I'm willing to do it, but only if you give me some other pain to replace it. Something fresh and new and flavorful. Yours, and Cody's, and Marcus's. It's not so hard to understand, is it?" she asked reasonably.

It made a kind of horrifying sense, I suppose. . . if you had the heart of Satan. I realized that up till then I'd never in my life met anyone who was truly evil. And this pretty, fresh-faced girl with her sweet smile and colorful blouse was the stuff that nightmares were made of. Real ones.

"I can't do that," I finally said, gripping the edge of the couch cushions tightly to keep from shaking.

"No? Maybe if I let Marcus go, too? Although I have to admit, he does look pretty tasty himself," she laughed, and that was enough to make me shudder in spite of my grip on the couch. Whatever this devil meant by "tasty" I devoutly didn't want to know. I could think of a dozen possibilities, each one more horrifying than the last.

"How do I know you'll keep your word?" I asked, and she smiled again, seemingly not offended at all.

"Tsk, tsk. I always keep my word. If I didn't, I'd never get any customers, you know," she said reprovingly.

I still couldn't bring myself to agree to such a thing. How could I tell such a horrible lie to all the people I loved? How could I tell my mother? How could I tell Miss Josie? How could I tell Brandon, or Marcus, let alone Cody? Besides the way it affected me, it had the potential to bust up everybody else's lives in all kinds of ways. It could easily end up costing Marcus his job, his best friend, his home, and even his most favorite hobby as the Mustangs' drummer, all at one whack. Miss Josie would think I was no better than trash, and how could I blame her? And then when it came to Cody. . . my heart broke when I thought about how much it would cost _him,_ no matter what happened. I knew him too well. It would wreck every ideal about love that he'd ever believed in.

Which was exactly what Miss Latimer had in mind, no doubt. I looked at the woman with loathing, wondering how it was possible for any human being to be so cruel or so filthy.

"I'll have to talk to Marcus, first," I said, temporizing, and for the first time Layla frowned slightly.

"You don't have much room for negotiation, you know," she reminded me, and then she seemed to have a change of heart.

"But nevertheless, I'm feeling generous this morning. Let's go talk to Marcus, and then you can make up your mind," she said. I doubted whether Layla Latimer ever had a generous impulse in her entire life; most likely she hoped to witness some more grief and heartache out of the deal. Probably mine, when I got a glimpse of whatever she'd done to Marcus.

And so it was. I followed Layla's little brown Subaru wagon back up into the mountains again, until we arrived at a fancy mobile home hidden away in a dusty and very secluded valley surrounded by rugged peaks.

I killed my engine, not wanting to get out. But I was the one who'd asked to go there, after all, so I nerved myself and opened the door.

Layla was waiting for me at the door.

"Hurry up, slowpoke. I've got things to do, you know," she said, tapping her watch.

She led me to one of the back bedrooms, and my hand flew to my mouth when I saw Marcus hanging from the ceiling by his wrists. He looked up when the door opened, his eyes full of pain, and his face clouded over with fresh misery when he recognized me. He probably thought I was Layla's next captive. My tongue stuck in my throat, and Layla herself seemed to be enjoying the sight of all this horror like a cool drink on a hot day.

"Cut him down!" I demanded, when I could find the strength to speak.

"Certainly," she agreed, and slashed the rope that held Marcus to the ceiling. She did nothing to break his fall, though, and Marcus crashed to the floor in a heap, groaning. I ran to him and threw my arms around his body, trying to comfort him.

"We're going home, Marcus. Get up if you can," I whispered in his ear, almost in tears. Only the thought of how much Layla would enjoy it if I started to cry gave me the strength to hold it back.

"I'll try," Marcus croaked, and he made a valiant effort. But even with my help he wasn't able to stand, much less walk. All I could do was help him crawl, dragging him in places. Layla followed, watching us.

I finally got Marcus out to the car and into the passenger seat, and then found Layla close beside me.

"I assume we have a deal, since you're taking him with you?" she asked, gesturing toward Marcus.

"Yes," I whispered, hardly able to choke out the word.

"Good. Now, here's your camera. Make sure to get some good footage, please. I'll give you a few days to work out all the details, of course, but I'll expect to see you again no later than. . . hmm, let's call it two weeks from today? I'll break the curse when I see you then, as long as you keep up your end of the deal in the meantime," she said, placing the small camera in my palm and squeezing my fingers around it. Her skin was cool and dry like lizard scales. It was all I could do not to shudder again.

I couldn't have said another word right then to save my life, so I only nodded. Then I fled from that horrible place as fast as I could safely go.

My first impulse was to hit the gas and fly back home as fast as the car would take us. But Marcus needed attention, so I stopped at a convenience store in Las Cruces to get some bottled water and some ointment for his wrists. They were raw and bloody from the chafing of the rope, and I wondered how long he'd been hanging there before I arrived.

He'd passed out in the car seat almost as soon as I got him in there, and he was still deeply asleep when I came back out of the store. I washed the sweat from his face and cleaned his wrists, and in spite of my gentleness the pain must have woken him.

He jerked back violently and tried to hit me, and if he hadn't been so weak then he might easily have given me a black eye.

"Marcus! It's me," I told him, and then he came to his senses. He stared at me with wild eyes, and then gradually relaxed.

"I'm sorry, Lisa. I wasn't thinking," he said hoarsely.

"It's all right. Here, drink some water. You look like you need some," I told him, and he didn't need to be asked twice for that. He grabbed the bottle and drank all of it, hardly slowing down to breathe.

"I haven't had anything to drink since yesterday morning," he said, as soon as he could talk.

"What happened? What did she do to you up there?" I asked.

"Not now, Lisa. Please. I'll tell you when we get home, but I can't do it yet. Just get us out of here," he said.

"All right. Go back to sleep, Marcus," I said, smoothing the hair back from his face.

## Chapter Twenty-Two - Lisa

I drove in silence, leaving the radio turned off for Marcus's sake, and when we got back to Goliad late that evening I was exhausted all over again. I drove across the dam and past the peach orchard to his house, not knowing where else to take him, and I guess he'd started to recover a little bit by then. He was able to walk inside, at least, and lie down on the bed by himself.

I stayed with him that night, worried that he didn't need to be left alone just yet. I slept on the couch, and in the morning we talked.

He was already more or less back to normal by then, except for his wrists. But still, there were shadows under his eyes and a haunted look on his face that I'd never seen there before.

"So what happened?" I asked.

"You really don't want to know, Lisa," he said darkly.

"No, but I probably ought to," I said.

"Well, I went to see her that morning, like I told you. She seemed friendly enough, told me a few things about Selena Garza, and then said she had some more stuff back at her brother's house if I wanted to go see it. And me, like an idiot, I fell for it. She seemed so dadgummed sweet and innocent, you know. Anyway, once she got me out there alone in the middle of nowhere, it was all over. She sneaked up and hit me on the head from behind, and next thing I knew I woke up tied to the ceiling," he said.

"Did she hurt you?" I asked.

"No, not really. Not the way you think, at least. All she did was let me hang there. No food, no water, no nothing. It wasn't too bad at first, but then my wrists and my shoulders started to hurt something awful. She came in now and then just to stand there and watch me suffer, like she was enjoying it or something," he said bitterly.

"Yeah, I think she does," I agreed.

"I don't think she cared if I died or not. I think she wanted me to. I think I _would_ have, if it'd been much longer. She said I'd probably taste good, whatever _that_ means. She seemed to think it was funny," he said.

"You don't think she, like, _eats_ people, do you?" I asked, feeling sick.

"I don't know. I wouldn't put it past her," he said.

"I'm sorry, Marcus," I said.

"Wasn't your fault. You saved me from that nutball," he pointed out.

"It's not over, yet," I said, and his head snapped up.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"She said she'd break the curse on Cody's family, but only if I hurt him really bad and break up with him. She even wants video," I said.

"That's crazy!" he said.

"It gets worse, I'm afraid. She wants me to tell Cody that you and me hooked up and we're together now, to make it hurt more," I said, forcing myself to say the words. Marcus just stared at me.

"We can't do that," he said.

"That's what I said. But if we don't, then the deal's off. Cody's back under the curse and I'm not sure what she'd do to you and me. Probably have us both hanging from the ceiling till we die of thirst. I'm afraid all three of us are on the block, here," I said.

"You don't think we could just tell Cody the truth, and try to figure something out?" Marcus said.

I hesitated; the same thought had crossed my own mind, but there was one stubborn problem with that idea.

"I want to. But if we do, then what'll happen? Layla will never break that curse unless we do this. I want to give Cody his life back, and the only way to do that is to give the monster what she wants," I said.

"You believe in the Curse now?" he asked.

"Yeah, I guess I do," I agreed.

Marcus is no fool; he recognized reality when he heard it, no matter how much he hated the idea.

"So what's the plan, then?" he asked, defeated.

"I guess I'll have to go to Alaska and do what I have to do. Then we'll see," I said, surprised that I could be so steely-eyed about it.

"Do you think you can make Cody believe it?" he asked.

"I have to. Maybe I can tell him we went to a party and got drunk, or something like that," I said.

"You know he'd never believe that. He knows neither one of us is a boozer," he said.

"Well. . . I don't know. What if I tell him it was supposed to be a fish fry or a wiener roast or something innocent like that, and somebody spiked the punch? He might believe that," I said.

"Yeah, he might. Tell him it was at Tommy Jones's house; he's a meth-head from way back," he suggested.

"I don't know Tommy that well," I said. I remembered him slightly, since Jenny had dated him for a while a couple months ago. He was exactly her type; a good-looking, muscular ex-football player who loved to party and run wild.

"He lives over there on Redbud Street in Ore City. I used to run around with him a little bit, before I moved out to Goliad my senior year. He didn't used to be quite as much of a doper as he is now. Anyway, Cody knows all that, so maybe he'd believe it if you told him we went over there," he said.

"I guess so," I agreed, thinking how unreal it was that I was actually sitting there having a serious discussion about how best to deceive Cody.

There was nothing left to say, and waiting would only prolong the agony. I figured if the thing had to be done, then it was best done quickly. But there was still one more conversation I needed to have before I hit the road.

I wasn't sure if Miss Josie would be home or not, but after leaving Marcus's place I pulled in at the main house just in case. There was a slight chill in the air as I headed up the steps, and I pulled my sweater a little closer around my shoulders. Miss Josie must have seen me coming, because she opened the door with a smile before I even had time to knock. Then she saw the look on my face, and her smile faded.

"Is something wrong, Lisa?" she asked, looking concerned.

"No, ma'am. I just came to talk to you about something, that's all," I said, nervously fiddling with my keys.

"Oh, all right. Well, come on inside, then, before you catch your death of cold out there," she said, stepping aside to let me in. I followed her to the kitchen, shutting the door behind us.

"Can I get you some coffee, maybe some hot chocolate?" she asked, in her usual hospitable way.

"I'd love some hot chocolate," I admitted, knowing how much she liked to be a good hostess.

"Sit down, then, and we'll talk awhile. I was fixing to go wash some clothes, but that's nothing that can't wait," she said.

She proceeded to busy herself at the stove, pulling out milk and chocolate and this and that and the other thing. I knew her well enough by then to know that she would have been horrified if you'd suggested using instant hot chocolate, or anything else instant, for that matter. She always made everything from scratch. But practice makes perfect, I guess, because it didn't take her long to get the chocolate done, and then she sat down across the table from me while we sipped the warm drinks. The cup felt good on my cold fingers.

"So what is it, sweetie?" she asked, taking a sip of her own chocolate.

"I don't want you to think badly of me," I began, my palms beginning to sweat with nervousness. Telling Miss Josie was a major risk, but I just _had_ to.

"Oh, honey, no. I could never think badly of you. You can tell me, whatever it is," she promised me.

"All right, then. Just promise you'll hear me out to the end, okay?" I asked, and she nodded.

"A few months ago, Cody told me he thought there might be a curse on y'alls family, that everybody would die young," I said.

"I see," she said.

"I didn't really believe it at first. Not then. But then several days ago Marcus told me some rumors he heard about how the curse came from a witch in New Mexico, and we finally decided it was worth having Marcus go out there to see if he could find out anything, since it seems to bother Cody so much," I told her reluctantly, my nervousness increasing to the point that my throat was getting dry and making it hard to talk. I took another swallow of hot chocolate to moisten it.

"I see," Miss Josie said again.

"We didn't tell Cody anything. You know how he is; he would've worried, and maybe even come running back down here, if he couldn't talk us out of it," I said, pausing to take another drink.

"Go on," she said.

"Some bad stuff happened. I had to go out there and bring Marcus back. That curse is not just a fairy tale, Miss Josie. It's real. I believe that now. But I think. . . I _hope,_ we found a way to get rid of it," I said, forcing myself to say the words. There was a thick pause in the room, and I wondered if the woman thought I was crazy.

"How would you do that?" she finally asked.

"It won't be easy. I don't know what all I might have to do, yet. I might be gone for a while. I might. . . I might have to tell Cody some things that are not true. Even some really bad things. I just want you to know that I love him and I always will, no matter what. He's everything to me. Whatever you hear and whatever happens, please believe me when I say that," I said.

"I believe you, Lisa. But I can't lie to him, if that's what you're asking," she said sternly.

"I'm not asking you to do that. Only to keep all this to yourself, and please remember what I said, that I love him more than anything in the world. That's all," I said.

"I don't understand," she said.

"Do you think if I told him a lie that really hurt him, that he'd forgive me later on? If he knows I only did it for his own sake?" I asked.

"I honestly don't know what he might say in a situation like that," she admitted.

"Me neither," I said.

"I do know this much. You'd be a lot better off if you told him the truth," she said.

"Not about this," I said bleakly, and Miss Josie shook her head.

"Lisa, I've been around for a good many years, and I've never yet seen a time when deceit was the right choice. Not even to protect someone. It always comes back to haunt you later on. Cody has the right to make his own choices about what he wants to do with his life, just like you do. You can't make them for him, no matter how well-intentioned you think it is. Believe me, he won't thank you for that," she said.

"Even if we're talking about saving his life?" I asked, my voice cracking. Miss Josie took a long time to answer that one.

"I don't know. I guess it's possible there might be exceptions to every rule. I can't tell you for sure what you should do. But I would think long and hard before lying to him, no matter how good you think the reason might be," she said.

"But if I _have_ to. Do you think he'd forgive me?" I insisted.

"I think if it was a case where you really, truly had no choice in the matter, then yes, I'm sure he would. He's not unkind, you know," she said.

"Yeah, I know that," I agreed.

"So have some faith in him, and trust God that things will work out the way that they should," she said.

I left not long after that, heavy-hearted as ever. I drove slowly, trying to count up in my mind how much money I had. I didn't know how much it might cost for a plane ticket to Prudhoe Bay, but I was willing to bet it wouldn't be cheap.

It turned out I had a little over a thousand dollars saved up. It was supposed to be set aside for emergencies, but I figured this surely had to count as one if anything did.

The cheapest flight I could find turned out to be thirteen hundred dollars, which left me about two hundred dollars short. I didn't know where I might get the rest, let alone have anything left over for food or anything else. I finally scraped it up, though; I pawned whatever jewelry I could find and sold my computer and my textbooks. All together, it was barely enough.

I bought the ticket for Thursday so I'd get there on Friday afternoon, and then I was supposed to come back on Monday evening. Even though I didn't really expect to stay that long, I'd already decided I had to make it seem like this whole thing was a legitimate attempt to win his forgiveness. Layla wanted her footage up close and personal, and there was no way Cody would believe I'd come all the way to Alaska to break up with him. I could do that much by phone or letter and spare us both an ugly scene. But he might believe it if he thought I'd come to make up with him. I was going to have to hurt him so much that _he'd_ be the one to break up with _me;_ that was the only way it would ever work, and I was terrified that I wouldn't be able to pull it off.

I hoped they'd change my ticket and let me come home early after it was all over, because if not then I didn't know what I might have to do. I wouldn't have enough money left over to rent a hotel room, that was for sure. But that was all right; I was grimly determined to do whatever it took, even if I had to sleep on the floor at the airport.

I'd have to tell Jenny and Mama where I was going, of course, and I braced myself for the argument _that_ would cause. Jenny would have to drive me to the airport and come pick me up when I got back, and I could just imagine some of the choice words _she_ might have for the whole adventure.

I could have asked Marcus to take me, I guess, but considering what I was fixing to have to tell Cody, I think that would have been unbearably awkward at the time. What do you talk about for two hours with a guy you're pretending to have a fling with? Celebrities? The weather? Out of all the convoluted stories I'd ever read, there was nothing to cover a situation like this one.

All I could do was cross my fingers and pray it all worked.

## Chapter Twenty-Three - Lisa

"You're going _where?"_ Jenny asked, as soon as the words left my mouth.

"Prudhoe Bay," I said, knowing perfectly well that she'd heard me the first time.

"And your reason for this is. . . ?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.

"My own business. I need to talk to Cody," I said.

"Um. . . sis, they do make envelopes and telephones, just in case you hadn't heard," she told me.

"No, I need to see him in person," I said, shaking my head.

"Why?" she asked.

"I told you, that's between me and him. You'll know soon enough, I'm sure, but not till I get back," I said.

"Has it got something to do with your little vacation to New Mexico?" she asked.

While I was gone, Jenny had somehow come up with the notion that I'd cooked up the whole trip to Las Cruces as a scheme for arranging a romantic getaway with Marcus without anybody finding out about it. It seemed like the stupidest plan anybody would ever have thought of, let alone the fact that New Mexico is hardly the first place that comes to mind when I think about romantic getaways. So I don't know where she got that idea, unless it was the simple fact that it was easier for her to think that I was a tramp than to accept the scary story I'd told her at first. Sometimes it's easier not to believe, when you don't want the truth to be true.

And as much as it galled me, I had to let her keep thinking so. It made things much easier (in a way) if she thought the whole thing was all bosh and melodrama. The only bad part about the situation was that Jenny-the-Cynic had returned with a vengeance.

"Nope, it's got nothing to do with New Mexico at all," I lied.

"Hmm. . . sounds like a kiss-and-make-up kind of trip to me. You know, sis, playing both ends against the middle like that never works for long. One of them always finds out sooner or later, I promise," she said, like she was sharing some great piece of wisdom.

"Oh, for pity's sake! That's not what I'm doing at all," I said in exasperation. The fact that she was so close to guessing the gist of my little story only infuriated me all the more.

"Sure, sure. Just saying, that's all. The whole thing still sounds pretty fishy to me," she said.

"Maybe so, but will you take me to the airport or not? If you won't then just say so, and I'll find somebody else," I said, tired of arguing with her.

"Yeah, sure, I'll take you. What time do you have to be there?" she asked.

"I have to leave from Dallas at six o'clock tomorrow night," I told her.

"And you'll be back when?" she asked.

"One-thirty on Tuesday afternoon," I told her.

"Well, I don't care what you do. I might go to the beach for the weekend with Janice and Sheila," she said.

"At Galveston?" I asked.

"Yeah, probably. It'll be too cold before much longer. Might as well have one last hoot before winter gets here," she said.

"What about Mama?" I asked.

"I'll see if she can stay with Aunt Michelle for the weekend," she said, and I nodded. Michelle lived in Lufkin, which was right on the way if she was headed down to the coast. I had my doubts that she'd agree to keep Mama if she thought it was only to let Jenny kick up her heels at the beach for a couple of days, but I couldn't worry about that. Putting a crimp in my sister's social life was the least of my concerns at the moment.

By the next afternoon I'd already packed and repacked my travel case at least five times, and I was so nervous I could barely remember to breathe. I hadn't talked to Cody very much since the encounter with Layla for fear I'd break down and blow everything, and I knew he probably wondered about that. I could only hope he hadn't started to guess that something was up.

When he told me to watch out for an evil woman named Layla I almost wanted to laugh hysterically. But I didn't dare tell him that his warning came too late.

I didn't particularly care to talk to Jenny much on the way to the airport, and I didn't particularly care for the plane ride, either. I had two layovers, in Phoenix and in Anchorage, and since I didn't sleep very well on planes that meant I was awake pretty much all night long.

I got to Prudhoe Bay in the gray half-light not long before the sun came up, about 9:15 in the morning. My first sight of the place wasn't very encouraging; it looked like a jumble of beat-up trailers and industrial buildings, some ice and snow scattered here and there, and the rest of it pretty much bare gravel.

It was also frigid. The pilot told us the high for the day was supposed to be ten degrees, right about normal for late October. I shivered just hearing the number; I'd never been so cold in my entire life.

I knew Cody would be at work till six o'clock that evening, so I sat in the airport and tried to keep warm by imagining tropical beaches and mountain vistas and pretty much anything other than the barren, empty landscape I found myself in and the horrible encounter that lay ahead. I read for a while and caught a few snatches of sleep when I could, wondering how anybody could stand to actually live in such a place.

I took the camera out of my purse and attached it to the collar of my blouse. It was made to look like a button or some innocuous clip-on decoration, so that no one would be likely to pay any attention to it. All I had to do was touch it to activate the recording.

I felt like a ghoul, feeding off the misery and suffering of others. I had to keep reminding myself I was doing this to save his life. To save _all_ our lives, most likely, and however filthy and loathsome it made me feel, I didn't dare cave in.

It got dark again about five-thirty, and by the time it was safe to call Cody, there was nothing outside but the almost-full moon. At six fifteen I called him, and he answered on the third ring.

"Hey, Lisa, what's up?" he asked, sounding tired. As well he might, after a twelve hour shift.

"Oh, nothing much. Got a surprise for you, though," I said, with fake enthusiasm.

"Yeah? What's that?" he asked.

"Are you anywhere close to the airport?" I asked. Cody isn't stupid; I knew he'd put two and two together the second he heard that word.

"Um. . . Lisa, at the risk of sounding dumb, you wouldn't happen to be _at_ the airport, would you?" he asked.

"You better believe it," I told him, happily. For a second he seemed stunned.

"Hold on; I'll be there in five minutes," he said.

He was as good as his word, and five minutes later he came walking into the airport, still dressed in his dirty work clothes and with his face red from the cold.

As soon as he saw me he stopped in his tracks, like he thought he might be imagining things. He looked thinner than I remembered, and tired and worn, but he was still my dear, handsome Cody, and for a second I could pretend nothing was wrong. I ran to him and threw my arms around his midsection, and he swept me up in a bear hug and kissed me long and tenderly. Two and a half months might not seem like such a very long time to most people, but to me it felt like an eternity had passed since the last time he'd kissed me.

"You're really a sight for sore eyes, babe; I can't believe you're really here," he said, shaking his head.

"I couldn't take it any longer; I just had to see you," I explained. Lie number one, I thought sadly.

"How long are you here for?" he asked.

"Only a day or two," I said.

"Um, you do know there's nowhere to stay up here except in the work camps, don't you?" he asked.

"I found a website that said there are supposed to be two or three hotels," I said, not mentioning the fact that I knew they were closed for the winter and didn't expect to need one anyway. After the initial joy of seeing him again, my fear of the upcoming encounter was beginning to creep back again in full force. No, _fear_ is too mild a word. Holy terror is more like it. I was going to have to give the performance of a lifetime and break his heart in the process. Even though none of it was real, it was already killing me inside.

"Well, yeah, technically. But only in the summertime. It's way past tourist season now. I guess you can stay with me in my room for a couple days, if you don't mind hiding out. It'll get me in trouble if anybody finds out you're here," he explained.

"Sure," I agreed.

"Okay, then. Let's see if we can sneak back in there," he said.

When we got to the Arctic Caribou Inn, I found that it was a collection of trailers which had been modified to house the oilfield workers, and anybody else was more or less an afterthought. But I decided if Cody had been living there for months already, then I could surely make do for a few hours. He seemed uneasy and kept glancing around to make sure nobody had seen us.

He took me to one of the doors and unlocked it, letting us into a fairly small but decent bedroom. There was a bed, a nightstand table with a lamp and a telephone, a closet, a desk, and a wooden shelf. The only other feature was a door which presumably led to the bathroom.

It was chilly for my taste, but Cody didn't seem to notice. Maybe he'd been used to the cold for so long he didn't even pay attention to it anymore. He pulled off his jacket and coveralls and pretty much everything else he was wearing, till he was stripped down to his shorts and t-shirt. He didn't even shiver.

"Let me take a shower real quick so I can get the sweat and the grime off me, and then we'll talk, okay?" he said, and I nodded. He had all kinds of grease and dirt and ground-in grime all over him, especially on his hands. I couldn't blame him for wanting to clean up a little bit before bedtime. He grabbed some fresh clothes from the closet and I soon heard him scrubbing in the shower.

As soon as he disappeared into the bathroom, I sat down on the bed to wait. I was trying hard to have faith in him and to believe what Miss Josie had told me about how things always worked out for the best, but my heart was beating fast and I felt sick and scared. I took deep breaths to calm myself.

I couldn't resist snooping a little bit, while he was gone. He had a picture of me that I'd sent him, parked right there on his night table, and when I slipped the drawer open I found a thick stack of envelopes that must have contained every letter I'd ever sent him.

I didn't have time to look anywhere else, because it wasn't long till he came padding back out in his skivvies, still drying his hair with a towel. It had grown out a lot longer than I remembered, and yeah, he was definitely thinner.

He noticed me looking at his body, and did a slow twirl with his arms raised to show off, obviously enjoying my appreciation of the view. I thought he might even have built up a little more muscle since he'd been there, even if he'd lost some weight in the process.

"Do I look like myself?" he asked, smiling a little.

"Yeah, just a little thinner, that's all," I said.

"I can believe that. They work us to death up here," he nodded, sitting down beside me on the bed.

"I'm sorry, baby," I told him, wishing there was something I could do to make things easier on him. A solid year of twelve hour days with never a break or a single day off had to wear a man out after a while.

"It's all right. I'll survive. I've got some good news, though; I'll be home at Christmas for two weeks. My alternate wanted the extra days and I wanted the time off, so he's filling in for me. Then I'll be done up here for good on August fifteenth. I'm counting down the days; I promise you that," he said.

I could tell he was more tired than he liked to admit, so I slid over to make room for him to lie down on the mattress instead of having to sit up. He did, and then scrunched up close to the wall to make room for me, too.

"Come lay next to me, Lisa," he said, and I was happy to comply. I quickly snuggled up close to him with my head on his chest so I could listen to his heartbeat, and he put his arms around me.

"I'm glad you're here, darlin', but surely there had to be some reason besides just missing me, why you came all this way," he said. He was right, of course, but I was reluctant to get into all that yet. I wanted to savor the closeness of him, the warmth of his skin and the feel of his rough hands, if only for a little while. God only knew when I'd be able to do it again after all this.

"Yeah, but right now I just want to be close to you for a while. I'm starved to death for Cody time," I said.

"Hmm. . . makes me feel like a big bottle of apple juice you've been saving for a special occasion," he said.

"Hey, that's a good comparison. Sweet, healthy, and completely natural. There you go. I could write some poetry about my apple-juice boy when I get home. No wonder I'm starved for you," I said, and he laughed.

"You're such a nut, babe. Well, enjoy me all you want to, then," he teased, obviously amused. So for a while I was quiet, putting off breaking the news to him for as long as possible.

But I could tell he was fighting sleep, and as much as I hated to break the peaceful mood, I knew it was time to tell him. I brushed the camera to activate it, and then it was show time.

## Chapter Twenty-Four - Cody

"Cody, do you love me?" Lisa said, tracing circles on my belly with her forefinger. Her nail was just sharp enough to tickle, and made my whole body tingle drowsily. I could feel sleep nibbling at the edges of my mind, and no matter how hard I fought it off, I couldn't help worrying that I might fall asleep right in the middle of talking to her. I was really that dead beat.

"You know I do. More than anything in the world," I said, yawning and making an effort to shake myself awake again.

"What if I did something that hurt you really bad; would you still love me then?" she asked.

That was enough to wake me up completely and make me forget all about her fingernails on my stomach. People don't usually say things like that unless they have a good reason, especially not when they travel thousands of miles to say it. But I knew the answer, anyway.

"There's nothing you could say or do that would make me not love you anymore, I promise," I said.

"Nothing at all?" she persisted.

"Nope, not a thing," I said, nervous about where she was headed with all this.

"What if I got totally wasted on meth and ecstasy at a party and hooked up with your best friend? Would you still love me then?" she asked jokingly, and then all my worries dissolved in a quiet explosion of mirth.

"That's a good one, Lisa," I laughed. She'd really had me going there for a few seconds.

"Well, would you?" she asked. I couldn't understand what her sudden obsession was, but I tried to consider the question seriously, since she seemed so concerned about it. I ran my fingers through her hair absentmindedly, thinking. It was soft and silky, like a baby calf in the springtime. I don't know if she would've liked that comparison or not, but I've noticed that occasionally random thoughts like that will pop into your head at the strangest possible times.

"I guess nobody ever knows for sure what he'd do till he's tested, but I hope I'd still feel just the same. Love is a cheap thing if it won't stand up under pressure," I said thoughtfully, choosing my words carefully.

"Fair enough answer, I guess," she said, sounding moody.

"Oh, come on, Lisa, lighten up; it's not like you'd ever do anything like that in the first place," I said, laughing again.

I didn't know where this dark mood had come from all of a sudden, and I wanted to get rid of it and enjoy the rest of the evening and fall asleep with her in my arms.

Then came the plunger.

"But I did, though," she said softly, and for a second I felt like the ground had suddenly opened up at my feet.

"Huh?" I asked, thinking I must have misheard her.

"I went to a fish fry with Marcus, only it turned out to be more of a party. Somebody spiked the punch and we both drank it. I got so stoned I couldn't think straight, and so did he. I never would have done something like that if I hadn't been high, Cody, I swear to you. I don't think Marcus would have, either. I'm so sorry. If you don't want to be with me anymore then I understand, but I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me," she said, the words tumbling out in a rush.

At first I couldn't comprehend what she was saying, and even when I did comprehend it I still couldn't believe it. Lisa and _Marcus?_ There haven't been too many times in my life when I've been struck totally speechless, but that was one of them. In fact, the only thing even more unbelievable than the idea of her doing such a thing in the first place was the notion that she'd tell me a story like that if it wasn't true.

"I see," I finally said, when I finally got my voice back. I think I was still in shock; the words sounded dry and factual, almost clinical, even to me. But it was all I could manage to say.

"What are you thinking?" she finally asked, after a long time had passed. At that I started to feel just a little bit of emotion coming back for the first time.

"I'm thinking. . . life really bites right now, if you want me to be honest," I said bitterly. _Bites_ was a gentle word for it, actually. I felt like my whole life and everything I ever believed and wanted and dreamed of was falling to dust and ashes right around my ears.

"I'm sorry, Cody. I swear I never meant to hurt you. I never meant for any of this to happen," she said, starting to cry.

I sighed.

"I'm sure you didn't, Lisa. But now we have to deal with it all the same, don't we?" I said.

"Yeah," she whispered.

"I ought to _beat_ Marcus when I get home," I said venomously, grasping desperately at the only other person I could blame, even though that was hardly any better. Marcus was supposed to be my best friend, the one who always had my back no matter what; even my brother, almost. The fact that it was _him_ of all people hurt almost as much as the fact that it was Lisa. I wanted to kill both of them and I wanted to cry while I did it, and what kind of screwy thinking is that? But what do you do, when suddenly trust can't be trusted, and you find out that love isn't love after all?

## Chapter Twenty-Five - Lisa

I could see Cody's agony, and hated myself for it. I felt lower than a wad of used gum on the bottom of a hooker's second-best shoes. It was all I could do not to break down and tell him the truth. Instead, I bit my lip hard enough to bring blood and made sure the camera had a good view.

"Don't blame Marcus either; he was just as messed up as I was. He wouldn't have done it either, if he'd been sober," I told him.

Any other time I knew he would have respected me for that, for not letting Marcus take all the blame. But as it was, I guess he must have been too torn up inside to care anymore.

"Well, what were y'all doing at a party like that, anyway?" he demanded, with real anger in his voice.

"I thought it was only a fish fry. Just somethin' fun to do and get out of the house for a little while because me and Jenny haven't been getting along too well here lately. It was at Tommy Jones's house," I told him.

"Well, that was your first mistake, darlin'. Everybody in town knows Tommy Jones is a meth head. All you have to do is look at his rotten teeth," he said.

"I didn't know. I don't keep up with the town gossip, and I didn't even see Tommy at the party at all," I said.

"Well, maybe not," he admitted, "but Marcus should have known; they used to be friends."

"He said Tommy told him it was only a fish fry, nothing else," I said.

"Then he's stupid, too, for believing it," he said savagely, fury filling his voice. I winced; he was basically (if obliquely) calling me stupid right along with Marcus, but I couldn't get mad about it or I'd blow my cover. Oh, I hated this.

"But I don't care who knew what, when. When y'all got to the house and saw for sure what the deal was, then you should have turned around and left right then," he went on, not finished yet.

"I know," I said softly.

"So how come you didn't, then?" he demanded.

"I don't know, Cody. I guess I didn't want to seem like a prude, you know. I didn't want to get ready and go all the way over there just to turn around and go home. I didn't want Marcus to think I was scared; stuff like that. I kept telling myself we could always leave if it seemed like it was too rowdy. What can I tell you, so you won't be mad at me for the rest of my life? Yeah, I know it was stupid, I totally and completely admit it. But haven't you ever talked yourself into doing something even though you knew better, and then regretted it later?" I asked him.

"Yeah, you got me there," he admitted, and for a second the question broke his anger and he sounded utterly lost again.

"I'm sorry, Cody," I said, for what felt like the fortieth time.

"Do you love Marcus?" he asked me, with an edge to his voice. It was the question I'd been dreading to hear, and I'd already made up my mind that I ought to hesitate just long enough to make him think I had feelings for Marcus that I wasn't willing to admit. But when push came right down to shove, I couldn't do it. Even at the risk of wrecking the whole plan, I couldn't bring myself to answer him with anything but the truth.

"No, Cody. I never loved anybody in my whole life except you," I said, knowing what a deep place in his heart those words would touch. They touched him, all right; I could see it on his face. They probably hurt him more than anything else I could have said, too.

"I never loved anybody but you, either, Lisa. That's what makes this so hard, you know. I wanted. . . I always thought. . . " he said, struggling to keep the tears out of his eyes. That shocked me almost more than anything; in all the years I'd known him, I'd never seen Cody crack like that.

I could hear the pain and the grief of loss in his voice, and it was all I could do not to cry out that it was all a horrible lie, to make it not to be. A part of me was dying inside; I could feel it happening. . . some small part of me which had been innocent and pure right up till that moment had winked out like a candle in a winter's draft, and I wondered if I'd ever in my life feel clean again after doing this to him, even to save his life.

"Go home, Lisa," he finally said, thickly.

"What?" I asked.

"Go home. You shouldn't have come here. You and me, we're just not right for each other," he said, and I could tell that he believed it. It was victory, of a sort; the kind of victory that left me with nothing but the taste of blood and a heart full of cold ashes.

"Cody, no. . . don't say that," I said, my voice cracking. But his heart was shut and his mind was made up.

"Come on, I'll take you back to the airport. They ought to change your ticket and let you go back home tonight. I'll pay the fee for you," he said, ignoring me as he got up to put his dirty clothes back on.

"You and me both are better off apart. Wait and see; you'll thank me someday," he added, and I could hear the desolation in his voice when he said it.

I didn't say a word the whole time while we drove back to the airport and changed my ticket, no matter how badly I wanted to speak. If I'd kept talking to him, I don't know but what he might not have broken down and forgiven me, even then, and I didn't dare risk that. We barely made it in time to catch the last flight out for the day, and when it was time to get on board the plane I swallowed hard, but my eyes were dry.

"It's better this way, Lisa, for both of us," he repeated, and then with one last little nod, he turned and walked away.

There was nothing I could do except get on the plane and leave. I did cry then, like I never have in my whole life, but nobody asked me what was wrong or even offered me a tissue. There were only a handful of people on the flight, and the others simply pretended not to notice the girl who was crying her heart out on the third row.

I got myself back together again a little bit by the time we landed in Anchorage, where I had an all-night layover. I'd done Layla Latimer's dirty work for her, and I felt like filth.

## Chapter Twenty-Six - Cody

I don't know how, but some way or other I managed to make it back to the motel before I crumbled, and then for the first time since I was a kid, I wept. I cried myself to sleep that night, only to find that my dreams were no better than reality.

I felt like everything I'd ever believed in was nothing but a pipe dream, like I'd been a fool for ever thinking there was such a thing as true love. I should have known better all along. It made me wonder if my whole life up till then had been a naïve delusion.

When I was little, I used to have night terrors. . . those kinds of bad dreams where you wake up breathing hard with your heart racing, thrashing the covers and knowing something horrible was happening, but you can't remember a bit of it. That night I had another one like that for the first time in years, and woke up with fresh tears on my cheeks. God only knows what I was dreaming about. I can't remember, and I'm pretty sure I don't want to.

I went on for days like that, mopey and sad and touchy and apt to drive my fist into the wall at odd times for the stupidest of reasons, and I'm _never_ like that. About the third time I busted my knuckles at work, I got written up for having anger problems and they told me if it happened again then I'd get suspended for three days.

I forced myself to get a grip after that. No matter how miserable I was, I still had responsibilities.

Nevertheless, the next few days were torture. I hated my job, I hated life, and I was surly and bad-tempered with everybody. I didn't hit the wall or show it on the surface anymore; I had more self-control than that, but it didn't keep me from wanting to. I was so curt that people started keeping their distance after a while, which only made me feel worse.

Eventually Troy caught up with me in the break room one day with a serious look on his face. I was sitting alone at one of the metal tables (a given, by then), and I had to force myself not to scowl when he sat down across the table from me. Company was the last thing I wanted, even from him.

"Hey, buddy boy. How you been?' he asked.

"Fine," I said automatically, in a tone that probably could have curdled milk. Troy ignored it, like he always does. He's never been the type to take a hint, by any means.

"Cody, I'm worried about you, buddy. You've been down in the mouth for days now, and you snap at anybody who says hi to you. What's up?" he asked.

"Nothing," I said.

"Don't tell me it's nothing. I know better than that. Talk to me, boy," he said, and I could tell he probably wasn't going to leave me alone until he got some kind of explanation.

"It's only a bad break-up, that's all. I'll get over it," I said, trying my best to smile and not doing such a great job of it.

"Yeah, that's bad. Do you want to talk about it?" he asked, and I hesitated. I really didn't, to tell the truth, but I suspected he wasn't going to leave me alone until he found out what the story was. So I told him what happened, more or less, and he nodded sympathetically.

"Anyway, I'll be all right. Just takes a little while, okay?" I finished.

"Yeah, okay. I know how it is," he agreed. I seriously doubted he did, honestly; Troy is the kind of dude who flirts and jokes and plays with all the girls but never takes any of it seriously. It's all just fun and games to him, and I strongly suspect he's never been in love before in his entire life. I always used to think it was kind of a shallow way of looking at things, but now I almost couldn't help but wonder if he was right after all. Love was a joke, and as for all that one-and-only honor-and-faithfulness junk I always said I believed in, well, we see how _that_ turned out.

"I'll be fine, Troy. I promise. I just need a little time, that's all," I repeated, trying to make it sound as earnest and convincing as possible.

"Okay, buddy. I'm here if you need me; you know that, right?" he asked.

"Yeah, I know that," I said, relieved to be done with him that easily. There are certain people you can talk to about stuff like that, and there are others. . . well, let's just say they're not very good listeners. Lisa had been really good at that, but Troy was another story completely. He's fun to hang out with, but he's not such a good shoulder to cry on.

Thinking about Lisa didn't help my mood at all, but Troy wouldn't have understood any of that even if I'd tried to explain it.

After a week or so I did manage to get semi-collected again, at least enough not to snap at people when they tried to be friendly.

Once I had a cooler head and was able to think a little more rationally, I started to realize how much of a sacrifice that trip had probably been for Lisa, and how much she must have loved me to go to such lengths to ask my forgiveness. I hadn't handled the situation very well, and I thought several times about maybe giving her a call and saying I was sorry for the way I acted. I remembered what I said about how love is cheap if it won't stand up under pressure, and wondered if I was really such a hypocrite that I couldn't take the heat the very first time I got tested.

But before I could find the right words to say to her, it all turned out to be a moot point when I got the news from Cyrus that she was definitely going out with Marcus. She must have had some feelings for him after all, in spite of what she said before.

That knocked me back all over again, and all the hurt and anger I'd been feeling before came surging right back again for a day or two. But it didn't last near as long this time, mostly replaced by a kind of fatalistic hope that maybe things would work out better this way in the long run. I told myself I'd known all along that she was better off with somebody else, no matter how hard it was for me personally. In fact I ought to be happy for her, if I loved her even half as much as I said I did.

I kept repeating all that until I mostly convinced myself. Deep down in my heart I'm not sure I ever quite managed to make myself believe it, but nobody ever knew about that except me.

Weeks passed, and after a while I managed to come to some kind of terms with the fact that my life would never turn out the way I always thought it would. I felt hollow and empty inside, like I didn't know who I was or what I wanted anymore. I remembered what Mama told me about not losing myself and coming home whole, and for the first time I thought I understood what she meant. I felt like I'd lost entire masses and chunks of myself, my whole heart and half my mind.

In a moment of weakness, I even slipped up and said something about it to her.

"I don't guess you've heard anything from Lisa, have you?" I asked wistfully.

"Not for a while. Why don't you give her a call? You could probably still work things out, if you talked about it for a while," she said. I'd already told her about everything that happened, of course.

"No, that's all right. I just wondered, that's all," I said hastily, afraid she might take matters into her own hands and call Lisa herself. Mama could be bold as brass when she thought the occasion called for it. I didn't want to give her any ideas.

But that was pretty much the only time I slipped up, and for the most part I suffered in silence. I used to like to watch old Westerns sometimes where the cowboy had to bite down on a bullet while they cut an arrow out of him with no anesthesia, and most times he never even let out so much as a whimper. I wonder what he felt when that sharp knife cut down through his flesh, and whether he ever felt like screaming. I guess I'll never know. All I can say is, sometimes you can seem tough as nails on the surface even while you're slowly dying inside.

## Chapter Twenty-Seven - Lisa

They routed me through Seattle and Denver before I landed in El Paso. Las Cruces is only about an hour's drive from there, and I didn't want to put off dealing with Layla for a second longer than necessary. The sooner I was done with that scumbag, the sooner I could call Cody and start trying to explain things. I didn't look forward to that conversation either, but I was sure we could work things out if I gave him a little time to think.

I took the shuttle bus from the airport, alighting in the parking lot of the Ramada Palms de Las Cruces. I had to take a taxi from there out to White Sands, and that just about wiped out the last of my cash. But at long last I found myself standing in Layla's living room again, less than a week after the last time I'd been there.

"Ah, there you are, Lisa!" she said, with what seemed to be genuine pleasure.

"Yeah, here I am. Did you break the Curse yet?" I asked, getting right to the point. I had no intention of pretending I liked the girl when I hated her guts.

"Not so fast, hon. Have you got the footage?" she asked. I reluctantly pulled the camera out of my purse and handed it over, waiting while she played back the recording in some little device beside her TV. She seemed to be awfully tech-savvy.

She watched the entire video right there in front of me in her living room, to my intense shame. I never wanted to think about that scene again for the rest of my life. But at last she seemed satisfied.

"Ah, that was beautiful. Truly beautiful," she said dreamily, as if she'd just witnessed something of exceptional power and delight.

"Can you break the Curse now, please?" I asked, almost frantic to be done so I could leave the place.

"Sure, no hurry. Here you go," she said, handing me a small tube of green liquid. It reminded me of antifreeze.

"What am I supposed to do with it?" I asked tightly.

"Just have him drink it, that's all. Might be a little bitter, but mind he doesn't spit it out," she said.

"Thanks," I said, and then started to get up from my seat.

"Just one more thing, sweetie," she said, and my heart filled with dread.

"What's that?" I asked.

"You might be thinking you can make things up with Cody at some point in the future. I'm afraid I'd have no choice but to see that as a deliberate breach of our agreement. If that ever happened, I think I might have to reinstate the curse, among other things," she said mildly.

"But you can't. . . " I began, and then trailed off. She _could,_ and there was nothing I could do about it.

"Yes?" she asked, with one brow raised and a hateful smirk on her face. One last twist of the knife, the final cherry on top of her delectable feast.

"Nothing," I whispered.

"Good. I'm so glad we understand each other. It's been a real pleasure doing business with you, Lisa. And remember, I'll be watching!" she said pleasantly, and I couldn't think of a single word to answer her.

So I said nothing at all, and fled.

* * * * * * *

By the time I got back to Ore City, I'd had ample time to think about Layla's parting shot and what it might mean. Part of me wanted to scream and cuss in despair, and part of me whispered that maybe all this was a sign that I wasn't supposed to be with Cody, after all.

I didn't know what to do, honestly. I'd hoped that sooner or later Cody would come to understand why I had to lie to him and we'd be able to put the whole episode behind us and live happily ever after. But now. . . well, _that_ was never going to happen, that was for sure. I didn't know what else Layla might do, but I seriously doubted she'd be content just to reinstate the curse. She'd come up with something even worse than that next time, if only for the pleasure of tormenting us.

I told myself I could live with the consolation that at least Cody would live a long life, even if it turned out to be with some other girl, and that his children and grandchildren would never again have to worry about the Curse hanging over their heads. It was cold comfort, but better than none at all. It reminded me of what he said when he talked about why he wrote _Nebo's Crossing,_ about how sometimes you can't always have the things you want the most, even if it breaks your heart to give them up, so the people you love can have them later.

Ever since I was little, I always thought I'd have a fairytale wedding to my one true love, my Tristan, my Albert. . . my Cody. Never in my worst nightmares had I imagined anything like the situation I found myself in, making serious plans to give up everything I ever dreamed of in life, because it would kill him if I didn't.

I cried till my eyes hurt and there were no more tears left to cry, and I told myself it was worth the price of giving him up; it _was._

It was a shame my heart didn't believe it.

I called Marcus when I got back home, and told him what happened.

"Do you think you can handle all that?" he asked.

"I have to. I'm fixing to go give the serum to Miss Josie, so she can have him drink it when he comes home for Christmas," I said.

"Why don't you just wait and do it yourself?" he asked.

"Because then I'd have to explain everything to him, and I'm already afraid he might change his mind about wanting to break up. You know how he is. He'll cool off and start feeling bad after a while, and then there's no telling what he might do. I can't let that happen or it'll all be for nothing," I said. I wasn't entirely sure that's how things would play out; Cody had seemed pretty firm when I left Prudhoe Bay. He might never speak to me again for the rest of my life, for all I knew. But I had to be sure.

"Well, yeah, true. I guess he might," Marcus agreed.

"That's why I think you and me should pretend we're really together for a while, till he decides to give up," I said, hoping he'd agree.

"I don't like that, Lisa. It was bad enough having to lie to him in the first place, without keeping on and on with it. It makes things really awkward out here. I might even lose my job, and they're too hard to come by," he said.

"It's not for long, Marcus. Only till I can think of something better," I explained, and he sighed.

"Okay. For a little while," he agreed.

"Thanks, Marcus. You're the best," I said, gratefully.

It was a little bit late to head over to the big house, but I didn't think Miss Josie would mind. She'd probably be watching TV, or some other quiet, domestic kind of thing like that.

I knocked on the door, and Miss Josie looked considerably less happy to see me than usual. That saddened me, but it was hardly unexpected.

"What is it, Lisa?" she asked, not unkindly. No doubt she'd already heard the whole story about what happened in Alaska, but she probably also remembered what I told her ahead of time about having to tell Cody some things that weren't true. She probably didn't know what to think, at this point.

"I came to bring you something. For Cody," I clarified, and she wordlessly stepped aside to let me in.

"I talked to Cody last night. I didn't tell him what you said about having to lie to him, but I want you to know I don't approve. I don't think you realize how badly you hurt him the other day," she said, frowning.

"Yes, ma'am, I do know. It was the only way to get this," I said, pulling the tube of liquid out of my purse.

"What's that?" she asked.

"It's the cure for the Curse. You need to have him drink it. I was told it might be a little bitter, but he needs to finish it all," I said, offering the tube. Miss Josie took it, holding it up to the light.

"But what is it? Where did it come from?" she asked.

"All I know is that it's supposed to break the Curse. I got it from a woman named Layla Latimer, out in New Mexico. Breaking up with Cody was her price for giving it to me," I said flatly.

"That doesn't make any sense," Miss Josie said.

"It would if you knew the woman. She's the most evil person I ever heard of. She likes to see people suffer. She made me wear a camera when I went up to Alaska, so she could watch me and Cody break up and enjoy how hurtful it was. I _had_ to do it, Miss Josie; it was the only way she'd work with me," I explained.

"I can't believe you'd agree to such a thing," she said, shaking her head.

"I did it for Cody's sake. There was no other way," I said. I couldn't tell what she thought about that; maybe she thought I'd lost my mind.

"So have you called to tell him all this, at least?" she asked.

"I can't. Miss Latimer told me if I ever got back together with Cody that she'd put the curse back on him. Kind of like if I undo the breakup then she'll undo the cure. He can never know. Me and Marcus are gonna pretend to be together for a while, so he won't wonder why I won't talk to him. That's why I brought this to you. I'm sure you can think of a reason why he should drink it. It's not safe for me to see him," I said.

"Sweetie. . . I'm so sorry," Miss Josie said, putting a hand on my arm.

"Yeah, me too. I love him so much. It's hard to believe it's got to end like this," I said.

Miss Josie looked at me, like she was thinking about something.

"Lisa, can I tell you a story?" she finally asked.

"Yeah, I guess," I said.

"Do you know how Marcus ended up coming here to live with us?" she asked.

"Well. . . no, now that you mention it, I guess I don't," I admitted.

"It's because his father is an alcoholic. When Marcus was eighteen, his father got drunk and beat him up pretty badly and threw him out of the house. On Christmas Day, no less. I gather it wasn't the first time, from what Marcus has told me. But it so happened that Cody had a dream about it the night before, and found him sitting in the park that afternoon in his bedclothes with nowhere to go. Thank God it was fairly warm outside that year. But we brought him back here, and gave him some clothes, and we fed him and gave him a job on the ranch, and a place to live. He's been here ever since," she said.

"I never knew that," I said.

"No, he never talks about it very much. But the point is, it all came right in the end. Sometimes when things seem like they couldn't possibly get any worse, that's exactly when God has something good up His sleeve," she said.

"I wish I could be as sure as you are," I said.

"I know it may not look that way right now. I know you can't see how any of this could ever turn out for the good. But it will, I promise you. Marcus was a lost boy once, with nowhere to go and not much to hope for, pretty much like you're probably feeling right this minute. But sometimes the lost can be found, in the most unlikely ways. Now he has a place of his own, and work that he enjoys, and he's probably happier than he ever would have been if his father had never kicked him out. Have faith that everything will work out for the best. Things will be all right, for you and Cody both," she said.

I thought about that, and I guess she had a point. I didn't see how things could ever be right again, but it's true that God can do wonderful things. I believe in miracles, here and now. But short of a miracle, I didn't see how Cody and I could ever be together again, let alone how I could ever be happy apart from him. Miss Josie's story gave me the barest glimmer of hope, but not much more than that.

"Do you think Cody would even want me back, after all this?" I asked. What rich irony it would be if somehow Layla ended up getting eaten alive by a miraculous swarm of vicious fire ants, but then Cody decided he didn't want to get back together again anyway. I was ninety percent sure I could win him back if I ever had the chance, but ten percent doubt is plenty enough for your nerves to dance on, believe me.

"Cody is hurting right now, Lisa. Put yourself in his shoes and imagine how he must feel. But give him time. He can be stubborn and even foolish sometimes, but he does have a gentle heart when he's put to the test that way. He's not the type to hold a grudge," she said.

That was true, as far as it went. I don't think I ever really doubted that, or I wouldn't have felt like I needed to pretend to be going out with Marcus. The thought made me relax a little bit.

"He reminds me so much of Blake, sometimes. He was always noble like that, too. Even before we got married, he always told me he wanted our house to be a refuge for the hurting and a place of peace. . . a place where the lost could be found and the broken-hearted find happiness, as much as it lay within our power to give it to them. That was his dream, and the thing I always loved most about him. I've tried to live up to that, and to teach Cody the same. It hasn't always been easy," she said, and I saw that her eyes were full. I'd never seen Miss Josie get teary-eyed before, and I thought to myself how much pain this woman must have been through, and how incredibly strong she must be to have lived the life she'd chosen for herself.

I'd never heard any of those stories before, and they touched my heart. I hadn't known that Marcus had been a throwaway kid, or that Cody had rescued him, or why. I'd never known that there was any vision for Goliad except an ordinary horse and cattle ranch. I hadn't known so many things.

Suddenly I understood a little better Cody's fierce love for this place. It wasn't just the dirt in his blood, although that was part of it. It was also part and parcel with his greatness of heart, the very thing which (I now realized) was what I'd always loved most about him from the very beginning. I'd seen it when he talked about love that day by the lake. I'd seen it when he laughed and kissed me for asking him to give Brandon a place to stay, almost like I was the one doing _him_ a favor. I saw it now in what he'd done for Marcus. Even that story about bottle-feeding Buck when he was a colt; it was all of a piece.

I heard a sermon on the radio once, about finding the things your mate treasures and learning how to bask in the reflected glory of his heart. On some level I think I always knew that. Maybe deep down everybody knows it. But I'd never thought of how it should apply to my own life. Right then, for just a moment, it was clear as crystal in my mind. Cody was a giver, one who poured out his life for others, and that kind of man never falls in love at all unless it's with a girl whose heart is just as great as his own.

The fact that Cody must have believed I was that kind of girl humbled and thrilled me at the same time, and I loved him more in that moment that I ever had before. Whole entire orders of magnitude greater; it was like everything I'd ever felt for him in the past was no more than hints and trifles in comparison, like turning from the morning stars to the blazing sun at noon. I caught a glimpse, for just a moment, of the kind of life we might have had together, for no one on this earth tastes near as much of Heaven as a man and a woman who join hands to love the world as God does. Even the glimpse of it was enough to take my breath away, and I could truly understand for the first time exactly how Miss Josie must have felt about Blake.

Then I remembered why I was sitting there in Miss Josie's kitchen right then, and I felt more loss and hurt than I could ever have thought possible. In spite of my determination to be strong, I found myself crying, and none of her attempts to comfort me were any use.

## Chapter Twenty-Eight - Lisa

"You've got to get ahold of yourself, sis," Jenny told me one day, after about a week of moping and crying.

"You just don't know what it's like," I said bleakly, hugging my knees while we sat on my bed.

"Yeah. . . actually I do. Believe me, you're not the first girl who ever had a broken heart, and I'm pretty sure you won't be the last one, either," Jenny said.

"But-" I said.

"No buts, sister. You can't keep wallowing like this. It's not healthy, and besides that it doesn't help. Cry over him for a few days, sure, and then let him go," Jenny said.

She didn't understand, of course; it was absolutely impossible that she'd ever felt anything like this. How could she possibly know what I was going through?

"You don't understand," I repeated.

"What do I not understand?" Jenny asked, and I hesitated. There was no way I could explain things to her, even if I'd wanted to.

"Let it alone, sis. I'll be all right," I told her, making an effort to smile. Jenny looked at me doubtfully, and then nodded.

"All right, then. But if I ever see that scumbag again, I'm giving him a piece of my mind!" she said, and in spite of everything I almost had to laugh. Jenny would probably do it, too, and Cody would probably listen respectfully with his hat in his hand and then never pay it another bit of attention.

"Whatever you say," I told her.

"What you need to do is get up out of this bed, get gussied up a little bit, and go out on the town tonight," Jenny declared.

"Go out on the town? In Ore City?" I asked skeptically.

"Sure, why not? It doesn't matter where, as long as you get out of this stuffy house and live a little. Even if all we do is go to the Dairy Dip and have a double chocolate sundae," she suggested.

The thought was appalling; I didn't know if I'd ever be able to set foot in the Dairy Dip again.

"No, not there," I said quickly.

"Yeah, you're right. Over-rated, anyway. We'll go to the soda fountain at the drug store in Gilmer instead," she said.

I considered it, and decided maybe Jenny was right. I had to stop wallowing, and maybe getting out a little bit would help take my mind off Cody for a while. Heaven knows I was ready to think about something else for a change. And honestly, how often does a good excuse for eating a double chocolate sundae come along?

I took a deep breath and got up from the bed.

"Atta girl!" Jenny said approvingly.

I took a shower for the first time in days and fixed my hair, and decided I really did feel better. Then we told Mama where we were going and headed downtown.

We had our sundae, and then took a walk downtown and browsed in some of the shops for a while. It was a sunny, breezy day, not nearly as chilly as usual, and a good day for outdoorsy things. I found a pair of silver spangled shoes that looked very nice, I thought, and a bracelet that matched them perfectly.

For a little while, I really did manage to forget about Cody, or at least to think about him less. That is, till I saw a young man with his girlfriend on the sidewalk in front of us, wearing a white straw hat just like the one Cody liked to wear. That undid me. I started crying again, and had to get Jenny to take me home.

I gradually got better over the next two or three weeks, but now and then little things like that white straw hat kept tripping me up. I'd see a boy with a horsehair belt, or pass some place where I'd talked to Cody on the phone, or some other trivial thing like that, and it would set me off again. It was awful.

And even though I slowly seemed to be getting better on the surface, down deep I really wasn't. True enough, I finally got to the point that I didn't cry anymore, and I could go to work and function pretty normally for a change. I could pass by the table at the Dairy Dip where he'd carved our names and not fall to pieces, for example. So yeah, things went back to normal in some ways. But way down deep, in the very heart of my heart so to speak, Cody was still there just as much as he always had been. I was beginning to think he always would be.

I made an effort to go out with Marcus once in a while and be seen in public, but that was fake and empty and I hated the pretense.

Jenny knew I still had Cody on my mind, and I think she found the whole situation incomprehensible. She kept telling me I ought to be happy with Marcus, or if not him then I ought to go out and meet some new guys till I found one ten times better than Cody ever was. She kept telling me there are plenty of fish in the sea. And maybe there were, for her. Maybe even for most people. But for me, there'd never be anyone at all but Cody McGrath. I knew it as surely as I knew my own name.

Maybe I _would_ end up an eccentric old spinster who talked to her tomato plants, I thought to myself. It was supposed to be a joke, but it wasn't funny. I still clung tenaciously to the forlorn hope that somehow, someday we'd find a way to be together and put this whole horrible experience behind us, however unlikely that seemed. Tristan the Brave may have gotten his princess sooner or later, but I wasn't at all sure my own Tristan would ever get his.

I still had his high school ring. He'd forgotten to ask for it back. I took it off my finger and put it on a chain around my neck instead, so it would always rest right next to my heart. I didn't think that was too over-the-top; it's not like anyone could see it there. No one even knew about it except me. And maybe it was stupid, but every night before I went to sleep I kissed that ring and blew it toward the window, and imagined my kiss traveling all the way up there to Alaska, and slipping through his window, and landing right on his lips while he slept. And when it did, I hoped he thought of me, and smiled in his sleep.

Yeah, fantasy life big-time. I knew it even then. But that was all right, because I kept it all to myself and didn't breathe a word of how I really felt to anyone. It was simply my own little private sorrow.

I tried to keep busy. I took refuge in painting or gardening or writing poetry or anything else I could think of; anything to keep me from brooding too much. It helped a little, at least as much as anything did.

Which is to say, not much at all.

I did talk to Brandon sometimes, since nobody else seemed to understand. I had to go out there to Goliad occasionally for appearances' sake, ostensibly to visit Marcus. But there were times when I couldn't bear to actually see him, let alone Miss Josie. So on days like that I'd sit with Bran in the barn to keep him company while he did his chores after school. He was the only one who didn't make me feel guilty. Not that the others did it on purpose, you know; it was just the way I felt.

We never talked about Cody very much, but he knew at least part of what was going on, even if he didn't understand exactly why. We were sitting in the hayloft one day when he finally said something to me about it. The window faced north across the pasture, and somewhere many thousands of miles away that's where Cody was. I guess Bran must have noticed my glances in that direction, however surreptitious I thought they were.

"Everything will be fine. Don't worry," he said.

"Yeah, I'm sure it will. But when you love somebody then your heart is wherever they are, no matter what. That's the way it works. You'll meet somebody special one of these days and then you'll know what I mean," I said. I could say all that to Bran because I knew he wouldn't repeat it, but the thought made me sad.

"Lana's pretty special," he said, and that was a welcome distraction from thinking about Cody.

"So tell me about her, then," I said.

"She's really smart. She got a scholarship to come here because she did such a good job in school where she's from," he said.

"Where is she from, anyway?" I asked.

"Vyborg. Close to Saint Petersburg. That's where she grew up all her life," he said.

"Really? What do her parents do?" I asked.

"Her dad's a dentist and her mom is a secretary, and she's got one brother and one sister but she's the oldest," he said.

"Sounds nice. How long will she be here? Just a year, right?" I asked.

"Maybe two. She said she might convince her dad to pay for another year so she can learn English better, 'cause he thinks it'll help her get into a better college and find a better job someday. He's got plenty of money so it's all good," he said.

"Maybe so," I agreed.

"I hope she gets to stay another year. I really like her," he said.

"It sounds like it," I said.

"She said she likes my muscles," he confided, striking a pose to show me his biceps. I couldn't help laughing.

"I'm sure she does, Bran. You're an awfully good-looking boy," I said, still smiling.

"Yup," he agreed, smiling himself.

"Hey, now, you're not supposed to agree with that. You're supposed to blow it off and mumble something under your breath about why it's not really true," I said.

"Why should I lie, though?" he asked. He was joking, of course, but I was glad to see it. When he first came here, Bran never smiled or laughed at all. Ever. Even now it's like a ray of sunshine in some gray and overcast land where the clouds never fade. But when he does, you can't help but smile back.

"Aw, shut up before you get yourself slapped, boy," I said. He could be a pain sometimes, but I was really glad to have him around at times like that.

It crossed my mind that he wouldn't have been, if Daddy hadn't abandoned my mother and Jenny and me. That was the worst thing that ever happened in my whole life, I think. But now I was getting an unexpected reminder that God can and will turn even the most hurtful things into a blessing. I had living proof of it, sitting right there beside me.

God is good that way; sometimes His love brushes your cheek like a gentle caress, at times when you need it desperately and in ways you never would have guessed. It gave me hope that even this whole horrible mess with Cody would turn out well, even if I couldn't see how.

I hoped I could manage to remember that.

## Chapter Twenty-Nine - Lisa

Three weeks later there came a day I went out to Goliad and found Brandon and Marcus both gone for some reason. I found myself all alone for the first time in a while, and, not surprisingly, missing Cody more than usual.

It was only an impulse, but I decided for some reason to go talk to Miss Josie again. I couldn't have said exactly why; a melancholy, self-torturing wish to hear a little bit about how he was doing, maybe, or a wistful desire to be near some of his things and the places he loved. It made me feel closer to him, if only for a little while. Goes to show how well I was doing apart from him, doesn't it?

I hadn't been back to the main house ever since I gave her the serum, mostly because I was afraid it would seem awkward at best and probably hurtful, too. But now; well, I decided I didn't really care about all that anymore. If it turned out to be awkward and painful then so be it. I'd been through worse things lately.

So I circled back around, and as I drove through the main arch I couldn't help remembering the first time I ever set foot on that place, with Cody fixing the fence in his sweaty white t-shirt under the hot summer sun. I knew the very spot where he'd been standing, and if I closed my eyes I could almost imagine he was right there, close enough to touch. I could see the dark stubble on his chin, the nails he'd been holding in his mouth to leave his hands free, even the sawdust on his jeans. But most of all the light in his eyes when he saw me and smiled. It was all there in memory, even though it seemed like centuries ago.

I needed to quit thinking like that or I'd be an emotional wreck before I ever even set foot on the porch.

The place was quiet, and when I parked the car under the pecan tree in the circle drive and headed up the steps, I wondered if maybe nobody was home. I had no particular plan in mind, and found myself wondering what in the world I'd say to Miss Josie even if she was there.

She was, though, and when she opened the door it turned out I didn't have to think of anything to say, because she smiled warmly and beat me to it.

"Lisa! Come on in here, girl. How have you been?" she asked, stepping aside and inviting me in. I hesitated for a second, unsure, but then decided it would have been stupid to back out at that point. Talking to Miss Josie was exactly what I'd come for, after all. I stepped inside the foyer, and she shut the door behind us.

"Come on back to the kitchen and let's have some coffee; what do you say?" she said.

"I'd love some," I said automatically, following her to the kitchen. She started fixing the drinks while I sat down at the table, and all the while she kept talking.

"So tell me, what have you been up to? Haven't seen you since. . . oh, it's been _weeks_ now, hasn't it?" she asked.

"I've been fine. Just working, mostly. How's Cody?" I asked. I'd meant to be a little more discreet and indirect than that, but somehow I couldn't help myself.

"Well, pretty good, I guess. He said it's dark almost all the time now, so he mostly holes up in his room and watches TV when he's off work. He said the food is pretty good but he misses Goliad something fierce. He asked about you the other day," she said, and my heart skipped a beat at that news.

"He did?" I asked, trying not to let it show how much that idea thrilled me and terrified me at the same time.

"He did. He asked if I'd heard from you lately, but of course at that time I hadn't," she said, coming back to the table with a cup of coffee for both of us.

"Did you tell him about the serum?" I asked.

"No. I thought it was best to wait till he gets home," she said.

"I really miss him," I admitted, and then wished I hadn't said it. It threatened to unleash more tears, and I didn't want that. Miss Josie looked at me sympathetically, and I couldn't help wondering what was going through her mind at that moment. I was afraid to guess.

I noticed for the first time that she still wore a wedding band even after all these years, and since talking about Cody was unbearable right then, I snatched at the chance to change the subject.

"Could you tell me some more about Blake?" I asked, nodding my head at the ring.

"Well, there's not much to tell, really. We knew each other forever, of course. We both grew up here in Avinger, him at Goliad and me down the road a little way. He gave me my first kiss when we were in kindergarten, I'm told. I don't even remember it, honestly, but my mother told me the story so many times it almost seems like a memory. Then we got together officially when we were in seventh grade, as soon as our parents would let us have anything even resembling a date. Nobody thought it would amount to anything; just puppy love, they thought. And I'm sure they were right. But sometimes puppy love grows into something more as the years go by. It did for us. He always had a silly side; I remember he kissed me for probably thirty minutes one time, right by the highway down there on the corner where everybody in town could see us and honk when they went by. He just laughed, and since he did, why shouldn't I? But it was always his heart that I loved the most, the way he loved God and tried to do what he could to make the world a better place. He was special. Oh, I know everybody always says that, but Blake really was. We got married the day after we graduated high school, and nobody thought that would last, either. But here I am, almost twenty-three years later, still just as much in love as I ever was. And if Blake were still here, I know he would be, too. People ask me sometimes why I don't go out after all this time, but how could I ever be satisfied with steel after I've once held gold? I'm spoiled forever," she said, with a little laugh.

"That's an awesome story," I said.

"I never used to think it was anything unusual, but maybe so," Miss Josie agreed.

We sat there and talked for at least an hour, and I wondered to myself why I'd put off visiting for so long. It was exactly what I needed. . . red meat and strong drink after all those weeks of nothing.

"Do you think it'd be all right if we went down to the bunk house for a little while?" I asked presently. I was calm enough by then that I thought I could hold things together. Cody's things weren't Cody, but they were as close as I could get at the moment, and that was better than nothing. Miss Josie must have understood, because she didn't start asking me all kinds of questions about why.

"I don't think Cody would mind if we took a sneak peek," she agreed, and together we crossed the pasture and the woods to the bunk house.

The moment I stepped inside his room, I felt enveloped in memory.

I could tell no one had been in there for a while, but there was still a faint scent of that knock-off Old Spice he liked. He still had the same quilt on the bed, and everything else was pretty much the same, too.

I noticed he'd left his boots standing beside the dresser, and his horsehair belt was still hung up on a nail right above them. The golden letter C on his buckle looked dull and forlorn, abandoned by its owner. His body might be in Alaska, but his heart was still in Texas. I could see that just from looking at everything he'd left behind.

Above his bed was the painting I made of that sunrise scene at Mount Nebo, and right there in the middle of his knickknack shelf, in a red cedar frame, was a picture of me.

Well, a picture of both of us, anyway. I recognized it immediately; it was one of the snapshots Miss Josie had taken when I came over for supper that first night. We were leaning against the pecan tree in the center of the circle drive, with his arm around my shoulder. He had one knee bent, with his boot planted flat against the tree behind us. We were both smiling, and I was overcome with emotion again. Miss Josie was watching me.

"Why don't you take that with you, sweetie? I can always have another one printed, next time I make it to town. The frame, too; I know where he got it," she suggested.

"You don't think he'd mind?" I asked.

"No, I don't think so," she promised.

"Thanks," I said simply, resisting the urge to hug the picture close to my chest.

"Don't mention it," she said.

We headed back up to the big house not long after that, and I lingered for a while longer, not wanting to go home.

"Now, Lisa, I want you to come back and see me as much as you want to. No need to call ahead or anything; just poke your head in the door and give me a yell whenever you come to see your brother. I'm almost always here, unless I'm outside somewhere," she told me, right before I left.

"I'll do that," I agreed, liking the idea.

"Good," she said.

I put the picture of me and Cody beside my bed when I got home, subjecting myself to withering scorn from Jenny as soon as she saw it. For once I guess it was hard to blame her, since supposedly I was still going out with Marcus. I don't know what she thought, honestly. All I know is that for a while she wasted no opportunity to mock me about it, calling me a cheap dime-store floozie and telling me I was no better than Sheila Jackson or any of those other girls I used to think were so trashy, and on, and on, and unendingly on. I couldn't explain what was really going on without blowing my cover, but I refused to take down Cody's picture even if it hare-lipped every cow in Texas. All I could do was try to ignore her for a while, but after a few days it really started to tick me off.

We had some harsh words. I told her she was jealous because she wanted him herself and couldn't have him, to which she said it didn't look like I had him either, and things deteriorated from there. She ended up storming off to her room and slamming the door hard enough to rattle the windows, while I tried to suppress an overpowering urge to choke her to death with my bare hands as soon as she showed her face again.

It never actually came to blows, but we barely spoke to each other for days after that, and the atmosphere in the house was so icy you could have made popsicles by leaving them out on the coffee table when both of us were in the room.

Sometimes I wish life didn't have to be so complicated.

Brandon must have been thinking about what I said about Cody, because next time I talked to him he had an idea for me.

"Why don't you ask for a dream to show you what to do?" he finally said one day.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"I mean I can see you're chewed to pieces inside, like a pit bull got ahold of your heart and tore it up like a cheap rug. You've been that way for weeks. So why don't you pray about it? Lots of people have dreams and visions, you know, not just Cody," he pointed out. Comparing my heart to a cheap rug wasn't the most flattering statement he could have made, but at least it was brutally honest.

"Well, yeah, I guess they do," I admitted. I hadn't thought about it much, honestly, but I couldn't deny that what Bran said was true. But he wasn't finished yet.

"Did I ever tell you how I started reading dreams?" he asked.

"No, I don't think so," I said.

"A long time ago, when I was four years old, I died for a while," he said calmly.

"Really?" I asked, not sure what to think about such a statement.

"Yeah, really. No breathing, no heartbeat, cold as ice, for almost two hours," he said.

"So, what, did you fall through some ice or something like that?" I asked. Everybody has heard of little kids surviving cold-water drownings and such, so that wouldn't have been so shocking.

"No, I had pneumonia. They knew I was dead; they already took me to the morgue and everything. I don't remember very much about it, honestly, but from what I heard later my brother and his wife prayed over me and I came back to life. The only thing I remember for sure is that God told me I had a job to do, and He sent me back. Ever since then, I've been able to see what dreams mean, if I ask Him," he said.

It was the first time Bran had ever confided that story in me, and I guess I was still a little speechless.

"Well, I'm glad you're still alive," I said.

"Yeah, me too. But I'm telling you that for a reason. I can't tell you what dreams mean because there's anything special about _me._ It's only because I ask. Sometimes you have to ask for things or you won't get them. So maybe if you ask, you might get," he said.

There was some truth in that, too, so I went home and prayed hard that night. But just because you ask doesn't _always_ mean you get what you want, and certainly not always right away. That was one of those times for me. All my prayers were to no avail, it seemed. No dreams came, and there was nothing but the quiet night to lie wakeful and sad in.

Sometimes it's easy to feel paralyzed when there's absolutely nothing you can think of to do. So I did my work and thought and prayed constantly that somehow, some way, I could have Cody back, no matter what I had to do. I prayed till I thought my mind was exhausted. I believe if it had gone on much longer, the stress would have turned me gray-headed.

But sometimes prayers get answered in ways you don't expect, and that's the way this one turned out.

## Chapter Thirty - Lisa

I tried to make it look good with Marcus. I really did. Whenever we went out we held hands, and I kissed him now and then even though that part was awfully hard, and we mouthed all the words that people expected to hear. The only time we could drop the pretense was when we got back to Goliad and there were no witnesses. Miss Josie knew the truth, and in spite of her disapproval we both knew she wouldn't say anything. We had to put on an especially good show whenever Cyrus was around, because he told Cody everything. I hated those episodes even worse than the ones in public, and I'm pretty sure Marcus did too. But I smiled and nodded and let everybody think we were a perfect couple, even though my heart was a thousand miles away.

Christmas put me in a bad mood, mostly because I knew Cody was in town. It was easy enough to stay away from Goliad for a while, but the thought of accidentally bumping into him somewhere else was always on my mind. I couldn't imagine what we might say to each other if that happened. Poor Marcus didn't have a choice in the matter, and that only made me feel worse.

I tried to take my mind off things by painting, and reading, or mulching the cabbages and broccoli that were still left in the garden. The weather report was calling for a strong cold front to sweep through sometime within the next week, with snow and ice and killing frost, so I had to make sure my vegetables were protected. It helped to while away the time, but unfortunately it didn't do a thing to help me forget the fact that Cody was only fifteen miles away. Nothing could do that, apparently.

I wondered if Miss Josie had given him the green vial yet. I hoped so, but I was reluctant to ask Marcus to find out.

We ended up having a very subdued celebration on Christmas Day, with no one there except me and Jenny and Mama. Jenny was in between boyfriends at the time, and even though I thought about asking Marcus over, I simply couldn't face the thought of any more intrigue and deception at the moment. So it was just the three of us, and I guess that was all right. Mama seemed more tired than usual and only picked at her food, even though I'd baked a ham and made all her favorite things to entice her.

The next morning I was supposed to go to work at the Dairy Dip, since they always needed extra staff over the holidays and God knows I needed the cash. But when the next day rolled around I woke up feeling awful, almost like I was coming down with the flu; my head hurt, my body ached, and I had a fever and swollen lymph nodes. I popped a few Tylenols and went on to work anyway, taking it easy because I still felt terrible even with the medicine. Somehow I managed to make it through the day.

A few days later I felt worse, and I finally succumbed to misery and took refuge in my bed, hoping the fever and aches would go away in a day or two. I thought about going to the doctor, but I strongly suspected they wouldn't do anything anyway except tell me to get some rest and drink plenty of fluids. If you already know what they'll say then why waste your time or money?

Three days after Christmas, the threatened front finally swept through, turning things bitterly cold and snowy and nasty for several days, which did nothing to help me feel better. I talked to Marcus or Brandon occasionally, and sometimes that cheered me up a little bit before bedtime, but there was really nothing anybody could do except let me suffer through it.

Then, on the morning of New Year's Eve, Mama had another stroke.

Naturally it was a holiday weekend and there was no doctor I could get hold of, and Jenny was gone to an early party with her friends and had her phone turned off. In desperation, I called Marcus.

"Marcus, get over here, _now!"_ I screamed into the phone.

"What's wrong?" he asked, sounding scared. But then, I guess I would have been, too, if somebody called me up screaming.

"Mama's had another stroke. I need to get her to the hospital," I said.

"I'll be right there," he said, and I spent the next few minutes trying to get Mama ready to go. It was hard, with no help and still being as sick as I was, but somehow I managed it.

When Marcus finally got there and saw the condition I was in, it must have shocked him.

"You look awful, Lisa," he said, staring at me.

"Yeah, I feel like it, too. But that's not important right now. Come on, let's get Mama out to the truck," I said.

I was weaker than I thought, and eventually Marcus literally had to carry my mother out to the truck and put her in the seat wrapped in an old quilt to keep her warm, and then drive all the way into Longview to the nearest emergency room.

To make things worse it was snowing hard again, and he had to drive slower than a snail even on the highway.

It was over before we got even halfway there; Mama slumped over and stopped breathing, and there was no way I could reach her to do artificial respiration. Not unless we stopped and got out so I'd have more room.

"Stop!" I yelled at Marcus in a panic, and he hit the brakes, sliding on patchy ice before he came to a halt on the shoulder. He pulled off the road as much as possible, switching the flashers on. But before I even had a chance to get my door open, a car came out of nowhere in the snow and t-boned Marcus's truck as we sat there. It happened so fast it was over even before I realized what was going on. For a few seconds there was nothing but noise and cold and the truck flipping over and glass smashing, and then silence.

It didn't knock me out, but it dazed me; the truck was sitting at a crazy angle against the embankment, with shattered glass and blood everywhere; whether mine or Marcus's or Mama's, I had no idea. I looked over and saw Marcus lying very still, whether dead or unconscious I didn't know and honestly couldn't summon the energy to care. Icy cold wind was blowing in through the smashed windshield, showering me with snow. The foul smell of hot antifreeze was everywhere. I had an idle thought that we must be close to the same place where Linda McGrath had died all those years ago. I wondered if this was how her last minutes had passed, and what Cody would think when he heard about it.

I don't remember much after that, except in fits and starts. I vaguely realized I was bleeding a lot from a deep gash in my thigh, and I was light-headed and drifted in and out of awareness. I dimly remember somebody pulling me out of the truck and putting me in an ambulance, and when they got me to the hospital they wheeled me off for some kind of procedure to stop me from bleeding. I got hysterical again when they wouldn't tell me anything about Mama, and they had to knock me out before they could even do what they needed to do.

## Chapter Thirty-One - Cody

I had a quiet vacation, for the most part. My last day at work was the twenty-first of December, and I got back to Goliad late the next afternoon.

I was glad to be home, gladder than I'd ever felt in my life, to tell the truth, but I can't deny that things were different. I felt like an empty shell of myself, nothing at all like the kid who left Texas four months ago. I didn't see the world in the same way anymore, and I didn't think I ever would.

Mama could see it the second I walked in, of course, but, being Mama, she only hugged me and fussed over me for a while without mentioning it. But after things settled down, she pulled me aside for a talk.

"You look sad, son. What's wrong?" she asked. I knew better than to tell her it was nothing; she'd shoot that down without blinking an eye.

"I guess I'm still a little messed up about Lisa, that's all," I said, truthfully.

"Yeah, I thought that's what it might be," she said.

"Can't blame me, can you? I mean, after everything that happened," I added, and she looked troubled.

"No, I don't blame you for anything. But if you're still missing her so much, why don't you give her a call?" she finally suggested.

"I don't know if she'd even talk to me, after the way things went last time. Besides, she's with Marcus now," I said, scandalized.

"She's not married, is she?" she asked.

"Well. . . no," I admitted.

"So call her, then. Even better, go see her. You know where she lives. If you tell her how you feel and apologize for some things, you might get her back, you know," she said.

I toyed with the idea for a minute, but the wave of pain and sadness that came over me when I thought about Lisa was more than I wanted to deal with.

"It's better if I leave it alone, I think," I said.

"Why is it better?" she asked.

"Because it is," I said, and realized that was no explanation at all. I didn't really have an explanation, other than the fact that after you've finally managed to close the covers on a painful and messy episode in your life, you're not usually eager to reopen that book all over again, not even for the sake of improving the outcome.

She searched my face, and she must have seen that my mind was made up.

"I can't make you talk to her if you don't want to, Cody. But I think you'll be sorry someday if you don't at least try," she said.

"I'll think about it," I finally said, just to get away from the uncomfortable topic.

And I did think about it now and then, sort of, but I couldn't decide what I wanted to do or whether to talk to her or not. It wasn't that I thought we'd have a big, nasty fight or anything. Quite the opposite. I was sure we'd both be perfectly civil to each other. We'd probably say all the proper things, telling each other that everything was just fine and burying the hatchet at least in words. But even though we might _say_ all that, I didn't really believe it. I was inclined to think nothing could ever be right again, after all that had happened.

I didn't have much choice but to talk to Marcus occasionally, awkward as that was. But we kept it brief and strictly businesslike; two coworkers who didn't much like each other. I didn't think _that_ relationship could ever be the same again, either. Losing my best friend made me sad, too, and there were times when I got the feeling Marcus was hurt almost as much as I was. But what else did he expect?

It turned cold a few days after Christmas, with snow flurries off and on for most of the next week or so. Everybody kept moaning and groaning about freezing to death, and I sort of smiled patronizingly. After you've lived in Alaska for a few months, even the harshest and most frigid weather Texas ever gets seems balmy and tropical in comparison.

I was out in the barn fiddling with the tractor on New Year's Eve, wearing nothing but jeans and a t-shirt in spite of the fact that it was snowing again outside, when Mama showed up in the doorway.

"What is it, Mama?' I asked, looking up.

"I just heard on the radio there's been a wreck out on the Longview highway, down by the river. It sounds like a bad one. Two cars flipped over in the ditch, blood everywhere," she said.

"Yeah, it's probably because of the ice," I agreed, wondering why she felt compelled to come out there just to tell me that. She usually wouldn't have, unless there was something else on her mind.

"I don't mean to upset you, son, but I think it's Lisa," she said, and I dropped my wrench on the ground.

"Huh?' I asked stupidly.

"I heard them mention some names. Not all of them because there was a lot of static, but I know I heard Lisa Stone. I thought you might want to know," she said.

"Is she all right?' I asked, surprising myself at how anxious I was.

"I don't know. It said they were taking everybody to the hospital in Longview. You might call them," she suggested.

I tried, but of course she wasn't there yet and they probably wouldn't have told me anything even if she had been.

Sitting at home wondering would have been unbearable, so I got in the truck and drove down to Longview myself, quite a bit faster than it was really safe to drive on the icy roads. I passed the place where the wreck had been and recognized Marcus's truck immediately, even though it was crushed gruesomely. I saw a blood stain on the back glass, and that only scared me even more.

I finally got there not long after the ambulance did, apparently, because they were still trying to deal with a hysterical Lisa who was fighting them tooth and nail. I ran back there without asking, and even though her eyes were open I could tell she didn't recognize me. She was covered in blood and so far out of it she probably didn't even know what planet she was on.

"Can't you knock her out?" I yelled.

"Who are you?" one of the nurses demanded, and that stopped me cold for a second. Who was I, after all, that they should pay any attention to what I thought?

"I'm her brother," I lied through my teeth, knowing they'd kick me out if I said anything else.

"She won't stop fighting us, but we've got to get her into surgery so we can stop her from losing any more blood," the nurse said.

"Then hold her down and knock her out!" I said, exasperated. They were in the middle of doing that very thing anyway, and as soon as they had her out they immediately hustled her off to the operating room to do whatever it was she had to have done.

I knew better than to follow them. Even family members aren't allowed into operating rooms. I soon found myself standing alone in the hallway, at a loss for what to do.

I bought a Dr. Pepper that I didn't really want, and went back to sit in the waiting room for almost two hours until eventually a nurse came out to tell me that Lisa would be okay. She just needed to sleep for a couple hours, but I could go sit with her if I liked. That was a huge relief, but there were a couple of other things I needed to know.

"What about Marcus Cumby, the boy who came in with my sister? Can you tell me anything about him?" I asked.

"He'll be fine. Cuts and bruises, mostly, and a ruptured spleen. We had to take that out, but he'll be okay. He's in room 326 if you want to go see him, too. Do you have any preference about which funeral home you'd like to use? For your mother, I mean?" she asked, and for a second my mind skidded. Then I remembered I was supposed to be Lisa's brother.

"Uh. . . we should probably wait and ask Lisa about that when she wakes up. We've got different mothers," I said wryly.

"All right. But make sure to ask her. We need to know as soon as we can," she said.

"Thanks," I said.

There was nothing I could do for Lisa at the moment, but nevertheless I made my way up to the third floor to sit with her. She looked pale and sick when I got there, and she had cuts and bruises in several places. I pulled up a chair beside the bed to wait.

"Are you sure she'll be all right? She looks awful," I asked again when another nurse came into the room. She sure didn't look like she'd be all right anytime soon.

"She'll be okay. She's had a pretty rough time, I'm afraid. Do you know if she's been in contact with any cats, lately?" the nurse asked.

"Cats?" I asked, mystified.

"Yes. She's got a severe case of toxoplasmosis. Kind of rare, but it usually comes from cats," she explained.

"Not that I know of," I said, baffled.

"Has she done any gardening work or anything like that recently?" she asked.

"Well, yeah, she does raise vegetables," I agreed.

"That's probably it, then. Stray cats like to use gardens as litter boxes because the ground is soft," she said.

"She'll be okay, though, right?" I repeated.

"Yes. She probably won't feel too good for a few days, though. She'll need to take it easy for a while, and y'all need to make sure she finishes her antibiotics. We'll probably let her go home tomorrow sometime, if everything goes all right," she said, and I nodded.

They left me alone with her again after that, and for a while I simply watched her sleeping. She looked fragile and weak, and all kinds of thoughts went through my mind as I sat there. I let my mind drift back to the summer, to mimosa crowns and passionate kisses, and to wordless promises on a mountain beneath the stars. I hadn't been all that wise since then, and maybe she hadn't either, but whatever might have happened in the past, I knew in that moment that I still loved her. I didn't know what she'd say to that or if she still felt the same way about me, but I wanted to give it a try if she did.

But there was someone else to be considered in all this, and since Lisa was still sleeping, I decided it was a good time to go see him. I leaned over and kissed her on the cheek, knowing she'd never know, and then slipped three doors down to Marcus's room.

He was awake, not-watching a game show on TV and looking like he was in a good bit of pain.

"Hey, Marcus," I said softly, and he smiled, more or less.

"Hey, Cody. Didn't expect to see anybody today, with the roads so bad," he said.

"Yeah. . . I had to come check on y'all," I said, sitting down in the chair beside his bed.

"How's Lisa?" he asked, and I quickly gave him a rundown on her condition, finishing up with the words I'd mostly come to say.

"I don't know what she'll say, but I'm fixing to ask her if she wants to get back together, Marcus. Just so you know," I told him.

Marcus didn't say anything about that at first, but finally he gave me a crooked little smile. A tired and pained one, to be sure, but still a smile.

"Yeah. . . I think you should, honestly," he said.

"I'm surprised you'd say that," I said, raising an eyebrow at him.

"I've been thinking about it for a long time, in the back of my mind. Me and Lisa never really had anything together except just friends, you know. I'm tired of pretending. We both almost died out there today, and I guess maybe that has a way of making you see things a little different. So yeah, go talk to her. I think y'all are better off together, no matter what happens. I always did think so," he explained, sounding sad.

The speech didn't seem to make a whole lot of sense, but I decided it wasn't the time to grill Marcus about what it all meant. I had my answer about Lisa, and that was all I really cared about at the moment.

"Well, good, cause if you didn't say it was okay, then I was gonna have to pound you as soon as you got home," I told him jokingly, and Marcus laughed.

"Aw, don't make me laugh, Cody. It hurts too much," he said, putting a hand on his left side, presumably where they took his ruptured spleen out.

"Sorry," I said.

"It's okay. They say they'll let me go home in a couple days, hopefully," he said.

"That's good. But I guess I better get back down there and check on Lisa. I'll come back in a little while, okay?" I said.

"Thanks," he said, and I gave him a rough hug, or at least the best one I could manage without hurting him.

"Get well, boy," I told him.

"I'll do my best," Marcus agreed.

I went back down to Lisa's room after that, to see if she was awake yet. She wasn't, and for a long time I sat there in the chair looking out at the snow and watching her breathe. I didn't know how to get hold of Jenny, so there was nothing I could do except keep watch while she slept.

## Chapter Thirty-Two - Lisa

When I finally woke up, I was lying in a hospital bed in a quiet room, hurting in every way imaginable. Mind, body, and heart were all shattered. My world was nothing but the depths of bleak devastation, black as the bitterest night.

It was still snowing a little bit, but it was the big flakes that always come near the end, when the storm is almost over. From what I could see, there was only maybe an inch or two on the ground.

Then I turned my head away from the window, and to my utter shock, Cody was there, sitting in the chair beside my bed. He looked careworn and sad, and he was wearing that same old _Cowboy for Life_ t-shirt that he'd worn the first day I went out to see him at Goliad, all those eons and centuries ago. It reminded me of happier days, or at least it would have if Cody hadn't seemed so sorrowful, like he thought I might never open my eyes again. In a way I think that comforted me just a little bit; when your heart is broken, it's a comfort to know that your pain isn't yours alone.

"Cody," I said, and I was surprised how weak my voice sounded. He stirred, and reached out to clasp my hand. Any other time I wouldn't have let him do it, but at the moment I needed the touch.

"Hey, Lisa," he said.

"How did you get here?" I asked.

"Well. . . Mama heard about the wreck on the radio, so I decided to come down here and see if you were all right. It sounded pretty bad, the way they talked about it," he said, not quite looking at me.

"I'm so sorry," I told him. I don't even know why I said it or what I was supposed to be sorry for, but I was such an emotional basket case right then, I might have said just about anything and it would have felt logical. Sorry for lying to him? Sorry for making him have to drive to Longview in the snow? I really had no idea. All I knew was that I felt like I'd let him down, like I'd let everybody down, and Mama most of all. Tears started to run from the corners of my eyes, and he quietly wiped them away with a tissue from the bedside table.

He must have guessed my apology had something to do with the wreck.

"It's nobody's fault. The road was bad, and there was nothing anybody could have done different. But the nurse said you lost a lot of blood and they've got you on some pretty strong antibiotics, too. You've got a bad case of toxoplasmosis. But they say you'll be fine in a couple days," he told me.

I'd never heard of toxoplasmosis. I didn't know where it came from, or how I could have gotten such a thing. But it didn't matter, anyway.

"What did they do with Mama?" I asked dully.

"Nothing, yet. They wanted me to ask you which funeral home you'd like to use. If you want to, I thought we could bury her at Nebo. Maybe keep y'all from having so many arrangements to make," he said.

It didn't surprise me that he'd make such an offer. He was always like that, when he thought nobody was paying attention. But still, I was grateful beyond words for that small act of kindness.

"Thanks," I said.

"It's the least I could do," he said.

"Where's Marcus?" I asked.

"He got banged up pretty bad, but they think he'll be okay. He's down the hall, there," he said, nodding his head in that direction.

"I'm glad you came," I told him, truthfully.

"Well. . . I couldn't pretend I didn't know," he said, scuffing his boot on the floor a little bit.

"I've really missed you," I told him, not stopping to think or care how that might sound. He raised an eyebrow at me.

"Still?" he asked.

"Always," I admitted. It says in Proverbs that an honest answer is like a kiss on the lips, and I guess that's how my words must have felt for Cody. He was silent for a few minutes, maybe thinking, and then cleared his throat.

"Lisa, I know this is maybe not the time or the place, but I've been thinking an awful lot. I really didn't mean all that stuff I said when you came up to Alaska. I was mostly just mad and hurt, and then later when I found out about you and Marcus getting together, I don't know, it seemed like it was better to let it alone. Anyway, I know me and you both have done some stupid stuff, but I'd like to try to maybe work things out, if we can," he finally said.

I wanted to say no. I knew what the price would be if I didn't. But I was sick and weak and my heart was already broken, and I didn't have the strength to turn him away. I knew it might be the last chance we ever had together. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't make myself do it.

"Yeah, me too," I agreed softly, and squeezed his hand.

"What about Marcus?" he asked.

I thought about that, but the prospect of explaining to him that I'd never really been with Marcus in the first place was more than I could handle right then. It would drag in the whole mess with Layla and the fake breakup in Alaska and who knew what else, and all of it together was too much.

"Marcus knows how I feel about you. He always has. I'd like to think he'd be happy for me," I said instead, which was as much of the truth as I knew how to give him at the moment.

"He said he was glad, when I talked to him earlier," he said.

"You talked to Marcus?" I asked. I couldn't help wondering what they might have said to each other, and how much information Marcus had let slip.

"Well, yeah. He's still my best friend, you know. But I told him I was fixin' to ask you if we could work things out, even if I had to beat him bloody if he didn't like it, so he gave me his blessing," he said. I laughed a little, even though it hurt.

"He's a good man," I said.

"Yeah, he is," Cody agreed.

We didn't say anything else for a while, but at last he took a deep breath and ran his fingers through his hair.

"I probably better go, Lisa, unless you need me to stay. There are some things I need to do, to get ready for the funeral, you know. I'll try to call Jenny to come sit with you, if you'll give me her number," he said.

"Sure, go ahead. I'll be all right," I said, giving him the number. I would have liked him to stay, honestly, but I didn't feel like I had a right to ask him for anything, yet. Our relationship was still in the eggshell stage, tenuous and fragile.

"Okay, then," he agreed. Then he kissed me goodbye, just a quick peck, and left the hospital to do what needed to be done.

I watched him leave, and for a little while I slept again until Jenny showed up. I almost would rather have been alone, if the truth be told, but I smiled tiredly and prepared myself for whatever the encounter might bring.

"How are you feeling, sis?" Jenny asked, in a subdued tone.

"I've been better. What about you?" I asked.

"I'll be all right. Mama wouldn't have liked it if we fell apart, you know," Jenny said, and in spite of my exhaustion and desolation, I had to smile a little. It was true; that's exactly what Mama would have said. To be strong and hold it together, no matter what. It surprised me that Jenny had ever paid attention.

"Cody told me not to worry about anything, cause he was taking care of all the funeral arrangements. He said y'all already talked about it. Now, it's not like I'm not grateful, you know, but what's he doing here at all?" she asked. I thought wryly that my sister was the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow; always nosy.

"He heard about the wreck, so he came down here to see me, that's all. He's only being the way he always is. He didn't want me to have to deal with all that from a hospital bed," I said. I didn't mention the fact that we both knew Jenny couldn't have handled it period; there was no need to hurt her feelings by saying so.

"Well. . . okay. Just seemed strange that _he_ was the one calling me, that's all," she said.

"We're gonna try to work things out one more time, I think. See what happens. And I don't want to hear a word about it from you or anybody else," I said, a touch severely.

"I won't. I'm glad for you, that you got him back. I think he really loves you," she said, and that surprised me almost as much as anything Jenny had ever said.

"You do?" I asked skeptically.

"Yeah. He wouldn't still be here after all this, if he didn't. I hope y'all work out this time," she said.

"Yeah, me too," I agreed.

This time, in my heart of hearts, I could almost believe we would.

End of Part Two

Part Three of Many Waters

In Beauty Be It Finished

## Prologue - Lisa

The next person who walked into my room was Layla Latimer.

It was morning by then; I could see it from the way the light fell on the trees outside my window. I wanted to scream when I saw her, but I found that my tongue was stuck in my throat, and I couldn't make a sound.

"Now, Lisa, really; I told you I'd be watching," she scolded when she got close enough. I noticed she had a syringe in her hand, but I seemed frozen, unable to lift a finger as she came up beside the bed and inserted it into my IV line.

"This'll just knock you out for a little while, so there's no fuss. We'll be headed back to New Mexico in a few minutes; you and me and Marcus. Then we'll wait for Cody to come along, which I'm sure he will, shortly," Layla said soothingly, as if comforting a recalcitrant child.

Then the darkness took me, and I knew no more.

## Chapter Thirty-Three - Cody

I got most of the funeral arrangements done by the time evening came, and then went home tired and wet to take a hot shower and eat supper with Mama. It was just the two of us, for once; Brandon was spending the night with one of his friends. It was a lot quieter with him and Marcus both gone, but that was all right. She fixed spaghetti and garlic bread, one of my favorites, and the quiet was soothing after such a rough day.

"I talked to Lisa today. I think maybe we might work things out, after all," I mentioned between bites of food, knowing she'd be pleased at that news.

"I'm glad," she nodded.

"Hmm. . . would've thought you'd been more excited," I said jokingly.

"Did she get a chance to tell you?" she asked.

"Tell me what?" I asked.

"Obviously she didn't," she said.

"I guess not. So what's the big secret?" I asked.

"I'm not sure if I should be the one to tell you or not," she fretted.

"Well, since you already mentioned it, you might as well tell me. If you don't then I'll have to worry about it all night long till I see Lisa again. Come on, Mama; I promise I won't be mad at her for not telling me. I know she was in pretty bad shape this afternoon," I said.

"All right, then. But don't judge, till you hear the whole story," she warned.

"Do I ever?" I asked, frowning.

So she proceeded to tell me the whole story about New Mexico and Miss Latimer and the fake breakup, and I couldn't decide whether to be shocked or sad or numb. I'd finally struggled my way through all that garbage till I reached some kind of understanding and acceptance of reality, to forgiveness and peace, and the revelation that things had never been quite what they seemed to be knocked me flat in the dirt all over again.

I really hate to be manipulated, and the idea that everybody I loved and trusted was secretly maneuvering behind my back was a hard pill to swallow. It stung almost as much as that whole incredible story about Lisa and Marcus hooking up at a party. In hindsight, I couldn't believe I'd ever swallowed such a whopper as that in the first place. She must have been really desperate, to come up with something that stupid. I ought to have known better. I ought to have demanded more answers when she tried to feed me that line of bull. If I had, then things might have turned out different.

My face flushed red when I thought about what a fool I'd been.

"Why didn't you tell me all this sooner, if you knew?" I asked, accusingly.

"Because I knew y'all would work things out sooner or later, if I stayed out of the way. It wasn't my place to meddle in the meantime," she told me, and I grudgingly decided maybe she had a point.

I was still struggling to adjust myself to the idea that Lisa had been lying to me this whole time. I couldn't decide whether to be furious or whether to feel sorry for her, let alone Marcus. Knowing they did it for my own sake and no other reason made it easier to forgive, I guess, but that didn't mean I was okay with it, either. As soon as things settled down a little, we all three needed to sit down and have a serious talk about what it means to trust somebody.

"Here. This is the stuff that's supposed to break the curse. Lisa dropped it off awhile back, and told me to have you drink it," Mama said, holding up a tube of green liquid. I stared at it, and then reached out to take it into my own hand.

I looked at the vial, watching it glitter in the soft light, and my heart softened. I could only imagine how much it had cost Lisa to get that little tube, all the fear and humiliation she must have suffered. All for me, and not even any thanks. That was greatness of heart if anything ever was.

I think I've said before how irresistible that trait has always been in my eyes; that reflection of the Light that illuminates the world and makes everything beautiful that it touches. I think I would have fallen in love with Lisa all over again, just from hearing that she'd done such a thing for a complete stranger. It was the deed itself which was beautiful, not the fact that she did it for me.

But it _had_ been for me, and there was no way I could thank her, nor ever repay the gift she'd given me, except to love her forever with my whole heart. And that I had every intention of doing.

But there was still the issue of what to do about Layla, because there wasn't a shred of doubt in my mind that she was the same person as this so-called Miss Latimer. According to the dreams, we were both still in danger of death if I understood things right. Layla had practically said as much, if and when she found out Lisa and I were back together again. Therefore I didn't drink the liquid right away, and handed it back to Mama.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"I think I'll let you hold on to that little gem for a while before I use it," I said, my mind already working far ahead.

"How come?" she asked.

"Well, it seems to me Layla can't curse me twice, and I think it's about time I paid her a visit. I might need that cure more when I get back," I said.

"Back from where?" she asked.

"I think it's about time I went out there to New Mexico and busted some heads," I said. Yeah, I know, it sounded like pure bravado. But I was dead serious, too. If anybody thought they could get away with hurting my family and the people I loved, then they'd find out otherwise real quick. That was a lesson already burned deep into my soul by a hundred generations of history.

My family is from Cumberland, you see, right on the border between England and Scotland. That was always a land of conflict and strife, of raids between the two kingdoms and governments who did nothing to protect their people. For thousands of years it was like that, ever since the Picts and Romans fought over the same ground; maybe even earlier. People had no one to depend on but family, and that was a bond you never, ever forsook. So maybe somewhere back in the misty depths of time there's still a Borderland warrior who looks out of my Texan eyes and sees a world very different, yes, but in some ways no different at all. I like to think so.

For all I know, one of them might even have been a knight in shining armor back in the old, old days, a man of honor who not only knew how to fight but also how to care for the sick and the hurting, how to build things of beauty and to humble himself before God. I'd like to believe that, too. True, I have my own battles to fight and my own courage to find, but it surely does help to remember those things.

Mama didn't say anything right away, but she looked unhappy.

"Before you do anything like that, I guess there's something else I need to tell you," she finally said.

"Well, this sure is turning out to be a night for secrets, isn't it?" I said dryly.

"It's just some things your father told me when you were a baby, that's all. I don't know how much of it is true, or even if any of it is," she said.

"Mother, just _tell_ me, for pity's sake!" I said, exasperated.

"Well, for one thing he told me that story Marcus heard, about the curse and where it came from. I never realized other people in town knew anything about it. He also told me those bright blue eyes of yours are the mark of a curse-breaker, but I guess I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit. Do you know that crystal up there on your Grandpa Reuben's tombstone?" she asked.

"Yeah, what about it?" I asked.

"Your daddy always told me that crystal is tied to you. As long as it's up there on the mountain, in that very spot, then it'll guide and protect you no matter what. It'll give you true dreams to show you which way God would have you to go, and no kind of magic can touch you. Not even the curse. He said your Grandma Hannah dedicated it to you when she first put it there. But you still have a hard choice to make," she said.

"What kind of a choice?" I asked.

"Well, you can decide to live out your own life just like a normal person if you want to. The crystal will protect you from the curse for as long as you live. You'd be skipped over, you might say, but in that case the curse would pick back up again with any kids you might have," she said.

"And what's my other choice?" I asked.

"Well, he also said you could choose to take that crystal loose and use it to make an end of the curse forever. He never said how, but he did say it'd be dangerous and you might even die. He personally never doubted which choice you'd end up making, though, and that's why he told me not to say anything about it till you turned twenty-five, so you'd have time to come to your full strength before you put yourself in danger. That's why I never told you anything," she said.

I sat there with my mouth open, reeling from yet another shattering of everything I ever thought was true. Mama knew about the Curse? I was immune to magic? That was incredible. My mind jumped instantly to that night Layla tried to kiss me, and the fear in her eyes. Suddenly finding out she couldn't hurt me might have been why she turned tail and ran off like a scalded dog. Not knowing why her magic didn't work _would_ have been scary, I guess.

There was something else that bothered me about the whole thing, though.

"But how can _any_ of that be true? I wasn't even born yet when Grandma Hannah put that crystal up there. How could it have anything to do with me one way or the other?" I objected.

"Maybe she had a dream about you," Mama said.

There was always _that_ possibility, of course. Hannah had owned that crystal for a long time before she ever put it up there on the tombstone, so if it could really give visions of the future then it was entirely possible she might have had a few. I certainly couldn't think of any _other_ way for her to know all those things.

"But why _me,_ though?" I asked, and Mama shook her head.

"That I don't know, son. I'm sure there's a good reason, but sometimes we have to be content not to know what it is," she said.

I decided she was probably right about that. Sometimes you simply have to accept reality for what it is and let that be the end of the matter, no matter how unsatisfying that may be. As the saying goes, it is what it is. That might sound like the kind of frivolous and flippant thing only a high school kid would ever say, but it actually contains a grain of very good sense when you think about it for a while.

Well, all right, then. I could accept the fact that I might never know why God chose me instead of somebody else, but I couldn't help wondering how Hannah must have felt about that. She and Reuben only ever had one child, my Grandpa Martin, and I suppose she would've liked to use the crystal to protect _him,_ if she had her own way. From her point of view, it must have seemed that God was asking her to condemn her own son to an early death to save me instead, her grandson's great-grandson, and it must have seemed utterly irrational since the crystal could have been passed down to me eventually anyway. That's what I would have been thinking, at least. She must have wondered why God would ever ask her to do such a thing, and for her to actually go through with it must have taken a kind of faith I could barely imagine.

I guess it's possible that that in itself was part of the reason why He asked, of course. Greatness of heart in one person is an inspiration to all others who see it, and the ripples may wash ashore in far times and places and in ways the original doer of the deed knows nothing about. But then again, there might also have been some very practical reason why He asked; that crystal might have saved me from death a dozen times already, for all I knew, in some odd way that never could have happened otherwise. Nobody ever knows what _might_ have happened.

Or maybe it was both.

I loved her a little bit then, this old woman I never knew who sacrificed so much for me, and for a fleeting moment I wished I could have met Hannah Trewick McGrath, if only just once, to thank her for having the courage to believe. As it was, I could only bless her silently, and pray that her dreams gave her comfort, and promise her that I'd never let her sacrifice be in vain.

I guess Daddy was right about what choice I'd make, after all.

But my head hurt from trying to digest too much new information, and I was so confused about everything by then that I didn't know what to think anymore.

"But what am I supposed to _do?"_ I finally asked.

"I've told you all I know, Cody. If you don't know what to do then maybe it's not the right time to do anything yet. Wait for a dream. You might have to be patient," she said.

"I've got to think about all this for a while," I finally said, shaking my head.

"Yes, you do. Whatever you're supposed to do, I can't help but think it's something more than just busting some heads, as you put it," she said.

"So what changed your mind? Why are you telling me all this _now,_ all of a sudden?" I asked.

"Because I don't want you to do anything foolish, that's why. You can't make wise decisions if you don't know everything, and if things like this are happening then I think it's time I told you," she said.

"Well. . . thanks," I said.

"You're welcome. Just think about what you need to do, and I'll support you whatever you decide. But don't do anything hasty, all right?" she asked.

"I won't," I said automatically.

That night, I dreamed again.

At first it seemed ordinary and even dull, because it started out in a place that I knew quite well; the cemetery at Nebo. The only odd thing was that it seemed to be almost empty of tombstones. The only one in sight was my Grandpa Reuben's, and the dirt seemed fresh on that grave. I wondered if I was seeing something from long ago instead of the future, and if so I wondered why.

In front of the grave was a lady in a black dress, praying, and somehow I knew it was Hannah. Then I saw her lift up her hands to Heaven, and she spoke _my_ name, and I glimpsed a shining crystal in her hands. She said some words from Scripture that I vaguely remembered hearing before, kissed the jewel, and then attached it firmly to the top of her husband's tomb.

Then she turned around, and I could have sworn she looked right at me. I don't know if it's possible to communicate across time that way, but I know for just a second we locked eyes, and she smiled. But only for a second, because then the whole scene vanished and I found myself reeling into utter insanity again.

I was in the midst of a howling storm on a mountaintop at night, with lightning bolts striking the boulders all around me and splintering the stone. I wanted to cower down under the rocks to keep from getting burnt to cinders, but my other self in the dream did no such thing. He climbed on top of a boulder, then reached out and grabbed one of the bolts in his bare hand. Then he threw it back at the clouds, for all the world like Thor in a cheap Viking movie. Then the storm hushed, and there was rain.

Only rain, quiet and still.

* * * * * * *

I would have dearly liked to talk to Brandon the next morning, but since he wasn't there I didn't have much choice except to wait till he got home from school. I consoled myself with the thought that quiet rain is a comforting kind of thing, so whatever the dream portended, it seemed to be mostly good. I sure did hope so.

I was beginning to wonder a lot about _him,_ actually, and whether it meant anything that we had the same intensely blue eyes. I hadn't thought about it much till Mama mentioned her little tidbit about how that was supposed to be the mark of a curse-breaker, but now it made me curious. It was hard to believe something like that could be just a coincidence, and I made a mental note to do some serious investigation into the subject whenever things settled down and I could find the time.

I _did_ look up those words that Hannah quoted, and found the place in the Book of Numbers where they came from. They were the specific words of blessing that God told the priests to speak over the people, and the concordance noted that they'd also been commonly used over the centuries by a parent or grandparent as a blessing for a child. That seemed fitting, coming from my far-distant grandmother. Whether they always had to be spoken when setting the crystal or whether that was something she meant only for me, I couldn't have said.

The meaning of the lightning storm on the mountain was just as obscure as ever, but as it turned out, I never got a chance to ask Brandon what the rest of it meant.

Around mid-morning I got a call from Jenny, of all people, letting me know that Lisa and Marcus had disappeared from the hospital sometime before breakfast. No one knew where they'd gone or how they could have left the building without being noticed, but I didn't have the slightest doubt where they were.

That little tidbit of news settled all my doubts in a hurry, and so it was that I found myself packing Daddy's 30-30 Model 94 Winchester deer rifle behind my truck seat. It was old, true, but still well-oiled and ready for use. Under good conditions it could kill at two hundred yards or more, and with a little luck I expected to have excellent conditions in the desert. I'm a pretty crack shot, if I do say so myself.

I didn't have much of a plan, other than hunting Layla down and putting a bullet between her eyes if I had to. I was none too sure things would work out the way I hoped, though. She might not be able to use any magic against me, but there are plenty of other ways to kill a man without resorting to sorcery. I'm not immortal, not by a long stretch.

And then again, even if I succeeded, shooting someone is murder, after all. She was a cruel and evil person who'd done plenty of wrong, but the law wouldn't look kindly on killing her. They tend not to believe in magic and curses, and I didn't particularly want to go to prison for life in New Mexico for killing the woman.

But what other choices did I have? The police were a waste of time; Layla was surely a respectable member of society, and I had no proof she'd done anything wrong. By the time the police were willing to do anything, she would've had time to get rid of Lisa and Marcus in a way so that nobody would ever find them. I didn't dare give her the chance.

I needed help in a major way, and that's when I thought about Matthieu again. True, I barely knew him, but when you're grasping at straws, sometimes you have to take a chance on the unknown. I fished out his number and called, praying he hadn't changed phones.

"Hello?" someone asked, and I recognized the voice.

"Hey, Matthieu, I know it's been a while, but how've you been?" I asked, not sure what else to say.

"Mr. McGrath! I'm glad to hear from you. What's up?" he asked. So I gave him a quick sketch of all the spooky events of the past few months, including Lisa and Marcus's disappearance.

"You should have called me sooner, Cody. That girl in Alaska sounds just like Layla Garza to me, and so does the one in New Mexico. She switches names all the time to make herself harder to track, but she's always got the same angle. She's a dangerous sorceress," he said.

"Yeah, I figured out that much on my own," I said.

"Well, never mind. The only thing that matters right now is to get Lisa and Marcus back, and then hopefully to deal with Layla once and for all. I'll meet you at Goliad in about three or four hours, okay? I'll have to get some stuff together and that plus the drive will take me about that long," he said.

"I'll be waiting," I said, wishing it wasn't so long. I couldn't imagine what Lisa and Marcus might be going through in the meantime while I twiddled my thumbs doing nothing.

"Back so soon?" Mama asked, when I walked in the door.

"I never left yet. I decided I can't tackle Layla alone. I've got to have some help," I admitted, and she nodded.

It seemed like an eternity, but eventually Matthieu showed up in the same big black truck he'd been driving the first time, only now it was fitted with a mean-looking iron brush guard across the grille. He was dressed in black combat fatigues, of all things, and he'd brought an extra set for me.

"We can't underestimate Layla. I don't doubt she's expecting us, so we have to be as careful as we can," he said, handing me the extra fatigues.

"Do you think she's got backup?" I asked.

"Possibly. But even if she does, she's still the most dangerous one, anyway," he said.

"How much do you know about her?" I asked.

"She drinks the life from a young man and turns him old, while she stays young forever. All she has to do is kiss him," he said, and I thought instantly of James Fitch.

"Is that all?" I asked.

"No, it's not. She can also change her appearance so you wouldn't recognize her. Her brother was a lot more powerful than she is, but we finally nailed _him_ a few months ago. Layla might still have some of his items that she can use, though; one of his crystal balls at the very least and maybe some other things, too," he said.

"So if you got him then why didn't you get her, too?" I asked.

"She wasn't with him, then. She never stays in one place long enough for us to track. She likes places where there are not many women, and lots of young guys but not many locals. College towns, army bases, things like that. Prudhoe Bay sounds like a perfect hunting ground for her. Bet it freaked her out when her magic didn't work on you," he said, laughing a little. I didn't think it was all that funny, myself; even the memory of it was enough to send a chill down my spine.

"Do you think she was there after me personally, or was I just in the wrong place at the wrong time?" I asked.

"Who knows? We found your name in a list on her brother's hard drive, so I'm inclined to think she probably knew about you, at least. But I couldn't say whether she had her eye on you specifically or not. Especially when that's a place she would've liked anyway," Matthieu shrugged.

"So what's the plan for tonight, exactly?" I asked, changing the subject.

"Well, it's about a twelve hour drive to Las Cruces. We should get there about two or three o'clock in the morning, if all goes well. That'll be a perfect time to hit the place; the moon will be down by then and it'll be as dark as it gets. Catching her asleep is probably too much to hope for, but I'll be content with surprise," Matthieu said.

"Won't we be tired, at that time of night?" I pointed out.

"Yeah, no doubt, but we can take turns sleeping on the way out there. That'll help some," he said.

"What about when we get there?" I asked.

"I remember the place well enough, if she's really using her brother's old place like you said. There's a steel gate about a mile from the house with a lock on it. I can get us through that. Then we'll drive up to the house, real slow so we don't make any noise. I've got a set of night-vision goggles for both of us, so we can run with no lights on. We absolutely can't let her have a chance to get prepared. I think our best option is to do a direct frontal assault on the place. Ram the truck right through the front doors, come crashing in on her before she knows what happened. That's what the brush guard is for. Do you think you can drive, Cody, so I can be ready to jump out immediately?" he asked.

"Sure. I ram trucks through walls every day," I said dryly. Matthieu didn't laugh.

"I'm serious. Can you do it or not?" he asked.

"I can do it," I agreed.

"All right, then. I'll take care of Layla, and anybody else who's there. You just make sure to find Marcus and Lisa, and watch out for zombies. It's possible there might still be a few of _them_ left up there, too," Matthieu said.

"Zombies?" I asked.

"Andrew Garza was a necromancer, among other things. He killed people and turned them into soldiers. Layla can't make them herself but I'm sure she wouldn't hesitate to use one if it was available. Let's hope they're all gone by now and then it won't be a problem," Matthieu said, without a trace of a smile.

"Can you kill them?" I asked.

"Well. . . you can't really kill something that's already dead. You mostly want to destroy their eyes and ears so they can't find you, or their arms and legs so they can't reach you. It's best to knock their heads off, if you can. Then they're useless," he said.

I swallowed hard, my mind giving me a hideous image of knocking the head off a dead man with a baseball bat. No game, this. But if that's what it took to save Lisa and Marcus, then that's what I'd do.

But there was one other thing that had to be done before we left. I had no idea yet what I was supposed to do with the crystal, but I did know I was supposed to carry it with me. Cutting that stone loose from its place would mean the end of my special exemption from the Curse, and it was no sure thing I'd survive the coming battle. But in spite of all that, when it came right down to it, the choice wasn't so hard at all.

Matthieu knew about it, of course; I'd told him that part along with everything else. But when I got back to the house holding it in my hand, he couldn't seem to tear his eyes away from it.

"You don't have any idea what that is, do you?" he asked.

"Uh, no, I guess I don't," I said.

"It's a Guardian Stone. They're very precious, and very holy, and there are only three of them in the whole world. They were a gift of God to Saint Madryn of Gwent way back in the Middle Ages, as a tool of protection against evil. Make sure you never lose it," he said, very solemnly.

I looked at my crystal with new respect, and carefully zipped it up in my chest pocket, where it couldn't possibly get lost. Then I thought better of it.

"You know what, I think you need this more than I do for now. You're the one who'll have to deal with Layla," I said, offering him the Stone. It wasn't the time for false humility, so he simply nodded and took it.

Matthieu liked to talk and he ended up telling me quite a few things during that long, long trip. He told me about fighting giant octopuses on the bottom of the sea, and hunting monsters in Kazakhstan, and other things even harder to believe than that. He was (he said) an Avenger, sworn to fight evil wherever it reared its ugly head. He made my own life seem tame and ordinary by comparison.

I suppose there's a certain thirst for adventure in the heart of every young man, me included, and therefore a certain admiration that wells up unasked, for those who live such a rough and tumble life as Matthieu talked about. I can't deny it. But all the same, if I had to choose, I think I'd rather be at Goliad with my hands in the dirt. I don't mind fighting when I need to, but I don't particularly like it. I'd rather be the sunshine and the rain that makes little things grow strong, a steady rock to shelter the weak. There are different kinds of strength, and different kinds of courage. So even though I admired Matthieu and enjoyed his tales, I'm glad his life is not mine.

## Chapter Thirty-Four - Cody

So it was that, many hours later, we found ourselves parked in front of a steel gate on a dirt road in the Organ Mountains, with the lights of Las Cruces shining barely ten miles away. It seemed unreal, that such a dark and deadly operation should be going on within sight of the modern, ordinary world, right down there in the valley. We'd already been to the house down in White Sands, and found it dark and empty.

Matthieu was picking the lock while I stood there and watched him. We both had our night-vision goggles on, which I'd never used before. They painted the whole world in shades of ghostly green, spooky and mysterious. Still, I could see almost like it was broad daylight, and that was all that mattered. We were practically invisible in our combat fatigues, and as soon as he finished picking the lock, I silently swung the gate open and returned to the truck.

"Ready?" Matthieu asked. He was wearing a helmet with a face visor, to keep Layla from kissing him I suppose. He had the Guardian Stone to protect him, of course, but there's nothing wrong with taking extra precautions. My own head was bare, but I dearly hoped I never had to see Layla at all.

"Ready as I'll ever be," I muttered. I got behind the wheel and snapped my seat belt, knowing the sudden impact of hitting the house would throw me forward if I wasn't buckled in. I couldn't afford to get knocked out against the windshield, or worse, punch through it.

We crept forward with no headlights, as quietly as we could on the gravel road. When we came in sight of the house itself, I saw that it was a doublewide mobile home with French doors in front that led onto a concrete patio.

"Ram right through those doors," Matthieu whispered, nodding towards the front of the house, quickly buckling himself in for the impact.

"Here we go, then," I said, and hit the gas. The truck's powerful engine picked up speed quickly, and in spite of the goggles I shut my eyes reflexively at the last second.

The impact was incredible. I was thrown forward against my buckle with enough force that I was sure there'd be bruises there in the morning. There was a massive sound of shattering glass and snapping wood and squealing metal, and the truck's windshield blew out, showering us with bits of glass. Then we were through, and found ourselves sitting in the middle of what looked like it might have been a fairly ordinary living room before the wall came crashing down. Showers of sparks from ripped-out electrical wires lit up the room.

"Go!" Matthieu cried, and the two of us quickly scrambled out to head for opposite ends of the house.

I stumbled through rubble almost knee-deep, doing my best not to step on the live wires that were still sparking and shorting in places. My boots were supposed to be shock-proof, but I didn't want to test that theory. I remembered something about how Lisa had found Marcus hung up in one of the back bedrooms, so that was where I headed first.

Then I found myself tackled from behind and knocked hard to the floor, and before I could come to my senses I felt something _biting_ me on my left shoulder, dangerously close to my neck. I instinctively punched at the thing, and my hand encountered dry, leathery skin barely clinging to bone. One of the zombies. It couldn't bite me very well through my clothes, but I can promise you it hurt plenty, and the thing was trying to get its stringy hands around my throat at the same time.

I fought the thing in a wave of revulsion and horror, and I found that every time I punched or ripped it, chunks would come loose in my hands, foul and greasy. None of that seemed to be hurting the thing, though, and we rolled and grappled on the floor for several minutes with neither of us able to get the upper hand. I was terrified that another one would pile on at any second, and if that happened then I was lost.

I vaguely heard gunfire and Matthieu yelling and the room was suddenly lit up by an explosion that threw both me and the zombie against the wall so hard that it felt like it might have cracked ribs. But at least it knocked loose the thing's hold on my neck, and before it could get up I scrambled to my feet and kicked it in the head as hard as I could with my steel toed boots. The thing's head came loose from its body and sailed across the room like a football, and then it was still.

I was still shaking from the fight, but there was no time for that. I quickly got a grip on myself and ran for the bedroom again, sliding along the wall to keep my back covered this time.

I kicked in the bedroom door without a second thought, and inside was a scene that broke my heart. In spite of the adrenaline rush of fighting off the monster and the blood and sweat and smoke of battle that was all around me, the sight in front of me was enough to stop me cold.

Marcus and Lisa were hanging from the ceiling by their wrists, just like Marcus must have been that other time. A long steel rod had been built into the ceiling, maybe for that very purpose, and both of them were almost naked except for whatever they'd been wearing at the hospital. The green glow of the goggles made it hard to see exactly what the situation was, but I could tell that Marcus's bandages across his stomach were soaked dark with blood, and neither he nor Lisa lifted their heads nor made a sound when I burst inside.

The battle was still raging outside the bedroom, and then all of a sudden there was silence. I almost dreaded to see what the outcome had been, but I was afraid to cut the prisoners loose without help. It might do more harm than good.

I crept back outside to the living room, where I found Matthieu sitting on the overturned couch while he put pressure on a bloody wound in his thigh as best he could.

"What happened?" I asked, staring at the blood.

"Got shot in the leg, that's what. Layla's pretty good with a pistol, turns out. But not as good as I am, though," he said with satisfaction.

"You got her?" I asked, hardly daring to hope.

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure I did. I know I got her better than she got me, but you better go after her and make sure, though," he said, handing me his pistol. It was a Glock .45, heavy and lethal. It still had several rounds left.

"Which way did she go?" I asked.

"She busted the bedroom window out and ran off up the valley, but she wasn't moving too fast. You better hurry, and take this, too," he said, handing me back the Guardian Stone.

I quickly zipped it up in my pocket where it couldn't get lost, then ran outside and picked up Layla's trail right where Matthieu had said I would. She must have been moving faster than he thought, though, because I lost her trail about a hundred yards from the house. I don't know if she went to ground or if she was still running, but either way she was gone.

I cussed and kicked the ground, but there was nothing to do except go back to the house and try to do what I could for the others.

Matthieu was still bleeding when I got back inside, and it was obvious there was no way he could help me with Marcus and Lisa.

"Was there anybody else?" I asked when I got back indoors.

"No, it was just Layla and two zombies, fortunately," Matthieu said.

"Are they both dead?" I asked, vividly remembering my brush with the one in the living room.

"Yeah. Well, _deactivated_ is maybe a better word, but you know what I mean," he said.

I went back to the bedroom, and found a chair to climb up and cut the ropes that held Marcus and Lisa to the ceiling, trying not to let them fall.

It didn't look good. They hadn't been in good shape to start with, and I was sure Layla hadn't given them any food or water ever since she hung them up in there. I had to get them to a hospital, and Matthieu too, for that matter.

"We've got to get y'all to the hospital," I told him, as soon as I carried Marcus and Lisa out to the living room.

"Yeah, but not in Las Cruces. None of us can be associated with what happened here tonight, not even remotely. In fact I'd like to get out of New Mexico completely, if we can. El Paso's only about forty-five minutes; I think it'll be best if we go there. But we can't leave the house like this, either. We've got to bury what's left of those zombies somewhere nobody will find them, and then we need to set this place on fire," he said.

"Can't we come back and deal with that later? Marcus and Lisa might not make it that long. You might not either, if you keep bleeding like that," I said severely. He gazed at the others, and finally nodded.

"Yeah, you're right. We'll come back later and finish up. Let's go. We can take Layla's car," he agreed.

I had to carry all three of them out to Layla's brown station wagon, laying Marcus and Lisa in the back seat as comfortably as possible, while Matthieu rode in front.

"You know, Cody, I've been thinking. You might ought to hold off a while before you drink that serum Layla gave you," Matthieu said after a while.

"How come?" I asked.

"Well. . .Curses are usually made to last forever, unless the one who cast them specifically breaks them. I'm not quite sure Layla had the power to break it in the first place. In fact, I wouldn't put it past her to give you a vial of poison, just for the pleasure of causing more heartache. You better let me stop by and test it, before you try to use it," Matthieu said.

I hadn't thought of that possibility, but I decided it was definitely a good idea to find out what was in that vial before I drank it.

"Okay, no problem," I said.

"I'll try to stop by on our way home. It's not too far out of the way. Just wait till then before you touch that liquid. I've got to get my uncle Rob and some of the others out here to take care of that scene in Las Cruces before somebody else finds it, so that might take a few days," he said.

"No worries; you know where to find me," I said.

We got to El Paso with no trouble, and then had to wait for an hour or more while the nurses decided what to do with us. Matthieu had to have surgery to get the bullet out of his leg, and the others were admitted to the hospital, too.

I called Mama to come get us, but El Paso is an awfully long way from Avinger. There was no way she could get there before late afternoon at the earliest. I wasn't sure yet when Marcus and Lisa would be released; hanging from a bar for several hours hadn't been good for them. Marcus had had his stitches torn open, and both of them were dehydrated.

But by late afternoon they were both awake at least, and the hospital was nice enough to let them have next-door rooms. Lisa was able to sit up in a wheelchair and let me push her into Marcus's room so we could talk, after he woke up from having his stitches redone.

"What happened?" he asked thickly, and I told both of them the story, with comments and interruptions along the way.

The hospital grudgingly let them go home the next morning (against medical advice), with a long list of home-care guidelines and strict orders to check back with a doctor if they took a turn for the worse. We probably would have stayed longer in El Paso, if it hadn't been for the need to get back home and take care of Mrs. Stone's funeral.

Mama left Brandon at home so he wouldn't miss school, even though he wanted to come. But it was better that way, since it left a lot more room in the car. We only drove partway that first day, taking it easy and spending the night at a motel in Sweetwater before finishing the trip the next morning.

Early that same afternoon, Matthieu stopped by on his way home as he'd promised he would. He had a white rat in a wire cage, which I could only guess was for testing the vial that Layla had given us. I was kind of disappointed, honestly; I could have done that much myself, if I'd known _that_ was all he had in mind. Marcus was at home resting, but Lisa and I were sitting at the kitchen table with Mama, drinking hot chocolate.

"Are you all by yourself?" I asked, when he showed up alone.

"Yeah. The others are still in Las Cruces, getting the truck fixed and stuff. But they told me to go on home so I could rest," he said.

"Did you get everything taken care of at the house?" I asked.

"Mostly, I think. We buried those poor people out in the White Sands Desert where nobody will ever look; it was the best we could do for them. We pulled the truck out and got rid of all the evidence we could find. I think it'll be all right," he explained.

"Sounds like y'all are pretty thorough," I said dryly.

"We have to be. Now, do you still have that vial Layla gave you?" Matthieu asked.

"Yeah, Mama has it in her purse, I think," I said.

"May I see it?" Matthieu asked.

"Sure. Let him see it, Mama," I said, and she wordlessly handed him the vial. Matthieu held it up to the light and watched it sparkle.

"I see. And you've never tasted it yet, right?" he asked.

"Nope," I said.

"Do you have an eyedropper we could use, maybe?" he asked.

"Sure," Mama agreed, getting up to fetch one from the medicine cabinet.

"Now, let's see what happens to Mr. Rat when we feed him a drop of this," Matthieu said.

As soon as Mama got back with the medicine dropper and handed it to him, Matthieu took some of the green liquid from the vial, then poked the dropper through the bars of the cage. The rat came up to it curiously, sniffed the offering, and then licked it twice.

Nothing seemed to happen at first, but Matthieu kept watching intently, and sure enough, five minutes after tasting the liquid, the rat started jerking and twitching and fell to the floor of the cage curled up in a ball with a thin trickle of blood running from his mouth.

"That's what I was afraid of. That vial is nothing but poison. If you'd swallowed it, I don't think you would have been alive for long," Matthieu said calmly.

I don't guess I was all that surprised by this turn of events, but for Lisa it was a shock.

"But. . . " she said, looking stricken. I knew immediately what she was thinking; that all that suffering had been for nothing, and how close it had come to being even worse than nothing. Layla Garza's whole deal had been a cheat from the very beginning. It would have been one last twist of the knife; one last method of extracting a final bitter drop of agony, after all the rest. And worst of all, Lisa herself would have been a willing part of it. Without a word, I took her in my arms.

"Never think of it again," I whispered in her ear, too low for anyone else to hear; the same words she'd whispered to me on that night at Autograph Rock when I first told her about the Curse. I knew she'd remember, and I wanted her to know it didn't matter. She laughed through her tears, and then kissed me fiercely right there in front of company.

Matthieu discreetly pretended not to notice, and when Lisa had pulled herself together he went on as if nothing had ever happened.

"I'd get rid of this, if I were you," he said, holding up the vial.

"Is it safe to pour it on the ground?" I asked.

"I'm not sure about that, honestly. I can take it with me and get rid of it for you, if you like," he offered.

"Yeah, maybe you should. I'd really appreciate that," I nodded.

"No problem," he agreed.

"But what about the Curse?" I asked, and Matthieu seemed uncomfortable.

"It's still there, Cody. I don't know what to say. You'll still be okay as long as you keep the Guardian Stone somewhere on your body at all times. But if it ever gets lost or stolen, I don't guess I need to tell you what happens then. I suggest getting it attached to a chain, to make it easier to keep up with. Maybe you should come over to Natchitoches sometime and we'll see if we can find out any more possibilities for how to break that curse. My parents have a library bigger than some small countries, all about things like that," he offered, and I let out a deep breath. If I'd lived with the curse this long, then surely I could live with it a while longer.

Hopefully.

Not long after Matthieu left, Brandon got home from school and I was finally able to ask him what my dream of the lightning on the mountain might mean.

"The lightning bolts mean that for a while you'll be surrounded by danger and evil and there won't be any place to hide. You'll have something to do which seems insane, like climbing up on that boulder. Throwing the lightning back at the sky means you'll have to take your enemy's greatest weapon and turn it against her. The rain means peace, but only if you have the courage to do the other things first," he said.

"You sure are obscure sometimes, Scrapper," I said with a sigh.

"I only know what I know," he shrugged.

And with that I had to be content.

## Chapter Thirty-Five - Lisa

We buried Mama late the same evening at Mount Nebo, not far from the largest of the cedar trees.

It was a brief and simple service, partly because of the cold and partly because me and Marcus were in no condition to stay out there for very long. Cody prayed, and we sang a hymn, and then in the last of the failing light, we laid her to rest in the pale Texas ground. I guess that little plot has seen a lot of such burials over the years.

Not many people were there; just Cody and Miss Josie, and me and Jenny and Aunt Michelle, and Brandon, and Marcus and his sister.

I cried almost the whole time, and Miss Josie did her best to try to comfort me, with whispered words about how we shouldn't weep like those who have no hope. I knew that she of all people knew what loss felt like, and I was comforted at least a little bit.

Cody quickly filled in the grave before we all went back down to the house. Miss Josie had cooked a somber dinner, barbecued beef and pecan pie and various other things, and for a while we all gathered in the kitchen and the living room to talk in low voices. I only picked at my food and couldn't find the heart to socialize much, even though I knew it would have been worse to be alone. I just sat beside Cody the whole time, and he held me when I seemed to need it, and that was good enough.

After a while Marcus left with his sister, and Jenny seemed to be getting ready to leave with Aunt Michelle also. But I had something else in mind, and when I was alone on the couch with Cody for a few minutes, I brought it up.

"Cody, would it be okay if I stayed here with you for a few days, till you go back to Alaska?" I asked wistfully, with my head on his shoulder. I could imagine lots of reasons why he might not think that was such a great idea, but I hoped he'd say yes in spite of it all.

"You don't think it might make you look bad?" he asked, only half jokingly.

"I don't care what the gossips think anymore. You and me both know that nothing improper will happen, and so does God. I just need you right now, that's all," I said, and he nodded.

"All right, then. I'll only be here till Friday, though," he reminded me.

"I know. But it's better than nothing," I said.

We walked home together through the pecan trees, holding hands but not saying anything. It was hard to walk on my wounded leg, and I had to lean on his arm most of the way and stop several times to rest. But eventually we got to the bunkhouse, and he silently opened the door for me. Once inside, we quietly lay down together on Cody's big cedar bed, and then he held me while I cried myself to sleep.

That's how it was for a few days. I had my good times, when the sun was out and I felt a little better and it seemed like life might actually go on someday. Then I'd slide off another cliff's edge of black depression for a few hours.

Cody was always there, to hold me when I needed it, to make sure I ate and remembered to brush my teeth, to remind me not to give up on living. He took me outside when the weather was nice and tried to talk to me and make me smile, even though it didn't work too often. Still, I thought then as I think now; it's the quiet, loving angels of this world who ought to inspire more awe than any other kind of hero.

I still felt awful from the toxoplasmosis and the wreck and everything else, but I gradually healed, both in body and in heart.

Cody ended up taking an extra two weeks off from work to stay with me a little longer, although I suspect he probably got himself in trouble for that. He never said so, but I could read between the lines well enough to guess.

A week after the funeral, I could even smile again now and then, and by the time Cody's birthday rolled around on the twelfth, I'd gotten to the point that I could even laugh occasionally and felt almost like my old self sometimes. There was still a shadow of pain in my heart, but nothing like what it was before.

But a fresh parting was looming ahead, when Cody had to go back to Alaska for seven more months. Two extra weeks was as much as he could manage without quitting his job completely. I was about to lose my steady rock, and I still wasn't sure how I'd handle things with him gone.

He must have wondered about that very thing, because he asked me about it the next day while we were sitting in the gazebo by the lake. We'd just come back from having some leftover birthday cake and burgers with Miss Josie and Marcus and Brandon, which had buoyed me up more than usual. It had warmed up again after all the recent nastiness, although nobody expected it to last very long. There were already dark clouds piled up to the north beyond the lake, and little gusts of wind that hinted at another storm. But in the meantime, it was nice outside.

"Do you think you'll be okay, if I head back up north?" he asked quietly, gazing out across the lake while he played with my hair.

"I'm sure I'll survive. I won't like it, but I know we're on the downhill slide, now," I told him.

"Yeah, but seven months is still a long time. If you need me to stay, I'll stay," he said.

Heaven knows I was tempted. But I knew what it would mean if I said yes, and I couldn't let him do that.

"It's all right. Go do what you need to do. Get the ranch back in shape, and then everything will be better for all of us. You're not doing it just for yourself; it's for me, too. I know that. I'll be fine; I've got Miss Josie to watch out for me, and Jenny, and Marcus and Bran. I won't fall apart, I promise. It's time I learned how to stand on my own two feet, anyway," I said.

"You always could," he said.

"You think so, maybe. Boy, are _you_ ever wrong," I said.

"No, I know so. The way you handled Layla, and Brandon, and everything else, it's pretty amazing, you know," he said.

"No, not really. I just did what I had to do," I said.

"That's the whole point. You always did what you had to, no matter how sick and scared you might have been at the time. You're one of the bravest girls I ever met, and it's one of the things I love about you the most," he said.

I'd never known that Cody felt that way about me, or that he thought I was so courageous. I certainly didn't feel that way. But if he believed it, then maybe there might be a grain of truth to it after all. I smiled.

"Then don't worry about me, Coby. I'll stick it out, and then when you get home we'll all live happily ever after," I told him.

"Amen to that," he agreed.

It stormed again that night, heavy and hard, with a freezing cold wind howling down the plains from Canada. Sometimes people like to say there's nothing between Texas and the North Pole but a barbed-wire fence, and nights like that I can surely believe it. It was chilly even inside the house, and we burrowed under the covers in bed to keep warm. I snuggled up against Cody's side and laid my head on his chest, with both his arms around me, just like I had on that other cold night in Alaska. I could hear his heart beat, and I felt warm and safe and right where I wanted to be.

"Marry me, Lisa," he said quietly, when I was right on the edge of sleep.

"What?" I asked, not sure I'd heard him right.

"Marry me. I love you, and you're the only one I want, for now and always. Let's make it official," he said. I knew those weren't cheap words for Cody McGrath, and I was overcome with a surge of love for him.

"That's all I've wanted ever since the beginning. Of course I will," I told him, and he hugged me close.

I think that night was one of the happiest times of my life, no matter how odd the circumstances of his proposal might be. I was tucked away in a little house in the middle of a freezing storm on the Texas plains, and outside I could hear the wind whistling and howling all night long. But I was safe and warm, held close in the arms of my beautiful boy. It was bliss. In a lot of ways I felt like he was already my husband; he was so very much the heart of my world. In some ways, it felt like he always had been.

* * * * * * *

As soon as we got up the next morning, he took me down to Longview to Ambrose's Jewelers. The streets and sidewalks were full of melting slush, and it was hard to walk without getting our feet soaked.

"Do you know what kind of ring you'd like?" Cody asked.

"Just something simple, that's all. White gold, I think, maybe one stone," I said, thinking out loud.

"We'll see what he's got, then," he said.

But as soon as we got inside, the first thing he did was to pull the Guardian Stone out of his shirt pocket and ask if it could be put on a chain. Apparently it could, so while he and Mr. Ambrose haggled out the details of all that, I browsed the ring case.

After a few minutes he came up beside me.

"Did you get that all worked out?" I asked, still looking at rings.

"Yeah, it'll be ready on Tuesday. I know it's a little bit of a risk to be without it, but it's only three days, and I figure it's better than the risk of losing it if it's not attached to anything," he said.

He scanned the ring box, and then shocked me by immediately picking out the biggest diamond in the case, a round cut solitaire on a white gold band. When he slipped it on my finger, it fit perfectly.

"You like it?" he asked, grinning.

"It's beautiful, but I'm sure it's much too expensive," I said in a low voice which Mr. Ambrose pretended not to hear.

"Well, not so much. So happens I'm rolling in dough right at the minute; might as well spend some of it," he said. Nothing I could say would deter him.

When he paid for my diamond and matching bands for both of us, I almost fainted. It didn't seem to faze Cody a bit, though, and five minutes later I left the store wearing a diamond big enough to cut logs with. Well, really it was only one carat, but that was still bigger than anything I'd ever seen in my life. I was almost afraid to wear something that expensive, for fear I might lose it or have it stolen.

"I can't believe you did that," I told him when we got back to the truck.

"Well. . . I wanted you to have somethin' special, you know. It's a one-time thing; might as well make you happy," he said.

"Aw, I would've been happy with a ring from a gumball machine, as long as it came from you, Cody," I told him, and he laughed.

"Okay, then. Should we take the ring back in there and get a refund and go get you a really nice cubic zirconia for thirty bucks?" he teased.

"Don't you dare," I told him, and he laughed again.

"Uh-huh, didn't think so. I'm glad you like it, though," he said.

"I absolutely love it. I can't wait to show it to everybody," I said.

"Good," he said, sounding pleased as punch.

We drove for a while in silence, while I admired the diamond by moving it back and forth in the sun. It was the most beautiful thing I'd ever owned.

"Any idea what day you'd like to get married?" he finally asked.

"What about today?" I asked immediately, and he laughed.

"We can't do it today, Lisa. There's no way," he said.

"I don't care if it's fancy or not. I don't even really want anybody there except family and a few friends, anyway. It's for us, not for the whole world," I said.

"But it's Saturday. The courthouse is closed, and anyway you don't even have a dress," he objected. I considered that idea, and decided he might have a point.

"Well, okay, maybe we can't do it today, then. What about the day before you leave? That'll give us almost a week to get everything ready," I said. He was supposed to leave sometime late Friday morning, so Thursday afternoon seemed like the most feasible date on the calendar.

"Are you sure? You wouldn't rather wait till I get back home?" he asked.

"No, I definitely want it to happen before you leave again," I said. I was firm on that point; I didn't want to take a chance on anything splitting us up ever again.

"Well. . . okay, then," he said.

"Are you sure? You don't sound real enthusiastic," I said.

"No, it's not that. I just always thought a wedding was something special for a lady, you know. I want you to have a nice one, that's all," he said.

"It'll be nice. This is what I want, Cody; I promise," I told him, and finally he smiled.

"Then that's the way it'll be. But I want you to have a pretty ring and a long white dress and all that stuff, too, even if it costs a little more. You can tell me you don't care about that stuff all day long if you want to, but I know better," he said, and all I could do was laugh. He had me pegged, and I couldn't deny any of it.

So he took me into Tyler that afternoon to go shopping, and I found the perfect dress in a bridal shop down there. It was white and lacy and beautiful, with a ten-foot train and little silver horseshoes embroidered into the hem with metallic thread; a very old custom, they said. I'd already decided I wanted Cody to wear a royal blue western shirt and black wranglers instead of a tux, with his silver dress-buckle and cowboy boots. He said that was fine with him; he never liked monkey suits in the first place.

Monday morning he surprised me with a real silver sixpence to wear in my left shoe; a very old one from 1897, from Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.

"Where'd you get that?" I asked, holding the coin in my hand and staring at it.

"Ordered it online from a coin shop, had it shipped overnight. It wasn't all that hard to find, honestly. I remembered how much you loved Queen Victoria, so I thought you'd like to have it," he said.

I kissed him for that, and tucked the sixpence safely away inside my purse until it was time to use it. I already had my new dress, an old necklace that Mama had loved to wear, some shoes borrowed from Jenny, and a long blue ribbon for my hair. Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue, and a silver sixpence to wear in me shoe. Now I had it all.

I didn't plan on a very big reception since I wanted something a little smaller and more intimate. . . only about two dozen people. Miss Josie was more than happy to have an excuse to cook and to bake us a cake, and I meant to serve the traditional red ginger ale punch out of my grandmother's crystal punch bowl.

We decided to have it in the living room at Goliad, since we couldn't find a church on such short notice. But that was all right.

In saner moments, I realized I might have been a little too optimistic about being able to get everything done in less than a week. Well, okay, I'd been a _lot_ too optimistic, actually. It made things hectic, trying to organize and arrange and make plans and run here and there to take care of all the various things. But nevertheless, I was too happy to care about minor inconveniences.

## Chapter Thirty-Six - Cody

On Monday afternoon, I got home whistling under my breath. I'd gone into town to pick up a pizza for supper, and Lisa had stayed behind, saying she was tired.

I was glad to be back; it was blustery and wet outside, with showers of cold rain blowing in the wind. My mind was full of warm food and a warm fire, and maybe a few warm kisses if Lisa happened to be awake. But not much else.

I trotted to the porch hunched over from the rain, fishing my house key out with one hand. The front door was already unlocked when I got there, which might have seemed a bit strange if I'd thought about it; Lisa usually kept the door locked if she was home alone. But at the time I didn't think much of it, and went inside without a care in the world, but quietly in case Lisa was still asleep.

The first thing I noticed was that the drapes were pulled tightly shut to block out the light, which didn't particularly bother me except that it made things almost pitch dark inside. Then I flipped the light switch and discovered that the power was out.

That was nothing unusual when it stormed, so I put down my keys and the pizza on the table and shut the door to keep the cold air out, feeling my way forward in the darkness to open the curtains. I almost stumbled over the bear-skin rug, and then I was startled when I felt Lisa's arms encircle me. I jumped a little, and then laughed and hugged her back.

"You shouldn't do stuff like that in the dark, Lisa; you startled m-" I began, and then she cut me off with a passionate kiss. One hand began to play with the hair on the back of my head and the other lay flat against my chest. She was warm, and the taste of her lips was sweet and smooth as vanilla. I wondered fleetingly if she'd found some new gloss or some such thing. It seemed so unlike-

That was as far as I got, because a second later she kneed me right between the legs, hard. I went down in agony, and hardly felt the kicks and blows she rained on my body thereafter. I couldn't even breathe to ask her what she was thinking.

Nor did I have to wonder for long. Seconds later she ripped the curtains open, and through a haze of pain and utter astonishment I saw none other than Layla Garza standing there, with a smile of triumph on her face.

I couldn't lift a finger to fight her; not right then, and she obviously knew it.

"There now, Cody. I've been wanting to do that forever," she said, and I wondered whether she meant the kiss or the kick. I would have much preferred the kiss, if I got to choose.

"Well, you got it," I gasped.

"Yes, I did. Just as good as I always thought, too. See you around, sweet stuff," she said cheerfully, and aimed another sharp kick at my face before she headed out the door. I managed to duck that one, but it didn't seem to faze her. She simply walked out and slammed the door hard enough to knock picture frames off the wall. There was no way I could chase her, so I didn't even try. That could come later.

As soon as I was able to get my breath, I hobbled painfully to the bedroom to check on Lisa. She wasn't there, and for a second I was terrified that Layla might have done something to her. I found her in the junk room, though, tied up with a big bruise on the side of her face. I untied the nylon rope she was bound with, and she soon woke up when I started rubbing her wrists and ankles.

"What happened?" I asked, as soon as she was able to sit up.

"I don't know. A girl wearing a scarf came to the door, and the second I opened it she punched me. That's the last thing I remember till you woke me up. Who was she? What did she want?" Lisa asked.

"It was Layla. I guess she must have survived after all," I said reluctantly.

"Yeah? So why didn't she finish us off, then?" she asked.

I started to answer her, but then I was overcome with a sudden wash of sick horror. Layla's power was to take the life from a young man with her kisses, like she'd done with James Fitch. . . and the Guardian Stone was still at the jeweler's.

I felt ill.

"She kissed me when I first came inside. It was dark and I never thought about anybody else being in the house. I thought she was you at first," I said.

"At first?" Lisa asked, and I couldn't tell if the question was a joke or serious.

"Yeah, for about two seconds or so. Right up till the point when she kneed me. That kinda spoiled the whole illusion, you know," I reminded her.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean it to sound like that," she said.

"It doesn't matter. Let's find her, before she gets away. You didn't happen to see what she was driving, did you?" I asked.

"Yeah, it was a red Camaro, or something like that,"

"She must have moved it out of sight before I got here, then, because I didn't see anything. Did you notice the tags?" I asked.

"Uh. . . yeah. I don't remember the number, though," she said.

"Do you remember _any_ of it? Even just the state would help," I said.

"No, but I think the license plate had a lighthouse on it," she said.

"That'd be Mississippi, then. I see those out on the interstate all the time. So I bet she's headed east," I said. It was a gamble, but it was the only clue we had.

We got in the truck and immediately headed out, knowing the chances were slim to none that we'd ever catch up with Layla. She had too much of a head start. I drove so fast I risked flipping the truck, but by the time we got to Linden I sighed and slowed down.

"It's a lost cause. She could've gone three or four different ways from here, if she even went this way at all," I said, admitting defeat.

We glumly turned around and went back to Goliad, driving a lot slower this time. I called Matthieu to pass along the information and tell him what happened, not that I expected it to help much. Even if Layla was really in Mississippi, she might move on at any time.

And in the meantime, I had worse problems to worry about.

The second I got out of bed the next morning, I knew something was different. It was hard to put my finger on what it was, exactly, but it was almost like having a cold, when my body was stiff and achy.

I felt a thin prickle of fear, and when I went to the bathroom to look in the mirror, that fear was confirmed. My hair was turning colors. It wasn't easy to tell yet unless you paid close attention; just a few strands of gray here and there. The stubble on my chin was much worse; nearly half the hairs were sugar-white. Not only that, but I was sure I saw faint lines around my eyes that hadn't been there yesterday, although that might simply be because I was still tired. I had a vivid memory of a thousand _Oil of Olay_ commercials that promised to erase fine lines of aging, and I would have barked with laughter if I hadn't been so terrified at what it meant. James Fitch came to mind again, and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt what lurked in my own future. In days, weeks; who knew?

I carefully plucked out all the gray hairs I could find and shaved away the salt-and-pepper stubble so Lisa wouldn't notice anything, and then washed out the sink so she wouldn't see it there, either.

She woke up while I was brushing my teeth, and silently came to put her arms around me from behind and kiss the nape of my neck. She must have felt the tension in my body, or sensed it some other kind of way, because almost immediately she looked up at me in the mirror.

"What's wrong, Cody?' she asked, in a tone that meant she knew perfectly well that _something_ was. Even in the midst of my fear and distraction, I marveled all over again at how well she could read me sometimes. It was almost eerie.

"I don't guess you'd believe me if I said it was nothing, would you?" I asked, hoping it would make her smile. It didn't.

"Nope, not a chance," she said.

There was no help for it, and soon enough no hiding it either, so I gave in gracefully. I put her arms down so I could turn around, and stuck out my chin so she could see it in the light. Even shaved, it was easy to tell if anybody looked close enough.

"Look," I said simply.

She must have realized what it meant without needing to be told, because she put her arms around me again and put her head on my chest, and I soon felt the warmth of tears soaking through my t-shirt. I put my arms around her without saying a word.

"It doesn't matter," she finally said, hugging me tighter. Her words were muffled against my body, but I understood them.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"I mean it doesn't matter. I love you, and I'm still going to marry you on Thursday afternoon even if it kills me," she said fiercely.

I couldn't say anything to that. All I could do was hug her a little tighter, and wonder what good thing I ever did to deserve someone who loved me so much.

"Lisa, there's got to be a way to undo this. Somehow, some way. I don't know what it is, yet, but I can't believe it's got to end like this," I finally said.

"Maybe the Guardian Stone will fix it. We could try that first," she said.

"Yeah, that's definitely the first thing. Or maybe we could find something in Matthieu's library, like he suggested," I said.

She let me go, and I quickly slipped a dry shirt over my head before grabbing my phone from the desk where I'd left it to charge the night before. Then I quickly punched in Matthieu's number.

And got his voicemail.

"So?" Lisa asked hopefully.

"Got his voicemail. I'll have to wait and let him call me back later. I didn't think about it before but I bet he's in class this morning," I said.

"Yeah, I keep forgetting that," Lisa said.

"Yeah, me too. But maybe he'll call back at lunch time," I said.

"Maybe so," she agreed.

"In the meantime, let's go pick up the crystal," I said.

So that's what we did, and I slipped it back around my neck the instant it was in my hands.

"Hopefully it works," I muttered as we left the store, and she could only squeeze my hand and agree.

Matthieu did call back at lunch time.

"You'll have to come to Natchitoches, if you want to find out anything else. I don't know if there's anything more in here about the Guardian Stones or Layla's magic or anything else that might help, but if anybody knows anything, this is where it'll probably be," he said almost immediately when I told him the news.

"What time?" I asked.

"Anytime after three o'clock is fine," he said.

"We'll be there about three-thirty, then," I agreed.

Lisa had overheard the entire conversation, of course, so there was no need for me to tell her what was going on. She quietly limped to the bathroom to change clothes and fix her hair, not even bothering to ask me if we were going or not. Her leg still bothered her sometimes, but it was getting better.

"Do you think we should take Marcus?" she asked when she got out.

"I was just thinking about that. All we're really doing is going over there to look at some old books. I'm not sure if he'd care anything about that or not, but we'll ask him," I said.

It turned out Marcus had had enough road running for a while, so me and Lisa ended up going alone that time. Natchitoches is only a little more than two hours' drive from Avinger, so we still had plenty of time to get there by three o'clock.

"I'm sorry you got dragged into all this," I said.

"No, don't be sorry. I made my choice with both eyes open. I got you, and that's enough to make me happy for the rest of my life," she said, and I smiled.

"You really think so, huh?" I asked.

"I know so," she said firmly.

The rest of the trip passed uneventfully, and not long after three o'clock we pulled into Matthieu's driveway.

"Well, let's go see what we see," I said, getting out. She followed, and we walked up to the front door holding hands. I pushed the doorbell, and chimes sounded from inside. After a few minutes Matthieu opened the door.

"I thought y'all would never get here. Come on in; I've already got some of the books laid out on the dining room table, but there are still a lot more to go through," he said.

"How's your leg?" Lisa asked, and he smiled.

"Better. It'll leave a scar, I'm sure, but nothing worse than that. What about you and Marcus?" he asked.

"Yeah, I'm mostly better. Him too, I think," she said.

"That's good. I was a little concerned about how things would turn out. Here are all the books I was able to find so far that have something to say about Guardian Stones, or sorcery, or anything similar. There's actually some method to all this disorder, believe it or not. My dad knows where everything is, if you give him a minute to think about it," Matthieu said, and then we got down to business.

"This is interesting," Lisa said after a while.

"What is it?" I asked.

" _This_ book talks about attaching one of the Stones to a specific person, like Hannah did with Cody. It says you have to place the Stone in a spot of special significance both to you and to them. If it ever leaves that spot then it reverts to protecting whoever holds it," she said.

"That's good to know, I guess, but I don't see how it helps, much. We already knew the Stones could be attached to a single person," Matthieu pointed out.

We kept searching till we covered every book on the table and quite a few others we pulled from elsewhere. But in spite of hours of searching, that pitiful little tidbit was the only fresh information that we found all day. It hardly seemed worth it, and we left Natchitoches that night more discouraged than ever.

## Chapter Thirty-Seven - Cody

"I have an idea," Lisa said on the way home that evening. It was dark by then, and we were both moodily staring at the lights of cars passing by on the interstate. She seemed unhappy, and I could hardly blame her.

"What is it?" I asked, tiredly.

"What if you asked for a dream tonight? So far you've only waited for them to come whenever they come. But it's like Brandon told me a while back; sometimes you have to ask," she suggested.

"Yeah, I hadn't thought about that," I admitted.

Therefore that night when we got home, that's what we did. I don't often pray on my knees, but that night I did, and so did Lisa even though I knew it must have hurt her leg. We put our foreheads together, and I spoke. I asked for wisdom and for courage, and for a true dream that might show me what to do. Then Lisa spoke and thanked God for His great glory and love. I've never believed in prayers of many words. I think God knows what we need before we even ask. To pray long is to think we can impress Him with what we say, like a lawyer in front of a judge.

After we were done I got up and helped Lisa to her feet, and then we went to bed. And that night, indeed, I dreamed.

It was nothing like any of the others, except that it was the same kind of vivid almost-real sort of vision. I found myself standing on the bank of a rocky river, full and clear, with a bright sun shining down and glinting off the ripples in the water. The grass was thick and green underfoot and the trees were just beginning to bud. And suddenly I knew this place, and would have gasped if I'd been awake. But as it was, I could only watch in mute horror.

There on the bank stood three teenagers, a girl and two boys, playing in the shallows of the river, while a slightly older man in dark sunglasses watched from a distance. Farther downstream I saw my father, not much older than I am now, fly fishing for trout. I saw my mother cooking hamburgers on a camp stove, and my own six-year-old self, thin and tow-headed, building stacks of rocks beside the table. I knew what was coming, and wished I could wake up.

Even worse, I knew with the sure and certain knowledge of dreams who those four people standing upstream from us were. Layla Garza and her three brothers; Andrew, Gabe, and Orem.

No one had been watching Layla at the time, but in my dream I saw her glance at the older man; Andrew. He nodded meaningfully at her, and she nodded back. Then she artfully pretended to slip and fall into the deep current, with a piercing scream that made everyone turn to look. The current snatched her away at once, and she didn't seem to know how to swim. No one else moved, but Daddy, poor, brave, selfless soul that he had been, never hesitated. He threw down his pole and kicked off his shoes and plunged into the water, swimming strongly to intercept the girl before she drowned. The current quickly carried both of them out of sight, and that had been the last time I'd ever seen him alive.

Until now. I seemed to hang above the river, and I saw my father reach the girl and struggle to pull her to shore. They came aground on a grassy bank, him crawling from exhaustion and Layla seemingly not much better. But then she grabbed a rock from the muddy ground and smashed the back of her rescuer's head while he wasn't looking. He collapsed to the ground, bleeding and knocked out cold, and I saw her smile. Then she rolled him over on his back and knelt down beside him. He was still breathing, and she kissed him on the lips long and deeply. She glanced around to make sure no one was near, and then she carefully and methodically dragged him back out to the edge of the current and shoved him in. She waited to make sure the river had him well and truly in its grasp, and then smiled in satisfaction before returning to the bank herself.

I wanted to scream and cry and curse, and I could do none of those things. Knowing that my father had died to save another person's life had been hard enough. Finding out he'd been killed by that same person was ten thousand times worse.

Layla was sitting on the bank sobbing her heart out by the time the first people came, and I had to listen while she told a moving story about how Daddy had pulled her to shore and saved her life but never made it out behind her. I hated the Garzas at that moment more than I've ever hated anybody or anything in my life, and I made a fist so tight it hurt even in my dream. I wished I could hit somebody, or break something, or maybe just weep.

_He was her first,_ a quiet voice whispered in my mind, and I knew without asking what that meant. He was the first youth she'd drained of his life, and that must have been why she kissed him before tossing him back into the river to drown.

_She liked the taste of him, and that's why she came after you in Alaska,_ the voice said.

The scene on the riverbank had played itself out by then, and in mercy my eyes were shielded from the sight when my father's body was pulled from the flooded Brazos nearly a mile downstream.

_Why did I have to see this?_ I cried.

_You had to know. You wouldn't have understood what you must do, if you had never seen,_ the voice answered.

_What must I do?_ I asked, startled at the thought. I'd almost forgotten.

_First, you must forgive her. You must forgive all of them. And then you must give her your Stone, and bring it here to this place, and leave it,_ the voice said.

_I can't do that!_ I cried in horror. It was too much to ask; it was beyond anything I could ever have the strength to do. But the voice was silent, and would not argue.

_She is my daughter also,_ it said, and that was the last thing I heard. I woke to find tears on my cheeks, and my heart more broken than it had been since that night in Alaska with Lisa. I was developing a real talent for crying lately, I thought to myself.

It was almost six thirty, and I decided there was no point in staying in bed any longer. I got up quietly, leaving Lisa asleep. Then I went to the living room to sit on the couch and try to pull myself together after what I'd seen and heard. I had no doubt it was a true dream; there was no way I would have imagined anything like that, even in my worst nightmares. I wouldn't have imagined being spoken to by God, either, for that matter.

I'm sure that's who it was, and that part awed and humbled me. The revelation of what had really happened to my father and what I'd been asked to do was no easier, but it was impossible to ignore. Forgiving the Garzas for all the wickedness they'd done was hard enough, but in some ways giving Layla the Guardian Stone was even worse. It seemed to be protecting me the way it was supposed to; at least, I felt no older than I had the day before. But without it I knew I'd quickly grow old, just like James Fitch. There was no doubt in my mind that I wouldn't live long enough to see my next birthday, at the rate I'd been going before I got the crystal back. It seemed like a complete victory for them, a careless tossing away of my whole life, a deliberate taking back of everything I'd promised Lisa and a dashing of every hope. I didn't know what to do.

Or, well, yes, I _did_ know what to do, honestly. . . I just didn't like it and hadn't choked down my resistance quite yet, that's all.

As soon as I recognized the source of my trouble, I recognized the uselessness of it, also. When God asks for something, the only choice you've got is whether to refuse or whether to try to obey, and that's really no choice at all, if you're a believer. Therefore I'd try to do what He'd asked of me, if I could. I guess that part was never really in doubt, after all. I remember reading once that few things are dearer to God's heart than a son or daughter who finds themselves forsaken and alone, who can see nothing but heartache as the result of obedience. . . and then obeys anyway. Well, I'd be a good son, and if that required throwing myself on a sharp sword, then so be it.

I didn't make the decision gladly, and I didn't make it without a residue of bitterness and fear which I don't doubt is a flaw in my nature. I'm not one of the martyrs, who could go into the flames with a smile on my face. Nowhere near.

I quietly got dressed and headed across the pasture towards the big house, my heart no more at ease than yesterday. Sometimes the truth is no comfort.

I made an effort to compose myself by the time I reached the back door, and when I got inside I found Mama and Marcus eating breakfast at the kitchen table. Bran was already gone to school, I suppose; he left pretty early.

"So, did you find out anything yesterday?" Marcus asked.

"Not much. But I did have a dream last night. A true one," I finished. As I expected, that got their full attention.

"What happened?" Marcus asked, leaning forward in his chair.

"I have to forgive the Garzas, and I have to give Layla the Guardian Stone," I said wearily. I didn't mention what I'd found out about Daddy; there was no need to darken Mama's heart with _that_ news. I didn't say anything about having to take the Stone to Possum Kingdom, either, for fear she might guess too much.

"Are you sure that's what it means?" Mama finally asked.

"Yeah, I'm definitely sure," I said.

Maybe neither one of them knew what to say, because I finally smiled.

"But, on a more practical note, did y'all save me some food or did you eat it all?" I asked.

"There's some left on the stove," Mama said, and I helped myself. I left enough for Lisa, although there was no telling what time she might get up. She's a late sleeper sometimes when she gets the chance.

I ate my breakfast, and then went out to the barn to feed Buck and the other horses, since Marcus still couldn't do much yet. There weren't quite as many chores to be done in the wintertime, especially with the cows gone, but the few that there were couldn't be overlooked. Brandon helped a lot, but he couldn't do everything.

"Are you really giving her the Stone?" Marcus asked quietly, walking out to the barn with me.

"Yeah, I really am," I nodded.

"But you know if you do that, you won't be protected anymore," he pointed out.

"Yeah, I know," I agreed.

"Then why do it?" he asked.

"Mostly because I was told to. I'm sure there has to be a reason for that, even if I don't know for sure what it is," I said.

"What possible reason could there be?" he asked.

"I'm not sure. But I got to thinking, you know, maybe it'll stop her from hurting anybody else. She couldn't drain away people's life if she can't be affected by magic, could she? Maybe that's what Brandon meant about not being afraid to do something that seems insane and turning her greatest weapon against her," I said.

"Sounds logical, I guess," Marcus admitted.

"So then it'd be worth it, wouldn't it?" I asked.

"I reckon you're the only one who can decide that," he said, refusing to look at me.

"Marcus, we've been friends for a long time now, right?" I asked.

"Yeah," he agreed.

"Then don't be so down in the mouth. You never know what'll happen. Things might turn out better than you think," I said. I was speaking as much for my own benefit as for his, but that didn't make what I said any less true.

"I know," he said.

"Will you come with me, then?" I asked.

"Come where? You didn't say anything about needing to go anywhere," he said.

"To Possum Kingdom. I've got to put the Stone in the river, where Daddy died," I said, and for a second Marcus was speechless.

"Why _there,_ of all places?" he demanded, when he got his voice back.

"I told you it's got to be put in a place that means something to both people, right?" I asked.

"Yeah, and I know what that place means to _you,_ obviously. But what's it got to do with _her?"_ he asked.

"You can't tell Mama, but she was the girl my father tried to rescue that day when he drowned. She knocked him out with a rock and let him die. He was her first victim, and that was the first place she ever practiced her sorcery. So that's where it has to end," I explained.

"I'm sorry," Marcus said, and I knew what he was talking about without having to ask.

"It's all right. He did it because he believed he was saving her. He's still a hero as far as I'm concerned," I said staunchly.

"I only meant. . . well, never mind. Yeah, of course I'll go. When are you leaving?" Marcus asked.

"In a little while, when Lisa gets up. There's no reason to wait," I said.

"No reason to wait for what?" Lisa asked, appearing in the archway of the barn.

"You're up early, baby," I said, smiling as I went to give her a kiss.

"Yeah, I guess so. I walked up to the house and Miss Josie said you were out here. She seemed upset so I wondered what was up," she explained.

"Did you eat anything?" I asked.

"Yeah, I had a biscuit and a piece of sausage. But I'm not worried about that right now. What did I miss?" she asked.

So I told her, recapping everything I'd already told Marcus, including my reasoning as to why it needed to be done. Then I waited to see what she'd say, because other than me, she was the one person most deeply affected by it all. When I was finished she looked at me solemnly.

"So what do you think?" I finally asked, when she didn't speak.

"I think even if I never loved you before, I would now," she said, and I laughed a little, embarrassed.

"Don't laugh; I was being serious," she scolded.

"I know you were. I'm sorry," I said.

"It's okay. But you're right, there's no reason to waste any time. Let's go while it's still early," she said.

## Chapter Thirty-Eight - Lisa

We left in Cody's truck, without saying much to Miss Josie. There was room for three of us in the cab, if we squeezed a little bit.

"How far is it to Possum Kingdom?" I asked when we stopped at the light in Avinger.

"About four hours or so. Not far past Fort Worth," Cody said tightly. He was probably conflicted about having to visit the place, if I had to guess. Glad to strike a blow for justice, but dreading the memories he was sure to have to face. As far as I knew, he hadn't been back there since he was six years old.

"I wonder why it's called Possum Kingdom," I said out loud.

"You got me, there," Cody said.

"It's because they used to trap possums out there in the canyons. For the fur, you know," Marcus said.

"I didn't know they ever made anything out of possum fur. Seems like it'd be all thin and stringy and gray and ugly," I said.

"I don't know about that part. Maybe it was for people who needed some cheap fur and they didn't care if it was kinda ugly. I guess they could always dye it if they wanted to," Marcus said.

"How do you know all that, anyway?" I asked.

"I remember reading about it somewhere," he shrugged.

"You know, I thought about something just now," I said, turning to Cody again.

"What's that?" he asked.

"It said in that book that we have to make sure the Stone stays in the same place once we put it there. How can you make sure it'll do that, at the bottom of a river? Won't the current sweep it away?" I asked.

"Yeah, I already thought about that. We'll have to stop and get some epoxy cement or something like that, and glue it into a hole in the rock," he said.

We stopped at a hardware store in Mineral Wells to do that very thing, and bought two gallons of marine epoxy sealant and a small steel box to hold the crystal. Then, a little over thirty minutes later, we were there. Cody seemed ill at ease, and I could hardly blame him.

We approached the dam area slowly, passing by an ominous warning sign that told us the water was subject to sudden rise and we should wade or swim at our own risk. We parked near the picnic tables and got ready to begin.

The river was deserted; nothing unusual for a weekday in January, but that was all to the good. No snoopy eyes to see what we were up to. There was practically nothing but a trickle in the bottom of the stream bed, thin enough that we could have jumped across in places. That was because of the ongoing drought, which had shrunk the Brazos to almost nothing.

We all three climbed down the rocky bank onto the stream bed, glancing uneasily at the dam. The warning sign had said there would be a horn blast to warn people to get out, but we'd only have about two minutes before the water arrived. That's precious little time. But the dam looked dry and tranquil, and there didn't seem to be any immediate release planned.

"So where are we supposed to go?" Marcus asked.

"Downstream a little bit. As close as we can get to where she. . . " Cody began, and then left it at that, waving vaguely downriver with his left arm. We headed that way, stumbling sometimes over the rough limestone boulders that filled the streambed. It hurt my leg now and then, but I was determined not to whine about it.

I had a gallon of epoxy to carry, and Marcus had the gallon of hardener. Cody had the crystal inside its metal casket, a hammer, a tube of super glue, a five-gallon plastic bucket, and a pack of sandpaper.

It seemed to take forever, but it couldn't really have been very long before we arrived at a larger-than-normal boulder in a deeper-than-normal spot, and Cody stopped.

"This is the spot," he said.

We gathered around the slab of limestone, which was full of pits and crevices, and Cody selected one of these which let him slip the box inside the rock almost elbow-deep. He opened the box and took the crystal out, lifted it up to the sky, and prayed silently. I was almost certain I saw his lips move in the shape of Layla Garza's name, and then in a normal voice he spoke these words:

The Lord bless you and keep you,

The Lord make his face to shine upon you,

And be gracious unto you,

The Lord lift up his countenance unto you,

And give you peace.

Then he kissed the Guardian Stone and put it in the box we'd bought for it, and shut the lid before stuffing it as deep inside the crack as he could reach.

"All right, let's seal it in," he said. Marcus already had the lid of his jug open, and Cody took the other jar from me and pried it open with the claw of his hammer. Then he quickly poured both of them into the bucket and stirred them vigorously.

When they were thoroughly mixed, Cody poured the entire concoction into the hole till it was full to overflowing. Then there was a thirty minute wait for it to harden until he could use the sandpaper. The idea was to smooth and soften the edges of the epoxy to make it look more or less like any other part of the rock, just in case the water was ever low again and some nosy explorer got curious.

"Where'd you get those words you said?" I asked, and he shrugged.

"It's the priestly blessing from Numbers. It's what my Grandma Hannah said when she attached the Stone to me. I tried to do everything exactly the way she did," he said.

"Do you think anybody'll find the Stone?" I asked.

"I don't see how they would. This place is almost always under water, unless it's during a hundred-year drought like this. And even if it was exposed, I doubt anybody would take the trouble to bust up enough rock and putty to find it. It's buried in there pretty deep. I just hope this works, and stops her from hurting anybody else," he said.

There was no way I could reassure him about that part, of course, so I didn't try. All I could do was squeeze his hand, and try not to notice the age in his eyes. After a while, the putty was hardened enough that he could start sanding it down. He did his best to make it even with the edge of the stone, to give the water as little of a crevice to work on as possible. We didn't want it eroding away the stone and moving the box; at least not till Layla Garza had lived out her life and was gone. What might happen to the Stone after that was anybody's guess.

He finished sanding and was ready to spread the superglue across the surface and coat it with dust to further camouflage it, and then we heard the sound we'd all been dreading ever since we first set foot on the riverbed. The horn at the dam sounded, faint and far behind us. Cody hurriedly finished spreading the glue with his fingers and threw sand on top, not caring if the job was perfect or if he got some on his hands. Marcus quickly started to pile the cans and trash into the bucket to take with us but Cody waved him down.

"Don't worry about that! Just leave it here and the river'll wash it away. Let's go!" he cried. Marcus grabbed the bucket and threw it across the empty channel, where it hit a boulder and scattered trash everywhere. Then we ran.

There was no place close by where we could get out of the channel. When the water level was high, then no doubt the bank could have been reached by a swimmer. But as it was, there were steep limestone banks on both sides which were almost impossible to climb. We had no choice but to run downstream, hoping for a place where the slope of the bank was gentler.

We almost made it. Two minutes can seem like two years when you're hobbling as fast as you can across loose rocks and boulders, praying to God you'll outrun a flood which is hot on your heels. We almost made it to a place where the bank was low and shelving, but not quite, because the water caught us right before we got to the tree line. Seconds later, all three of us were slogging through ice-cold water which quickly rose over our heads and swept us into the woods. That slowed the current a bit, but in a way it was even more dangerous since there were more things to hit or get trapped in.

"Climb that tree!" Cody yelled, and then took his own advice. There was a huge oak tree somewhat leaned over ahead of us, and when the water carried us beside it he grabbed hold of a low branch and pulled himself up. I was right behind him and he barely had time to turn around and grab my arm to help me up. Marcus managed it on his own, and together we climbed higher to be out of reach of the river. The water level was still rising fast and none of us knew when it might stop.

Finally we reached a point about twenty feet above the water, which was as far as we could climb. The trunk was broken off at that point, and the branches were too thin to hold us up. So there we sat amongst the leafless branches, huddled together and shivering in our soaked clothes but glad to be safe.

"Do you think it'll make it this high?" I asked, through chattering teeth. If you want to know how I felt, imagine getting dunked in ice water and then going outside on a breezy winter day. Not fun at all. Cody can go swimming amongst the icebergs in Prudhoe Bay all he wants to, but I'm no Polar Bear, I promise you.

"I don't think so. There's the water line, over there on those bushes. I don't think it'll get this high. All we have to do is wait till they stop releasing water and then we can walk out," Cody said. I hoped so; I'd never been so cold even in Alaska.

"How long do you think it'll be?" Marcus asked.

"Who knows? Probably a few hours, at least. All we can do is wait," Cody said.

So that's what we did, and a miserable few hours it certainly was, too. The water stopped rising when it reached a point about three or four feet below the place where we sat. Too close for comfort, but not close enough to be dangerous. After a long, long time, I noticed the level was gradually dropping. It was almost like watching a loaf of bread bake in the oven; you couldn't tell anything had changed unless you looked away for a while. But eventually it dropped to the point that it was no more than a sluggish flow.

"I think it's probably safe to climb down now, if y'all don't mind slogging through the water a little bit," Cody finally said.

"Sure, let's go," I agreed immediately. I was ready to walk through ten rivers if it got me out of that dadgummed tree.

We carefully climbed down, and found that the water was still waist deep, and in some places more. We had to swim across a particularly deep backwater, but when all was said and done we reached the shore with nothing worse than a fresh freezing. We were on the wrong side of the river, but nobody felt like swimming again.

"We'll have to walk down to the highway bridge and cross back over. It shouldn't be that far," Cody said.

It turned out to be less than half a mile, though that was far enough. The bridge itself was built of masonry arches, and I would have stopped to admire the prettiness of it if I hadn't been so tired, and so cold, and if my feet hadn't been so sore. My leg was hurting, too, but I hated to ask for help. We crossed the bridge, and then followed the road on the other side back up to where the truck was parked, just past the warning sign. I've never been so glad to see a heater in my life.

Cody didn't say a word about getting the seats wet; all three of us climbed in and turned the heat up full blast, and by the time we got back to Mineral Wells all three of us were toasty warm again.

Nobody seemed to be in much of a mood to talk, and after a while I put my head down on Cody's shoulder and closed my eyes. His clothes were still wet, but I didn't care.

"Do y'all think we should stop and get some cheap dry clothes?" he asked presently, when he saw a dollar store up ahead.

"It'd be nice," I admitted, and Marcus only shrugged. Cody pulled in to the parking lot, and soon enough we all had a cheap set of dry clothes, with the wet ones tossed in the truck bed. Cody covered the soaked seat with some bath towels, and after that I did fall asleep when we got back on the road. It had been a long day.

* * * * * * *

The next morning I woke up earlier than usual, and when I turned my head to look at Cody, I barely contained a gasp. He had hair in his ears, and his hands had dark spots on them, and his stubbly whiskers were white as snow, like an old man's. He looked fifteen or twenty years older than yesterday. Giving up the crystal had left him defenseless, it seemed.

I gazed at him in horror, and unwillingly tried to guess how much longer he might live. A week? Ten days? I didn't know if he'd keep aging that fast every day or if it would slow down at some point. But one thing was for certain; he wouldn't make it long. Not like that.

I thought of the day when he first walked into the Dairy Dip and swept me up in his arms with a laugh. So young, so handsome, so full of life, with his silly little grin and his blue, blue eyes. It seemed like a hundred years ago; all the more so when I saw him lying there looking like a man on the cusp of old age. I loved him so much, for so many different reasons, and now it seemed that I was about to lose him already.

I remembered my own words, about how I wouldn't be sorry even if a little time was all we ever had. They seemed prophetic now, and harsh. It's so easy to make promises, when nothing is at stake and you know they'll never be put to the test. Now I was staring Death in the face, and I wondered if I had the strength to keep my word. Jenny would have told me I deserved better. Maybe most people would have thought the same thing, even if they didn't come right out and say so.

Mama would have said that love with strings attached is worthless.

I reached out to run my hand along the side of his face and then through his short stubbly hair. Somewhere beneath that weather-beaten surface I could still see the ghost of the boy I'd known. I could _feel_ him, with my heart if not with my hands, and I felt a flood of love mixed with sorrow. I kissed him gently on the lips, not hard enough to wake him, and then put my arms around him with my head on his chest, as if holding on to him fiercely enough might ward off the doom that was settling slowly but surely on us both. I closed my eyes, like a child who can't bear the sight of evil, and for a little while I could pretend that nothing had changed.

As I lay there, and as I so often had done in the past, I began to put some of my feelings into words, into verses that would express at least a little bit of how I felt and how much I loved him. And when I was done, the work read like this:

Cody

Sometimes at night I think I dream,

Of blossoms tossed by summer breeze,

While weaved amongst my flowing hair,

Beneath the rustling white-oak trees.

I watched you gather a blade of rye,

In June all soft and palest green,

To taste the sweet and loving earth,

So fresh and cool and misty-clean.

Your skin was warm as summer hay,

The sun had kissed all golden brown,

Your touch as soft as the breeze that day,

That curled your dampened hair around.

Oh, your love was all the world to me,

And the thought that you were mine,

More beautiful then than a shining star,

When only one is in the sky.

For who could ever take your place?

And who could touch my heart so deep?

And how could I ever count the ways,

Your love has meant so much to me?

Though storms may rage and dark may fall,

And heartache come for a year and a day,

I still feel the warmth of your hand in my own,

And your love washes sorrow forever away.

I tinkered with the words a bit, till the work pleased me. I thought I might have it printed on rose-paper and framed in a wooden frame, to give to him so he'd always know what he meant to me.

Thinking thus, I gradually drifted back to sleep, still holding him close while I could.

## Chapter Thirty-Nine - Cody

"I wonder if I should quit my job," I asked while all of us were sitting down at breakfast. There wasn't much to wonder about, honestly; I'd never be able to get anything done at Prudhoe Bay in the shape I was in. I only had about half the cash I needed to dig Goliad out of the hole, but I didn't know what else to do anymore.

I was in pretty low spirits, especially for a man on the morning of his wedding day, and I had half a mind to tell Lisa we ought to just call the whole thing off.

"I'll go instead, if it comes to that," Marcus said staunchly.

"You're not up to it, either, Marcus," I said.

"No, but I will be. Give me a month or so and I'll be fine," he said. It was a noble offer, and I didn't know but what I might not have to take him up on it. I poked at my sausage and eggs, not sure what to say.

"You got a letter in the mail this morning, Cody," Mama said, filling in the silence.

"Really? Who from?" I asked.

"I don't know. I didn't open it, and there was no return address on there. Here it is, though," she said, getting up to fetch it from the mail holder on the countertop.

I took the letter, and there was indeed no return address anywhere on the envelope, but it was addressed to me and I did notice that it was postmarked from Atlanta, Georgia. I couldn't think of a soul I knew in that part of the world, but it didn't look like junk mail since the address was handwritten. I shrugged and tore it open.

It was from Layla.

There was only a single page, and it was nothing but a long, poisonous tirade of hatred and spite. She spent most of it mocking me, telling me she'd been having dreams about me lying dead in the moonlight and other cheerful things like that. I turned it over and found nothing on the back, and wondered why she bothered. If she was hoping to hurt my feelings then she failed miserably at that. I was unmoved by the whole thing, except maybe to pity her a little. Hate hurts the hater more than the hated, so all she was doing was heaping coals on her own head.

I shrugged it off and dismissed the whole thing.

"What did she say?" Lisa asked, as soon as I finished reading.

"Oh, nothing much. Just a bunch of insults and nastiness, about like you'd expect. Read it for yourself," I said, handing her the letter. She read it, and when she was done she turned to Brandon. He hadn't gone to school that day because of the wedding, sad and hopeless as it seemed at the moment.

"Bran, do you remember the story about when the King of Babylon wouldn't tell anybody his dream, but Daniel knew what it was and interpreted it anyway?" she asked.

"Yeah, what about it?" he said.

"Do you think you could do something like that?" she asked.

"I don't know. I never thought about it. Why?" he asked.

"Because if Layla Garza's been having dreams, then they might tell us something, if you can read them," she said.

I hadn't thought of that, but it seemed highly unlikely. I could accept the idea that God might create such a thing as the Guardian Stones, but it was hard to see how something like that would work for an evil person like Layla Garza. It didn't seem to make any sense.

But then on the other hand, it's certainly true that everybody serves God's purposes, whether they like it or not and no matter what they choose to do. They can choose willingly to serve Him like a son or daughter, or they can refuse and then He'll use them like a tool instead. So it was possible Layla had been used as a tool, since she wouldn't serve Him as a daughter. She could have been given the dreams He meant for her to have, to serve the purposes He meant for them to serve, regardless of what kind of person she was. That made sense, in a way.

But while I was thinking about all that, the conversation had moved on without me.

"I can try, but I'm not promising anything," Brandon said, shrugging.

"No, I'm not expecting you to. Just thought it might be worth asking," Lisa said.

"Maybe so," he said.

He put down his fork and started praying, his lips moving silently. When he looked up, he had that unfocused gleam in his eyes that he sometimes gets, and finally he spoke.

"I know what she dreamed, but you won't like it," he said.

"What is it?" I asked, grimly preparing myself for the worst.

"She dreamed you were dead beside a pool of water, on a cloudy night with only one bright star shining down through the clouds and reflecting in the pool," he said, and I think my heart stopped.

"What does it mean?" I asked. It seemed pretty dadgummed plain what it meant, but I had to ask. Bran looked uncomfortable, but he didn't answer me directly.

"Call Matthieu. Ask him to go outside to the brick wall that separates the front yard from the flower garden next to his house," he said.

"For what?" I asked. It wasn't remotely what I expected to hear.

"There's a ceramic troll about two feet high sitting in the corner where the house meets the fence, right next to the wrought iron gate. It's hollow and has a removable head. Tell him to look inside it," he said.

"What's in there?" I asked.

"A little over a year ago, a boy had to climb over that fence. It doesn't matter why; you can ask Matthieu if you want to know the whole story. But anyway, he was carrying a glass bottle full of water from a holy spring which had the power to heal any sickness or curse. The bottle was too big and too breakable for him to get it past the fence, so he poured as much water as he could into an empty Coke bottle from the trash. The glass one was nearly empty, so he left it sitting on the ground and completely forgot about it. The gardener found it later, and since he was too lazy to carry it all the way to the trash, he just put it inside the troll so nobody would see it, and then he forgot about it himself. Nobody has touched it ever since," he said.

"So it's still full of holy water?" I asked, but Bran was already shaking his head.

"No, not full. I told you there's only just a little bit left, and it's the last drop in the world. The spring was destroyed, and Andrew Garza shattered all the other bottles that were left. Matthieu knows that story, too. But that one last bottle is the single star in your dream," he said.

"But it's still enough to cure me of being older than dirt, though, right?" I asked, with a fresh sense of hope. It was so strong and sudden that I don't think you could possibly imagine what it felt like; it almost _hurt_ from sheer intensity.

"Well, yeah, it _would_ be, Cody. But you can't drink it. There's something else you have to use it for instead," Brandon said. Those few short words instantly destroyed every speck of my newfound hope, plunging me right back into a pit of despair even deeper than before. I had to take a deep breath to get a grip on my feelings before I could say anything.

"What am I supposed to do with it, then?" I finally asked in a dull voice. I knew the question mattered, but it was hard to care very much right then.

"Pour it in Cadron Pool," Brandon said.

"You mean the one back there in the woods behind Nebo?" I asked skeptically. I guess that was a silly thing to ask; I certainly didn't know of any _other_ Cadron Pool. But Brandon's suggestion was so unreasonable and stupid that I had to make sure we were actually talking about the same thing.

"Yeah," he said, confirming it. For a second I was speechless.

"Why?" I finally asked, and he shrugged.

"That's what Layla's dream means. That last bit of water is the shining star that has to be put in the pool before you die. I can't say why; I just know that's what you're supposed to do," he said.

"You _know_ this?" Lisa asked, and he simply nodded.

I don't like doing things on blind faith, when I don't know why. Which I suppose when you're dealing with a prophet is a character flaw. They're notorious for asking people to do things that don't make any sense, to test your faith and courage. The ones who trust them are blessed, and the ones who reject them are cursed. I've read all the stories often enough to know it. But trust me, when it's your own neck on the chopping block, it's a lot harder to believe. I knew that water could erase Layla's magic, and Bran was telling me to pour it out.

A year ago I don't know what I might have said or done, but I've learned many things about what it means to trust God at times when He asks things that seem impossible. So I called Matthieu, and even though he seemed skeptical at first, he did go look inside the troll. The bottle was there, just like Brandon had said, with about an inch of water left in the bottom. Nobody was inclined to doubt the rest of what he said, after that.

Two hours later, Matthieu pulled into the driveway in his big black truck. We were already waiting for him on the porch, and as soon as he got there he wordlessly handed me an old green wine bottle containing what was left of the water. I wanted to drink it down right then and there; God knows I did, but somehow I found the courage not to stumble.

"Come on, let's go," I said, getting up from my chair.

I had trouble walking very fast anymore, and I looked more like a man of eighty rather than the boy of twenty-two that I'd been less than a week ago, but I was still determined not to give in to helplessness until I had to. So it took us a while to walk all that way, but when we finally got there the place was just like I always remembered; black stones around a wide pool reflecting the deep blue sky. I stepped up to the edge and uncapped the bottle.

"Whatever You will, Lord, let it be," I murmured, and poured out the water into the pool. It made ripples that traveled across the surface to the far side and then reflected back again till they stopped. Even the wind died down to nothing, and all the world seemed breathless with anticipation.

"Now wash," Brandon said, and I knew what he meant.

There are times and places when modesty is appropriate, and then there are other times when it's not. This was one of those times when it wouldn't have been proper at all. I took my clothes off and waded into the pool, which in spite of it being winter was no more than slightly chilly. The bottom was sandy, and when I reached the deepest point I took a deep breath and plunged all the way under.

When I came up again I heard simultaneous gasps from everybody except Brandon, and I saw so much joy on Lisa's face that I hardly knew what to make of it. As soon as I got to the edge of the pool she grabbed my hands to pull me out, still dripping wet and buck naked, and her tears were mixed with laughter.

"You're cured, Coby; just like you were before," she whispered in my ear as she held me tight. But Brandon must have had very sharp ears.

"He's even better than before. The curse is broken, too. From now on this place is holy ground, and nothing evil can survive here," he said.

I don't know if cold can be considered evil or not, but it's certainly not nice, and I also realized that even if modesty hadn't been appropriate before, it certainly was now. I quickly grabbed my clothes and got dressed.

"What do you mean, this is holy ground?" I asked, while I was slipping my boots on.

"When you trusted God and poured that water into the Pool, you consecrated this place. You and Lisa have been faithful with little things, so now you've been trusted with something bigger," Brandon said.

"This, you mean?" I asked, waving at the pool.

"Yes. God never repeats Himself, but He does love reflections. This place isn't quite the same as that other spring which was lost, but it's partly a reminder. A man named Joram Ross called that other one into being over a hundred years ago, just because he had faith to believe. But that one and this one and maybe even others are all reflections of an even greater place, a Fountain clear and cold where the blessed of God can drink and erase for a little while the curse of the Fall. And even _that_ place is only a reflection of God Himself, the Giver of all good things. So let people come here to wash away any kind of sickness or injury they suffer with, but also guard this place with your lives," Brandon said.

"Why would anybody need to guard it?" I asked, puzzled.

"Because there are people out there who'd like nothing better than to crush this place and stamp out every memory of Heaven on earth. You can't let that happen here. This Pool is yours to defend for as long as you live, and to use for the glory of God," Brandon said.

"I never wanted to leave this place, anyway," I said, and clasped Lisa's hand.

"Me neither," she said.

They say the threads of fate are woven tighter than we can possibly imagine. I never really understood exactly what that meant, till then. So many seemingly unrelated things: Marcus and Lisa, finding Brandon in the swamp, Matthieu and the forgotten bottle of holy water, even Layla Garza; all of it was beginning to come together with a _click,_ and who knew where it might all lead? The threads of fate are woven tightly, indeed.

I guess it's fitting, in a way, that Cadron Pool should become a place where filthy and evil things are washed away forever. After all, it's written that long ago King Hezekiah cast the ashes of all the idols and evil things into the Cadron Valley in Jerusalem to make the land clean. Maybe that was a reflection, too.

I thought fleetingly of Moses on Mount Nebo, looking out across the Promised Land that he could never enter. I used to think my own life would turn out that way, once upon a time. But my prayers had been answered after all, and now I hardly knew what to think as I looked out on a future that seemed dazzling and deep. Whatever the years might bring, that was all right. I was content for now to enjoy the bright morning before the storm, if storm there had to be.

## Chapter Forty - Lisa

The memory of my wedding day is burned into my heart like a white-hot flame; a thing to be treasured forever. You might think everything that happened at Cadron Pool that morning would have eclipsed the whole day, but somehow that's not the way it felt. Instead it cast a bright shadow of holiness onto everything we said or did, like something you'd hear about in a song or in a beautiful fairy tale. As for me, God had already given me the sweetest gift I ever dared wish for when Cody climbed up out of that water whole and healthy again. After that, how could it help but be the happiest day of my life?

We found some white wooden lawn chairs to set up in the living room after pushing all the furniture out of the way, and Miss Josie found some white and blue ribbon to decorate with. It wasn't as fancy as some people have it, but to me it was everything I could have wished for.

I had a bouquet of white roses, and when I walked down that aisle to meet my beloved, even Jenny cried.

Halfway through, instead of lighting a candle, Cody surprised me by picking up a golden cup and holding it out to me.

"Will you drink with me, Princess?" he asked, with one of his little half-smiles. It hadn't been in the plans, but I knew immediately what he was talking about. So I smiled back and nodded before taking a sip. I didn't really think Tristan and Isolde had shared a cup of ginger ale punch, true, but I loved the symbolism, especially when I knew Cody understood it every bit as much as I did.

I think to be bonded with him at last in that way as in all others was one of the sweetest moments of my life, and it wasn't till then that I realized I was crying. But tears can be sweet sometimes, and there was no fear or shame in them.

He gently kissed me, and then it was done. I was reminded of that first kiss we shared at the fall dance in seventh grade, just as sweet in memory as this one was in reality.

"Now you have all there is of me," he said solemnly, and I smiled through what was left of my tears.

When the ceremony was over, Marcus and Cyrus played Paul Brandt's version of _I Do,_ and we danced while everybody watched. I cried a little bit at that, too, because I don't think there's any song in the world more fitting for me and Cody. Then finally we ate brisket and cake and drank punch.

There wasn't time for us to go anywhere else before he had to leave, so we'd already decided to take our honeymoon when he got back home in August. He asked me where I wanted to go, and I promptly told him I didn't care as long as it wasn't Alaska or New Mexico. He laughed, and when he suggested Hawaii I was reminded for a second of that dream I had on the night when he first told me about the Curse. Maybe it was about to come true after all. I couldn't wait to see how it ended.

But all too soon it was time to put my daydreams away and let him go back to Alaska, to wait out the long seven months without him.

Just before he left, we drove the few miles to Autograph Rock, where we solemnly carved our names in stone below Blake and Josie McGrath.

"Love and peace," he murmured under his breath, in a voice so low I almost couldn't hear him.

"What are you talking about?" I asked, but he only smiled a little.

"Nothing, darlin'. Just thinking about something Daddy used to say, that's all," he said.

When we got back to Goliad, Miss Josie was standing on the porch waiting for us.

"I thought y'all would never get back! Look what came today!" she cried, holding out an envelope. Cody took it, and after reading the short note inside, he started to laugh.

"What's so wonderful?" I asked, confused, and Cody swept me up for a tight hug before he answered.

"This is what," he said, showing me the note.

Dear Cody and Lisa,

Congratulations on getting married. May God richly bless you both. In the meantime, please accept this as a token of our love and appreciation for all you've done in the fight against evil.

It was signed by John, Sarah, and Matthieu Doucet, and attached to the bottom of the note with a paperclip was a check for fifty thousand dollars. I almost fainted.

"You know what this means, don't you?" Cody asked, bringing me back to reality.

"What?" I asked.

"It means I'm not going anywhere, darlin'. Unpack that bag and tear up my ticket, cause I'm home for good," he said.

I did cry, then, but it was all I could do not to laugh at the same time. Sometimes things keep getting better and better until you almost can't believe they're real, but they are.

So we settled into the bunkhouse together, and for several weeks I redecorated, and repainted, and in the end I don't think I flatter myself too much when I say the place looked a hundred times better than it did when it was only a bachelor pad for a young buck with no sense of style at all. I love Cody to death, but he was and is a cowboy to the bitter end, and however much I love him I really didn't feel like living for the rest of my life in a house decked out in nothing but cowhide and bearskin.

My days were full and mostly happy, and if there was a current of leftover sadness underneath, well, I've come to believe that life is like that, sometimes. You may not always get everything you want, but I think you do always get what you need.

Spring came, with its showery days and green grass, when the whole world seems new. The pastures were full of bluebonnets as far as the eye could see, just like Cody had told me they would be. For a while I painted to my heart's content, trying to capture a little bit of all that fleeting beauty. I felt like I'd finally come home, at long last, and maybe even to have some of that pale and nourishing dirt in my own blood, just like Cody did. Blake McGrath's vision of a refuge for the hurting and a place of peace had come true for me, too.

The Mustangs started playing gigs again as soon as Marcus was up to it, and in March Cody surprised me by writing a song for me. The first time I ever had the slightest notion he was working on such a thing was the day when he first sang it, for a small crowd at Sufficient Grounds in Tyler, my favorite spot out of all the places they'd ever played. The patrons laughed and cheered when he stepped offstage to kiss me afterward, and even though it was kind of embarrassing to be made such a spectacle, I wouldn't have traded it for the world. Whenever I thought I loved him as much as humanly possible, he always managed to top it.

And then a few days ago I had a dream of my own, for the first and only time in my life, I think. It's not the one I asked for, to be sure, but maybe it's the one I needed to see.

I see, in my mind's eye, a boy of sixteen or so, with dark hair and a face that reminds me just a little of Cody's. It's a rainy night, in some warm place where palm trees grow, and he's working intently at a lab bench, all alone in a room full of gear I don't recognize. I'm not sure what he's doing, except that it's very, very important, and somehow I know that the fate of all mankind depends on what that one boy is doing that very night. He looks exhausted and close to despair, and I wish I could speak, to tell him not to give up.

And that's all. Just that one image, no context, no explanation, but somehow it means more to me than I could ever explain. Far in the future, he's some distant child of mine and Cody's. I know it in that strange and inexplicable way that you simply know things in a dream sometimes.

I don't doubt that it's true, and I admit it worries me a little, what may end up happening to them all in that far future time. But I have to believe that whatever may happen, things will work out as they should. Mama told me many times that now is all we ever have, that the past is gone and the future may never come. She would have said that God Himself has no future and no past, that all times for Him are right now, and that therefore if we want to be like Him and to get a small taste of what Heaven must be like, then the present is the only place we can do that. So I've been trying, hard as it is sometimes.

In May, I found out I was pregnant. My immediate reaction was to instantly start worrying about anything and everything that might go wrong, and for a while it was hard to be quite as happy as I felt like I ought to have been. I didn't even tell Cody for almost a month, irrationally afraid that if I got too excited something bad might happen. But gradually, as time went by, I put aside my fears and became more confident that things would be all right.

He came in smelling like peaches, on the day I finally told him. Yellow Freestones, to be exact; I've had a thorough education about the peculiarities of peaches since coming to Goliad. It was harvest time, and the scent had soaked into his clothes and even his hair, so strong it was almost like potpourri. It was a little odd, mixed with the scent of sunshine and sweat, but I wrapped my arms around him and took a deep breath of his t-shirt before he kissed me. He must have been eating fruit off the trees, because I could taste warm peach on his lips, too.

"Monkey kiss," I said, smiling.

"Yeah, couldn't resist. They're really good, fresh in the sun like that," he said.

"I bet," I said.

"Here, I brought you some," he said, handing me three of them wrapped up in his handkerchief.

"Well, so happens I have a surprise for you, too," I said.

"Oh, yeah? What's that?" he asked. I could tell he was completely clueless, and I drew it out a bit longer, relishing the suspense.

"Well. . . we're having a baby, Coby; aren't you happy?" I asked, enjoying the look of shocked surprise on his face.

"Oh, wow," he said, or something like that. Maybe he was too stunned to think of anything else, but it was a statement so bland that I couldn't help laughing.

"Is that really all you can think of to say?" I asked, still amused.

"Hey, you've had a lot longer to think about it than I have," he reminded me, and I relented.

"Yeah, true. I guess I ought to let you recover for a few minutes before I expect you to say anything. You _are_ happy, though, right?" I said.

"Absolutely. Cross my heart and hope to eat Brussels sprouts. That's a fate worse than death, you know," he said. He took me in his arms and kissed me on the forehead without saying anything, and for a long time neither did I.

"It'll be born in January," I finally murmured.

"Cool. Maybe we'll have the same birthday. That'd be awesome, now wouldn't it?" he said.

Christopher Marlowe once said _Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight?_ That's how it feels, sometimes. I feel like I've loved Cody ever since the day I was born, like we were made for each other stitch by stitch like a glove is made for a hand. He completes and fulfills me in ways I never knew I was lacking till I found him. I feel like God must have written us together into the story of the world on the day the universe was made. So many things could have kept us apart, and yet here we are.

I don't know what the future will bring, or how many sorrows and hurts it might throw at us. But I'm certain that as long as we're together, we can always overcome them. When I think about all the things we've already endured, it only makes me even more certain that nothing can ever come between us.

Cody loves me like the sun loves the green grass, like the rain loves a new-plowed field, like a burning fire that cleanses and leaves me pure. I love him like a yellow rose loves the summer heat, like a blue sea loves the blue sky, a reflection of glory that makes him whole.

There are times when love is so right that it can bring tears to the eyes for very sweetness, and all the poetry in the world could never be beautiful enough to capture it. Only the ones who are blessed enough to find it themselves can really understand.

I wish I'd known back in the old days, how much better the truth can be than even the most beautiful fairy tale. Cody and I have found it, at long last, in spite of everything, and I wouldn't trade that for any other treasure this world could offer. Life doesn't always turn out like a Scarlett Blaze romance, even though I know I once hoped it would.

Sometimes it's even better.

## Epilogue - Cody

Goliad is full of life these days, in a way that it hasn't been ever since I can remember. The weather seems better this year, so hopefully there'll be no more drought to worry about. I keep busy in the fields and the pastures and the orchard, with farming and music and family, and even though the work is hard I love it.

Brandon is more help than I ever thought he'd be, especially with mechanical things. He can work on the tractor almost as well as I can these days. He's still enough of a kid to think I walk on water, though; I'm not sure exactly when the hostility got replaced by hero-worship, but it happened sometime. I still wonder a lot about what it might mean that we share the bright blue eyes of a curse-breaker, but for now I haven't said anything. If God has a plan in mind, then I'm content to wait and see.

I talk to the baby every night, which made Lisa laugh at first until she realized he'd stop kicking for a while to listen. Then she was all for it. So I tell him about life and love and red dirt bands and anything else under the sun. I know he won't remember, of course, but it's really kind of amazing how much you can socialize with a baby that small, if you only try. We decided to name him Micah, after the prophet, even though I'm sure we'll end up calling him Mike or Mikey or some such thing as that.

Becoming a father makes you thoughtful about a lot of things you never paid much attention to before, and knowing there's another person who depends on you so completely is a humbling experience. I wouldn't trade it for anything, though. In fact, there's nothing else I know of which is more likely to inspire a man to greatness of heart, if there was ever a spark of it to be found in him to begin with.

I think a lot about what to do with Cadron Pool, because that's an awesome responsibility, too. The first thing we did was to track down as many of Layla's victims as we could, but that's been hard. She was always so anonymous about things, it's hard to know when or where she met people. James Fitch wouldn't believe me, not even after I drove all the way up to Nebraska to plead with him. I think that probably stung the most, but there was nothing I could do for him if he wouldn't listen. But there have been two so far that we _did_ find and save; one from Missouri and another from Oregon. I hope we'll be able to find more; I'm certain there are plenty of them out there.

So that will be our life's work, it seems; to heal hurts and make things right, and Goliad will indeed be a refuge for the broken and a place of peace in ways I never even thought of before. I feel rich beyond my wildest imaginings, and I could never have dreamed of a life so sweet and full until suddenly it was there. God is awesome that way; a loving father who delights to give his children all the good things they ever wished for, and even more than they wished for. He may do it in a way which isn't quite what you expected at first, but He never forgets or overlooks.

I've also been thinking a lot about Layla Garza herself here lately, and what it might mean that she liked the taste of my father's life. My father was noble and his heart was always bound close to God, but there was nothing else to set him apart or make him special. So if Layla found that she liked the taste of that, if she learned to thirst for God even in the midst of all her wickedness, then maybe in time her heart might be broken with longing for what the world can never give, and she might, just possibly, become one of the saints herself. And if that's true, then Daddy really did give his life to save her, in a much deeper way than he or anybody else ever suspected. And for that I'm prouder of him than ever, and I wish I could tell him so. Maybe someday I will.

I had another dream last night, and I'm not sure if it was one of the true kind or not. I saw Lisa and me, standing in a field of bluebonnets, hand in hand. Three kids were playing around our feet, and the setting sun cast a golden glow on our faces. Was it real, or only wishes? God only knows.

But for now, I'm content to sit beside Lisa on the porch and pick my twelve-string, to watch the sun set on Mount Nebo, and to think about Love.

In Beauty be it finished, after all.

The End

The story of Brandon, Lisa, Cody, and the rest of the Stone family continues two years later in:

### Bran the Blessed

Book Three of the Stones of Song Series

Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial,

Because when he has stood the test,

He will receive the crown of life

That God has promised to those who love Him.

-James 1:16

## Prologue

"I had a really strange dream last night," Lana said.

"Yeah? What about?" Brandon asked, coming to sit down on the bench beside her. She quickly handed him a bottle of cold water, and he drank nearly three quarters of it before spraying the rest on his sweaty face. The blistering heat of an east Texas summer could make football practice a brutal ordeal, especially if you didn't drink enough.

The situation did have its good points, though. Lana's job as the water girl gave him a perfect excuse to spend some time with her now and then, as long as they were careful not to do anything overly affectionate in public. It was strictly against the rules for any exchange student to have a boyfriend, and certainly not an _obvious_ one. The need for secrecy was irksome at times, but unfortunately it couldn't be helped.

Lana waited till he was done with the water, and then told him about her dream.

"I saw a wolf with red fur, and he was running through the woods all alone on a cloudy day in the winter. I think he must have been running for a long time, because his paws were bleeding on the snow. Then he came to an open place and howled at the sky as if his heart was breaking. It was the saddest sound I ever heard. But finally a ray of sunshine came down through the clouds and lit up the clearing," she said.

She spoke almost flawless English, thanks to the fact that it had been a required subject in Leningrad Province every year since kindergarten. In fact, a stranger who knew no better might easily have mistaken her for a British girl instead of a Russian.

"That's definitely strange," Brandon agreed, furrowing his brow.

"So what does it mean?" she asked, with complete seriousness. Bran could have counted on the fingers of one hand the number of people who knew about his gift for interpreting dreams and visions, but Lana Krisanova was one of them.

"I'll have to ask and see," Brandon said, and then shut his eyes to pray.

"Anything?" Lana asked, when he opened his eyes again.

"It's. . . weird," Brandon said, fumbling for the right word.

"Like how?" Lana asked.

"The wolf is me, which I guess is pretty obvious from the red fur. It means I'll have to go through some really sad and lonely times one of these days, but it'll turn out to be a wonderful blessing in the end," he said. It was a cryptic answer at best, but Brandon had long since learned not to ask twice. God had revealed what He meant to make known, and that was that. For Bran the gift was an old and familiar thing after all these years, no more remarkable than his double-jointed thumbs or his cherry-red hair.

"I _guess_ that's a good thing," Lana said, seeming less than enthusiastic about his interpretation.

"I guess so. You better not be speaking curses over my head, girl," Brandon teased, not wanting to make too much of it. Just as he hoped, her slight frown soon dissolved into a smile.

"You know I'd never do that, Beebo," Lana said, and then held up the first two fingers of her left hand. It was supposed to mean _I_ _love you,_ a secret code they could use in public when the actual words would never do. Brandon returned the smile, and then raised his own two fingers back at her.

His water break had lasted as long as he could stretch it at that point, so he quickly poured another bottle all over his face and neck before heading back out to the field. He wasn't too concerned about the strange dream and what it might entail, or at least not yet. As long as he knew it would turn out to be a blessing anyway, who cared?

He was too happy in those days to worry about much of anything, actually. He hadn't been in trouble at school in over a year, he had the best girl and the best family in the world, and God had showered him with more blessings and wonders than most people ever dreamed of.

Besides his gift of foresight, the greatest marvel of them all had been Cadron Pool, of course; the holy spring at the foot of Mount Nebo which could cure any sickness or injury. That Pool belonged mostly to his sister Lisa and her husband Cody, true enough, and Brandon's only real job was to carry the weakest and sickest visitors down into the water if they lacked the strength to do it themselves. But even so, he treasured his own small part in such a glorious calling. It was an awesome thing to see people with vicious diseases made suddenly clean and whole, to watch them come up out of the water laughing and weeping and praising God at the top of their lungs. These miracles of healing were some of Brandon's happiest memories, from a life which seemed rich and sweet as crumb cake in those days.

But there were creeping shadows just beyond the bounds of this bright and beautiful world. The evil witch known as Layla Garza still thirsted for vengeance, and there were others more than happy to assist her in spinning fresh webs of sorcery and deceit. Nor did he yet imagine the price in sorrow that would someday be asked of him for the sake of Love. For just as his brother had been chosen before him, so also Brandon was called to a high and lonely destiny full of blood and tears.

It has been told elsewhere how Brian Stone found his way at last to the Fountain of Youth at the heart of the world, and then drank of that pure and icy water. Of how God blessed him to live far beyond his years, young and beautiful till the end, and granted him the power to break for a little while the curse of the Fall, to turn men's eyes back to Heaven in memory of what was lost. Indeed, the tale of his deeds has been lifted in song by many a glad heart throughout the darkest corners of the earth since that day. Yet of all his mighty and wonderful works, none were greater in his own eyes than the moment when God gave back life to a dead little boy named Brandon, beloved by his brother above all things in the world.

But that was long ago, and Brandon himself rarely remembered these things anymore. He was content with his full and placid life, and except for the mysterious warning of Lana's dream he was still blissfully unaware of what lay ahead.

He was soon to find out.

## Chapter One

It was a dark and rainy night in late September when Brandon's life changed forever.

Everybody on the bus was singing along with old Garth Brooks tunes as they rode back home from Tyler after the game. It had been a good one; they'd finally crushed the White Oak Roughnecks, their arch-rivals, and Brandon especially was in a good mood. He'd been the one who scored the last touchdown with less than five seconds left on the clock, and the sweet taste of victory was still fresh in his memory.

"Hey, Bran, we're fixing to have a party over at Bobby Jones's place after we get back. Why don't you come over for a while?" Jason Lewis asked him. They were only a few miles from Ore City by then, and Brandon knew that Cody and Lisa expected him home no later than midnight. It was already almost eleven thirty, and besides that Bran himself was ready for a shower. His thick red hair was sticky with half-dried sweat, and he felt grungy all over. It had been a muddy game.

"I don't know about that, Jase. I'm supposed to be home in thirty minutes," he said. They'd been teammates and casual friends ever since eighth grade, but they'd never been especially close.

"Aw, come on, don't be such a goody-goody. Can't you call and tell them you're spending the night with me? They'll never know any different. I think we _deserve_ a party after that game we played tonight. You more than anybody," Jason urged.

"Well. . . maybe. Who all's coming?" Brandon asked, weakening a little. He hated it when people made him feel like one of those narrow, prudish Christians who didn't know how to have a good time. Yes, he was a church boy and a Promise Keeper and he played in a praise band and all the rest of those things, but it was hard when his friends made him feel like an outsider because of that.

"There won't be anybody there except some people from school. C'mon, it'll be fun," Jason went on.

Still Brandon hesitated, torn between the desire to celebrate with his friends and the desire to go home and go to bed. He wouldn't have thought twice about it even just a year ago, of course. He'd been surly, defiant, and downright impossible back in those days, till Cody and Lisa gradually loved him out of his bad attitude. Then some of the fire had gone out of his bright blue eyes and he hadn't wanted to be the black sheep anymore. For the past year or so he'd been a good kid, and the last thing in the world he wanted was to ruin that.

But temptation was strong, and he finally decided he could fudge things a little, just this once. He'd go to the party for an hour or so, maybe socialize and drink a glass of sweet tea or a Dr. Pepper, maybe relive some of the high spots of the game, and then he really _would_ go over to Jason's house and sleep on the couch. Just a little fun to celebrate the win, with no real harm done to anybody.

"Sure, why not?" he agreed, pulling out his phone to call Cody.

"What's up, Beebo?" Cody asked when he answered the phone.

"Hey, is it all right if I spend the night at Jason's place? I think we might get up and go fishing sometime early in the morning," Brandon fibbed. He told himself it wasn't technically a lie since he'd only said they _might_ go, and besides which, they might end up deciding to do something like that anyway.

"Will his parents be there?" Cody asked.

"Yeah, they're always at home. So can I go? I'll be back sometime tomorrow morning," Brandon said.

"All right. Just make sure you're home before noon, though. We've got hay to cut," Cody said. And so indeed they did; Cody was the owner of a thousand-acre cattle ranch named Goliad, and the work of a farm boy was endless, it seemed. Bran loved the place and didn't really mind all the chores it involved, but he had to admit they sure did cut into his free time now and then.

"Sure thing," Brandon agreed, and that was that. Jason had overheard the entire conversation and gave him a quick high-five.

"So, you ridin' with me or what?" Jason asked, and Brandon shook his head.

"No, I think I'll drive myself. I don't want to leave my truck at school all night, and besides that I might go see if Lana wants to come," he said. She hadn't been with them at the game in White Oak because of a piano recital, but that was all right. The water girl was technically a teammate just like anybody else, so there was no reason why she shouldn't get to celebrate, too. Besides which, inviting her to the party gave Brandon an excellent excuse to go see her.

"Oh, all right. You know where Bobby lives, don't you?" Jason asked.

"Yeah, I've been out that way a time or two," Brandon said. He'd gone hunting with Cody a few times down in the bottomlands along Cypress Creek, and that was less than a mile from Bobby's place along the same gravel road. It was good whitetail country down there, full of acorns and wild muscadine grapes and all kinds of other scrumptious deer delicacies like that.

"Okay. We'll be out in the barn, far as I know," Jason said.

It wasn't long till the bus pulled in beside the gym, and then there was a short burst of activity while people unloaded equipment or made last-minute phone calls or various and sundry other things. The rain was over by then, but it was still wet and breezy outside, with a crisp hint of fall in the air. Brandon put away his own gear before changing out of his muddy uniform into a pair of shorts and a t-shirt. It was a little bit nippy to be so lightly dressed, but those were the only clean things he could find in his locker. Then he trotted off on foot, leaving his truck at the practice field. Lana's host family kept her on a pretty tight leash, which meant he couldn't just drive up to her front door in the middle of the night. He'd have to be sneaky about it if he wanted to see her so late, much less take her out anywhere.

But that was all right, too. The idea of slipping away together for a few hours without starchy old Mr. and Mrs. Jackson ever knowing about it was kind of fun, actually. Brandon might love Cody and Lisa too much to do anything _very_ bad nowadays, but he still harbored a certain amount of his old rebel attitude.

The house was only a few blocks away on Catawba Street, and before long Bran was close enough to see that Lana's bedroom light was still on. Good deal. He crept across the manicured lawn to tap on her window, hoping it wouldn't startle her. A dark shadow moved against the light, and then Lana herself parted the curtains to peer outside. As soon as she recognized Brandon she opened the window.

"What are you doing here, Beebo? I was just going to bed," she whispered, leaning out to give him a quick hug and a kiss. There was no reason to hide anything in the dark, of course, so they didn't try. Her waist-length brown hair fell down around his face, still damp from a recent shower. Her lips were sweet with strawberry gloss, and she smelled like rose petal shampoo, fresh and clean.

"I came to see you, obviously," Brandon said, like it was the most natural and ordinary thing in the world for him to show up at her window at midnight.

"That's very sweet, but you know we could both get in trouble if anybody found you here, don't you?" she asked, glancing back at her bedroom door.

"So come with me, then. Turn off your light and they'll think you went to bed already," he said.

"Come where?" she asked.

"We're having a little get-together at Bobby Jones's place tonight, to celebrate winning the game," he said.

"Oh, did you win?" she asked.

"Sure we did. Was there ever any doubt?" he asked, puffing himself up just a bit.

"No, Beebo. None at all," she agreed, smiling. She had an odd sense of humor sometimes, so it was hard to tell whether she was being serious or not.

"So how did the concert go?" he asked.

"It was not bad. I played the _Rondeau_ from _Sinfonie des Fanfares_ and then part of the _Blue Danube_ _Waltz_. I don't remember what everybody else played. I was too nervous to pay attention," she said.

"Wish I could've been there. I'm sure you did a beautiful job, though," he said. That much he didn't doubt; Lana had been taking piano lessons since she was six years old, and she was an accomplished player.

"Thank you, my _krasny malchik,"_ she said, and he smiled a little. The words were a subtle joke between them, since they could mean either _beautiful boy_ or _red boy,_ depending on exactly how Lana chose to pronounce them. She often liked to say that both meanings fit him perfectly.

"No problem, _milaya._ So how about coming to the party with me?" he asked, returning to the subject at hand. _Sweetheart_ was about the extent of his foreign language skills, but Lana didn't seem to mind.

"Nobody will say anything, will they? I wouldn't want the Jacksons to find out," she said.

"Of course not. Nobody else wants to get in trouble, either," he said.

"Okay, then. Wait just a minute," she said. She let the curtains fall shut, leaving him to stamp his feet and put his hands under his armpits to stay warm while he waited. When she reappeared at the window she was dressed in a simple pair of jeans and a sweater, nothing fancy at all. She'd tied her long hair back in a ponytail and it looked like she might have put on just a little blush and some fresh lip gloss. He gave her a hand to steady herself while she climbed outside, and then together they slipped away from the house.

It didn't take long to get back to Brandon's old blue Chevy at the practice field. It was nothing much as far as trucks went, with a few dents and patches of rust here and there from hauling hay and such, but it drove like a brand new machine. It had been a gift from Cody on Bran's sixteenth birthday less than a month ago, and the freedom that came with it was still a fresh and heady thing.

The Joneses lived on a ramshackle cattle farm about two miles north of town, and the barn itself was so far back in the pasture that it was nearly invisible from the main house. When Brandon and Lana finally arrived there were already at least a dozen cars parked on the grass. Loud country music wafted outdoors from a radio, and several people had lit a bonfire off to one side where it wouldn't get out of hand. The pungent smell of wood smoke almost completely covered up the lingering odor of mud and rain from earlier in the evening. Two or three human-shaped shadows were gathered round the flames, laughing occasionally.

Brandon parked the truck and then sat there frowning for a minute. He'd been expecting something a little smaller, from what Jason had said. He had half a mind to turn around and forget about the whole thing, actually; he could always make excuses later and say something had come up at the last minute. But while he was still sitting there thinking about all this, Jason himself came walking by and spotted them.

"Hey, Bran!" he called cheerfully, waving at them. He was holding hands with a tall and very beautiful dark-haired girl, causing Brandon to wonder briefly who she was and how Jason had ever managed to hook up with such a fine specimen. He'd never been especially popular with the ladies before _._

It would have seemed feeble and cowardly to leave at _that_ point, so Brandon smiled and waved back. Then he and Lana got out to head for the barn.

"There are more people here than I thought," she said, as they walked across the wet grass.

"Well. . . yeah, there are. We can go somewhere else if you want to," he offered, half hoping she might take him up on the offer.

"No, that's all right. Let's go inside and see what it's like. We can always leave whenever we like," she finally said.

"Okay, then. If it gets too rowdy just let me know," he said, and she nodded.

The barn was full of unfamiliar faces when the two of them finally got inside. Some of them were definitely older than high school age, and Bran noticed immediately that several people were drinking. Off to one side was a massive cooler full of brown beer bottles and slushy ice, right next to a table well-stocked with whiskey and two-liter Cokes.

Brandon eyed the beer with suspicion, wondering all over again whether coming to this party had been such a great idea or not. It wasn't remotely what Jason had led him to believe it would be, and Bran privately made up his mind to have a few choice words with the boy as soon as they both got back to school on Monday.

As an afterthought, somebody had put out chips and cold cuts and various other finger foods on the same table next to the whiskey and Coke. At one end was a huge bowl full of red fruit punch, sitting next to a tray of chocolate brownies sprinkled with powdered sugar. Bran took a cautious sip of the punch to make sure it wasn't alcoholic, and then nodded at Lana.

"It's okay. Just fruit punch and ginger ale," he said. He was still thirsty from the game, so he drank down a full glass and then refilled it while Lana fixed them a plate of food to share. Finally the two of them sat down on a bale of hay in the corner to eat.

Several couples were out there dancing in the middle of the room, including Jason and his nameless new honey. It seemed to be one of the few feasible ways to socialize very much; the music was almost too loud to hear yourself think, much less talk to anybody.

"Do you really like this?" Lana asked after a while, sipping on her own glass of punch.

"Sure, it's cool. Better than being at home, anyway," Brandon said, with what he hoped was a charming grin.

"I guess so," she agreed, sounding dubious. Bran was dubious himself, to be honest, but since going to the party had been his idea (sort of), he felt compelled to at least pretend to enjoy it for a while. Nevertheless, he'd already made up his mind to leave as soon as they could graciously get away with it.

So they sat and talked, and ate and drank, and people-watched for about thirty minutes or so. And after a while Brandon really did find that he was enjoying himself a lot more than he thought he would. He felt lightheaded and happy, and the music which had seemed so loud and annoying before now seemed enthralling, like an extension of his own body. He could have sat there and listened to it for hours, days, _weeks_ even, and never lost interest.

"Let's dance, Lana," he suggested, and she nodded. This was on the very fringe of being an unwise thing to be seen doing in public, but at the moment that didn't seem to matter so much.

They got up and moved onto the dance floor, and it was awesome. The song on the radio was _Everything I_ _Shouldn't Be Thinking About,_ which for some reason struck him as hilarious. He could feel the music even better out there, and when he put his arms around her she surprised him by leaning in close against his chest. Her body was warmer than the summer sun in July, and he kissed her on impulse, feeling tingles run all up and down his spine at the touch of her lips.

That was _definitely_ unwise public behavior, and somewhere in the back of his mind he still had enough sense to realize something was awfully strange about all this. But that small part of him was nowhere near strong enough to change anything.

He remembered the rest of the evening only in fits and snatches. At one point somebody thrust a guitar into his hands and for a while he ended up playing a strange mix of red dirt country and Ozark bluegrass which only a barn full of drunk people could possibly have enjoyed. Then later on he vaguely remembered drinking a few shots of Coke and whiskey himself along with Jason and his girlfriend, something he would _never_ have done ordinarily.

He was too fuzzy-headed by that time to think much of it when the dark-haired girl pulled a vial of clear liquid from her pocket and poured some of it into their drinks.

"What's that?" he asked.

"Just cherry flavoring. It'll make this cheap stuff taste a little better," the girl said, wrinkling her pretty nose distastefully. For some reason that seemed funny too, so Brandon laughed before downing the shot. The sweet taste of cherries filled his mouth, and before long he'd completely forgotten about the incident.

It must have been awfully late by the time he fell asleep, because when he finally opened his eyes it was almost noon. He woke up in the hay loft with Lana still asleep beside him under a horse blanket, with a pounding headache and his mouth so dry it felt like his tongue had turned into a piece of saddle leather.

He sat up to rub the sleep out of his eyes, and then realized his shirt and shoes were missing. He couldn't remember taking them off, nor how he ended up in the hay loft, or much of anything else for that matter. Then he glanced uneasily at Lana, wondering what might have happened during the night.

He knew immediately what people would _think,_ of course, and that alone was enough to make his face turn red. If word got out then he'd never hear the end of it.

He got up to hunt for his clothes, only to find that they seemed to have vanished into thin air. The shirt didn't matter so much, but the shoes were a whole different story. The prospect of explaining to Lisa how his best pair of game cleats could have disappeared was enough to make him squirm just thinking about it.

Eventually he gave up searching and came back to shake Lana's shoulder. If he didn't get her home before the Jacksons found out, then he'd soon end up having to explain something much worse than a pair of lost shoes.

"Hey," he said awkwardly, as soon as she opened her eyes. Her sweater had disappeared also, leaving her with only a skimpy tank top which couldn't possibly have been very warm. She sat up, pulling the blanket closer around her shoulders, and then looked at him silently.

"We have done wrongly," she said, after the silence had stretched on for a painful length of time. Somehow he didn't have to wonder what she meant.

"I'm sorry," he said, for lack of anything else to say.

"Do you love me, Bran?" she asked. It wasn't at all what he expected her to say, but at least he knew the answer.

"Always," he said, and that seemed to comfort her.

"There must have been something bad we ate or drank. I remember nothing," she said. He could tell she probably had a terrible headache herself, if only from the slipups in her speech. Normally she could have put a dictionary to shame.

"Me neither. But if there was, I swear I didn't know it. I even tasted everything first to make sure it was clean," he said.

"I know that, Beebo. I am not mad at you," she said.

"Okay, I just didn't want you to blame me, that's all," he said, and then came another lengthy pause. Finally Lana let out a long breath, as if she'd been thinking for a while.

"Perhaps we should simply pretend it never happened, yes? My sponsors would send me home if they knew, and I don't want that," she said.

"But what if somebody else at the party says something?" he asked.

"Maybe that will not happen. They were mostly strangers to me, anyway," she said, and he nodded.

"All right, then. As far as I'm concerned, it never happened," he agreed.

"Good," she said. Then a shadow of pain crossed her face, and she raised both hands to rub her temples.

"Does your head hurt?" he asked.

"Yes. Very bad. But I will find medicine at home," she said.

"Yeah, me too. But I guess if we don't want to get caught then we should probably go home now. I'm supposed to cut hay this afternoon, but call me tonight sometime and let me know how things went with the Jacksons, okay?" he asked.

"Okay," she agreed.

The two of them climbed down a wooden ladder into the main part of the barn, which lay silent and empty except for scattered beer bottles and leftover trash from the party. Jason and Bobby and all the others were long gone, it seemed.

"Feels strange to be so quiet down here," Brandon said, kicking one of the bottles with his bare foot as they crossed the dirt floor. It was his first feeble attempt at normal conversation, but the words felt stilted and artificial even as he said them.

"Yes, but at least no one will see us leaving," Lana said, and then both of them reverted to silence again.

As soon as they reached the truck Bran rummaged behind the seat till he found a dirty black-and-gold Ore City Rebels t-shirt. It smelled like grease and old sweat, but he pulled it over his head anyway before driving them back downtown. He pulled over less than two blocks from the Jacksons' house, and then reluctantly turned to face Lana.

"I'll see you tomorrow at church, I guess," he said, and she nodded. They'd both attended the Avinger Cowboy Church ever since arriving in Texas barely a week apart at the beginning of eighth grade, he from Arkansas and she from Saint Petersburg, two friendless strangers far from home. The place had felt like a second family to both of them ever since.

In fact, they'd first met at the church's annual Back to School Rodeo that year, when Brandon sat down next to her in the stands purely by chance. He hadn't been very charming at the time, admittedly, with chili-cheese all over his fingers and mouth from eating a Frito pie while he watched the calf roping competition. But then again, he'd only been thirteen in those days, young enough that girls still didn't interest him very much.

Life had been so much simpler back then.

"Okay, I'll see you tomorrow then. Love you, Beebo," Lana said. She didn't seem to notice his fleeting stroll down memory lane, or whatever one wanted to call it. She simply squeezed his hand briefly and then kissed him on the cheek in the way that some old-fashioned Russians were apt to do when they said goodbye. He'd learned quite a few interesting little tidbits like that from talking to her over the years, and up till then he'd always thought that particular custom was rather sweet. But at the moment, even a kiss on the cheek seemed painfully awkward.

"Love you too," he said, laying his fingers on the spot where her lips had touched. He watched her get out and walk away until she turned the corner onto Catawba Street, and then he drove away with a heavy heart.

He was reluctant to go home himself, irrationally sure that Cody or Lisa could somehow read what he'd done on his face, like the mark of Cain or the Scarlet Letter. Knowing that he'd committed such a major offense left him feeling guilty and remorseful, even if he couldn't actually remember anything.

For a while he indulged in beating himself up over how stupid he'd been. He never should have lied to Cody about what he was doing. He never should have asked Lana to sneak out in the middle of the night. They should have left the party immediately when they saw what it was really like. There were a thousand things he could have done differently which wouldn't have led him to the spot he was in now, and he'd chosen wrongly every time.

What he kept coming back to was the complete weirdness of it all. He simply wouldn't have acted like that under normal circumstances, and the whole evening wouldn't be a blank slate, either.

Lana's idea about how there might have been something else in the food or the punch besides alcohol came to mind again, and he gave it some serious thought this time. There were all kinds of drugs which didn't have any smell or taste; even _he_ knew that much.

He finally decided there was only one good way to find out for sure, so he turned around in the parking lot at Catfish Village and drove back downtown to the health department. It was open till one o'clock on Saturdays, a fact which he knew from going there with Lisa now and then when she took Micah to get his shots or his well-baby checkups or whatever else he needed. Mikey was nine months old, and even though he loved the kid dearly, Brandon often thought his nephew had to be one of the sickliest little ankle-biters he'd ever met.

There hadn't been much to do during those visits other than read pamphlets or stare at posters on the waiting room walls. But still, Brandon had learned a good many things about the Texas Department of Health while he sat there twiddling his thumbs for all those dull and tedious hours.

Including the fact that they gave drug tests.

The parking lot was nearly empty when he got there, a good sign since he didn't have much time. It wouldn't be long before Cody started to wonder why he wasn't home yet, and Bran had no intention of stirring up _that_ particular can of worms. The fewer questions anybody asked about where he'd been or what he'd been doing, the better off he'd be.

He hurried inside to the receptionist's window, still barefoot and hoping nobody would notice. Then he tried to explain what he wanted, so nervous that he fumbled with the pen and had trouble signing his name. The only time he'd ever been to the health department on his own account had been to get a tetanus shot after stepping on a rusty nail in the barn last year, but that was nothing compared to _this._

The receptionist herself didn't ask too many questions, but the nurse in the examination room certainly made up for lost time after she called him back there. He had to explain the whole squalid situation, and by the time she got through grilling him he almost wished he hadn't come at all. Finally she seemed to be satisfied, and after giving her blood and urine samples he was free to go.

"All right, hon. Call back Monday after one o'clock and we'll have the results for you," she said, patting his shoulder.

There was no other reason to linger in town, so Brandon went home to slip on his cowboy boots and some fresh clothes before heading out to the pasture. Then he had to suffer through an entire afternoon of cutting hay in the hot sun, praying the whole time that Cody wouldn't smell any leftover traces of whiskey on his breath. Things were bad enough already without _that._ Bran had never felt so awful in his entire life. He felt sweaty, achy, and pukey all rolled into one, and by the time they finished cutting the last field, all he could do was crawl up to his room and lie there groaning in the dark.

One minor bright spot occurred when Lana texted him a little after eleven to say that the Jacksons had still been in bed when she slipped back home that morning. They never noticed a thing. That was a major relief, but he still felt guilty and ashamed of himself. Therefore he took the time to pray earnestly just before he fell asleep.

_Please forgive me, Lord; I didn't mean for anything to happen,_ Brandon whispered under his breath. Then he went on to recite a long list of reasons why God should let him off the hook just this once, and ended with a solemn promise to never let it happen again.

He knew better than this, of course. He understood perfectly well that God isn't remotely the sort of person to whom one offers deals or excuses. Free gifts offered in love were the only things He cared for, either to give or to receive. The proper thing to do would simply have been to ask forgiveness and then forget about the matter, with no need for any further explanations. But even though Brandon knew all this, it didn't stop him from trying to justify himself in this one case.

A lingering sense of guilt dogged him all the way to church the next morning, even though he tried not to let it show. He played the music service just like always, making sure to smile not just for the crowd but also for his band-mates. He was good at things like that when necessary. The only hint of his inner conflict that he ever let slip was when he chose _The Prodigal Son's Prayer_ for his solo piece. It didn't fit in very well with the more traditional hymns they were _supposed_ to be playing that morning, but he never offered any explanation for what must have seemed like an odd choice. He noticed Cody looking at him a bit strangely afterward, even though nobody actually said anything.

He didn't get a chance to speak to Lana, but he did see her sitting on the third row with the Jacksons and their two natural children, Jamie and Sheila. He waved at her casually with his two left fingers, and Lana smiled and did the same.

He chewed his nails to the quick for the rest of the weekend, awaiting the verdict from the health department. When Monday afternoon finally rolled around he still had to wait till after school before he could call them back, and those last few hours were almost unbearable. He snatched up his phone the second the last bell rang at three twenty, only to be put on hold for several more minutes while they looked up his information.

"Mr. Stone?" the nurse asked when she came back on.

"Yes ma'am, I'm still here," he said.

"We got your results back a little while ago. I'm afraid you came back positive for methamphetamines, ecstasy, and marijuana," the lady said, and in spite of bracing himself for just such an answer, Brandon almost dropped the phone in shock.

_Methamphetamines,_ he thought to himself. _Ecstasy. Weed._

For almost a whole second he was so stunned he didn't know what to think, but it was soon replaced by a rage so intense he thought his clothes might spontaneously catch fire. He could feel the hot blood of anger rushing to his face until it literally clouded his vision and he saw red.

His first thought was how much he'd like to cut Jason Lewis to pieces with a rusty knife and then feed him to the alligators in Cypress Creek bit by bit. But since he couldn't do that, he satisfied himself with calling the boy every name he could think of and then some. He was too furious even to care that it hadn't technically been Jason's party. He didn't want to be fair, and he didn't want to be nice. He wanted to think about slow ways to roast his teammate over an open fire.

The other object of his wrath was whoever had spiked the punch in the first place, but that was unsatisfying since he didn't have the faintest idea who might have done it. Some idiot who thought it was a way to liven up the party and help everybody have a good time, no doubt. Probably one of Tommy Jones's brain-dead stoner buddies if Bran had to guess, or maybe even Tommy himself. He was Bobby's brother, after all, and out of all the folks at the party he was surely the prime suspect. Brandon was sorely tempted to knock a few of the dude's teeth loose next time they ran into each other.

Then he took a deep breath and told himself to calm down and get a grip. He didn't go around starting fights anymore, no matter how richly it might be deserved. He wouldn't hit Tommy, and he wouldn't even cuss Jason. The old Bran would have, but he was determined not to fall back into all _that_ again.

He reminded himself several times not to start thinking there was some nefarious scheme going on behind the scenes. It wasn't like this had been some huge conspiracy to ruin his life. Nobody had meant him any harm personally. He'd just been stupid, that's all, and so he shouldn't be surprised that the consequences had come back to bite him. That wasn't Jason's fault or anybody else's except his own. In hindsight he could see clearly how much of a fool he'd been, but the only thing he could do was to promise himself that he'd try to use a little more common sense in the future.

On the bright side, it seemed like they might get by with keeping the whole sordid mess under wraps. Nobody ever mentioned it at school, and Cody and Lisa never asked him any more questions about his imaginary sleepover with Jason.

But the lie that nothing had ever happened was simply that, a warm and comforting lie. The truth lived on beneath the surface, out of sight and out of mind for a little while, perhaps, but never quite forgotten. And no matter how desperately the two of them might wish for that lie to be true, they were soon to find that both God and the Devil had other plans.

Chapter Two

On a bright and chilly Saturday afternoon six weeks later, Lana texted him to ask if they could meet at the city park for a private discussion. She wouldn't say what it was about, leaving him to wonder uneasily if somebody at the party might finally have let something slip to the Jacksons after all. That was the only possibility he could think of at the moment, and he knew it had to be _something_ serious. Lana wouldn't be so secretive unless she had a good reason.

Cody and Lisa had gone to Dallas for the afternoon, leaving him with a list of chores ten miles long to be finished before they got back. Bran didn't really have the time to spare for mysterious secret meetings at the park. Nevertheless, he told her he'd be there in a few minutes.

As soon as he got to the park he spotted her sitting on one of the benches by the baseball field, so he jogged over and took a seat.

"Okay, here I am. Now what's so important that we couldn't talk about it on the phone and it can't even wait till church tomorrow?" he asked, just a touch irritated.

"I'm not sure how to tell you," Lana began.

"Just spit it out and get it over with. Did somebody tell the Jacksons about the party? You're not in trouble with your sponsors, are you?" he asked.

"Brandon, I'm pregnant," she told him, not even trying to sugarcoat it.

"Huh?" he asked, too shocked to think of any other response.

"Did you not hear me?" she asked.

"Yeah, I heard you. When did you find out?" he asked.

"Just a few hours ago. But there's no doubt about it. I've already been to the health department this morning and had it confirmed," she told him.

He was silent for a long time at that news, while all kinds of things passed through his mind about what he should say or do. Fear loomed large, and he wished for a second that he could run away to some tropical island, or maybe just shut his eyes and wake up to find that it was all some kind of bad dream.

Then he thought of something else, a Christmas gift from Lisa the year before. She'd given him a foil picture of a shepherd boy with red hair, wading barefoot across a stream with the legs of his overalls rolled up and a lamb in his arms, with these verses by William Blake inlaid in the metal:

Love seeketh not itself to please,

Nor for itself hath any care,

But for another gives its ease,

And builds a heaven in hell's despair.

So sung a little clod of clay,

Trodden with the cattle's feet,

But a pebble of the brook,

Warbled out these meters meet:

Love seeketh only self to please,

To bind another to its delight,

Joys in another's loss of ease,

And builds a hell in heaven's despite.

Below these verses, in a much larger typeface, was printed one stark and simple word: _Choose._ Lisa had always loved poetry, and she swore the red-headed boy in the picture looked just like Brandon himself, even though you could only see him from the back. It was a beautiful work of art, and the lesson was plain: that selfless love was the path to joy.

That was the message Brandon remembered now; that above all things he mustn't think of himself. _That_ was the first little step on a long and dreary road that led nowhere but the bottomless pit of hell.

"So what do _you_ think we should do?" he finally asked, fumbling for the right words.

"I don't know. I thought I should discuss all that with you and see what you thought," she said, and the strain in her voice was obvious. She must have been stretched almost to the breaking point, to be showing that much emotion during a crisis. She usually retreated into a kind of cool Russian stoicism when faced with emergencies, very unlike the reaction of a typical American girl. In fact, that cultural inclination to detachment was probably the only thing keeping her from falling to pieces at the moment, if he had to guess.

"Well. . . we still have some time to think. Nothing will show for a while yet," he said, latching onto the first thing that came to mind. He sounded a lot more calm and steady than he really felt, but he hoped Lana might take some comfort in that.

"I can't tell the Jacksons, but I've got a doctor's appointment at four o'clock a week from Friday at the free clinic in Longview. Can you take me? It would mean a lot to me, if you could be there. You're all I have in this place," Lana told him.

"Yeah, I can do that. No problem at all," Brandon agreed. That was something specific and concrete for him to focus on. He could handle that much.

"Let's meet here at the park after school, then. I can tell the Jacksons I went to Sabrina Lister's house for a few hours. She won't mind covering my tracks, but if you and I were seen leaving together then it might get all of us in trouble," Lana said.

"Yeah, good idea. I can tell Cody I went fishing or something like that," Brandon said.

"All right, then. I need to get home before anybody notices I'm gone, but I'll see you at church tomorrow. If you come sit with me after the music service, we might have a chance to talk a little longer," Lana said.

"You mean Jamie's not home?" Brandon asked. Lana's foster brother was a notorious eavesdropper, and worse than usual about keeping what he heard to himself. Bran didn't like him much, partly for his loose tongue and partly for his petty meanness. Lana had put up with his spiteful jokes and minor cruelties for years, a fact which didn't improve Brandon's opinion of the boy.

"No, he's at the band clinic in Tyler this weekend. He's got his senior concert coming up soon, so he'll take all the practice he can get right now," Lana said.

"Then maybe we'll get a chance to talk for a little while. In the meantime I guess we both better head on home," Brandon said, standing up.

She nodded, standing up to hug him tightly while he kissed her on top of the head. Her hair still smelled like rose petals, and it seemed somehow unreal that so much could have changed in less time than it took to use up a single bottle of shampoo.

Brandon watched her leave, and then as he headed back to the truck the full enormity of what she'd just told him really began to sink in. He walked along in a kind of daze, wondering how it could even be possible that he'd brought down such a disaster on his head. His whole world had changed so suddenly and so completely that he could barely comprehend all the repercussions. It seemed unbelievable, like something that might have happened to somebody else in a book or a movie he'd once seen.

But there were no second chances for certain things in life, and unfortunately this was one of them. Cody had told him that once; just a few months back. Now it seemed like that conversation had been centuries ago, in some alternate reality where the future was still bright and fresh and full of promise. All that was gone forever now, lost like a raindrop in the cold gray sea. If anything was certain in this whole rotten situation, it was surely that.

Brandon felt a sudden pang of loss so deep and sharp that it brought tears to his eyes, and for a while he just sat in the truck and cried. Then through his tears he cursed Jason Lewis and Bobby Jones, and even Cody for not making him come home that night after the game. He cried till there were no more tears left to cry, and finally there came a kind of calmness instead.

They wouldn't be able to keep the secret for long, of course. The episode at the party, yeah, something like that might eventually fade into the background and be forgotten. But this? No way. It'd be obvious soon enough whether they liked it or not, and there was absolutely no way out of it, no way around it, and no way to avoid it.

The most immediate consequence would be public humiliation, of course. Not that Lana was the first girl at school who ever had a baby, of course; that wasn't what made it such a titillating scrap of tittle-tattle. It was the fact that both of them were popular students, good athletes, and very public Christians. Lana was an honor student, and Brandon could have been one himself if he'd ever been inclined to try. _That_ combination would make the story irresistible, and the rumor mill would run rampant. Somebody would remember the party, and the drinking, and who knew what else. There was no telling what kinds of lurid tales people might hear by the time it was all over.

Even worse, Lana would be sent home to Russia within days of when the story surfaced, and then Brandon knew he'd most likely never see his girlfriend or his baby ever again. That was the worst punishment of all.

He felt tears well up and threaten to overflow his eyes all over again, and for a while he felt sorry for himself and ran circles in his mind about why him and why now and how could this have happened, as if knowing those things would have helped the situation at all.

He made an effort to wipe his face clean before he got home, so Cody and Lisa wouldn't notice anything was wrong. Then he parked his truck under the pecan tree in the front yard and headed out to the barn to finish his chores before it got too late. The horses still had to be fed and watered and brushed, and after that he had to practice for the worship service in the morning. But that was all for the best; it gave him something to do other than brood on his problems.

The horses neighed when they heard him coming, and then for a little while Brandon was kept busy taking care of whatever they needed. All of them had their own little quirks to deal with, especially when it came to brushing. Nellie was mostly quiet unless he touched a ticklish spot, while Buck stamped and swished his tail a bit more. Brandon had worked with them long enough that it was almost second nature to adjust his methods for each animal's personality, so the job didn't take near as much attention as he might have liked.

Little Bit was the last one in line, only four years old and Bran's very own best friend. He was a half-breed quarter horse, and his name had come from the fact that it takes two bits to make a quarter. Little Bit was only half a quarter, which made him just one Bit, and he was smaller than average, too. A lame joke, maybe, but it had seemed funny at the time. Brandon rode him mostly when they had to work with the cows, and sometimes at the trail ride after church on Sundays.

Those were always fun times, especially when he and Lana got a chance to ride double now and then. They couldn't do it _every_ week, of course, since they didn't want people to start wondering if they were more than just friends. But they could get by with it occasionally, and the memory of her arms around his middle while she held him close from behind was a poignant reminder of everything he stood to lose.

Brandon let out a long sigh. Apparently he couldn't even brush the horses without getting reminded of her somehow.

Her name was Svetlana Mikhailevna Krisanova, a mouthful if ever there was one. Lana for short. The name meant bright and beautiful, and that she was, with her flawless face and her long hair and her eyes like dark green fire. All the boys at school had thought she was incredible when she first showed up, the exotic Russian girl with the funny accent and the dazzling smile. But somehow Brandon was the only one she'd ever connected with.

Not especially in a romantic sort of way, or at least not at first. Bran himself deeply distrusted those kinds of relationships after seeing the way his parents had betrayed each other so often, and of course Lana was forbidden even to consider such a thing.

Nevertheless, they shared a mutual love of music and a liking for adventure, and even a taste for healthy food and athletics. They both loved God and held family in high regard, and moreover they were both newcomers in a strange land, both of them slightly lonely and homesick for anything familiar to cling to. All these things had conspired to draw them close even before they quite realized what was happening. And so it was that love had gradually grown up and blossomed between them in spite of all the rules and bad memories in the world.

This had been such a sweet and unexpected thing in Brandon's eyes that he hadn't minded the secrecy at all. He felt like a poor man trudging along a muddy street in the rain who suddenly stumbles across a hundred carat diamond. Love was like that for him; a precious jewel to be treasured and guarded ferociously, if one were ever so lucky and blessed as to find it in the first place. No doubt this attitude had something to do with the way he'd grown up, but he couldn't find it in his heart to be sorry for the way he felt about things. Indeed, his worst and darkest fear in life was to find himself completely alone and unloved again someday.

It turned out Lana had a similar opinion, for reasons not altogether unlike his own. From the little she ever said, he gathered that her father was a difficult man to get along with, angry and demanding when he wasn't cold and distant. She often liked to say that Brandon was one of the sweetest gifts that God had ever given her.

The two of them had sometimes indulged this mindset by talking blithely about all the things they might do together later on in life, just as if she'd never have to go home someday. They both knew all along that these were nothing but impossible pipe dreams, of course. Sooner or later Lana's father would get tired of paying for her foreign study, and then that would be that. She'd be gone, back home to Saint Petersburg, and then Bran would never see her again. Simple as that.

The future had always been ultimately hopeless for the two of them, he supposed. Having a kid didn't really change anything except to make it hurt that much more when the end came, as it surely would have done all along. Brandon had known it for years, and so had she. But even so, the heart knows only what it yearns for, even if the mind understands all too well that it can never be.

In a perfect world, with nothing to fear, he would gladly have married her and lived happily ever after. In that same perfect world, even the thought of a baby might have had a certain amount of appeal, at least in some respects. Cody had told him times without number that children were always a blessing, even if they showed up at unexpected times. That idea had settled into his heart till he believed it, and he'd had enough experience with Mikey that he already knew what a baby entailed. To some extent anyway. He didn't mind changing diapers or feeding bottles, and even though crying was no joy he was fairly sure he could tolerate it for a while.

But unfortunately the world was _not_ perfect, and there was a _lot_ to fear, and there seemed to be precious few options for how to deal with the situation. A sixteen year old boy didn't have many choices in life, even if he wanted desperately to do the right thing. He had no idea what Cody and Lisa would think or even if they'd let him stay at Goliad anymore after they found out. And as for Lana's parents, he dreaded to imagine what _they_ might say or do.

For a while he harbored the wistful notion of running away together to live in the greenwoods, hunting for food with his deer rifle and picking up aluminum cans for extra money to buy bullets and things. He'd survived that way for several months before Cody and Lisa brought him to Goliad, after all, and so had countless pioneers over the centuries. He could keep them fed and clothed and sheltered from the rain, and surely that was all they really _needed,_ wasn't it?

But the more he contemplated what that kind of life would really be like, the less appealing it seemed. He didn't think Lana would enjoy such a rough existence, and sooner or later he'd probably get tired of it himself. Running away was no solution, at least not for the long term.

He was still brushing Little Bit and thinking uselessly about the bottomless hole he'd dug for himself when Cody popped his head in the door of the barn.

"What say you come play with us a little bit tonight, Beebo?" Cody asked.

"Play where?" Brandon asked.

"We got a last minute gig down at Sufficient Grounds and I can't get hold of Cyrus. I thought you might like to fill in for him," Cody said.

"Really?" Brandon asked, momentarily distracted by such a golden opportunity. Coffee house crowds were some of the best audiences they ever got to play for. They were pretty tame and tended to like almost anything, and they'd usually clap even if you did an awful job, just to be polite.

"Sure. I think you're ready. You're a fair player, and it'll be a nice crowd, and we won't have anything too hard to play. Go grab your guitar," Cody said.

So Brandon hurried inside to change clothes and wash his face, and before long they were all headed for Tyler. He was a little bit nervous, even though he'd been playing at church for almost a year. Cody had never asked him to take a major role anywhere else, though, and the prospect of fumbling his first _real_ performance was almost enough to make him forget about everything else for a little while.

Still, he didn't do too badly. Most of the time he only had to play background guitar while Cody or Marcus handled the singing, but towards the end of the concert they did let him take the lead for one song. Bran decided to stick with a safe choice for his first time out, so he settled on _Should've Been a Cowboy;_ a surefire crowd pleaser which also happened to be one of the songs he'd practiced most.

The patrons seemed to like it, such as there were of them. It was a pretty slow night, with only about ten or fifteen customers in the place at a time. The band only got paid with free cheesecake and coffee, but nobody minded that. As Cody often liked to say, as long as you're doing what you love then money doesn't matter so much.

After he finished his solo performance Brandon let the others finish up the set while he came down off the stage to sit with Lisa and have some strawberry cheesecake. She was gone when he reached the table, probably in the ladies' room changing Mikey's diaper or some such thing. That was all right, though; he didn't mind sitting alone for a little while. The main lights were turned down low so people could see the band better, and he wasn't paying much attention when a man in a dark coat came up beside him.

"You can play really nice, you know," the man said, like they'd known each other for years. Brandon glanced up to see who it was, but his eyes hadn't quite adjusted yet from having the stage lights in his face.

"I'm sorry, do I know you?" Brandon asked, ignoring the stranger's compliment.

"Well, I guess I deserve that," the man said wryly, and then it clicked.

" _Dad?"_ he asked. His heart was beating fast and for a second he thought he might fall off his chair. Or faint from shock, more like it. He hadn't seen his father since he was eight years old, and only rarely before that. Crush Stone had never been the close and loving type, not by a long shot. Nevertheless, this uninvited stranger was certainly Crush, all right. He had the same cherry-red hair as Brandon himself, and the cast of their features was too much alike to leave the slightest doubt.

"Can I sit down for a minute?" Crush asked, and Bran wordlessly waved at the chair next to him.

"What are you doing here?" Brandon finally asked, when he could get himself together. He made no effort to sound especially friendly, either. If the man expected to be met with hugs and kisses and a slice of cheesecake after all this time, he was crazy.

"It's a public place, you know. I came in to get some coffee after work. I recognized you and stopped to listen, that's all," Crush said.

There were a thousand things Brandon wanted to say right then, some of them not very nice. But he made a superhuman effort to bite his tongue and not let anything slip that he might be sorry for later.

"So, how have you been?" he asked instead. It was inane, but the situation was so awkward he couldn't think of anything else to say.

"Pretty good, I guess. What about you? And how's your brother and your mama?" Crush asked.

"Mama passed away two years ago. I haven't seen Brian in a long time so I don't know about him," Brandon said, and at that his father furrowed his brow.

"I'm sorry to hear that. What happened?" he asked.

"Car wreck," Brandon said succinctly, and then left it at that. He preferred not to think about all the lurid details.

"So where are you living, then? You're not old enough to be on your own yet," Crush asked.

"I'm staying with Lisa now," Brandon said.

"Lisa who?" Crush asked.

"Your daughter Lisa, my half-sister. Remember her? The one you never told me about?" Brandon asked, a touch of scorn creeping into his voice in spite of his determination to be civil.

"Hmm. . . how'd you ever meet up with _her?"_ his father asked, ignoring the sarcasm.

"It's a long story," Brandon said, wondering why he was even telling the man all these things. It wasn't like he deserved to know.

"I see," Crush said, as if he didn't much like that idea.

It suddenly dawned on Brandon that he might be walking on awfully thin ice with this man. With Mama out of the picture, that probably meant Crush had the power to meddle with Bran's life in all kinds of ways if he wanted to. That was the _last_ thing anybody needed, and Brandon decided he'd better tread carefully.

"It's a good place for me. Lisa's married now; that's her husband Cody up there on the stage with the guitar. We live on a big ranch and I even get to work sometimes, and play football at school, and all that good stuff," Brandon said, doing his best to sound as happy as possible. Let Crush think everything was all fine and well; then maybe he'd disappear into the woodwork again and decide to leave well enough alone.

The strategy seemed to work, as the faint frown on his father's face gradually morphed into a vaguely preoccupied look.

"Well. . . take care of yourself, okay? It was good to see you, Bran. Say hello to everybody for me when you get a chance. Love you, son," Crush said, getting up from his chair.

Brandon gave a noncommittal grunt, unwilling to say the words himself even though he knew it was expected. Then Crush was gone, just like so many times before. It was nothing new. Nothing new at all. So why did it still feel like the first time he ever walked away?

Lisa must have known something was wrong as soon as she came back to the table.

"What's wrong, Bran?" she asked.

"Nothing," he said.

"Are you sure? You're frowning, and you've barely touched your cheesecake," she asked, sounding doubtful.

"Daddy came in and talked to me for a few minutes, that's all," he admitted.

"Really? That's weird," Lisa said.

"Well. . . no, not so much. Last I heard he lives somewhere in Tyler nowadays. So I don't guess it's all that strange that sooner or later we might run into each other down here. I'm surprised we haven't sooner," Brandon said.

"What did he say?" Lisa asked carefully.

"Just that I played nice and to say hi to everybody for him. We really didn't talk much," Brandon said.

"Sounds like you're not too happy about it," Lisa said.

"I don't know how I feel about it yet," Brandon admitted.

"Well, I don't see how it'll change anything," Lisa finally said.

"No, I guess not. I just thought you should know," Brandon said.

He rode home with her in the car after they were done, staring out the window at the darkness along the highway. Cody was following along in the truck with all the sound equipment, and Mikey was asleep in the back seat. That left the two of them more or less alone together.

"Lisa, if I did something really bad, would you still love me?" he asked her abruptly. This was partly a calculated aim at sympathy, of course, but deep down he really did want to know the answer.

"Of course I would. You could never do anything bad enough that I wouldn't love you anymore. Same thing goes for Cody, too," Lisa said.

"You're sure?" he asked.

"Absolutely. Don't you ever doubt it for a split second," she said.

He hesitated for a few seconds, tempted to ask her a few more purely hypothetical questions about late-night parties and whiskey and babies. He badly needed some comfort and encouragement. But then on the other hand, he was still terrified of the consequences if he let the secret slip.

He decided not to push his luck.

"Okay, then," he finally said, and Lisa glanced at him with a look of mild concern.

"Is something wrong, Beebo?" she asked.

"No. . . just thinking, that's all," he said, turning back to stare out the window so she wouldn't see his face.

"Are you sure? You know you could tell me if there was, don't you? I meant it when I said I'd love you no matter what," Lisa said.

"No, it's nothing. I guess talking to Daddy again after all this time kind of put me in a weird mood, that's all," Brandon said. That was a half-truth at best, but it was the only excuse he could think of to keep from having to explain what was really on his mind.

"That's understandable. Try not to think about it too much if you can help it. He is what he is, and that's not your fault or mine," Lisa said.

"I know," Brandon agreed. Then there was a long silence, filled only by the soft background noise of Mikey's lullaby music on the radio and the even fainter sounds of the car's engine and the tires against the road.

"There's something I keep meaning to ask you about, bubba, while we're just sitting here," Lisa said after a while, and Brandon was glad for a chance to change the subject.

"Yeah? What's that?" he asked.

"There's a dream I keep having now and then; the exact same thing over and over again, ever since about two years ago. I didn't think much about it at first, but like I said it's been the same thing at least four or five times now. I just wondered if it means anything," she said.

"What's it about?" Brandon asked.

"I don't know that it's really _about_ anything. All I see is a picture, one little scene. There's a boy with dark hair, maybe sixteen or so, sitting all alone on a stool in a lab somewhere and working with stuff I don't recognize. It's a rainy night, in some warm place where palm trees grow; I can see them outside through the windows. I've never been able to tell what he's doing, except that it's really, really important. In fact, I get the impression that the fate of the whole human race depends on what that one boy is doing that night. He looks like he's ready to give up any second, and he's so tired he's got circles under his eyes," Lisa said.

"Is that all?" Brandon asked.

"Yeah, that's all I remember. Just that one image, with no context and no explanation. In the dream it seems like he's some child of mine, but I don't see how that could be," Lisa said.

"I can ask," Brandon said, shrugging.

"Please do," Lisa said.

So Brandon shut his eyes and prayed, and for one of the few times in his life since he was given the power of interpreting visions, the answer scared him.

Many years from now a terrible disaster will come over the earth, one which will destroy almost all of mankind, along with the birds of the air and the beasts of the field. The boy in the dream is your nephew Micah's son, and I have chosen him as my champion to overcome the catastrophe and renew the earth. It will be your task to guard and to teach him when he needs you, for he will have cruel enemies.

_Where can I find him?_ Brandon asked silently. He thought it wise to be sure, because heaven only knew what might happen in all the years before Mikey could grow up and have a child of his own. He was only a baby himself right now, for pity's sake. If they got separated for some reason, he needed to know where he was needed.

In Jamestown, on the island of Eleuthera, in the year 2158.

_But how can that be? I could never live that long,_ Brandon said. It seemed like utter insanity, but then on the other hand, God was fond of doing things which seemed impossible.

Have faith, and you will see.

And with that he had to be content, for his eyes snapped open and the vision was over.

"You saw something, didn't you?" Lisa asked.

"Only a little," Brandon said, uncharacteristically hesitant. Maybe because no dream he'd ever interpreted had involved _him_ quite so closely.

"So tell me," Lisa said.

"You're right about everything you said. The boy is your grandson. Micah's kid. And yeah, he's supposed to save the world someday, even though I'm not sure exactly how that's supposed to happen," Brandon said.

"Is that all? Surely there had to be more," Lisa said.

"I've told you all I can say," Brandon said, and she didn't press him anymore after that.

The dream added a whole new dimension to his list of worries, and that was the last thing in the world he needed at the moment. At some point he'd have to sit down and try to figure out what it all meant, but right then he simply didn't want to think about it.

He had too much on his mind already.

Chapter Three

For the next three months Brandon was careful not to draw any attention to himself. He did his chores and his schoolwork with no complaints, and spent most of his free time either working out at the gym or fishing. He played with the band sometimes if Cody asked him to, but other than that he kept a low profile.

So did Lana, in a different sort of way. She took to wearing loose and shapeless clothes to hide her expanding middle, a task made easier as winter settled in. Brandon sneaked her to doctor's appointments at the free clinic in Longview once a month, taking obscure back roads and parking behind the building for fear someone they knew might catch them there. They were afraid even to be seen together very much anymore, lest it make somebody suspicious. Both of them knew the secret couldn't last for much longer, but they lived in a kind of frozen paralysis which didn't seem to have any solution. Even when they found out in January that the baby was a boy, they barely discussed it. Anything related to the future had become a scary subject.

It was nothing unusual for them to spend several hours on the phone talking about _other_ things, though, so when Lana's number popped up one evening on Brandon's caller ID he didn't immediately think anything of it.

"Hey, what's up?" he asked, rolling over to hang his head and shoulders off the edge of his bed. For some reason his phone always seemed to get better reception that way.

"They know," Lana said, sounding out of breath and scared. That was enough to send an icy bolt of fear through Brandon's heart, and he almost dropped the phone before he could answer her.

"But _how?_ " he asked.

"Mrs. Jackson walked in and saw me getting out of the shower. She had a fit and said all kinds of things, but I ran from the house. Can you come get me?" Lana asked.

"Where are you?" Brandon asked.

"I'm at Sabrina's house, but they'll find me here soon. Mrs. Jackson knows all the places I could go," Lana said.

"I'll be there in ten minutes," Brandon said, scrambling to put his shoes back on and grabbing his keys off the desk. He managed to slip outdoors without bumping into Cody or Lisa, and then as soon as he was safely out of sight down the road he drove as fast as he dared to Sabrina's house on Redbud Street. Lana must have been watching from the window, because she hurried outside to get in the truck as soon as he pulled up to the curb. Within minutes they were out of town on a dirt road where nobody would ever find them, but Bran knew as well as she did that the game was up. Hiding wouldn't save them for long.

"What _happened?"_ he demanded, pulling over on the shoulder to kill the motor.

"I told you, Mrs. Jackson walked in and saw me," Lana said.

"How come you didn't lock the door?" Brandon asked.

"I didn't think about it," Lana said, and Bran smacked his forehead in frustration.

"Lana, that was _stupid._ You should have known better than that," he said. He didn't really mean it, but fear had a way of making him hasty at times.

"Well, I'd like to see _you_ keep a secret like this for months on end, Mr. Perfect," Lana said, getting angry herself. That was very unlike _her,_ if Brandon had stopped to think about it, but he barely noticed at the time.

"Oh, I don't even care about that right now. What are we gonna _do?"_ he asked.

"Why are you asking me? You should be the one to come up with something. This is all your fault anyway," Lana said.

" _My_ fault?" Brandon asked.

"You're the one who wanted to sneak out and go to that stupid party. Nothing ever would have happened otherwise," Lana said.

"So? Nobody forced you to go anywhere. You wanted to go as much as I did," Brandon said, stung by her accusation.

"No I didn't. I only went because you asked me to. I thought it was a bad idea from the very beginning," Lana said.

He said something nasty to that, and she said something even nastier in return, and soon the conversation degenerated into an ugly fight over who was more to blame. It ended with Lana getting out and slamming his truck door so hard Brandon thought it might shatter the window, and then she started stalking back toward town on her own while he stood there watching her go, gritting his teeth and wanting to punch something. In fact that's what he finally did, hitting his truck bed hard enough to leave a dent above the gas cap. The pain only made him madder, so he hit the same spot again and again till it was slick with blood from where he'd busted his knuckles against the steel. He tried to call her several times and got no answer, and then finally he broke down and cried.

He went to look for her as soon as he was able to pull himself together again, but she was nowhere to be found. The only thing he could think of was that she must have gotten a ride with somebody else.

Her phone went directly to voicemail when he tried to call again, so he finally gave up and went home. Cody and Lisa were in the kitchen with Mikey when Brandon came through the front door, but they were too far away to notice the blood and tears on his face and hands. He slipped upstairs to his bedroom to nurse his wounded hand and stare bleakly at the wall till he finally couldn't keep his eyes open any longer.

Just as he feared, the news was already all over school by the time he got there the next morning, or at least a few scraps and snippets of it were. He never heard his own name mentioned, so maybe nobody knew about his own part in the situation yet. There wasn't a snowball's chance that that would last long, of course, but it made things a little easier in the meantime.

Lana herself was nowhere to be found, so Brandon forced himself to approach Jamie Jackson instead, when he spotted the other boy standing in the hall between classes. Bran knew exactly what kind of reaction he was likely to get by asking _him_ for information, but unfortunately there was nobody else who might know anything.

"Hey, Jamie. Uh. . . I don't guess you know where Lana might be, do you?" Brandon asked, and sure enough, the smirk on Jamie's face when he heard _that_ could have put a possum to shame. That didn't bode well.

"So it was _you,_ huh? Little mister goody two shoes himself. Imagine that," Jamie said, shaking his head with fake astonishment. Brandon knew this was only a blind guess, of course; if Jamie had been sure of anything then he would've told everybody in town already. He just wanted to get a reaction of some kind.

"Just tell me where she is if you know. Please," Brandon said, refusing to confirm or deny anything.

"Well, buddy, I'm sorry to have to be the one to tell you, but your little tramp got sent home this morning. See, Mama called the agency last night and told them what their precious Lana had been up to. They weren't very happy, sad to say. So they came and picked her up about an hour ago. She's probably halfway to Shreveport by now," Jamie said, obviously enjoying himself.

"Did she say anything before she left?" Brandon asked, ignoring the insult.

"Nah, not much. I asked her which street corner in town was her favorite, but she never answered me," Jamie said, with another smirk.

Brandon hit him for that, without even stopping to think about how sore his hand was or the fact that Jamie was two years older and fifty pounds heavier. Bran had a hard punch when he wanted to use it, and Jamie went sprawling to the floor with a bloody nose, caught completely off guard. He jumped right back up in a fury, of course, and then the two of them fought like bulldogs while a crowd of onlookers gathered round to clap and cheer.

It was only a few seconds before the principal and one of his henchmen pulled them apart, hauling Brandon to the front office and Jamie to the nurse to see about his nose. Before he knew it, Bran found himself sitting there waiting for Lisa to come pick him up, with a fresh five day suspension to sit out at home. There'd been a time when he used to get those pretty regularly, but it had been nearly a year since the last time he got sent home for fighting.

"I don't know what's wrong with you, Bran. I thought you'd grown up a little," the secretary scolded him. He just sat there and glowered at her, not even bothering to answer. There was no way he could explain himself, and he wasn't about to try. Nor was he the least bit sorry. Jamie deserved every lick he got, and Bran didn't mind getting a few bruises himself if that's what it took to wipe that arrogant smirk off the other boy's face.

Lisa didn't say a word when she came to pick him up, and that was just as well. She knew better than to goad him when he was already furious, but that didn't mean she'd just drop the subject, either. Sooner or later he'd have a lot of explaining to do, and he couldn't even begin to imagine what he'd say.

He went to his room as soon as he got home and shut the door behind him, then swallowed his pride and called Mrs. Jackson at work before Jamie had a chance to muddy the waters. It was likely she hadn't heard about the fight yet, since Jamie was eighteen already and therefore legally an adult. The school wouldn't have called his parents unless he asked them to, and hopefully he hadn't done that. Brandon faced a hard enough conversation already.

Mrs. Jackson herself answered the phone, and she didn't sound too friendly.

"Hello?" she asked.

"Hi, Mrs. Jackson. I just wondered if you had Lana's address or phone number in Russia. I'd really like to talk to her if possible," Brandon said, trying to sound as humble as he could.

"No I don't, and I wouldn't give them to you even if I did. She's better off among her own people, without a selfish boy to take advantage of her and ruin her life any more than it already is. Leave her alone," Mrs. Jackson said coldly, and then hung up on him before he could get another word in.

Well, that was that. Brandon might as well have rented a billboard to let the whole town know he was the culprit. Jamie's mother was a worse gossip than her son.

Brandon lay down on the bed with his arms crossed behind his head, looking up at the ceiling with unseeing eyes while he tried to get used to the idea that Lana was really gone. He would have given a lot right then for the chance to take back some of the things he'd said the night before, or at least to apologize for having said them.

He wondered idly if the baby would grow up speaking Russian, and for some reason that one simple thought filled him with a sudden red-hot surge of grief and loss. He had to tell himself sternly that he wouldn't cry this time. He _wouldn't._

He took several deep breaths, struggling to get his rebellious emotions under control, and after a few minutes he managed to calm down again.

After a while there came a soft knock on his bedroom door which could only have been Lisa, and he mentally prepared himself for what _that_ encounter might bring.

"Come in," he said. She came to sit on the corner of his bed, and then seemed at a loss for what to say.

"Mrs. Jackson called," she finally told him. Brandon thought of several cutting remarks he would have liked to say to Sylvie Jackson right then, but he didn't let it show.

"Did she?" he asked in a dead voice, still staring at the ceiling.

"Yeah. . . just a few minutes ago. So tell me, is it true?" Lisa asked, and Bran was in no mood to play dumb. They both knew exactly what she was talking about.

"Yeah, it's true. Me and Lana are having a baby. Aren't you so proud?" he asked, with a bitterness in his voice that hadn't shown itself in years.

That silenced her again, and after a while he noticed tears welling up in her eyes. That was infinitely worse than if she'd simply yelled and screamed at him like his mother would have. He knew how to deal with _that._ He could have done some yelling of his own and maybe even broken a few things if necessary. But Lisa's silent weeping only made him feel like dirt, and he could no more have yelled at her than he could have made a flying leap over the moon. He could only lie there in mute misery and listen, till at last she made an effort to collect herself.

"Don't you have anything to say for yourself?" Lisa finally asked, and Brandon shrugged a little.

"Only that I didn't mean for it to happen. I'm sorry," he said, still not willing to meet her eyes.

"I'm glad to hear that, but being sorry won't change much, I'm afraid," Lisa said.

"So, are you gonna throw me out now?" Brandon asked, bracing himself for the reaction to _that_ one. Lisa gave him a long look whose significance he couldn't decipher, and for a second he was afraid she might really say yes.

"No, Bran. You're still my brother, and you're still a child yourself whether you feel like one or not. I'd never throw you out to sink or swim on your own. I love you, and this is your home for as long as you want it to be," she said.

"Thanks," he mumbled.

"I should have protected you better. I should've paid more attention to where you went and who your friends were. I should've told Cody to wait a while instead of giving you that truck for your birthday. We should have talked a lot more often about stuff like this. Then maybe it never would've happened," Lisa said.

"It's not _your_ fault. You couldn't have stopped me from doing anything I wanted to do," Brandon said.

"Maybe not. It's just that I always wanted so much better than this for you. How many times have I told you not to trust in your own strength? The flesh is weak, Brandon, not just for you but for everybody. That's why you don't put yourself in tempting situations to begin with. I know I've told you all those things a million times. Did you never listen to anything at all?" Lisa asked.

Brandon was silent at that, and after a while Lisa let out a long breath.

"I don't know what else to say right now. Maybe it's best if I give you some time to think about what you've done and all the pain you've caused. I don't know what Cody will say when I tell him, but we'll see," she said.

A minute later she was gone, leaving Brandon to float in a corrosive pool of salty guilt. No one disturbed him again before suppertime, so maybe they were letting him "think about it", as Lisa put it. He dreaded going downstairs to hear a second round from Cody, but it turned out to be even worse than he feared. He didn't get a tongue-lashing, but the atmosphere was thick and heavy with tension. No one said a single word, and the loudest sound in the kitchen was the occasional _clink_ of a fork against somebody's plate. Even Mikey was silent. The pressure made Brandon so sick he could barely eat, and he excused himself from the table as soon as possible.

The next two weeks offered plenty of torture like that. It was bad enough while he was still on suspension, but when he got back to school he immediately had to face all the mockery and shame that was heaped on his head by classmates. He was forever branded as a hypocrite, just as he feared. Jamie was only the first in a long line of sharks who smelled blood, and he was soon wounded with a thousand jabs from friend and foe alike. Even some of the teachers and the folks at church joined in. The adults did it inadvertently, by lecturing him about his supposed carelessness and selfishness until he wanted to scream. Did they really think he didn't know all that already?

But he never said anything to silence his tormentors. In a way he felt like he deserved all their intentional and unintentional cruelty, and the only sure way he could have defended himself was to say something nasty about Lana, and he refused to do that.

Still, he wasn't used to people treating him like scum, and it stung more than he liked to admit. Not that Cody and Lisa were ever cruel to him, of course, but he couldn't help seeing the sorrow and disappointment in their eyes even if they never actually said anything. In a way, that was even worse than the open mockery he endured at school.

But as bad as things already were, they soon took a sharp turn for the worse.

On the first of February a letter arrived from a law firm in Tyler, to the effect that Crush Stone didn't believe his son was living in a good environment, and he expected Cody and Lisa to turn him over to go live with his father by the end of the week.

That was the last straw. Brandon felt like his whole life had been ripped away from him piece by piece till there was nothing left at all, and he found himself sinking into a black pit of hopeless depression. The only thing he could see in the future was a boundless ocean of misery, and he remembered something Lisa had told him once, about the last words of Vincent van Gogh: _There is no end to sorrow._ For the first time in his life Bran could totally sympathize with the crazy old painter. No end to sorrow, indeed.

He started to avoid company whenever possible, taking long rides through the woods with Little Bit to chew endlessly on his troubles. A few days after the letter from the law firm arrived, he slipped away after school and climbed up to the summit of Mount Nebo, where there was a flat rock that looked out to the west. He liked that place, partly for the view and partly because nobody ever came to bother him up there. On the west was a sheer hundred foot drop to a boulder-filled ravine, which kept the view from ever getting blocked by trees. It was a pretty place, and sometimes beauty was a small comfort to him.

While he sat there he unclipped the old Browning buck knife from his belt, absently turning it over in his hands a few times, hilt to blade and then back again. It had once belonged to his Papaw Stephen and then to his brother Brian, till it finally came down to Brandon himself. At the base of the blade were the initials _S.D.G.,_ for Stephen Dale Golden, no doubt, although Brian had always liked to say they could also stand for _Soli_ _Deo Gloria,_ Latin for _To God Alone Be the Glory._ The knife was another thing that gave Brandon a bit of solace now and then, reminding him of childhood days when he'd been happy for a while.

All that had ended abruptly when he was ten years old, when his brother disappeared with not a word of explanation and not even a single call or letter ever since. Just a kiss on the forehead and a bright steel blade to remember him by. That, and a few last words that Bran had never forgotten:

Love God with your whole heart, Beebo. Don't be afraid when He asks you to do something great, even if it's scary or if it hurts you. Remember no good thing is ever purchased without a dear price. Be faithful and true, and you'll never be sorry for that.

So Brandon had tried; God knew he had, even when he found himself standing very much alone against a dark and hellish world. Six months after Brian disappeared, Mama had gone back to drinking again, and things had gone steadily downhill from there. It had been a harsh and lonely time for the next three years, till she was finally killed while driving drunk on a dark and rainy night in the mountains.

Brandon had learned to trust no one by then, to use his fists when necessary and to make his own way in a hard world; his promise to love God almost forgotten. Not _entirely,_ perhaps, but it had definitely sunk down behind a wall of bitterness that left little room for faith.

Crush was nowhere to be found at the time; no surprise there. And since no one else had wanted to deal with a surly half-grown boy at that point, it meant Brandon had ended up in a shelter for troubled youth for a while. He'd finally run away from that place after getting into one too many fights, and he'd soon found himself camped out in the middle of a swamp, stealing things and scrounging for scrap metal just to survive. It had been a bad time.

But then Cody and Lisa had found him, and asked him to come live with them at Goliad Ranch. That changed _everything._ For the first time in a long while he'd felt loved and wanted again, even though he'd been slow to believe it initially. But he certainly believed it _now,_ and the thought of losing them _and_ Lana was almost unbearable.

It had been a rough day at school, and as Brandon sat there on the rock in his near-despair, he toyed with the thought of what might happen if he fell off the edge of the cliff. He wasn't especially _serious_ about the idea, although it did hold a certain amount of dark fascination at the moment. At least in an abstract, hypothetical sort of way.

They'd find him down there among the rocks and boulders, no doubt, maybe a little bloody and broken but probably not _too_ much. Then maybe everybody would come to his funeral and talk about how much they missed him and what a terrible accident it had been. They might be sorry for all the hateful things they'd said to him lately, and some of them might even cry a little.

It was a halfway appealing notion.

He clipped the knife back to his belt before creeping up to the edge of the drop-off, till he was standing close enough to look down on the jumbled rocks far below. Some of them looked pretty jagged, and he wondered morbidly how much it might hurt to hit bottom.

What might have happened if he'd been left alone to marinade in his misery for too long, God only knows. He was standing dangerously close to the edge, and a sudden gust of wind or a loose rock might easily have overbalanced him even if he hadn't really intended such a thing. Those who flirt with death very frequently find what they seek.

Then, without warning, he felt a pair of strong arms grab him around the middle and yank him backwards. He was too startled to do anything except fall flat on the rock behind him in a tangle of arms and legs. But Brandon was no weakling, and he soon had his attacker pinned down flat on his face with one arm twisted up behind his back.

"Let me up, Beebo," Cody said, breathing hard, and then Brandon finally came to his senses and realized who he was dealing with. What Cody was doing up there on the mountain right then he didn't have a clue, but he turned him loose and stood up. Cody brushed himself off and did the same.

"What are _you_ doing here?" Brandon asked, crossing his arms and scowling. The man must have been silent as death, because Brandon hadn't heard so much as the whisper of a footstep or a crackle of leaves as he came up behind him.

"I could ask you the same thing right about now, Beebo. So happens I saw you headed this way after you got home from school and I came up here to find you. Looks like it's a good thing I did," Cody said, in a tone of voice that seemed to show that he knew exactly what Brandon had been thinking.

"You don't know anything, Cody," Brandon muttered, turning red with embarrassment. It was one thing to privately contemplate the notion of what his funeral might be like. It was quite another thing for Cody to think he really meant it.

"I don't? Well it sure looked to me like you meant to jump off that rock just now. I know that much," Cody said.

"I wasn't gonna jump off the stupid rock," Brandon said.

"Really? You got some other reason for coming up here and standing that close to the edge?" Cody demanded.

"Yeah, matter of fact I do," Brandon said.

"So tell me," Cody said.

"It's none of your business," Brandon told him.

"I think it is, since I had to save your life just now," Cody said.

"You didn't have to do anything. Now leave me alone," Brandon said, and then turned to walk away without another word.

"Where are you going?" Cody called after him.

"To the bunk house. I need to work out for a while," Brandon said, knowing he couldn't get away with not answering the question. He also knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Cody would watch to make sure that was really where he went.

Brandon stomped his way back to the bottom of the hill and kicked the ground, letting out some of his anger on the inoffensive dirt. Why couldn't Cody have minded his own business? Now he'd constantly be wondering if Brandon wanted to kill himself, and he'd tell Lisa the same thing, too. They'd probably never let him out of their sight again for years.

He slouched along to the empty bunk house at the edge of the peach orchard, looking down at the ground and scowling the whole way. He kept a weight bench and some assorted other fitness equipment in there, since there was no room for it at the main house. Telling Cody that he needed to work out had only been a half-lie; exercise was another thing which could dull the pain of living for a little while.

So Bran lifted weights till he was exhausted and dripping with sweat, and his muscles felt swollen and crampy. He'd probably ache for hours, although the workout did improve his mood a little. His body was chiseled and perfect, without an ounce of excess fat, and he liked to keep it that way. He was far too pale and milky white to ever completely fit in with all those deeply tanned images on the muscle-man magazines, but still, he was in much better shape than most guys he knew. Thank God he didn't have any freckles, at least.

He took a long, hot shower before he left, and then spoiled it by running most of the way home across the pasture. It made him sweaty all over again, but he didn't much care.

Nobody was there when he got home, so he fixed a quick protein shake and slugged it down, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He didn't have any homework and wasn't in the mood to do any even if he had. He seemed to have eluded Cody for the time being, but Brandon knew better than to think that would last for long. Sooner or later there'd have to be a Talk about what happened up at Nebo; an ordeal which he did _not_ look forward to.

The house felt oppressively quiet and empty, so Brandon grabbed his tackle box and then trudged across the back pasture to the riverbank; another of his favorite sanctuaries. It was tranquil and empty down there, full of the faint cinnamon-like scent of a hundred sycamore trees. He cut a medium-sized cane pole with his buck knife, and then morosely sat down beside the water to bait his hook. It was a mindless and soothing activity, exactly what he needed at the time. Precious balm for his jangled nerves.

After a while he grudgingly decided he ought to thank Cody for pulling him back from the edge. He'd been careless to stand that close to the drop-off, and sometimes accidents really _did_ happen. That wasn't what he wanted; not in his heart of hearts.

No, what he _really_ wanted was to get Lana back, and stay at Goliad, and maybe even rebuild his good name someday. He kept telling himself that none of those things were strictly _impossible,_ even if he had to hunker down and wait till he turned eighteen in a couple more years. Then Crush wouldn't have any more say-so about where he lived, and he'd also be free to go and find Lana as soon as he had a chance to work a little while and earn some money. Surely she wouldn't forget about him _that_ soon, would she?

He remembered Lana's dream about the red-furred wolf back in August, and wondered if all his recent troubles might simply be part of the sad and lonely time he was supposed to go through. In that case, it should all be over soon and even bring a blessing with it.

This was a much more favorable and upbeat line of reasoning for him to take, and Bran latched on to it immediately. If _that_ were true then maybe someday the two of them could even look back and smile at everything.

His thoughts were interrupted by the muffled vibration of his phone, and he noticed with fresh annoyance that it was Cody again. Didn't the man know how to take a hint and leave him alone for a while? Brandon was tempted not even to answer.

Then he thought better of it. If he didn't pick up then Cody might have forty bloodhounds on his trail before he could blink an eye. Much as Bran didn't feel like talking to anybody just then, it was definitely the lesser of two evils.

"Hey," he said tiredly, not pretending any enthusiasm. He wanted Cody to know he was safe; he didn't care about being chatty.

"Hey, Bran. How are you doing?" Cody asked.

"I'm fine. Just sitting down by the river," Brandon said.

"At the swimming hole?" Cody asked.

"Yeah, nobody was home after I got done lifting weights so I decided to go fishing," Brandon said, already wishing the conversation could be done with.

"All right. There's something I want to talk to you about when you get home, though," Cody said.

_That_ was no surprise, and Brandon silently gritted his teeth. He didn't doubt that Cody meant well, but there were times when he just didn't want to hear it.

"Okay," Brandon said neutrally.

"It's not what you think, I promise. It's got nothing to do with what happened at Nebo today," Cody said.

"What is it, then?" Brandon asked.

"The same reason I came to find you this afternoon. Lisa got the judge to sign an order saying you can stay here till school gets out for the summer. There'll have to be a hearing sometime between now and then to decide what happens after that, but they haven't set a date for it yet," Cody said.

"You mean I don't have to go to Tyler?" Brandon asked. It seemed almost too good to be true.

"Not right now, anyway. You'll have to go stay with your dad every other weekend and talk to him on the phone if he calls, but other than that you'll be here at least till the end of May," Cody said.

"That's the best news I've heard all week," Brandon said, almost dizzy with relief.

"Yeah, I thought you'd be glad to hear that. But there's something else, too. I want us to go see Dr. Anderson today and talk to him about some things," Cody said.

"What for?" Brandon asked bluntly. The episode at Nebo came instantly to mind, along with the fact that people sometimes got locked up for such things. Brandon had no intention of letting _that_ happen.

"I think it's better if I let him explain that. It's kind of complicated," Cody said, which did nothing to clarify the situation.

"You promise he won't try to lock me up?" Brandon asked.

"No, Beebo. I promise it's nothing like that," Cody said.

Cody would never lie about such a thing, but in a way that only puzzled Brandon all the more. Dr. Anderson wasn't his regular doctor, nor even a psychiatrist for that matter. He was just a friend of Cody's who lived a few miles down the road in Mooringsport, right over the Louisiana line. The two of them worked together at times, bringing the sick and the injured to bathe in Cadron Pool and thereby find healing for things beyond the power of medicine to cure. Other than that, the good doctor was also a jackleg preacher at a little church too poor to pay him anything for doing it, and a part-time athletics coach at one of the private schools in Shreveport. How the man found time to eat or even breathe was a true marvel.

None of which seemed to offer a good explanation for what the upcoming visit was about, of course, but finally Brandon decided he'd find out soon enough.

Chapter Four

Bran went home to change clothes, throwing on a clean t-shirt and a battered Ore City baseball cap. He didn't want to go out in public smelling like either dried sweat or dead fish, and he also took the time to run a comb through his hair a few times so he'd look just a tad bit more respectable. He didn't really know Dr. Anderson all that well except for seeing him at the Pool now and then, so he felt obliged to be on slightly better manners than usual.

"That was fast," Cody commented when he came downstairs, and Brandon just shrugged.

"All I had to do was change clothes and comb my hair. Are you ready?" he asked.

"Yeah, let's go," Cody agreed.

Dr. Anderson lived in a red brick house on the shores of Caddo Lake, several miles outside the city limits of Mooringsport itself. Brandon had only been there once or twice, but he still remembered the place well enough. It was nice, but not fancy; Dr. Anderson wasn't the type to be showy with money, even though he undoubtedly had some.

A boy roughly Brandon's age wearing nothing but a ratty old pair of sweatpants came to the front door when they knocked. He was dark-haired and sort of bony-looking, with a faded farmer's tan on his arms and the back of his neck.

"Hey, Jonah. Is your dad home yet?" Cody asked.

"No, but he will be soon. Just me for now, but y'all might as well come on in," Jonah said.

Cody and Brandon followed him all the way through the house to a set of sliding glass doors at the back, and then out onto a wooden deck overlooking the lake. The water was smooth and blue under a cloudless sky, surrounded by the massive trunks of winter-bare cypress trees growing far out into the shallows and draped with Spanish moss.

"I hope y'all don't mind if I leave you alone out here for a little while, do you? I've still got three pages of trigonometry homework to finish before suppertime or else Mom won't let me go to the movies tonight," Jonah said, sounding apologetic.

"We'll be fine, Jonah. Go finish your math," Cody said, with a tolerant smile.

"Okay. There's stuff to eat and drink in the kitchen, or give me a holler if you need anything else," Jonah said.

As soon as they were alone, Brandon decided it was a good time to clear the air with Cody. There'd been so much stress and tension between them for the past few weeks that sometimes Goliad didn't even feel like home anymore, but the knowledge that he wouldn't get snatched away at least till summertime took a massive weight off Brandon's shoulders. He was ready to patch things up if at all possible, and if the incident at Nebo could somehow break the ice then it might turn out to be a blessing in disguise.

"Listen, I'm sorry about this afternoon. I shouldn't have been that close to the edge up there. But thanks for watching my back," Brandon began.

"Hey, I love you, kid. That's what I'm here for. I don't guess you'd feel like telling me what that was all about, would you?" Cody asked. It was the perfect opening for what Brandon wanted to say, so he took a deep breath and plunged in.

"Well. . . things have been pretty bad here lately, with Lana and my dad and all the rest of it. You know that, right?" he said, and Cody nodded. Of course he knew, just like everybody else in town.

"Yeah, I know. You've been pretty good about keeping it covered up, but I can tell when you're hurting even if you don't say anything," Cody agreed.

"Can you blame me?" Brandon asked.

"No, I don't blame you for anything. Never have. But all the same, we'd hate to lose you, Beebo," Cody said, and Brandon shrugged a little, staring down at the floor.

"All I did was go over there to look down at the rocks. I promise I never meant to jump. I was only feeling sorry for myself and wondering if people might regret the way they treated me if they ended up having to come to my funeral. That's all," he said.

"That's bad enough," Cody said.

"I know. But I felt like the whole world was falling to pieces all around me," Brandon said.

"Yeah, I guess I can see how you might feel that way," Cody agreed.

"I never meant for any of this to happen. I wanted to do right," Brandon said, finding himself unexpectedly teary-eyed. He hadn't meant to cry, but Cody's sympathy made it hard not to. He'd been holding in so much grief and rejection for so long that even a little bit of love was enough to pop the bubble.

"I know that. Mrs. Jackson tried to tell Lisa you're a sociopath; you know, the kind of person who's got no conscience, who just uses people and then tosses them aside whenever there's nothing left. She said we ought to get rid of you while we still had the chance," Cody said.

"She _said_ that?" Brandon interrupted, shocked.

"Yeah, she really did, Beebo. Then Lisa told her exactly what she could do with her opinion and hung up the phone," Cody said.

"Did she?" Brandon asked.

"Yeah. . . Lisa might've said some worse things to _you_ that day if she hadn't still been so mad at Sylvie Jackson, so count yourself lucky. Needless to say, we never believed anything like that. People do things they're sorry for later, that's all. We don't love you any less because of that. We never expected you to be perfect," Cody said.

"Thanks," Brandon said in a low voice.

"Aw, it's okay. Mrs. Jackson was just mad because you mopped the floor with Jamie that morning," Cody said, punching Bran's arm just a little. Then Brandon smiled through his tears and decided he might as well go for broke.

"You don't know everything, though. You remember that night when I called you after the game at White Oak and asked to spend the night at Jason Lewis's house?" Brandon asked, wiping his eyes dry with both hands.

"Yeah, I remember," Cody said.

"I lied to you about that. I wanted to go to a party that night with Lana, so that's what we did. They had beer and stuff there. Both of us got drunk, and the next thing I remember we woke up in the hayloft together the next morning. I'm so sorry," Brandon said, and Cody took a deep breath.

"Yeah, we thought it was probably something like that. We've been talking about everything pretty often here lately, trying to make sense out of what happened," Cody admitted.

"Neither of you ever said anything," Brandon said.

"It wouldn't have helped if we did. You've got a stubborn streak ten miles wide, boy. If we'd tried to lecture you then that would only have made things worse, because then you would have bucked up and felt like you had a reason to justify yourself. We decided it was better for you to think about the consequences of your actions for a while," Cody said. Those words brought back a raft of painful memories, and Brandon decided it was high time to change the subject.

"We wanted to get married, you know," he said abruptly, even though it didn't have much to do with the conversation.

"Did you?" Cody asked.

"Yeah. . . even way back before any of this ever happened. We used to talk about all the things we wanted someday. A big place way out in the country, with horses and cows and a yard full of kids. Maybe to play music together somewhere like you and Lisa do, or travel around to see the world for a while. All that good stuff. We didn't think it could ever happen because we knew she'd have to go back home sooner or later, but that's what we always said we wanted," Brandon said.

"I'm not surprised. Those are pretty common things to wish for, at your age," Cody said.

"You think so?" Brandon asked skeptically.

"Yeah. God made you that way, to grow up and find your other half, then to go out and fill the world with children. It's a good thing to want, as far as it goes. I might have told you to be patient and wait for better timing, but I'd never tell you not to dream good dreams. One of the saddest things that can happen to a man is to live his whole life without ever reaching for the thing he wants the most. So if love and family is your heart's desire then I pray you can have it someday," Cody said.

"Seems pretty unlikely, if you ask me. Lana's gone with no way to find her, and I've got a kid I'll never see, and it seems like everybody thinks it's all my fault and the way I feel doesn't matter. I've made a pretty good mess of things here lately," Brandon said.

"Oh, I wouldn't necessarily say that," Cody told him.

"What do you mean?" Brandon asked, startled into glancing up for a second.

"Dr. Anderson had a dream he'd like to discuss with you. That's why we're here to see him, actually. He explained it to me a little bit over the phone, but I told him he really ought to speak to you directly since it's mostly about you and Lana. Don't get your hopes up _too_ much yet, but I think he's got a notion about trying to bring her back here," Cody said.

"Really?" Brandon asked.

"Yeah, and I wouldn't be surprised if he found a way to make it happen. The Andersons are good people. They know a lot of important folks, and there's no doubt they've got the money to get things done if need be. I think we've got a good chance of untangling all this mess, God willing," Cody said.

Just then they heard the sliding glass door open again, and Dr. Anderson himself came out onto the deck. Neither of them had heard him pull in.

"Brandon! I'm glad you could make it," the man said, and then shook hands with a bone-crushing grip. He looked much too young to be a real doctor; Bran would have guessed no more than thirty-something at most, with sandy hair and a mustache to match. He didn't look much like a coach or a pastor, either, in his plaid flannel shirt and faded blue jeans. In fact, he resembled a lumberjack more than anything else, or maybe a roughneck in an oilfield. Some job where you had to be big, burly, and strong as an ox, anyway.

"Cody said you wanted to see me, sir," Brandon said, partly to distract Dr. Anderson from crushing his hand.

"Yes, I did. Cody tells me you've been having some tough times here lately," Dr. Anderson said. Brandon glanced at Cody, and then reluctantly nodded. His eyes were still a bit red and puffy, but he hoped it wasn't _that_ noticeable.

"Yes sir, I guess you could say that," Brandon admitted.

"Don't worry, nobody's here to tear you down. We all know you can't go back and change the past. We just want to help you make a better future, if there's any way to do that. I've already heard the gist of things from Cody, but I'd like to hear your own side of the story before we say too much more," Dr. Anderson said, and it was the first time Bran could remember that anybody had ever asked him that question.

"Yeah, sure, why not?" Brandon said, and proceeded to tell him the whole convoluted tale. He didn't mention the incident at Nebo, just in case, and Dr. Anderson listened without a word till he was finished.

"So what would you like to do at this point, Bran? I don't mean what you think is possible; I mean what you really _want._ If things could turn out the best possible way, what would it look like?" Dr. Anderson finally asked.

"I guess. . . Lana could come back here, and maybe we could get married in a couple of years, and hopefully my dad would decide to leave me alone and things could go back to the way they used to be. That's all I want right now," Brandon said.

"And if you somehow got all that, would it be enough for you? Would it make you happy?" Dr. Anderson asked.

"What do you mean?" Brandon asked.

"Just what I said. Is that enough to satisfy you for the rest of your life, or would it take more than that? I'm curious about what you'd like to do with your life someday. What is it that matters most to you?" Dr. Anderson asked, and Brandon barely kept himself from gritting his teeth. Here he was, his life in a shambles, and Dr. Anderson wanted to ask him what he wanted to be when he grew up? It was unbelievable.

"I have no idea," Brandon said flatly.

"That's not good. No idea at all?" Dr. Anderson asked.

"Dr. Anderson, I'm not trying to be rude, but does that really matter right now?" Brandon asked. But Dr. Anderson didn't seem offended.

"Yes, Bran, it does. It matters more than you can possibly imagine," Dr. Anderson said.

"Why?" Brandon asked.

"I can't tell you why, but I promise you it does," Dr. Anderson said, and there was an uncomfortable pause while Bran tried to think what to say. Dr. Anderson noticed, and gracefully filled in the blank.

"Maybe it'll help if we move on for now and give you a little time to think about it. In the meantime, I need to tell you about my dream last night," he said, and Bran heaved an inward sigh of relief. The conversation had veered into strange territory, and he was eager to get back to the issue at hand.

"Sure, sounds good to me," he agreed.

"It's not one that needs much interpretation, I'm afraid; it's just something I need to let you know. Lana's in serious trouble," Dr. Anderson said.

"What do you mean? What's wrong?" Brandon asked, instantly alarmed.

"Slow down just a second, Bran. The dream never showed me what was wrong. All I know is this: if we don't find a way to get her back over here before midnight on the Feast of St. Tigernach, then she'll surely die. Furthermore, the only one who can bring her back is _you,_ and even then only if you go alone. I don't pretend to understand why any of that should be, but the dream was clear," Dr. Anderson said.

"But that doesn't make any sense at all, Charles. I can't send a kid halfway around the world on his own like that. He's never traveled in his life," Cody objected.

"I don't know, Cody, but I have to believe that God knows what He's talking about. There's a time for trust in these things," Dr. Anderson said.

"When is the Feast of St. Tigernach, anyway? I never heard of him before," Brandon asked. He didn't care beans about anything else till he found out how much time they had left.

"It's April the fourth. I had to look it up myself," Dr. Anderson said.

"But why that particular day? I can't think of anything special about it, at least not offhand," Brandon said, and then he noticed that Cody had gone ashen-faced.

"What's wrong, Cody?" Dr. Anderson asked, turning to look at him.

"Are you _sure_ it's April the fourth?" Cody asked.

"I'm positive. Is there something unusual about that date?" Dr. Anderson asked.

"That's the same day Layla Garza killed my father eighteen years ago," Cody said, and for a few seconds that silenced all of them. Layla was a murderous witch who'd killed scores of young men over the years, including Cody's father and very nearly Cody himself. No wonder he blanched at the memory.

"I see. Now that's an awfully suspicious coincidence, don't you think? In fact, it makes me wonder whether it might not be a coincidence at all," Dr. Anderson said.

"You think Layla Garza might be mixed up in all this?" Brandon asked. He'd been too young to be involved very much when they tangled with Layla the last time, but he did remember a little.

Cody and Lisa had finally blocked her magic with an ancient crystal known as a Guardian Stone, which nullified all magical or supernatural power. That Stone had been a gift of God to Saint Madryn of Gwent long ago as a tool of protection against evil, and Brandon still wasn't quite sure how Cody and Lisa had managed to get hold of it. In any case, the two of them had placed it at the bottom of the Brazos River, at the very spot where Layla had killed her first victim, and as long as it remained in place then she'd be powerless.

"Surely not. Nobody's heard a peep out of _her_ ever since she ran off to Georgia two years ago. She's pretty much a toothless tiger without her magic, anyway," Cody said.

"Perhaps. But I don't think you should write her off so easily. People can do a lot of nasty things without resorting to magic, especially if they're determined enough. It comes to mind that a bitter enemy like that might have decided to attack the people you love as a way to get revenge, Cody. It wouldn't be all that uncommon, you know," Dr. Anderson pointed out.

"Maybe," Cody said, and he didn't look too happy with the idea.

"She might have decided to kill Lana as a way of hurting Brandon, knowing that would hurt _you._ Doing it on the same day she killed your father might be a subtle way of letting you know who was responsible," Dr. Anderson went on.

"Please don't give me anything else to worry about than I've already got, Charles. This whole situation is hard enough already without having to think about a crazy ex-witch stalking my boy through the back alleys half a world away," Cody said.

Bran didn't fail to notice the way Cody unconsciously referred to him as _my_ boy, the sort of protective wording that a man might use when speaking about a child that he dearly loves. It was no secret that Cody felt that way, of course, but it was still nice to hear it sometimes. Especially today, and especially when he said it without thinking.

"I believe I could handle it, even if she did show up. I know how to fight if I have to," Brandon ventured to say. If God had asked him to do this great thing, then he was determined not to be afraid.

"Maybe so, but I still don't think you have any idea how much could go wrong with a scheme like that, even if Layla's _not_ involved. It's dangerous to be that far from home with nobody to help you if anything happens, and besides that we have to be careful what we do between now and court day," Cody said.

"Surely it's not _that_ dangerous, is it? Lana's been traveling back and forth to Saint Petersburg alone ever since she was twelve years old and nothing bad ever happened to _her_. As for the court thing, Dr. Anderson only said she had to be back here sometime before the fourth of April. I could wait till spring break when I'll be out of school for a week and then Daddy wouldn't even know I was gone at all. That's still plenty of time before the deadline," Brandon said. He chafed at having to wait that long, but he could put up with it if necessary.

"I just don't know, Bran," Cody muttered. He plainly didn't like the idea at all, in spite of everything Brandon and Dr. Anderson had said. But there was still one last thing that might sway his heart.

"Lana wouldn't be in danger at all right now if it wasn't for me, so I think it's only right for me to do whatever I can to help. I think I owe her that much," Brandon said, and Cody sighed.

"Well, yeah. . . I reckon you do," he agreed, sounding sad and defeated. Cody could no more have resisted an argument based on honor than he could have scratched his head with his big toe. He was stubbornly, unbendingly noble that way, and his example was a lot to live up to sometimes.

"Spring break is still a long way off. That gives us some time to think about it and make arrangements, but we don't have to decide anything right away," Dr. Anderson said diplomatically.

"I guess not," Cody said.

"But in the meantime, I think we _do_ need to talk about some legal issues and long range plans, just in case. Lana's sixteen, right?" Dr. Anderson asked.

"She will be, in about two weeks. She's a few months younger than me," Brandon said.

"All right; I think we can handle that. I'm willing to buy her a plane ticket, and I'm willing to give her a place to stay in this house while she's here, provided she goes to school and stays out of trouble. That's the easy part, though. We don't know what her parents will say, and even if they're agreeable it still might be difficult to get her another entry visa after the last one was revoked," Dr. Anderson said.

"Oh," Brandon said, down in the dumps all over again.

"Don't give up _that_ easily, kid. I said it might be _difficult,_ not _impossible,"_ Dr. Anderson said.

"What did you have in mind?" Brandon asked.

"Well, _if_ we can't get her another educational visa, then there are a few other possibilities," Dr. Anderson said.

"Like what?" Brandon asked.

"Well, there are visas for medical treatment, I suppose. I could probably arrange something like that if need be. They don't last very long but they're fairly easy to get. She doesn't have any type of medical problems, does she?" Dr. Anderson asked.

"Not that I know of. Is there anything else?" Brandon asked.

"There are special employment permits, if I could convince them she had skills I couldn't easily locate here in this country. But I'm not sure if that would work till she's eighteen. Or there are cultural visas, if she knows how to dance or sing or something like that," Dr. Anderson said.

"She can play the piano pretty well," Brandon said.

"Then maybe we can use that one somehow, if nothing else works out. Those are all the major options, I'm afraid. We'll have to find a way to make at least one of them work. But I can look into that part on my own, I suppose. The part _you'll_ have to handle is dealing with her parents and finding out what _they_ might be agreeable to. We can't really make any definite plans without knowing what they think first," Dr. Anderson said.

"But how? Her mom and dad hate me; I'm sure they do. She always said her dad was super old-fashioned and traditional about certain things, not to mention hard to get along with. She told me he'd probably have fifteen heart attacks before he had time to hit the floor if he ever found out she had a foreign boyfriend. God only knows what he thinks _now._ I don't even know for certain where they live. Mrs. Jackson won't give me their address," Brandon said.

"Do you know the name of the town? Anything else that might be useful?" Dr. Anderson asked.

"Yeah, the town is called Vyborg and it's right outside Saint Petersburg. It's a pretty big place itself, though," Brandon said.

"Do you know anything else that might help us track them down? Names? Occupations? Maybe other family members?" Dr. Anderson asked.

"Well. . . her dad's a dentist and her mom's a secretary, and I know she's got a younger brother and sister. Their last name is Krisanov. That's really all I can think of," Brandon said.

"You don't know their first names?" Dr. Anderson asked.

"Um. . . Michael is her dad's name. Well, technically it's Mikhail, I guess. I'm not sure about her mother," Brandon said.

"I think that's enough information that you could find the address. They have yellow pages just like we do, you know. If her dad's a dentist then I'm sure he advertises," Dr. Anderson said.

"I still don't think they'd let me see her," Brandon said.

"Maybe not, but they can't keep her locked away _all_ the time. I'm sure if you watched and waited, you could find a time when she was out of the house alone. Then maybe the two of you could talk and figure out how to proceed from there. She'd believe you if you told her what I said, wouldn't she?" Dr. Anderson asked.

"I'm sure she would. She knows I can read dreams. But that doesn't mean I could get her parents to believe me. What if they won't let her leave at all?" Brandon asked.

"I don't know, Bran. I can only fall back on what I said to begin with, that you're the one who's meant to find a way," Dr. Anderson said.

"I hope so," Brandon said, wishing the plan had a firmer foundation.

"There's also the small but important matter of money to pay for all these things. I'd like to go ahead and lay that whole issue to rest immediately by saying that I plan to pick up the tab for this trip. I simply won't hear of it any other way," Dr. Anderson said, an offer which left Brandon speechless.

"But. . . " he began, and Dr. Anderson laughed.

"Honestly, kid, it's only a little money. It's not like I'm offering to kill the Pope for you," he said, amused.

"But why would you do something like that?" Brandon blurted, forgetting every rule of politeness about not looking gift horses in the mouth or questioning people's kindness. But Dr. Anderson didn't seem to mind.

"Well. . . I don't think God chose to give me that dream for no purpose. It so happens that I'm the one who has the resources to make this thing happen, and I'm glad to help if I can. Besides that, when I see a young person trying to do the right thing then I believe in supporting him in every way possible, financially or otherwise," Dr. Anderson said.

"I don't know what to say," Brandon admitted, thinking about what Lana's parents might do if he showed up on their doorstep unannounced. Dr. Krisanov might shoot him before he could say a single word. Lana's description of the man hadn't been very encouraging.

"Say thank you and then do the best you can to make this thing happen," Dr. Anderson said.

"I'll try," Brandon said. He never even considered the idea of refusing Dr. Anderson's offer. He'd bring Lana back while there was still time, somehow. Then maybe, just _maybe,_ things would turn out the way he'd always hoped they would.

"Good. You'll have to go down to the post office tomorrow morning to order a passport, but there's no need to worry about anything else till that's done. The rest of it can wait a few weeks," Dr. Anderson said.

Brandon nodded, his head spinning with all these plans and ideas. He couldn't get over the fact that things had changed so dramatically, so fast. But Dr. Anderson wasn't done.

"In the meantime, talk it over with Cody and Lisa and let me know what y'all decide," he concluded, and that sent a sharp knife of fear into Brandon's newfound hope. He glanced over at Cody, who only shrugged.

"We've still got some things to talk about," Cody said.

"Well, as I said, you've got a little while to think about it. Meanwhile we can at least get the paperwork going," Dr. Anderson said.

"Thanks, Dr. Anderson," Brandon said, and he'd never meant anything so much in his life.
Chapter Five

"So, can I go?" Brandon asked on the way home. He hadn't wanted to push Cody too much right there in front of Dr. Anderson, but alone in the truck together was a different thing completely.

"Maybe. It's kind of hard for me to say no, under the circumstances," Cody said dryly.

"You don't sound too happy about it," Brandon said, and Cody sighed.

"I'm not. It scares me to death even to think about it. If you want to know the truth, my gut reaction right now is to lock you up in the attic and throw away the key till you turn eighteen," he admitted.

"Why don't you, then?" Brandon asked bluntly, and Cody laughed a little.

"You've got such a way with words sometimes, Beebo. The only reason I haven't locked you up yet is because I know there are bigger things at stake here than just safety. For one thing, I have to believe that God knew what He was talking about when He told Charles you're the only one who can save Lana. And if that's really true then it feeds right into the second thing. What I've always wanted most for you is a noble heart; that you'd grow up fearless to do what's righteous and true no matter how high the cost. I wouldn't be setting a very good example of that if I kept you at home because I'm afraid, now would I?" Cody said.

"You're an awful lot to live up to sometimes, Cody," Brandon muttered wryly. No one else he knew of would ever have reasoned thus, not in a million years.

"Oh, I don't know about that. I like to think I did my part to teach you a few things. But there had to be a good seed there to start with or you never would've listened in the first place. You can't pick fruit from thistles, nor flowers from weeds. I always knew you were a diamond in the rough, ever since you first came here," Cody said.

"I guess so," Brandon said, and Cody laughed again.

"All right, I won't embarrass you any more tonight, Beebo. But there's a story I'd like to tell you before anybody even _thinks_ about going off to Russia," Cody finally said.

"A story about what?" Brandon asked.

"You, ultimately. But it starts a long time ago with a lady named Marybeth Trewick," Cody said.

"I never heard of her before," Brandon said. It sounded suspiciously like Cody was about to launch into one of his beloved yarns concerning family history, a topic which Brandon had never shared his enthusiasm for. It hardly seemed like the time or the place for such a thing, but if that's what it took to be allowed to go to Russia then Bran was willing to listen till Cody talked himself hoarse.

"She was your great-grandfather's great-grandmother. Mine too, for that matter, even though I hadn't heard of her myself till recently. But then again, people tend to focus on their father's kinfolk because that's the way we mostly reckon things, from father to son. Practically no one knows anything about his distant foremothers, especially if the line has been broken several times," Cody said.

"So what about her?" Brandon asked.

"Well, they say she was a real beauty back in her younger days, with eyes of the deepest and most vivid blue you ever saw. That was back in 1846, and she ended up getting married that year to a wealthy young planter's son in Shreveport by the name of Daniel Trewick. Daniel wasn't quite what he seemed, though. It turned out he was involved with all kinds of evil things. There's no need to go into all that, but suffice it to say he was a cruel man who treated his wife badly. They had five boys and one girl over the years, and after a while the five boys followed in Daniel's footsteps to become just as evil as he was, if not more so. The daughter was the only righteous one, and she had to run away and get married so her father wouldn't kill her. That was Hannah, the one who came here and married my grandpa Reuben. But she never saw or heard from her mother ever again after that," Cody said.

"What happened then?" Brandon asked, curious in spite of himself.

"Well, it so happens that Marybeth herself was a righteous woman, in spite of her circumstances. She loved her husband and her children, and she kept praying that the lost ones might be saved someday. But Daniel and three of their sons were killed during the Civil War, and when the fighting was over they lost everything they owned. Hannah was long gone by then, so Marybeth was left alone and destitute with her two youngest boys, ten and twelve years old. Both of them already hated her, and within a few years they were both gone, too, unrepentant as ever. John ended up on a dirt farm right outside Longview, where he took up as much of his father's wickedness as he could learn. Drake ran off to Arkansas to work in the cinnabar mines, at least when he wasn't too drunk to hold a pick and shovel. After a little while, she never heard from either of them again. So poor Marybeth lost everything, you see; she had to watch three sons die, and another one drink himself senseless, and the last one turn into an even wickeder man than his father had been. And the whole time she never realized that her daughter was only fifty miles away. She died old and poor and all alone at the pauper's hospital in Shreveport, without even a tombstone to mark where they buried her," Cody said.

"That's sad," Brandon said, wondering why Cody wanted to tell him such a depressing story. Things like that happened, no doubt, but the last thing he needed at the moment was something else to bring him down.

"Well, yeah, it _would_ be, if that's how it all ended. But Marybeth never stopped believing that God is loving and kind. She never stopped praising Him for His goodness and glory. She prayed constantly that He would use her suffering to bless others, that somehow all that pain would be worth the cost. And God heard her prayer," Cody said.

"He did?" Brandon asked.

"He did. He gave her a vision of things to come, to comfort her heart. He promised that after seven generations of her family had passed, there'd be five boys born to replace and redeem the ones that she lost. These five would be breakers of curses and fighters against all things wicked and evil, and each of them would have the same vividly blue eyes, the same color as Marybeth's, to mark him as one of the five, so that she and everyone else would know that God is faithful to His promises," Cody said.

"How did you find out all that?" Brandon asked.

"Part of it from public records, other parts from letters that Marybeth wrote to her sister, part of it from things Hannah passed down to me. It hasn't been easy," Cody admitted.

"So you think I'm one of those five?" Brandon asked.

"I know you are, Beebo. You've got those deep blue eyes to mark you, and I know for a fact that you're a seventh generation descendant of Marybeth. Do you remember your brother's middle name?" Cody asked.

"Yeah, Madaug. He always hated it," Brandon said.

"Maybe so, but that unusual name was the key that helped me find the last link, so we should all be grateful. He was named after your great-grandfather Madaug Davies, who was Drake Trewick's grandson. So there you go; you're not only my half-brother-in-law, you're my ninth cousin, too. What do you think about that?" Cody asked.

"Does that mean you're related to Lisa, too?" Brandon asked.

"I knew you'd ask me that, but as a matter of fact, no I'm not. You and Lisa have different mothers, and it's through your mom that you're related to me, not through your dad. So, no worries about any of our kids coming out with three arms or anything weird like that," Cody said.

"But you and me and Brian are still only three out of five. What about the other two?" Brandon asked.

"Their names are Zach Trewick and Cameron Parker. They're both descended from John, and they're about four years older than you, I think. They came out here to the ranch about two years ago asking for some help with a problem they had back then. Do you remember Matthieu Doucet, the one who helped us during the fight with Layla Garza?" Cody asked, and Brandon nodded.

"Sort of. I remember you talking about him, anyway, but I don't think I ever met him in person except for that one time when we all got together to consecrate Cadron Pool. Wasn't he supposed to be a monster hunter or something like that?" Brandon asked.

"Something like that. He's Rosalie Anderson's nephew; that's how I ended up meeting _them_ for the first time, actually. Anyway, Matthieu is part of a little group called the Avengers, and their mission is to fight evil wherever they find it. They train hard and they keep a library of reference materials and all kinds of things like that. Matthieu is the leader now, and Cam and Zach are both members," Cody said.

"So what did they want with _you,_ then?" Brandon asked.

"Well, it's kind of a long story, but it turns out Layla Garza had three brothers, and two of them were even worse sorcerers than she was. Her brother Andrew was a physicist at New Mexico State University and did sorcery on the side. He used to roam around out there on the Llano, killing people in remote areas so he could turn them into zombies to use for his own personal security guards. Things like that. He also invented a machine called a tachometer so people could see the future and even go there in person. It's strictly a one-way trip, though; nobody can ever come back home again," Cody said.

"Sounds like the Garza clan is a pretty nasty bunch all around," Brandon said.

"You better believe it. Andrew and Gabe are both dead now, and Orem's in prison, but Layla's bad enough on her own. She's the cruelest person I ever met in my whole life, bar none, and she's beautiful enough to manipulate folks even without her magic. She'll cause you more heartache than you ever thought it was possible to feel, and she'll relish all that pain like a cold glass of water on a hot day. She's not somebody you want to mess with, Beebo, and that's a fact. So you better keep that in mind and stay far away from really pretty girls who approach you for no good reason," Cody said.

"What does she look like?" Brandon asked.

"You won't be able to tell. It's too easy for her to wear colored contacts or change her clothes and hair color. All I can say is that she'll be extremely beautiful, and no more than a few years older than you are. Other than that you'll just have to be careful," Cody said.

"Maybe she'll stay in Georgia and mind her own business, then," Brandon said, chilled by Cody's description of the woman.

"I dearly hope so. Anyway, to make a long story short, the Avengers nailed Gabe and Orem, but Andrew escaped into the future because of his tachometer. So then Cameron volunteered to go after him, but he needed my Guardian Stone to protect him from Andrew's sorcery after he got there," Cody said.

"That was a brave thing to do, knowing he could never come back home again," Brandon said.

"Yeah, that's what I thought, too. So when Matthieu brought him out to Goliad to ask about the Stone, it was hard for me to say no. He deserved as much help as I could give him," Cody explained.

"But I thought that Stone was supposed to keep Layla powerless," Brandon said.

"It is, but I'm sure she'll be long since dead by the time Cam ever shows up to pull it out of the river. He was headed for 2134, so it'll stay right where it is till then," Cody said.

"I see," Brandon said. That year was suspiciously close to 2158, the time that Bran himself had been told to wait for in Lisa's dream, and he couldn't help wondering if there was any connection between the two things.

"Anyway, I don't know Cam or Zach very well other than that. But I'm sure they're both out there doing whatever things God has put in their hearts to do. Just like I'm doing with Cadron Pool, and I'm sure just like your brother is doing, too. You're the youngest of us all, Beebo, and the only one who hasn't been given a job yet. But someday you will, more than just reading visions now and then or learning how to play music at church. Like I said, you're marked for it, and God never breaks His promises," Cody said.

Brandon thought once again of Lisa's dream and the vision God had given him of the future, to guide and protect his great-nephew. He did indeed have _one_ job, even if nobody knew it but him.

But Cody wasn't finished yet.

"Now there are two reasons why I told you that story, and I want you to remember them both. The first thing is, you're a child of promise. You have a purpose and a destiny in the world far beyond whatever happens over there in Russia. We can hope that things will turn out well, but we both know there are no guarantees. You might get your heart broken all over again, and if you do then I want you to remember it's not the end of the world. You have to promise me you won't forget about that, Bran, because I won't be there to pull you down off a cliff this time," Cody said.

"Is _that_ what you're worried about?" Brandon asked.

"Among other things, yeah. You would be too, if the shoe was on the other foot," Cody said.

"I told you I never really meant to hurt myself. But I promise I won't do anything like that ever again, no matter what," Brandon said, and Cody was quiet for a long time, rubbing the stubble on his chin with two fingers.

"I'll trust you, then. You've always kept your promises," Cody said.

"So what's the second reason?" Brandon asked.

"I'm afraid you won't like hearing it, but it needs to be said before you get much older. Especially if you're thinking about getting seriously involved with somebody," Cody said.

"What is it?" Brandon asked.

"You have a real problem with love, Beebo. You live your whole life like you're waiting for the other shoe to drop, like you never really believe that God is good, or blessings will last, or love can be trusted. I can see it on your face; I can hear it in your voice sometimes even if you don't think it shows. There's a bitterness inside you that colors almost everything. To give you one example, I've never once heard you tell somebody you loved them, even when I know you really do. Touching you is like laying my hand against a cold block of granite sometimes," Cody said.

"How can you say that?" Brandon asked, stung to the heart. The part about never saying he loved anybody was true; with the sole exception of Lana, he hadn't said those particular words in years, and even with her it had always been in private. But surely as long as people knew how he felt then it meant the same thing, didn't it?

"I can say it because it's true. I've known you for two years now, and I pay more attention than you think. I love you dearly, kid; I wouldn't hold back even the stars in heaven if you asked for them. I know words are cheap sometimes, even ones like that which ought never to be. But when Lisa and I say those kinds of things, I want you to remember that we _mean_ them. When you hear that God is good, I want you to _trust_ Him. Right now you really don't. You may accept those things on a certain level, but you don't truly _believe_ them; not way down deep in your heart where it really matters," Cody said.

"If that's how it is then I've got my reasons," Brandon finally said, looking out the window with a tight-lipped scowl on his face.

"I know that. You've been hurt pretty badly by certain people who should have known better and done better. But that's something nobody can change at this point, Beebo. The past is over and done with; you can't let it keep eating you alive. Sometimes I worry that God will have to break your heart completely one of these days before He can ever make it whole again, the way a bone that heals crooked has to be rebroken so the doctors can set it straight," Cody said.

Brandon said nothing to this, and after a long silence Cody sighed.

"All I'm trying to say is that you'll never be able to do the work God has in mind for you or live the life He wants you to have unless you find a way to wash that bitterness out of your heart. Sooner or later it'll poison every relationship you ever try to have with anybody, Him included. It sours your temper, it ruins your trust, and eventually it opens the door to evil. I want better than that for you," Cody said.

These words forced Brandon to do some hard thinking. Self examination had never been his strong suit, but once Cody pointed it out he began to wonder uncertainly if perhaps he really _didn't_ love or trust God (or anybody else) even half as much as he would always have said he did. It made him feel cheap and phony to think he might actually be a hypocrite after all, and he had to blink back sudden tears for the second time in one day.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, wiping his eyes with his sleeve. He wasn't sure if he meant the apology for Cody or for God, or maybe both.

"I didn't mean to make you cry, Beebo. I'm only trying to teach you something. Let it be," Cody said in a kinder voice.

"No, you're right, and I can't let it be. If I know it then I have to try to change it," Brandon said.

"Then you'll have to start doing the very same thing that Marybeth did. When bad things happen, don't start questioning God's love. Praise Him instead. Sing to Him out of the darkness, even if your eyes are full of tears at the same time, even if your heart is broken beyond hope. _Especially_ then, as a matter of fact. The times when you least feel like doing it are the very times when you need it the most. Praise is one of the greatest weapons against evil that God has ever put into your hands. Don't overlook it," Cody said.

"Doesn't seem like such a great weapon to me," Brandon said. He was trying to soften what had turned into an awfully intense conversation, but Cody only smiled.

"You'll find out for yourself someday, I promise. In the meantime just remember what I said, okay?" he asked.

"I will," Brandon agreed.

"Good. I guess between now and spring break the main thing I need you to do is to lay low, Beebo. That means no more fights, no more parties, nothing like that. And I want you to promise me you'll be careful after you get over there, too. Don't do anything stupid, and watch out for people who stand too close or anybody your gut tells you to keep away from. Stay out of dangerous places and don't go anywhere alone if you can help it, especially after dark," Cody said.

"So I can go?" Brandon asked hopefully.

"Yeah. . . I guess I talked myself into it. Like I said before, I have to believe that God knows what He's talking about. If this is what He wants from us, then so be it. When people say stuff like _I know what God wants me_ _to do, BUT. . ._ then that one little word _but_ only shows they're still unrepentant rebels and sinners at heart, people who don't have the slightest intention to obey. They may even laugh about it at the time, like it's funny that they're about to knowingly drive the nails a little deeper into Jesus' wrists. I won't do that, Beebo, and I'd never ask you to," Cody said, and that was that.

It was amazing how much difference it made over the next few days to have some kind of strategy and a purpose in place. In the blink of an eye, Brandon's whole dreary existence had been changed into something bright and full of promise. He didn't even care about the occasional snide comments at school anymore. He had better things to think of now.

The court hearing with his father still hung over his head like a sharp sword, but that couldn't be helped. It had been set for second week in May, and Brandon knew everything he said or did would be subject to scrutiny in the meantime. So he talked to Crush on the phone now and then, and dutifully spent every other weekend in Tyler just as he'd been ordered to do. It was no time to rock the boat.

When he wasn't with Crush, Brandon spent most of the time with his nose crammed into a Russian phrase-book, trying to learn as much as possible while he still had the chance.

His passport arrived in the mail right before spring break, and then he had to wait several more days to get his entry permit. Unlike most countries, Russia required a separate piece of paper with his picture on it instead of just a stamp in his passport. But at last all the paperwork and miscellaneous necessities were finished, and then there was nothing left to hold him back.

Brandon spread the word that he meant to go camping at the river while school was out, since that gave him a perfect excuse to disappear for ten whole days. With a little luck, nobody would ever think twice about where he might be.

In reality he was already booked for a flight to Saint Petersburg on Friday morning, and Jonah had volunteered to drive him to the airport in Shreveport. From there he'd have to switch planes in Memphis, Detroit, and then again in Amsterdam, before finally arriving in Russia sometime on Sunday afternoon. It seemed complicated and difficult, especially since Brandon had never set foot on a plane in his entire life, but he was determined to go ahead.

Jonah was already waiting on the front porch as soon as Brandon arrived in Mooringsport on Friday morning, wearing a dark blue Dallas Cowboys hoodie and looking impatient.

"Man, I thought you'd never get here. What took you so long? Mom made some _beignets_ for breakfast and I know you like those, but you'll have to hurry or we'll be late," Jonah said, tapping his watch.

The _beignets_ turned out to be the strawberry kind, with powdered sugar on top. Rosalie Anderson had grown up in southern Louisiana and she knew how to make all kinds of interesting foods. Brandon crammed four of them in his mouth as fast as he could get them down, and then he was ready to go.

He hadn't brought much; just a single backpack with a few sets of comfortable clothes, a shaving kit, a Russian-English dictionary, a map of the Saint Petersburg area, and a guidebook for tourists. Rosalie Anderson had told him never to carry more than he could fit into one bag, and he hoped she was right about that. He tossed it in the empty bed of Jonah's Ranger to save room up front, and seconds later they were on the road.

"Dad told me to give you this, and he said to always keep it in your front pocket," Jonah said, handing him a disposable black Visa card.

"Thanks," Bran said.

"No problem. There's ten thousand dollars on there, so make sure you don't lose it. The best thing to do is to visit an ATM to pull out some cash every few days, for subway tokens and food and suchlike. That way you can keep the card in a safe place and only use it for big things like plane tickets," Jonah said.

"There's no way I'll ever need that much money," Brandon said, a little bit taken aback by such a hefty sum.

"Well. . . you might, though. Things do happen sometimes, so don't be afraid to use it if you need it," Jonah said.

"Thanks," Brandon said again, slipping the card into his front pocket.

Jonah drove like a maniac after he got to the expressway, dodging and weaving through the rush hour traffic and sometimes darting through gaps so narrow that they would barely have accepted even the best credit card. Dozens of other people were doing the same thing all around them, reminding Brandon of exactly why he hated to drive in Shreveport. He could only shut his eyes and pray while he gripped the door handle with sweaty palms. By the time they reached the airport he felt like he'd aged ten years.

They made it with only a few minutes to spare, so Brandon slung his bag across his shoulder while he hurried across the parking lot as fast as he could without running.

"Call us if you need anything. Mom's been all over the world several times. She knows how to pull strings when she needs to," Jonah said when they reached the terminal.

"I'm pretty sure if I get in trouble then I'll have to handle it myself, buddy. Nobody over here could get anything done soon enough to make a difference," Brandon said.

"Well, yeah, but call anyway. You never know whether somebody can help you or not unless you ask. You've got everybody's numbers, don't you?" Jonah asked.

"Yeah, it's all up here," Brandon agreed, tapping the side of his head.

"You'll have to leave that knife with me, you know. They'll nail you for that when you go through security," Jonah said, nodding at the buck knife clipped to Brandon's belt.

"Yeah, I know; I forgot to take it off when we left the house. Keep it safe for me; it's something my brother gave me a long time ago," Bran said, pulling it loose from his belt and then handing it to Jonah.

"No problem, buddy. This is just about as far as I can go, so be careful over there," Jonah said.

Bran nodded and then made his way through security, letting them look inside his shoes and his shaving bag and anywhere else they felt like snooping around. But the lines were short that day, and before long he was done with all that. Then he had no choice but to sit in the terminal and wait.

When the time came, he was one of the first passengers on board. The flight to Memphis took less than an hour, and then he had to wait for _another_ three hours before it was time to leave for Detroit. He barely had time to run from one gate to another when he got to _that_ airport, nearly missing his connection. He was the last passenger to board before the crew shut the door, and he took his seat with a long sigh of relief.

The flight to Amsterdam lasted all night long, and Brandon soon discovered that the airline didn't serve meals. All they offered was half a can of Coke and a stingy little sandwich that was gone in three bites, leaving him with a growling stomach for almost the whole flight. He tried to sleep since there was nothing else to do, but he never managed more than a restless doze. By the time he arrived in Holland he was tired, crabby, and unbelievably hungry.

He was a little disappointed by his first glimpse of a foreign country. The airport in Amsterdam looked exactly like the ones he'd seen in America, even to the point of having all the signs written in English. Then he decided it didn't matter. If everybody in the world wanted their airports to look identical then so much the better. That only made it easier for him to find his way around.

He ate half a pizza from the food court, and then wearily lay down on a hard plastic bench with his backpack for a pillow, trying to catch up on sleep while he had the chance. He had sixteen hours to wait before the next leg of his flight, and there was no reason to waste it.

A heavy downpour was falling in sheets against the huge plate glass windows in front of him, mostly blocking his view of anything outside. But the sound of the rain against the glass was soothing, and in spite of the hard bed and strange surroundings, he soon fell asleep.

Chapter Six

He arrived in Saint Petersburg on a cold and sunny morning, and noticed immediately that this airport was nothing at all like the one in Amsterdam. It was old and shabby, with everything painted in various drab hues of green and gray. The place reminded him of a run down factory or maybe an especially cold and dreary hospital instead of an airport. It was a depressing sight for new arrivals, and Brandon had to remind himself that he wasn't there to admire the architecture. He had a job to do.

He found an ATM machine to withdraw some money, and then followed the crowd outdoors to the bus stop. There were piles of dirty slush here and there in shady spots, along with a gusty breeze that soon made him wish he'd brought a warmer jacket. He hadn't realized it would still be so frigid at the end of March, in spite of everything he'd ever heard about the notorious Russian winter. The light windbreaker he'd been wearing ever since Shreveport left him chilled to the bone. He'd have to buy a real coat at some point, as soon as he could figure out where to get one. In the meantime he put on two extra t-shirts under his jacket and tried not to shiver too much.

He boarded the bus when it arrived, and gave some money to an old lady who came through asking for fares. All he could do was offer her a handful of coins and let her pick out whatever the price might be, since he didn't know how to ask. She took what seemed like a reasonable amount, and he supposed it didn't really matter if she cheated him out of a few measly kopecks anyway.

The bus took him all the way downtown, and then Brandon found himself alone for the first time since leaving home. The city felt cold and strange and unfamiliar, and even a little bit scary if the truth were told. Bran felt ill at ease and unsure of himself, and for a second he wished he was safely back home in Texas again, with nothing worse to fear than some unkind words from his classmates. All that seemed so trivial and insignificant now, standing on a sidewalk half a world away.

He took a deep breath to calm his nerves, and then studied his map to find the shortest route to his hotel. The Russian street signs were still hard for him to puzzle out sometimes, but he managed well enough.

He noticed many things as he went along; a man walking a brown bear on a chain, an old lady selling flowers on the corner, and street vendors offering everything from cheeseburgers to postcards. The buildings were old and Victorian looking, and he wrinkled his nose at the heavy stench of exhaust fumes from the cars. There also seemed to be an ice cream stand on almost every block, which struck him as odd considering the time of year. But the cold weather didn't seem to be keeping anybody else from enjoying a cone or a popsicle, so Brandon finally stopped and bought a frozen chocolate bar for the equivalent of ten cents. It turned out to be an exceptionally delicious one, too, a discovery which improved his opinion of the whole country by leaps and bounds. Any place that had such cheap and delectable ice cream couldn't be all bad, in spite of the ugly airport.

He was stopped twice on the sidewalk by policemen who wanted to check his papers, but since everything was in order they never bothered him for long. He also kept a watchful eye out for any potential dangers, including beautiful young ladies who might turn out to be Layla Garza in disguise. Bran wasn't really worried _too_ much about that possibility, but he'd promised Cody to be careful.

Before long he found his way to the youth hostel, where he paid three hundred dollars for a weeklong stay. Then he went upstairs to a dormitory with several rows of twin beds, and chose one as close to the corner as possible. Finally he shoved his pack up under the bed and lay down to rest for a while. Traveling took a lot more effort than he would ever have thought possible, and besides that his internal clock was still set nine hours earlier than this place. It might be early morning for the natives, but for Brandon it felt more like midnight after a hard day's work. He couldn't start looking for Lana till he gathered some fresh energy.

So he slept for several hours, and by the time he woke up it was getting on toward evening again. There wasn't enough time left to get anything done before nightfall, but he did walk a few blocks to the nearest train station, just so he'd know where to find it the next morning. The station turned out to be a beautiful building, with gilded paint and a huge ornate clock against the upper part of one wall, bigger than a stained glass window in a church. The clock reminded him to check the departure schedule while he was there, and he saw that the morning train to Vyborg left the station at nine o'clock sharp. He decided to go ahead and buy his ticket ahead of time, just to be sure he had a seat. Then he returned to the hostel.

After a breakfast of dry cereal and a quick shower the next morning, he hurried back to the station with almost thirty minutes to spare. The train pulled out right on schedule, and then there was nothing for Brandon to do except listen to the rattle of the rails beneath his feet and gaze out at the passing trees. None of the other passengers spoke to him, which was just as well since he didn't feel like talking anyway.

As soon as he arrived in Vyborg he went to a phone kiosk at the train station and used the yellow pages to find an address for Mikhail Krisanov, just as Dr. Anderson had suggested. That part turned out to be easy, but the thought of what might happen when he actually went up to knock on Lana's door was another thing completely.

He'd already decided that skulking and spying from the shadows would never do. It might make people suspicious, for one thing, not to mention the fact that it simply wasn't in his nature to be sneaky for very long. He much preferred to be open and direct whenever possible.

Still, he didn't want to confront Lana's parents until after he had a chance to talk to _her_ first, so it was just as well that he'd arrived in the middle of a Monday morning when both of them were most likely gone to work. There was a good chance that Lana herself might still be at home, since the schools in Vyborg were also on vacation that same week. There was no guarantee she'd be the one who answered the door, of course, so Brandon took the time to write down (painfully slowly) what he needed to know on a sheet of paper, just in case the person he had to deal with didn't speak English.

Dr. Krisanov lived on a quiet street lined with houses spread far apart and almost hidden behind thick hedges, as if the owners didn't want to be seen. Brandon kept himself as inconspicuous as possible until he found the right house, then took a deep breath before heading up the walkway to knock on the front door.

When an elderly lady answered, he smiled and handed her the sheet of paper. She was wearing a dusty apron and a threadbare cotton dress which looked like it had seen better days, the kind of thing an old lady might wear when she cleaned house. Lana had mentioned now and then that her parents had a cleaning lady named Anna, so Brandon guessed that was who he was talking to. Besides which, he'd seen a picture of Lana's mother once, and she was nowhere near as old as this woman.

Anna frowned, and for a second Brandon wondered if he'd mangled the note so badly that she couldn't figure out what he was trying to say. She told him something he didn't understand, and then she must have seen the confusion on his face. She took a pen from her pocket and wrote an address on the back of his note before handing it back to him. Then she said Lana's name and shooed him away with her hands, which he took to mean that he should go to this place she'd written down.

" _Spasiba,"_ he said, thanking her absently while he tried to decipher the address she'd given him. He knew enough Russian to mind his manners, at least.

The place Anna sent him to turned out to be a large and ornate building on the outskirts of downtown. It might have been pretty at one time, but just like the airport had been, he couldn't help noticing that it was also rather old and run down. He thought at first that it might be a school or even an office building of some kind, but then he noticed a metal plaque beside the door with the Russian words _Detski Dom,_ which meant _Children's Home._ That puzzled him at first, since he knew that was simply another term for an orphanage. But Lana definitely wasn't an orphan, and Brandon wondered what she could possibly be doing at such a place. He supposed she might have found a job there, perhaps, or maybe even had friends who lived there, but those were the only things he could think of at the moment. Then he shrugged and decided he'd find out soon enough.

He knocked on the door, and when another old woman came to answer it he offered her the same scribbled note he'd used at Dr. Krisanov's house. This time it got better results. Bran found himself quickly ushered into a large office on the second floor and offered a seat.

Before long a tall and very thin lady in a blue dress arrived, and then sat down in a leather chair behind the huge desk, where she looked at him curiously. There was a brass name plate in front of her with the words _Vera Melkova, Director,_ in bold Cyrillic letters.

"Well, young man, I hear you're looking for our Svetlana. Can you tell me why?" she asked. Her English was good, although she spoke it with the same pseudo-British accent that Lana had always used. But her question was a hard one to answer, and all the reasons Brandon had rehearsed in his mind for weeks to explain himself once he got to Russia seemed to fall apart under the lady's unblinking eyes. Finally he resorted to his usual habit and simply blurted out the truth.

"Because I love her," he said. The lady stared at him for a while longer, perhaps lost for words herself at such a bald statement, but then she smiled.

"You came all the way here, just to see her?" she asked.

"Yes, ma'am," Brandon said.

"Well. . . I have to say, this is not at all what I expected to hear. When Lana first came here, with child no less, I wasn't inclined to think too highly of you. But perhaps I was too hasty, after all," she said, looking him up and down.

"Can I see her? Please?" Brandon asked, and Mrs. Melkova's smile faded.

"You could, if she were still here. But I'm sorry to say that the children here can only stay till they turn sixteen. Lana has been gone since her birthday last month. I'm so sorry," she said.

"What are you talking about?" Brandon asked, totally confused.

"No one has told you?" Mrs. Melkova asked.

"Told me what?" Brandon asked, and the lady cleared her throat.

"I'm afraid that Dr. Krisanov and his wife disowned Svetlana when they found out what happened. They said she had brought shame and disgrace upon her family and she was no longer welcome in their house. So they brought her here and would have nothing to do with her anymore," Mrs. Melkova said.

"I never knew that," Brandon said, and felt his eyes blurring in spite of himself.

"No, I don't suppose you would have. Dr. Krisanov certainly would not have mentioned it, and Lana herself never liked to worry anyone," Mrs. Melkova said.

"No, she didn't," Brandon agreed, wiping his eyes.

"There, now, hush. Surely you didn't come all this way for nothing. I spoke to Lana before she left, and she said something about going into Petersburg to find a job if she could. One never knows; perhaps you may still find her," Mrs. Melkova said soothingly.

"Did she say anything specific about where she might go? Saint Petersburg is an awfully big place," Brandon asked, wondering how he'd ever manage to locate her in the middle of such a huge city. But the lady seemed troubled.

"Young man, there are certain things no child should have to know, but under the circumstances I'm forced to tell you. When the children leave this place, they are still very young, yes? They have no family, no jobs, no place to go, and they soon find that the world is a cruel place. Most of them go to the city, in the hope that they might find work, or a place to live. What they usually find instead are gangs who will put them to work, indeed; as thieves and prostitutes and drug dealers, things of that sort. They live in the abandoned apartment buildings by the harbor, or in the sewers, and many of them are dead within a year or two. Some end up in prison, and a very few indeed find some kind of stable situation to tide them through. I wish I could give you better news, young man, but if you wish to find Lana, look first on the streets, and then in the jails," Mrs. Melkova said.

"But how can you let that happen? How can you stand it?" Brandon asked, appalled.

"One bears what one must. I care for them as long as I can, in the hope that a few of them might survive. But I have barely the room and the food even for the little ones. For the older ones after they leave here, all I can do is pray for them," Mrs. Melkova said.

Brandon thought of Lana having to live such a life as that, and he did cry then. This was a million times worse than having to face a nasty scene with Dr. Krisanov. That fear seemed trivial now, no more than a fleabite in comparison to _this._ He wished bitterly that he hadn't waited so long to come find her, even if it _did_ put his court case at risk. He'd never dreamed that things could be so bad, or that anyone's parents could be so cruel.

"I'm sorry," he said, wiping his eyes again.

"So am I. But come now. It's almost time for lunch, and you should at least eat with us before you go back out. You may even learn some things, if you speak to the children. Lana was friends with many of them," Mrs. Melkova said.

"I don't know much Russian," Brandon admitted, taking a deep breath to compose himself.

"Don't worry about that. Most of them know at least a little English. They study it every year in school. Some of them are better students than others, of course," Mrs. Melkova added.

She waited for Brandon to dry his tears, and then led him downstairs to a large cafeteria which housed probably two or three hundred kids, of all ages. Mrs. Melkova clapped her hands for silence before introducing him, and then he suddenly found himself a minor celebrity, surrounded by cheerful greetings in every imaginable tone of voice.

They served some kind of salty fish soup with ravioli, and strawberry yogurt on the side. For a while, Brandon was kept too busy talking to curious orphans to even taste his food, but in time the interest subsided and he was able to eat. They all spoke a little English, frequently sprinkled here and there with scraps of Russian. Some of them even switched back and forth between the two languages right in mid-sentence, apparently without even noticing the fact. But Brandon could usually get the gist of whatever they were trying to say, and if not then he simply smiled and nodded.

Presently, a boy and girl he hadn't seen before came up to him and sat down across the table.

"You are Lana's boyfriend, right?" the girl said. She was close to his own age and could speak better English than most, with light brown hair and thin, almost birdlike features. She reminded him a little bit of Lana.

"Yeah, that's me. Do you know her?" Brandon asked hopefully.

"She's my best friend. My name is Tatiana; Tatya for my friends, and this is my brother Vladic. He's not very good with his English," she said, offering her hand. He shook it.

"Pleased to meet you both," Brandon said.

"Likewise. Listen, I came over because I'd like to help you find Lana," Tatya said.

"You would?" Bran asked, surprised.

"Yes, but I want you to do something for me in return, if you can," Tatya said. Brandon was instantly on guard, but he tried not to let it show.

"What's that?" he asked carefully.

"It's nothing bad. But when you get home, I just want you to see if you can find some nice people who will adopt Vlad. I'll be sixteen next month so I'm too old, but he's only twelve," Tatya explained, nodding toward her brother.

"I don't know if—" Brandon began.

"I know you can't promise it will happen. I'm only asking you to try, that's all. If you came all this way for Lana's sake, then I think you must be trustworthy," Tatya said, interrupting him.

Brandon considered the idea. He didn't have the faintest idea who he could ask to do such a thing, other than the Andersons perhaps, and they were already offering to take Lana in. But he was only promising to look, of course, not necessarily to find someone. He glanced at Vladic, who was shockingly blond and looked more like ten than twelve. He had on a red and white football jersey with a pair of jeans, and if he didn't open his mouth he'd look perfectly natural in any American mall. He had a solemn look on his face, as if he knew he was being sized up.

"I'll try," Brandon said doubtfully, wondering how he ever managed to get himself into such things. Then he remembered what Mrs. Melkova had told him about the future that lay ahead for most of these kids when they turned sixteen, and he was ashamed of himself.

"That's all I ask," Tatya agreed.

"Did Lana say anything about where she was going?" Brandon asked, to cover his discomfiture.

"She said she was going into the city to find work. She said she hoped somebody might hire her, if only because of the baby," Tatya said.

"But nowhere in particular?" Brandon pressed.

"No, but she liked to cook and also to play music, so I think she would probably try some clubs and restaurants along Nevsky Prospect before she went anywhere else. We should go there first; that's what I would do. Maybe she got a job, or if not then at least somebody might remember her," Tatya said. Brandon had no better ideas, so he shrugged.

"Sure, sounds good to me," he agreed.

"Let's go, then," Tatya said, seeming satisfied. She got up from the table to throw her trash away before leaving the cafeteria, and Brandon followed her. To his surprise, so did Vlad.

"Is he coming too?" Brandon asked, jerking a thumb at the boy.

"Yes, he likes to go places. It will be all right," Tatya said.

"You don't have to tell anybody where you're going first?" Brandon asked.

"Only the little ones. Teenagers are free to come and go as we please, as long as we make it back before bedtime and don't miss school. Vlad would have to sign out if he went somewhere alone, but nobody cares if he goes with me," Tatya said.

She and Vlad stopped in the foyer to put on heavy coats and fur hats, and when Brandon didn't do likewise Tatya looked at him critically. He still had on his windbreaker and his layered t-shirts from the day before, inadequate as they were.

"You will need warmer clothes than that, if you plan to be out in the weather all day. It will be cold, and people will look at you strangely. That will not help us get answers," Tatya said.

"I didn't know where to buy anything," Brandon said, feeling foolish.

"We can soon fix that," Tatya said.

With no more ado, she took them directly to a clothing store just a few blocks from the orphanage. There he was able to get a heavy coat, boots, and a black fur hat similar to the one Vlad wore. It felt thick and strange on Brandon's head, but it was definitely warm. He especially appreciated the long flaps that came down to cover his ears.

"There. Now you look like a proper Russian," Tatya said, nodding her head in satisfaction.

"As long as I don't say anything," Brandon said wryly.

"Yes, but I think you can handle that part," Tatya said.

It wasn't far from the clothing store to the train station, and as soon as they got there Brandon bought three tickets into Saint Petersburg.

Tatya and Vlad seemed to know their way around the city fairly well. They took him directly to Nevsky Prospect and started asking about Lana at every club and restaurant they could find. It seemed Tatya was serious about keeping up her end of the bargain.

Unfortunately, they came up empty.

"There are many other restaurants in the city," Tatya said reluctantly, when the daylight had begun to fail and they'd almost reached the end of Nevsky. She'd even taken it upon herself to question some of the cops who checked their papers now and then, but all to no avail.

"I know, I know. I just don't have much time, that's all," Brandon said. He had exactly five days left till he had to head home, and that wasn't much.

"I'm sorry we didn't find her today, Bran. We have to go home now, but meet us at the train station in the morning. We will keep looking," Tatya promised.

And so they did. For four more days they combed the shops and eateries and back alleys of Saint Petersburg, but no one seemed to have heard of Svetlana Krisanova. She seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth.

Brandon began to get discouraged again, and wondered darkly if she was even still alive. Mrs. Melkova's warning about the gangs was never far from his mind. He noticed for the first time the girls walking the streets, some of them younger than he was, and scanned their faces anxiously, hoping and yet dreading to find her as one of them. Indeed, as Tatya led him off the beaten path to wander some of the lesser known areas he began to see _many_ things he hadn't noticed before; the beggars on the streets, the slums, the poorness of so many people. There was nothing Brandon could do about these things, of course, but they filled his heart with sorrow and discouraged him all the more.

If he'd ever suspected for even half a second that Lana would have to come back to something like this, he never would have allowed it to happen. If necessary he really _would_ have run away and taken her to live in the woods till they both got old enough to make better arrangements for themselves. It would have been a hard life, but surely it would have been better than _this._

But he hadn't known, and now it seemed that he might never find her at all. He was rapidly running out of time to think and places to search. Then on Saturday he met Tatya and Vlad at the train station with one last idea. It was snowing again that morning, but he'd soon learned that Russians paid no attention to such things.

"We haven't checked the prison yet," he said, hardly able to force himself to say the words. He couldn't believe Lana might actually be found in such a place, but he was near despair and ready to try anything. The others looked shocked.

"Prison?" Vlad asked, wide-eyed. Apparently he knew the word.

"I know, I can't believe it either, but it won't take long to check," Brandon sighed. Tatya looked unhappy, but she didn't argue with him. She knew as well as he did that things were becoming desperate.

They walked in silence to the bus stop together. Brandon had become fairly used to Saint Petersburg by then, and the surroundings no longer seemed quite as strange to him as they had at first. But when they neared the prison grounds, he found himself just as uneasy as he'd ever been.

"Have you got any money?" Tatya whispered.

"Yeah, a little. Why?" Brandon asked.

"Give it to me. We may need it," Tatya replied, and he fished out a crumpled wad of hundred-ruble notes. She took it, making sure nobody could see what she held in her hands, and then quickly counted it before shoving the whole mass into the front pocket of her coat.

"What do we need money for?" Brandon asked.

"We might have to bribe somebody, that's why. But it's only about a thousand rubles here. That works out to about eighty dollars," Tatya fretted.

"Will it be enough?" Brandon asked.

"I hope so. We may not even need it, but you never can tell," Tatya explained.

The prison turned out to be a grim block of concrete, cracked and pitted from the salt air. It sat right in the middle of a dilapidated area of industrial buildings and abandoned apartments near the harbor, and Brandon could tell he wasn't the only one who felt ill at ease. It was gang territory down there, and the signs of it were everywhere. The whole area was full of spray-painted graffiti and broken windows, stark and ugly against the fresh snow. People got robbed in neighborhoods like that, and sometimes worse. Brandon and the others kept huddled together in a nervous knot until they finally reached the guard post at the front gate of the prison.

Here they were stopped by an armed guard who didn't sound too friendly, but then perhaps it would have been strange if he had. Tatya spoke to him in a low voice, while the boys kept quiet. Brandon understood almost none of the conversation, and it didn't seem like a good time to ask for a translation.

Then they were waved through, and the clang of the big steel gate when it swung shut behind them made Brandon shiver.

"He said he doesn't know if she's here or not. We will have to ask the main office, so that's where we're headed now," Tatya said in a low voice as soon as they got out of earshot.

"Why are we whispering?" Brandon asked, speaking just as softly as she had.

"He doesn't know you're not Russian. They might not let us in if they thought you were a foreigner. I told the guard that Vlad and I are her brother and sister, and you are her cousin. So don't talk unless you have to or they may throw us out," Tatya said.

Brandon nodded, and soon they reached the rusty front doors. The front lobby was dimly lit, filled with the faint stench of mold and other unidentifiable filth. Here they found another guard on duty, but this one waved them through incuriously with the tip of his rifle.

A few yards down the hall a steel door opened into a remarkably clean and modern-looking office, rather startling after the beat-up condition of everything else. A secretary in a brown dress sat behind a desk, looking up when they came inside.

Again, Tatya did the talking and Brandon understood almost nothing. The secretary frowned, and then got up to fetch a manila folder from a file cabinet against the wall. She came back thumbing through the papers, and finally lay it open on her desk. Bran couldn't read the writing, but he recognized the picture, oh yes. There was Lana, her face thin and hollow, dressed in a ragged brown jumpsuit.

" _Eta ona?"_ the secretary asked, and for once Brandon understood perfectly, even with his small stock of Russian words. _Is that her?_

" _Da,"_ he answered, before Tatya could say a word. She glared at him with a look that told him to shut up before he got them all in trouble, and then proceeded to talk to the secretary for quite a while longer. Eventually they seemed to reach some kind of agreement. Brandon managed to keep a strict poker face when Tatya passed the wad of money he'd given her across the desk, even though such shameless corruption left him astounded. The secretary smiled and pocketed the bills, and after that seemed much more accommodating.

The end result of the whole thing was that the three of them were escorted to a dingy, olive green room completely empty except for an old aluminum table with mismatched chairs. Here they were locked in by a guard.

"It's not visiting day, so I had to bribe her. They'll bring Lana out in a few minutes," Tatya said, not bothering to whisper anymore.

"But what's she in here for? Lana would never do anything criminal," Brandon said, and Tatya looked uncomfortable.

"Uh. . . I know it can't be true, but she's in here for murder, Brandon," she said. Bran felt his jaw drop at that, and was so shocked he actually gasped.

"No way. It can't be. There's got to be some kind of mistake," he said, shaking his head.

"I don't believe it either, but that's what the file said. I didn't have time to read it all, though. You will have to ask her when she gets here," Tatya said.

Chapter Seven

In just a few more minutes, she did. One of the guards opened up the heavy steel door just long enough to shove Lana inside and then locked it again behind her, leaving the four of them alone together.

She looked even thinner than in the picture, gaunt and even bony in places, as if they hadn't been feeding her enough. The only exception was her stomach, of course, which at seven months was hard to overlook. Her beautiful long hair had been chopped off so short that it didn't even cover her ears anymore, and her clothes and face were grimy. There were cleaner patches on her cheeks where she must have cried and then wiped it away with the filthy sleeve of her jumpsuit, and her nails were cracked and bleeding in spots. Then she saw Brandon, and her eyes widened.

"Beebo? Is that really you?" she asked, like she couldn't believe it.

"Yeah, it's really me," he said. They stood looking at each other for a second, hesitating, and then he lifted his arms to take an uncertain step toward her. That was all it took. She ran the rest of the way, and threw her arms around him, and he felt her hot tears on his shoulder. He felt like crying a few of them himself. Then he kissed her, and they sat as close as humanly possible on the table while they talked.

"I can't believe you're here. I thought I'd never see you again," Lana said at last.

"I was afraid I'd never see you again, either," Brandon said.

"I thought you didn't want to, after that last time we talked," Lana said.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean all that stuff I said. I was just scared and upset, that's all," Brandon told her.

"It's all right. You're here now, and that makes up for a lot. I think I could forgive you for many worse things than that today. But how did you find me? And how did you meet Tatya, or even get to Russia at all?" Lana asked.

"Cody's friend Dr. Anderson gave me the money to come over here, after we explained everything to him. It was easy to find your address in the yellow pages after I got to Vyborg, and then Anna sent me over to the orphanage. The director was really nice. She gave me some ideas about where to look, and then that's also where I met Tatya and Vlad. They've really helped a lot. I don't think I could have found you without them, much less got in here to see you. We've been searching all over Saint Petersburg for nearly a week, but this was the last place we ever thought to look," Brandon said, glancing around at the grubby room.

"Bran, you must believe me; I never hurt anyone," Lana said quickly.

"Of course I believe you. But how did you end up in a place like _this?"_ Brandon asked.

"That's a long story, but it started with my father, I suppose. You must understand that Papa is very old-fashioned in certain ways, and also very respectable. When I first got home he was incredibly angry with me, and he said all kinds of nasty and hurtful things. He was determined to get rid of the baby one way or another, and when I refused to do that then he told me to leave his house and never come back. I always knew he was like that, but I never really believed he'd turn me out. So then I stayed at the orphanage for a while, till I turned sixteen, but after that there was nowhere else for me to go. I have a cousin in Pushkin, right outside the city, and I thought she might let me help with her business. She sells souvenirs to tourists; fur hats, lacquer boxes, postcards, things like that. But when I got there she said she couldn't help me either and sent me away. I didn't know what to do. A man found me walking down Nevsky that night with nowhere to go, and he told me he'd give me a job and a place to stay if I'd come with him. I knew about the gangs, of course, and I knew what happened to the people who went with them, but I was desperate. I had no choice but to trust him," Lana said, looking down at the floor.

"What happened next?" Brandon whispered, not sure he wanted to hear the rest.

"He took me to an apartment with several other people. They gave me food and a place to sleep, but I soon found out they were gangsters, just as I feared. They did find me a job, stealing from guests at a hotel while the rooms were empty. I hated it, but that was the only way they'd let me stay with them. Then one day there was a fight with another gang, down at the harbor. Six people were killed before the police showed up. They caught only me and one other girl, so they decided to make examples of us, I think. I swear I never killed anyone, Beebo; I never even touched a gun. But they didn't care about that, so now here I am," she said, and started to cry again. Brandon held her close, unable to speak.

"I'm so sorry," he finally murmured, almost drowning in guilt.

"Hush and don't talk that way. It's no more your fault than it is mine, or Papa's, or the gangsters downtown. Whatever wrong you did, you more than made up for by coming here to find me. I just hate for you to see me like this," Lana said, waving vaguely at her chopped-off hair and dirty clothes.

"No, I had to come," Brandon said, and then trailed off awkwardly while he tried to think how to explain Dr. Anderson's dream. Finding her locked up in prison put the whole issue in a brand new light, and he was at a loss for what to do. How could he possibly find a way to bring her back home when she was in jail for _murder?_

"Listen. I want you to do something for me, okay?" Lana asked, interrupting his train of thought.

"What is it?" Brandon asked.

"Come back this summer, and take the baby after he's born. They'll let you have him, if we both tell them you're his father. I don't want him to go to an orphanage," Lana said.

"We'll find a way to get you out of here before then," Brandon said quickly.

"No you won't, Bran my love. They won't be letting me out of here for a long time, if they ever let me out at all. But I can bear it, if I know my baby is safe," Lana said.

"Don't give up yet. We _will_ get you out of here, I promise," Brandon said vehemently. Lana just looked at him with a sad smile, and he could tell she didn't believe it for a second. He wasn't even sure he believed it himself, for that matter, but the alternative was too awful to think about.

"How long will you be in Saint Petersburg?" Lana asked.

"I'm supposed to go home tomorrow. I have to be back in time for school on Monday," Brandon said, wincing at how childish that sounded while sitting in a Russian prison cell. But Lana seemed not to notice.

"I don't suppose I'll see you again after you leave today, then," she said wistfully.

"I'm not sure," Brandon said, which seemed to be the only safe answer.

"It's okay. I'm grateful even for these few little minutes, if that's all we can have. But why did you come after me, Beebo? You must have had a reason," Lana asked, and that put him in a difficult position. It seemed heartless to burden her with the true answer, at least not till he could offer some kind of hope to soften the blow. But it would take some hard thinking to come up with anything like that, and in the meantime he had to say _something._

"I wanted to bring you back home with me, hopefully. Dr. Anderson said you could come live with them and finish high school, at least till we're old enough to get married," Brandon said, too distracted to fully realize what he was saying.

"You mean you're asking?" Lana asked, with a touch of her old playful sense of humor. Brandon suddenly turned red, but there was no way to unsay the words at that point. All he could do was make the best of it.

"Yes, I'm asking. Will you marry me, Svetlana Krisanova, or must I live forever with a broken heart?" he said, trying to make it sound lighthearted.

"Of course I will. I never wanted anything else," Lana said, and they kissed again. Just then Tatya cleared her throat.

"I hate to interrupt, but we only have a little bit longer. Perhaps you should think about making some definite plans?" she said, half apologetically.

"Yes, we should, Tatya. Now Beebo, you'll have to be here in June. I don't know exactly when the baby will come, but you have to be here when he does. They won't let me keep him in the cell with me for more than a few days, and it wouldn't be safe, anyway. Can you make it?" Lana asked, all businesslike, and the question only served to remind him once again of what they were _really_ up against.

This was not at all the way Brandon had imagined things would go. Traveling halfway around the world, confronting Dr. Krisanov, maybe even searching high and low through a foreign city; these were things he'd been in some measure prepared for. But how was he supposed to handle _this?_ Concrete walls and prison bars couldn't be reasoned with, and they couldn't be bribed, either.

But then again, he knew what giving up would mean, too. The last shred of hope would be gone forever, and then in seven more days Lana would die. That was the cold and bitter truth, and there didn't seem to be anything whatsoever that Brandon could do about it.

For a little while he was at a loss for words. But he knew she expected some kind of answer about whether he'd come back for the baby in June, so he tried to focus on that issue for a minute.

"I guess I'll have to," he said numbly.

"Okay, then. I'll write you letters, and you must promise to write back to me as often as you can. But you'll have to leave some money with the main office, so I can buy paper and stamps and things," Lana said.

"No problem," Brandon said.

"Is there anything else you need, Lana?" Tatya asked.

"They don't let us have much, I'm afraid. But if you leave some extra money, they do feed us a little better, and let us have tea and coffee now and then, and sometimes chocolate. It does make things easier," Lana admitted. Brandon could tell she hated to ask, but he didn't care about a few miserable dollars.

"I'll leave whatever I can, whenever I can," he said, and then pulled a stubby pencil and a scrap of paper from his pocket.

"Here's my address. I may end up having to go live with my dad for a while, but if I do then it's probably better if you keep sending letters to Cody and Lisa's house instead of to his. I'm not sure what he'd say, if he thought we were talking," Brandon explained, tearing the paper in half to give her the part with his address on it.

"All right. Here's mine," Lana said, writing down her own address at the prison on the other half. She printed in block letters so he could read it clearly, and then wrote _I love you_ at the bottom. Bran slipped it in his pocket without a word.

"Do they have phones here?" he asked wistfully.

"Not for the prisoners to use. Only in the main office," Lana said.

"Yeah, I thought so," Brandon sighed.

Just then a key rattled in the lock, and they heard the steel door start to open again. The visit was over.

Bran didn't dare speak English (or even Russian) while the guard could hear, so he lifted the two forefingers of his left hand instead. It reminded him poignantly of happier days, but Lana simply smiled and raised her own two fingers back at him. Then the guard was leading her away, while Brandon sat on the table and buried his face in his hands till the sound of her footsteps disappeared down the hall.

"It will be okay," Vladic said, clapping him on the shoulder. The boy tried so hard, with the little stock of words that he knew.

"I'm not sure it will, Vlad, but thanks anyway," Brandon said. He knew Vladic wouldn't understand even half of what he'd just said, but it didn't matter. He'd get the thanks part, and that was good enough.

" _Prikhaditye!"_ the guard said as soon as he got back, and they followed him to the front doors without a word.

Brandon paid no attention to anything above the tips of his shoes as they left the prison grounds, grief-stricken beyond words. He was sure Tatya and Vlad and everybody he passed on the street could see it, but he didn't have the heart to care anymore about what kind of impression he was making. His plans were utterly wrecked, shattered into a million tiny bits, and he didn't have the faintest idea how to pick up the pieces.

Maybe the Andersons could think of something, but he knew it was useless to call them till early morning because of the difference in time zones. Otherwise he'd either wake them up in the middle of the night or else interrupt them at work, neither of which would be a good time for serious conversation.

The light snow from earlier had switched over to a cold and drizzly rain while they were inside the prison, filling the streets with icy slush and making Brandon shiver in spite of his warm clothes. The gray and soggy weather matched his mood perfectly.

Vlad and Tatya whispered between themselves the whole time as they walked, and finally Tatya spoke up.

"Bran, we think you should not be alone tonight. Come back with us to Vyborg and stay. Mrs. Melkova thinks very highly of you. She would let you stay with Vlad tonight, I think, since the other bed in his room is empty right now," she said.

Brandon was tempted to say no. His first impulse was to wallow all night in his misery at the hostel, and besides that he didn't want to risk any delay in calling the Andersons. His phone had no service outside Saint Petersburg, so if he stayed with Vlad then he'd have to come all the way back into the city tomorrow morning before he could get in touch with anybody. It seemed like a hassle at best.

Then he thought better of it.

"Maybe you're right. As long as I get up early in the morning to make a phone call, it'll be all right," he agreed.

"Good!" Tatya said, and Vlad smiled.

Brandon stopped by the hostel long enough to pick up his backpack and check out, and in spite of his sorrow he noticed his stomach rumbling. It was well past lunchtime by then.

So he took Tatya and Vlad to Pizza Hut, since that was a rare and wonderful treat for them, but Bran himself barely tasted his food. He chewed and swallowed mechanically, but his mind was a thousand miles away. He didn't have the heart to think of anything at all except Lana, sitting there in her concrete cage beside the harbor.

As he pondered the harsh reality of what _she_ was up against, Brandon slowly came to realize that he'd been selfish. Not so much in his actions, perhaps, but in his way of thinking about things. He'd thought mostly about how Lana's absence affected _him,_ about how much he missed her and how hurtful it was that some of his former best friends had been treating him badly. It hadn't even crossed his mind until recently to wonder how Lana herself might be doing.

He also came to see that he'd been ungrateful. Whatever _his_ problems might be, he had things fairly soft and easy compared to the life Tatya and Vlad had to look forward to, and definitely easier than what Lana was experiencing. It wasn't that he was heartless or without compassion, he'd just never thought about such things before. Now he was having to take a long, hard look at the world and his place in it, and that's never easy.

Tatya and Vlad tried to cheer him up. Since there was no need to look for Lana anymore, they took him to see the sights for a few hours in spite of the drizzle. They visited the Winter Palace and several beautiful churches, along with various other attractions which he didn't pay much attention to. Now and then they came across something interesting enough to distract him from his troubles for a little while, but the sadness was always there in the background, just waiting to reappear.

The rain had stopped by the time they went back to Vyborg that evening, so they visited the old stone castle by the waterfront and anything else Tatya could think of to show him, including the storefront church where Lana had been a member. It was a small one, and poor by the looks of it.

"So this is where she went, huh?" Brandon asked, staring at the dark and empty building. It was ten or twelve blocks from the children's home, and maybe a mile from Dr. Krisanov's house.

"Yes, she played piano for them and taught the little ones. She walked here every Sunday from the orphanage, even in the rain," Tatya said. It didn't surprise him, either that Lana had done those kinds of things or that she hadn't mentioned them. It was all very much like her.

"Why didn't some of them help her when she needed a place to go, then?" Brandon asked.

"They are very poor in this neighborhood, and the church is small. They could not help her, except to pray," Tatya said.

"It doesn't seem like the kind of place a respectable man like Dr. Krisanov would want to go," Brandon said.

"He never did. Dr. Krisanov goes to the big cathedral downtown, but only on high holy days. Christmas, Easter, Michaelmas, things like that. Lana told me he never liked it that she came here, that he thought it was a place for fanatics and heretics. He never outright forbade her to attend, but he did make it very difficult sometimes. Indeed, she said that one of the reasons he allowed her to study in America for so long was to weaken her attachment to this church," Tatya said somberly.

"She never told me that," Brandon said.

"Lana does not believe in flaunting her fights. But I know religious differences were among the reasons her father pushed her out. When they fought over you and the baby he became very loud and hateful, as she mentioned at the prison. But she told him that God makes no mistakes and she would not forsake the sacred trust He had placed in her, that He would take care of her even if her father would not. She told Dr. Krisanov that he was sticking his finger in God's eye and he would not go unpunished for that. Then her father called her a fanatic and a prostitute and told her never to darken his door again until she came to her senses," Tatya said.

"But she never did," Brandon said, and it wasn't quite a question.

"No, she never did. I suppose he would have taken her back, if she had changed her mind and decided to give up the baby. But she would not do that, and Dr. Krisanov would never humble himself to let his daughter win a fight with him. So she told me. We spoke about many things like that while we shared a room at the orphanage," Tatya said.

"I wish she'd told _me_ all those things," Brandon said.

"Well, she has not had the opportunity to tell you anything at all for several months, except for those few minutes during the visit today. These are all recent things, you know. But surely you knew the mettle of her heart and mind already, did you not?" Tatya reminded him.

"Yeah, I did," Brandon said, and then really smiled a little for the first time since they left the prison. He could imagine what that scene must have been like. Dr. Krisanov screaming and threatening while Lana stood there in front of him, barely half his size and yet blindingly bright and unspeakably beautiful in her fearless determination to stand fast on the holy rock of God. If ever she earned her name, it was then.

It was almost too dark to see by that time, so the three of them trudged through the wet and chilly streets of Vyborg till they reached the orphanage again. Mrs. Melkova was glad to let Brandon stay just the one night, even though it wasn't strictly permitted. She was sad when she heard about what happened to Lana, but hardly surprised. It was an all too common tale, she said.

Tatya herself wasn't allowed in the boys' wing, but they sat in the public room till the latest possible time, talking about many different things.

"I hope we live close together someday," Vlad said wistfully, which was the longest sentence Brandon had ever heard him say. His English was gradually improving, since he'd been forced to use it more often.

"I hope so, too, buddy," Brandon said. Tatya and Vlad had been the staunchest friends he could have wished for, and he'd already made up his mind to bring _both_ of them back home with him if possible. Tatya might think she was too old to be adopted, but surely there was a way to make it happen somehow or other. Bran was determined to try, especially after everything he'd seen and heard lately.

When it was time for bed they each kissed him on the cheek in the same way that Lana had done sometimes, a thing which he submitted to but couldn't quite bring himself to return. He thought to himself that if Tatya and Vlad really did come to America, he'd have to remind them at some point not to do that in public anymore. It was a sweet and charming custom in its place, but people who weren't used to it might not understand.

The incident brought back a distant memory of the first time Lana herself had ever kissed him, less than two weeks after they both arrived in Texas. It had been a just-friends kind of thing like that, on his left cheek after the first football game he ever played at Ore City. They won, and she'd come down to the edge of the field to congratulate him. But the Jacksons had been in a hurry to leave, so Lana had kissed him goodbye right there in front of everybody because she hadn't learned enough about America yet to realize what people would think. Brandon's face had turned almost as red as his hair, and the other guys had rubbed his nose in it for _weeks_ after that. He could still remember the spot where her lips had touched that night, soft and warm against his skin. The memory was both sweet and painful at the same time.

He didn't think he'd be able to sleep when he went to lie down, not with so many thoughts swirling around in his mind. But he must have been more tired than he realized, because he fell asleep almost right away and didn't wake up till he heard Vlad coming in with a breakfast tray.

"I saved food for you. Better eat it before me," the boy said, as soon as he noticed that Brandon's eyes were open. It didn't sound like a very serious threat, so Bran laughed a little before he sat up to stretch and yawn. He was fairly sure nobody was supposed to take food outside the cafeteria, which meant Vlad was probably breaking the rules to bring him breakfast in bed, so to speak. It was a kind and thoughtful gesture, but he hoped the kid didn't get in too much trouble for it.

"Thanks, Vlad," Brandon said, swinging his bare feet around onto the cold linoleum floor so he could set the tray on his lap. It was nothing but yogurt and some dry cereal with no milk, but that was all right.

When he was done eating, Vlad took the dishes back down to the cafeteria while Brandon changed clothes and shaved the gingery fuzz on his chin. Then he put on his last clean shirt, a black and gold Ore City Rebels team jersey with his name and number on the back. It wasn't the official one he played in, just a knock-off copy to wear whenever he liked.

"Come on, buddy; let's go find your sister," Brandon said, as soon as Vlad got back from the cafeteria. There was no clock in the room, but he knew it wouldn't be long before he needed to get back to the city to call Dr. Anderson. There was no reason for Tatya and Vlad to go with him for that, especially since he was due at the airport in a few hours anyway, but he did want to say his goodbyes before he left.

Tatya was already downstairs in the public room, so it turned out there was no need to look for her. They walked to the train station without saying much, and then as soon as they got there Brandon went to the ATM machine to withdraw some money.

"Will you take this to the prison for me?" he asked Tatya, handing her two thousand rubles. It was only about a hundred and fifty dollars, but it would do for a few days. If it took longer than that to get Lana out then it wouldn't matter anyway.

"Of course I will," Tatya said, taking the cash.

"Thanks, Tatya. Not just for this but for everything. I couldn't have done it without you," Brandon said.

"I was glad to do it. She's my friend," Tatya said.

"I'll find a place for Vlad somehow or other, and for you too. If I can't do it before you have to leave the orphanage, then I'll send you some money so you can find an apartment for a little while. I won't leave you here alone to go live with the gangs, I promise," Brandon said. Then Tatya laughed a little, but her eyes were bright.

"I can see now why she loves you," Tatya murmured, and kissed his cheek without arguing any more about what was possible or not.

"I guess I'd better go now," Brandon said, and they both nodded. He boarded the train just minutes before it pulled out of the station, while Tatya and Vlad stood there on the platform waving their handkerchiefs until he disappeared around the first bend in the tracks. It was like a scene from some classic movie about olden days. Russia kept surprising him with odd little throwbacks like that, as if the past lingered longer there than it did in other places.

Brandon might have enjoyed contemplating such a philosophical idea, if he hadn't been so careworn and heartsick at the time. He liked to think and to dream, and to picture how the world might be different if certain things were true or not. He was, as Crush liked to say, a lot smarter than he looked.

The only philosophy Brandon cared about at the time was whether or not he could trust God's word, and in spite of appearances that was harder than it seemed. God had said that Brandon was the only one who could find a way to thread this pitiless needle which threatened to destroy everything he cared about. No one else, only him. Maybe that was still true, but it was awfully hard to believe it right then. Bran felt small and useless and frightened, like a weaponless mouse sent out to do battle with a dark and terrible elephant.

He stared out at the passing taiga with eyes that barely saw, focused almost completely inward on his troubled soul.

Chapter Eight

As soon as he reached the city, Brandon found a place where his phone had service and then called Dr. Anderson. It wasn't quite midnight yet in Louisiana, if he counted the hours properly. Late, yes, but not _completely_ unreasonable. It took a minute for the call to connect, and then he wasn't surprised when Jonah answered.

"Hey, buddy. Is your dad still awake?" Brandon asked.

"No, they already went to bed maybe an hour ago. But hold on just a sec and I'll wake them up," Jonah said.

"You're sure they won't mind?" Brandon asked.

"Nah. They're used to getting calls in the middle of the night anyway, if there's an emergency at the hospital or somethin' like that," Jonah said.

"Okay, then," Brandon agreed. He had to wait several minutes while Jonah woke up his parents and got them to the phone, but eventually Dr. Anderson picked up the receiver.

"Hey, kid, what's up?" Dr. Anderson asked, sounding sleepy.

"I'm afraid things are worse than we thought, sir. Lana's in prison for murder," Brandon said bluntly, getting right down to business.

There was a long pause on the other end.

"I don't know what to say," Dr. Anderson finally said.

"She didn't do it, though; I _know_ she didn't," Brandon said vehemently.

"So what do you think happened?" Dr. Anderson asked.

"She got caught in a fight between two gangs, and since she was the only one the cops could catch, they blamed her for the killing," Brandon said.

"That's bad," Dr. Anderson said.

"I didn't know she was about to get kicked out on the street like that," Bran said, letting his voice show some of the misery he felt.

"Slow down, boy. You're leaving too much out. How come she ended up on the street?" Dr. Anderson said.

"Her dad kicked her out. He was really mad about everything, from what I heard. So he took her to an orphanage there in Vyborg and dropped her off, but kids can only stay in those places till they turn sixteen. That's when they have to move out, and then there's nowhere for them to go but the streets. So they join gangs and things to survive, and sometimes it gets them killed or gets them involved with drugs and criminal stuff and they end up in jail for a long time. She's not the first one it ever happened to," Brandon explained.

"I don't doubt it, Bran. It's a dark world we live in," Dr. Anderson agreed.

"But I never thought. . . " Brandon began, and then stopped, unsure of what he meant to say.

"No, you never had any reason to think about such things, thank God. I know you haven't had the easiest life in the world yourself, but sooner or later we all catch a glimpse of something _really_ ugly like that, something that shocks us to the core. It's never easy, and it never happens at a time when you think it will. I'm sorry you had to face it alone and far from home, but the only thing that matters now is what you choose to do about it," Dr. Anderson said.

"What do you mean?" Bran asked.

"Some people, when they first come face to face with the pain in the world, they turn away and pretend they don't see. They surround themselves with little pleasures and hobbies, and do their best not to think about anything beyond the edges of their ordinary little world. They don't do much harm, perhaps, but then again they don't do much good, either. They live a life which is almost completely selfish, even though most of them would be shocked if you ever told them so," Dr. Anderson said.

"And the other kind?" Brandon asked.

"The other kind choose to do something; to nurse the sick, to comfort the weeping, to heal such hurts as they can, even though it may cost them everything on earth they ever thought they wished for. And the ones who make _that_ choice soon discover a great secret," Dr. Anderson said.

"What's that?" Brandon asked.

"That a life of selfless love is also a life of joy," Dr. Anderson said.

The words reminded Brandon instantly of those verses on the foil picture that Lisa had given him, about the clay and the pebble. He didn't really disagree with the statement, but it was awfully hard to live up to in real life.

"I'm trying to do what I can," Brandon said, unsure what Dr. Anderson wanted him to say.

"Good boy. Do whatever you can, whenever you get the chance. But right now let's think about what we can do for Lana. I'm afraid this new situation makes things a lot more complicated than we first thought," Dr. Anderson said.

"Yes, sir, it does. I don't know what to do at this point, and she's only got till Friday night. That's only six days even if you count _today,_ and I'm supposed to leave for the airport in just three more hours," Brandon said.

"I'm not sure either, Bran. Even if we hired a lawyer and opened a court case on Monday morning at the crack of dawn, I don't believe it would do any good. Things like that can drag on for years sometimes, especially the serious cases. I'm certain there's no legal way of getting her out within the next few days," Dr. Anderson said.

"But we _have_ to," Brandon said, and Dr. Anderson was silent again for a long time.

"Yes. . . in this particular case, I think you're right. But you and I both know that if we can't get her out legally, then the only other choice is to break her out somehow," he finally said. Brandon might have been more shocked by the suggestion if he hadn't already been thinking about it on some level himself. Thinking about it wasn't the same thing as having a plan in place, though. He was as far from that as ever.

"But _how?_ And what if I get caught? They'd probably throw me in jail and flush the key down the drain. Besides that, it's not spring break anymore. I'd have to stay here at least a few more days even to _try_ something like that, and it'll get Lisa in trouble if I start missing school. Not to mention my dad will find out and then it'll give him even more ammunition to take me away," Brandon said.

"I'm sure that's all true, Bran. But it's just like I told you before; I don't think God would ask you to do something He knew was impossible. There's a way to get Lana out of there, somehow. I'm certain of that. Maybe not a _guaranteed_ way, but a possibility at least. Sometimes you have to be brave enough to try, even when things are scary and you know they might not end well. Is Lana worth the risk, or is she not?" Dr. Anderson asked.

"Of course she is," Brandon said.

"Then don't worry. I can write you a doctor's excuse for school, so I think we've got _that_ part covered. We can always say you're getting treatment for a heart condition. Then it won't even be a lie," Dr. Anderson said, and in spite of everything Brandon had to laugh at that.

"Yeah, I guess you're right," he agreed.

"It might not hurt if you could find somebody trustworthy over there who'd be willing to help you right now. I can only do so much from six thousand miles away," Dr. Anderson said.

"Well, there's a girl and her brother at the orphanage in Vyborg who already helped me an awful lot this week; Tatiana and Vladic Volkov. They took me all over town looking for Lana, and then got me in to see her at the prison. They might help me with this too, I guess," Brandon said, wondering whether he really ought to drag them into such a dangerous criminal enterprise even if they were willing.

"How old are they?" Dr. Anderson asked, perhaps wondering the very same thing.

"She's not quite sixteen and he's twelve. I meant to say something to you about them anyway, as soon as I got a chance. Tatya asked me if I could try to find some people who might adopt Vlad, so he won't be out on the streets in a couple years," Brandon said.

"But not her, too?" Dr. Anderson asked.

"She's too old, or at least she thinks she is," Brandon explained.

"Hmm. . . well, I'll think about that, maybe see what I can come up with. One of the doctors at the air force base in Shreveport is a good friend of ours; I know he and his wife have occasionally talked about doing something like that. I could pass the word along, maybe see how they feel about the idea. Or if that doesn't work out then I'm sure we could find somebody else," Dr. Anderson said.

"Thanks, Dr. Anderson. I really, really appreciate it," Brandon said.

"It's the least I could do. It worries me about asking kids like that to get involved in a possible jailbreak, though; especially the little one. Is there nobody else you can think of?" Dr. Anderson asked.

"No, not really," Brandon admitted, and Dr. Anderson was silent for a few seconds, perhaps thinking.

"Well. . . I don't like it, but I guess you might as well ask them. They're probably already in trouble at this point whether they help you or not, unfortunately. If they've been seen visiting Lana at the prison recently then that's enough to put them right at the top of anybody's suspect list after the breakout. That's a dangerous place to be, especially if the police can't find anybody else to blame. We've seen that already in Lana's case," Dr. Anderson said.

"I hadn't thought of that," Brandon said, horrified that he might have inadvertently put his friends at risk. But Dr. Anderson wasn't finished.

"In fact, I think it might be best if you went ahead and brought them with you when you leave Russia, instead of leaving them behind till we can find a family for them. They can stay here along with Lana for a while if necessary," Dr. Anderson said.

"Maybe," Brandon agreed, frowning. Including Tatya and Vlad complicated the whole plan considerably, but Dr. Anderson was surely right about the danger.

"I have to warn you, though. You can't just fly out of Saint Petersburg after all this, whether you succeed or not. Your entry permit will be expired by then, and the others won't have the proper exit paperwork, either. You'll get arrested the second you try to go through customs. I'd suggest leaving from Helsinki airport in Finland instead, if you can find a way to slip across the border without getting caught. It'll simplify things. In the meantime, I can see about getting medical visas approved for Lana and your two friends. I'll arrange it so you can pick up the paperwork at the embassy in Helsinki whenever you get there, as long as everybody has a passport. Don't worry about all those technical things right now, just focus on finding a way to get all four of you out of Russia as soon as possible. You don't have much time," Dr. Anderson said.

"That's kind of a scary thought," Brandon admitted, a bit frightened by the prospect of everything he had to do in such a short space of time. So many things could go so horribly wrong at any moment.

"Well. . . I don't guess I can blame you for feeling that way. I'd probably feel the same way myself, if the shoe was on the other foot. But my nephew always likes to say that if you can't be heart-brave, then sometimes face-brave will have to do. And if you wear that face long enough, then you'll find that your heart goes along with it after a while. So try to have some courage, boy, even if it's only the imitation kind. It'll serve you well when the hard times come," Dr. Anderson said.

"I'll give it my best shot. And thank you for everything, sir. You've done more than I can ever repay you for," Brandon said.

"I've already been paid back a thousand times over, Bran," Dr. Anderson said, and for a second Brandon nearly asked him what _that_ was supposed to mean. Then he brushed it off as irrelevant. There were more important things to worry about.

He stood there on the sidewalk for a few minutes, discouraged almost to the point of despair and wondering what to do next. Breaking Lana out of prison seemed like an impossible scheme, the kind of hare-brained idea that only a fool would ever contemplate. He might end up dead or in prison himself just for _trying_ such a thing.

But then again, what other choice did he have?

Bran chewed his bottom lip, thinking. His entry permit would expire at midnight, and after that he'd be in Russia illegally. Getting caught with expired papers was enough to land him in jail even before he got anywhere _near_ the prison, and he knew from experience that the cops were liable to check his documents at any time. Therefore the very first thing he had to do was to find a safe place to stay while he worked out a plan for everything else.

That made things difficult. Any hotel would check his papers, and he didn't dare sleep in the park like a vagrant, either. The only sure thing he could think of was to camp out in the woods for a few days, maybe with a sleeping bag and a fire to keep off the cold. He didn't much like that idea either, but he finally decided it would do until he could come up with something better.

With that issue settled, Brandon trotted along Nevsky Prospect till he found an upscale bistro with a strong wi-fi connection so he could use the internet. Then he sat there all day watching prison movies on his phone, hoping something he saw might offer a spark of inspiration for how to plan a real escape attempt. The restaurant didn't care how long he stayed, as long as he kept spending money now and then.

Most of the movies seemed lame and stupid even to him, but he finally decided the most workable plan might be to follow the city sewers underneath the building and then break in through one of the bathrooms. Those concrete walls had looked pretty old and crumbly, after all. There was no way to find out for sure whether such a thing would work or not without actually going down into the sewers to check, but it seemed worth a try.

The plan would be dangerous even if it _did_ work, of course. Those prison guards had real bullets, and they wouldn't hesitate to use them, either. Brandon had never done anything deeply unlawful before, and the prospect of doing it now made him sick with fear. The worst crime he'd ever committed was stealing loose change from parked cars, back in the bad old days when he'd been too hungry to care whether it was wrong or not. But people didn't usually get shot for things like _that._

He also fretted and dithered for hours over what to do about Tatya and Vlad. Dr. Anderson had a point about how they might as well help him since they were already in danger anyway, but Brandon hated to involve them any deeper than necessary. He finally decided it couldn't hurt to at least talk things over with the two of them, so he took the last train out to Vyborg before it got too late.

His appearance created quite a stir at the orphanage. He spotted Tatya sitting on one of the couches with a copy of _Devochka_ magazine almost as soon as he entered the public room, but she was too absorbed in whatever she was reading to notice him at first. Then she glanced up to see what the younger kids were making such a fuss about.

"Brandon?" she asked, her mouth falling open in shocked surprise. He couldn't really blame her, since he was supposed to be on a plane halfway across the ocean by then.

"Yup, it's me. Listen, I really need to talk to you for a little while. Can we go somewhere private? Like maybe outdoors?" he asked. The room was full of other kids who certainly didn't need to overhear anything.

"I guess so, as long as we don't stay out too long," Tatya agreed.

"Okay. Bring Vlad, too, though. I don't want to have to explain twice," Brandon added.

She hurried off to fetch her brother, and the three of them were soon outside in the street together. Tatya took them to the park at Vyborg Castle, and there she stopped.

"Is this all right? I don't think anyone can hear what we say, unless we yell," she said. Bran decided that was probably true; there were a few other people on the castle grounds, but they were much too far away to hear anything. The sun was already down and the stars were out, and most folks were probably at home thinking about supper and bed. It wasn't quite as cold as usual, but Brandon could still see his breath in the air.

"Yeah, this'll work," he agreed, sitting down on a bench nearby.

"So what is it, then?" Tatya asked, taking a seat beside him.

"I think we can get Lana out, if you'll help me," he said in a low voice.

"But how? Did you get a lawyer?" she asked.

"No. We're gonna break her out," Brandon said, and this time the look of shock on Tatya's face was almost comical.

" _What?"_ she asked.

"We're gonna break in there and take her out, whether they like it or not," Brandon clarified.

"That's impossible," Tatya said.

"No, it's not," Brandon promised.

"This is one plan I truly have to hear," Tatya said, shaking her head.

"Could we get back in to see her tomorrow? I know it's already too late today," Brandon asked.

"Maybe. Probably, if we have the cash. But why are we doing this? Surely a lawyer would be better," Tatya asked.

"I'm afraid it might be hard to believe," Brandon said, choosing his words carefully.

"Try me," Tatya said.

"When you and Lana used to share a room, did she ever talk about me?" Brandon asked.

"Yes, all the time," Tatya said dryly.

"Did she ever tell you that I can understand dreams and visions, like Daniel and the other prophets used to do?" Brandon asked.

"She mentioned it a few times, yes. I never knew if she was serious or not," Tatya said.

"Well, she was. My friend Dr. Anderson had a dream about her a few months ago. He said she was in serious trouble and that if I didn't bring her back to Texas before April the fourth then she'd die. He didn't understand why or how, but that's the reason I came here in the first place, to bring her back home before it's too late. He said nobody else could do it except me. But that was before we knew she was locked up for murder, and the fourth of April is only six more days from now. There's no possible way a lawyer would have time to get her out by then. So if I don't break her out myself then she'll die," Brandon said.

Tatya was quiet for a while, perhaps thinking about this, and finally cleared her throat.

"I think if anyone else had told me this, I would not believe him. But Lana does not lie; this I know. She told me you have this strange power, so if you say she is in deadly danger then I can only trust your word. But what did you have in mind?" she asked.

"First let me say that I want all four of us to leave the country at the same time. I'm afraid the police might already connect you and Vlad with anything I do at this point. You've been seen with me quite a lot lately. Dr. Anderson is trying to arrange visas, and he thinks he knows of a family who might take you both," Brandon said.

"Really?" Tatya asked.

"Hopefully," Brandon said, but Tatya still hesitated.

"Perhaps you should tell me your plan first. I can't promise anything unless I know what the risks may be," she finally said.

"All right, fair enough. I noticed the prison is made of old crumbly cement, right? So if we come up through the sewers then we should reach a place where one of the bathrooms is located. I think we can dig through the walls and make an opening big enough for Lana to crawl through. We can take a blowtorch with us to crumble any spots that are too tough to dig, since heat turns concrete back to dust. Then we could all get away, especially if it's late at night when there's nobody to see," Brandon said.

"I'm sure someone has thought of that before," Tatya said, with a skeptical frown on her face.

"Probably. I'm sure every possible idea has been thought of and tried at least once. But they seem pretty slovenly at this particular place, if you ask me. Most of the prisoners are too weak and beaten down to try anything. I bet ninety-nine percent of them wouldn't even know about the sewers, or how to use a blowtorch, let alone have anybody on the outside willing to help them. It can work. I know it can," Brandon said, trying to sound as convincing as possible. But Tatya still looked uneasy.

"I would like to believe you. And maybe your plan will work. But it would still be very dangerous. There are many walls in the prison, and the guards have guns. Getting out won't be so easy," she warned.

"I know that, but I think it's the best chance I'll ever have. Certainly the best chance that _she'll_ ever have," Brandon said.

"And what then? We may get her out, yes, but then she would never be allowed to leave the country. And we could never survive on the run forever. It will not be long before the guards discover a hole in the wall and come after us. Then what would happen?" Tatya asked, but he'd already thought of that objection.

"I told you, I don't plan to stay in Russia even a second longer than necessary. All we have to do is slip across the border somewhere, pick up the visas in Helsinki, and fly home from there. I know it's still risky, but surely it's got to be better than going to live with the gangs in a few months, doesn't it?" Brandon asked, and Tatya frowned again at that.

"Are you _sure_ all that would work?" she finally asked.

"We'll never know if we don't try," Brandon said, and then Tatya smiled faintly.

"I still think it's very dangerous. But you're also right; nothing is gained without risk. I think I will be glad to see a little more of the world than Vyborg for a change. Yes, we'll help you," she decided.

"Great!" Brandon exclaimed.

"But I will also say that we should go early in the morning. Vlad and I will skip school tomorrow, but there will come a time when Mrs. Melkova will start to wonder where we are. If possible, we should try to finish everything and leave the area in one day. Otherwise our disappearance will complicate everything. The authorities may even believe you have kidnapped us," Tatya said.

"I agree. We should get everything done as soon as possible," Brandon said.

"We must also decide immediately which way to leave the city. The secretary at the prison knows my name, and Vlad's too. She knows Lana is from Vyborg. This is the very first place they would look for us after the escape, most especially the roads and trains that come this way from Saint Petersburg. It is the shortest route to Helsinki, yes, but we dare not come back this way. We must choose a direction they will not expect," Tatya warned.

"What other ways are there?" Brandon asked.

"There is the highway to Narva on the Estonian border. That would be the second quickest way out of the country, but I fear they would think of that, also. But any of the other roads will take us deeper into Russia, and that would not be wise, either," Tatya said, thinking out loud.

"Could we find a boat, do you think? Dr. Anderson already warned me not to fly," Brandon asked.

"I don't think so. There are not many harbors close to Saint Petersburg, and the authorities will be watching all of them if there is a major prison break. We might perhaps head north to the coast, to Archangel or Murmansk, and leave from there by ship. That would mean taking the east road out of the city, which probably no one would think we would use," Tatya said thoughtfully.

"How far is it?" Brandon asked.

"Seven hundred miles to Murmansk. Maybe half that, to the White Sea," Tatya said.

"That's too far. We don't have that much time," Brandon said, and Tatya furrowed her brows.

"I suppose we could also take the south road to Pskov, and then somehow cross over Lake Peipus into the southern parts of Estonia. But what then? We would still have a long journey to reach Helsinki at that point, across a country we have no permission to enter," she said.

"True, but that's the least of our worries right now. We can figure that part out when we're safely over the border and don't have any cops breathing down our necks," Brandon said.

"Perhaps," Tatya said, still sounding dubious.

"You and Vlad don't even have passports, do you?" Brandon asked, remembering what Dr. Anderson had said about everybody needing one.

"No, there was never any need. I'm old enough to sign for my own but Vlad is not. I don't know if they will let me apply on his behalf or not. But besides that, we will have to have our birth certificates and Mrs. Melkova has those. Not to mention that it will take several weeks before the passports can be issued," Tatya said.

"I'm willing to bet there's a way to rush it, if they get paid enough," Brandon said dryly. If he'd discovered anything lately, it was the fact that money could solve a great many problems.

"No doubt that is true. But we still have to have our birth certificates from Mrs. Melkova's desk, and I suppose we should take Lana's passport as well. I know she left it there for safekeeping when she went into the city," Tatya said.

"Would Mrs. Melkova give us all those things?" Brandon asked.

"She would want to know why, and she is not stupid. If you ask for Lana's passport and we ask for our birth certificates, then she will know that something is going on," Tatya said.

"I'll just have to tell her the truth, then," Brandon said.

"She won't let us be involved in anything criminal, Brandon. If you tell her what we mean to do, then she won't let us have the papers at all. She would think it was for our own protection," Tatya said.

"She's probably right. But if she won't give us the papers any other way then we'll have to sneak into her office and take them," Brandon said.

"I think I can do that tonight, if nothing goes wrong. But where will _you_ spend the night?" Tatya asked.

"I thought about camping in the woods somewhere. If the cops catch me with an expired entry permit then I'll end up in jail," Brandon admitted.

"Perhaps I can arrange something better than that. I think one of the families from church would let you spend the night in return for a little money. They would not check your papers or turn you in," Tatya suggested.

"Sounds good to me," Brandon agreed. Even the most uncomfortable couch in the world was better than the cold hard ground.

Chapter Nine

Tatya took him to a cramped apartment somewhere in downtown Vyborg, where she introduced him to a young couple and their two children whose names he never managed to remember.

"We will be back early in the morning, if nothing goes wrong at the office tonight. Wish me luck," Tatya said in a low voice, just before she and Vlad headed back to the orphanage.

"Good luck," Brandon whispered, and never in his life had he meant it so fervently.

He slept that night on a genuine red corduroy sofa which was undoubtedly older than dinosaur toenails. The springs dug into his ribs from where stuffing had leaked out over the years, and the fabric smelled like stale dog pee from the family's elderly Chihuahua. _Not_ one of Brandon's favorite scents, especially when he knew it would probably seep into his clothes overnight and leave him smelling exactly the same way.

He didn't complain, though. The couch was still a better place to sleep than the woods, and he would have had a hard time sleeping anywhere that night, worried as he was about whether Tatya had been able to get hold of the papers or not.

"I got them," Tatya declared, as soon as she and Vlad arrived at the apartment early the next morning. She was breathless after climbing six flights of steps from the street, but still smiling with accomplishment.

"Did you have any trouble?" Brandon asked.

"No, but Mrs. Melkova will notice soon enough that we are missing, after the two of us don't return for bedtime tonight. Then it won't be long before she sees that our papers are gone, too. We have little time before the secret is out," Tatya said.

She and Vlad seemed to have nothing with them but the clothes on their backs and the shoes on their feet; not even so much as a backpack or a purse to carry personal items.

"Do you and Vlad need to go back to the orphanage for anything?" Brandon asked, uncertain whether they could get by with so little.

"No, there is nothing at that place which matters anymore. We have a new life to think of," Tatya replied firmly.

"Let's go, then," Brandon said.

They took the train back into Saint Petersburg, and then Brandon went immediately to one of the larger banks to withdraw thirty thousand rubles from Dr. Anderson's credit card. He got a few suspicious glances for that, but nobody actually questioned him.

"Why do we need so much cash? It would be very dangerous, if anyone knew you had such a large amount of money in your pocket," Tatya whispered as they left the building.

"I know, but cash is easier to spend, and it won't leave a paper trail, either. If we're on the run then we don't need to give the cops a fix on where we are by using a card," Brandon said.

"Can they do that?" Tatya asked.

"I'm not sure, but that's what happened in one of the movies I saw yesterday. I'd rather be safe than sorry about things like that. Here, we'll divide up the cash just in case anything happens," Brandon said, handing each of them a wad of bills.

Privately, money issues didn't worry him even half so much as his expired paperwork did. All three of them kept a sharp eye out for cops, and whenever they spotted one Brandon immediately went inside a shop or turned down a side street. There was no sense in taking unnecessary chances.

The first order of business was to get Tatya and Vlad's passports, and sure enough, for a hefty fee they were able to get those issued the same day. Then Bran got in touch with Dr. Anderson again to check on the medical visas.

"Was the doctor able to arrange everything?" Tatya asked, as soon as Brandon got off the phone.

"Yeah, the visas are ready. They're only good for three weeks, but we can worry about getting extensions later on if we have to. They'll get us past the customs agents and that's all that matters. We can pick them up at the embassy in Helsinki anytime this week. If we make it that far," Brandon muttered under his breath.

Next stop was the engineering department at city hall, where after a major hassle and three more bribes, they were able to get a partial map of the city sewer system. It turned out there was no such thing as a _complete_ map, only bits and pieces. But what they had was enough to figure out where the main line passed underneath the prison building and where the closest manhole should be. That was all they really needed to know.

With everything else arranged, the only loose end still to be taken care of was to go speak to Lana herself, to let her know what was coming. They stopped at a bank to withdraw some additional bribe money, and then headed over to the prison.

The secretary seemed to remember them, and again there was a lengthy conversation about who-knew-what, while Bran did his best not to start sweating bullets. It was amazing how nerve-wracking it could be when you knew you were about to do something criminal.

Tatya gave the woman the money, and they soon found themselves escorted into what looked like the same Spartan visiting room as before. Shortly afterward, a guard brought Lana inside. Brandon ran over to hug her tight as soon as the door was shut, but this was no occasion for catching up on old times.

"We're getting you out of here tonight," he whispered.

"But—" she started, and he put a finger over her lips.

"No buts; just listen for a minute. You remember Dr. Anderson, right?" Brandon asked.

"Yes, I think so. What about him?" Lana asked.

"God gave him a true dream a few months ago. He said if we didn't get you back to Texas before April the fourth then you'd die. That means we've got to get you out of here right _now,"_ Brandon said, bracing himself for questions or doubt. To her credit, Lana didn't quibble about the details. Maybe she had an easier time accepting the situation since she already knew about his gift, because her first question was a purely practical one.

"How?" she asked simply, cutting right to the heart of the matter.

"I think we found a way to break into the bathrooms tonight, by coming up through the sewer system. Which bathroom is closest to your cell? And can you meet us there at midnight without anybody harassing you?" Brandon asked, and Lana furrowed her brows for a minute, thinking.

"I'm in cellblock A, which is in the northeast corner of the prison. And yes, I think I can meet you there at midnight. They don't usually lock us down unless there's been a fight or something like that," she finally agreed.

"Okay, we'll see you tonight," Brandon said.

After leaving the prison, they immediately headed downtown again to buy a blowtorch, four headlamps, some rope, and a few other items that might be useful.

It was shortly before sunset when they returned to the slums right outside the prison walls. None of them wanted to be out roaming the streets after dark, at least not in _that_ neighborhood, so they found an abandoned apartment on the second floor of the building closest to the manhole they meant to use. They stowed four sets of clean clothes along with several jugs of wash water inside an empty cabinet in the bathroom, and then tried to stay quiet and lay hid for a few hours. They didn't dare shine any lights or make noise, not even indoors, and Brandon felt so unsafe that he unconsciously kept his back up against a wall the whole time. There were too many unfriendly eyes in the area, not just prison guards but gang members, too.

It got cold after the sun went down, and about eight thirty Brandon decided it was time to get started. There was no telling how long it might take to dig through the cement, and besides that he was so edgy that sitting still any longer would have been unbearable.

"Come on, let's go. We need to make sure we've got enough time to do this before midnight," he said.

The others followed him downstairs, and then all of them hesitated at the front doors. The moon was almost full, flooding the streets with silver light and casting thick black shadows behind every object. A dozen robbers could have been hiding within a block of where Brandon stood and he never would have seen them. He had to remind himself several times not to think about stuff like that.

"Okay, I don't see anybody, and there's the manhole," he whispered, pointing at the middle of the street. He was every bit as hesitant now as he'd been antsy just a few minutes ago, and from the looks on Tatya and Vlad's faces, so were they.

"It will be unspeakably filthy," Tatya said.

"Yeah, but let's go," Brandon said, trying to sound tough so he wouldn't lose his nerve. It was pure imitation courage, as Dr. Anderson had called it, but it did seem to help.

He walked boldly into the street and lifted the manhole cover with a special tool he'd bought for that very purpose earlier in the day. It made a muffled clatter against the pavement, and then Brandon took a deep breath before heading down the ladder. Tatya brought up the rear, and as soon as she pulled the cover back over the hole they were instantly plunged into inky darkness. Brandon heard a soft whimper, probably from Vlad, and switched on his headlamp as soon as he could find the toggle.

They found themselves inside a clay pipe large enough even for Brandon to walk through if he hunched over a little. He was also knee deep in sewage, and the stench was almost strong enough to make him vomit.

"Come on, then," Brandon said, still whispering. They seemed to be alone for the moment, but he was afraid echoes might travel down the pipe and attract unwelcome attention.

He set off walking toward the prison, carefully counting paces to make sure they didn't go too far. Vlad had to stop and throw up at one point along the way, but there was nothing to be done about it.

"This should be the place," Brandon finally said, when they reached an area with several large drains coming down from the sides and above.

"Are you sure?" Tatya asked, looking pale and sick herself.

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure. These big drains come down from the showers and toilets and things. Might as well get started," Brandon said.

He used a hammer to smash open the top of the clay sewer pipe, sending chunks of rubble falling everywhere and splashing all three of them from head to toe with sewage. Brandon's stomach did a lazy heave, and he had to stand still with his hands on his knees for several minutes to keep from losing his supper. Sweat popped out on his forehead, and he had to swallow hard to get rid of the sour taste of acid in the back of his throat.

"Hold your breath next time so you won't smell it as much," Tatya suggested, and Brandon nodded.

The strategy seemed to help, even though there were still several times when it was all Bran could do not to stop and heave his guts up. But the effort paid off when he finally broke through into a narrow space full of drains and water pipes between two cement walls. A little more demolition opened up a good-sized hole.

Brandon grabbed hold of a rusty water pipe to pull himself up, and soon he was wedged in between the two walls. There was barely enough space to let him through, and he wondered uneasily if Tatya and Vlad would be able to pull him back out if he got stuck in there. He could feel bits of concrete and showers of flaky rust falling everywhere as he brushed against the walls and pipes, and it smelled dank and moldy. That was a definite improvement over the sewer, to be sure, but still nasty enough in its own right.

He finally worked his way far enough into the gap that he must have been above floor level, and then he started digging out chunks of gritty concrete with the claw end of his hammer. Whoever built the place had mixed in way too much sand with too little cement, probably to save money, and it must have been older than Methuselah's dentures anyway. Good enough to keep a lid on a bunch of half-starved female inmates with no tools, maybe, but no match for a hammer. He didn't even need the blowtorch at all.

The wall was about eight inches thick, but finally Brandon poked through into empty space at one spot. Then he switched off his headlamp so he could peer through the hole at whatever lay on the other side.

Sure enough, it was a bathroom. The place was painted the same dingy olive green as the visiting room and lit only by a single dull fluorescent tube. Judging from what he could see, Bran guessed he was somewhere inside the wall behind the showerheads. The room itself was deserted, and since it was still early there was no reason to break completely through the wall just yet. He quickly thinned a wide area to no more than an inch thick, and then clambered back down to stand next to the others.

"We still have about an hour before midnight. We'll have to wait till then before we break the rest of the wall open, just in case. We don't want anybody to come in and find a hole," Brandon whispered.

At 11:45 he climbed back up to wait for Lana. She came through the door right at midnight, looking thin and scared, and she seemed to be alone. Brandon noticed her glancing around as if looking for some kind of clue, so he flashed his headlamp through the hole to attract her attention.

"Beebo, is that you?" she whispered, coming up to the wall in front of him.

"Yeah, it's me. The wall's dug almost completely through, but it'll take just a few more minutes to finish. You better back up so it won't fall on you," Brandon whispered back.

"Hurry. I'm not sure when the guard will make his rounds," Lana said.

Brandon did hurry, tearing chunks out of the remaining wall as fast as he could. Then, when he judged the remnant was weak enough, he made a sudden heave with all the force he could muster. The last bit of wall gave way, and he went sprawling to the floor covered in gray dust and assorted pieces of concrete. Lana ran to throw her arms around him for a kiss, and for a second he returned it.

"Gah, you _stink,"_ she said, and Brandon laughed a little.

"It gets worse than that, I'm afraid. But come on, let's go before we get caught," he said urgently. Lana nodded, and then as soon as they splashed down next to Tatya and Vlad, everybody took off slogging as fast as they dared back in the direction of the manhole cover.

At first it seemed as if they might slip away without being noticed. Brandon was just climbing out to join the others on the street when they heard the sirens begin to blare at the prison.

"They must have found the hole," Lana said.

"This is the first place they'll look, then. Come on!" Brandon said, and then took off running.

"What about changing clothes?" Tatya called after him.

"There's no time for that now; we'll worry about it later!" Brandon hissed.

Within seconds they were out of sight of the prison, lost in the maze of streets among the decrepit buildings. But the police must have arrived on the scene even faster than Brandon had feared, because he soon heard heavy footsteps running through the street, and yelling in Russian. The four of them were dangerously exposed at that point, right in the middle of a long block between two massive apartment buildings. They had to get out of sight immediately, so Brandon grabbed Lana's hand and took off at top speed around the nearest corner.

It didn't help. There was _another_ group of guards coming in from the far end of the block they'd just entered, and this new set of enemies spotted the fugitives at once. One of the cops gave a sharp cry of discovery, and then Brandon knew the situation was about to get ugly. Some of the guards were already reaching for their pistols.

All these things flashed across his mind's eye in a split second, and he glanced around wildly for some avenue of escape. For a second Bran felt just like a rat in a trap, but then he thought of one possible way out.

"Come on!" he hissed, darting inside the nearest apartment building.

The four of them ran up the dilapidated stairs all the way to the roof, never slowing down to glance behind and with only the barest nod to keeping quiet. It was a twelve-story climb, and even Brandon was sweaty and gasping for air by the time they reached the top. They finally stumbled to a halt just outside the final access door, with nowhere left to run.

"They find us here!" Vlad said, his voice thick with fear. They all knew the police had seen them running into the building, and they also knew it wouldn't take longer than a few minutes to check every room in the structure. The roof was likely the last place the cops would search if they did the logical thing and worked their way up from the bottom floor, but they wouldn't be delayed for long.

"They won't find us, Vlad. I've got an idea," Brandon said.

He quickly grabbed the rope from his pack and lassoed a vent of some kind on the rooftop across the street from them, silently thanking God and Cody for teaching him calf-roping. Then he pulled it tight and tied it to an antenna on their own roof before fixing two more ropes at about shoulder height to form a kind of narrow suspension bridge.

"Come on and let's walk across. I think we can do it if we don't look down too much," Brandon said.

There was literally no other option, so Bran took the lead. It took all his courage to step off the edge, and then for a second he froze, staring down at the emptiness below his feet. The parapet of the building was even higher than the cliff at Mount Nebo where he'd toyed with jumping, but this time he didn't have even the slightest desire to flirt with death. Far below them was an empty street littered with wind-blown trash, and even from that height the pavement looked stony and pitiless as a bill collector.

Finally he tore his eyes away and moved forward, not daring to go too fast for fear the others might lose their shaky balance and go plunging to their deaths on the dirty concrete far below. But that didn't happen, and soon all four of them set foot safely on the roof of the next building. Then Brandon slashed the ropes. With no obvious bridge and maybe just a little luck, it was possible the cops wouldn't realize where they'd gone.

Just in time, too. They barely had time to scramble behind a rusty old chicken coop before the police and prison guards burst out onto the roof of the building they'd just left. Then for a while Brandon heard loud cursing as they searched the place to no purpose. They apparently never noticed the cut ropes, or at least never attached any importance to them.

Eventually they gave up and went back downstairs.

"They may search this building eventually, too," Lana murmured quietly, and Brandon nodded.

"Come on, then. Let's go while we still can," he said.

They hurried down the stairs of the new building as quickly as they dared without falling head over heels, and then slipped out into the shadowy streets once more. For the next hour or so they ducked and dodged through the deserted buildings, several times barely eluding the police. Eventually they reached an unguarded subway station, and after another few hours of trains, subways, and plain old walking, they ended up far outside the city limits to the east. Tatya bought another set of clean clothes for each of them from a street vendor, and they paused just long enough to wash up in a public restroom so they wouldn't stink anymore. Then at long last Bran called a halt in a small clearing surrounded by pine trees, and all around them was nothing but the silence of the north woods.

He finally let go of Lana's hand, and then sat down on a rotten log to think. The great escape had succeeded beautifully, but they were far from out of the woods just yet. Somehow or other they still had to reach Lake Peipus, and after running from the single-minded determination of the police for so many hours, Brandon was full of fear and foreboding. The cops plainly didn't mean to give up till they either killed or captured all four of them, and that was a scary thought.

"So what happens now?" Lana asked quietly, watching him as he thought about these things.

"I don't know. We have to try to get out of Russia as fast as we can. We've got visas and plane tickets waiting on us in Helsinki as soon as we can get there, but I think we'll try to slip across Lake Peipus into Estonia so maybe they won't guess what we're doing. Tatya already grabbed your passport," Brandon explained.

"Should we perhaps try to make it across the lake tonight?" Tatya asked.

"No. . . I'm afraid we'd get lost if we tried something like that in the dark. It's late, and we're all exhausted, and I think we're safe for now. Let's rest here for what's left of tonight. Then we'll take the early train to Pskov in the morning and figure things out from there. Mrs. Melkova already knows you and Vlad are missing by now; a few more hours won't make any difference," Brandon said.

Tatya hesitated as if she meant to say something else, but then she must have thought better of it.

"All right," she agreed.

They piled up armfuls of evergreen boughs beneath a sheltering tree to form a makeshift bed, soft and fragrant with pine resin. Brandon was almost asleep when he heard the soft sound of Lana singing.

"What are you doing?" he asked drowsily.

"Singing to the baby. He likes to keep me awake at night, kicking my ribs. But sometimes if I sing to him, he'll stop to listen for a while," Lana said.

"Really?" Brandon asked.

"Yes. It helps me sleep sometimes, if I can get him to be still. You can't imagine how strong he is. Put your hand there and he'll kick you, too; then you'll know how it feels," Lana said, moving his hand to a spot right below her ribs. It was the first opportunity for such a thing that he'd ever had. It had been too early to feel anything when Lana was taken away, and there'd never been a good time at the prison.

"I don't feel anything," Brandon said after a while.

"Just wait a little while and you will. But I've been thinking, Beebo. What do you think we should name him? We never talked about it very much before, but I would rather have something to call him even if we change our minds later," Lana said.

"Did you have any suggestions?" Brandon asked, temporizing. It wasn't a subject he'd given much thought.

"I'm not sure. In my family we've always had a tradition of naming the oldest son after his father," Lana said.

"I don't want to name him Brandon junior. That's too confusing," Brandon said.

"Well, what's your middle name then?" Lana asked.

"Trust me, we don't want to use that either. It's awful," Brandon said, suddenly shy. So far as he could remember, he'd never uttered his middle name to another living soul.

"Surely it couldn't be _that_ bad, could it?" Lana asked.

"Yeah, it really could," Brandon said.

"Well, now I'm curious. What is it?" Lana asked.

"You promise not to laugh?" Brandon asked.

"I promise," Lana agreed.

"It's Bartimaeus, but you better never tell anybody," Brandon whispered in her ear. Tatya and Vlad seemed to be asleep already, but there was no sense in taking unnecessary chances.

"That's not so bad," Lana said.

"So you say. I sure never heard of anybody else with that name before, except for that blind dude that Jesus gave back his sight," Brandon said.

"Well. . . that's not such a bad story to remember," Lana said.

"Maybe not. But I _definitely_ don't want to name the baby Bartimaeus, or even Bart for that matter," Brandon said firmly.

"You _do_ make things difficult sometimes, don't you?" Lana chided.

"Well. . . what about Michael? That's _your_ dad's name, after all," Brandon asked.

"No. I don't want to name my son after a man who turned his back on me. And besides that it sounds too much like your nephew's name," Lana said, every bit as firmly.

"Yeah, true, and I don't exactly want to name him Crush, either. But what about Stephen?" Brandon asked.

"Why Stephen?" Lana asked.

"It was my grandpa's name. I never knew him myself but my brother always said he was a good man. That's his knife I wear on my belt sometimes," Brandon said, somewhat diffidently. Lana considered the idea for a minute, and then nodded.

"All right, then. It will do for now. As I said, we can always change our minds later," she agreed.

Just then, Brandon felt a hard kick right under his palm, startling him. He yanked his hand away without thinking, and then tentatively put it back again.

"You see? I told you he's strong," Lana said, amused at his reaction.

"Yeah, he is," Bran admitted, and in that moment a subtle yet momentous change took place in the depths of his spirit. Suddenly two became three, as the baby was transformed in the twinkling of an eye from an abstract concept into a little boy named Stephen. A boy who could kick hard and enjoyed music; one who could be touched and spoken to and known. Love filled Brandon's heart for this child he'd never yet seen, as he felt that small foot against the palm of his hand.

"Will you sing to him for a while, so maybe he'll let me sleep?" Lana asked, perhaps not entirely oblivious to how Brandon felt at that moment.

"Sure," he agreed, trying to think of something appropriate.

"All right. Good night, my _krasny malchik,"_ Lana said, and he smiled a little.

"Good night, _milaya,"_ Brandon said.

Then he quietly sang the _Ozark Mountain Lullaby,_ a song about family and God and how love is the tie that binds; all the things he most wanted the boy to remember. On a more personal level, it was also a sweet reminder of Brandon's own childhood days in Arkansas, long before he ever came to Goliad. His choice to sing that particular song represented a sharing of his heart in many more ways than one. By the time it was over, Stephen was sleeping and so was Lana.

Bran quietly put his arms around both of them, and then shut his own eyes.

Chapter Ten

When morning came Brandon felt like he hadn't slept a wink, but he knew there was no more time to rest. They had to get out of Russia before the noose could be drawn any tighter around them than it already was.

The sky was full of gray clouds again when they headed back into town, but it didn't smell like snow anymore. Instead there was a cool softness in the air that reminded Brandon of a day in very early spring. It felt _rainish,_ as Cody might have said, even though it might still be hours before anything started to fall. So maybe the fearsome Russian winter really did have an end after all.

As soon as they reached the train station, Tatya handled all the details of getting them tickets to Pskov as soon as possible. The less time they lingered in public places, the better.

It turned out the next departure was in less than thirty minutes, and the train was almost empty since most people were heading _into_ the city at that hour on a Tuesday morning, not _out_ of it. They were even lucky enough to get a carriage all to themselves, and soon they were safely on their way.

Brandon and Lana held hands without talking, looking out at the passing countryside as the train rolled southward. The scenery was a mixture of evergreen woods and bits of farmland, with here and there a little wooden house or an onion-domed church glinting with gold even under the gray skies.

"Why do they build the churches like that?" Brandon asked after a while, for the sake of conversation.

"You mean the domes?" Lana asked.

"Yeah, those," Brandon said.

"Well, I'm not Orthodox, but you know that sometimes they light candles in church as a sign of devotion to God, yes?" Lana asked.

"Yeah, I heard about that before," Brandon agreed.

"Okay, so those towers are supposed to look like candles, and the domes are meant to look like candle flames. That's why the churches are often painted white, and the domes gold. So this whole land will be covered from sea to sea with bright little flames of devotion to Jesus. That's one reason the godless Communists destroyed so many of them. They were a constant reminder to the people to look up and remember that this world is not all there is. The leaders hated that," Lana said.

"I never knew that," Brandon said, looking at the churches with fresh interest.

"Not many foreigners do. But whenever you think of that terrible time, you should remember not only the cruelty of our atheist rulers in those days. You should think also of your brothers and sisters in Christ, and the countless thousands of them who were tortured and put to death in this land because they would not forsake the faith. It's a great glory to God that His church is still standing here, even after those who hated Him and murdered the saints have been swept away onto the ash heap of history. Whenever you see a Russian church, remember those things," Lana said.

Other than the churches there was nothing especially interesting to be seen along the way, so the trip was a dull one for nearly an hour. The train was only a few miles from Pskov at that point, crossing a tall embankment over scattered peat bogs and taiga.

That's when Tatya spotted the policemen.

"I was afraid of that," she said in a low voice, discreetly pointing through the window at the front door of the carriage. Three armed cops were checking passengers' identification documents in the car ahead of them, and even worse, they were carrying what looked like pictures.

"Come on, let's go," Brandon said abruptly, getting up from his seat and heading for the back door.

"Where are we going? We've only got two more cars left before we run out of train," Lana pointed out.

"I'm not sure, but at least it'll give us some time to think," Brandon said.

The last two cars were empty of other passengers, just as their own had been. Brandon locked each door as they went through, knowing it was futile, and when they reached the final carriage it was literally the end of the road. There was nowhere left to go.

"We've got to hide. They'll be back here any minute," Brandon said.

"There's nowhere to hide where they won't find us," Tatya said, and instead of answering Brandon went to the access hatch leading up to the roof.

"Maybe they won't think to look up there, if we're quiet," he said.

There was no time to argue about it, so the four of them scrambled up the ladder and then outside onto the cold metal roof, keeping as low as possible to avoid getting blown off by the wind. Then Bran closed the hatch behind them, wishing there was some way to lock it from the outside.

They didn't dare talk or move any more than absolutely necessary, and for a while nothing else happened. Then a policeman popped his head up through the access hatch. He saw them at once, of course, but then he wasted time by turning to shout the discovery to his friends instead of shooting first and asking questions later. That gave Brandon one final slender opportunity.

The embankment had changed over to an elevated trestle above marshy woods, and the train itself was slow enough and the ground wet enough that they might possibly survive jumping at that point. It was definitely worth the risk, since otherwise they were most likely about to get shot.

"Jump!" Brandon cried, and then took his own advice without waiting to see if the others followed.

He was instantly surrounded by a storm of bullets from the thwarted cops inside the carriage, and the sound of shattering glass when they shot through the windows was nearly as loud as the guns themselves. Brandon fully expected to be killed at any second, but the shots went wild because of motion and distance. Then the train was gone, and Brandon found himself dropping like a stone into the treetops below. That was bad enough, with the slender branches of the evergreens whipping against him like hundreds of thin and flexible switches of all sizes on the way down.

No doubt that was what saved him in the end, since the branches slowed him down and helped to break his fall. But it was awfully hard to be thankful for that while the trees were beating him to a bloody pulp.

The ground below the canopy was sprinkled with standing pools of stagnant water, and Brandon finally hit one of these boggy patches with what felt like bone-crushing force, knocking the breath out of him and adding a whole new dimension to the red haze of pain that already filled his body after his whipping from the branches. For a minute all he could do was curl up in the cold mud and groan.

But there was still Vlad and the girls to think of, so he forced himself to get up. He spotted Lana immediately, and then staggered through the muddy water to see if she was all right.

She was pale with pain when he got close enough to see, with her face covered in fresh cuts and bruises from the fall. She looked terrible, but then again Brandon supposed he probably didn't look any better himself.

"Are you okay?" he asked anxiously.

"I'm okay, I think. I did something to my shoulder, though. It feels like I twisted it too far. And I think Stephen is not happy about the fall; he's been kicking me ever since. But we have to find Tatya and Vlad; I know I saw them jump right behind me," Lana said briskly, struggling to her feet. Her cool Russian stoicism was back in full force in response to the disaster. She might break down and cry later on, but never in the middle of a crisis; not unless she was stretched absolutely to the breaking point.

Brandon had always rather admired her for that unflinching toughness, and never more so than right then. But he didn't mention all that; he just grasped her hand in his own and let it be. She was all right, and babies didn't kick unless they were very much alive and well. At the moment, those were the only two things that mattered.

It didn't take long for them to find the others. Tatya was sitting beside her brother at the edge of another boggy area, both of them looking every bit as battered as Brandon and Lana did. Tatya had a startling black eye from her trip through the trees, and Vlad looked even worse.

"What happened?" Brandon asked.

"Vlad was shot by one of the policemen," Tatya said. She sounded even more detached and clinical than Lana had, by which Brandon recognized that she must be utterly terrified.

"Where'd he get hit?" Brandon asked, getting down on his knees beside the other boy.

"Here," Tatya said, gesturing to a hole in the kid's shirt not far above his belt buckle. He was soaking wet and covered in mud from the bog, but in spite of all that Brandon could still see the blood stains in the fabric, dark red and sticky. The place was oozing red even as he watched, and Vlad's face was several shades paler than usual.

"We've got to find him a doctor," Brandon said.

"We dare not take him into Pskov; the police will be everywhere. We will have to seek help elsewhere," Tatya said.

"We should leave right away, then. It won't be long before the police come back to look for us _here,"_ Lana said.

Brandon had no choice but to carry Vlad, and even though the kid didn't weigh very much the burden got to be awfully heavy after a while, especially as bruised and battered as Brandon himself already was. The girls weren't strong enough to help, and Lana couldn't have carried anything anyway because of her twisted shoulder.

The bogs and trees seemed to go on forever as they struggled westward, and Bran lived in constant fear of what might happen if the police caught up to them again. There'd be no escaping a third time, and God only knew what kind of punishment they'd have to face from the authorities if they didn't get shot dead on the spot. Six million years in prison seemed like the very best they could hope for, if they weren't hauled away to some secret gulag in Siberia to work at hard labor for the rest of their lives. Brandon wasn't sure if they still had such places or not, but he definitely didn't want to find out the hard way.

They walked for hours before stumbling across a paved road that snaked through the woods. It had started to drizzle by then, keeping them sodden and cold in spite of the exercise. The highway seemed utterly deserted, so they took a chance and stopped to rest beside the pavement for a few minutes.

"Where are we, do you think?" Brandon asked.

"I think this is the road between Pskov and Lake Peipus. If we can make it to the lakeshore, then perhaps we can hire a boat to carry us across into Estonia," Tatya said.

"It'll have to be soon. It'll be dark in a few more hours, and I'm not sure how much longer I can carry Vlad, either," Brandon said.

"We can only try," Lana said.

They kept walking for several more hours, never meeting a single car. At first they tried to parallel the highway without actually using it, but they soon gave up on that idea. They were too exhausted, and the road was so much easier and faster that it seemed worth the risk.

Brandon felt like his arms might break if he had to lug Vlad much farther. The boy woke up from time to time during the trip, murmuring unintelligible words which Bran didn't know how to answer. Tatya usually came up beside them at such times to smooth the wet hair away from his face and quietly sing to him in Russian till he slept again.

"He is getting hot," she said, not long after dusk.

"Fever?" Brandon asked, even though he'd started to notice the same thing. Not too surprising, maybe, since the kid's guts had probably been torn open by the bullet as it passed through. Vlad didn't seem to be bleeding anymore, but peritonitis was surely bad enough.

"I think so. I am worried, Brandon. He needs help soon," Tatya said.

Thirty minutes later they crested a small hill and spotted the tranquil expanse of Lake Peipus stretching all the way to the western horizon. The sun was already down by then, and not far away were the lights of a small village twinkling brightly through the rain.

" _Finally,"_ Brandon murmured.

The sight of the lake gave all of them fresh energy, and they hurried eagerly into the village to see about finding a doctor and a boat, in that order. Unfortunately it turned out the place was too small to have any kind of medical facilities, but even then Tatya didn't suggest going back to Pskov.

"We'll have to try to find help across the lake," Lana said at last, and Tatya nodded even though her lips were pressed together in a tight line of worry. Brandon could tell she was getting more and more anxious about her brother the longer they had to put off doing anything for him, but it was hard to blame her for that.

They did manage to find a local fisherman who was willing to smuggle them across the lake in return for ten thousand rubles. It was enough money to make the man temporarily rich, and it almost wiped out Brandon's hoard of cash, too. He didn't haggle over the price, though. He just paid the man and forgot about it.

The fisherman put them down in the bilge of his boat under a semi-waterproof tarp which smelled pungently of dead fish, and then took them out across the lake.

"Why do we have to hide?" Brandon whispered after they were underway.

"Because sometimes the border guards patrol the lake, too. They might board the ship to investigate if it looks like there are more people than there should be," Lana said.

"Maybe they won't feel like working too hard on a dark and rainy night like this," Brandon said.

He must have been right, because in due course the fisherman dropped them off without incident on the western shore, not far (he said) from the small town of Räpina. There were still a few miles to walk from the beach to the hospital, but there was at least a decent road to follow.

It was a major relief to be safely out of Russia, but as they walked along the road a new and troublesome thought came into Brandon's mind.

"It worries me, showing up at the hospital like this. Even in Estonia," he finally said.

"Why do you say that?" Lana asked.

"People don't normally get shot in the guts by accident. It's kind of suspicious, especially when all of us are foreigners here. They might call the police. In fact I'd be shocked if they didn't, if only to check things out," Brandon said.

"We can't afford to deal with the authorities, even here. We're still very close to the border, and they _do_ work together at times. Not to mention all of us are here illegally. Could we treat Vlad ourselves, perhaps, or at least enough to get him home? It won't matter after that. We can take him to the hospital in Shreveport, or maybe even to Cadron Pool," Lana said.

"Maybe we could, if we knew exactly what's wrong with him and how bad it is. I'm sure the bullet tore him up inside and he's probably got a bad infection because of that, if nothing else. That's why he's so hot," Brandon said.

"You have your phone, don't you?" Lana asked.

"Yeah, if I've got service here and if it didn't break it when we fell through the trees. Why?" Brandon asked.

"Maybe you could get online and find out some things that way. See what kind of injuries a gunshot might cause," Lana said.

"That's a good idea," Brandon admitted. He had to put Vlad down at that point, even though there was nowhere to lay him except on the wet grass. It had mostly stopped raining by then, but everything was still dripping and waterlogged. Bran took the opportunity to stretch his cramped arms for a few seconds, and then pulled out his phone to see if he could get online. It didn't seem to be broken, thank God, but he was still afraid at first that he might not have service. Entering a new country seemed to have solved that problem, though, and he soon discovered that he had better service than he did at home. Unfortunately he also had very little battery left, and no way to recharge it. He'd have to be quick.

"Okay, it says here that the main dangers from gut shots are bleeding and infection, which I guess makes sense. The bullet tears apart the intestines and blood vessels, which causes peritonitis. Kind of like a burst appendix," Brandon said, reading from a medical website.

"But how does one treat a burst appendix?" Tatya asked.

"Um. . . surgery, for one thing. And strong antibiotics in the meantime," Brandon said, reading a little further.

"Well, we can't do surgery on him, so which antibiotic does he need?" Lana asked, and Bran held up a finger for a few seconds while he looked.

"Looks like they normally use something called Meropenem. It should keep him safe for a few days at least, as long as we can keep the infection under control," Brandon finally said.

"I never heard of it before," Lana said.

"Me neither, but that's what he needs," Brandon said.

"We would need a prescription for something like that, I'm sure," Tatya said.

"Yeah, that's definitely the only way they'll sell us any," Brandon agreed.

"Nobody will give us a prescription just because we ask for one, and besides that it's the middle of the night. Everything is closed except the hospital. If we can't go there then our only other choice is to break into a pharmacy and take some," Lana said.

"You're serious?" Brandon asked, once he got over the shock of hearing her suggest such a thing.

"Yes. I don't like it, but what else can we do? Maybe living with the gangsters and learning how to steal will end up as a blessing in disguise, if it helps me to save Vlad's life tonight," Lana said.

"Do you really think you'd be able to get away with something like that?" Brandon asked.

"I don't see how it could be much different than breaking into a house or a hotel room," Lana said, and that was a good point.

"Let's get started, then, while there's still time," Brandon said.

The first thing they did when they got into town was to find an ATM machine to withdraw some local currency, since the deal with the fisherman had left them practically broke as far as cash went. They needed to find a hotel room so Vlad could rest while they hunted down a pharmacy, and Brandon still preferred to use cash whenever possible.

"Is it safe to use the credit card now?" Tatya asked, watching him.

"We don't have much choice at this point, but at least this way if they _do_ track us then it'll only lead them to this machine and not to the exact place where we're staying. Maybe it won't matter anymore since we're not in Russia now," Brandon said, not liking the reminder. In reality he was far from certain about that, but all he could do was cross his fingers and pray for the best. He withdrew four hundred euros, the machine's daily limit, and hoped that would be enough to last for a while.

"You will have to rent the room, Beebo. They don't like Russians very much in this part of the world," Lana whispered when they reached the hotel. It was the only one they'd been able to find in the town, and none of them were inclined to do much more searching.

"Okay. Y'all don't say anything unless you absolutely have to; just nod and smile a lot. That way they might think we're all Americans and maybe they won't look at us too hard," Brandon whispered back, and the others nodded.

"We will have to think of a reason for all these injuries. Otherwise it will seem suspicious," Tatya said.

"I'll think of something. Can you hold Vlad for a little while so I can deal with the clerk? Maybe she'll think he's just sleeping," Brandon asked, and Tatya nodded.

"Yes, for a few minutes," she agreed.

They took a few seconds to get things arranged, and then Brandon took a deep breath to calm his racing heart as they approached the front desk.

"I'm sorry, ma'am, do you speak English?" he asked when they got close enough.

"Yes, of course. May I help you?" the girl asked, barely glancing at the others.

"Yes, ma'am, we need a room for the night," Brandon said.

"One room, one night?" the girl asked.

"Yes, ma'am, that's all. We've got places to go and things to see. We just got done with a cruise in Sweden but we've still got a few days left before we have to go home. Everybody kept telling us we should definitely visit the lakeshore down here if we had time, but I think one day is as much as we can spare," Brandon said, in the glib and airy way of a young man on vacation without a care in the world.

"Yes, the lake is lovely this time of year. Did you have a nice cruise?" the girl asked politely, not really paying attention while she filled out paperwork.

"Yeah, it was fun. We got to ride some reindeer and do some rock climbing, and we even saw the northern lights. It was awesome," Brandon said, with more fake enthusiasm. He knew he was babbling, but the girl didn't seem to notice.

"Looks like you were hurt a bit," she finally commented, glancing at his scrapes and bruises.

"Yeah, I slipped on the rocks a little, even kicked my sister in the eye before the rope caught me. But hey, it's a memory, I guess," Brandon said, as if the whole thing were a silly accident that people laugh about later. Tatya smiled and nodded, just like he'd told her to. The story was paper thin and wouldn't have stood up to scrutiny even for half a second, but mercifully the girl didn't seem interested in questioning it. She merely pushed a piece of paper across the counter for him to sign, which he did, using the name Beebo McGrath. She never asked for ID.

"Have a good night, sir," she said, handing him an old-fashioned brass key with the number 19 written on it.

As soon as they got away from the front desk and out of sight, Brandon went weak-kneed from relief and had to sit down on a bench outside.

"We got to ride _reindeer,_ Beebo?" Lana asked, with a skeptical half-smile on her face.

"Hey, it was all I could think of," he said defensively, and then she did laugh.

"I think you should go to work for a cruise company, after that performance. It made me want to buy tickets right away," she said. The fact that she could still have a sense of humor in spite of everything made him love her all the more, but he was too frazzled to laugh.

"I am just glad she didn't ask for identification," Tatya muttered.

Each room in the building opened directly to the outdoors, and as soon as they located number nineteen Lana turned the key to let them in. There were two beds inside, and even though the place was a bit threadbare in spots it wasn't really all that bad. Brandon carried Vlad indoors and put him down on the nearest bed, trying not to move him any more than necessary. He looked even worse than earlier, and the hole in his stomach was seeping blood again.

"He's getting worse very quickly," Tatya said, sitting down on the bed beside her brother to grasp his hand.

"I know it, Tatya. But Lana's right, if we can get him some medicine and then hang on for another day or so, he'll be fine," Brandon said, hoping and praying that that was really true.

"Stay here with him, Tatya. Brandon and I will go find him medicine," Lana said.

"All right. Go see what you can do, then," Tatya said.

Chapter Eleven

So Brandon and Lana went out to look for a drugstore, since there didn't seem to be any way to find one on the internet or otherwise. His phone battery had finally given up the ghost by then, and there was no directory in the motel room. That left them with nothing but the old-fashioned method; roaming the streets to look for a sign.

They found only one pharmacy even after exploring most of the town, and it was well protected. There were steel bars on the door and windows, and a bored-looking security guard pacing back and forth in front of the building. Brandon and Lana watched him from the shadows of an alley nearby.

"It's good they have a guard," Lana murmured after a while.

"How could that possibly be good?" Brandon asked.

"Because it means they probably don't have an alarm system. They most likely wouldn't want to pay for both," Lana said.

"Are you sure about that?" Brandon asked, raising one eyebrow.

"No, but that's what the gangsters taught me. They ought to know," Lana said.

"Well. . . maybe. So what do we do now, Cat Woman?" Brandon asked. He thought she might smile at that, but the reference seemed to be completely lost on her.

"First I want you to go knock out that guard," Lana said.

"Do you, now?" Brandon asked sarcastically.

"Yes. I know you can hit hard enough," Lana said.

"I don't know so much about that," Brandon said.

"He won't be expecting anything, and you're a good fighter. Then as soon as he's out of the way, I'll try to get the door open. I think we can do it," Lana said.

"You've got a lot more faith than I do, then," Brandon said, and Lana sighed.

"We have to try, Beebo. If we don't then Vlad will die," she said.

Brandon muttered something under his breath about becoming a wanted criminal in forty countries before it was all said and done, but of course he didn't argue with her anymore after that.

"All right, here goes nothing," he said.

He sauntered out into the street with an open map in his hands, back in his slapdash touristy guise from the motel. Never mind the question of what a tourist would be doing roaming the streets of a backwater town at midnight; it was the best front he could think of on such short notice. It seemed to work, since the guard gave him a cursory glance and then paid him no more mind.

"Excuse me, sir. Can you help me find the hospital?" Brandon called out when he got close enough, holding up his map with a helpless expression on his face. Most Estonians could speak English, and the guard seemed to be no exception. Nor did he seem the least bit suspicious as he came over to look at the map. The darkness made it hard to see that it was a map of Vyborg rather than Räpina, but the secret wouldn't keep for more than a few seconds. Then that one little detail would blow Brandon's cover in a hurry.

Bran hated to punch a man who was doing him a kindness, but unfortunately, as Lana had pointed out, if they didn't find a way into that pharmacy then Vlad didn't have long to live. So Bran silently asked the man's forgiveness before making a fist and nailing him right under the chin with a hard left hook, being careful not to telegraph his move first. He used every bit of strength he possessed, and Lana's faith in him must not have been completely misplaced. The guard dropped to the street like a nine-pin.

Lana herself must have been watching from the alley, because she was at his side seconds later.

"Good job, Beebo. See, I knew you could do it," she said.

"Yeah, well, hopefully nobody saw that little episode. I'd hate to end up in jail tonight," Brandon said.

"Come on, then. Let's go," Lana said, heading for the front entrance. The gangsters must have taught her well, because it didn't take long for her to jimmy the lock with a bobby pin and get the door open while Brandon watched.

"You just have to find the tumblers inside the lock and turn them over. It's not hard if you practice a little," she said, holding up the bobby pin so she could blow on it as if it were a smoking gun. She'd picked up that particular little habit from Brandon, and in spite of the tense situation it made him laugh.

They dragged the guard inside and shut the door behind them.

"We'll have to tie this dude up. He won't stay out for long," Brandon said.

"Yes, but we don't have any rope," Lana pointed out.

"We'll have to find something else, then. We can't leave him free like this," Brandon insisted.

Like most other drugstores he'd ever seen, this one sold lots of other items besides medicines. There were four aisles of merchandise of various kinds in the front of the store, each of them about chest high. Behind them was a counter with a cash register, and behind that the pharmacy section where the drugs were kept. At first there didn't seem to be anything usable as a rope substitute, but then Brandon found a rack of panty hose near the back. It wasn't the ideal thing to use, but it would do.

"Come here, Lana. I think I found something that'll work," he called to her. She came over, and together they tore open several packages of hose to tie the man up as securely as possible, making sure to stuff an extra package in his mouth so he couldn't make noise.

Then it was time to go for the drugs.

"Come on, let's find the Meropenem," Brandon said, switching on the light in the pharmacy section. That was a definite risk, if anybody came by on the street and saw lights on, but of course they couldn't find anything in the dark.

"Here it is," Lana said after a few minutes, grabbing a box off the shelf. Brandon came up behind her and stuffed two more boxes in his pockets, cleaning out the entire supply. In the meantime, Lana was busy reading the label.

"How are we supposed to give it? Do we need anything else?" Brandon asked.

"That's what I'm trying to figure out. This drug is a powder which will have to be dissolved in sterile water and then injected with a needle. So we'll need some of that water and also a box of syringes," Lana said.

Within seconds they'd added these other items to their loot, and as an afterthought Brandon also snatched some tape and bandages, along with a bottle of morphine. Vlad had to be in lot of pain, purely aside from the infection.

"We ought to leave some money to pay for this stuff, don't you think? I don't want to just steal it," Brandon said, after they had the last of the items gathered up.

"How much cash do you have?" Lana asked.

"A little over three hundred euros," Brandon said.

"I'm not sure how much these things are worth, but surely fifty euros would be enough," Lana said, and he nodded.

So Brandon left the cash sitting on the same shelf where they'd found the medicine, right in the empty spot where the boxes should have been. No one who found it there could have any doubt where it came from or what it was meant for. Then he stuck a twenty in the shirt pocket of the guard's uniform, as a sort of apology for having to knock him out. As soon as that was done it was time to hit the road. Brandon switched off the light, and together they headed for the front door.

"Stop!" Lana hissed, when he was just about to reach for the knob.

"What is it?" he asked, and even as the words left his mouth he saw what had grabbed her attention. A police car was cruising slowly along the street, and Brandon instinctively dropped to a crouch.

Maybe they'd seen something to make them curious; lights, or movement, or maybe somebody else had seen something and called them. Whatever it might have been, the car pulled to a stop in front of the store. Then, to Bran's horror, two policemen got out and headed for the door. There were only scant seconds to decide what to do, and the options were limited.

"There's no back door," Lana whispered, answering the question he hadn't asked.

"Hide behind the counter. I can't fight two of them at once," Brandon said.

They scrambled down one of the aisles and back behind the counter just in time before the lead policeman opened the door, and then did their best not to breathe.

Flashlight beams played around the store while the two men stood by the entrance, talking between themselves. Brandon didn't understand a word of what they said, and he doubted Lana did either. They were speaking Estonian, not Russian, and the two languages were not even remotely similar.

The cops gradually worked their way toward the back of the store along the left hand aisle, seemingly in no hurry, and as they got closer Brandon tapped Lana's shoulder and pointed toward the opposite end of the counter, mouthing the words _Let's go_. She nodded, and they crept stealthily past the cash register and then to the right hand end of the counter, duck-walking to stay low.

Then one of the cops must have found the tied-up guard, because all of a sudden there was shouting and lots of excitement back there. Brandon seized the opportunity to slip into the right hand aisle while nobody was watching, and then followed it all the way up to the front of the store as fast as he dared. From the sound of it, the cops were busy untying the guard and trying to revive him. Nevertheless, there was no chance Brandon and Lana could open the door and get outside without being noticed.

"Come on, we'll have to get out as fast as we can and then run," Brandon whispered in the lowest voice he possessed.

"Which way?" Lana asked.

"Down that alley we hid in earlier. We've got to get out of sight as quick as we can," he said, and she nodded. He crossed his fingers and grabbed the doorknob, yanking it open with a sudden jerk and then running for the alley for all he was worth, holding Lana's hand and praying they didn't get shot.

Seconds later they heard footsteps pounding after them across the pavement, along with shouts that could only have been an order to stop. But then they were in the sheltering darkness of the alley, and none too soon, either; Lana was panting for breath. Running at top speed while seven months pregnant was no easy task.

They had to stop at that point, and when they looked back it seemed that only one policeman had come after them while the other stayed behind, perhaps to call for backup. But the man couldn't see them in the inky darkness between the buildings, and as soon as he rounded the corner Brandon tackled him, just as he might have done against an opposing lineman back home at Rebel Field in Ore City. They both went sprawling through the trash and the rain-soaked scum, grappling for a good hold.

The man was stronger than he looked, and the two of them struggled and kicked across the wet and filthy pavement for several minutes, gripping each other chest to chest as they both tried to get the upper hand. Then Bran felt an agonizing pain in his right ear as the man's teeth sank in, and he almost let go without thinking. The man took advantage of the loosened hold to almost break free, but that turned out to be his undoing. Nearly blinded by pain and by the sting of blood running into his eyes, Brandon seized the opportunity to get a fresh hold around his adversary's neck to choke him down. The man still didn't give up, managing to smack Bran's bitten ear with his fist. He didn't have much leverage because of the position he was in, but it hurt enough to literally make Bran see stars. Still, he gritted his teeth and held on, squeezing even tighter until the man suddenly went limp in his arms. Then at last he let go and stood up, breathing hard and still bleeding. The whole side of his face and neck was slick with blood and street scum, and his ear throbbed with every heartbeat.

"Are you all right?" Lana asked, coming closer.

"The dude _bit_ me. Nearly chewed my ear off," Brandon said, pulling his mucky t-shirt off and using it to put pressure against the bite. It gave him a fresh jolt of pain when he touched it, but he had no choice.

"How much are you bleeding?" Lana asked.

"I think it'll be all right if I keep pressure on it for a while. I just can't believe an officer of the law would stoop to something so low. That was a cheap, dirty move," Brandon said, glaring at the man and wishing he could kick him.

"Well, Beebo. . . I'm not sure if it's actually against the law to bite off somebody's ear in Estonia," Lana said, and in spite of his excruciating headache Brandon couldn't help but laugh a little.

"Maybe not, but we better get out of here while we still can. This one won't be out for long, and there's no telling what his buddy's up to back there inside the store, either. We could get swarmed with cops any second," he said.

They took off down the alley with alacrity, hurrying along the empty streets as fast as Lana could manage.

"It was beautiful, the way you tackled that man in the alley. I'm glad I was there to see it," she said after a while, and he smiled at the odd compliment. He never would have described a dirty brawl in a back alley as something beautiful, personally, but the thought of it tickled his sense of humor.

"Well, I guess football had to be good for _something_ sooner or later. Sure does seem like we're depending an awful lot on my fists here lately, though," Brandon said.

"Yes, and thank God we can. All those fights at school finally came in handy, didn't they?" Lana asked, and he couldn't help but laugh out loud again at that, sending another wave of pain through his head.

"Aw, please don't make me laugh anymore, babe. It hurts too much," Brandon said.

"We can't stay at the hotel anymore after this. You know that, yes?" Lana asked, turning serious all of a sudden.

"I haven't had a chance to think about it too much, what between fights and break-ins and almost getting my ear gnawed off and everything. Been kind of busy," Brandon said dryly. Not to mention the fact that his head was still hurting too much to think clearly.

"Well, we can't. You spoke to that guard at the pharmacy; he'll know you're an American as soon as he wakes up. We only saw the one hotel in this town, and that's one of the first places they'll look for a foreigner. We have to be gone by the time they figure out those things and show up to arrest you, and it probably won't take them all that long," Lana said.

"But where else can we go? We're on foot, and it's the middle of the night, and we've got a really sick kid to worry about," Brandon pointed out.

"I don't know, but we'll have to think of something soon," Lana said.

Ten minutes later they were walking past the parking lot at the bus station when Brandon had an idea. The pain in his ear had subsided to a dull ache by then; still bad, but nothing he couldn't tolerate for a while.

"I bet nobody would miss one of these cars before morning," he said, with a thoughtful look on his face.

"You want to steal a car?" Lana asked, sounding skeptical.

"No, I only want to borrow one for an hour or two, just long enough to get us to Tallinn so we can hop the ferry and get out of this dinky little country before we end up getting busted for all this stuff we did tonight. Seems like we have a real talent for getting in serious trouble no matter where we go," Brandon said.

"Maybe that would work, if we can find one with the keys inside," Lana said.

"Nah, I can hotwire it, I think. Me and Cody have to work on the ignition system in the tractor all the time. Can't be much different than that," Brandon said, although in fact he dreaded the thought. Pain and darkness mixed with bloody hands and no real tools made for a disagreeable mechanicking job if ever there was one.

There were about two dozen cars in the parking lot, and it didn't take long to find one with the doors unlocked. Then they had a real stroke of luck for the first time in what felt like quite a while; the keys were still sitting in the ignition. No need to fiddle with wires, after all.

"Come on, let's go," Brandon said, sliding behind the wheel. Lana quickly got into the passenger seat while he started the engine, and minutes later they were parked in front of the hotel where Tatya and Vlad were still waiting for them.

"What happened to _you?"_ Tatya asked, staring at the semi-dried blood and gunk all over his shirtless chest and shoulder. His milk-white skin made everything show up even more clearly than it might have done on a darker person, giving him an especially hideous victim-of-an-axe-murderer appearance.

"Got in a couple fights, that's all. No big thing," Brandon said, pulling his filthy t-shirt back on to cover up as much of it as possible.

"Are you all right? Did you get the medicine?" Tatya asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine, and we left the medicine outside in the car. But there's no time for all that; we've got to leave, _now._ The police could be here any minute," Brandon said.

It didn't take long to gather up their few possessions, and then Brandon carried Vlad out to the car to put him in the back seat along with three pillows and a blanket from the hotel. His list of crimes for the day already included robbing a pharmacy, assaulting a policeman, and stealing a car, and that wasn't even counting everything he'd done in Saint Petersburg only _yesterday._ After all that it seemed silly to balk at pinching some ratty old bedclothes. Still, he left some money on the nightstand to pay for the items, just as he had at the pharmacy. He preferred to be as honest as possible.

Soon they were out on the highway, and while Brandon drove Lana mixed a vial of antibiotic powder with twenty mils of sterile water, shaking it vigorously and then letting it fully dissolve before drawing it up into a syringe.

"Do you know how to give shots?" Brandon asked, watching her out of the corner of his eye.

"No, but I've seen it done many times. I've been to Papa's office when he had patients, and then also when I was with the gangsters," Lana said.

The second half of her statement puzzled him at first and he almost asked her what she was talking about. Then he remembered what Mrs. Melkova had said about hardcore drug users and snapped his mouth shut. He really wasn't sure he wanted to know too much about where Lana might have seen needles being used. Wherever it was, she must have learned enough to do an adequate job. Vlad moaned a little, but that was all.

"There. He won't need another dose for eight hours. I gave him some morphine too, so maybe he can sleep for a while," Lana said when she was done.

They left him alone in the back seat then, with the rest of them crowding into the front together to give him more room.

"Do you think he will be all right now?" Tatya asked after a while.

"I think so. I'm more worried at this point that he won't be awake when we have to get on the plane tomorrow. They might not let him fly if they think he's that sick," Brandon said.

"He will have to be awake, then," Tatya said simply.

None of them said much during the rest of the drive, partly because they were all utterly exhausted and partly because they each had a lot to think about. They reached Tallinn sometime in the wee hours of the morning, since Estonia was not after all a very large country. As soon as they got there, Brandon drove directly to the harbor to catch the ferry across the bay into Helsinki, stopping first at a public restroom to wash the blood off his body and rinse out his t-shirt so he wouldn't alarm anybody.

The border between Estonia and Finland was a completely open one, so there were no guard posts or customs agents to have to worry with. It was no more difficult than crossing from Texas into Louisiana would have been. Brandon found them another hotel as soon as they were safely across the water, and then staggered into the room to lay Vlad on the bed before collapsing beside him. Picking up the visas and everything else would have to wait till morning.

They slept till almost noon, and Brandon woke up with a fierce headache. The whole side of his face was tender and painful from his mangled ear, and all the fresh cuts and bruises from the day before had had time to get really sore overnight. His whole body hurt, in places he hadn't even realized were injured. He sat up to stretch and yawn, feeling charley-horses in every muscle, and then went to the bathroom for a long, hot shower.

He felt much better after that, even though he had no choice but to put his dirty clothes back on again. When he came back out of the bathroom he saw that Vlad was fully awake for the first time since the accident.

"How do you feel, buddy?" Brandon asked, sitting down on the bed to lay one hand against the boy's face. Vlad's forehead was much cooler than it had been the night before, which hopefully meant the Meropenem was doing its job. The kid looked even younger and smaller than usual, and there was no mistaking the fact that he was seriously ill. But he smiled a little anyway.

"Hurts," he said simply, and Brandon nodded.

"Don't worry; we'll fix you up soon," he said.

Lana mixed up a second dose of Meropenem and injected it into Vlad's arm, but she didn't give him any morphine for pain this time. He absolutely had to be awake until they got on the plane later that day. They couldn't risk knocking him out.

"We must clean up and have fresh clothes if we wish to travel, especially Vlad. All these rips and blood stains will not do," Tatya said.

"Yeah, we can't get on the plane looking like this, that's for sure. But there's no reason to drag Vlad all over town, either. If we all write down our sizes then I think I can find what we need by myself," Brandon said.

"Perhaps you should take Lana with you, just in case. European sizes are not numbered the same way as American ones. It will save time," Tatya pointed out.

"Sounds good to me," Brandon agreed.

Helsinki turned out to be a clean and spacious city, with wide and breezy boulevards lined with shops and restaurants of all different kinds. Brandon was fairly sure he could have found some clothes on his own, but that was all right. It was a sweet and satisfying thing to hold hands with Lana while they strolled along, with no need to worry about who might see them together in public or even to be anxious about Dr. Anderson's dream anymore. They'd soon be home with plenty of time to spare, and then all the haters and naysayers could kiss Brandon's big hairy foot. He felt truly safe and happy for the first time since last September, and that was something to be treasured.

They bought several new outfits for all four of them, plus a wheelchair for Vlad so Brandon wouldn't have to carry him anymore. Then as soon as they got back to the hotel everybody cleaned up and changed into the new things. There wasn't much they could do about the cuts and scrapes or about Brandon's bitten ear or Tatya's black eye, but they bandaged everything as well as they could and hoped nobody would pay too much attention.

Dr. Anderson had bought them tickets to Shreveport, but Brandon changed them to Dallas instead so they could get a direct flight with no connections or layovers. For Vlad's sake, they didn't need to do any more jostling or waiting than absolutely necessary.

They had to wait in line at the embassy for nearly an hour before picking up the medical visas, and then it was time to leave. Lana gave Vlad the last dose of antibiotics before tossing the leftover syringes and morphine down a storm drain. Nobody wanted to get accused of drug smuggling.

Brandon got a window seat on the plane, and then let out a long sigh of relief that this unbelievable ordeal was finally coming to a merciful end. His taste for adventure was all tuckered out for a while.

Chapter Twelve

Because of gaining eight hours on the flight west, they landed in Dallas less than three hours after leaving Helsinki, about four o'clock on Wednesday evening. So much had happened in such a short space of time that it seemed unreal to think they'd still been in Saint Petersburg just yesterday morning.

The customs agent was downright rude to Brandon when he first got back, asking him where he'd been and for what reason and telling him if she found any drugs in his bag that she'd arrest him on the spot. It didn't take long to verify that his backpack contained nothing more sinister than a pair of dirty socks, so she finally let him go without even a perfunctory apology. Brandon couldn't help wondering what kind of treatment foreigners got, if the agents were that rude even to their own people.

Actually, Tatya and Vlad and Lana all seemed to get the gentle treatment, maybe because they were supposed to be sick and all three of them looked like it. Soon all four of them were sitting together in the concourse, home at last. Brandon was tempted to get down on his knees and kiss the ground.

Cody was already at the airport to meet them, and two hours later they were standing beside the clear water of Cadron Pool. Not a minute too soon, either. Vlad's face was red and hot to the touch again, and his blond hair was soaked with sweat. There was no way he could have walked into the Pool himself, so Brandon picked him up gently while Cody took off the kid's bloodstained clothes. His wound had started to bleed again at some point, and it was doubtful how much longer he could have lasted.

Then Cody stood beside the water with one hand on Vlad's head and the other on Brandon's, looking up to heaven as he prayed for wholeness and healing.

"All right, Beebo, take him down there," Cody said when it was done.

Then Brandon carried the boy down into the water, making sure to immerse them both completely. As soon as his head was under water, Bran felt all his cuts and bruises disappear as if they'd never been, including his bitten ear. And even though he'd seen it happen many times before, it was still every bit as awe-inspiring as ever.

Brandon came up wiping water from his eyes, grabbing a towel from the stone lip of the Pool before he climbed out. Soon he and Vlad were both wearing dry clothes, and then they went out to where the girls were waiting, a little bit down the path. Cody and Lisa normally didn't allow males and females to use the Pool at the same time, for modesty's sake. The necessity of going into the water naked could make things awkward sometimes.

"Is he okay?" Tatya asked as soon as they got close enough.

"He'll be fine. This is a holy place; no sickness can live here," Brandon said. And it seemed to be so. Aside from being a little paler and thinner than before, Vlad seemed just like his old self again.

"Bullet gone," Vlad agreed, pulling up his shirt to show her the place where the hole had been just minutes before. There was nothing there now except smooth skin, as if nothing had ever happened. Tatya hugged him tightly, and as he'd done every time since he'd first seen it happen, Brandon silently thanked God for his glory.

Then Lisa took Tatya and Lana to the Pool to heal their own injuries, leaving the boys to wait on the path.

Then Cody dropped the bomb.

"Dr. Anderson would like for us to come see him after church tonight, just so he can check a few things. For some reason he seems to think Lana might not be out of danger yet," Cody said, throwing a sudden bucketful of ice-cold water all over Brandon's previous contentment.

"Why would he think that?" Brandon asked, doing his best to stay calm.

"I'm not sure, but he told me to come see him as soon as y'all got here. Don't say anything about it yet, though. There's no reason to upset anybody," Cody said.

Soon the girls were back from the Pool and everybody was seated around the kitchen table, healed of every scratch and scrape. Even Lana's shorn hair had grown back out to its full length again, a minor miracle in its own right.

Cody talked for a while about the plan for Lana and the others to stay with Dr. Anderson until better arrangements could be made, but Brandon paid no attention to all that. All his joy and relief at getting safely home again had abruptly been snatched out of his hands, leaving him anxious and sorrowful once more.

He tried to cover up his feelings for Lana's sake, but she knew him too well for him to be able to hide his troubled heart. She waited till they could be alone for a little while on the front porch swing, and then she broached the subject.

"What's wrong, Beebo? You seem unhappy," she said, and then Brandon knew there was no more point in trying to pretend otherwise.

"I _am_ unhappy. It feels like everything is falling apart all over again," he admitted.

"Why do you say that? We're here together, you and me, safe and sound. Even Tatya and Vlad will have a place of their own soon. Why would you think any of that is bad?" Lana asked.

"I don't think any of _that_ is bad, but Cody told me Dr. Anderson is still worried about you for some reason. We got you back here just in time, and then that was supposed to be the end of it. Now Dr. Anderson seems to think you're _still_ in danger, and April the fourth is _Friday,_ Lana, as in the day after _tomorrow._ I don't know what else to do anymore," Brandon said, staring at the floor.

"I see," Lana said.

"Is that all you can think of to say?" Brandon asked.

"No, I could think of many things to say. But I already prepared myself to die several times while I was with the gangsters. If that's the way it has to be, then it's nothing I haven't already faced before," Lana said.

"You're not scared?" Brandon asked.

"God is my strength and song; of what shall I be afraid?" Lana said simply, and her words were both a comfort and a mild rebuke at the same time.

Brandon thought to himself that he should have been the one comforting _her_ at such a time, rather than the other way around. Fear was a far cry from faith, no matter what the circumstances might be. It shamed him to remember what Cody had said about his lack of trust, and it shamed him even more so to be afraid when _she_ apparently wasn't, but that didn't change the fact. He _was_ afraid, whether he ought to have been or not. But if she could trust God in the very face of death, then for her sake he had to try to do the same.

"I guess so," he said bleakly.

"I don't believe it will end that way, Beebo. God will save us, just as He always has. Wait and see," she said with conviction.

He couldn't answer that, so he simply held her for as long as he could and tried not to think about what the future might bring.

After supper Cody took them over to Mooringsport, partly to see what Dr. Anderson wanted and partly to pick up Brandon's truck, which was still parked in the driveway at the lake house. All three of the Andersons were waiting in the front yard when they arrived.

"Welcome back, globe trotter. Here's your knife. I kept it safe, just like you asked," Jonah said, handing over the blade. Brandon nodded as he clipped it to his belt again.

"Thanks, bud," he said.

"Come on, let's go down to the clinic so I'll have the lab available. There are some things I'd like to check," Dr. Anderson said. His grave attitude soon infected everybody else, and they all rode silently to the clinic.

The entire downtown area of Mooringsport was completely deserted when they arrived, which made it seem spooky and sinister. Public places like that were supposed to be full of people, not empty. Even the clinic itself was silent as death when Rosalie unlocked the front door to let them inside, an unfortunate comparison if ever there was one.

Brandon had always found hospitals and doctors' offices to be mildly creepy places even at the best of times, which this definitely wasn't. He hadn't been to the doctor himself in years, except for piddly things like football physicals or that dadgummed nail in his foot last year. Tagging along for Mikey's appointments or Lana's checkups didn't count. Everybody else took a seat in the waiting room, while Brandon and Lana followed Dr. Anderson and his wife back into the depths of the clinic.

"What are we looking for? I thought the Cadron Pool healed everything," Lana asked while Rosalie Anderson drew a vial of blood.

"It does. But only if the person can bathe in it," Rosalie said.

"But I _did_ bathe in it," Lana said, sounding puzzled.

"Yes, dear; _you_ did, but your baby didn't. He _can't,_ under the circumstances. The water can't touch him, so there's nothing it can do for him," Dr. Anderson said.

"There's something wrong with my baby?" Lana asked, putting a protective hand across her middle. Brandon felt a cold thrill of fear unlike anything else he'd ever experienced, but he couldn't think of a word to say.

"I don't want to say that at this point, dearest. I just want to make sure, that's all. There's no reason to worry right now," Dr. Anderson said.

"But something must have made _you_ worry," Brandon pointed out bluntly, and Dr. Anderson reluctantly met his eyes.

"I've got a bad feeling, Bran. It's nothing more than that, and I can't even give you a specific reason for it. It may not amount to anything at all. But I've found that sometimes God speaks to us that way, to nudge us in directions we wouldn't have thought of on our own. I just want to check things out, and if it _does_ turn out there's a problem then maybe we can fix it. Try not to worry in the meantime. We'll find out for sure, and then we'll know what to do," Dr. Anderson said.

The words held little comfort, but there was nothing to be done about the situation except to sit in the examination room for the next few hours while the Andersons apparently ran every type of diagnostic test known to man. Lana bore the brunt of all these needles and procedures, and there was nothing Bran could do about that either except sit there and hold her hand. But at last Dr. Anderson rubbed his eyes and let out a long sigh.

"I think I found it," he said.

"What's wrong?" Brandon asked immediately.

"Come on back to the lounge and we'll talk about it. I need a break for a few minutes anyway," Dr. Anderson said. They all got up and went with him to the end of the hall, where there was an old beat-up yellow couch and a matching armchair, with a table and a snack machine interspersed between shelves of reference books and medical supplies. It wasn't exactly a lounge, but it served the purpose. Dr. Anderson got a bag of peanuts from the snack machine and offered everyone a Coke, which only Rosalie accepted. Then the Andersons both sat down at the table, while Brandon and Lana took the couch.

"What did you find, sir?" Brandon asked, as soon as everyone was seated.

"It's not good, I'm afraid. Your baby has a condition called trisomy-18. It happens when someone ends up with an extra 18th chromosome. There was nothing either one of you could possibly have done either to cause it or to prevent it from happening, so I don't want you to blame yourselves or each other. It's just a mistake of cell division, that's all. But what I need for you to understand very clearly is that it's not compatible with life. It's a fatal defect which usually causes death long before a child is born. In fact, it's almost miraculous that this one is still alive at seven months," Dr. Anderson said.

"So there's no hope at all, then?" Lana asked, in that dry and clinical way that she had when something truly frightened her.

"I won't say there's _none,_ my dear. Miracles do happen sometimes. But I'd be lying if I told you there was any hope apart from that. He'll die on April the fourth, just like he was always meant to, I suppose. That must have been what my dream meant all along, now that I think about it. It never specified exactly what the problem would be, and it never actually said _you_ would die on April the fourth, only that we had to get you back here by then if we wanted to save you. But I don't doubt if you'd been left in that filthy prison with no medical care then you would have died yourself not too long after the baby, from the gangrene poison. _That_ at least won't happen anymore, now that you're here in a place where you can get proper treatment. So I want both of you to remember that you've very likely saved one life already," Dr. Anderson said.

"But there's nothing you can do for Stephen?" Brandon asked numbly. It was the first time he'd spoken the baby's name to anyone except Lana, but if Dr. Anderson noticed then he didn't see fit to comment.

"There's nothing any doctor can do for him. But as I said, I'd be the last person in the world to tell you that miracles can never happen. I know for a fact that they do, and not just at Cadron Pool, either. Maybe it'll help if I tell you a story about one very particular miracle that I saw with my own eyes, and then you might understand a few things better. It might even give you some hope for your own. Did you know that Jonah had leukemia when he was seven years old?" Dr. Anderson asked.

"Uh, no, I don't guess I ever knew that," Brandon said.

"Well, he did. A particularly aggressive kind, too. I was fresh out of medical school at the time, and it's a hard thing to know so much, and still be helpless to save your child. Remember what I said about how everybody smacks into the really ugly side of life sooner or later? That was when it happened to me. We took him everywhere, but nothing seemed to help. Finally there was nothing else the doctors could do, and we knew it was only a matter of time till we lost him. I know what it's like to be sitting where you are right now, when it seems like there's no hope left at all. But then the strangest thing happened," Dr. Anderson said.

"What?" Brandon asked.

"I was doing my residency work in pediatrics at a hospital in Little Rock, and while I was there I heard a story about a little boy who died and came back to life, when his brother laid hands and breathed on him. It had only been two or three years since it happened, at that time. Would you like to guess who that little boy was?" Dr. Anderson asked.

"Me," Brandon whispered, not even needing to wonder.

"That's right. You. I guess you might understand how curious I was, when I heard that story. Sometimes when there's nothing else left, you're willing to snatch at straws like that. So I made it my business to track down that boy and his family, and it wasn't really all that hard to find them. Then we took Jonah out there to visit, to see if your brother could do something for him, too. We had nothing left to lose, after all. But to make a long story short, I saw a miracle that day, of the kind that will make a believer out of even the hardest heart in the world. God had never been a big part of our lives up till then, even though we always went to church every Sunday. But after that, He was the heart of everything for both of us. Jonah barely remembers the whole episode anymore, but I promise you his mother and I will never forget," Dr. Anderson said.

"I don't know what to say," Brandon said. Some of the Andersons' comments and generosity were suddenly much more understandable, in light of this new tale.

"Don't say anything. Nothing we've done or could ever do would be enough to pay for Jonah's life. I don't want it to make things awkward or strange because I told you all this. I just wanted you to understand a few things, that's all. We got to be good friends with your brother after that, and even helped him with his work for a while. I'm a doctor and Rosalie is a nurse, so it was easy for us to make contact with the sick and the broken, to help him find the people who needed healing the most and to keep it a secret. It was a similar kind of arrangement to what I do with Cody and Lisa nowadays. That went on for about five years, I guess, till he and Rachel ended up having to leave. But even after all that time, the only thing he ever asked us for his own sake was to keep an eye on _you_ after he left. He always told me there'd come a day when you'd have a heavy burden laid on your heart, and then you'd need all the help you could get. He loved you very much, you know, and after everything he'd done for us, how could I possibly have said no?" Dr. Anderson said.

"But. . ." Brandon said, and then stopped in confusion. He'd always thought Brian had abandoned him, after he'd disappeared with no explanation and never stayed in touch.

"But then why didn't he write or call, and where did he run off to in the first place?" Dr Anderson asked, watching him.

"I did wonder a little," Brandon admitted.

"All he ever said to me was that he thought it would make things harder on you if he tried to stay in touch. He thought it was kinder in the long run to make a clean break while you were still young enough to forget," Dr. Anderson said.

"Well it _wasn't_ kinder, and I _didn't_ forget," Brandon said.

"Maybe not, but he was trying to do what he thought was best in the middle of a thorny dilemma. That's never easy, Bran, and sometimes people choose unwisely in situations like that. None of us makes the right decision every single time. If he did you wrong then I'm sure he'd be the first person on earth to ask your forgiveness," Dr. Anderson said.

"Maybe," Brandon said reluctantly.

"Anyway, I'm not sure where he is now, but I know when he left here he was headed for Borneo," Dr. Anderson said.

"But what's all that got to do with Stephen?" Brandon asked, returning to the subject at hand. All these other things were incidentally interesting, to be sure, but he couldn't find it in his heart to care much about anything else at the moment.

"It has everything to do with it. You were _dead,_ Brandon. Not just very sick but stiff and cold as stone. If your brother could lay his hands on you and undo even _that,_ then don't you think it might be possible to do the same for Stephen? Think. You were plenty old enough by the time your brother went away to remember that he could do those kinds of things. Did he never tell you where he got that power?" Dr. Anderson asked.

"Yeah, he told me. He always said that far away there's a cavern green as emerald at the heart of the world, which only a person who's chosen by God and found worthy will ever find. No one can stumble across it by accident. But if you ever _do_ come to that place, you'll find a flowing well, clear and cold. Then, if you have the courage to drink that water, you'll be given the power to erase for a little while the curse of the Fall. To make everything beautiful and pure, just like they should have been if the world was never broken. To cure any illness, break any addiction or curse, sometimes even bring the dead back to life again. That's what he always told me," Brandon said.

"Indeed. That's exactly what he did for you, and for Jonah, and many hundreds of others too. But perhaps he _didn't_ tell you that those who drink that water go on to live an awfully long time, well over a hundred years, and they never age in the meantime. They never get sick, and they heal within a few hours even from the most terrible injuries, without even so much as a scar left behind. They can be killed, of course, but not easily. They're always young and beautiful till the very end. That's why in some stories it's called the Fountain of Youth, even though that's really one of the least important aspects of it. Someone who went looking for it for _that_ reason, for his own good pleasure, would never be allowed to find it. His heart wouldn't be in the right place. In any case, that's why Brian had to leave when he did; people were beginning to notice that he never aged. He was only fourteen years old when he drank, and it's not easy to be twenty-one years old and still look like you're fourteen. But that Fountain still exists, Brandon, and when it all comes down to the wire, that's why I'm telling you this story. I think you've finally come to that dark place in your life that Brian always told me about, and now I have a chance to give back to you the same gift he gave to me. So if you want to save your child's life, and if you have the courage and the deep desire to love this world as God does, then go find that place as your brother did," Dr. Anderson said.

"But I haven't been chosen, and I'm definitely not worthy, and anyway I don't even know where it is," Brandon objected.

"How do you know you haven't been chosen?" Dr. Anderson asked, and of course Brandon had no answer for that.

He supposed it was quite possible he _had_ been chosen, actually, considering everything Cody had told him about God's promise to Marybeth Trewick all those many years ago. Nor had he forgotten Lisa's dream about the future and his own puzzlement about how he could possibly live long enough to see it through. The Fountain might be an answer to that problem, too. And finally there were Brian's parting words, urging Brandon not to be afraid when God asked him to do something great one day, that no good thing could be purchased without a dear cost. It all hung together suspiciously well.

But Dr. Anderson wasn't finished.

"As for the being worthy part, well, only God can answer that. But if I'm allowed to have my own opinion, I happen to think you've stood the test better than most," Dr. Anderson said.

"What are you talking about? What test?" Brandon asked.

"The chosen are always tested, somehow or other. That's what it means to be found worthy. It's not necessarily the same experience for each person, though; we figured that much out because Brian and Rachel were tested in completely different ways, and yet they both went on to drink from the Fountain. Nevertheless, it _does_ boil down to one very simple question. What will you put first when you're forced to choose? Love, or something else? It hardly matters what that something else might be, although I'm told money and power are popular choices. So far as I can see, you've always chosen rightly," Dr. Anderson said.

"But what did I ever do that was so great? All I did was try to save my girlfriend and my baby and my friends, and anybody would have done _that_ if he could have," Brandon said.

"No, Bran. . . not everybody. _You_ did, but you can't know what anyone else would have done in your place. God called you when He sent me that dream, and you believed Him and went. Nobody forced you to do that. You were free to shut your eyes and ignore Him, if you liked. You could have made excuses and come up with all sorts of reasons why you couldn't go, or why it wasn't really God speaking, or something similar. That's exactly what a lot of people would have done, if the cost of obedience seemed too high. But God is love, and love is always in some sense a reflection of Him, and for love's sake you never thought twice," Dr. Anderson said.

Brandon considered this, and finally decided Dr. Anderson might have a point. Crush would never have gone to Russia to save Brandon's mother, for example, and if the shoe had been on the other foot then Peggy Stone probably wouldn't have lifted a finger to help Crush, either. They were like two peas from the same selfish pod, and sadly they were far from alone in the world. Bran could think of a dozen more examples without even trying.

It was similar to what Dr. Anderson had told him about selfless love on the phone in Saint Petersburg, or what Cody had always said about greatness of heart, or the words of that little clod of clay in Lisa's picture. _Love seeketh not itself to please, nor for itself hath any care, but for another gives its ease, and builds a heaven in hell's despair._

So maybe Brandon had done something really praiseworthy after all, even though he'd never thought of it that way before.

"Maybe so. But even if that's true, I still don't know where to find the place," Brandon pointed out, and Dr. Anderson sighed.

"Fair enough. But only God can lead you there, in His own good time. Maybe you're still being tested; I can't say for sure. All I can tell you is to go home and pray tonight, to seek His will and trust Him. You can't manipulate Him, and you can't be found worthy by your own efforts. It has to come from the heart or not at all," Dr. Anderson said.

"I remember Brian had a little silver necklace with a pointer inside to show him the way to the Fountain. Maybe I need to find that," Brandon said.

"I don't think so, Bran. That necklace is just a piece of silver. It's _nothing,_ when it comes right down to it; just a tool for God to express Himself, like Cadron Pool or Cody's Guardian Stone or even the Fountain itself. None of them amount to anything at all by themselves," Dr. Anderson said.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Brandon asked.

"It only means that God likes matter. Jesus healed the blind by rubbing mud on their eyes. Moses used a staff. We eat real bread and wine at church. People were healed at the Pool of Bethesda. Did God _have_ to do things that way? Was there some kind of actual power in the mud or the staff or the water itself? Of course not. It's just that God _enjoys_ working through the things He made, even though He doesn't _have_ to. People who think that's crude or unspiritual simply haven't read the Scriptures, but those who think the objects themselves are powerful are no better off. It was always God who worked His will through those places and things, never anything else. He'll make a way for you to reach the Fountain if He means for you to get there at all; I'm certain of _that._ His purposes can't be hindered by such trivial issues," Dr. Anderson said.

They left the clinic shortly afterward, heading back to the Andersons' place. Brandon and Lana rode together in the back seat of Lisa's car, sometimes talking quietly and sometimes simply holding hands in silence.

When they reached the lake house, Cody came up beside Brandon to speak to him privately for a minute while the others headed inside. Lisa and Mikey were already gone.

"I've been thinking, Beebo. Maybe you should stay down here yourself tonight. You can always drive the truck back home tomorrow if you want to," Cody offered.

"You don't mind?" Brandon asked.

"No. I think you and Lana need to talk and pray about some things," Cody said.

"Yeah, I guess we do," Brandon agreed.

"Okay, then. We'll see you sometime tomorrow, I guess. Love you, boy," Cody said, and then hugged Brandon tight for just a minute before letting him go.

Bran stood there in the driveway and watched him leave until the taillights of his old red 4x4 disappeared down the street. Cody was so many things: his cousin, his brother, his teacher and friend all rolled into one. His father too, if the heart mattered at all. Yet Brandon had never, not even once, told the man that he loved him. That was a wrong he ought to have righted long ago, if he really cared.

He tried, and then found that he couldn't say the words.

Not even as a whisper; not even as he stood there alone in the darkness. They stuck in his throat like glue, leaving him speechless and frustrated with himself. Why was it such a hard thing, after all?

Brandon gave up, and then slowly raised the first two fingers of his left hand to wave at the empty street. He didn't think Lana would mind if he borrowed their secret gesture for something else just this once. No one would ever see or understand what it meant, except for God who knew his heart already.

Then he turned to go back inside.

Chapter Thirteen

Brandon slept on the couch that night, at least as much as he was able to sleep at all, and woke up the next morning to the sound of Lana quietly playing the piano down the hall in the sunroom. It was something classical-sounding which he vaguely recognized, though he couldn't remember the name of it. He got up and walked down there, barefoot and tousle-headed, his steps making almost no sound at all on the smooth hardwood floors.

The sunroom had one entire wall made of glass, with curtains which could be drawn to let in more or less light. There was a cream-colored futon against one wall next to a bookcase, and the place was full of Rosalie Anderson's tropical plants, including several potted lemon trees in full bloom. The bright, citrusy scent of them filled the air.

In the center of the room was a baby grand piano which faced away from the door, and there sat Lana in her pale yellow nightgown, playing softly from memory.

"What are you playing?" Brandon asked, coming up behind her to put his arms around her shoulders.

"Mozart. Piano Sonata in C. One of my favorites," Lana murmured, grasping his hands in her own and laying her head back against his chest.

"You don't have to stop," Brandon said.

"It's okay. I'm tired of playing for a while," Lana said.

"But I love to listen to you," Brandon said, and she laughed a little.

"All right. Then I'll play something just for you, my love," she said.

And so she did: _Amazing Grace,_ while she quietly sang the words in Russian. The verses didn't mean quite the same thing as they would have in the English version, but they were similar, all about being saved by grace from the depths of loss, of finding life at the heart of death and sight in the midst of darkness.

Oh, Blagodat, spasen Taboi, ya iz puchiny bed;  
Bil mertv y chudam stal zhivoi, bil slep y vizhu svet!  
Slovam Gospodnim veryu ya, maya vsya krepast v'nikh,  
On verny schit, On chast maya, va vsekh putyakh mayikh.

She had a high and beautiful voice, and that particular song was wrapped with a specially poignant layer of love and nostalgia for both of them.

They'd been walking across the back pasture at church one Sunday afternoon, while everybody else was gone on the weekly trail ride. Bran couldn't remember what the circumstances had been which led to the two of them having a few hours alone together that day. He just remembered walking through the bluebonnets hand in hand, barefoot and happy beneath a cloudless spring sky. They'd ended up singing hymns together, odd as that might have seemed to an outsider. _Amazing Grace_ had been the only one they both knew.

That day had been the first time they'd ever said _I love you._

Any other time, Brandon would have smiled at the memory. Not today. Indeed, considering what was about to happen the very next evening, the words of the song cut his heart to the quick. He almost told her to stop, but then bit his lip and let her finish. She was crying by the time it was over, and he wasn't far from it himself. He sat down beside her on the bench and held her for a long time without speaking. Whatever she might say about having faith and fearing nothing, he knew from his own experience that it was much easier to say things like that than to live them out.

"Shall I tell you something?" she asked, still crying a bit.

"What?" Brandon asked.

"This little one kept me safe while I was with the gangsters," Lana said.

"What do you mean?" Brandon asked.

"They wanted to sell him after he was born, Beebo. The gangsters make a lot of money that way. If I had not already been pregnant when I came to stay with them, they would have forced me. I saw it happen to many other girls while I was there. But God knew what would happen, and he sent this little boy to be my guardian angel," Lana said.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Brandon asked, wondering how many other horrors she might have seen and kept to herself.

"Because I didn't want to hurt your heart. But this child protected me when no one else could have. We can't let him die, Beebo. We _can't,"_ Lana said.

"We won't, _milaya._ No matter what," Brandon said, although it felt like an empty promise even as he spoke the words.

After a while Lana excused herself to go to the bathroom, leaving him alone in the silent sunroom. Sunshine was pouring in through the curtains by then, and Brandon walked closer to stand by the glass. Then in the midst of his despair he knelt down in the light to pray, silently promising that he would devote all the rest of his life to giving glory to God, if only he might be shown how to keep his promise and save Stephen.

And his prayer was answered swiftly. Brandon's eyes grew dull and unseeing, and anyone who saw him at that moment would have thought he was blind. But in his mind's eye he saw a far green country that shone like the sun, through which a river ran cold and clear from a Fountain that glittered in the morning sun, and he knew in his heart that he must find that place and drink from that water.

Then the vision faded, and when he could see again, Brandon knew beyond all doubt that he should head due west.

That puzzled him a bit, since he knew Brian had gone north, not west, and for him the Fountain had been in a cave, not in a shining meadow. For surely that's what the vision meant, didn't it? That he should go and find the Fountain before it was too late?

Brandon wondered if perhaps not everyone found it in the same place, or if there was some other explanation he couldn't quite put his finger on. It didn't seem to make any sense.

Then he decided it didn't make the slightest bit of difference whether it made sense or not. He knew which way to go, and that was enough.

Thick white mist lingered in curling swathes above the mirror-like surface of the lake when he went out onto the deck, too dense to see very far. Wherever the vision wanted him to go, the lake was directly in his path.

His first thought was to drive his truck westward along the shoreline, since he had no idea how far he might have to go or how much time it might take. But somehow that didn't feel right. No, what felt right was to go down there to the dock where Dr. Anderson's little wooden skiff was tied up, and then row out across the lake itself.

That didn't seem to make any sense, either, since the Andersons' house was built on a narrow arm of water no more than a few miles wide, and even after he bumped into the far shore there'd be nothing but more houses or possibly some undeveloped woods he'd have to walk through. But the call was strong, and he shook his head in confusion.

He finally decided he ought not to question the matter too much. After all, if he'd been able to figure things out for himself then he wouldn't have needed to ask.

While he hesitated, staring at the misty water, Lana came outside to stand beside him.

"What are you looking for?" she asked.

"Nothing really. But I saw something while you were gone, and I think we're supposed to cross the lake," Brandon said, and proceeded to tell her all about the vision he'd seen. When he was done, she only nodded.

"I knew God would make a way. Perhaps we should ask Dr. Anderson if he'd let us borrow his boat," Lana said.

"Are you sure it's a good idea for both of us to go? What if we don't find the Fountain in time and we're stuck out in the middle of nowhere? You might die, if we couldn't get back to civilization in a hurry. It'd be just like leaving you in that prison with no medical care," Brandon asked, his heart full of doubt.

"No, Beebo. You might not be able to make it back soon enough. I want to be right there beside you, so we can heal him at the first possible moment. I would rather risk me than him," Lana said. She seemed utterly firm, and since he could see there was no dissuading her, he stopped trying.

"Come on, then. I think Dr. Anderson is awake now," Brandon said. Then they slipped into the kitchen where the Andersons were gathered with Tatya and Vlad, cooking bacon and eggs.

"Dr. Anderson, is it all right if we take your boat out on the lake for a while?" Brandon asked.

"I suppose so. Any particular reason?" Dr. Anderson asked, and Bran quickly explained the vision he'd seen and the strong call to head west across the lake.

"I just hope we can find the place before tomorrow night. I'm not sure what we'll do if it takes longer than that," Brandon concluded.

"I'm not sure either, Bran. But there's one more little thing you might like to know before you leave. A bit of hope and comfort, if you choose to take it that way. You remember that Stephen is supposed to die on the Feast of St. Tigernach?" Dr. Anderson asked.

"Yeah, I remember. What about it?" Brandon asked, not liking the reminder.

"Well, I always thought that was strange, why God would give us the date _that_ way instead of just telling us it was April fourth from the very beginning. But there's always a purpose for things like that, so I took the time to do a little research about Saint Tigernach last night after we got back from the clinic. Would you like to know what he's famous for?" Dr. Anderson asked.

"Sure, I guess," Brandon said, without much enthusiasm.

"Raising people from the dead," Dr. Anderson said, and that left Brandon speechless.

"We think God mentioned St. Tigernach's Day instead of just April fourth as a subtle way of telling you not to be afraid. That He's the one who holds the keys to death and hell in His strong right hand, and there's nothing in this or any other world that can stand against Him. He already saved _you_ from death, after all, and He could surely do the same thing again if need be," Rosalie said.

"You really think that's what it means?" Brandon asked.

"That's what I feel in my heart, and so does Charles. But it's nothing unusual, you know. God loves us in little ways like that all the time, even if we never notice," Rosalie said.

"Yes, He does," Lana agreed fervently.

Brandon considered that idea for a few seconds, remembering the way Lana's hair had grown back at Cadron Pool; not a strict necessity for her to be healed, just a small but loving kindness done without asking. There'd been all sorts of things like that recently, now that he thought about it. Finding the keys in that car in Räpina, which had saved him from having to hotwire anything while his head hurt so much. The rain on Lake Peipus which kept them safe from the border guards, and perhaps even that other rain against the windows of the airport in Amsterdam that lulled him to sleep when he needed soothing. They were only little things, to be sure, but they mattered at lot.

Thinking farther back, he could recall dozens, maybe even hundreds of such little coincidences over the years. He'd rarely chalked them up to anything but chance. Now he couldn't help wondering how many of them had actually been small gifts of God that he'd never noticed, much less been thankful for. It was a humbling thought.

But Dr. Anderson wasn't finished yet.

"That said, I don't believe you should take it as a promise that He'll work a miracle for you this time. He might, or He might not. I think it's more of a call to trust Him that everything will unfold the way that it should. I definitely wouldn't use it as an excuse to dawdle or waste time when it comes to the things you've already been told to do," Dr. Anderson said.

"We better go ahead and leave, then," Brandon said, glancing at the clock. It was barely nine o'clock, but he was anxious to get started. He could feel time slipping away like a trickle of sweat running down his back.

"Yes, but stay and eat breakfast while I pack a lunch and some snacks. You might need it along the way," Rosalie Anderson said.

Brandon couldn't deny that that was a sensible idea, so he wolfed down a heaping plate of bacon and scrambled eggs, along with several strawberry _beignets_ and two glasses of milk. Lana only picked at her food and he supposed she probably wasn't feeling well even though she didn't mention it.

As soon as they finished breakfast, Brandon and Lana went down to the shore and took their seats in the little boat, while the others stood on the dock to watch them. They had a backpack full of drinks and finger foods for lunch, and Brandon had a hundred dollars in his pocket just in case they needed it.

"Good luck!" Vlad called, and the others waved silently as Bran rowed the little boat away from shore.

Soon the Andersons disappeared into the misty distance, along with the shoreline and everything else. There was nothing to be seen all around them but water and fog, as if they were floating in the middle of a gigantic ocean instead of a lake. It was almost completely quiet except for the sound of the oars, and unseasonably cool for April.

"It's very lonesome out here," Lana said after a while.

"Yeah, it feels like we're in the middle of nowhere, doesn't it?" Brandon agreed. He was pulling the oars slowly so he wouldn't get tired and he'd still have breath to talk. They didn't make much speed that way, but nevertheless he expected to hit the far shore fairly soon anyway.

But as time dragged on and they never touched land, Brandon began to feel puzzled and then worried. The lake wasn't _that_ wide.

"I wish the mist would burn off," he said after a while. If anything, it was thicker than ever, a dense and impenetrable curtain hiding everything beyond the immediate vicinity.

"That would be nice," Lana agreed. She didn't seem to realize they should have reached the far shore by then, and Brandon decided not to mention it for the time being. There was no need to worry her for no reason. He supposed they _might_ have been going around in a big circle, somehow; that was easy to do when you couldn't see where you were going. If that's what it was then he'd feel awfully foolish when the fog finally cleared.

Deep in the back of his mind was the uneasy notion that it would be a lot better to feel foolish for a while than for something else to be going on. Something strange and inexplicable.

But the fog never lifted, and they never reached the shore, and eventually the light began to fade from the sky. Brandon's muscles ached from rowing all day, and the food from lunch was long gone, and it was even colder than it had been earlier. Lana was shivering, in spite of wearing her own jacket plus Brandon's, too.

"Are you cold?" he asked, already knowing the answer.

"At little," she admitted.

"I think we might have to spend the night in the boat," Brandon said, reluctant to admit the obvious. But Lana just nodded.

"Yes, I've been thinking so for several hours. It's very strange, though; I know the lake isn't this wide," she said.

"I hoped you wouldn't notice," Brandon said, and she smiled a little.

"Why would you wish that?" Lana asked.

"I didn't want to worry you," Brandon said.

"I'm not worried, Beebo. Cold and hungry, yes, but not worried. God will take care of us," Lana said, and he nodded.

"Well, in the meantime I guess we'll have to sleep down in the bottom of the boat tonight. Come lay next to me and maybe it'll keep us both warm," Brandon said, clambering down into the bilge. It reminded him vividly of lurking at the bottom of that other boat on Lake Peipus while they escaped from Russia, if only it had been a rainy night and they'd been sheltered with a foul-smelling tarp stained with fish guts. Here there was no rain, but also nothing to cover up with. Brandon would have given a lot right then even for that stinking old piece of canvas from the fisherman's boat.

Lana joined him, moving considerably slower than he had. Then he put his arms around her and they lay as close together as possible to share body heat, with his empty backpack under their heads for a makeshift pillow. He could hear frogs singing all around them, faint and far away. Every now and then a fish or some other creature would make a splash a little closer, but that was all. There was nothing to be seen but the mist, nothing to be smelled but the cool and heavy scent of the water.

"I'm sorry," Brandon said after a while.

"Sorry for what?" Lana asked.

"All this. If it wasn't for me, you'd be home in Vyborg right now with your mom and dad. You never would have had to live with the gangs, or go to prison, or suffer so much," Brandon said.

"I'm not sorry. Things might have been easier that way, yes, but sometimes when you ask God for certain things, you have to be ready to pay the price for them. I've asked many times for a way that you and I could be together someday, you know, and I think this is the only way it could ever have happened," Lana said.

"I guess I never thought of it that way before," Brandon admitted.

"Neither did I, till I had some time to think about it for a while. But if God has done this much already, then I think surely He'll go on to answer my prayer completely and let us live happily ever after. And then again, it may be that all those things were _my_ test, after all. Perhaps we'll both drink from that Fountain, you and I, and then together we'll go out into the world to pour light into the darkness until every sorrow is forgotten and every hurt is swallowed up in joy. So no, I'm not the least bit sorry and I don't regret anything at all, Beebo. And I hope you don't either," Lana said. He laughed a little at that, not for amusement but for simple ease of heart.

"I really love you," Brandon said, and held her tight.

"I love you too, my _krasny malchik._ I always have, ever since I saw you with chili on your face at the rodeo," Lana said, and he laughed again.

"I wonder what it'll be like, to be young and beautiful together for a hundred years?" Brandon said. Her vision of what the future could be like had thoroughly bedazzled him, and the thought of all those happy golden years spread out before them filled his heart with deep contentment.

"It will be wonderful," Lana said simply.

"Amen," Brandon said.

They didn't talk anymore after that, but Brandon took the time to pray silently for all things to happen as they should. Lana had opened his eyes to a glorious possible future, although he knew there were still a hundred different things which could cause that beautiful vision to wither on the vine. But he chose not to think about that, at least for the moment, and before long he found himself drifting off to sleep in spite of the cold and the damp.

Chapter Fourteen

When Brandon woke up the next morning, his body was stiff and sore from the uncomfortable sleeping position and from too much rowing the day before. The white mist still surrounded them like a glove, and he was finally forced to admit that something very strange was going on. It was uncanny, the way the mist hung on and never dissipated. Those kinds of things might happen in other parts of the world, but not in Texas.

He was gnawingly hungry by then, and even though he knew it wasn't the smartest thing in the world to do, he cupped his hand to take a drink of the lake water so at least he wouldn't be thirsty. The lake was probably clean enough, but you never really knew about that kind of thing.

He stretched and yawned, trying to ignore the chill in the air while he worked some of the stiffness out of his arms and legs. Lana soon joined him, looking tired and sore from the way she moved, and he could hardly blame her.

"Are you all right?" Brandon asked, after she painfully took her seat across from him.

"Yes, I'm okay. My body hurts from sleeping in the boat, that's all. I'd really like to get back on solid ground today," Lana said.

"Yeah, me too. But surely we ought to reach the far shore sometime this morning," Brandon agreed.

He grabbed the oars and started rowing, doing his best to use the sun as a compass. Then for a long time there was nothing much to be said, but after several hours Brandon caught the sound of water lapping against the shore.

"Do you hear that?" he asked, and she nodded. He rowed closer, and before they knew it a sandy beach appeared out of the mist. Brandon jumped overboard to drag the boat up on shore, and then Lana joined him.

"Where are we?" she asked.

"I don't know," he admitted. There was nothing to be seen but pale sand and lake water, and mossy cypress trees dripping with condensed mist where the beach left off. It could have been the western shore of the lake, or it could have been almost anywhere. There didn't seem to be any track or path to follow through the woods, and Brandon didn't like the idea of striking out blindly through the wilderness with nothing to guide them.

While they stood on the beach thinking about what to do next, a huge dog came trotting across the sand. He resembled a large Labrador retriever, with fur almost white as snow and soaking wet from the mist. The second he spied the newcomers he wagged his tail and ran to snuffle their feet and lick their hands.

"Where did _you_ come from, boy?" Brandon asked, scratching him behind the ears. There was no tag or collar to tell who his owner might have been, although he surely must have had one. He was too healthy and clean to be a wild dog, and too friendly. After a few minutes of socializing, he bounded away a few steps and then looked back at them to bark expectantly.

"Maybe we should follow him. He might lead us to whoever owns him," Lana suggested, and Brandon nodded.

For a long time the dog led them down the sandy beach, and then he cut through the woods for a bit. Presently the trees came to an end and they found themselves at the edge of a pasture full of scattered sheep, with the grass nibbled short as a lawn.

"I don't remember ever seeing a sheep farm around here before," Brandon said, watching the animals curiously. East Texas and the surrounding areas were cattle country, almost without exception. Bran supposed it wasn't strictly impossible that there might be a sheep farmer here and there, of course, but it was definitely odd.

Before long they came to an old wooden barn, and the dog led them directly to a large cabinet just inside the archway.

"I wonder what's in there," Lana murmured, and Bran could only shrug as he reached for the door handle.

At first there didn't seem to be anything at all except for a few cans and boxes of sheep-related supplies, much to Brandon's disappointment. Then he noticed a brown paper bag near the bottom, with the unmistakable greasy stains of something edible inside.

"Jackpot!" Bran cried, ripping the bag apart to get at the food. It was nothing but a hunk of cheddar cheese and half a loaf of stale French bread, but Brandon wouldn't have cared by then if it had been deep-fried snails with possum snot dressing. He quickly halved the scraps with Lana and then wolfed them down without a second thought, while the white dog sat watching them and licking his black lips.

"You knew we needed food, didn't you, boy?" Brandon asked when he was done eating, getting down on his knees to pet the dog. The animal licked his face with its long pink tongue, and Lana laughed.

"It looks like you've made a friend," she said.

"Maybe I have. I still wonder who he belongs to, though," Brandon said, wiping dog slobber off his cheek.

"Who knows? Don't you think we ought to call him something, though? It's strange to keep saying _the dog_ all the time," Lana said.

"Sure, let's call him Snowball. He's white enough," Brandon said, and Snowball barked as if he agreed with his new name.

"You like that, do you?" Brandon asked, and the dog barked again.

"Which way do you think we should go from here?" Lana asked.

"Still west, I'm sure, but at least maybe we can walk from now on," Brandon said.

They left five dollars in the cabinet to pay for the cheese and bread before setting out across the fields on foot, only to find that they suddenly hit the lake again less than ten minutes after leaving the barn. Attempting to follow the shore soon resulted in the disappointing discovery that the farm was an island, and a rather small one at that.

"I guess this means going back to the boat," Brandon said, when it finally became clear what the situation was.

"Well, at least we got some food," Lana said.

"Yeah, at least we got that," Brandon agreed without much enthusiasm.

It didn't take long to retrace their steps to the boat, but as soon as they pushed off from shore they got a surprise. Snowball the white dog seemed determined to go with them, swimming out to the boat and trying to climb inside.

"Go home, boy," Brandon said, shoving him away with an oar. Snowball gave him a reproachful look and came right back to the side of the boat.

"Let him come if he wants to, Beebo. He might be some use to us," Lana said, and Brandon eyed the dog uncertainly. Then he grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and pulled him inside the boat.

"There. Happy now?" he asked the dog. Snowball responded by shaking his wet fur and showering both of them with cold lake water.

"Yuck. A dog shower," Brandon muttered. But Snowball paid no attention, and quietly lay down in the bottom of the boat to sleep. Lana put her feet up against him for warmth, and after a while Brandon did the same. Whatever else their new pet was good for, he made a fine heating pad.

Brandon hadn't had a dog of his own ever since he lived in the swamp at Ravanna when he was thirteen years old. Back then he'd had three mongrel strays named Cut, Scrape, and Gator; half wild and not much good for anything, but at least they'd kept him company. Ever since then he'd led a dog-free life. He couldn't really have said why, except that Lisa was more of a cat person. There were two or three dozen of _those_ running around the house and barn. They were good at keeping rodents away, true enough, but they sure weren't very sociable little critters. Snowball had more personality than all the cats at Goliad put together.

"Today is the last day, you know," Lana said after a while, interrupting his wandering thoughts.

"Yeah, I know," Brandon said, not liking the reminder.

"If it happens that I don't survive, then—" Lana began, but he cut her off.

"No, don't even talk like that. You _will_ survive," he said fiercely.

"It's not nice to interrupt. We're far from help out here, and there's no telling how long it might take to reach the Fountain or even to get home. Death is a very real possibility, Beebo. We both knew that before we left. Now as I said, _if_ I don't survive, then there are a few things I hope you would do," Lana said.

"What are they?" Brandon asked, tight-lipped.

"First, that you'll still go on to find the Fountain, and not give up because of me or anything else," Lana said.

"Why would you say that?" Brandon asked.

"Because there are so many dark and evil places in the world that need light. You know this; how many of them have you seen already with your own eyes? You should remember that, and not do this just for the baby's sake, or even for mine. It's a serious thing to be given an opportunity like this. Do it for the glory of God above all, just as Dr. Anderson told us," Lana said.

No one had ever asked Brandon to make such a difficult promise before. He could accept the idea of making necessary sacrifices to save the people he loved, which might even include giving up his whole life in service to God. Or then again, he could have gladly accepted that beautiful future in which he and Lana both drank from the Fountain and then went on to heal a dark and fallen world together.

But the thought of doing it all alone, purely for its own sake; that was another matter completely.

"Was there anything else?" Brandon asked, temporarily sidestepping the issue. He didn't want to think about it, and he dearly hoped he never needed to.

"Yes, but that's the most important thing. The others I think you would do anyway," Lana said.

"What are they?" Brandon asked.

"Tell my mother what happened, and ask your sister if you might bury me in that cemetery on top of the mountain. I would like to think I'm part of your family now," Lana went on, and the picture of two fresh graves at Nebo with Lana and Stephen's names on them was a mental image Brandon would gladly have done without.

"We'll see what happens," he whispered.

"Don't be sad, Beebo. You have nothing to fear, and neither do I," Lana said.

"Yes I do. I have to fear being without you for the rest of my life," Brandon said.

"You'll never be without me, no matter what. I'll watch over you from heaven, till we meet again," she said.

"You know that's not how it works, Lana," Brandon said, in no mood to be comforted. She sighed.

"I know that, Beebo. . . but I also know that whatever else God may be, He surely isn't _less_ kind or loving than I can imagine. If it's not true that I can watch you from heaven, then that's only because the truth is something even better. Do you really doubt that?" Lana asked.

"No," Brandon finally said.

"Then don't worry about what will happen," Lana said, as if that settled everything. Maybe for her it did, but Brandon felt otherwise.

It started to rain not long after that, beginning with a misty drizzle which soon thickened into a heavy downpour. Both of them were kept busy dumping water out of the bilge, and to make matters worse the wind started to pick up. If it kept on like that for too long, there was a serious risk that the boat might sink.

"Do you know how to swim?" Brandon asked, and she nodded. Rivulets of water ran down across her face from the rain, and she looked pale and tired. She had dark circles under her eyes which hadn't been there yesterday, and Bran was gripped by a sudden fear that the baby had already died before the appointed time and was starting to make Lana sick, too. The mere suspicion of such a thing was enough to make his heart stand still, but he bit his tongue and kept silent, as if speaking his fears aloud might somehow make them come true.

The rain kept on for hours, and it gradually turned cold and icy toward the end of the day. This was almost unheard of in April, in Texas, and it left both of them exhausted and freezing. Even Snowball was shivering as he huddled under one of the seats; the driest place he could find.

Then Brandon heard the very thing he'd been hoping and praying for ever since leaving the sheep farm; the sound of waves slapping against a solid shore. He couldn't actually _see_ anything through the fog and the rain, but that didn't matter.

"Do you hear that?" he asked, his voice full of renewed hope.

"It sounds like waves," Lana agreed.

"I think it is," Brandon said, grabbing the oars and starting to pull as hard as he could in that direction. Lana struggled to keep the water out of the boat as best she could on her own, but with only one of them dumping it wasn't long before the bilge began to fill up. If it took them too long to reach land then they might still end up sinking anyway.

But the closer they got to the sound, the more uncertain Brandon became.

"That sounds like _rocks,"_ he finally said, astonished. As far as he knew, he'd never seen a rock _anywhere_ in the vicinity of Caddo Lake, much less a large enough mass of them to crash waves against.

He had no more time to think about it, though, because all of a sudden sharp pinnacles of stone appeared out of nowhere ahead of them. A split second later the prow of the boat was driven against them, and before he knew it all three of them were dumped into the cold lake.

Brandon woke up flat on his back on a rocky beach, dazed and hurting all over while heavy rain pelted his face. The last thing he remembered was falling into the water, and he soon decided he probably ought to move; the waves were still swirling around his legs. He tried to get up and almost fell, and that's when he first noticed his fierce headache. His hand came away bloody when he touched the side of his head, so he figured he must have hit something after the boat overturned. Lana was nowhere to be seen, but then of course he wouldn't have noticed her even ten feet away through the heavy downpour.

"Lana!" he cried, hoping she might hear him and answer.

There was no reply, but he did hear fierce barking from somewhere in the distance along the beach. He couldn't have said whether it sounded like Snowball or not, but since there was nothing else to go on Brandon seized the slender clue and headed in that direction. His shoes had disappeared, and the rocks were cruelly sharp on his bare feet. He half-crawled and half-walked through the driving rain for what seemed like a month until he finally made out the vague shape of a white dog dragging at something in the edge of the water. When he got close enough he saw that it was Lana, every bit as battered and bedraggled as he was. Snowball had the collar of her shirt in his teeth, dragging her with all his strength away from the waves. Brandon couldn't tell if she was dead or only unconscious.

Sudden fear gave him a surge of energy, and he ran to her side without even feeling the sharp rocks anymore. She was cold; oh so cold, but at least she was still breathing. He dragged her away from the lake and up under the overhang of a rock which gave them a little shelter from the rain, and there he sat with his back up against the stone. He was shivering violently himself, and for his own sake as well as hers he held her close against his chest.

Snowball came and curled up next to them to add his own warmth, and after a while Brandon thought to reach up and feel his own collar. Sure enough, there were holes in it which could only have come from a dog's teeth.

"You pulled us both out, didn't you, boy?" he murmured, looking down at the dog and petting his thick fur gratefully.

Presently he noticed Lana's eyes open, and he smiled at her.

"Good morning, sleepyhead," Brandon said, and in spite of the rain and the circumstances, she smiled back just a little.

"Cold," she murmured.

"I know it. Me too, but there's not much we can do about that till the rain stops," Brandon said.

"Where are we?" Lana asked.

"Your guess is as good as mine. Somewhere on land, that's all I know," Brandon said.

"I thought both of us would drown when we hit those rocks," Lana said.

"Yeah, so did I," Brandon admitted.

"Thanks for pulling me out," Lana said, and he laughed a little.

"You should be thanking Snowball, not me. He pulled both of us out," Brandon said.

"See, I told you we might find a use for that dog," Lana said.

"I guess you were right, then," Brandon agreed.

After a while the rain began to slack off, until finally it was no more than a sodden drizzle. Brandon's head still ached, and his body hurt, and he was tired and cold and hungry too, and he didn't imagine Lana was in any better shape than he was. But they couldn't just sit on the beach till doomsday, so at last he cleared his throat.

"I guess we should get up now, don't you think?" he asked.

"Yes, no doubt we should," Lana agreed, and so they both struggled to their feet to gaze at the foggy landscape around them. There didn't seem to be any obvious way to go.

"Maybe we should follow the shore. There might be houses, and people who would help us. I would even settle for another empty barn," Lana said.

Brandon shrugged and nodded, and for a while they followed the beach hand in hand, with Snowball padding along beside them or sometimes bounding ahead for a little distance. For a long time there was nothing to see except rocks and fog and water, but eventually there loomed up a stone wall off to the side of them.

"What's that?" Lana asked, staring at it.

"I don't know," Brandon admitted, reaching out to touch the wall with his free hand. The rough stones were set close together with no mortar, dark gray and dripping wet with condensed moisture. The barrier was maybe ten or twelve feet tall, and disappeared into the distance as far as Brandon could see through the fog.

"Come on, let's see if we can find a gate," he said.

Before long they _did_ find one, a ten foot high wrought-iron monster of a thing which opened in the middle via a simple latch. There didn't seem to be any lock or bar to keep them out, but still they hesitated.

"Do you think we should go in?" Lana asked doubtfully. Brandon wondered about that himself, but finally nodded.

"I think we have to. We can't survive out here much longer. Surely whoever owns this place will understand that much, won't they?" he said.

"I hope so," Lana agreed.

Brandon thrust open the gates on noiseless hinges, and side by side they walked through the wall along a path of beaten dirt. Soon they found themselves in the shadowy aisles of a thick cypress forest, with the trees soaring up to unguessable heights above them and lining the path like huge silvery-grey columns draped with Spanish moss.

"I've never seen anything like this before," Brandon whispered as they went along. The place seemed to demand hushed voices and silent footsteps, to match the almost noiseless surroundings. The only thing to be heard was the soft dripping of water from the mossy cypress trees.

"Have you been all over the lake before?" Lana asked.

"Well. . . no, but I think I would have heard about a place like this. It reminds me of a park, or maybe even somebody's old mansion," Brandon said.

"I'm sure we'll find out soon enough," Lana said.

Soon they came to a place where the trees drew apart and left a perfectly circular lawn of clipped grass, with a well in the exact center. It was built of the same dressed stone as the wall, and there was a cupola over the top with a bucket and a chain for drawing water.

"I wonder if they'd care if we stopped and had a drink," Brandon muttered under his breath. He was far more hungry than thirsty, but he knew water would fill him up for a little while at least.

There were three stone benches around the well, so Lana sat down on one of them while he tried to get the bucket and chain assembly to work. Finally he was able to lower it down to draw some water, and since there was nothing else to drink from they both had to take turns with the bucket itself.

"I don't think we'll make it to the Fountain before the day is done," Lana murmured quietly after a while.

"No," Brandon agreed dully. It was useless to deny it at that point, even though it broke his heart. Stephen's time was up at midnight, and out there in the middle of nowhere with no help, it wouldn't be much longer before Lana followed him. They'd both known it all along, and the time had come at last when there was nothing to be done but to face the hard and bitter truth.

"I'm sorry things couldn't have turned out differently. I love you very much," Lana said, and that almost undid him.

"I love you too," Brandon said, wiping his eyes with the back of one dirty arm.

"Then please don't cry anymore. I can't bear it," Lana said. He could hear the anguish in her own voice, and that was enough to finish him off. He did cry then, and she soon joined him, and for a while they sat there in the twilight and wept in each other's arms.

Chapter Fifteen

"Is something wrong?" a voice said uncertainly, and Brandon looked up through blurry eyes to see a young man in a black hassock standing in front of them with a concerned look on his face. He must have approached noiselessly through the mist, because they hadn't noticed him at all till he spoke.

"No, sir. We're just lost, that's all," Brandon said, quickly wiping his eyes dry. There was no hiding the fact that he'd been crying, of course, but there was no need to keep on with it in front of the man.

"Indeed? Well then, you've come to the right place, I suppose," the man murmured.

"Where are we?" Lana asked, wiping her own tears away.

"You're just inside the walls of the monastery," the man said.

"The _monastery?"_ Brandon asked, wondering if he'd heard right.

"Yes. The main building is back that way, through the trees," the man said, seeming surprised at the question.

"I never heard of any monastery around here," Brandon said.

"Well. . . it's been here for an awfully long time. But I apologize; I'm being inconsiderate. My name is Brother Timothy. Let me take you both inside and get you some dry clothes and a warm fire before we do anything else, and some food and water if you need it. I ought not to leave guests sitting out here to talk in the rain," the man said.

"Sure," Brandon agreed. He certainly wouldn't turn down food and fire, preferably in that order.

"Come, then," Brother Timothy said, heading deeper into the woods than they'd yet gone. He didn't hurry, but soon they approached what looked like some odd mixture of a castle and a house. It was built all of dressed stone, with ornamental towers and turrets like a castle, but on the other hand it had windows and doors just like a house. A large and fancy one, perhaps, but a house nevertheless.

Brandon didn't know quite what to make of the place. It wasn't so much that the building itself was impossible to believe, it was just that it didn't fit in with what he thought he knew about the world. Such a place belonged somewhere in Europe during the Middle Ages, not in the middle of a shallow lake in modern-day east Texas. The setting made it feel startlingly alien, even though Bran was too glad for the shelter to care too much about appearances.

Snowball had to stay outside on the porch, and Brandon squatted down to pet him one last time before they left him behind.

"Don't worry, boy. We'll see you in the morning," he said, and the dog licked his face several times. Maybe it was just that he liked the salt from Bran's tears, or maybe it was his way of giving what little comfort he could. He was awfully smart that way.

It was almost dark by then, and Brother Timothy said nothing as he ushered them into the warm entrance hall. Then he led them to a nearby closet hung with black robes very similar to the one he wore himself.

"These are all we have to wear, I'm afraid. We don't get visitors very often," he said apologetically.

"Thank you so much," Lana said, and soon they were both changed into dry clothing, leaving their soaked ones in a pile by the front door. There were no shoes, but Bran didn't mind going barefoot for a while.

"We'll make sure your clothes are washed and dried by tomorrow morning," Brother Timothy said. He seemed to take it for granted that Brandon and Lana would be spending the night, and Bran himself wasn't inclined to turn down the invitation. They certainly didn't have anywhere else to go.

"We're just about to have supper if you'd care to join us," Brother Timothy offered, and they both nodded.

He took them to a large room with several tables and benches made of rough wood, all of them empty except for a small group of monks seated at the central one. Brandon counted only twenty-four of them, even though the room could easily have held ten times that many. Most were youngish, although there were a few greybeards also. Some of them were male and others female, though the difference was often hard to tell since they were all dressed in the same shapeless black hassocks. The only exception was the man seated at the head of the table, who wore scarlet instead. All of them rose to their feet when Brother Timothy brought Brandon and Lana inside.

"We have guests, my friends. I found them beside the well when I went to get water, lost in the woods," Brother Timothy said, and the one in the scarlet robe smiled.

"It's a nasty evening for something like that. Please stay with us tonight and then we'll see about getting you safely where you belong in the morning," the man said.

"Thank you, sir. We'd be grateful," Brandon said.

There was plenty of room at the table, and Brother Timothy ushered them to a place right next to the scarlet-robed leader, who promptly embarrassed both of them by getting down on his knees to wash their feet while the others waited. Brandon had heard about that particular custom, of course; it was something Jesus had done at the Last Supper, so he supposed these monks probably took it very seriously. Therefore he bit his tongue and let the man finish his task without objection.

Then they ate. It was nothing special, just potato soup and soda bread with hot tea to drink. But there was no shortage of it, and no one seemed to mind if they ate as much as they liked. After being on such short rations lately, it seemed like a feast.

As they ate they talked about various things with Brother Manchin, the abbot of the place who wore the scarlet robe.

"I didn't know they still had places like this," Brandon said, trying not to talk with his mouth full.

"It's true, there aren't many of us left nowadays. But there are still a few individuals who prefer to lead a quiet and reflective life away from the temptations of the world, praising God with prayer and thanksgiving. It's a very rewarding kind of existence, we think," Brother Manchin said.

"I guess I just never heard of _this_ place, that's all," Brandon said, and Brother Manchin gave him a very peculiar smile. Not an unpleasant one, but the type of smile people have when a child has innocently said something funny.

"No, I don't suppose you would have. No one finds this place without need," he said.

"What do you mean?" Brandon asked, his spoon frozen halfway to his mouth.

"I mean what I said. This place could never be found on a map. It exists only in the realm of hidden things. One could set sail across any lake or body of water in the world on a foggy day and reach this place if he were meant to find it, but it could never be found otherwise. It's a refuge for those who need it, and there are more such people in the world than you might think. They come here for a season or sometimes for life, to draw refreshment from worship in a land without fear. Then some of them go home when their spirits have been healed, and others whose need is greater than we can help go on to Elysium," Brother Manchin said.

"What's that?" Brandon asked.

"Far in the west, there's a land where the blessed of God can rest for a time in perfect peace, where the sun shines forever in a blue and cloudless sky. It's the most beautiful land there is; a shadow of Heaven where the living can taste for a little while what might have been, if the world had never fallen. Few ever reach it, but it's said that those who do are never the same afterward, and that the fragrance of that place clings to them forever after. That's why every man or woman who sets foot on that holy shore is given the title _the Blessed,"_ Brother Manchin said.

"You've been there yourself?" Brandon asked.

"Oh, good heavens, no; not me. I'm content to live right here and keep the way for such travelers as may come, to heal those I can and to show the way forward to those who need it. But if you should ever go there yourself, make sure to walk barefoot and bare headed, as a humble pilgrim should, and to take no weapon," Brother Manchin said.

"I came here to find the Fountain of Youth," Brandon said abruptly.

"Did you, now?" Brother Manchin said, seeming unsurprised.

"You've heard of it?" Brandon asked.

"Yes. . . I've read about it in my books. One of the things we do here is to study and meditate upon all the wonderful things that God has done in the world. We hear quite a lot from travelers, and sometimes we learn other things in dreams and visions. Whenever any of us hears about some new thing like that, we write it down for those who will come after us," Brother Manchin said.

"Is it close by?" Brandon asked eagerly.

"The Fountain, you mean? No, I'm afraid you won't find anything like that near the monastery. You should have been given a guide of some kind to lead the way, if I remember correctly. You'll have to follow that if you hope to find the Fountain. But I suspect that if it brought you this way, it must be leading you to Elysium. Perhaps you need healing yourself in some way," Brother Manchin said.

"But that doesn't make any sense. I thought the Fountain was in a cave. That's what my brother always told me after _he_ went there," Brandon said, ignoring the comment about how he might need healing himself.

"So I've read. But it's also written in the books that no two people ever find it in the same place twice, nor in exactly the same way, nor even for quite the same reason. Your brother's story is not yours, and the tale of the one who comes after you will be different yet again. That shouldn't surprise you," Brother Manchin said.

"No, I guess not," Brandon said. It reminded him of the vision he'd received long ago at Cadron Pool, about how God loves reflections and thus the world is full of endless variations on a handful of central themes. But never exactly the same thing twice. Not even two snowflakes or grains of sand were ever identical in all the world in all of time.

"You don't seem happy with that news," Brother Manchin said, watching him.

"I'm not," Brandon admitted.

"And why might that be?" Brother Manchin asked.

"Because if the Fountain is that far away, then there's no hope. I'm sure you can see that we're having a baby. But we know from a dream that he'll die this very night at midnight if we don't find the Fountain first. And if it goes on much longer after that, then Lana will die, too," Brandon said bluntly.

"Ah, is that it?" Brother Manchin asked, in a much more compassionate tone of voice.

"That's it," Brandon said. He was careful not to let his voice crack when he said it, even though the reminder broke his heart all over again.

"I'm sorry, child," Brother Manchin said.

"Yeah, so am I," Brandon agreed, and for a few seconds Brother Manchin was quiet while he stroked his beard and thought.

"May I ask you a very personal question, young man?" he finally asked.

"Sure, why not?" Brandon said, shrugging.

"How much do you love this young lady?" Brother Manchin asked.

"More than anything in the world," Brandon said.

"Do you really mean that?" Brother Manchin asked.

"Of course I do," Brandon said.

"Are you willing to prove it?" Brother Manchin asked.

"What do you mean?" Brandon asked, a cold shadow of doubt creeping over him.

"I'm not without power of certain kinds. I can't break the rules that are already set, but I can alter the circumstances, perhaps. We might be able to save them both. But I warn you, it still won't make things easy," Brother Manchin said.

"I'll do anything it takes," Brandon said.

"Listen first, before you make any promises," Brother Manchin warned.

"All right," Brandon agreed.

"This is what I can do. I can put the young lady to sleep until you find the Fountain and your appointed task is done. Time won't pass at all for her in the meantime, while you go about the work that God has given you. I can't say how long that will take; somewhere between a hundred and a hundred fifty years is my best guess, but you'll feel it in your heart when the time is up. For all those years she and the baby will sleep without aging, just as you'll never age out there in the world. And then, when the fullness of time is complete, if you still love her after so many years, come back to this place on Easter morning," Brother Manchin said.

"And what then?" Brandon whispered.

"Kiss the young lady as she sleeps, and then she'll wake from her slumber, and your life will be given back to you as well, to grow up and age as other men do. Your child will be healed at the same time with the last of your power, and then all three of you can live out your full lives together," Brother Manchin said.

"That might as well be forever," Brandon said, aghast. A century and a half of waiting? He didn't know if he could bear such a thing.

"No, child. _Forever_ is too long a word for anyone to use. The time will go by faster than you think," Brother Manchin said.

"But what if. . ." Brandon began, and then couldn't bring himself to finish the thought.

"What if you don't come back, or if you fall in love with another, or something like that?" Brother Manchin asked, and Brandon just nodded.

"Then she'll sleep till the end of days," Brother Manchin said.

"And me?" Brandon asked.

"On the day that you even so much as kiss another girl in yearning, the bond between you will be broken forever and you'll never be able to wake her. That's the proof of your love, that it can last till the appointed time, and also your atonement for the sin that brought you here to begin with," Brother Manchin said.

"I'll never forsake her, no matter what. I swear it," Brandon said, recovering his composure after the first shock of what he'd been told. There was no stronger vow he could think of to make, and Brother Manchin smiled.

"Then don't fear. But I warn you, the heart is fickle and feelings will fade. You'll be young and strong for all that time, and there won't be any shortage of sweet and beautiful girls who come into your life. You'll be very lonely sometimes, and memories will come to seem like ancient history after a while. You could easily end up breaking your own heart in a moment of weakness if you aren't careful," Brother Manchin warned.

"I won't break," Brandon said staunchly.

"I hope you always remember that," Brother Manchin said, with a touch of sadness in his voice.

"I will," Brandon promised.

"Then there's nothing left to say, on your part. What do _you_ say, young lady?" Brother Manchin asked, turning to Lana.

"I believe him. I always knew that God would make a way. I'll sleep, and then for me it will be like waking up tomorrow morning with my whole life to live and my love at my side," she said firmly.

"Then come, both of you," Brother Manchin said.

He led them up a set of narrow stone steps into one of the towers of the house, stopping at a wooden door while he fished out a set of keys. Inside was a circular room with a four-poster bed against the far wall, but sparsely furnished otherwise except for a pitcher of water on a nightstand with a mirror above it. A single window looked out on the murky night, and the bed itself was made with a white lace coverlet.

Brother Manchin poured water into a cup from the pitcher, and blessed it before offering it to Lana.

"Drink this, my dear. That's all it will take, and then in a little while you'll fall asleep. God be with you, till the bright morning," Brother Manchin said, and then excused himself to leave them alone together for a little while.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Brandon asked as soon as the man was gone.

"Do we have any choice?" Lana pointed out.

"No, I guess we don't," Brandon admitted, looking down at the floor.

"Don't be sad, Beebo, and don't worry. The time will pass, and you'll come back for me, and then we'll all live happily ever after," Lana said.

"I wish it could be that easy," Brandon said.

"It _is_ that easy," Lana insisted.

"But what do I do in the meantime? A hundred years without you is forever," Brandon said.

"Find the Fountain. Then you'll know what to do. Make the world to be as beautiful as it was in the Garden of Eden, to remind men of what was lost in rebellion. Teach them to hunger and thirst and pant after heaven as the deer pants for water on a summer's day. That will be your purpose, all the days of your life, and then all this sorrow will be well spent," Lana said.

"Is that really what you want me to do?" Brandon asked.

"Yes, Beebo. That's really what I want, and I think in your deepest heart it's the one thing you've always wanted yourself. Otherwise I don't believe you would have been chosen to find the Fountain at all. That's why I'm asking you to do this not just for my own sake but for yours, too," Lana said, and because his heart was killing him and he would have done almost anything for her at that moment, Brandon gave in at last.

"Then that's what I'll do. I promise," he finally said, his throat tight.

"Good," Lana agreed.

They talked like this for several hours, till midnight drew near. Then at last Lana glanced at the clock and sighed.

"There's no more time left, Beebo. I have to drink that cup now, or soon it will be too late," she said.

"I know," he said, getting up from his seat on the bed to fetch it for her. Then she drank it down, putting the cup on the windowsill and arranging herself as comfortably in the bed as possible. Finally she grasped his hand, and for a few precious minutes they were both silent. Brandon wanted to talk, to say almost anything, but he couldn't think of a single word that wouldn't have felt stupid and trivial at such a moment.

"There's one more thing I want to say while I still can. If you should ever decide you don't love me anymore, or some other girl comes along who steals your heart, then go and be happy, Beebo. I won't hold you. I'll simply smile in my sleep and be glad for you, and then we'll all meet again in heaven someday," Lana finally said, bare seconds before time was up.

"No one will ever hold my heart except you," Brandon promised, and she smiled. Then the clock struck midnight, and she closed her eyes, and he was left there holding her hand, almost as much alone as if she'd really died. But he could see the slow rise and fall of her breath, and he knew she still lived. And someday, after more years than he cared to think of, she'd open those eyes again.

"I love you forever, _milaya,"_ Brandon whispered, and then kissed her one last time before getting up to leave the room.

Brother Manchin was waiting for him downstairs.

"She's sleeping now," Brandon said, and Brother Manchin nodded.

"Don't worry, young man. They'll be safe here, as long as the world stands," Brother Manchin said, and since that was the very last thing in the world Brandon wanted to talk about right then, he changed the subject.

"Can I find the way to Elysium from here? Is it very far?" he asked.

"Since you've made it this far then yes, I think you can find it. There's only one path to follow from this point onward. I don't know for certain how far it is, though. Not many ever come back this way," Brother Manchin said.

"Where do they go, then?" Brandon asked.

"Home, eventually. But not by coming back this way," Brother Manchin said.

"That doesn't make any sense," Brandon said.

"Not much, I'm afraid. But I'll tell you as much as I know, if it will help you. From here you'll have to leave through the west gate, which will lead you out onto a dirt path through the woods. How far it goes and what you may find along the way I can't guess, but I _can_ say this much: you'll have to face three challenges before you reach Elysium," Brother Manchin said.

"What kind of challenges?" Brandon asked.

"One of them will test your faith, another your courage, and the last one your love. Other than that I don't know; they could be almost anything, I suppose. But if you fail any of them then you'll never find the way forward," Brother Manchin said.

"I guess I'll just have to wait and see," Brandon finally said. He was still too numb from watching Lana close her eyes to feel anything more than a detached interest in whatever the future might hold.

"Indeed you will. But come, you should go to bed now. It's late, and you have a long journey to begin tomorrow morning," Brother Manchin said.

Truer words were never spoken, so Brandon followed the crimson-clad monk to another guest room somewhere in the monastery.

He lay wakeful and sad for a long time that night, thinking about the future that lay ahead. It was nothing at all like the beautiful vision that Lana had described to him as they lay in the boat together the night before. No, this was more like a nightmare from which there was no waking. The thing he most greatly feared had come upon him at last, to find himself alone and unloved till the end of days.

He should have seen it coming, he supposed, ever since way back in August when Lana told him her dream about the red wolf. Brandon had known ever since then that a time of loneliness was coming, but he'd never dreamed how soul-crushingly deep it would be; how appallingly long it would last. No wonder that poor wolf had howled like his heart was broken. For the first time, Brandon could understand the feeling perfectly.

_But a blessing will come, too,_ he reminded himself. And since that was the only comfort he could cling to, he kept repeating that simple promise till he finally drifted off to sleep.

Chapter Sixteen

Brandon rested with the monks till noon the next day, since there was no need to hurry anymore and he wanted to get his strength back before tackling the rest of the journey.

He used part of that time to tell Brother Manchin and half a dozen others all about Cadron Pool, so the monks could write it down in their book of miracles. They all listened eagerly to this new tale, for it was indeed a mighty work for which they could praise God exceedingly.

Brandon tried to show as much enthusiasm as the monks did, but it was hard for him to hide the fact that deep down he was still bereft and broken-hearted by the thought of what lay ahead. His tears were never far from the surface, and perhaps Brother Manchin was wise enough to see this. A little while before lunch, the old monk found Brandon sitting alone in the library, looking out at the misty lawn and the cypress trees and trying hard not to cry anymore. Bran quickly wiped his face when the monk showed up, even though it was obvious what he'd been doing. But Brother Manchin pretended not to notice, even when he sat down on the bench right beside him.

"There's something I'd like to say before you leave this place, young man. A bit of comfort, I hope, to strengthen you for the days ahead," Brother Manchin said.

"What is it?" Brandon asked.

"Only that your tears are not without purpose. When people see that you hold fast to God and praise Him in the midst of your troubles, then He is shown to be righteous and true in the eyes of the nations, in a way which could never otherwise happen. We suffer as the Lord did, and for much the same reason; that the blind should see the light. You're never more like Christ than when you suffer, and it's often at times like that when you draw men closer to Him by your example, without even realizing what you're doing," Brother Manchin said.

"Maybe," Brandon said bleakly. He was hurting too much right then to care about explanations.

"You'll find that it's true someday, I promise. And if ever it seems that your life is too hard to bear and your burdens too heavy to carry, remember that He didn't send you out to face the wolves without knowing the cost Himself. He understands how you feel. No boy was ever crucified, that the weeping Father didn't find the nail-prints in His own hands," Brother Manchin said.

_That_ was enough to make Brandon cry again, right in front of Brother Manchin. He wept until his eyes were red and blurry, and the worst pain in his heart was washed clean. When it was over he was still broken-hearted, but not so much that he couldn't function.

He left the monastery not long afterward. The monks stood in a group to see him off, and he thanked them for their hospitality before heading out into the woods. He was wearing his own clothes again instead of the hassock, everything clean and dry and neatly mended. They'd also given him food and water to last for several days, plus a pair of leather boots to replace the shoes he'd lost in the lake; kindnesses for which he was deeply grateful. He was alone except for Snowball, so the provisions ought to last a long time with care.

"Although goodness knows _you_ eat plenty," Brandon said, scratching behind the dog's ears. Snowball made a chuffing sound, as if he didn't deign to comment on such a statement.

The path meandered through the same dark and dripping cypress forest that surrounded the monastery on all sides, full of the same thick white mist as everywhere else. It was almost completely silent except for the sound of Brandon's own footsteps, and after a while the loneliness of the place began to press down on his heart like a physical weight. He followed the path with his eyes focused just above the tips of his boots, barely noticing the world around him. His mind was far away, in the stone chamber where Lana lay sleeping.

After a while he didn't cry very much anymore, even though he sometimes still wanted to. Instead he did what Cody would no doubt approve of; every time he was tempted to feel discouraged, he sang praise songs quietly to himself. He knew dozens of them by heart from playing at church every Sunday, and the woods were silent enough that even his softest voice seemed loud. But as the echoes of _God is Great_ and _All the Heavens_ reverberated through the misty forest, Brandon slowly came to appreciate the truth of what Cody had told him about the power of praise. The more he sang, the less he thought about his sorrows and the more he looked ahead to the future. Perhaps his many-times-great-grandmother Marybeth Trewick had had to learn the same lesson, all those countless years ago.

Days went by with no sign of anything except more trees. Brandon followed the seemingly endless path from early morning till long after sundown each day, and then every night he ate some bread and hard cheese before lying down next to one of the thick cypress trunks with Snowball for warmth.

Then suddenly one morning he came to a region of charred and blasted ground, as if there might have been a forest fire in that area. It must have been an awfully recent one, though, because wisps of smoke were still rising from a few of the stumps here and there. Pale white mist swirled around the dead trunks with every faint eddy of breeze, and the path was almost hidden beneath wind-blown ashes and blackened bits of wood. Bran could still feel heat radiating from the ground.

"Come on, boy. It's only an old fire," he murmured, scratching Snowball behind the ears absentmindedly.

Brandon set off along the ashy path, and soon found himself sweating from the heat. The air was full of a foul, acrid odor that stung his eyes and nose and parched his throat, and he found himself having to drink more water than usual, just to keep from coughing. Even worse, he began to notice that the light was fading fast, even though it was nowhere near time for sundown yet.

"Something's not right, buddy. It's not time for dark yet," Brandon said, and Snowball whined a bit as if worried.

"Do you feel something, boy?" Brandon asked, uneasy himself. But there was nothing to do except go ahead or turn back, so after a brief hesitation he went on.

The gloom swiftly thickened till it was dark as a full-blown night, but somewhere far up ahead there seemed to be the reddish glow of flames. That explained the darkness, at least, if there was that much smoke in the air.

Bran hesitated again, not liking the thought of heading into what might be an actively burning fire. He'd read stories about people and animals who got roasted alive that way; a gruesome fate to imagine. Indeed, he soon heard a faint but piercing scream in the far distance, of such agony that it froze his very blood.

"What was _that?"_ Brandon whispered, staring at the far-off flames. Snowball gave a low growl, and Bran could feel the hackles on the back of his own neck standing up. He stood and listened for a long time, but the scream was never repeated. Finally he shook his head and went on.

As he got closer to the fire he heard more screams from time to time, some louder than others but all of them every bit as heart-stopping as the first one. He never actually _saw_ anything, but in some ways that only made it worse. His imagination was free to have a field day with a million hideous ideas to explain where the screams could be coming from, with each new possibility even more horrifying than the last.

Eventually he reached a swampy area where pools of stinking water were scattered among the blackened trees, and in that region some of the trunks were still burning. The heat was almost unbearable, so Brandon hurried along as fast as he could without having to breathe too hard and bring on a coughing fit. All the while the screams continued all around him, like souls in torment. It was horrible enough that he wondered if he'd stumbled into one of the outer rings of hell.

He didn't have the breath to sing, but he prayed constantly as he went along, and somehow he found the courage to keep going.

Then, in a place where the flames were especially thick, a _thing_ with a body of swirling black smoke and bulging yellow eyes big as dinner plates suddenly came rushing out of the fire with a bloodcurdling scream, holding a red-hot knife in one upturned hand.

Brandon turned and ran for his life, back in the same direction he'd just come from. But the monster was in hot pursuit, so close that Bran could feel its fiery breath scalding the back of his neck. He expected to feel its sharp claws seize him from behind at any second, and sheer terror threatened to burst his heart even if the monster somehow failed to eat him alive first. He used every ounce of strength he possessed to outrun the thing, and at last it screamed again and threw its red-hot knife at him. Out of the corner of his eye Brandon saw it land sizzling in one of the fetid pools of water.

He was far beyond the burning trunks and almost out of breath by then, so he dared to glance back over his shoulder to see if the monster was still chasing him. To his intense relief, the path behind him was empty. The creature must have given up when it threw the knife.

Brandon stood there breathing hard and coughing his lungs out from the harsh fumes, trying to get his breath back and slow down the pounding of his heart. He drank some water to clear the smoke from his throat and then wiped his face clean with his t-shirt. Finally he was able to calm down a bit, even though he could still smell the stink of fear in his own sweat.

"What can I do, boy? I've got to get past that thing," he muttered, and Snowball whined again.

"You know, Brother Manchin _did_ say I'd have to face three tests. I bet you that refugee from a bad horror movie is probably one of them. And I bet you anything he's there to test my courage. So that means I've got to face him down, don't you think?" Brandon asked, trying to reason it out. Snowball chuffed noncommittally.

"Lot of help _you_ are," Brandon said.

He was ninety percent sure he was right, but still. . . it was one thing to talk about facing down a horrible monster empty handed; it was quite another thing to go through with it. The thought of what might happen if he failed was enough to drive another cold shaft of fear into his heart, and ten percent doubt was plenty enough for his imagination to work on.

Then he thought of Lana lying there asleep in her bed, and he knew she and Stephen had no hope at all if he didn't do this.

So Brandon took an iron grip on his fear before creeping back to the place where the creature's blade had fallen, determined to retrieve it and thus have a weapon of his own if need be. His buck knife was too puny a tool for that kind of fight.

The monster's blade was still there, with its black hilt sticking up out of the mud just a bit too far from the water's edge to be easily reached. Brandon held on to a charred stump so he could lean out over the puddle without falling in, and finally he managed to snag the very tip of the handle. The blade itself was over two feet long when he pulled it out, wide and black and wickedly sharp. It resembled a machete blade, but as soon as Brandon hefted it to get a feel for the weight, the whole thing turned to smoke in his hands and then disappeared, leaving him standing there in complete frustration.

"So much for that idea," he muttered in disgust.

His own knife was better than nothing at all, so Brandon unclipped it from his belt before heading back to the place where he'd encountered the monster.

Sure enough, as soon as he reached the burning trunks the creature came rushing out of the flames to attack him again. But even though his knees shook and every fiber of his being shrieked for him to run, this time Brandon stood his ground.

The monster came right up to him and screamed, its hot breath blasting his face. It was so close that Bran could see its rotted teeth and smell the stench of its greasy sweat. The thing stood right there in front of him for several minutes, breathing hard and staring at him with malevolent eyes.

But it never actually hurt him, and presently Brandon worked up the courage to take a deliberate step past it, just as if the thing wasn't there. He kept his knife at the ready, praying all the while that he wasn't about to get chopped into mincemeat. The thing screamed at him again and slashed long cuts in the ground with its blade, but Brandon ignored that too and kept on going along the path. Then more of the creatures arrived, until he found himself surrounded by a shrieking crowd of things that might have populated the worst nightmare he'd ever imagined.

Bran covered his eyes before they ripped him to shreds, but when that didn't happen he began to wonder if maybe the monsters _couldn't_ really hurt him. Maybe all they could do was threaten and roar, and their power came only through the fear they caused.

It seemed like a good guess, especially if they were there to test his courage. So Brandon ignored the creatures with a quaking heart, pretending they didn't exist and keeping his eyes focused straight ahead as he walked right between them. For a little while the monsters redoubled their efforts to terrorize him, but finally they seemed to realize it was no more use at that point. Then one by one they gave up the ghost and disappeared.

At last he was left alone again on the path, still shaking from the encounter but no worse for the wear.

Daylight returned as he got farther away from that horrible place, and soon the landscape switched over to an endless plain of scrubby grass. There was still a thick cover of the whitish-gray mist that seemed to be typical for that whole country, but he could deal with _that._

After his ordeal with the monsters it seemed like a dull and even boring area, especially since it apparently went on forever. He did pass little streams now and then where he could refill his water supply, and these also gave him an opportunity to wash off the smoke and sweat from the fire country. The less reason he had to be reminded of that experience, the better it suited him.

He spent a lot of time talking to Snowball as they went along, just as if the dog could really understand what he was saying. Snowball slept next to him at night for warmth, and shared his meager meals, and comforted him in his solitude, and in general was the best friend a sad and lonesome boy could have asked for.

"You know, Snowball, I think I'll take you home with me after all this is over with. We don't have any dogs on the ranch right now, just some cats that live in the barn to keep away rats," Brandon said.

Snowball chuffed in that noncommittal way he had, and Brandon rolled his eyes.

"Aw, come on; there's nothin' wrong with cats. Besides, you wouldn't have to deal with them if you didn't want to. There's a thousand acres you can run around on, and cows to chase, and all kinds of stuff like that. It's a dog's paradise, I promise," he said.

He went on to extol all the virtues of Goliad Ranch from a dog's point of view, and Snowball listened politely until he ran out of things to say.

"No comment, huh? Didn't really think so, but you just wait and see," Brandon promised.

After several days they came to the edge of a vast and desolate city built of reddish mud bricks, and at first Brandon was glad for the change in scenery. Narrow cobblestone streets meandered between tall buildings huddled close together, reminding him of some ancient sun-kissed metropolis from Roman days. The only thing that tended to spoil this romantic image was the heavy white mist that drifted through the winding streets, making it seem that not a single ray of sunshine had ever kissed that particular city since the day the world was made. In some ways it reminded him of the decrepit slums of Saint Petersburg, except that he didn't have to worry about gangs or prison guards.

There didn't seem to be anything dangerous or sinister about the place, but nonetheless Brandon soon found himself hopelessly lost in what felt like an endless maze. For nearly a week he wandered aimlessly, sleeping in abandoned buildings and trudging the deserted thoroughfares without a clue as to whether he was making any progress or not. All he could do was try to keep moving in a straight line and hope that sooner or later he found his way through to the other side.

But he never did, and the city seemed to be exactly the same no matter how far he wandered. There were always the same endless cobblestone streets, the same partially ruined mud brick buildings everywhere. The foggy atmosphere kept him from seeing very far, creating the powerful illusion that he was surrounded by skyscrapers in every direction. He felt trapped and suffocated, enclosed in a small gray capsule of mist and mud.

Then he encountered the woman.

"Good evening, young man," she said, startling him.

Brandon looked up from his feet to see where the voice had come from, and then wondered how he'd ever managed to miss the woman in the first place. She was sitting on the front steps of a building nearly identical to all the others he'd seen, shelling peas into a wickerwork basket. Her face was so wrinkled and her hair so white that she looked a thousand years old. But it had been so long since Brandon had seen another human being of any kind at all, he was more than happy to speak to her.

"Good evening, ma'am. Could you tell me where I am, please?" he asked, since that was the question he most wanted to know.

"It's been so long since anyone lived in this place, I'm not sure it would be right to say that it still has a name. But once upon a time it was called Lakkaia, back when the world was fresh and new. As for myself, you may call me Mara," the woman said, nodding at him graciously. The name sounded vaguely familiar for some reason, but Brandon couldn't think where he might have heard it before.

"Brandon Stone. Pleased to meet you," he said, nodding back at her since he wasn't quite sure how else to respond.

"Likewise," Mara replied.

"Uh. . . I think I might be lost, ma'am. If you could tell me the way to Elysium, I'd be grateful," Brandon asked.

"Of course. Just follow the sun into the west," Mara said.

"But that's what I've been doing for days, and I never seem to get anywhere," Brandon objected.

"Then there must be something holding you back, because I know that's the way," Mara said.

"The test," Brandon murmured, barely above a whisper. But Mara must have had very sharp ears, because she heard him.

"Perhaps; I wouldn't know about that. But the day is almost done, and you won't make it much farther tonight. Could I offer you a place to sleep and some warm food tonight, for you and your dog?" she asked, and Brandon hesitated for only a second before nodding.

"Yes, ma'am, I'd appreciate that," he agreed.

"It's my pleasure. No one comes this way anymore. It's been forty years since the last time I spoke to another human being," Mara said.

"Forty _years?"_ Brandon asked, shocked.

"Yes, indeed, my little man. Forty long and weary years, ever since my husband died," she agreed.

"But why didn't you go somewhere else after that, if you were all alone?" Brandon asked.

"This is my home. I don't mean to leave it," Mara said, and Brandon couldn't think of any way to argue with that.

"But how do you live, though?" he asked.

"There's water from the well down yonder, and I have my little garden to grow whatever I need. It's enough. And if there's anything I lack, then people have left behind enough other things here and there in the city to last me for a thousand lifetimes. I don't need anything," Mara said.

"I guess not. Just seems awfully lonesome," Brandon said, and Mara sighed.

"Well, now, I have to admit it is _that_ sometimes. But we all have our burdens to bear," she said.

"Yes, ma'am, I guess we do," Brandon agreed, thinking to himself that truer words had never been spoken.

They talked for quite a while longer, and eventually Brandon found himself seated on the worn brick steps helping Mara shell peas. It reminded him weirdly of doing the same thing on the front porch at Goliad sometimes.

"You have a beautiful dog," Mara said after a while, petting the animal's soft white coat.

"Thanks. His name is Snowball," Brandon said.

"Have you had him long?" Mara asked.

"Well. . . only about two weeks, honestly, but it feels like a lot longer than that. He already saved my life more than once. He's my best friend," Brandon said, smiling a little as he realized how much he'd grown to love that dog in such a short space of time.

"It sounds like it. You've very lucky to have him," Mara said in her papery voice.

"So I am," Brandon agreed.

Mara used some of the peas to make a pot of soup for supper, along with some kind of herbal tea that reminded Brandon of chamomile. Then she showed him a rough and narrow mattress stuffed with hay in the corner of her one room apartment inside the building. There was a stack of handmade blankets of various colors and designs folded up at the foot of the bed, and another one half-finished on a loom sitting against one wall. She seemed to like to make things.

Bran chose a black and gold one since the colors reminded him of home, and then lay down quietly to ponder his situation. He didn't doubt that somehow this intricate city with its single lonely inhabitant must be a test of some kind, if he could only figure out what exactly it all meant. But if the fire monsters had been his test of courage, then this must be a test of either love or faith, and it was hard to know which.

Well, what were those two things, faith and love? At bottom they were both choices of one kind or another; faith was the choice to keep believing in something in spite of appearances or emotions, and love was the choice to be kind and to seek the good of a certain person or thing, as much as that was possible in a given situation. So which choice was it that he faced at the moment?

It seemed much more likely that he faced a test of love in this situation, the more he thought about it. There was nothing Brandon could think of which had to be trusted at the moment, other than the fact that he'd find his way through the city, and he'd already believed _that_ ever since the beginning. But then there was Mara, who'd lived all alone for forty years in a deserted city in the middle of nowhere. Surely there was something he could do to ease her loneliness and make her life a little easier; that would be showing love in a tangible way.

As he reasoned his way through all these things and tried to puzzle out what was expected of him, it crossed his mind that there was really only one thing he could do for Mara which would do any lasting good, and that was to give her Snowball.

No sooner did the thought arise than he dug in his heels and resisted; giving up his dog was the last thing in the world he wanted to do. But the more he thought about it the more certain he was. Snowball would be a comfort to her; there was no doubt about that, just as he'd been a comfort to Bran himself while he was lonely. Giving him up would also be a painful sacrifice on Brandon's part, and thus a very real and costly test of love.

_Is that really what I'm supposed to do?_ Brandon murmured under his breath, but there was no answer. He supposed that might have been too easy, though, and part of the test was the simple fact that he had to figure it out on his own.

He reached out one hand to pet Snowball's furry head, a silent way of saying goodbye. Then he rolled over and went to sleep.

In the morning he woke to the smell of frycakes sizzling on a griddle, and before long Mara served him a plate full, piled high and drizzled with honey. Brandon ate with gusto, but after he slowed down a bit he finally brought up the subject of the dog.

"Mara, you've been really nice to me, and I know living here must be awfully lonely for you. I'd like for you to keep Snowball after I leave, if you would," he said. It was hard for him to say the words, but he meant them.

"I couldn't take your dog, little man. That would be selfish of me," Mara said.

"No it wouldn't. I'll be going back home soon. I can always get another dog if I want to, and besides that I have family and friends to make up the difference. You're here all by yourself. Please keep him," Brandon said. Mara hesitated for a little while longer, then finally nodded.

"All right, then. I'll keep him. Thank you," she said.

"You're welcome. Uh, I guess I probably ought to be going now, while it's still early," Brandon said, and she nodded. He got up from the table and stretched, grabbing one last bite of frycake and honey before he left the apartment.

Snowball got up to follow him when he went outside, but Brandon turned and shook his head.

"No, boy. Stay here," he said. The dog cocked his head at him and whined a little as if to ask why.

"Stay with Mara. She'll take care of you," Brandon said. He scratched the dog's ears one last time, and then quickly walked away. He couldn't have said anything else past the hard lump in his throat anyway.

He set off once again through the misty streets, hoping he'd done the right thing. He still wasn't altogether happy about giving up his dog, but he supposed it was all for the best. Mara really did need Snowball more than Brandon himself did, and that alone was a good enough reason to let her keep him.

Less than two hours after leaving Mara's apartment, Brandon emerged at last from the endless city. A pale dirt path stretched ahead of him across the same old grassy plain, till it faded into the misty distance.

"I guess that was the test, then," Brandon murmured to himself.

Chapter Seventeen

For the next three days Brandon trudged across the misty plain, and at night he slept alone on the cold ground. It was amazing how much difference Snowball had made, and without the dog to share warmth Brandon felt like he might freeze. Even worse, he had only a few little scraps of food left. They wouldn't last more than two or three days at the most, and he wondered how much farther he could go before hunger alone forced him to give up the journey.

He spent most of his time lost in thought, since there wasn't much to hold his attention in such a featureless landscape. He wrestled endlessly with the question of why God would ask so much of him; why he should have to suffer so much when it all seemed so pointless and cruel.

He'd been stubborn, no doubt, and maybe even messed-up inside about love and trust and things like that. So maybe part of it was simply that God had had to break his heart in order to make him truly whole someday, just like Cody had talked about when he mentioned how doctors sometimes had to rebreak a bone that heals crooked. That was understandable, at least, even though it seemed like a needlessly harsh lesson that could have been taught some easier way.

Or then again, Brother Manchin had suggested that suffering might draw other people to God, but there was no one Brandon could think of who knew anything at all about his situation who wasn't already a believer. Telling his story after the fact didn't seem likely to carry the same punch.

But what other reason for all this pain could there be? He refused to accept the idea that it meant nothing at all, because logically that would have forced him to believe that _nothing_ meant anything at all. Not love nor life nor truth nor beauty, and that was a price too high to be paid. Either nothing had a purpose, or else everything did; he was perceptive enough to grasp _that_ much.

Brandon sighed and shook his head, wishing life didn't have to be so messy and complicated. He hardly knew what to think or believe anymore, about his own situation or anything else. He could only sing to the silent mist, and try to have trust.

He often pondered what his life might be like after he drank from the Fountain. To live a hundred years and never age, his body young and beautiful till the end, immune to all sickness and injury, and by the touch of his hands to have the power to heal those things in others. To make ugliness beautiful, to make foulness clean, and in the process to make believers out of the hardest hearts in the world. Or as Lana had said, to teach men to hunger and thirst after heaven as a deer pants for water on a summer's day. It was a high and noble work which gave glory to God, no doubt about it.

And yet. . . oh, so very lonely.

And so it was that in spite of his love for God and his desire to glorify Him, there was still a residue of sadness and apprehension in Brandon's heart, a tinge of uncertainty that he really wanted all this. Maybe it was true that selfless love led to joy; God Himself had promised it, after all. And yet, if Brandon had been offered the choice between living a normal and quiet life with Lana or accepting this high destiny to change the world, he honestly wasn't sure which one he might have picked. Perhaps he hadn't yet washed the bitterness completely from his heart or quite learned to believe that Love could be trusted.

That was beginning to change as he found himself forced to rely on God whether he liked it or not, even for his day-to-day and hour-to-hour survival. He took some comfort in Brother Manchin's parting words about a father's love, but it would have been a lie to say that he'd given up his doubts altogether.

While he pondered these things there came to him unbidden a distant, almost-forgotten memory of his early childhood, of the day when he'd died for two hours. He'd seen God enthroned in glorious light, surrounded by the angels and the saved of earth who sang His praises forever. And he, Brandon, had wanted nothing more than to go and join those who sang. But then a young man in white clothes had picked him up.

"Are you willing to go back to the earth for a while?" the man had asked.

"Why?" Brandon had asked.

"To give hope to those left behind, and glory to God," the man said.

"What would I have to do?" Brandon had asked.

"To give the meaning of dreams and visions to those who ask, and someday to drink from the Fountain of Youth to bring healing to many," the man had said.

"I'm willing," Brandon had said.

"It will be very painful sometimes. All the more so if you ever forget why you were sent," the man had warned.

"I promise I won't forget," Brandon had said, and shortly thereafter he'd woken up cold and shaking in the basement of the hospital.

But he _had_ forgotten, as the cares of the world had battered him relentlessly. And just as the man had warned him, life had become very painful as a result. He recalled now just a little of the certainty he'd felt back then, and that was a greater comfort to him than anything else could possibly have been.

"Thank You for that," he whispered to God, grateful for the gentle reminder.

The next day Brandon woke to find the white mist completely vanished for the first time since he'd left the Andersons' house. It was a bright and cloudless morning without a breath of wind, and at last he could see where he was once more.

All around him stretched the grassy plain, and up ahead the path ran down a gentle slope to the shore of some vast lake or ocean that seemed to go on forever. The water was smooth and glassy as crystal, with not a ripple to break the mirror-like surface, and when he lifted his eyes he beheld an island far away in the west across the silent sea.

The path ran downhill and straight into the water, just as if it continued directly to the island across the bottom of the ocean. And since he didn't know how deep or how cold it might be, Brandon approached the water and squatted down on one of the rocks at the edge of the shore to test it with the fingers of his left hand. He yanked them back out again after only a split second. The water was icy; so cold that it felt like a thousand red hot needles on his skin. There was no way he could ever swim _that,_ or even wade it. He'd be frozen to death before he made it even halfway across. If this was to be the test of his faith, then he wasn't sure what was being asked of him.

But his heart was changed and strengthened by the memory of his vision, and he was determined now to fulfill everything he'd promised, somehow or other.

The reflection of the sun on the surface made it difficult to see, but after a second Brandon noticed writing carved into a rock at the bottom of the water. After scrutinizing it carefully, this is what he read:

Only the humble shall pass.

That seemed plain as mud, and he furrowed his brow trying to think what it might mean. Then he remembered what Brother Manchin had said, about having to approach the holy place as a humble pilgrim, with bare head and bare feet, and leaving all weapons behind. That was Bran's best guess as to the inscription's meaning, but still he hesitated, remembering the cold.

Then he decided he was too far along to give up now, so he took off his boots and his baseball cap to leave them on the sand, his red hair glistening in the sunshine when his head was uncovered. The bright steel of Papaw Stephen's knife shone silver-white as it lay there on the ground, and his initials at the base of the blade showed up clearly.

"To God alone be the glory," Brandon whispered under his breath.

Then he went back down to the water's edge. It looked deep and frigid, dropping off steeply from the shore, and that meant he'd have to do a lot of swimming. If the cold made his muscles stop working then he'd drown within seconds. In the ordinary world, such a thing would have been suicidally stupid.

But then he reminded himself that this _wasn't_ the ordinary world, not by a long shot. In fact, this might even be his test of faith, whether he could believe the invitation and do something which seemed impossible. After all, the writing on the stone implied that the humble _would_ get past, even though it was hard to see how.

So Brandon took a deep breath, bracing himself for the freezing water, and then stepped off the bank.

To his utter astonishment he found the water to be solid as stone, with his right foot standing flat on the surface. He gingerly brought his other foot forward, and then took another few steps until he was standing maybe five or six feet from the shore. The surface felt cold and slick beneath the soles of his bare feet, like walking on ice or maybe wet linoleum. He could look down to see fish and rocks far below, but there was no time for him to marvel at this. He still had a long walk ahead.

He took extreme care not to slip and fall as he walked across the glassy water. Bran wasn't quite sure what might happen if he lost his footing, and he certainly didn't want to get dunked in icy water. But he never fell, and after two or three miles of walking he finally approached the sandy shores of the island.

Here Brandon stopped for a little while simply to gaze in open-mouthed wonder, for the earth of that land seemed to shine with a light of its own. The stones on the ground were of diamond and pearl, even down to the smallest grains of sand on the beach, and they glistened and sparkled like fresh white snow in the sunshine. Beyond the beach lay a land of meadows and trees, full of golden yellow flowers and fruits of many different kinds. A faint breeze brought the scent of those meadows across the water, and tears filled his eyes and his breath nearly stopped, for nothing more beautiful could there be.

Then Brandon set foot at last on that hallowed shore, and for a while he wandered in delight through the meadows and woods, almost forgetting why he'd come. But even though his feet must have carried him for many miles, he never reached the end of that land. The sun never moved in the blue and cloudless sky, as if the whole place were lit with the changeless light of an early spring day, crisp and fresh as a bright red apple a-drip with shining dew. He never saw another person, but he heard them many times in the far distance; voices raised in beautiful melodies the like of which he'd never imagined.

Then at last he came to a mountain in the midst of the land, with a beaten path which led up to the mouth of a cavern. From thence there flowed a clear stream beside the path, bubbling and dancing over stones as it glittered in the sunlight.

With bowed head Brandon made his way up to the cave, and inside he found a chamber draped with green vines. In the very center there stood a Fountain of jet black stone, from which water clear as glass gushed forth to fill the bed of the stream below. Upon the lip of the stone there sat a golden cup encrusted with seven blue sapphires, and below it were carved these words:

The strong of heart shall drink of Me,

The life-giving Life, and the Beauty that makes beautiful.

Without even needing to wonder, Brandon knew immediately that he'd found the place he'd been looking for.

But as he stood there hesitating, a young man dressed in white clothing came out of the depths of the cave to speak to him; the same one he'd seen all those years ago in heaven.

"What is this place?" Brandon whispered, when the man came close enough to hear him.

"This is the land of Elysium, and here dwell in peace for a little while many of those blessed ones who seek the Lord with a broken heart. Tread softly, for the land where your feet rest is holy ground," the man said.

"You told me to come here," Brandon said.

"So indeed I did. All who come to this place are called," the man agreed.

"Is this the Fountain I'm supposed to drink from?" Brandon asked.

"Have you accepted the task which is laid before you, to live your life as a light in the darkness, and to guard and protect the one who will come after you?" the man asked.

"Yes, sir," Brandon said.

"And do you choose this with a glad heart, and not because you must?" the man asked, and that was a much more difficult question. Bran was tempted to say something humble and thoughtful to explain his mixed feelings, but nuanced answers had never been his nature. Therefore he spoke the only truth he could be certain of.

"God knows my heart better than I do," he finally said, and the man smiled.

"He does, indeed. Drink, then, and be welcome," the man said, gesturing toward the cup. Brandon took a step forward, and then another, till he stood right in front of the Fountain of Youth itself. Then he lifted the golden cup and filled it to the brim. The water was icy cold, making him shiver as it touched his hand. And then at the last he lifted the cup to heaven.

"To God Most High, may this cup that I drink give You glory forever," he said, using almost the very words that his brother had spoken as he stood in that same place twelve years earlier.

Then Brandon lifted the cup to his lips. He felt as if it might freeze his very heart as he drank, and when he was done he solemnly replaced the cup on the lip of the Fountain. He felt no different than before, but he didn't doubt the change that had taken place in his body.

Then the young man in white clothing took a small crystal flask from his pocket and filled it from the Fountain, sealing it up and handing it to Brandon.

"What's this for?" Brandon asked.

"Keep this for the one who comes after you. His trials will be different than yours, but if he passes the test and if he so chooses, give him this to drink. He'll need it to fulfill his own task, when the time comes," the man said.

"Do you mean my nephew's son?" Brandon asked.

"Yes. His name will be Tycho, and I believe you know already where to find him," the man agreed.

"Yes, sir. He'll be somewhere in Jamestown, on the island of Eleuthera, in the year 2158. But how will I know when the time has come to give him this, or whether he passed the test or not?" Brandon asked.

"God has given you foresight to understand those things when need be. You'll know when the time is right," the man said.

"All right," Brandon agreed, putting the crystal flask in his pocket. It lay cold against his skin through the thin fabric, making him shiver again.

"Be glad now, Blessed One, and lift up your eyes, for you stand at the beginning of great and glorious things. You may feel that you've given up your whole life today, and indeed you have. But remember that unless a seed falls to the ground to die, it can never blossom or grow. Unless a man is willing to pass through the depths, he can never be lifted up. Such is the law. From death comes life, and from sorrow comes joy. Be faithful to your promise, even when the days seem darkest, and you'll find that someday all the desires of your heart have come true; even the ones you never dreamed of yet. Therefore go in peace, and return once again to your home," the man said.

Then Brandon took his leave, and retraced his steps through that shining land to the edge of the crystal sea. He walked once more across the water till he reached the other side, and then stopped for a little while to gaze back at the shores of Elysium, until the light and the beauty of that place were imprinted forever upon his heart.

But at last he turned away, and after putting his boots, his knife, and his cap back on he slowly took his path across the grassy plains once more.

He slept that night on the open ground just as he'd always done before, and when morning came Brandon found himself surrounded once again by the white mist. But it was nowhere near as thick as it had been before, and he could still judge directions more or less by the dull orb of the sun. He plodded steadily eastward, on the theory that he should head in the opposite direction from Elysium to find his way home.

Before long trees began to appear all around him and rapidly thickened, and as the morning went on the fog began to dissipate. By noon he found himself standing in broad sunshine in a clearing surrounded with pine and cypress trees, and the path seemed to have disappeared completely.

"I wonder where I am _now?"_ Brandon murmured under his breath, and then picked his way northward along the edge of the woods to try to find a way to keep going.

Then he glimpsed a perfectly ordinary highway, far off through the trees. He was somewhere in the normal world again, however _that_ had come about. Bran let out a whoop of joy, and then ran through the tangled bracken and undergrowth till he came out beside a rural two-lane road, marveling that such a commonplace thing could seem so beautiful.

He had no idea where on the good green earth he might be, but after walking a little way down the shoulder he finally came to an old bait shop with the windows boarded up. There were still a few tattered business cards tacked to an old cork board beside the front door, and from these Brandon was able to ascertain that he had to be somewhere near Uncertain, Texas. He was on the western edge of Caddo Lake, more than twenty miles from Dr. Anderson's house at Mooringsport.

Two hours later Bran reached a gas station with a phone that he could use, and by mid-afternoon he found himself sitting in Dr. Anderson's living room again. _Much_ to everyone's surprise, since they all seemed to think Brandon and Lana had left that very same morning. The timeline made no more sense than anything else lately, but it seemed useless to question it.

"Where is Lana?" Tatya asked as soon as he got to the house, and Brandon had to think seriously before he could come up with any good way to answer that question.

"She's sleeping," he finally said, and then went on to tell the whole story of what had happened to him.

"That's almost unbelievable," Jonah said when he was done.

"Yeah, almost. I wouldn't believe it either, if I hadn't been there," Brandon agreed.

"I believe it. You look different, and you don't smell the same," Tatya said, staring at him critically.

"How do you mean?" Brandon asked.

"She's right. It's hard to notice at first because you were always handsome anyway, but now it's _more,_ somehow. You're absolutely perfect, physically speaking. Like a statue or a painting come to life," Rosalie Anderson said.

"That's what the Fountain is supposed to do, girls. None of us should be surprised at that," Dr. Anderson said.

"But what about the smell?" Tatya asked, and Rosalie came closer to sniff Brandon's hair and shirt.

"She's right about that, too. There's definitely a scent about you that wasn't there before. It's like. . . I'm not quite sure how to describe what it's like, actually. It reminds me of sweet and beautiful things, but nothing specific that I could lay a finger on. It's like apples in the fall, or the milk on a baby's breath, or maybe even clothes that were left out to dry in the sun. But then again it's not really like any of those things; it just makes me think of them. It reminds me of what joy would smell like, if it had a scent," Rosalie said, groping for words.

"Brother Manchin said I'd always smell like Elysium, as long as I live," Brandon said.

"He must have been right, then. It's very faint, but I think if you could bottle it up you'd put every perfume company in the world out of business in a week. It's enough to make any girl on earth fall in love with you, if you go around looking like that and smelling that way," Rosalie said, smiling a little.

"I hope not," Brandon said, alarmed at the very thought. It was bad enough to have to spend a hundred years alone; it would be ten thousand times worse if girls were swooning over him all the time. Even with the best intentions in the world, he didn't know if he had the strength to endure that kind of torture. It reminded him of the story of Tantalus, dying of hunger and thirst while surrounded by grape vines heavy with fruit he couldn't eat and standing neck deep in water he couldn't drink. Even though Brother Manchin had warned him about temptation, Brandon had never understood till that very moment how vicious a battle he really faced.

_God help me,_ he whispered under his breath. No doubt some people would have traded anything for such a gift, but for Brandon it was only one more layer of anguish to be borne.

"It will be all right, Bran. You are strong," Vlad said, watching him. The boy's simple faith made Brandon want to laugh and cry at the same time. He didn't understand, of course; he only knew that Brandon had carried him for miles and fought three men to get medicine for him. That was strength, in his little-boy eyes. He didn't yet comprehend that sometimes muscle and courage weren't enough to carry the day.

Would that they were.

But the comment had been meant kindly, and Bran didn't want to seem ungrateful for that by saying something bitter.

"I'm sure it will, Vlad. I'm more concerned about you and Tatya right now," he said gently, changing the subject.

"I think we might have found a place for these two, if everything works out. Do you remember Dr. Bartow, our friend who lives in Shreveport and works on the air force base?" Dr. Anderson asked.

"I think so," Brandon said.

"Well, Rosalie and I talked to them about the situation again this morning, and they've more or less agreed to adopt these two. I believe I mentioned before that they can't have any children of their own, so this is something they've been thinking about for a long time," Dr. Anderson said.

"They are very nice," Vlad said solemnly.

"We talked to them for a long time on the phone. They are coming to visit this afternoon and talk more, but I think everything is mostly decided," Tatya agreed.

"That's good. At least we won't be very far apart, if you're only in Shreveport. We can still visit sometimes that way. Will you have to change your names?" Brandon asked.

"Only last name. I will still be Tatiana. That's English enough to suit me. But Vlad says he will be Wolf from now on, since that's what our old last name means in Russian," Tatya said, and Brandon laughed.

"Name funny?" her brother asked, looking worried.

"No, not at all. It'll just be hard to think of you as Wolf Bartow, that's all," Brandon said.

"We will get used to it, I'm sure," Tatya said.

"Well, I'm happy for both of you," Brandon said.

"So are we, and thank you," Tatya said.

"Yes, thank you," Vlad, no, _Wolf_ agreed. Brandon wasn't sure if he'd ever get used to calling the other boy by that name, whatever Tatya might say. But the two of them had a chance for a happy life to look forward to now, and that was all that really mattered. No doubt the other kids in Shreveport who never knew him as anything else wouldn't think twice about it. There was nothing to worry about anymore, as far as _they_ were concerned.

Besides which, Brandon still had his own issues to deal with.

Chapter Eighteen

"I don't think the judge is gonna change his mind, Bran," Lisa said a few weeks later, as they were sitting on the porch after the final court hearing. The question of whether Crush Stone would really take him away from Goliad or not had finally been answered, and the results were not at all to Brandon's liking. He'd have to go live with his father, as soon as school was over at the end of May.

"Never mind about that. It doesn't matter anymore," Brandon said, letting out his breath in a long sigh.

"It doesn't?" Lisa asked, obviously surprised.

"No, not really. The worst he can do is force me to live with him for one more year. As soon as I turn eighteen I'll come back here anyway," Brandon said.

"Well, that's one way of looking at it," Lisa agreed.

"It's the only way I can look at it and keep from going crazy. I don't know why he won't just leave me alone. It's not like he ever cared all that much before anyway. It might be different if he had," Brandon said.

"I don't know either, but as it stands, he's got the right. We can't stop him," Lisa said.

"Yeah, I know he does. Who knows, maybe he'll get tired of having to mess with me after a month or two and he'll let me come back sooner. I can be a real pest when I want to be," Brandon said.

"I'm sure you could, but things like that start turning into habits after a while. I'd rather suffer through a year and have you come back the same brother I remembered, than to watch you turn mean and surly again. I've already had enough of _that,"_ Lisa said.

"Yeah. . . me too," Brandon admitted.

"I've been thinking about how we could make things easier on you in the meantime, though. Maybe he'd let you stay in the same school at least, if you tell him you'll drive yourself every day. It's not all that far," Lisa said.

"But how would I do that? I could never afford to put enough gas in the truck to drive back and forth from Tyler every day, even if he said yes," Brandon pointed out.

"Don't worry about that part. We'll make sure you have what you need," Lisa said.

"Thanks," Brandon said, humbled.

"Don't mention it. I don't know if he'll let you visit us or not after all this; he's not real happy with me right now. But maybe we'll get to see you at football games and things like that, if nothing else," Lisa said.

"I don't even know if I'll play again next year," Brandon said, kicking the floor with his shoes.

"Why not? I thought you loved football," Lisa asked.

"Well, yeah, I _did._ But Daddy's house is right over the line in White Oak, and I don't really want to play for _them,_ you know. I'd feel like a traitor. And even if he lets me drive to Ore City, certain people have been pretty hateful around here lately," Brandon said.

"Yeah, but you can't keep thinking about that so much, Beebo. There's an ugly streak in human nature sometimes, that's all. If you're handsome, or a strong athlete, or if you're kind and loving, or any other good thing, then yeah, people will admire you for it. But some of them will also have an itch to cut you down to size, to prove that you've got feet of clay and you're not really as good as people think you are, that you were nothing but a humbug and a hypocrite all along. Lots of people _enjoy_ that," Lisa said.

"Yeah, they do. Some of them turn out to be people you always thought were your best friends," Brandon said, letting a touch of remembered bitterness creep into his voice. Several of the cruelest remarks he'd heard all spring had come from his former buddies.

"Yeah, some of them do. But you know what? You can't worry about people like that. Be the best you can at all the things you love and all the things you believe in, and don't worry about the gossips and the hatemongers. You live for God and not for them, and His opinion is the only one that matters at all," Lisa said.

"Yeah. . . I know," Brandon agreed.

"So don't let a bunch of idiots with loose mouths keep you from doing something you love. Don't play if you don't want to, but don't give it up for _that_ reason," Lisa said.

"We'll see. I still have a while to think about it," Brandon said.

"Well, in the meantime I think Daddy is coming to get you next Friday at five o'clock," Lisa said.

"That soon?" Brandon asked.

"It's not really that soon, bubba; it's two whole days after school is out for the summer. I couldn't put him off any longer than that. God knows I tried," Lisa said.

"It's not your fault. Like I said, it's only for a year at the most. I can stand on my head for _that_ long. And I promise I won't turn surly again," Brandon said.

"That's all I ask, then. Wherever you go and whatever you do, always come home whole again," Lisa said, and patted his hand with her own.

"I will. No matter what," Brandon said.

It was unbearably awkward when Crush came to pick him up the next Friday. Lisa cried, and Cody barely said a word. But as bad as the goodbyes had been, the ride to Brandon's new home was even worse. He'd been down there to visit several times already, of course, but the level of hard feelings had never been so high before. His father tried to make conversation at first, but after a while he gave up and they both sat there in silence thick enough to cut with a knife.

"I know you didn't want to come down here, Bran, but I'd really like to make this work if we can. I wish you'd talk to me," Crush finally said.

"About what?" Brandon asked.

"I don't know; anything you want to," Crush said.

"Sorry. Can't think of a thing," Brandon said, barely bothering to hide the sullen anger in his heart. In spite of his promise to Lisa, he was in no mood to be nice.

"How come you hate me so much?" Crush asked bluntly. Brandon almost said something cruel to that, but he bit his tongue at the last second.

"I never said I hated you," he said instead.

"No, but you sure do act like it," Crush said, and that got on Brandon's last nerve.

"Well, gee, I wonder why. You run off and leave me for eight years and don't even call or write a postcard, then you show up one day out of the blue and drag me away from a place where I'm finally happy. And all for what? I still don't even know the answer to _that,"_ Brandon said bitterly.

"I had a reason," Crush said.

"Then keep it to yourself. There's no reason good enough. Not for any of it," Brandon said.

"I'm sorry," Crush said.

"I don't even care anymore. You should have thought about all that eight years ago," Brandon said.

"Then I hope you never need any forgiveness yourself, son. It might not be easy to come by, with such a hard heart," Crush said. That cut Brandon's conscience a little, and he made an effort to soften his attitude.

"All right, I'm sorry; I shouldn't have said that," he said grudgingly.

"No, you shouldn't have. But let's forget about it, okay?" Crush said.

"Fine with me," Brandon agreed, and then returned to his silence.

"You don't even want to hear what my reason for bringing you down here was?" Crush finally asked.

"Sure, go for it," Brandon said, shrugging.

"It's because I think you're in danger, son," Crush said, and Brandon rolled his eyes.

"That's the stupidest thing I ever heard," he said, not even pretending to be respectful anymore.

"No it's not. That night after I saw you at the coffee house last fall, I went home and couldn't sleep. And then when I finally did, I had a dream like nothing I've ever had before," Crush said.

That news piqued Brandon's curiosity almost in spite of himself. Crush had known all about his son's gift for interpreting dreams ever since the first time it happened when Bran was four years old, so it was completely believable that the man would have taken a strange dream seriously. But still, Brandon wasn't ready to give up his hostile stance quite yet.

"Really?" he asked, in the most neutral tone of voice he could muster.

"Yes, really, and I think you ought to care since it was about _you,"_ Crush said.

That was an even more interesting tidbit of information, and Bran decided to let down his guard just a little.

"Would you like to tell me about it?" he finally asked.

"It's not very nice, I'm afraid. At first all I saw was darkness, full of screams and the sound of bombs going off. I think it was early morning, because it kept getting lighter, and then I saw _you,_ standing on a street corner in Longview and fighting with somebody. Everything was in ruins, with bomb craters and rubble everywhere. You had on a soldier's combat suit, but not like anything I've ever seen before. It was blue-gray, with gold pins on the shoulder. Then I saw you get shot in the chest at point-blank range, and the other guy ran away while you fell down in a pool of blood on the sidewalk. Then it was all over," Crush said.

"How did you know it was Longview, if everything was bombed out?" Brandon asked.

The dream _did_ sound scary, even to him, although not as much as it would have a year ago. Brandon knew he'd heal within a few hours or so even from a point-blank gunshot wound, as long as it didn't kill him before his body had a chance to recover. The Fountain had made him pretty durable nowadays. But of course Crush didn't know that, and Bran wasn't inclined to enlighten him.

"I knew it was Longview because I recognized the courthouse. But that's not important right now. What matters at this point is to keep you as far away from that place as possible," Crush said, but the words went almost unnoticed. While his father was talking, Brandon had shut his eyes to pray silently for understanding of the dream.

"That war won't even start for almost a hundred years yet, so there's no reason to let it worry you anytime soon," Brandon said, relieved that the danger was so far off.

His father looked skeptical.

"Seems to me like you'd be a really old man by then, if not dead and gone already. You didn't look a day over twenty to me," Crush said, which put Brandon in the decidedly awkward position of having to explain _that._ For a long time he couldn't think what to say, and his father took the silence for an answer.

"Yeah, that's what I thought. Forget it, boy; I'm not _that_ dumb. I don't mean for you to be anywhere near that place, and that's final," Crush said, and Bran had to suppress a surge of fresh anger at that. Crush was more or less calling him a liar, even if not in so many words.

The situation was infuriating on at least a dozen different levels, but nonetheless Brandon took a deep breath and kept his cool. He didn't trust his father enough to tell him about the Fountain, so Bran gave up on the question of timing and tried a different tack.

"Well. . . Tyler isn't exactly all that far from Longview, in case you didn't notice," he pointed out.

"That's why we're not going to Tyler," Crush said.

"We're not? Where are we going, then?" Brandon asked, startled. It was the first he'd ever heard of such a thing.

"Alabama. I've already got a house and a job and everything else lined up in a little place called Piedmont," Crush said.

"You can't be serious," Brandon said.

"I'm dead serious, boy. You would be too, if the shoe was on the other foot," Crush said.

"I can't _believe_ this," Brandon muttered under his breath.

But it was true, and nothing Brandon could say or do was able to change his father's mind. He might as well have been arguing with a rock for all the good it did, so after a while he gave up and tried to make the best of things in spite of his resentment.

The situation wasn't _all_ bad, of course. Piedmont was a nice enough town, and the mountains reminded him of his childhood home in Arkansas. And then there was the fact that nobody at school knew anything about his checkered past. It was a relief not to have to face the snickers and the gossip anymore, if nothing else.

So Brandon signed up for football again in the fall, and found a church where he could still play guitar sometimes, and for the most part he endured his exile quietly. He stayed out of trouble at school, earning a solid reputation as an athlete and even as an honor student after a few months. That was a new and surprising feather in his cap, since he'd never been fond of books before. But now he had more time than he knew what to do with, and even homework was a welcome distraction from his often-lonesome existence.

For Bran soon discovered that Rosalie Anderson had been absolutely right about what would happen if he let people get too close to him. Every girl fell in love with him and every boy wanted to become his best friend and blood brother. Children adored him and every grown-up wanted to adopt him. He had to keep them all at arm's length not just for his own sake but for theirs too, and that was a tough way to live.

The only positive aspect to all this newfound lovability was the fact that people seemed much more apt to listen to whatever he had to say. He had to admit _that_ certainly had its uses now and then.

But still, it was hard to feel so alone in the world.

He still had Cody and Lisa, of course, and the Andersons and the Bartows. _They_ understood what he was going through, at least to some extent. But Crush did everything in his power to make it difficult for Brandon to keep in touch with anybody back home, and that was a real sore spot between the two of them. Bran was forced to make calls only when his father wasn't around to see what he was doing. It was annoying to have to duck and dodge, but that was the maddening reality of the situation.

"Cody, there's something I need to tell you," Brandon said, during one of the first of these calls back home.

"What is it, Beebo?" Cody asked.

"The reason my dad brought me here is because of a dream he had, where he saw me fighting in a war in Longview. So now he thinks I'll get killed if I stay anywhere close to there," Brandon said.

"Is that what it really means?" Cody asked.

"Not exactly, but nobody can tell _him_ that. He won't listen to anything I say; he just thinks I'm lying to him so he'll let me go back to Texas," Brandon said.

"I'm sorry, Beebo. I know that's got to be frustrating," Cody said.

"That's the truth. You have no _idea_ how stubborn that man can be, once he gets a notion in his head about something," Brandon fumed.

"Oh, I think maybe I do. His son and his daughter are both pretty good at that kind of thing too, as I recall," Cody said. He was joking, of course, and Brandon smiled a little.

"Well. . . yeah, maybe so," he admitted.

"Maybe it'll get better. Sometimes people like that won't listen at first, and then after they have time to think it over they end up agreeing with you. Give him a little time," Cody said.

"I'll try," Brandon said, with a long sigh.

"Aw, come on, Beebo; cheer up. Don't you know every time you sigh, it uses up a drop of blood from your heart?" Cody said, and Brandon laughed.

"Who told you _that?"_ he asked.

"Your beautiful and poetically inclined sister, of course. She read it somewhere," Cody said.

"Well, anyway. . . my dad might not want to listen to what that dream means, but I still think _you_ ought to know," Brandon said, sober again.

"What's it mean, then?" Cody asked.

"There _is_ a war coming, just like my dad sort of thought. He was right about that much. Most of the towns and cities in that area will be completely destroyed and the people killed if they don't escape in time," Brandon said.

"That's pretty grim," Cody said.

"Yeah, but it won't happen for a long time yet. Not for almost a hundred years. That's the part I can't get Daddy to believe," Brandon said.

"But who'd be fighting a war _here?_ That doesn't even make any sense," Cody said.

"I don't know, Cody. All I know is that it's coming, and when it gets here then it'll be really bad. I don't know what it's about, or who starts it, or even how much ground it'll cover. All I know for sure is that anybody who wants to stay safe had better be east of the Mississippi River when it starts," Brandon said.

"Well. . . I don't know that it matters a lot, if it's _that_ far ahead. There's not much we could do about it right now, anyway. I doubt we even live that long," Cody said.

"It won't matter to you and Lisa very much, no. But it'll matter an awful lot to Mikey and any kids he ever ends up having someday. They probably don't need to hang around anywhere near Goliad, at least not after they get grown up," Brandon said.

Cody was silent for a while, and Brandon knew he didn't like that news at all. Cody was a man who cherished continuity and dearly loved the thought of passing along his ancestral home to future generations. His dreams of the future were deeply rooted in the past, and being suddenly told he couldn't have those things was a harsh blow.

"That's a hard thing to ask, Beebo," Cody said at last.

"I know it, but that's the way it is, I'm afraid," Brandon said, and Cody was quiet again for a while. But whatever he might have thought in his deepest heart, he kept it to himself.

"You probably ought to tell Jonah too, don't you think?" he finally asked, changing the subject.

"Yeah, and maybe Wolf and Tatya, too. I'd like to take out a full page ad in the Longview paper and tell everybody in the whole area to get out while they still can," Brandon said.

"They wouldn't believe you," Cody said.

"I know. They'd just think I was crazy. But Jonah and Tatya and Wolf know better," Brandon said.

"I'll have to tell Marcus and Cyrus, maybe a few other people. Some of them would believe me, and they might even be able to make some long-range plans that far ahead of time," Cody said.

"Yeah, maybe you should," Brandon agreed.

That was all they said about it, and the next afternoon Brandon made a point of calling Dr. Anderson. Just as he thought, the man wasn't unbelieving at all.

"So we can't stay here, huh?" the man said wryly.

"No, sir. It won't be safe. Not in the long term, anyway," Brandon said.

"I don't doubt you. We hadn't really planned on moving again, but I guess it _could_ be done," Dr. Anderson said.

"Well, sir, you don't exactly have to drop everything and run for your lives. It'll still be a long time yet," Brandon said.

"That's not so much what worries me. But if we stay here much longer and Jonah ends up settling down and getting rooted in this place, then it'll be a lot harder to pick up and leave later on. People tend to forget about danger when it's not urgent. I think we'd be much wiser to leave as soon as possible, or at least within the next year or two," Dr. Anderson said.

"Yeah, I guess that's probably true," Brandon said.

"Does it matter where we go?" Dr. Anderson asked.

"No sir, I don't think so. As long as it's somewhere east of the Mississippi," Brandon said.

"Well, my sister lives up in the mountains in North Carolina and she's always wished we could be closer. I might finally take her up on that," Dr. Anderson said.

"Do you think you could mention something to the Bartows? I'd like to warn them, too, if they'll listen," Brandon said.

"I don't know if it'll matter much about them. Dr. Bartow will get transferred to another base within a few years anyway, if he stays in the air force. There's no telling where _they_ might end up. You might not have to warn them at all," Dr. Anderson said.

"Alabama would be nice," Brandon said wryly, and Dr. Anderson chuckled.

"Well, you never know. They told Rosalie they've been thinking about Florida, if Dr. Bartow decides not to re-enlist next time," he said.

"I don't guess it matters then, since that's in the safe zone too. But I'd still like to mention it to Wolf and Tatya, just so they know," Brandon said.

"I'll leave that part up to you, then. Maybe you can tell them in person if you get to come visit anytime soon," Dr. Anderson suggested.

"I hope so," Brandon agreed, and truer words were never spoken.

Chapter Nineteen

Because of the way his birthday fell, Brandon ended up having to finish both of his remaining high school years in Piedmont. Crush wouldn't let him leave even a single day before he turned eighteen, and by then he would have lost an entire semester of work if he moved. He didn't feel like having to repeat an extra year of school just to graduate.

But in spite of his irritation at the delay, Brandon wasn't wholly unhappy with all this extra time in Alabama. His life was full, and as long as he didn't think about Lana too much he could manage. That was hard sometimes since Crush had a way of pestering him frequently about why he never went out on dates, to which Bran only smiled thinly and said he didn't have time for things like that. Crush was never completely satisfied with that excuse, but since Brandon _did_ seem absorbed in school and sports and other things, there wasn't much the man could say about it.

There were other things to occupy Brandon's time by then, too. For just as his brother had discovered before him, there was no shortage of good works to be done in the world. He took to visiting the hospitals and clinics around Piedmont, and even in nearby parts of eastern Alabama and western Georgia whenever he could scrape up the gas money. More than a few desperate souls he snatched back from the very teeth of death, and others he made whole again from incurable sicknesses.

He didn't dare visit any given place too often, of course, lest people start to notice what he was doing. _That_ would have created more headaches than he wanted to deal with and complicated his life even more than it already was, so he developed the skill of touching people subtly, to keep them from noticing what he'd done.

But there were darker places by far in the world than even the most forbidding hospital could ever be, as Bran well knew. And although he never told his father about his excursions to these places, there were times when he came home pale and shaken from the evil he'd seen and the battles he sometimes had to fight. But if Crush ever noticed the occasional blood on his son's fists or the haunted look in his eyes, he never saw fit to mention it.

There were drug houses, runaways, homeless mentally ill people wandering the streets, gangsters of all stripes and kinds, sometimes simply bullies who enjoyed causing pain. There were sorcerers and murderers, Satanists and racketeers, and many, _many_ others who colluded with such people and profited from what was done, even though they never stooped so low as to get their own hands dirty. Some of these people were respectable members of society with positions of great authority. Teachers, public servants, policemen and judges, even _preachers_ at times. If he hadn't known it already, Bran would have quickly figured out how black the depths of evil really are in the world.

But as time passed he grew toughened even to the most awful things he was apt to see in the back alleys of Atlanta and Birmingham, and a good number of these festering sores he was able to wipe clean with his power and his courage. By healing those enslaved to drugs or insanity or curses, he was able to set many captives free. He also found that sometimes when his fists were not enough, he could accomplish both justice and mercy by erasing the memories of evildoers. Then they utterly forgot all the purposes of their hearts, and became like little children with incurable amnesia. Thus he destroyed their ability to do harm, at least for a little while.

He had no one to talk to about these things, except occasionally Cody or Lisa by phone. So Brandon learned to cling ever more tightly to music and praise, as Cody had told him to do, and in that way he was able to hold fast to light and joy in the midst of darkness. Otherwise the work he was called to do might have broken his heart, in spite of all the power in the world. For even though he could do many wonderful things, the one problem he could never eliminate was the free choice of evil in the hearts of men. And God knows that alone was horrifying enough sometimes.

But the forces of darkness in the world had not overlooked these activities by any means, especially those near Piedmont whose power and wealth had suffered most at Brandon's hands. Therefore they hated him and thirsted for his blood, ever the longer the more. And by and by they saw their chance for revenge.

It was a cold and rainy night in the middle of his senior year, and Brandon was on his way home from Atlanta just before Christmas when he had a flat tire. That wouldn't normally have been a major issue, except that he'd already used the spare three days ago and hadn't had a chance to replace it yet. Even worse, he was sitting on the side of a lonely road in the middle of nowhere with very few houses, not much traffic, and (not surprisingly) no cell service.

"What else could _possibly_ go wrong tonight?" Brandon muttered to himself, trying to think what to do. Given a choice between driving on a flat, sleeping in the truck, or trying to walk somewhere through the freezing rain, he honestly couldn't decide which alternative he hated least. It was his own fault for not replacing the spare sooner, but that didn't make it any easier to deal with in the meantime.

But while he sat there and debated with himself, a sleek red Camaro pulled in just ahead of him and stopped. It was almost miraculous that anybody would stop to help him at such a place and time, and Bran was even more astounded when the door opened and a girl got out. She was dressed in stylishly faded jeans and a bright tangerine t-shirt with the word _Cupcake_ emblazoned across the front, and he watched in bemusement as she opened a black umbrella to keep off the drizzle before walking to the side of his truck. She didn't seem to mind the cold.

"Hey, I saw you had a flat. Do you need a ride somewhere?" the girl asked with a smile. She seemed to be not much older than Brandon himself was, and incredibly beautiful, too. Not that he cared about such a thing, of course, but it was hard to keep from noticing the fact. She also looked vaguely familiar for some reason, even though he couldn't remember where he might have seen her before.

"Yeah, I'd really appreciate it," he agreed.

"Come on, then. It's a nasty night to have to change a tire," she said.

"Yeah, it is. My spare was flat, too, so I'm not sure what I would have done if you hadn't stopped," Brandon said, getting out and making sure to lock the truck doors behind him. She shared her umbrella till they reached the car, and then he ran to the passenger side to get in, buckling his seat belt and then putting his hands in front of the heater to warm up his freezing fingers. The interior was rich black leather with suede accents, and Brandon was suitably impressed.

"Cool car," he said admiringly, and the girl favored him with a smile which could have made butterflies dance in the stomach-pit of every boy in Alabama.

"Yup, she's one of a kind. Everything's customized," the girl replied. The radio was tuned to a mixed rock station, and just as they pulled out it began to play Madonna's _Material Girl._

"Oh, yeah, I love this song," the girl said, turning up the volume a little. She spun out on gravel at the edge of the highway and then shot down the curvy mountain road quite a bit faster than Brandon would have liked under the circumstances. But he only smiled uncomfortably, sort of wishing somebody else had stopped to help him instead, or maybe even nobody at all. The girl seemed just a tad bit strange.

"By the way, my name's Lilly Adams. Which way are you headed?" the girl asked.

"Brandon Stone. Pleased to meet you. I just need to get a way to the nearest town so I can call my dad. There's no cell service out here," he said.

"Are you from around here?" she asked.

"Yeah, sort of. I live in Piedmont," Brandon said, and Lilly smiled.

"Sweet. So what brings you over this way?" she asked.

"Just headed back home from a friend's house," Brandon said. That wasn't strictly true, of course, but he'd learned to be careful who he shared his _real_ business with.

A few minutes later they approached a truly magnificent old home set high up on the side of a hill, decked out in thousands of little white Christmas lights which twinkled prettily through the wind and the rain.

"That's my place, up there on the hill. If you want to, you can come in and use the phone there. It'll save some time," she offered. There was no reason to refuse, so Brandon nodded.

"Sure; thanks a lot. You really live up _there?"_ he asked, gesturing toward the house. It was a southern colonial, probably at least a hundred years old, with four white columns across the front and all sorts of fancy little trappings. It made him see the girl in a brand new light, knowing she lived in such a palace as that. No wonder she had such an expensive car.

"Yeah, I've only been here for a few months, though. Do you like it?" she asked.

"It's awesome, especially with all the lights," Brandon agreed, letting his admiration show. It never hurt to be gracious.

Lilly wheeled the Camaro onto a wide concrete slab in front of the three car garage and parked it as close to the front door as possible. Then she killed the engine.

"I'll be right back," she promised, holding up one finger. So Brandon sat in the car to wait, listening to the faint sound of the rain against the roof and wondering idly why she hadn't wanted him to come in right away.

_Maybe she wanted to stuff the potato chip bags under the couch cushions,_ he thought to himself, and smiled a little. He'd been known to do the same thing sometimes, when unexpected company showed up at the door. But he thought nothing of it beyond that, at least not till the girl came back outside with two men holding rifles. Then Brandon began to care very much what might be going on; all the more so when he found that his seat belt wouldn't unlatch. He was trapped, and there was no way out of it.

All he could do was sit there frozen while the two men came and yanked his door open. They didn't shoot him, but they were none too gentle, either. One of them put him in cuffs and leg irons while the other one aimed his gun right at Brandon's chest, and then finally they dragged him out of the car after cutting the seat belt loose. He was kicked and shoved into the house without apology or explanation, and he didn't dare fight back. The only weapon he had was his buck knife, and it would have been crazy to attack two gunmen with nothing but _that._ All he could do was bide his time and wait for a better opportunity.

His captors took even the knife away from him as soon as they got inside, and then patted him down to make sure he didn't have any other concealed weapons. Finally they forced him to sit down at one end of a grand dining room table built of heavy mahogany, while the rest of them took seats close together at the other end. Then for a little while they all studied him, as if curious. Bran looked back at them with no expression on his face, waiting to see what happened next.

"He's not quite what I expected," one of the men commented after a while, speaking to Lilly.

"Appearances can be deceptive, Craig. That boy has single-handedly undone half your work this year, and even more of Albert's. He's more dangerous than he looks," she said. Brandon allowed himself a brief moment of private satisfaction at that news, but he was careful not to let it show.

"You're _sure_ he's the right one?" Craig asked.

"Oh, I'm sure, all right. He's definitely the one," the girl said, as if that settled the matter beyond all doubt.

"All right then, sweetheart. We'll have to take your word for it," Craig said.

"Yes, you will," Lilly agreed.

"So what do we do with him, now that we've got him?" the one called Albert asked, speaking up for the first time. He was a somewhat older man with salt-and-pepper hair, who wouldn't have looked out of place in a business suit.

"We'll figure out all the specifics tomorrow, Albert. Do whatever you want with him tonight, and then lock him up till Prissy can get here. She's stuck in Atlanta tonight for a board meeting," the girl said.

"What a shame," Craig said dryly. The dislike in his voice was obvious, but Lilly ignored it.

"Anyway, I'm going to bed. It's been a long night," she said, getting up from her chair.

"So how bad can we hurt him?" Craig asked, and the words gave Brandon a cold chill.

"Just don't leave any permanent marks. He's too pretty for that," she said, and Brandon couldn't decide whether to be thankful, insulted, or terrified by such a statement. Or maybe all three at once.

Lilly walked right by him on her way out, trailed by a faint scent of jasmine perfume. She paused to run her fingers through his thick red hair and caress his left cheek, chuckling when he shrank back from the touch. And even though Craig and Albert were too far away to see it, he also noticed that she inhaled deeply as she stood there next to him, almost as if she liked the way he smelled. Maybe she did, for all he knew; the scent of Elysium still clung to him, although she hardly seemed the type to enjoy that faint reminder of all things bright and beautiful. She seemed more like a child of the Devil who ate charcoal for breakfast and then belched flames.

Then another possibility suddenly crystallized in his mind, one far more terrifying than anything he'd yet imagined. He was in _Georgia,_ after all, the home-in-exile of Layla Garza, the murderous witch who'd killed all those young men over the years. Bran hadn't thought of her in years, but now he remembered Cody's warning that she was exceptionally young and beautiful. Lilly was definitely _that,_ and she'd approached Brandon under strange circumstances, too. All that plus the situation at hand were enough to make him practically certain of his guess.

It was a horrifying revelation, and in spite of his determination to show no fear, he slipped and let a faint gasp escape his lips. Layla saw it and chuckled again, then leaned over close as if she meant to share some deep secret.

"It's not me you have to be afraid of, sugar," she whispered, and then brushed her lips ever so briefly against his ear, making him shiver. Whatever Layla might have meant by such a statement, it had the actual effect of filling him with even more dread than before. He might not have much to fear from _her,_ true enough. As far as he knew, her magic was still blocked by Cody's Guardian Stone at the bottom of the Brazos River. But her words only drew attention to the fact that he probably had plenty to fear from the others.

She smiled at him again, seeming to guess exactly what he was thinking, and then she was gone. The sound of her heels on the hardwood floor ended abruptly when she stepped off onto the luxuriant Persian rug in the front room.

"Remember, guys; no marks. Be gentle with him!" Layla called back, and the two men waved her off irritably.

That left him alone with Craig and Albert, who were both looking at him with predatory smiles which might have fit better on a wolf or a crocodile than a human being. Brandon had no idea what they meant to do with him and he was afraid to guess.

What they did was to chain him up to a pole in the basement and then strip him down to his boxers before lashing him with a bullwhip for at least a solid hour. It was by far the worst physical pain Brandon had ever suffered in his life, but he tried not to give his tormentors the satisfaction of hearing him scream or beg for mercy. That would only encourage them to keep going even longer. Nonetheless, he couldn't help letting out a groan or a soft cry sometimes, and he couldn't stop the tears from running down his face.

He bled quite a lot when the lashes broke skin, but his torturers were careful not to cause any deep or ragged injuries that might leave permanent marks, just as Layla had instructed them. Nevertheless, Brandon's back and even his arms and legs were a solid mass of gory stripes and bruises by the time they were done.

He couldn't walk or even stand by the time Craig and Albert finally got tired of lashing him, so they dragged him up two flights of stairs to another room before hurling him to the floor in a bloody, tear-stained heap. He heard the door slam shut behind him, and then Brandon found himself alone for the first time since the ordeal began.

As soon as he had the strength, he lifted his head to see what kind of place he was in. It seemed to be a spare bedroom, stripped almost completely bare except for a thin mattress on the slick hardwood floor, along with a pillow and a ratty blanket. There was a single window covered with iron bars, and a door that led into a small bathroom. In one corner lay two sleek Dobermans, staring at him with gimlet eyes. Brandon wondered if they were supposed to be guard dogs, and then decided he didn't much care. They made no move to get up or even growl, so he felt safe to ignore them for the time being.

He crawled slowly to the bathroom, and then struggled to his feet by grabbing the edge of the sink to pull himself up. Then he stood there breathing hard for a few minutes, lightheaded and clenching his eyes and teeth from pain. Blood was still running down his back in a few places, though he knew that wouldn't last very much longer. He could already feel the lashes beginning to itch as they healed, but that didn't keep them from hurting like the devil in the meantime.

Brandon wondered what these ghouls wanted with him. He had a strong suspicion that sooner or later they meant to kill him, after they had some fun for a little while. Nor was that impossible; anything that killed him faster than his body could heal would do the job quite nicely. Things like drowning, or a bullet to the heart, or maybe getting his head cut off. He was far from immortal.

He wasn't too keen on finding out what other afflictions they might have in mind for him in the meantime, either. Getting horse-whipped had been bad enough, and that was probably just the beginning. Sooner or later they'd notice how fast his injuries healed, and then there'd be almost no limit to the ocean of pain they could inflict on him. Brandon shivered, and the very thought of such a horrible fate was enough to make him start thinking about how to escape immediately.

He knew it wouldn't be easy. They had his phone, his keys, and even his boots and clothes. It was much too cold to go running down the highway or through the woods barefoot and half naked; he'd freeze before he made it anywhere. And even if he _did_ escape, that still didn't solve the problem of what might happen when they found him again, as they surely would eventually. He'd foolishly told Layla his name and even where he lived. How long would it take them to show up at his house with a machine gun next time?

No, he couldn't just escape and leave it at that. Somehow he had to take care of things once and for all, and that was a knotty problem indeed.

Brandon thought about the situation while he waited for his wounds to heal, and it didn't take long for him to decide that getting rid of the dogs had to be his top priority. He was sure they'd attack him if he tried to break out, and any kind of commotion like that would attract the jailers, too. That was the _last_ thing Brandon needed.

As soon as he felt strong enough, the very first thing he did was to ransack the room for anything at all that might be used as a weapon. Sadly, the pickings turned out to be slim at best; almost everything he could lay hands on was either made of flimsy plastic or else bolted down. There was nothing sharp, nor explosive, nor corrosive. In fact there wasn't even so much as a loose paperclip to be found in his entire cell. His captors had been awfully thorough about things like that, it seemed.

They _had_ been generous enough to provide him with basic toiletry items, at least. He had a toothbrush and toothpaste, a small bar of soap like the ones you might find in a motel, and even a disposable safety razor, but it was hard to see how any of those items could be reworked into a miracle weapon. He had to try, though, so he started thinking about all those prison movies he'd watched in Saint Petersburg, and what kinds of tools and weapons the inmates had been able to come up with using bits and pieces like that. He finally decided there was only one thing that he might be able to duplicate.

He was betting on the toothbrush. He _might_ be able to carve a shank from the plastic handle, and then with a little luck he could use it against the dogs. He'd always heard (in those same movies) that if you stabbed someone between the ribs and punctured a lung then they couldn't scream, so surely the same thing applied to dogs, didn't it? If he could kill the Dobermans without giving them a chance to bark, then he might have a pretty good shot at breaking out.

It was worth a try.
Chapter Twenty

Brandon crept to the bathroom again, this time to grab his toothbrush and razor from beside the sink. Then he sat back down on his bedroll and got to work.

The house was silent as death except for the faint _scratch scratch_ of metal against plastic as he slowly sharpened the tip of his toothbrush like a pencil. The razor turned out to be an almost worthless tool for whittling, but persistence paid off in the end. It was several hours before he could prick his finger with the finished shank and draw blood, but the moment _did_ arrive. His back was almost completely healed from the whipping by then, so it was time to get started.

Brandon stood up, gripping his weapon tightly. One of the dogs was asleep in front of the bedroom door, and the other had found a spot for itself below the window. That might have been something they were trained to do, but in this case it chimed perfectly with Bran's strategy. He inched his way closer to the one by the door till it was right by his feet, sprawled out on its side like a flounder with its chest rising and falling gently as it slept.

Brandon offered a silent prayer, and then with a single hard thrust he plunged his makeshift dagger right between the dog's ribs. It went in nearly all the way up to the bristles before he yanked it back out again, just like he'd seen in the movies. The animal flopped and flailed like a headless chicken for a few seconds, and then expired with a shuddery sigh.

Bran let out a sigh of his own; it had been even easier than he thought.

Then a low growl startled him. He turned his head just in time to see the second dog getting up from beside the window, sniffing the air with bared teeth. The place was full of the coppery scent of fresh blood, and Bran watched the hackles on the dog's neck rise as the smell intensified. It might not understand exactly what was going on, but it knew _something_ wasn't right.

All of a sudden the dog began to bark wildly, shattering the silence. Brandon grabbed his blanket and dived on top of the creature in desperation, trying to wrap it up in the muffling cloth before it could wake the dead with its barking.

The Doberman was quick as a cat, but the slick hardwood floor kept it from getting any traction, while the blanket helped to clog the action of its teeth and claws. That didn't keep Brandon from getting bitten at least half a dozen times, but it did keep him from getting killed. He threw his weight on top of the dog to hold it down with one arm around its neck while he stabbed it to death through the blanket with his toothbrush, causing little red flowers to bud and grow all over the baby blue fabric. Finally the animal stopped moving, while Brandon lay on the floor panting for breath and bleeding profusely for the second time in one night.

Seconds later the light flipped on.

"Now what a waste," Layla said regretfully, and Brandon froze at the sound of her voice. She stood at the door in a filmy green silk nightgown, surveying the dead dogs and holding a snub-nosed revolver in her right hand. She had dark hair and pale skin, like the Spaniards of New Mexico from whence she came; a beautiful shell for such a wicked soul.

"That was cruel, you know. You really ought to be ashamed of yourself," she scolded, and Brandon couldn't think of single appropriate answer to such a statement. She didn't seem to notice the missing stripes on his back, maybe since he was covered in fresh blood from the dog bites. Otherwise she might have been more suspicious, and Brandon silently thanked God for small mercies.

"We'll have to have a nice little chat about this in the morning, I'm afraid. Prissy won't be pleased when she hears what you did to her dear little puppies. In the meantime I suggest you go back to bed and behave yourself. Craig and Albert will be standing guard outside in the hall for the rest of the night just in case you get any more bright ideas, and I warn you they're gonna be _really_ unhappy about that. I might be too, if you make me have to get up twice tonight," Layla said, and all the while the muzzle of the gun remained centered on Brandon's heart. He still said nothing, and finally she nodded.

"All right then. Good night, sweetie; see you in the morning!" Layla said. She flipped off the bedroom light before twirling on one bare heel and leaving the room without another word, leaving Brandon alone with the dead dogs. He heard the cold _snick_ of the lock being turned into place, and then the sound of Layla singing good-humoredly to herself all the way down the hall on her way back to bed.

A little while later he heard voices outside the door, no doubt Craig and Albert settling in for guard duty. They seemed irritated about it from the tone of their conversation; Brandon certainly hoped so. If causing his captors a little inconvenience was the best he could do, then that was better than nothing.

Still, he spent the next few hours in abject misery, first from the painful dog bites and then from lack of sleep combined with the knowledge that he was quickly running out of time. At one point he saw headlights pulling into the driveway, and then came the sound of a door opening and shutting somewhere downstairs. No doubt the mysterious Prissy had finally arrived, and for a while Brandon was afraid she might show up to deal with him immediately over her dear little puppies. She must have decided to wait till morning, though, because soon the house grew quiet and still once more.

Not long before sunrise, Bran felt ready to make another effort at breaking free. His bites were healed by then, and he hadn't heard any noises or conversation from the hallway in quite a while. Hopefully that meant Craig and Albert were asleep.

He still had the bloody shank, so Brandon retrieved it before silently approaching the bedroom door. The lock was ancient, as might be expected in such an old house, with a keyhole big enough to look through. His captors must not have cared too much about that, maybe thinking the dogs were good enough to keep a severely beaten boy under control till morning came. And they probably would have been correct, if that boy had been anyone else but Brandon. As it was they'd underestimated him, and that was his only asset.

He tried to fit the sharpened tip of the toothbrush into the keyhole, only to find that it was too bulky to fit. He needed something longer and thinner to use for a lock picking tool, so he sharpened the plastic a bit more, his palms slick with sweat as he worked. Time was frittering away.

Then he tried it again, and this time the slender plastic broke off inside the lock. A cold thread of fear ran through Brandon's heart, and it took almost twenty minutes before he was finally able to pull out the tiny stub. He didn't dare make a blunder like that again.

Then inspiration hit. The dead dogs both had metal buckles on their collars, and with a little luck those ought to be the perfect shape and size for a makeshift burglar's tool. Brandon snatched the nearest collar and got to work immediately, using the tongue of the buckle to manipulate the tumblers inside the old door lock, just as Lana had done at the pharmacy in Estonia. It was a lot harder than she'd made it look, but at last he heard a small metallic _click_ inside the lock, and when he turned the knob it opened.

Brandon had to suppress a shout of joy at that; he wasn't out of the woods yet by any means. He still had to deal with his captors.

He slowly cracked the door, peering out into the shadowy hall. Craig and Albert were sitting against the far wall with their heads slumped over to the side, obviously asleep. Fine guards _they_ made, Brandon thought scornfully. The lashing they'd given him earlier was still fresh and vivid in his memory, and he felt a hot surge of hatred rise up in his throat at the sight of them. Revenge might be a deadly sin, but he'd seldom in his life wanted to bust somebody's head open quite so much.

But no, in this case there was a better way. He couldn't have done it earlier without getting shot in the process, but finding Craig and Albert snoozing like that gave Brandon a golden opportunity to settle permanently with those two.

He tiptoed closer, until he stood right in front of them. Then slowly, with utmost care, he reached out the first finger of each hand to touch the two men in the middle of their foreheads.

"May you forget all the days of your life and the thoughts of your heart ever since you first chose to walk in evil," Brandon whispered, and then exerted his power to make it so. His hands grew warm, as they always did, and as he watched, Craig and Albert fell into a deep slumber of forgetfulness. When they woke up they wouldn't remember a shred of their entire wicked lives, like hitting the reset button on a stopwatch. Whether they chose to live differently from then on or not was an open question, but they certainly wouldn't be doing any more evil for a very long time. That was the greatest kindness he could give to such people.

Then he stood up, no longer interested in those two. Craig's pistol lay on the floor next to his right hand, so Brandon picked it up. He fully intended to wipe out Prissy's memory also, as soon as he could find her. But Layla was protected from anything like that by the same Guardian Stone that blocked her own magic, since Brandon's power was every bit as supernatural as any other kind. Cody was fond of saying that God never broke His own rules or contradicted Himself, so if the Stone was made in such a way as to block all supernatural powers, then Bran would have no choice but to abide by that same rule himself.

That meant he was going to have to kill her, and he didn't know if he had the strength.

The staircase to the ground floor was somewhere off to the right, shrouded in darkness. He didn't need to go that way, though. When Layla had left him earlier, after he killed the dogs, he'd heard her humming and singing as she went back to bed, and she'd definitely gone left along the shadowy hallway. Her bedroom had to be somewhere in that direction, and he hoped Prissy might be somewhere in the same vicinity. With any luck he might even catch both women asleep, the same way he'd done with Craig and Albert.

The soft shag carpet muffled the sound of his footsteps, and he kept his breathing as light as possible. There turned out to be six other doors along the passage, all of them shut fast, and at the very end was a brass plant stand with a fake mother-in-law's tongue sitting beneath a tiny round window.

Brandon touched the knob of the nearest door, and then instantly jerked his hand back when it shocked him. But nothing else happened, and he soon realized it was only static electricity from the carpet. He took a deep breath and gripped the knob for a second time, turning it with excruciating slowness so he wouldn't make any noise. Then he barely cracked the door just enough to see through.

It was a spare bedroom.

Bran stifled a snort. He couldn't imagine what kind of guests a human ghoul like Layla Garza might ever have, but the room's purpose was obvious. It had that unmistakable scent of old mothballs and musty linen. There was nothing he cared about in there.

He moved on to the next room, where he found an empty but rumpled bed which he supposed had been either Craig's or Albert's before they had to come out in the hall for guard duty.

There were loud snores coming from behind the third door, so Brandon was even more wary than usual as he turned the knob. Not that it mattered much, of course; the person in _that_ room probably wouldn't have heard anything even if he'd blown the door off its hinges with a bazooka.

Heavy drapes made it almost completely dark inside, so Brandon had to wait for his eyes to adjust before he crept to the bed. In the dim light he saw a frowsy middle-aged woman with curlers in her hair, and wondered if this could be the fearsome Prissy. It was hard to imagine who else it might be, but nevertheless he had to make certain. He touched his finger to her forehead just as he'd done with the two men, and sure enough, he could feel the wickedness in her soul like a swarm of stinging flies. So he wiped her memory clean as well, and then left her alone.

The next door he tried revealed a set of cobwebby stairs leading up to the attic; an old and unused set, by the look of them. He had no interest there.

The last door he knew at once was Layla's. It had a big Hollywood star plastered on it with her name done in fancy script with pink rhinestones. He hadn't seen it in the shadows until he came close.

He was horribly nervous now that the moment of truth had come, straining his ears to catch the slightest sound. But the house was quiet as the grave, except for the beating of his own heart in his ears.

Brandon cracked the door open a fraction of an inch, and then a little more, and finally slipped into Layla's boudoir. It was one of the richest rooms he'd ever seen, soft and inviting in a hundred little ways, full of velvet and silks and lace. It wasn't dark in there, either; a huge window threw a block of silver moonlight on the center of the floor which lit up the whole room. He noticed a set of car keys hanging on a nail beside the door, but he didn't take them right away. That could wait.

The room was dominated by a huge four-poster bed with a frilly canopy and lace curtains, and Brandon could barely make out a pale white shape and hear soft breathing. Layla.

He crept to her side and parted the creamy lace curtains, the faint scent of jasmine wafting out all around him. She was lying on top of the watered silk comforter, even more beautiful by moonlight than she'd been earlier. For a long time he simply couldn't tear his eyes away, but then he told himself sternly to get a grip.

Brandon lifted the pistol to aim it right at her chest, his finger trembling on the trigger. One little twitch would still that cruel black heart forever. It was only justice, after all the evil she'd done.

Then she spoke.

"Brandon," she said clearly, startling him almost out of his skin. He jumped back without thinking and almost dropped the pistol, though he soon recovered himself and stood his ground. But still he didn't fire.

Small sounds came from the bed; the whisper of silk and lace, a faint indrawn breath. She was getting up. Seconds later she stood before him, gowned in silver moonlight and more breathtakingly lovely than he'd ever imagined any human being could be. His throat was dry and he could barely hold the gun steady. She didn't smile.

"Finish what you started, boy," Layla said quietly, meeting his eyes.

But he didn't have it in him to be a cold-blooded killer, after all, and perhaps she knew it. She took a slow step forward, and then another, and he retreated until his back was pressed up against the wall and he could go no farther.

"Stop!" Brandon ordered in a harsh voice, jabbing the pistol at her, but she only smiled. Step by step Layla advanced until the barrel of the gun rested right above her heart, seemingly not fearful at all that he might still shoot her.

"I told you there's nothing to be afraid of from _me,"_ she reminded him, and even though he didn't believe her for a second, the words eroded the sharp edge of his fear and added a cool drop of uncertainty to the pool of his heart. She had no weapon, and no sorcery anymore, and he could easily overpower her in a fistfight if it came to that. It was true she couldn't really hurt him under the circumstances. Perhaps if she hadn't appeared so young and so incredibly beautiful then he never would have listened even partially. But she did, and his heart betrayed him.

Layla reached out one soft hand to touch his bare chest and run her fingers lightly across his skin, and Brandon shivered, just as he had when her lips brushed his ear in the dining room. She pushed closer until he lowered the gun to his side and her warm body was pressed full-length against him. One hand slipped around to play with the hair on the back of his head, then drew him gently closer. Her lips were slightly parted, and her eyes half closed.

"I've dreamed of this for a long time. Don't tell me you haven't, too," Layla whispered as she breathed in his ear. Brandon couldn't say the words, knowing it would be a lie if he did, and he felt her lips move into a smile against the nape of his neck. He _had_ dreamed of such things. Quite often, actually, as young men usually did. Bran was no exception, and as her kisses moved to the soft hollow of his throat, it threatened to drive every other thought from his mind.

But not quite.

On the day that you even so much as kiss another girl in yearning, the bond between you will be broken forever and you'll never be able to wake her. You could easily end up breaking your own heart in a moment of weakness if you aren't careful.

Brother Manchin's words came to mind with sudden, startling clarity. Brandon knew he was teetering on the very edge of catastrophe; a single kiss could rob him of everything he held dear. But he also knew that in a very few seconds he might not have the strength to turn away.

And along with that came another unwelcome thought; that Cody had been forbidden to kill this very same woman, even under much worse circumstances.

He still had the gun, clutched almost forgotten in his right hand. With a silent prayer he gripped the weapon tightly, and then struck Layla in the temple with all the force he could muster. She never saw it coming. Her body slumped to the floor with a soft thud and a sigh, leaving Brandon breathing hard and trembling. It wasn't till then that he realized his cheeks were wet with tears. He dashed them away with his hands and fled, pausing only to grab the car keys.

His clothes and other items were still in a pile on the floor beside the bloody whipping post, and he quickly got dressed before heading out into the frosty pre-dawn silence. Moments later the custom Camaro roared down the steep drive, the sound of its engine slowly fading until nothing could be heard but the cold whisper of morning wind on the hilltop.

Chapter Twenty-One

For several weeks Brandon was hyper-watchful, half expecting a squad of thugs to show up at his house at any time. He barely slept, and when he went to school or baseball practice he often wished for a third eye in the back of his head. But nothing ever happened, so after a while he finally started to relax just a bit.

Then came a cold and rainy Saturday in late February.

Brandon was home alone while Crush worked an extra day at the mill, a fairly common thing on weekends. Bran's opinion of his father had softened over time, to the point that he didn't really resent him all that much anymore. Crush did work hard, and he liked to fish and to read poetry, and he had a pretty good sense of humor. He was basically okay to live with, as long as you didn't argue with him and he got his own way all the time. Brandon had learned to go with the flow on the surface and then do as he liked privately; an arrangement which kept friction to a minimum.

Besides which, Bran could afford to be generous for a little while. Graduation was only three months away, and after that he'd be back in Texas anyway.

He was fiddling with his electric guitar that afternoon, practicing for church the next morning while he had the house all to himself and the sound wouldn't bother anybody. When the doorbell rang he was completely absorbed in _Amazing Love, Amazing_ _Grace,_ with his eyes shut and the amplifier turned up quite a bit higher than Crush would ever have allowed if he'd been at home. Brandon liked the way the beat felt against his skin, almost like he was swimming in the music instead of just listening to it.

He almost didn't hear the doorbell at first, but then set aside his guitar and hurried to see who was there. It was too early for Crush to be home, and he couldn't imagine who else it might be. They seldom had company.

He was still wary of thugs, too, so he left the chain in place and only cracked the door a bit at first, just in case. Sure enough, standing right there on the doorstep was Layla Garza herself. She looked haggard and worn, as if life had been hard on her since the last time they met, and she seemed to be alone.

Brandon's jaw dropped in shock, even though a part of him had been ready for that very thing. He immediately started to shut the door, but she put her hand against the jamb.

"Please. I'm not here to cause trouble. I only want to talk to you," Layla pleaded, and after a brief hesitation he allowed the door to open up again.

"What do you want?" Brandon asked suspiciously.

"I want to know why you spared me," Layla said.

"What do you mean?" Brandon asked.

"You destroyed Craig, and Albert and Prissy, too. They were three of the greatest _vrachoi_ in this part of the country, and now the others are all cowering in fear of you. They think I must somehow be friends with you or else I never could have survived what happened at Christmas. None of them will ever trust me again. Without them I don't have anything, not even a place to sleep at night. You know I can't hurt you; please tell me why you did this," Layla said, and Brandon reluctantly decided it couldn't do any harm to speak to her. He glanced around to make sure she was really and truly alone, and then undid the chain to let the door open completely.

"You better come inside then. It's too cold and wet to stand out there on the doorstep," he said, standing aside to let her in. The words came out a bit gruff, but he spoke as kindly as he could find it in his heart to speak to such a person. Vicious killers weren't high on his list of people to be sympathized with.

"Thank you," Layla said, slipping inside to take a seat on the leather couch. Brandon shut the door behind her and then sat down himself in the overstuffed chair beside the TV.

"Before we talk about anything else, there are some things _I_ want to know first," he said abruptly.

"What would you like to know? I have nothing to lose anymore by telling you," Layla said, shrugging slightly.

"Well, to start with, what's a _vrachoi?"_ Brandon asked.

"I think you'd call them followers of evil. Those who seek after dark and forbidden things of all kinds. Sometimes simply those who take pleasure in cruelty," Layla said.

"I see," Brandon said.

"There are lots of people who only dabble in such things, and then there are others who control entire regions and command all those lesser than themselves. My brother Andrew was one of the greatest _vrachoi_ of his generation; he was a sorcerer, and a brilliant scientist, and other things, too. So for his sake the others let me roam wherever I liked. Prissy was the most powerful sorceress in Georgia and a close friend of our family. She took me in after Andrew was killed and my own magic was lost," Layla said.

Brandon remembered a few stray facts about Andrew Garza from what Cody had said, and from what little he knew, Layla seemed to be speaking the truth. That was good to know, even though he still didn't trust her.

"What about Craig and Albert?" Brandon asked.

"Craig was the top crime boss in Birmingham, and Albert was the mayor of Huntsville. You did a lot of harm to them and their people before we captured you, and to Prissy, too. That's why they were the ones who came to the house and no others. They meant to kill you, _personally,_ and no one can understand why they failed. So now the other _vrachoi_ of this region are afraid of you, as I said. They think you must be incredibly powerful and dangerous, even though they can't figure out who you are. They said it's like you have a wall around you, blocking them from finding out anything. The only reason Prissy and I discovered that you were the one meddling in our affairs was because I spotted you fighting with one of our drug distributors in Atlanta," Layla said.

"I thought Prissy was a sorceress, not a drug dealer," Brandon said.

"She was, but you'd be surprised how well those two things work together. Prissy liked to make money just as well as the next girl," Layla said.

"I see," Brandon repeated. He supposed if a person were powerful, unscrupulous, and didn't mind indulging in murder once in a while, then the drug trade was probably an excellent way to make lots of money. The perfect business for a sorceress who enjoyed the high life, no doubt.

"Anyway, I was able to get the license plate numbers from your truck that day, and once we had _those_ we were able to confirm who you were and where you lived. I don't believe I've ever seen Prissy so infuriated. She was determined to kill you herself at that point, so we started watching for a good opportunity to waylay you. She bought that big remote house along the route you usually took on your way home from Atlanta, and then she had me follow you one night when we knew you didn't have a spare. I was able to plant a small explosive device inside the rim of your tire while you stopped for gas in Cedartown, and then when you were safely out in the wilderness I detonated it by remote control to give you a blowout," Layla explained.

"And then _you_ were there to kindly give me a lift," Brandon said wryly.

"Yes, and Craig and Albert were alerted even before you left the city. They had plenty of time to arrive at the house and get ready," Layla agreed.

"Sounds like a precision operation," Brandon muttered.

"Things like that always are. It's foolish to leave anything to chance," Layla agreed.

"So why didn't you just come to my house and set off a bomb or something like that? Seems like it would've been simpler," Brandon said.

"No doubt it would have been. But as I said before, Prissy wanted to kill you personally. She wanted to do it at her leisure, to make it last a long time and enjoy every minute of pain she could wring out of you. So did Craig and Albert, and they paid handsomely for the privilege to take part. Bombing your house wouldn't have been satisfying enough," Layla said coolly, and Brandon swallowed hard at the fate he'd so narrowly escaped.

"I'm surprised one of them didn't just capture me or put a bullet in my head next time they caught me in Birmingham or Huntsville, then. They sure didn't seem to like Prissy very much, from what I remember. Why would they pay her if they didn't have to?" Brandon asked.

"They had no choice. Information is power, and only fools waste it by talking too much. A loose tongue is like tossing fistfuls of dollars into the garbage disposal every time you walk by. Wise people learn quickly to reveal nothing except when absolutely necessary. Prissy and I told no one about you. Craig and Albert knew only that you were the enemy we'd been searching for; nothing more. Nor have I mentioned your name or anything else about you to the other _vrachoi_ I've spoken with since Christmas," Layla said.

"Okay, so why are you giving _me_ all this information, if that's the case?" Brandon asked.

"Because it's the only coin I have left at this point. If I answer your questions, then I hope you'll answer mine," Layla said, and it was impossible to doubt the truth of _that,_ at least. Her honesty was disarming, and Brandon had to remind himself once again not to trust her for an instant.

"All right, I can understand that. But I still have to wonder why you didn't tell those other _vrachoi_ about me. You probably could have won back some trust if you'd ratted me out," Brandon asked skeptically.

"Perhaps. But I knew they'd gang up and kill you immediately if I told them anything, and _they_ wouldn't have played cat and mouse games like Prissy did, either. They were already afraid of you at that point, so they would have used the fastest, harshest methods they could think of to make sure you ended up dead. I didn't want that to happen," Layla said, to which Bran couldn't help raising an eyebrow.

"You could have fooled me. You sure didn't seem to have a problem with hurting or killing me at Christmas. You told Craig and Albert to do whatever they wanted with me," Brandon reminded her.

"Yes, but that was before I touched you and smelled your scent," Layla said, looking down.

"What's _that_ supposed to mean?" Brandon asked.

"Perhaps you already know that my sorcery allowed me to drink the life of a young man and stay young and beautiful forever while he got old and died within a few years. That's why I still look as young as I do. My magic is gone now, but I can still taste that life deep inside whenever I kiss a man, even though I can't take it from him anymore. It's hard to explain what it's like to someone who doesn't already know, but the life of each person has a flavor of its own. With most of them there's always a bitter aftertaste, like drinking tea with too much saccharine. But not with you. Do you remember when I kissed your ear in the dining room?" Layla asked.

"Yeah, what about it?" Brandon asked, not liking the reminder.

"I could taste you then. It's hard to explain, but the life inside you is. . . sweet. Clean, like pure water with a bit of sugar added. I've only tasted that flavor once before, long ago when I was young, but even then it was never as strong as it is with you. And then there's that _smell_ about you, something wild and heady but almost too faint to catch. I thought I noticed it when we first met on the highway that night, but I wasn't sure till I could get close enough to touch you and breathe deeply, right before I went to bed. The combination is almost intoxicating; the most irresistible thing I've ever encountered. I can still catch a trace of it now and then, even sitting here across the table like this. So I didn't want them to kill you anymore after that, but there was only so much I could do at that point," Layla said.

"Do you really expect me to believe you were trying to help me?" Brandon asked, and she shrugged.

"I never said I was, except maybe incidentally. But I _did_ want to ask you what it is that makes your soul so full of brightness, why you smell like love itself. I couldn't ask you those things if you were dead, or even badly hurt," Layla pointed out.

"That's true," Brandon admitted.

"After you destroyed Prissy and the others, I had a lot of time to think about what happened that night. I'm sorry for the way I behaved. At the time I was so enthralled with that taste and smell of yours that I mistook what it was I really wanted. In hindsight I can see that it was never like that at all. Touching you feels different, like a kiss from my father when I was very small. Only sweetness, only strength which I can never come to the end of. Why? What is it that makes you so different? And why did you let me go when you could have killed me or made me like Prissy?" Layla asked, bringing his mind back to the issue at hand. Brandon had no inclination to beat around the bush, so he spoke the truth bluntly.

"I don't know if you'll believe me," he said, and she shrugged.

"Try me. I think I could believe almost anything right now," Layla said.

"All right, then. Two years ago I visited a place called Elysium. It's a land where the sun shines forever in a blue and cloudless sky, where the rocks are full of light, and beauty lives in every flower and blade of grass. It smells just like what you talked about, and they told me the fragrance of that place would cling to me for the rest of my life. It's a shadow of the scent of heaven, and a faint reminder of God. So if that's what your heart really yearns for, then you should come to Him and be whole. Nothing less will ever be enough," Brandon said, using every bit of his newfound charm to make her listen.

For a very long time she was silent.

"Even if that were true, I don't think God would want anything to do with me at this point," Layla finally said.

"Yes, He would. That's the reason I let you go, actually. God loves you and He's forbidden anybody to hurt you," Brandon said, and Layla's eyes widened for a second.

"I don't believe that," she said flatly, and Brandon shrugged.

"It doesn't really matter whether you believe it or not. I know for a fact that it's true. He called you His daughter and asked us to bless you. I was there when it happened," Brandon said.

"But why would He do that? I've hated Him, fought Him, done everything I could to oppose Him. I've been a _vracha_ ever since I was a child," Layla said.

"That doesn't mean you can't change your mind, does it? Human beings always have a choice," Brandon pointed out.

"I don't know," Layla said, looking away.

"I know He's given you dreams," Brandon said softly, and her dark eyes narrowed at that.

"Do you, now?" she asked, her face revealing nothing. But Brandon was on firm ground when he talked about _that_ subject. He shut his eyes to pray silently, and the vision of her dreams that he saw in his mind's eye appalled him.

"You've been having nightmares, full of blood and pain. You see the faces of every person you ever hurt, and you feel exactly what they felt as they died. They've been tormenting you almost every night since Christmas. I'm so sorry," Brandon said, feeling a wave of compassion for her.

He supposed in a way it was only simple justice, that she should have to pay for all the evil she'd done in the world. And maybe compared to what her victims had suffered it was barely a drop in the bucket. Still, it was hard for him to endure.

"Then you know some of the terrible things I've done," Layla said, watching his face.

"Yes, but wouldn't you like to be forgiven for all that? To be free of it forever? There's nothing you could ever do which is so terrible that God can't forgive it. He's standing there in heaven right now, just waiting to run throw His arms around you and cover you in kisses, to forget all the evil you've ever done and give you all the deepest desires of your heart. All you have to do is ask," Brandon said.

He wasn't totally sure if something like that would appeal to the woman or not. No doubt she'd suffered a lot recently, and he knew that on some level her heart still yearned for the fragrance of Elysium. But it remained to be seen whether God could take such a feeble spark and blow it into flame.

"You wouldn't say that, if you knew the rest of it," Layla said.

"What's the rest of it?" Brandon asked, uncertain what she was talking about.

"We also did _you_ wrong, long before Christmas," Layla said.

"Like how? You didn't even know me then," Brandon said.

"Not personally, no. But I definitely knew your sister and her husband. I hated them for destroying my sorcery, and I was determined to get revenge for that. I wanted them to suffer, but it took a while to figure out a good way to make that happen. I was afraid to move against them too directly, and Prissy wouldn't help me with anything which might have endangered her own position. But when I discovered how much they loved _you,_ then it became obvious how I could hurt them in a more subtle way, by hurting you instead," Layla said.

Brandon recalled that Dr. Anderson had warned them about that very thing at one point, even though nobody had taken it very seriously at the time. Now he wished they had.

"But what did you ever do to _me?"_ Brandon asked, trying to think of anything that hadn't been his own fault or that of others. But Layla was looking at him with an unreadable expression on her face.

"We were careful to make sure you never knew. Prissy helped me by spying on you with her sorcery, and I personally recruited two boys on your football team for that same purpose. I needed to find out what your weaknesses might be, what kinds of lies you might wish to believe if you heard them at the right time. Things like that. Most people can eventually be lured into committing the foulest offenses imaginable, provided the trap is baited sweetly enough. Many a saint has been destroyed by thinking himself immune to sin. Or perhaps you've heard the story of the Pied Piper, who lured the children of Hamelin into the forest with music and laughter and fun, and then viciously murdered every last one of them as soon as they were beyond help. The work of a _vracha_ is very much like that. One must always be careful to hide the sting inside a pretty wrapping, to beguile the victim until it's too late. It required a lot of patient stealth and planning, but finally we found an opportunity to set you up," she said.

"Which two boys was it?" Brandon asked, partly because her cool and matter-of-fact discussion of evil made him ill at ease. He could think of several possibilities, some of them more likely than others. But Layla only shrugged.

"Jason Lewis and Bobby Jones. But you shouldn't blame them too much. They were young and easy to corrupt, by a _vracha_ who knew her business. You see, Jason wanted desperately to believe that a beautiful girl could find him attractive, so I carefully stoked and fed that wish until he was putty in my hands. Bobby was tired of being poor and yearned after all the things that money can give, a thirst which made him even easier to control than Jason. They never stood a chance against me, even with no magic," Layla said. There was no pride in her voice, just a simple statement of fact.

After he got over the initial surge of fury at such a betrayal, Brandon supposed she probably had a point. Jason and Bobby had always been fairly shallow and thoughtless individuals, with both feet planted firmly in the world. They were fun to hang out with sometimes as long as you didn't mind the lack of depth, so Bran had always shrugged it off and made allowances. In hindsight, it didn't really surprise him that somebody like Layla could have ensnared them for her own purposes.

"So what did you finally do?" Brandon asked, unnerved by the revelation that so much manipulation and deceit had been going on behind his back for so long.

"After you won the game at White Oak, we knew you'd be in a good mood and therefore easier to influence. I told Bobby to arrange a party immediately, even before the bus left Tyler, and I specifically told Jason to invite you and what arguments to use. You crave love and approval, so that was how we baited our hook, by leading you to believe you were pleasing your friends. Then I went to the party myself to ensure that everything went smoothly," Layla said.

"But why? What did you think you'd accomplish with something like that? Embarrass me?" Brandon asked. Now that she mentioned it, he _did_ remember seeing her at the party, and even wondering briefly how Jason ever managed to snag such a pretty girl. But he hadn't thought anything of it at the time, and there'd been an awful lot of water under the bridge since then. No wonder she'd looked vaguely familiar when he saw her on the highway at Christmas.

"No. We planned to have you arrested for drugs after we called the police later on. We'd already arranged to have Bobby plant a large package of methamphetamines under your truck seat and then tell the police you were there to sell them. Jason was available to back up his story if need be, as a second witness against you. But then I saw that you'd brought your girlfriend along, so Prissy and I thought of something to make it even better at that point," Layla said.

"Like what?" Brandon asked. He simply couldn't get over Jason and Bobby's almost bottomless perfidy. They were supposed to be his _friends,_ for God's sake, and yet they'd betrayed him in ways that no honorable person would ever dream of. The sting of broken trust was almost worse than any scheme they could have plotted. Bran hardly wanted to imagine what sort of cruel and despicable plan might seem "even better" in the eyes of such wicked people.

"I told you Prissy is a powerful sorceress. You were drunk already, and so was your girlfriend; that gave us exactly the opening we needed. I poured a vial of poison into your drinks, to make you both irresistible to one another and to ensure that she became pregnant. You even saw me do it, if you remember. I told you it was cherry flavoring, and you were too drunk to give it a second thought. It would have been the perfect add-on, you see. You would have been in prison, and your girlfriend would have been sent home in shame to face her father alone. Best of all, the whole series of events was similar enough to a lie your sister once agreed to tell Cody on my behalf that both of them would have known immediately who was responsible, even though it would have been far too late to help you by then. They would have seen that it was purely vengeance, and it would have broken their hearts to know that your life was ruined at least partly because of them. The guilt and pain on all sides would have been sweeter than honey," Layla said.

For a while Brandon was speechless at that. It reminded him of something else Cody had said, about how the Garzas loved the taste of pain in all its forms. Bran had no reason to like or trust this woman in the first place, but the idea that she hated him enough to do such terrible things was almost incomprehensible. What had he ever done to deserve such a thing?

The answer was obvious, of course; he hadn't done anything at all. Layla hated him simply because Cody and Lisa loved him, and what kind of defense could he possibly make for _that?_

She never would have had the opportunity to hurt him in the first place if it hadn't been for his own foolish choices, of course; he couldn't lay _all_ the blame on her. But still, she'd definitely twisted everything to her own advantage and in the process caused him more pain than he'd ever thought possible.

Nevertheless, _something_ must not have gone according to plan, or else he would have been sitting out a lengthy drug sentence somewhere in a Texas prison at that very moment.

"But the cops never came," Brandon finally managed to say.

"No. The plan didn't work out quite the way we hoped. Bobby's brother Tommy stole the drugs we meant to put in your truck, so then there wasn't much point in calling the police anymore. At that point we decided the most entertaining option would be to stand back and watch everything unravel in slow motion, so to speak. We expected you to abandon your girlfriend when you found out about the baby, or at least that both of you would turn bitter and angry at each other. But instead you stayed together and even started to love the child. Prissy was _livid_ at that point, so finally she lost patience and cursed the baby with death," Layla said.

"You tried to kill Stephen?" Brandon asked numbly, wondering how much worse this story could possibly get.

"Yes, we slated him to die on the same day as Blake McGrath, as a final swipe at Cody if he ever happened to find out. We didn't know if you and the girl would manage to keep the secret that long, of course, but it was entertaining to think you might. It didn't really matter anymore after that beautiful meltdown in January when everything fell to pieces like a leisurely train wreck. Prissy and I watched with her crystal ball while you and the girl broke up, and then everything that happened to you at school for the next few days. We laughed till we cried. But that was the end of things as far as we were concerned. The girl was gone, and we soon found out your father meant to take you away, too. You were no more use to us after that, especially when we saw that your father meant to cut off all contact with Cody and Lisa. We were both getting tired of dealing with you by then, anyway. It's not much fun to torment people who don't react the right way, and besides that, I'd finally cooled off enough to decide I had better things to do than spend the rest of my life getting payback for an old grudge. It was enough at that point. So we never paid you any more mind after that, at least not till you started causing trouble in Atlanta," Layla said.

"But. . ." Brandon said, and then trailed off again. In spite of all the cruelty and corruption he'd seen the past few years, he couldn't think of a single thing to say to something like _this._ Maybe it was because none of those other things he'd seen had been directed at him personally, and this had been a deliberate attempt to destroy everything he loved and held dear. An attempt which had very nearly succeeded several times, and the cost of which he'd still be paying for years yet. Prissy and Layla must have written him off not long after the letter came from his father's lawyer in Tyler, right about the time when he'd been contemplating the idea that even death might be better than the misery of living. It had been the darkest, slimiest pit of black depression he'd ever experienced in his life, when there seemed to be no hope at all for the future. No wonder his secret enemies had decided he was no more use to them.

He wanted to kick Layla out at that point, and then maybe punch a few holes in the wall while he cursed her and cried. But just as he'd done in the bedroom at Christmas, he remembered once again the words of Brother Manchin.

Your tears are not without purpose. When people see that you hold fast to God and praise Him in the midst of your troubles, then He is shown to be righteous and true in the eyes of the nations, in a way which could never otherwise happen. We suffer as the Lord did, and for much the same reason; that the blind should see the light. You're never more like Christ than when you suffer, and it's often at times like that when you draw men closer to Him by your example, without even realizing what you're doing.

Brandon stared silently at Layla, and then thought of what Lana had told him on the lake, about how she didn't think they could ever have been together if none of these awful things had ever happened. If Prissy and Layla had never attacked him, then Lana would have gone home to Vyborg at the end of the school year right on schedule. There would have been no party after the game at White Oak, no drugs, no poison in the drinks, no shame and humiliation, no gangs or imprisonment, no nothing at all. Just the same calm and mostly tranquil life Brandon had always thought he wanted.

But then again, there would have been no Stephen, either. There would have been no visit to the Fountain of Youth in Elysium, no new home for Tatya and Vlad, no promise that someday Brandon could have all the desires of his heart if he didn't give up; even the ones he'd never thought of before. In every case, death and defeat had been swallowed up at last in victory, as the weapons of evil were twisted free and forced to serve as blessings.

Therefore Brandon took heart as he remembered all these things, and wiped the tears from his eyes. If praise in the midst of suffering was such a powerful thing, then he might never again in his life have such a potent opportunity to use it as he did now.

"It doesn't matter anymore; I forgive you for all that. Everything you meant for evil, God used it for something good. The only thing you accomplished in the long run was to give me everything I ever wished for, and to bless all the people I've touched since I came back from Elysium. So yeah, I still say the same thing as before. Come and be whole. Learn to serve Him like a daughter instead of like a tool from now on, and taste the only joy there is," Brandon said at last.

Layla sat there silently for a long time, and then slowly her own eyes filled with tears.

"I wouldn't even know how to start," she finally said.

"I can help you, if you like," Brandon offered.

And so it was that he found himself praying for salvation with one of the wickedest sinners he'd ever known, unbelievable as that would have seemed even just an hour ago.

"What should I do now?" Layla asked when it was over.

"If you're really sorry for what you've done then I think you ought to make it right, if you can. Not just with God but with all those people you hurt, too," Brandon said.

"But there's nothing I can do for them," Layla said.

"Yes there is. Go talk to my sister. There's a place near where she lives called Cadron Pool, and anyone who goes to swim in that water can be whole and healthy again. Help find all those people you hurt and take them there to be healed, or bring them to me if this is closer. I think that would go a long way towards making amends. I'll tell Cody and Lisa what happened here today. I'm sure they won't hold a grudge," Brandon said.

"Thank you. Maybe I'll do that," Layla said. The haggard look had melted away from her face, which looked soft and beautiful again.

"Thank God, not me. Oh, and one more thing before I forget. Here's your keys that I took when I left Prissy's house. Your car is parked at Wal-Mart," Brandon said, grabbing the ring from where it hung on the wall.

She nodded as she took the keys from his hand, and then got up from the couch to put her arms around him again before she left. There was nothing sinister about it anymore; just the hug of a sister for a brother, when he's done her a kindness too great for words alone.

Then she was gone, and Bran sat back down to marvel at it all. One of the lost had been found, which was cause for joy in both heaven and earth. And if Brother Manchin was right about the redemptive power of suffering, then perhaps Brandon's own tears might have had a part in saving her. His anguish had seemed greater than he could bear sometimes, true enough. But maybe no less of a sacrifice would have been sufficient, for such an evil person as Layla to finally see the light.

This idea gave him a lot to think about over the next few days. He felt in his heart that it was undoubtedly true, in that same deep way that he understood the meaning of dreams sometimes. Just a simple, unemphatic certainty. And even though he could never be sure, he liked to imagine that Lana might have smiled in her sleep, if only she knew.

For things like this, a hundred years of sorrow was indeed well spent.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Less than a week later Brandon was at baseball practice after school when a black 4x4 truck pulled up right next to the bullpen. Bran barely noticed it at first, intent as he was on watching the field. Other than his teammates he was alone as usual, though he hardly noticed that anymore either. But when he felt somebody tap on the back of his helmet through the chain link fence, he turned his head to behold none other than Cody McGrath, along with Lisa and Mikey still waiting in the truck. What they were doing there he didn't have a clue.

Nor did he care at the moment. He jumped up and ran outside the fence in spite of the rules, and after a general round of hugs and kisses he sat down on the tailgate with the others in his blue and gold Piedmont Bulldogs uniform, to talk for a while and catch up on old times.

Mikey sat on one knee, his wispy strawberry-blond hair getting tangled in the breeze, and even though Bran had seen pictures now and then it was still amazing how much the kid had grown in not quite two years.

"Does Daddy know you're here?" Brandon asked, thinking to himself that it didn't seem like the kind of visit Crush would approve of.

"No, we didn't say anything to him. Didn't seem like a good idea," Lisa said.

"Yeah, he probably wouldn't have liked it much. He still thinks it'll get me killed if I ever set foot in Texas again, apparently. I still don't know what possessed him to get so overprotective all of a sudden, but that's the way it is," Brandon said.

"Well, what he doesn't know won't hurt him just this once. It won't get you in trouble because we stopped by, will it?" Cody asked.

"I don't really care if it does. I'll be out of here in a few months anyway, soon as school is finished. Did y'all come all this way just to see me?" Brandon asked.

"Mostly, yeah. But we're going down to Pensacola for a few days, too," Lisa said.

"Oh yeah? Going to the beach?" Brandon asked.

"Yeah. Mikey's never been," Cody said.

"Wish I could come. Daddy would never let me, though," Brandon said wistfully.

"Do you really have to ask him? You're eighteen now, after all," Cody pointed out.

"Well. . . yeah, that's true, but I kind of have to do what he says as long as I'm still living with him, you know," Brandon said.

"Well, if it turns out you can make it, we'll be at the Gulf Breeze Motel, room 208. We'll be there till Monday," Lisa said.

"I'll try, but I can't promise you anything," Brandon said.

"I know. That's why we came this way, so we could make sure to see you for just a little while. It's been a long time apart, bubba," Lisa said.

"Yeah. . . I know," Brandon said, kicking the tip of his bat on the ground.

"Anyway, we won't think about that anymore. When's your next real game?" Cody asked, nodding his head at the baseball field.

"We've got an invitational tournament down in Montgomery on Saturday. Starts at noon," Brandon said.

"That's not _too_ far from Pensacola. I think we might come watch you play," Lisa said, after looking it up on her phone.

"That'd be cool," Brandon agreed.

And so they did, to watch and cheer for him even though the Bulldogs ended up losing to the Dothan Tigers by three points. Bran drove to Montgomery himself instead of riding the school bus, which gave him some free time to hang out for a while after the game was over. It wasn't as good as a weekend at the beach, but much better than nothing at all.

"You'll never guess who showed up the other day," Brandon mentioned as they left the stadium.

"Who?" Cody asked.

"Layla Garza," Brandon said, knowing full well what kind of reaction he was likely to get from that little tidbit. Nor was he disappointed; Cody choked and sprayed cold Dr. Pepper all over the steering wheel, and Lisa gasped out loud. For a second Brandon kept quiet, enjoying the shocked looks on their faces.

"She didn't try to hurt you, did she?" Lisa asked urgently.

"No, it was nothing like that. She just wanted to talk to me for a while. She'd been having really bad nightmares about all the horrible things she'd done, to the point she couldn't even sleep sometimes. I guess it finally broke her heart," Brandon said.

That was the edited version, of course. He didn't mention what Layla and the others had done to him at Christmas; the whipping, the dogs, how close he'd come to death or to losing all that made life bearable. Nor did he say anything about Layla's part in the events of two years ago, or about his ongoing battles with the _vrachoi_ ever since. There was no need to burden Cody and Lisa with stories like that, especially when there was nothing they could do to help. It was simply the nature of reality, after all. When a boy walks alone through the strongholds of darkness then it's only to be expected that he'll end up with a few scars now and then, even if they're mostly the invisible kind. It didn't do any good to cry about the fact.

"Well, I _would_ say that serves her right, but I'll wait to hear the rest of the story first. Did you help her?" Cody asked, too busy wiping up the spilled Dr. Pepper to notice Brandon's momentary distraction.

"Yeah. . . I did. She found her way to God, believe it or not," Brandon said, enjoying that revelation even more.

Cody was silent at first, and then suddenly laughed as he wiped tears away. It was a much more emotional announcement for him than it was even for Lisa, all things considered. Cody had actually _seen_ it when Layla cold-bloodedly smashed his father's head with a rock and then drowned him in the Brazos River. He knew what it was like to have his own life drained away by her sorcery, and that wasn't even counting the torture she'd put Lisa through. All that was a lot to get past.

But Cody had never lacked for greatness of heart, in this or anything else. Partly by choice and partly by nature, he was a flaming torch at the heart of the world's darkness. No doubt he would have liked that comparison, as soon as he finished laughing at it. But in the meantime, he chose the high road instinctively.

"It's all been worth it, then," he finally said, while Lisa nodded and grasped his hand.

"I said if she was really sorry for what she'd done then she ought to try to make up for it. She's supposed to get in touch pretty soon and see what y'all can do for any of her victims that are still alive. I hope you don't mind if I told her that," Brandon said.

"No. . . we have to think of those poor people we might still save. It'll be hard to handle at first, I'm sure, but you did the right thing, Beebo. I'm glad you told us, though. I'm not sure what I might have said if she just showed up on the porch one day out of the blue. In fact I'm _still_ not sure what I'll say," Cody said.

"Me neither. I wonder when she'll turn up," Lisa murmured.

"Bran said it's only been a few days. We'll give her a little time before we start wondering _too_ much," Cody said.

They didn't have to wait long. Three days after Cody and Lisa got home from Pensacola, Layla Garza showed up at Goliad to ask forgiveness and to make amends if possible. Then for a while they were busy tracking down dozens of her erstwhile victims all over the country and bringing them to Cadron Pool for healing, if they could be talked into coming.

"I can't get over it, Beebo; she seems like a totally different person," Cody told him on the phone one day, several weeks later.

"Maybe she is. God can do some incredible things," Brandon said.

"That He can. But I'm glad, not just for her sake but for all those guys she went after, too. We never would've found them all if she hadn't helped us," Cody said.

" _Did_ you find them all?" Brandon asked.

"Not yet, but we're getting there. Layla's been staying in one of the bunkhouses next to the peach orchard while we try to locate everybody. But I think she really wants to go home to New Mexico after it's all said and done. That's where she's from, you know, from White Sands," Cody said.

"Yeah, I think I remember that," Brandon agreed.

"Her brother Orem is serving ten years for burglary out there, but she thinks he'll be out on parole pretty soon. He's the only family she's got left anymore, so she wants to try to help him get his life together too, if possible. I told her we'd be praying for her," Cody said.

"Yeah, so will I. How are you and Lisa getting along, having her there?" Brandon said.

"It's been hard; I won't lie about that. Kind of strained and awkward, especially at first. Every time I saw her I kept thinking about what happened at the river. Did I ever tell you Daddy was trying to save her when she killed him? She pretended to fall into a deep current so he'd come in after her. That's when she knocked him out with that rock and drowned him," Cody said.

"That's horrible," Brandon said. He'd heard the story before, but never the part about Blake McGrath trying to save Layla from drowning.

"Yeah. . . I don't like to think about it much. But he was always noble like that, always loved God and tried to do what he thought was right. That's how Layla knew he'd come in the water to rescue her if he could. They'd been watching him for a while, she and her brothers. Stalking him, I guess you could say. They knew exactly how to manipulate him when the time came," Cody said.

"I'm sorry, Cody," Brandon said, although the story didn't surprise him. It sounded exactly like the way Layla had approached all her other victims.

"Well, yeah, me too, Beebo. But sometimes when you fight the devil you can get hurt, that's all. He died in battle against evil, if you want to think of it that way. He'll always be a hero for that, at least to me," Cody said.

"Me too," Brandon agreed. He'd been stalked and hurt several times himself lately in those kinds of fights, even if nobody knew it. He'd never stopped to think about whether it was anything heroic or not, but the notion that he might have done something to make Cody proud was enough to warm Bran's heart.

"But that's not the end of it. Layla told me she never forgot the taste of his life and nothing else ever satisfied her after that. I guess that's a strange thing to say to the son of a man you killed, but it's the reason she came after me, too. She thought since I'm his son that I might taste the same. But she told me she never understood what she _truly_ wanted till she met you and listened to what you said, Beebo," Cody said.

"Yeah, I remember her saying something like that, I think," Brandon said.

"She also told me she wouldn't have been ready to listen to _you_ if she hadn't spent all those years yearning for something she couldn't understand, and she never would have learned to do that if she hadn't killed my father. So you might say he really _did_ save her, in a deeper way than anybody ever thought. And I think if Daddy could've known ahead of time that the only way to save Layla from hell was to give up his own life, then he was the kind of man who might really have done it. You know what he always used to tell me?" Cody asked.

"What?" Brandon asked.

"He always said _never take your joy at the cost of another man's tears._ I've had a lot of time to think about that over the years, and I believe I understand what he meant now. He never wanted me to be the kind of man who could be happy at somebody else's expense, regardless of the circumstances. Not even if that other person has done me wrong. It's a rule that applies to all kinds of situations, but it fits this one better than most. If I let myself hate Layla and refuse to have anything to do with her because of all the things she's done then yeah, I might get some personal satisfaction out of that for a while. But I'd also be doing exactly what Daddy always told me not to do, because even though it wouldn't cost _me_ anything, all those boys she hurt would end up paying the price for my choice. They'd never be healed, all because I cared more about my own feelings than I did about their suffering. That's not the way God meant for me to act when He gave us Cadron Pool; I _know_ it's not. So surely I can be noble enough to get over myself and forgive this woman so we can work together to save others, can't I?" Cody asked.

"If there's anybody in the world who could do it at all, then I'm sure you can," Brandon said, shaking his head a little. As usual, Cody was a lot to live up to.

"Maybe. I'm sure gonna try, anyway. But in the meantime I guess I'll talk to you later, Beebo. Love you, boy," Cody said.

"Yeah, love you too, old man," Brandon said. He could finally say the words sometimes nowadays, even if he still had to wrap them in a joke. At twenty-six, Cody was hardly an old man yet.

Bran soon went back to his campaign against the _vrachoi,_ perhaps a bit more cautiously in light of everything he'd learned from Layla, but with no less determination. He was careful to splatter mud on his license plate whenever he had to visit dangerous areas, and other such minor safeguards as that. Layla turned out to be an invaluable source of information about the plans and purposes of her former friends, not to mention ways to keep himself safe when he dealt with them. With her help, Brandon was able to wreck so many evil schemes that eventually the very name of Piedmont became a source of such cold dread among the _vrachoi_ that most of them would never willingly have come within a hundred miles of the place.

But of all the things he did in those days, Brandon still loved music and praise best of all. Even in the thick of his war against evil, he seldom missed an opportunity to play his guitar and sing hymns at church. His favorite of these was _In the Sweet Bye and Bye,_ partly because it reminded him of Elysium, with its talk of beautiful shores beyond the waves and the joyful songs of the Blessed. He no longer doubted what Cody and Brother Manchin had said about how praise is the greatest of all weapons against evil, and he was determined to make full use of it whenever possible.

He occasionally talked to Jonah, or to Tatya and Wolf, and it was during one of these conversations that Wolf told him about a dream he'd had.

"I saw a man with white hair playing chess, except there was nobody else on the other side of the board. And there were more pieces than there should have been, too, and the board had more squares than it was supposed to. Then when I looked closer, I saw that the chess pieces had the faces of people, and some of them I knew and some of them I didn't. I saw me and Tatya, and you and Lana, and Jonah, and Cody and Lisa, and I can't remember who all else. It was really strange," Wolf said. He had only the barest trace of a Russian accent anymore. Unless you knew better, you'd think he'd grown up in Louisiana all his life.

"I think that one's pretty easy, Wolf. It just means God has some ultimate purpose in mind for each of us, that's all. Maybe for the ones you saw in particular," Brandon said.

"Yeah, but what?" Wolf asked.

"That I don't know, buddy. Not about you and Tatya, anyway. If you have another dream like that, let me know and maybe we can figure out what it means," Brandon said.

"Okay then; I guess that's what I'll do," Wolf said, sounding unsatisfied.

After he hung up, Brandon couldn't help but wonder why God would give Wolf a dream like that, to tell him something he surely already knew. But there was no answer forthcoming, so Bran could only wonder.

In the meantime, he decided it might not hurt to keep an eye on the Bartows and the Andersons for a few generations, just in case. The idea made him think wryly of Layla Garza, and his assigned duty to guide and protect Mikey's baby someday. Brandon couldn't help but wonder how many more people he'd end up having to watch out for over the years. Babysitting hadn't been quite what he envisioned as a permanent career choice.

To save one life is to save the whole world.

The thought came from nowhere, startling him. Then almost immediately he recognized the voice of God, and he humbled the momentary pride which had started to creep into his heart. He had no business feeling put-upon by anything he was asked to do, not even for a second.

But he pondered that simple statement about the value of a single life many times during the next few months and beyond, considering it from different angles in light of his own experiences, and the more he contemplated it the more beautiful it became in his eyes. From that one small seed there slowly grew up in his soul a new awareness of the bottomless depths of the heart of Love; a sure and certain knowledge that just as God had died for the whole world, He would have done no less for a single soul.

From there it was only a short step to the realization that Lana and Stephen and even Brandon himself were also included in this group of things so deeply beloved by God, and even though Bran had known that fact in an intellectual sort of way for a long time, it had never really sunk into his heart before.

Indeed, the more he thought about all the things he'd been through and the results that followed, the more obvious it became that God had loved him all along, even during his darkest days. He might have been bruised and bloodied at times, but there was glory even in that. Being chosen to fight the most dangerous and desperate battles in the war against evil was a sacred trust; something noble and great. Not a punishment or a sign of indifference, but a mark of love and honor for a faithful son.

This was a deep and magnificent revelation, and although the process had first begun when Cody warned him about the bitterness in his heart, it was there at his father's house in Piedmont that Brandon finally let go of the last vestige of his resentment. God _was_ good, and love _could_ be trusted, and Bran silently promised himself that whatever might happen in the future, he'd never forget it again.

Epilogue

True to his word from the very beginning, the day after graduation Brandon packed up his things and moved back home to Goliad, in spite of his father's strenuous objections. Jonah was gone to North Carolina by then and the Bartows were in Florida, and even Layla Garza had gone home to New Mexico. That left Brandon with not many people to socialize with, other than family. He didn't much care to get reacquainted with Jason or Bobby or any of his other former classmates.

But that was all right. He worked on the ranch, and took up playing with the band again, and even though he was often lonely he never mentioned it. He worked with Cody and Lisa to heal and comfort those who came to bathe in Cadron Pool, and taught and loved his nephew Micah and later on his nieces Emma and Jessica. And just as he'd done in Alabama, he visited the sick and brought light to the darkness whenever he could. And sometimes, when he encountered the _vrachoi_ or their followers, he fought.

In the course of these things he became well acquainted with his distant cousin and fellow Curse-Breaker Zach Trewick, along with Matthieu Doucet and the other Avengers. And although Brandon never joined the group himself, he often worked with them in those days and became dear friends with all of them, a relationship which grew to include extended family as well. Cody and Lisa grew to be great friends with Zach's aunt and uncle Justin and Eileen, and even Mikey became friends with their son Josiah. For a little while, Brandon rested secure in this warm cocoon of blood and friendship, and he had many adventures in those days, till the _vrachoi_ shunned that whole region and Goliad itself became beautiful as a memory of Elysium far away.

But as the years passed he grew restless with all this, especially after the kids grew up and moved away. Therefore he wasn't too surprised when Lisa found him one day sitting beside the Pool, lost in thought. It was only a month or so after Jessica had finally gone away to college in Denton, and the house still felt empty without her. Emma was already married and living in Dallas, and Mikey was about to start the last year of his PhD work in astronomy. A real genius that sickly little kid had turned out to be, but good-hearted and loving, too. His worst fault was a tendency to get lost in his work for hours and days on end, so much so that he even forgot to eat sometimes. He definitely wasn't sickly anymore, though. He was tall and muscular like Cody, with the same messy mop of strawberry-blond hair he'd had ever since he was a baby.

He didn't seem interested in girls most of the time, even though he was twenty-two years old by then. He much preferred to tinker with electronics in the astronomy lab, and he'd mentioned once or twice lately that he was curious about reworking Andrew Garza's old tachometer, to see if he could get it to function again. The prospect of getting to study the nature of time or maybe even catching a glimpse of what the future might hold was enough to make him almost drool with anticipation.

It was useless for Brandon to warn him about the dangers of fiddling with an evil man's pet projects. Mikey would only laugh and hug him and promise to be careful, even though they both knew the words were meaningless.

Nevertheless, Micah was destined to have a son in the far-flung future someday, and Bran was beginning to worry that the tachometer might end up having something to do with that particular event. It was a scary thought which gave Brandon a cold chill of foreboding for his nephew's sake.

_God be with you, boy,_ he muttered under his breath.

"Whatcha thinking about, Beebo?" Lisa asked, interrupting his ruminations as she came to sit beside him on the bench. She was in her late forties now, with the first strands of silver in her auburn hair. He could remember when she was barely older than he himself still appeared to be, and he felt (not for the first time), the ache of sure and certain loss; long foreseen but no less hurtful because of that. But he bit his tongue and didn't talk about those things.

But he didn't want to talk about Mikey, either, especially when he didn't really know anything for sure.

"I have to leave here," Brandon said abruptly. He wasn't sure what Lisa might say to that, but she only nodded.

"We knew it was coming, sooner or later," she said.

"Did you?" Brandon asked, surprised.

"Yeah. I see you out here brooding like this, and I hear you say little things now and then. I can tell you're getting restless, just like Mikey and the girls did. That's the way kids are, you know," Lisa said.

"I'm not hardly a kid anymore, even if I still look like one," Brandon said.

"I don't think that has much to do with it, bubba. You may technically be thirty-seven years old, but I've known people that age and even older who still had the mind and heart of a child. We all grow at our own pace, you included. You just have the benefit of having a body to match," Lisa said, and Brandon laughed a little.

"I don't know whether to take that as a compliment or an insult," he said.

"A compliment, of course. It'd be much worse if you _didn't_ match, wouldn't it?" Lisa asked.

"Yeah, I guess so," Brandon agreed.

"So. . . where do you think you'll go?" Lisa finally asked.

"I don't know yet. Haven't really thought about it much," Brandon said, turning his eyes back to the Pool.

"Not at all?" Lisa asked.

"Well. . . I keep thinking about that dream Daddy had. You know, about the war. I thought I might join the army for a while, maybe see if I can get some special forces training while there's still time. I might need it," Brandon said, and Lisa looked at him askance.

"I never would've thought that was your cup of tea," she said skeptically.

"I never would have either, up till now. But I think it's what I'm supposed to do," Brandon said.

"Maybe so," Lisa said.

"Don't worry about me, sis; I'm a tough little scrapper," Brandon said, and Lisa laughed.

"Yeah, you've always been _that_ much, at least," she agreed.

And so it was that Brandon went away for the second time, coming home only rarely to visit Cody and Lisa while they were still alive.

As time passed he grew in wisdom and strength, and he became a scholar, and a mighty warrior of renown, till there was none like him in all the world. But in all the lands where he lay his head (and they were many), he sought always throughout his long, long life to live by the simple rule that God had given him; that to save one life is to save the whole world.

Therefore he pursued peace whenever possible, and indeed it was often the strength of his hidden power which brought harmony to warring nations in many parts of the world, and life to countless thousands who would otherwise have been lost. By the touch of his hands he gave beauty and healing to all those who lived in darkness without hope, and in later years it was largely he who made the barren isles of Eleuthera and Barbados to blossom into the loveliest lands which human eye had ever beheld; as a comfort to those who dwelt there in exile. He was indeed a blessing to many, just as Lana had foretold.

And when the time came at last for him to teach Micah's son Tycho all the wisdom he'd learned after many long years, the one thing which he sought most of all to lay upon the boy's heart was simply this: to do all things for the sake of love.

He took great care to draw no attention to himself as he did all these things, but among those few who heard of his deeds he gradually became known as Bran the Blessed, the title he was given by Brother Manchin long ago. For no other man walked so close with God as Brandon, whose feet had once stood in the meadows of Elysium, and who had breathed for a while the clean air of that place.

But even though he was adored by many, his heart's love never wavered. He resolutely held fast to his promise, and after a century and more had passed, he knew in his heart that the appointed time of his work was done. Then he set sail alone from the western shores of the island of Hawaii where he lived in those days, slipping silently across the blue Pacific in the misty morning hours of Easter Sunday, till he found himself once again in the realm of hidden things.

He beached his boat on the rocky coast before making his way quickly to the monastery, and although his body was still not a day above sixteen, he felt ancient indeed as he knocked on the front door.

No one answered, and he noticed that the grounds were unkempt and deserted, as if no one had set foot there in a long time. Brandon suffered a small twinge of worry, but then thrust it out of his mind. He silently begged Brother Manchin's forgiveness before kicking the door open, and then went directly to the third floor room in the tower that he remembered so well, ignoring the desolate house in between.

Then he came at last to the stone chamber, and there indeed she lay, still sleeping in her lace-covered bed. Then it seemed to Brandon that the years fell away, and he was no longer a famous commander, or a man of learning, or the Blessed One who brought peace to tear-stained lands. He was only a boy again, and he trembled as he approached Lana's side. Then he closed his bright blue eyes and kissed her softly.

"Wake up, _milaya,"_ Brandon whispered, hardly daring to believe.

After a long few seconds she took a deep breath and opened her eyes for the first time in a hundred and fifty years, and she smiled when she saw him standing there.

"I knew you'd come," Lana said, as if she'd never doubted him for an instant.

"It's been a long road," Brandon said, and she nodded. Then Lana rose to her feet, more beautiful in his eyes than he could ever remember. She kissed him once more and held him tight, and together they left the old house.

They were married three days later, in the Mo'Kuai'Kaua Church of Kailua Kona, surrounded by family and friends. Some of these people Brandon had watched over for generations, had they but known it. Hunter and Leah Bartow, whose blond hair reminded him poignantly of Wolf, their grandfather's grandfather. Tommy and Amie Anderson, Jonah's far-flung descendants. Cameron Parker and his family, and also Jacob Trewick, a distant child of Zach. Even Danielle Black, whose grandparents Edmundo and Catalina he'd saved with his own hands from the bombing of Santa Fe during the Union War, for the sake of Edmundo's grandmother Layla Garza.

They danced to _Forever and Ever, Amen,_ a song so old by then that Brandon had to write down the sheet music from memory before the band could even play it for them. No one had ever heard of it before.

But that wasn't so very surprising, after all. The youngsters knew nothing of the world that had once been, nor of the struggles and hopes of their long departed ancestors. Much less Bran's part in protecting them for so long. Nor would he have wished to burden them with such things. He loved them in memory of his lost friends, and that was good enough. The price had been high, but it was well spent.

Thus it was that when Stephen was born two months later, red haired and green eyed, no one thought it strange that Brandon and Lana retired for a while to his little house across the street from the high school football field. She to play music, and he to write down the story of their lives for whatever inspiration it might be to those who came after. Then the two of them spent many years in gladness, even as God had promised him at the Fountain of Youth long ago.

And in all the time since, there has never been another like Brandon. For no one has ever been so faithful and true, nor so blessed and brave of heart, and this tale of his deeds was soon repeated with love by all the survivors of Earth.

But to all those who praised him for his many great and wonderful works, Bran merely smiled and answered them nothing, except to murmur perhaps these few simple words from his youth long ago:

To God alone be the glory, amen.

The End

The story of Micah McGrath, his son Tycho, Brandon Stone, and several other characters from this series continues in:

Nightfall

The Tyke McGrath Series: Book One

A Curse-Breaker Book

By William Woodall

## Chapter One

Friday, April 25, 2036

At the worst possible moment, the power died.

The lab instantly went pitch dark, causing the tip of Micah McGrath's screwdriver to slip just the tiniest bit. Metal touched metal, and before he knew it one of the capacitors had discharged its built-up load right into the circuit board he'd been trying to fix.

Mike cursed and slammed his fist on the table in sheer frustration; what _else_ could go wrong today? He didn't have _time_ for things like this; he was supposed to have his dissertation finished in only three more weeks.

After a few seconds the university's emergency generator kicked in and the lights flickered back on. Then Mike promptly forgot about power glitches and burnt-out circuit boards, and his eyes widened in shocked surprise.

The tachometer was gone.

Mike knitted his brows and stared at the empty spot where the machine had been sitting just a few seconds ago. He rubbed his eyes to make sure he wasn't seeing things, but there was no doubt about it. The thing had definitely vanished.

He didn't know quite what to think about this unexpected development; in spite of all his efforts to fix it, the tachometer hadn't actually worked in years. And even if it had, he'd certainly never switched it on or set the controls for it to do anything. There was no reason he could think of why it shouldn't still be sitting there on the workbench.

His first thought was to wonder if the discharge from the capacitor might have inadvertently activated some obscure function, even though that seemed highly unlikely. Anytime the tachometer was operational it was always surrounded by a silvery bubble of energy several feet across, and he certainly would have noticed if anything like _that_ had appeared.

But then again, Mike would have been the first to admit that he didn't really understand the blasted thing very well.

The machine was designed to capture and manipulate tachyons; those ghostly, faster-than-light particles which supposedly contained the power to foresee the future before it happened, and perhaps even to travel there.

True, Mike had never actually witnessed any of those things personally, but he'd heard plenty of stories from people who had. It was a fascinating subject, and when the time came to pick a research topic for his dissertation, there'd never been the slightest doubt that he'd choose to study tachyons. Never mind the fact that not everybody even believed they existed; Mike was determined to be the one who finally proved it to the world.

Dr. Bevels had smiled and called it "a learning experience", but that was okay; Mike was confident he'd show them all someday. He might only be twenty-three years old, but then again some of the greatest Nobel Prize winners in history had been in their early twenties. Mike himself was on track to become the youngest Ph.D. graduate in the history of the university, and surely that had to say _something_ good about his prospects, didn't it?

He would never have admitted to harboring such grandiose thoughts, of course, but they were awfully nice to think about now and then.

He glanced at the clock and saw that it was already 4:15; close enough to call it a day if he liked. He normally stayed in the lab at least till five, but the inexplicable disappearance of the tachometer was a mystery he felt too mentally tired to tackle at the end of such a long day. Not to mention the fact that he'd skipped lunch and his stomach was beginning to suggest pretty urgently that it was high time to get something to eat. Maybe he could come back in the morning with a fresh mind and think of some new ideas.

He shut down his laptop and turned off the lights before locking the door and putting the keys in his pocket. When everything was in order, he tiredly climbed the stairs from the basement and walked outside to where his Jeep was parked in front of the athletics building. The science center and several other structures on campus were closed for renovations at the moment, which meant Mike had been assigned this little niche in the gym instead. It was adequate, perhaps, but certainly not very glamorous.

His "lab" had actually been somebody's office before Mike moved in, but he'd done his best to make it work as a research space, shoving the desk up against one wall and moving in a lab bench from the science building. He'd even hung a portrait of Tycho Brahe above the desk, the father of modern astronomy and one of his particular heroes. Heaven knows he needed some inspiration and encouragement now and then.

There were more people than usual gathered in scattered groups outside, but Mike was too preoccupied with his own thoughts to pay much attention to that. He fired up the Jeep, intending to drive home, find something to eat, and then do absolutely nothing for the rest of the evening.

He heard police sirens wailing somewhere off to the north, and wondered idly what was going on. He supposed he'd hear about it soon enough, if it mattered.

He drove slowly down the quiet street next to the university, and other than the traffic lights not working there didn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary. Just a typical springtime afternoon. An old lady weeding her azaleas waved at him, and he smiled and waved back. He passed the fire station and the white-columned library, then the bank and his favorite coffee shop and the big red-brick Victorian courthouse on the town square. Almost home!

The house he shared with his best friend Joey Wilder was built on the side of a hill maybe half a block past the courthouse, where Third Street ran steeply down to cross the railroad tracks. But then as Mike swung into the front yard, he noticed an anomaly. There was a small crowd of people standing in front of the church across the street, but it was what they were staring at that immediately caught his attention and left him every bit as speechless as they were.

Just past the church, the street ended. Where it had once swept on down the hill to the tracks, now it just. . . stopped. And where the street used to be, now there were only trees. Large ones, that looked as if they'd been there since the day the world began.

That was shocking enough, but when Mike raised his eyes swiftly to look out over the treetops, he was in for an even greater shock. Where there had once been railroad tracks and factories and houses scattered thickly as far as he could see across the valley, now there was nothing. No tracks, no houses, no streets. Just an unbroken canopy of green that stretched all the way to the horizon.

Mike broke his stupefaction and walked slowly the last hundred feet or so to the end of the pavement, reaching out to touch the trunk of a massive oak tree that stood right in the middle of where the street should have been. The bark was rough and solid. Then he knelt down and touched the edge of the pavement, and found that it cut off as sharply as if someone had sliced it with a gigantic razor blade and left only this side behind.

The cut extended smoothly in both directions from where he knelt. To the east, it crossed the parking lot between the church and where the Family Life Center should have been, and then it passed quickly behind the church itself and out of Mike's sight. In the other direction it passed right through his own back yard, almost clipping off the corner of his house as a matter of fact. He could see a little bit farther in that direction, and it seemed that the razor's edge had a slight curve to it, though it was hard to be sure.

A dark suspicion flirted at the edge of his mind, but he dismissed the thought immediately. It _couldn't_ be.

He gingerly took a step past the end of the street, and then another. Soon he was standing amongst an almost silent forest of trees that whispered tranquilly in the breeze. They were unusually large and thick, but otherwise no different than any other trees he'd ever seen.

Except for the fact that they hadn't been there when he left the house that morning, of course. The trunks were widely spaced and the forest floor was level enough to drive a small car through, if the driver were careful.

After a few seconds he quit gaping at the trees and walked swiftly back up the hill to his own front door. As soon as he got inside the house, he found Joey fiddling with the little battery-powered radio they kept for emergencies.

"Where have you been, Mike? Have you seen what's going on out there?" Joey asked. He was almost exactly two years older than Mike himself, but they'd known each other ever since Mike could remember.

"Yeah, I see it. I don't believe it, but I definitely see it. Have you heard anything on the radio?" Mike asked.

"No, I couldn't find any batteries for it. All the ones I've tried are already dead," Joey said. For some reason Mike had never been able to force himself to throw away old batteries, and as a result almost every shelf and drawer in the house contained at least a few of them. Joey had complained about it times without number.

"I guess I better run go get some, then. I'll be back in a little while. One of us better stay here and keep an eye on the house, though, don't you think?" he asked, and Joey shrugged.

He grabbed a chocolate chip granola bar from the kitchen before running back outside to where the Jeep was parked. He usually walked or rode his bike around town, partly to save gas and partly to get some exercise, but at the moment he cared more about speed than anything else.

He didn't head directly for the store, though. As soon as he was out on the street, he began following the razor-edge to the west. There were places where it had sliced right through the middle of houses or buildings, with the other half disappearing like magic, with no trace of rubble or destruction. Except in a few cases, where the remainder of the structure had collapsed from the stress and fallen into the trees that crowded right up to the line. After a while, he also noted that the tree branches were cut off in a similar fashion; not even so much as a twig crossed the boundary.

People were gathered all along his route, staring at the trees with attitudes that ranged anywhere from mild curiosity to dumbfounded amazement. No one seemed panicky or hysterical, and some were even laughing and socializing, as if the whole thing were some kind of huge joke.

The line crossed right behind the National Guard armory and the post office, cut through some more houses and streets, then clipped the corner of the old cemetery. Then Mike saw some major damage; the blue jean factory and the junior high school had been sliced in half, and both of them had mostly collapsed. Thank God school had already been over for the day.

The line continued on into another residential area where Mike couldn't follow, but he drove quickly to Pine Street and picked it up again. It ran right through the middle of the Arby's drive-thru, and then plunged back (again) into residential areas.

Mike doggedly followed the line as far as he could. It ran right behind the university football stadium, and sliced off the main highway out of town exactly where Pizza Hut should have been. That was a bad scene; someone in a black Lexus had smashed into the trees when the road disappeared in front of her, and two other cars had piled up behind the first one. There was no ambulance to be seen; nothing but the smashed Lexus, and three bewildered-looking cops who kept glancing at the trees.

Mike made an illegal U-turn and drove urgently back to his lab, parking the Jeep right by the front door. The group of students from earlier had disappeared, which suited him just as well. The fewer witnesses there were, the better.

As soon as he got inside the gym he heard the sound of someone playing basketball, apparently unaware of what was going on. He rushed downstairs to his little cubbyhole and unlocked the door, almost stubbing his toe in his haste to get inside. There was a city map in his desk drawer, and he quickly unfolded it on the workbench next to where the tachometer had been. Then he took a pencil and carefully marked every location where he'd seen the razor cut pass.

He noticed immediately that it was an almost perfect circle, and with shaking hands he drew three separate diameter lines with a ruler so as to find the center point.

The lines met right where his lab stood.

A cold knot of fear threatened to cut off his breath when he saw that, because there could be only one explanation for everything he'd seen. Namely, the tachometer must have been activated somehow by the discharge of the capacitor, and then dragged the entire central core of Arkadelphia to some unknown point in the future.

Never mind that it hadn't been switched on, or that an ocean of trees looked nothing like any kind of future Mike had ever anticipated, or that he'd never imagined the tachometer could swallow an area big enough to engulf nearly a whole town. Those were incidentals which could be explained later. In the meantime, there wasn't a shred of doubt in his mind about what had actually happened.

_You've really done it now, boy,_ he thought to himself.

Even worse, he knew it wouldn't be long before other people started connecting the dots and reaching similar conclusions. Oh, they might not know exactly what happened, true, but it wouldn't take a genius to figure out who was responsible for it, as soon as somebody noticed whose lab was at the exact center of the circle. His research wasn't a secret, and neither was the location of his lab. One of the few things he liked about working in the gym instead of in the science building was the extra peace and privacy, but that wouldn't mean a thing once the whole town was looking for him. And he was sure they soon would be.

He quickly gathered up his own research notes along with Dr. Garza's original lab manuals. He didn't dare leave anything at the lab to be confiscated or destroyed, and least of all _those._ He even took the laptop, although he felt guilty about that. It technically belonged to the university, not to him, and he wasn't actually supposed to leave campus with it. He was careful to make sure no one saw him removing items from the building, since that would only focus attention on him that much faster.

He finished loading up and calmly drove away, thinking hard. Most people in town probably didn't really comprehend what had happened yet, and some of them might not even know. Things still seemed bizarrely normal at the moment. But Mike could guess what was coming within the next few weeks, if a world of trees were really all there was in this future time. Food and clean water would run out quickly, and when that happened, it was only a matter of time until cholera or dysentery reared its ugly head. And with no medicine to speak of. . . He shuddered.

Without wasting another second, he drove immediately to the bank. The lobby was already closed, of course, but the drive through was still open. He pulled up to the window and stopped, breathing a sigh of relief when he saw the girl at the computer. It was Allison, and he knew her well enough that she might do him a favor. He smiled and waved at her so she could see his face, and she smiled back when she recognized him. He pushed the call button and noted with satisfaction that the bank must have had a generator, since the machine was still working. Thank God for small blessings.

Mike quickly wrote a check for 2419.85, which was every nickel he had in his account.

Allison took the check and sent the cash and his driver's license back out, which he took with trembling hands. Somehow he managed to smile again and thank Allison before he left. He stuffed the cash in his pocket and then drove directly to the grocery store. If trouble were coming then he wasn't taking any chances.

It was busier than it should have been at that time of day, which worried him; apparently word was getting around and people were starting to get uneasy. The bread and milk sections were practically wiped out already, he noticed, but those weren't the kinds of things Mike had in mind anyway.

He grabbed a shopping cart and filled it as quickly as he could with anything that wouldn't spoil, especially canned goods. Then he filled two more. Not just with food, either; he quickly cleaned out everything useful he could find in the pharmacy section, too, including all the antibiotics and bandages, all the painkillers, and all the major vitamins. As an afterthought, he grabbed two handfuls of lighters, six bottles of chlorine bleach, and anything else he could think of that was useful and couldn't be replaced. The checkout lady gave him an amused look when he got to the cash register.

"You think the end of the world is comin', honey?" she asked with a chuckle.

"No, ma'am, just making sure," he said. That only made her laugh again, as he hoped it would. It took a while to pay for everything and get it loaded in the back of the Jeep, but there was still one more stop to make before he dared go home. His usual sporting goods store was gone, but there was a hole-in-the-wall gun shop downtown, and as soon as he got there Mike bought every .22 bullet they had. He got some raised eyebrows for that, but he couldn't have cared less.

He didn't park in the front yard when he got home as he usually would have. Instead, he backed into the garage to unload his supplies.

"Where have you _been,_ dude? Don't you know-" Joey began, coming out of the kitchen door into the garage. Then he saw the mountain of grocery bags and trailed off.

"Uh, do you know something you're not telling me?" he finally asked.

"I'm not sure. Help me carry all this stuff inside and then we'll talk about it and try to figure things out. But first let's lock all the doors, and the windows too for that matter," Mike added as an afterthought.

"Whatever you say, buddy," Joey said, with a shrug that indicated he clearly believed Mike had lost his mind.

They quickly locked every door and window, even drawing the blinds and drapes. Joey was mostly quiet during all this, even when Mike started taking food down to the basement instead of the kitchen, but when he saw the case of bullets that must have been too much for him to keep silent about.

"Hold on a minute, dude. Seriously, what's going on? If you're gonna come home and start acting like it's world war three you should at least tell me what's up," he said.

"You're absolutely right, but let's finish putting this stuff away first. As soon as that's done I'll tell you everything, I promise," Mike said. Joey looked like he wanted to argue about it some more, but then seemed to change his mind.

"All right, then," he finally said. And he was as good as his word; he worked as fast as Mike did to get all the groceries hauled down to the basement and hidden carefully behind the old furnace. Not just the food and supplies, either, but Mike's computer and lab notes, also. Only when everything was safely stashed away did they both sit down at the kitchen table and partially relax.

## Chapter Two

It was dim in the kitchen with the blinds drawn, so Joey quietly lit an oil lamp and put it on the table between them. The light cast dusky shadows across his face and made him look like a mummified corpse. Mike thrust the hideous image out of his mind

"So, are you going to explain now?" Joey asked.

"I'm not sure where to start," Mike said.

"Well, the beginning is always a good place," Joey pointed out.

"Well. . . I think I might've accidentally activated the tachometer," Mike said.

"I didn't think it worked," Joey said.

"I didn't think so either, but can you think of any other explanation for all this? You see the way the street cuts off like somebody sliced it with a knife, don't you? It goes on like that all the way around town, it even cuts right through buildings and houses sometimes, in certain places. It makes a perfect ring just a hair bigger than a mile and a half wide. Everything inside the circle is exactly the way it always was, but outside that there's nothing but trees. I followed it all the way around before I came home," Mike said.

"Okay, I admit that's suggestive, but it doesn't _prove_ anything," Joey said.

"No, but there's more. My lab is at the exact center of the circle, and I know I accidentally discharged the capacitor this afternoon at the exact same time the power died. And besides that the tachometer itself disappeared. What other conclusion could you draw from all that?" Mike said bleakly.

Joey digested that thought.

"I don't know, Mikey. I can see how maybe you might have accidentally switched it on when you discharged the capacitor. But I never heard of the tachometer covering such a big area as this," he said.

"Me neither, and I can't imagine any time in the future when there wouldn't be anything but trees, either. This is more like a million years ago," Mike said.

"But it can't be. The tachometer doesn't work backwards," Joey pointed out.

"Not that we _know_ of, anyway," Mike said.

"No, it's scientifically impossible; you know that as well as I do. We've got to be somewhere in the future, if that's what actually happened," Joey insisted.

"Okay, so maybe we skipped ahead ten million years and there are no human beings left on the whole planet," Mike said.

"Don't get so far ahead of yourself, Mikey. We can't know what year it is unless we go out there past the ring and find some kind of hard evidence. Which I'm sure we will, sooner or later. It's not like we won't have time," Joey said wryly.

"Yeah, you're definitely right about that," Mike admitted. If there were anything certain about the entire situation, it was the brutal fact that there was no going back. Once you skipped ahead with the tachometer, you were stuck there forever. Time was the one thing they had no shortage of.

"In the meantime, all we can do is deal with what we see. I'm guessing that's why you bought all those supplies?" Joey asked.

"Yeah. It's all stuff we could either use or trade later on, if we had to. Things could get nasty around here in a hurry if people start running out of food and water," Mike agreed.

"So what are the six gallons of Clorox for? Any special reason?" Joey asked.

"Yeah there is. We can use it to sanitize water to make it safe to drink. It won't taste too good, but it'll get the job done," Mike explained.

"All right, I guess I can understand that. But what about the ten bottles of cinnamon and the fifty pounds of sugar? Planning on baking a really big cake?" Joey asked.

"No, those are for keeping food safe, and like I said maybe for trading later on when everybody else runs out, which they will sooner or later," Mike said.

"And the .22 shells? I assume those are for hunting?" Joey asked.

"Yeah, mostly. But also just in case we need to defend ourselves," Mike said darkly.

"I really don't think anybody will come after us with torches and dogs, Mikey," Joey said. He was trying to lighten the mood, which Mike appreciated, but he didn't agree with his assessment of the danger level.

"They might. Things are hectic right now and maybe nobody's had a chance to think it through very much, but they will. They'll notice that this little slice of town that's left is a perfect circle, and it'll cross somebody's mind to see where the center is. And once they do that, it won't be long before somebody puts two and two together and figures out one of the astronomy students was doing experimental research down there in the gym. I don't know if Dr. Bevels is still in town or not, but he wasn't the only one who knew about it. People will talk, and then they might just start to wonder if maybe Mike McGrath was on to something with his silly little tachyon machine, after all. Then what do you think they'll do?" Mike asked.

"They'll come looking for you, to see if you know anything," Joey guessed.

"Bingo. And then what will I tell them?" Mike asked.

"The truth, maybe? You didn't mean any harm. Nobody ever thought you were doing anything dangerous," Joey pointed out, and Mike gave him a withering look.

"Do you think that will matter, when people start going hungry and getting sick? They won't want to hear excuses when that happens. They'll want answers, and they'll want all this to be undone, and if they can't have that, then they'll want vengeance. You of all people should know how folks think in a disaster," Mike said, and that was unquestionably true. Joey was a psychology major, and a pretty sharp one, too.

"Nothing to say to that?" Mike asked pointedly, when the other boy didn't answer.

"No. . . I guess you're right," Joey admitted, and then they were both silent for a few seconds after that.

"I don't guess you remembered to get any batteries for the radio, did you? We might hear something on the university station, at least," Joey finally asked.

"No, I forgot," Mike admitted, feeling supremely stupid. He'd been tied up in a million knots, of course, but that was no excuse.

"Well, it's too late to do anything about it now. We'll get some in the morning, if they're still selling them, that is. How _did_ you get all that stuff, anyway? It must have cost a fortune," Joey said.

"I used what I had in the bank," Mike admitted, and Joey raised an eyebrow.

"All of it?" he asked.

"Yeah. . . I wasn't sure if I could even get access to it after today, so I figured I better grab it while I could. Besides that, I figure it probably won't be worth the paper it's printed on within a couple days or so. I wanted to get what we needed to maybe save our necks while I still had the chance," Mike said.

"I don't know, Mikey. It'll be hard to get by even in a little place like this without some form of money to simplify trade. You might end up feeling kind of silly if everybody goes right on using the same old cash as always and then you're broke except for fifty pounds of sugar and a case of lard," Joey said.

"If that's the worst problem I have to deal with then I'll be happy to eat sugar and lard for the next six months. Besides, if that's the way it plays out then we can always sell the stuff, probably for a lot more than I paid for it. I'd be glad to waste all the money in the bank, if I knew it would undo all this," Mike said sadly.

"It's okay, buddy. You didn't know. Nobody can blame you for this," Joey said, and Mike laughed a little.

"Oh, there are all different kinds of ways of being to blame, you know. _I didn't mean to_ isn't much of a defense," Mike said.

"Well. . . Let's not worry about that right now, okay? There's nothing you can do about it at this point, anyway," Joey said.

"No, I guess not," Mike admitted.

"The only thing that matters right now is what we'll do tonight and tomorrow. Everything else can wait," Joey said, and Mike realized the comment was sensible. With an effort, he pulled himself out of his momentary funk and refocused on the present.

"Well, we have enough food to last us for a month or so if we're careful with it. I still have a little bit of cash, if it's worth anything. There's enough clean water in the water heater to do for drinking for a while, and we have plenty of bullets for the .22 if it comes to _that._ The Jeep has almost a full tank of gas, even though we don't really need to go anywhere for a while. I think it'd be best if we stayed put and kept all the doors and windows locked for now. We have oil for the lamps and wood for the fireplace; I'm not sure what else we need at this point," Mike said. Joey nodded all the while, and finally smiled.

"See, there you go. We're all set," he agreed.

"Are you not worried at all about what's going to happen or the fact that we're stuck in this weird place for the rest of our lives or anything like that?" Mike asked.

"What good would it do to worry about it?" Joey pointed out reasonably.

"I just don't see how you can be so calm about everything," Mike said.

"Mikey, there are really only two kinds of problems in the world. There's the kind you can do something about, and then there's the kind you can't do anything about. If you can do something about it, then quit worrying and go do it. If you _can't_ do anything, then worrying won't help you in that case either. Worry is nothing but fear, and fear is nothing but lack of faith. We can't do a thing about being stuck here and nobody knows what the future will bring. We've done everything a reasonable person could do at this point, so I'm not going to worry, and you shouldn't either," Joey said.

"I guess so," Mike finally agreed. He sometimes envied Joey for his untroubled tranquility. He'd never found it that easy, himself.

They spent a quiet evening, Joey reading by candlelight and Mike pretending to do likewise, even though he was too preoccupied to pay much attention. They both went to bed early, and Mike was asleep almost as soon as his head touched the pillow.

He woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of an explosion, followed by gunfire and a blood-curdling scream. It must have been far away because the sound was faint, but it was piercing nevertheless.

He jumped out of bed and grabbed his jeans from the floor, quickly slipping them on before he ran outside into the hall. Joey was already there.

"What was _that?"_ he hissed in the darkness.

"I don't know. It sounded like machine guns," Mike began, and then he was cut off by another explosion, louder than the first one. He crept quickly to the window at the end of the hall to part the curtains and see what he could see, but cautiously so as not to show any movement.

It was almost pitch dark outside, with all the street lights off. The only illumination came from starlight, faint and far. And yet, even that was enough for him to glimpse darker shadows here and there, moving between the buildings. They looked like soldiers carrying assault rifles, but he couldn't have said for sure.

Then the night was lit up suddenly by the orange glare of a bomb blast somewhere downtown, and for a second he glimpsed the soldiers perfectly. Somewhere in the distance, he heard more screams.

His mouth grew dry and his heart was pounding as he pulled the curtains shut and turned back to Joey.

"Did we lock all the doors and windows today? _All_ of them?" he asked urgently.

"Yeah, I think so. What did you see?" Joey asked, whispering as if someone might overhear them.

"Bombs, and a bunch of soldiers roaming around everywhere," Mike said, also whispering.

"Friendly or not?" Joey asked.

"I'd tend to say not, if they're the ones blowing things up. But I don't know for sure, and I don't want to find out the hard way, either," Mike said.

"We'd better go check the locks one more time, then, just in case. I'd feel a lot better if we did," Joey said.

"Yeah, me too," Mike agreed, and they quickly did so. Only when they'd double checked the last one in the house did Mike relax even a tiny bit.

"Do you think it's safe to stay here?" Joey asked. They were standing in the kitchen by the arch that led into the living room, and the sound of bombs and gunfire hadn't let up for a second.

"Where else would we go?" Mike asked.

"Well, I don't know. We could take the Jeep and go hide out in the woods, if we had to," Joey said.

Mike considered it, and then shook his head.

"I think we're better off if we sit tight for now. If we head down to the basement then we ought to have pretty good shelter," Mike said, nodding his head vaguely in that direction.

That was right before someone kicked the front door in.

There was no order to freeze, no attempt by the intruders to identify themselves, nothing like that; only a flurry of bullets that barely missed Mike and Joey and left holes in the living room wall big enough to put a fist through.

Mike was no fool; he ran for the Jeep as fast as his feet could take him, ducking low and hoping the soldiers wouldn't realize what he was doing in the pitch darkness of the house. Apparently they didn't, because he made it to the garage without getting a hole in his head. Joey was right behind him, and half a second after he reached the driver's seat he had the engine started. There was more gunfire from inside the house, and he hit the gas without even switching on the headlights. The Jeep shot out into the driveway, and Mike fought the wheel to make a hard right turn across the yard and down the hill onto Third Street. He knocked down the picket fence beside the curb and heard more bullets whizzing far above his head before they finally hit the edge of the pavement and slipped into the deeper darkness of the trees.

"What _happened_ back there?" Joey yelled.

"Shut up! We'll figure it out later!" Mike said.

He switched on the fog lights to give him just enough illumination to see his way between the huge trunks, if he paid close attention. But it was nerve-wracking, especially when he didn't know if a posse of homicidal maniacs were hot on their trail or not. He didn't dare turn on his bright lights for fear of giving away their position, even though it slowed them down.

But eventually the adrenaline rush began to wear off, and several hours later he found himself creeping through a thicker-than-usual patch of trees maybe three or four miles south of town. There'd been several times already when he'd had to stop and back up to avoid obstacles even the Jeep couldn't get past, and every delay made him want to chew his fingernails down to the elbow. Finally they came to a wide creek that looked like it might take some serious maneuvering to get across, and Joey spoke up.

"Don't you think we're far enough from town to be safe by now? We sure wouldn't want to get stuck in _that_ mess," he pointed out.

"Yeah, I guess you're right," Mike agreed reluctantly, and parked the Jeep under a big heavy-limbed magnolia tree that he hoped might keep it hidden from prying eyes. It was the best concealment they could hope to find on such short notice. Then they kicked the seats back and tried to sleep, but the distant sound of sporadic explosions and gunfire still coming from town made that awfully hard to do.

"Why would they be shooting machine guns at people?" Mike finally asked aloud. He didn't really expect Joey to know the answer; he was more or less talking to himself. But the whole thing was so senseless and inexplicable, his mind wouldn't leave it alone.

"I don't know, but there's nothing we can find out till morning. Let it alone and go to sleep, Mikey," Joey muttered.

That was easier said than done, and for a long time Mike lay wakeful in his seat. But eventually, sheer exhaustion closed his eyes for a few hours.

To continue reading, visit this book's Amazon page to purchase a full version of

Nightfall

The Curse-Breaker Books

by William Woodall

Long ago, there was a Godly woman named Marybeth Trewick, who for various reasons found herself married to a rich but wicked man named Daniel who practiced all kinds of evil. She could only watch helplessly as her five sons grew up to become just as wicked as their father, and as her only daughter was forced to flee for her life lest she be killed.

But in the midst of her despair, God sent Marybeth a dream that after seven generations had passed, there would be five boys born to replace and redeem the ones that she had lost. These five would be breakers of curses and fighters against all things wicked and evil, and each of them would have the same vividly blue eyes, the same color as Marybeth's.

And even though the Curse-Breakers are each called to very different tasks in the world, the basic goal of fighting evil and loving God is always the same. These are their stories below. Each series tells the tale of a different Curse-Breaker (or sometimes more than one), but all of them put together form a single unified storyline.

Click on any title link to visit that book's Amazon page.

### The Last Werewolf Hunter Series

Zach Trewick always thought he'd become a writer someday, or maybe play baseball for the Texas Rangers. What he never imagined in his craziest dreams was that he'd find himself dodging bullets and crashing cars off mountainsides, let alone that he'd ever be expected to break the ancient werewolf curse which hangs over his family. But Zach is the last of the werewolf hunters, the long-foretold Curse-Breaker who can wipe out the wolves forever, and he's not the type to give up just because of a few minor setbacks. . .

Cry for the Moon: What would you do, if your family wanted you to become a monster? What if they wouldn't take no for an answer? When 12 year old Zach faces questions like these, he seems to have only one choice; _run._ Thus begins a long search for refuge, and perhaps redemption also.

Behind Blue Eyes: When a stranger kidnaps him from his own back yard, Zach soon finds that the past isn't quite as dead as he might wish. For the time has come at last for Zach and his cousin Cameron to break the wolf curse forever; and his family has no intention of letting that happen.

More Golden Than Day: When his girlfriend Jolie and then Cameron fall into the hands of the wolves, Zach has no choice but to take on his enemies for a second round. Only this time the stakes are horribly high, and if he fails he may end up losing everything he's ever loved.

Truesilver: When a family of wicked ex-wolves is accidentally awakened, Zach soon finds himself locked in a desperate fight for survival that he never anticipated. And even though he's sworn an oath to fight evil to the utmost of his power, there are times when courage is awfully hard to come by.

* * * * * * *

_"If you are looking for a story about a boy who learns valuable lessons about family, love, friendship and God this is the book for you. I recommend this book to a pre-teen or adult. I truly enjoyed this book."_ **–** _Rae,_ _My Book Addiction Reviews_

The Stones of Song **Series**

These are the stories of the other three Curse-Breakers: Brian and Brandon Stone, and Cody McGrath. In this series you'll read about many things which were only hinted at in _The Last Werewolf Hunter,_ including Cody's fight with Layla Garza, the history of the Trewick family, and the Fountain of Youth of which the Sweet Spring is only a pale reflection. You'll also hear more of Matthieu's adventures.

Unclouded Day: Brian Stone's life isn't easy. Abandoned by his father, abused by his alcoholic mother, and mocked by his classmates, his only treasures are his beloved little brother and his old guitar. This is the tale of his journey to find the Fountain of Youth, and perhaps to save the world.

Many Waters: Lisa Stone is a small-town waitress with heavy burdens to bear. Cody McGrath is a young cowboy with mystical dreams and some very dangerous enemies. But when the two of them must face down an evil witch who tries to destroy their very lives, it seems that only a miracle can save them.

Bran the Blessed: Brandon Stone hasn't always made the right choices in life, but he's never found himself in quite such deep trouble as this. But even though his life seems ruined forever, Bran still has a high calling to answer, if he can find the courage.

* * * * * * *

" _I would absolutely, without reservation, encourage you to read this wonderful novel, even if you aren't the fantasy genre type. It was a blessing."_ _-Sue, Reflections and Reviews_

" _There are so many nuggets of truth in this book. It's about Heaven. It's about bad things happening for a reason. It's about deciding for yourself what truly matters most in life. It's a really good book!"_ _-Tattie, Christian Fiction Ebooks_

**The Tyke McGrath Series**

In the year 2154, the world has become a dangerous place. Extremist groups would like nothing better than to wipe out humanity completely, and even the people sworn to defend civilization against such threats have become deeply corrupt and untrustworthy. When a virulent plague destroys all warm-blooded life on Earth, a small band of survivors clings to life on the partially-terraformed Moon. But fresh dangers lie in wait for the unwary; nor have they left behind all the wickedness in the hearts of men.

In this series you'll hear a lot about Brandon Stone, and also Cody's son Micah and grandson Tycho. You'll also read about Cameron and Joan, Josiah, the tachometer, Annabelle, and even a bit about Zach Trewick. This series is a direct continuation of both _The Last Werewolf Hunter_ and _The Stones of Song,_ in which all five Curse-Breakers (and sometimes their children), play large parts.

Nightfall: When Micah McGrath suddenly finds himself thrust into a dangerous and ugly future after a lab accident, his only choice is to make the best life for himself that he can. But when the secret police get wind of his research into time travel, only Cameron and the other Avengers can save him.

Tycho: Tycho McGrath is a high school honor student in Florida when he discovers a terrifying secret: a man-made bacterium is about to wipe out all warm-blooded life on Earth within days. The only hope for survival is to flee at once, a plan which carries its own set of unexpected dangers.

Avenger: After spotting an SOS coming from the abandoned Moon, the survivors must organize a rescue mission. But the expedition quickly becomes far more complicated, leading them to the icy world of Titan in search of a holy mountain that no human eye has ever seen.

Freedom: When a cruel and power-hungry military commander on Venus decides to reconquer Earth, the only thing he needs is the formula for Tyke's Orion vaccine. The survivors soon find themselves locked into a bitter battle over the future of mankind, and who will inherit the Earth after all.

Elysium: What began as a simple mission to recover lost comrades in the Martian desert quickly turns deadly when Tyke and the others find themselves stranded on the Red Planet, with only the slimmest of chances to make it home again, or to fulfill the destiny which God has in store for them.

* * * * * * *

" _Reminiscent of Freedom's Landing, by Anne McCaffrey, Tycho combines the best of traditional space-exploration sci-fi with modern apocalyptic fiction. For any fans of hard science fiction, it doesn't get much better than this."_ _\- Liz, 0H2 Reviews_

All the Curse-Breaker Books

The Last Werewolf Hunter Series

Book One: Cry for the Moon

Book Two: Behind Blue Eyes

Book Three: More Golden Than Day

Book Four: Truesilver

The Last Werewolf Hunter: The Complete Series

The Stones of Song Series

Book One: Unclouded Day

Book Two: Many Waters

Book Three: Bran the Blessed

The Stones of Song: The Complete Series

The Tyke McGrath Series

Book One: Nightfall

Book Two: Tycho

Book Three: Avenger

Book Four: Freedom

Book Five: Elysium

End of Days: The Complete Tyke McGrath Series
