Wild Sign (Alpha & Omega #6)(21)

She was the last to finish, her stomach telling her it had been too close to the big breakfast she’d eaten. But she only felt overfull, not sick as she probably should have.

“Thank you,” Charles said again, this time to Ford.

Tag opened up the shoulder bag he’d brought with him and pulled out an earthenware bowl. It was putty colored on the outside and reddish brown on the inside, the shape a little irregular. The bowl was shiny in some places and matte in others, as if the potter had made a mistake with the finish—or as if it were so old the finish had worn off in spots. Anna was pretty sure she had last seen that bowl on the bookshelves in Bran’s office.

Tag set it on the table in front of Ford.

The man raised an eyebrow and Tag nodded. Ford took the bowl up in two cupped hands, turning it so it caught the light. He brought it to his nose and sniffed. He paused thoughtfully and set it, very carefully, back down on the table.

“We’d like information,” said Tag.

Ford nodded at the bowl. “It must be some information if you brought this to pay for it.”

“There was a group of people who had set up camp in the mountains,” said Charles. “They called it Wild Sign. We think there were somewhere between thirty and forty of them. They went there to live away from civilization.”

Ford snorted. Anna couldn’t tell if it was a derisive snort or a snort of agreement.

“Wild Sign is on land owned by my father’s mate,” Charles said. “And two hundred years ago, give or take a decade, something lived in those mountains. We are given to understand the people who settled there disappeared sometime this spring. We would like to know where they went. My father is concerned that a danger in the mountains, one that killed a lot of people a couple of hundred years ago, is waking up again. He feels responsible.” Charles hesitated, but then left that there. “We would appreciate any information you could give us.”

Ford smiled sweetly. “‘The mountains’ is a lot of territory.”

Tag reached into his bag again and pulled out a USGS map folded to display an area marked with a silver marker. Anna couldn’t be sure it was the same map Leslie had brought them, but presumably it was marked to display where the encampment had been.

Ford did not look at the map but gave a sharp nod. “It was a town, not a camp, this Wild Sign you speak of, a town with buildings and a school. It started about two years ago, when four people built a permanent camp up there as soon as the snow was gone. By last winter there were forty-two of them. Or so I have heard—I have not been there.”

“Who told you?” Tag asked.

“My nephew works for the Forest Service. He came upon them by accident—the young seldom have the wits to heed their elders’ warnings. He told me they seemed to know what they were doing and required no help. He also said they were a cheerful and generous people, free with food and drink for wandering forest rangers. They were not on federal land or tribal land”—he gave a wry glance at Charles—“or their own land, but the owner did not come to object, and so they were left alone.”

“Why didn’t you visit them?” asked Anna. That “elders’ warnings” was directed at something—and she wanted to know what it was.

“The mountains are vast, Ms. Cornick,” Ford said. “Why should I have visited them?”

Anna waited.

“No,” said Ford with a hint of a smile fading as he spoke. “We do not go there. None of my people.” He shook his head ruefully. “Not unless we are young fools who work for the Forest Service, we don’t. And his mama has seen to it that he won’t go again. We don’t go to that place.”

“Why not?” Anna asked, and found herself meeting eyes that were deeper than a moonlit night and of no color she could name, though a moment ago she’d have sworn they were the same shade as her husband’s eyes. She felt as though Ford saw all the way through her, whereas she saw nothing she could comprehend.

He looked away from her, smiled at his hands. Then he reached out and pulled the bowl nearer to him, as if the answer to her question was worthy of that gift or payment. “Because there is something sleeping there we do not wish to awaken.” He glanced at Charles and then away. “The creature your father is worried about, I’d reckon. There are not two such in our territory.”

“What can you tell us about it?” she persisted.

He took his napkin and pulled a pen out of his pocket. He drew an upside-down V and three upward slashes on each side. “That’s a wild sign for you,” he said, handing her the napkin.

“Are you referring to the town?” Charles asked as Anna examined what Ford had drawn.

There was a primitive feel to the drawing, almost like a Viking rune, but it didn’t look familiar. When she and her brother had been children, they’d learned a set of runes and written notes to each other. The runes had been real ones—at least the symbols they hadn’t made up. But maybe this was from an older group of runes or from a different culture. Tag held out his hand, and Anna gave the napkin to him. He frowned at it.

Ford answered Charles’s question while Tag scrutinized the napkin. “The town was named after the signs they found in the rocks and trees around there,” Ford said. “They called them wild petroglyphs.” He grimaced. “Even when they were carved into the trees.”