The-Hummingbird-s-Cage(64)

I threw off the quilt and ran toward Laurel’s room. I burst in to find her kicking and thrashing on her bed, eyes clamped tight, moaning and shrieking. I ran to gather her up, hugging her against me to quiet her, to stop the thrashing.

“It’s all right, sweetie,” I crooned over and over. “It’s all right.”

It was a long while before she could hear me, before she opened her eyes and looked at me, staring as if she hadn’t seen me in forever. She reached out and fingered my hair as if I were some foreign thing.

Then she burst into sobs and flung her arms around my neck. I let her cry it out, holding her close, walking the room with her as if she were a baby again. Olin and Jessie were watching from the doorway.

“I’ll heat up some milk,” Jessie murmured, and headed for the stairs.

Laurel’s face was buried in my neck and she was mumbling something over and over that I couldn’t make out. I stroked her hair. “What is it, honey? What are you saying?”

She shifted her head until she could speak more clearly.

“He’s coming,” she whispered.

“Who’s coming, sweetie?”

She buried her face in my neck again, but this time when she spoke I could hear her plain enough: “Daddy.”





The Ravenmaster





Jim didn’t come that night. Not the next night, either, nor the one after that. It was painfully obvious that my daughter dreaded her own father the way other children fear monsters under the bed. But in her case, she had every right to.

Laurel insisted she didn’t remember much about her bad dream, but it was a while before she settled down to sleep. For the rest of that night, though, and for several nights after, she slept with me.

I didn’t mention to anyone my own nightmare that had coincided with hers—the last thing I wanted was to compare notes. But I wanted very much to understand what it augured. Was it her own fears manifesting? A premonition?

Or had Olin’s kachinas and his stories of life and death and spirits sparked something in her? In me?

Her dream didn’t repeat itself, and in no time she seemed to have forgotten it.

I didn’t.


*

Soon enough, for the first time since we came to Morro, there was frost on the ground when I set the horses to pasture. The days were growing short, and Laurel grumbled about waking in the dark. She dressed for school as I packed her lunch, then bundled her in a jacket for the walk to town with Olin.

I was working the café that morning, and when I arrived there was already a stranger sitting quietly at a window table—a tall man with a bottlebrush mustache wearing a green tweed coat; a slouchy tweed cap sat on the table in front of him. There was a canvas knapsack at his feet and a walking stick propped against the wall.

When I greeted him, the man turned and blinked as if he’d just noticed where he was and that someone else was with him. He nodded.

In the kitchen, Simon was tying on his butcher’s apron.

“Who’s the early bird?” I murmured.

“Showed up just after I did,” he said. “Told him I wasn’t quite open, but he said he’d wait.”

“I’ll start the coffee.”

“Better make it tea—he’s English.”

Earl Grey steeping at his elbow, the man examined the menu. “Let’s try something exotic,” he said. “Spanish omelet. When in Rome, eh?”

He handed back the menu, and when I returned with the order Simon came with me.

“I’m just getting my sea legs, as it were,” the man said as he ate. “This . . . traveling takes getting used to. You know, we’d always talked of moving to the American Southwest one day, the wife and I. Running a bed-and-breakfast.”

“Oh, is she with you?” I asked.

“No—back in Surrey. Keyes, by the way.”

“Pardon?”

“My name. Albert Keyes.”

“Joanna. And this is Simon.”

“Delighted.”

Simon took a seat at the counter. “You’re far afield, aren’t you?”

Keyes nodded. “I’ll be returning before long, once I’ve seen a thing or two. Like your town here—Morro, is it? And your desert.” He gazed wistfully out the window. “And, perhaps, the Northwest.”

Pal rose from his quilt and headed for the window, his ears pricked, his eyes trained like gun barrels on something outside. In the growing light I could just make out a huge black bird perched on a signpost across the road. It seemed to be staring back.