The-Hummingbird-s-Cage(97)

The voice is moving, to the left of us, to the right, then back again. Hunting us down.

Laurel shifts, her hand groping for something in her pocket.

“Like I wouldn’t find out. Like I wouldn’t see the bike tracks in the yard.”

I gasp. I remember that. Bernadette peeling out from the house, bike wheels hitting the grass, throwing up sod, just as they threw up snow when she came up the mountain road to Simon’s cabin . . .

“Knock-knock. The maid’s gonna have a helluva time cleaning up that mess.”

I shake my head. He’s lying. He has to be. I just saw Bernadette. We’re meeting at the pub. She’s invited to the wedding.

But I know he’s not lying. Somehow I know.

My head starts to spin again. It throbs till I want to vomit. I close my eyes tight, lean back against the rock wall. But I still feel like I’m falling.

He’s talking like the last six months never happened. Like it’s just today that I saw him off at the front door, today that I sat in the chair under the sunburst clock, waiting with my heart in my throat for Bernadette to show up. He’s talking like he went after Bernadette just like he’s going after me now. Like she’s not checked into the Wild Rose back in Morro at all. Like she’s still at the Palomino. A helluva mess for the maid to clean up.

I can’t draw a decent breath. Can’t think.

From winter to summer in a heartbeat.

Laurel begins to whisper. So quiet I can hardly hear her. Holding something to her lips like a Catholic with a crucifix.

“Fly away, fly away,” she’s saying. So faint, like a release of breath. “Fly away.”

She whispers it over and over, like a chant.

Fly away, fly away, fly away.

I look close and see then what she’s holding to her mouth.

A tiny wooden doll carved of cottonwood root, barely three inches tall. Painted aqua and yellow, wearing a white leather skirt, green mask, moccasins. Crowned with a ruff of Douglas fir.

It’s the Hummingbird. The messenger you send to ask the gods for rain. The creature that warriors who die in battle are transformed into. The only bird that ever flew high enough to see what was on the other side of the sky.

I lean close and whisper in her ear: “Where did you get that?”

She turns her head to whisper back.

“Simon.”

There’s shuffling nearby, and we freeze, the kachina pressed against Laurel’s lips again. No whispering now.

I wait for a shadow to fall across the opening of our little cave, but none comes. Soon the shuffling moves off.

I don’t trust it. Could be a trap. More games. Or Jim could’ve moved on, and the shuffling was only a fox, a rabbit come back to find its home invaded.

But we can’t stay here and I know it. Sooner or later, moving up and down the trail, Jim’s bound to see the opening. Bound to check.

I shush Laurel one more time and maneuver around her toward the opening. I wait, bated breath, then slowly peer out, glancing all around as I go. Ready to pull back at the slightest movement.

Nothing.

Jim’s gone for now.

I crawl through the opening, turn to Laurel, who looks ready to follow me through. I push her toward the rear of the little cave.

“No. You can’t come with me. You stay here. Quiet as a mouse.”

“Like Warrior Mouse?”

I nod. “Quiet as Warrior Mouse. Just as clever, just as brave. No matter what you hear. No matter what happens. Promise me.”

Her face settles into something stubborn, and for a second I think she won’t promise.

Then she does.

“If I’m not back, stay here till morning,” I say. “Then make your way down the trail, careful as can be. At the bottom, you’ll see the highway. Go stand near it and wave your arms till somebody stops. Tell them to call the state police. Understand?”

Suddenly she pushes through the opening toward me and I think all bets are off. That she’s changed her mind and she’s coming with me, like it or not. Instead, she wraps her arms around my neck and for a long minute squeezes tight, like she won’t let go.

Then she does. Without looking at me, she turns to dart back through the opening and out of my sight.

I stand on shaky legs, leaning against the big nest of rocks for support. A strange, cool wind buffets me. I glance up at the sky and the cornflower blue is nearly gone now, replaced by storm clouds practically stampeding in from the east. The air temperature has dropped and I shiver in my thin blouse, my slacks; my skin prickles from a snap in the air. I can smell rain moving in on the wind.