Page 32 of The Salt-Black Tree
That’s where I’m going,she realized, and Baby purred her agreement.
It felt like Nat had been driving forever, humming along with golden oldies and a few newer songs. Whoever was choosing them had exactly her taste in music; she hadn’t heard a bad song yet, and no repeats either.
It made her wonder what Dmitri listened to in his black car. Or if Baby played something else for Mom—Vedel or Tchaikovsky, maybe, or folk songs from the old country Maria sometimes sang in the garden on soft summer nights, while she rocked on the porch swing and stared across her rigidly pruned, well-weeded garden.
The funny internal sensation of entering another divinity’s space thumped in Nat’s stomach. A single lane of unmarked pavement crumbled at its edges, slithering between giant moss-hung trees. Even at night there were so many different shades of green here, discerned only when headlights picked out asaturated edge, a trunk sheathed in wet blackish bark, a moss-covered boulder. Hushed and dripping, a cathedral of forest swallowed the Drozdova and her chariot.
The paving fringed away; gravel took its place, relatively smooth at first, then washboard-bumpy and weed-scarred. Eventually wagon-ruts hopping occasionally over thick-knotted roots rose under Baby, who took them with a faint rocking motion, a rowboat on a ruffled lake. Nat held fast to the steering wheel, glancing nervously from side to side. The headlights didn’t do much for lateral vision, and she had the uneasy sense that the trees were moving behind Baby’s taillights.
Closing in.
The orange glitter slipped between trunks, played hide-and-seek as Baby dipped into a valley, then approached in hopskip jumps once she climbed the other side. The wagon ruts disappeared, the trees pulled back all at once, and a level meadow appeared, tiny pollen-pieces of light lifting from waving knee-high grass—not fireflies, just glimmers riding invisible updrafts.
A campfire glittered some distance away, the will o’ wisp an actual flame and not just swamp gas after all. Baby approached obliquely, then came to a halt, headlights courteously averted from the orange-and-yellow smear. She didn’t quite shut off, though, her idle low and soft, somehow tentative. The tugging was all through Nat now, not just in her belly but drawing on each vein.
Maybe the car wasn’t the one who knew the way after all.
“It’s all right,” Nat said softly. “We’ve come a long way. Rest a bit.”
The engine halted with a sigh. Silence fell, not even a ticking of cooling metal breaking the profound hush. The tiny foxfire lights rising from the meadow winked out at some indeterminate point far above; clouds fringed into lacework and a three-quarters moon peered over the heads of dripping firs.
Even though she’d pulled on her waffle-weave thermal and flannel button-up back in Oregon, Nat shivered as she rose from the driver’s seat, the sound of Baby’s door unlatching loud in the stillness. She shrugged back into her peacoat, though the shivers fled almost immediately, that warm, forgiving strength spreading out to her fingers and toes.
Closing the car door quietly wasn’t possible; still, she tried. She set off across the meadow, glad of her boots.
The campfire crackled, mouthing well-seasoned food. Silver conchas glittered against a dark hat, and the flames were reflected in a lean, proud-nosed man’s dark eyes. He sat on the smooth dry trunk of a felled tree; beside him was a dark shape on a hunching granite boulder worn almost to satin smoothness by the passage of time. Long hair like Marisol’s glinted with bluish highlights instead of red; the second man stared at the fire instead of Nat, feathers framing his almost triangular face. A slight unamused curve tilted his thin lips, and his nose was even more knifelike than Coyote’s.
The fringe on Coyote’s jacket stirred restlessly. Nat approached the fire, her hands dangling loose and empty, her backpack left on the passenger side of Baby’s front bench seat.
Something told her that was the safest place for it.
Nat halted just at the edge of fireglow. Flames popped, the sound melding into a rattling buzz.
She’d never heard a diamondback, but she suspected it was a lot like that blurring, dangerous sound. An atavistic shiver worked down her back. Could divinities die of snakebite, or was it just really uncomfortable?
I don’t think I want to find out.
Coyote leaned back, his long legs stretched towards the fire. He looked just the same as he had in Ohio, right down to hissoft-soled boots, except now only a single beaded necklace, yellow and green, peeked from under his shirt collar. “Took your sweet time, buffalo girl.”
“Hello again.” Nat tried to figure out the applicable etiquette, and failed miserably. The tiny rising light-pinpricks from the meadow avoided her, swooping lazily as they ascended. The fire’s heat was blessedly normal, uncomplicated. Even the smell of smoke, tinged with a cedary aftertaste, was entirely good and wholesome.
But so, so strange.
“This is my cousin Raven.” Coyote’s brief, graceful movement indicated the man next to him. “Sometimes we’re just different faces. Not here, though.”
I’ve heard about different faces.One problem at a time, though, and she had all she could handle right in front of her. Nat tried a tentative smile. “How do you do?”
“How the fuck do I dowhat?” the black-haired man said, softly but with great vehemence. A pale smear was a white dress shirt; he wore a glossy black suit jacket over it, and blue-black trousers with fringe like Coyote’s coat. His dark irises glowed red at their borders for a moment, live coals warningdon’t touch. “White girls, man. Fuckin’ sit down so we can get this over with.”
“He lost a bet,” Coyote added, helpfully, pointing his toes like a young ballerina stretching. “Said you’d never make it past San Diego.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” Nat found a handy log to her left, its bark stripped away. It looked safe enough, and she settled gingerly upon its pale bar. That put her own boots uncomfortably close to the fire, but at least the flames had stopped buzzing. The radiant heat was pleasant, just on the edge of too much yet balanced against the chill on her back.
Coyote threw his head back and yip-laughed. Moonlight gilded his throat, flashed off the silver conchas on his hat.
Raven shook his head, hunching thin shoulders, but a smile twitched on his thin lips. “You’re right,” he said, as soon as the laughter’s echoes lost themselves among hushed, dripping trees at the meadow’s dry fringes. “She’s a funny fuckin’ white girl.”
“I told you.” Visibly pleased, Coyote settled himself a little more securely on his own seat. “Nice car, Drozdova. What you want for her?”
