Page 35 of The Salt-Black Tree
“Finally.” There was a snapping sound, like a heavy beak clacking shut.
Nat, tense and expectant, almost flinched. “Did you talk to my mother? When she left… whatever she left here?”
“Maria Drozdova’s too high-and-mighty to talk to the likes of us.” Raven’s eye gleamed, the red waxing, a perfect circle with an abyss at its heart. “Just stuck her garbage here and left. Typical.” He pointed, a quick jabbing motion, and his nail was long and thick, coming to a sharp, sharp point.
Nat looked over her shoulder. A mass of the tiny meadowlights coalesced into a stream, ribboning across high, dew-heavy grass. Past Baby’s sleek blue gleam, a huge tree-shadow loomed—a night-black cedar, its trunk easily as big around as the house Nat had grown up in. Bobbing little foxfires ringed the tree; the pull in Nat’s veins, bones, and the rest of her sharpened. “Oh,” she said, and sounded like a total dipshit.
She felt like one, too.
When she turned back to the fire, Raven was gone. His boulder-perch glowed in pale moonlight, deep grooves scored in its surface.
Claw marks.
“Give you a piece of advice, if you’ll take it.” Coyote stretched, fluidly graceful, the glowing tip of his cigarette perilously close to his lips.
“Okay,” Nat managed.
“One way or another, you’re gonna die. You wanna do it on your own terms, go south, and see Georgia.”
Georgia. Okay.“Thank you.” Her throat was dry, the words a croak as harsh as any corvid’s throatcut call.
The divinity bark-yipped another laugh, and his bottom lip moved with elastic authority. The burning stub vanished into his mouth and his strong white teeth clapped together. The campfire popped, Nat started violently, and there was a soft sound of collapsing air.
Now she was alone. The flames whooshed, collapsing. The campfire flattened to smoldering coals, all illumination gone except for the moon’s bleached face and that bobbing river of tiny will o’ wisp lights, heading for the tree.
It took all her courage to rise, and to turn her back to the dying blaze. Walking amid the tiny bobbing lights wasn’t so bad—they didn’t touch her, though they clustered in a tight ring as if urging her onward.
The tree loomed larger and larger, fringed cedar branches stirring slightly in a breeze she couldn’t feel. Baby’s headlights flicked on, casting Nat’s shadow against gleaming, drenched bark. A single star was caught in living wood, glittering like sharp silver boot-toes or silver conchas on a black top hat. Resin oozed around it, the tree slowly weeping at the intrusion of a foreign body.
Nat’s fingertips touched cold metal. The thing fell into her palm, much heavier than it should be. Now it was dull iron instead of bright silver, and she turned it over in her hands.
It was a key. It melted from a heavy antique number with a thick haft to a perfectly prosaic modern house-unlocker and back, shimmering like the Grail as it decided what it wanted to be. Finally, it settled somewhere between, a broad flat bow and the wards like prickle-sharp cat teeth on a long, gracefully fluted stem.
“Thank you,” she whispered, hoping it was the right thing to do. Sap made a soft oozing noise, sucked back into the cedar’s trunk. The pull throughout Nat’s body subsided, settling intodeep warmth and a heady sense of thundering force, power spilling up her arm, smacking her shoulder, cascading down her back in harsh ripples. Her breath came hard and fast, her heart skip-pounded, and her nipples were high hard peaks under her T-shirt. She blinked, almost blinded by Baby’s headlight glare in sudden darkness.
The tiny lights had winked out, and there was no sign of the campfire anymore.Of course,she thought, dazed.Wouldn’t want to start a forest fire.
A harsh, croaking laugh echoed across the meadow, married to a soft brushing rustle.
Nat whirled and bolted for her car.
KIDNAPPING AND THEFT
A big green sign, a green-painted building—of course, where else would Spring halt after so much of California’s dust-taupe and dry olive, oleander and madrona, hills sage-scarred and golden? Even the hushed cathedral halls of the redwoods, dripping with solid inches of cold precipitation, might not please a creature of tender new velvet and gentle rains.
The rube behind the BP’s counter was a hefty middle-aged woman with a graying blonde braid, a polyester vest pronouncing her an hourly serf and her plastic name tag bleatingPOLLY; her tired customer-service grimace was faintly ameliorated by a breath of jasmine under the reek of spoiled milk, cheap beer, and stick pepperoni.
Hisdevotchkahadn’t blessed this woman, but there was no sharp ozone of Spring’s lightning displeasure here either. Dmitri went aisle to aisle, sniffing, and when the glass doors whooshed wide the chime ofsomeone’s hereheld a sharp edge. The stink ofpolitsiya politrukwandered through like it had a right to stick its fat pink glistening nose in, but this far west it wasn’t Friendly—who was probably still slugging it out with Barry in Ohio, at least one of them enjoying the dance.
Muscle twitched and rolled under a tan uniform, and the blank mirror-face of the helmet reflected only lazily drifting smoke instead of the convenience store’s bright fluorescent glare.It was Chip, Friendly’s extremely southwestern cousin, with his gleaming leather gloves and his high shiny jackboots.
Chip liked to dress well, and that gleaming helmet was constantly polished by freeway wind. It must have irked him to be even slightly out of his jurisdiction—but making the rules, or enforcing them with neck-snapping violence, meant little things like the letter of the Law could be briefly set aside.
If necessary. If the payoff was good enough.
Bright packaging disguising cheap sugar and looming expiration dates ruffle-rustled uneasily, and tinny canned Muzak from dust-choked speakers grated on Dima’s ears. He hadn’t even touched so much as a candy bar yet. “Little bit out of your territory,” he said, quietly, and Chip’s helmet swiveled, a twitching, insectile movement. The rube behind the counter made a small sound, staring at what to her silly mortal gaze was a motorcycle cop who’d forgotten to take his headgear off.
“Konetsss,” Chip hissed. “Been looking for you.”
