Indigo Moon (19 page)

She cleared her head of her clamorous thoughts and breathed deep and slow several times, trying to not think, just feel. She liked it here. She liked the little group Ren had rescued with an offer of bed and board, and occasional work. There it was again, that word, “rescued.” Perhaps they were
all
trapped here in some shape or form by Ren.

And as for herself, her bait had been the same as everyone else’s. She wanted to be loved and cared for. Her journal told her she had deliberately embarked on a lesbian affair after her marriage breakdown, and for once she had done the right thing. She had never felt so alive, so strong and purposeful. Sleeping with Ren was akin to drinking rocket fuel and swallowing a lit match. She glowed inside, burning up with a ferocity that was outside her normal sphere of feeling. She had no emotional reference for these feelings and did not need a restored memory to know this was new.

Isabelle slumped against the counter. She wanted Ren to validate her right to these emotions, to make them solid and dependable. To make them a gateway to their potential future together. What she did
not
want was Ren to be a mad stalker, and all this newfound feeling to be fool’s gold. She did
not
want her time with Ren to be the only thing she wanted to forget.

Night had drawn in, and a fat-bellied moon hung over the eastern peaks. Wind-tossed pewter clouds scudded across its surface. Tomorrow night it would be plump and full, a pregnant goddess with a thousand starry ladies-in-waiting, all twinkling fussily around her. Isabelle laughed at her fantasies. She was restless. The wind made the cabin rattle and bang, as if shooing her outside. Usually a glass of wine, a blazing fire, and a good book would keep her snuggled down on a night like this. But not tonight. Tonight she wanted to taste the air. To feel the wind whip her hair, its cold sting ruddying her cheeks and ripping the breath from her lips.

Perhaps she should take a walk down to the farm and return the bag Jenna had lent her to carry groceries. Isabelle grabbed the bag, shrugged on the large coat she had more or less permanently borrowed from Ren, and stepped out into the night. The air assaulted her, slamming into her lungs, spinning through her cells until they snapped and popped. Everything around her was loaded with the tang of damp earth and pine needle. Far away came the musty scent of woodsmoke. The world smelled sharp, and satisfying, and clean.

Isabelle inhaled deeply through her nose. Clean, she could smell clean. Clean air, clean earth, trees, everything smelled natural and clean. She had never been in a place so wholesome, so connected, so right for her. And yet she had to leave it. She became bitter at the thought, and angry at Ren all over again for making her decisions so impossibly painful.

In a burst of giddy energy, she pushed it all away, and living in the pure, undiluted mountain-fueled moment, leapt from the top porch step. Instead of the satisfying crunch of new snow, her boots squished on slush. The thaw was a deep one. Mouse had assured her one more freeze was on the way and then it would be springtime proper. Isabelle smiled at the rustic wisdoms Mouse recited by rote. According to her, only the southern wind was keeping the temperature up. Soon it would die away and the snow would return for one last flourish.

Isabelle moved through the cedar windbreak. It hummed with fretful nocturnal life. Small creatures were making the most of the break in their hibernation to forage and stock up their body fat. For them the thaw was a boon. Predators were also making the most of this unseasonable abundance, picking off this sudden rash of fresh prey. Overhead, wings fluttered and folded. A squeak told her a snowy owl had found fresh meat. The winter thaw offered amnesty, not mercy.

Isabelle exited the windbreak and took the steep track down to the cluster of farm buildings. She noticed the yard was full of vehicles. All the trucks and quads had returned and were now parked up for the night. She slowed her step. This was what she had promised herself. A free ride out. But now? Tonight? With a bright moon and a crazy wind? She flexed her fingers against her pocket, touching her wallet through the waxed cotton.

Lights from the cookhouse windows paved the yard with oblongs of waxy yellow. Everyone was home for the evening. There would be witnesses. She noticed Ren’s truck parked beside Mouse’s lurid pink quad. It was craziness to bolt now. Isabelle’s anxiety rose. Maybe she should talk to Ren after all. Maybe she should try to understand what the hell was going on.

It looked like Ren hadn’t left yet. Perhaps she could ask to tag along with her. Isabelle wondered how far away the horse ranch was. They could talk in the truck and be honest with each other. They both had fears. Ren had secrets, and most of Isabelle’s life was currently a secret to her.

But what would she ask?

“Why have you behaved in such a manipulative and controlling way? Why have you hidden me in this valley and seduced me when I was at my most vulnerable?”

It amazed her. These vehicles were her ticket home, and yet here she was hesitating, wanting to talk, wanting to see Ren again and not just disappear without a word. She was borderline insane to hesitate even a second. She needed to get out. If she still felt like this when she got home then they could talk—long distance! First step was to find a set of car keys.

Only the cookhouse lights were on, and after a quick rap on the door Isabelle entered to find the huge kitchen empty.
Good.
A furtive check of every cupboard and drawer produced no keys. She went back to the porch and frowned at the curious quiet. All the vehicles were accounted for, but no one was home? She checked the bunkhouse; it was empty, too. Not even Mouse was there, and it was well past her bedtime. Isabelle’s hope for a set of car keys left on a bedside table soon evaporated. Wherever they were, their keys were in their pockets. But where were they?

The barn door still lay ajar. One step into its murky interior and she knew it was deserted. The entire complex was deserted. Uncertain, she went back to the yard and contemplated the row of vehicles, unsure what to do next.
I wish I knew how to hotwire a truck.

The howling started on the far side of the valley and shook her out of her indecision. An answering chorus tore across the Tearfell, carried by the wind. Her skin tingled with excitement. The smell of smoke brushed her nostrils. It was not cookhouse or bunkhouse smoke. This came from farther down the valley. She could see it rising, dancing on gusts of wind like a pale specter. Smoke was an ominous sign in the forest during summer, but what did it mean in the depths of winter?

Joey’s huge black quad sat before her. Would Joey carry his keys with him all day long? He couldn’t even ride his quad with his bad leg. What had he done with them after she had returned his bike that afternoon?
Think, Isabelle, think
. She strode over and unclipped the seat. Joey had stashed his keys underneath. She blessed his predictability and started the engine. It burst into life, loud and unforgiving. The roar was whisked away by the wind, its horsepower an ineffectual whisper against the raw power of nature. She twisted hard on the throttle to prevent the engine from stalling. Maybe it was the colder night air, but the engine seemed temperamental and sluggish.

She took the dirt track for Big Tree and kept an eye out for where it forked off to meet with the logging road near the north end of the valley. She knew she could find her way to Big Tree easily enough in the moonlight, but Joey still hadn’t fixed the headlights, so finding the exit track would be tricky.

Under the forest canopy her engine noise was muted. Solid walls of bark and the density of the snow that covered everything blanketed the sound. The thaw had not yet made its way here to the shadowy interior. Even the wind was beggarly under the low-slung boughs.

She scooted up to the skinning hole clearing where she’d found the burned-out car, and eased up on the throttle. Was it worth another look? What did she hope to find? Confirmation it was not her car after all? Was she willing to twist every fact to make Ren the good guy? To give her one last chance? No. She wasn’t. They could talk when she was safely in Portland, in her own home and settled in her old life.

The smell of smoke grew stronger. Even in the darkness she could see thick gray wisps weaving through the trees. It was not a forest fire—the smoke was too thin and wispy; the wind shredded it and sent it swirling in all directions.

Eventually, she saw the actual flames through a maze of tree trunks. A huge bonfire crackled before Big Tree. Orange flames swirled and danced, casting livid sparks up into the night sky. It was primitive and magical on this dark winter’s night.

Isabelle braked and sat watching, her breath huffing in the cool air, a stark contrast to the blazing heat up ahead. Mesmerized, she fixed on the fiery flash and roils of the flames. Shadows danced around and across them, like the wings of huge black birds fluttering and swooping through the blaze. She was uneasy now, as if she had gate-crashed a private event and was somewhere she shouldn’t be. There was something about the fire that was so personal, almost intimate.

As much as it unsettled her, she could not turn and ride away, either. Instead, she dismounted and carefully approached on foot through the woods. She hid in the shadows, lurking behind trees. Her apprehension prompted quiet steps and cautious movements, but an insatiable curiosity drove her on. Why were birds fluttering around the bonfire? Who had built it, and why was it unattended, roaring away, spitting and crackling like a coven pyre?

She crept closer, until only a few yards lay between the sheltering trees and the bonfire. The howling came again, this time closer. The wolves had crossed the river. They were on her side of the valley now. Isabelle was no longer excited by the eerie, singsong cries. Fear began to creep through her. Here, under the Big Tree, before this monstrous blaze, she was all too aware of the legends of Singing Valley and its ghost wolves. Now the old stories seemed far from fanciful. They crept across her skin like spiders.

Just one more step, one more tree to crouch behind and spy, and then she would go, she promised herself. She took the step…and caught her breath.

There were no shadow birds swooping on the bonfire. Only rags. Hundreds and hundreds of tattered rags hung from the lower branches of Big Tree. They billowed in the wind and in the updraft from the fire, their long shadows swooning and swirling among the flames. From deep in the forest they looked like a flock of elongated, black-winged birds, circling the blaze like demonic phoenixes.

Isabelle stepped out of the shadows and into the circle of orange firelight. She gazed in awe at the strange sight. Cottons and linens and wool in all colors danced from the branches. A rag of pale blue chambray caught her eye. She fixated on it, watching it droop exhaustedly only to twitch and leap back into the dance at the slightest breeze.

“That’s my shirt sleeve.” Her gaze darted from branch to branch. Each scrap of fabric was hers! Every piece of clothing she’d had in her suitcase now hung from this tree in a thousand rags. Flapping and dancing and ripped into shreds.

Isabelle turned and ran. She bolted for the quad and viciously kicked the engine into life, swinging it around in too tight a turn. It spluttered and shuddered as it hit a bank of mud. She bullied it on through and shot off along the track at full throttle.

Now the smoky tendrils crossing her path were menacing fingers that tried to catch at her face and clothing. She gunned the engine.
Slow down, you’ll crash
,
her common sense screamed
.
But she couldn’t slow down. She flew on recklessly.

Her shredded clothes hung from Big Tree like the skins of ancient ghost wolves. It was ceremonial magic of some sort, shaman and black, and it freaked her out to be at the core of it. She cannoned back toward the skinning hole as if the hounds of hell were after her.

Up ahead, headlights bounced off tree trunks. A truck was coming from the direction of the farm. Soon it would round the bend and pick her out in its lights. Isabelle yanked on the twist grip and swerved into the skinning hole clearing. She drove into the scrub for camouflage, thankful for Joey’s black paintwork and her lack of headlights.

The quad coughed angrily, spluttered, and cut out. Isabelle ducked behind it and peeped out from behind a wheel. The other driver was upon her now, but drove by unaware she was crouched only yards away. She could make out Ren’s profile at the wheel. It was a fleeting glimpse, but enough to set Isabelle’s heart racing for all the wrong reasons. It was Ren driving. She remembered seeing Ren’s cold beauty for the first time at the cabin. Classic features cut out of flawless marble, and her initial dismay and disbelief that she should be the object of Ren’s affections. Ren. Someone who could have anyone, yet chose her?

Isabelle watched that classic profile pass. Ren looked relaxed, pleased. Even from several hundred paces and from an oblique angle Isabelle could read that face. Ren was happy and charged. Was she heading for the logging road and the horse ranch, Isabelle wondered. Or was she going to Big Tree and the bonfire to get naked and dance around it?

Isabelle slumped behind the quad wheel and rested her head in her hands, her mind full of grim thoughts. The forest was eerily silent now. Even the wind had died away. She glanced over her shoulder. There was no further movement on the home track. It was time to go. She had to back up the quad and find another way out, and hope she managed to before Ren or one of the others found out she was missing. She tried to start the quad. No amount of bouncing on the kick-start, twisting the key viciously, or cursing would make it roar into life. It was done for.