Darkmoon(94)

I’d spent a little time the past few days doing research on early Flagstaff, and so I knew the downtown area, though old, had still been built decades after Nizhoni had been taken to be Jeremiah Wilcox’s reluctant bride. The original settlement was to the north and west of here; when the railroad came through, that was when most people picked up and moved to what would be downtown’s current location.

So although this was a good starting point, I knew I’d have to range farther out, to the approximate place where the first Wilcox clan members had settled in the area. Leaving aside the cheerful crowds and busy restaurants and bars of downtown, I drifted over dark residential neighborhoods, past the observatory on Mars Hill, heading in roughly the same direction where Damon Wilcox’s house was located, although not nearly as far.

As I moved, I began to feel…something. At first I thought maybe it was my own nerves playing tricks on me, raising my anxiety level even more, but this was different. It felt wrong, like an instrument played out of tune, almost masked by the sound of the rest of the orchestra…but not quite.

Beneath me was a dry creek that cut between housing developments. As I watched, though, I saw the stony stream bed disappear, hidden by dark water flowing over it. On either side the houses faded away, becoming insubstantial as mist before they evaporated altogether. In their place were stands of ponderosa pines, interspersed with mountain meadows.

Icy sweat trickled down my back, but I ignored it. The perspiration wasn’t real, was only a manifestation of my worry. And what I saw around me wasn’t real.

Or was it?

I saw her then, standing by the side of the creek, long hair blowing like raven silk in an unseen wind. Her back was to me, but I could see she wore a dress of dark calico with a modest bustle, probably quite fashionable for 1870s Flagstaff. I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t been expecting that; in my mind’s eye I’d always thought of her wearing some kind of native dress, although if I’d stopped to think about it, I should have realized Jeremiah Wilcox probably wouldn’t have allowed his wife to go around wearing deerskin.

She turned around, and I had to catch my breath. Probably because of the way her curse had echoed down the generations, bringing such evil with it, I hadn’t stopped to think that she might have been beautiful.

But she was, with that long black hair and tip-tilted dark eyes, those high cheekbones and full mouth. No wonder Jeremiah Wilcox had wanted her.

“Angela,” she said, startling me so much that I dropped to the ground with an ungraceful thud.

Was someone traveling in the otherworld supposed to make a thud like that? I didn’t know. It felt too real, just as the soft grass beneath my feet did, the cool mountain air against my skin. It didn’t feel like high summer in this place, wherever it was; the wind had a bite to it, but I couldn’t tell for sure if it was supposed to be early fall or late spring.

The sky was spangled with stars, but here, as it had been back in my own world, in my own time, no moon shone overhead. Not that it appeared to matter, because everything around me seemed to have a faint glow, the waters in the creek glittering so brightly that they might as well have been reflecting the sun.

“You have come a long way for nothing, Angela Wilcox,” Nizhoni said. Her English was good, although spoken slowly, as if she had to consider each word before she pronounced it.

“My last name is McAllister, not Wilcox,” I told her, a little surprised at my own boldness.

Her shoulders lifted. “Is the Wilcox primus not your intended husband? Is your own father not a Wilcox?”

“Well, yes, but — ”

“Then you are a Wilcox, no matter what you may call yourself, and so I have nothing to say to you.” Turning, she began to walk away from me, up the stream toward a stand of cottonwoods that clustered around the water.

“Wait!” I called, feeling like an idiot, and ran after her. I was dressed here exactly the same as I had been when I went into this meditation, and so I had on a pair of flip-flops. Not the best footwear for tearing along a rocky creek bank, and once or twice I slipped and nearly lost my balance. What would happen if I did a face plant here? Would I wake up back in my physical body sporting a new black eye?

But I didn’t slip, and because I was running while she was only walking, albeit with a purposeful stride, I did manage to catch up with her a minute later. She looked at me with scornful eyes and said, “I have nothing to say to you. Go back to your world, and learn to accept your fate.”

“I don’t think so,” I snapped. “I’m not going to accept this stupid curse of yours, because that’s what it is…stupid. Pointless. Hateful.”