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CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Tuesday, June 20

High Tide 6:57
A.M.

Sunrise 5:00
A.M.
EDT

It was 7:30-ish on my day off, but I was already in the kitchen, priming the coffeepot and singing along with Marc Cohn, really putting my all into . . .
the middle of a pouring rain . . .

The doors to the summer parlor were wide open, the front door was on the latch, and, unlike the Memphis of my duet, the sun was out, up, and very much on the job. A warm breeze explored the living room, rustling the map spread on the floor, and riffling the pages of the guidebook I’d left open on the coffee table. Outside, I heard seagulls screaming insults at each other, and the occasional crash of a wave, as the ocean danced away from the land.

To my observation, it was a perfect early summer day—which the weather guy on WBLM confirmed as I opened the refrigerator: Sunny, bright, breezy, zero chance of precip, highs in the mid-seventies. The theme continued tonight: clear and temps in the mid-fifties; with more of the same on tap for tomorrow.

I pulled out eggs, milk, cheese, closed the refrigerator door with my hip and headed over to the stove, asserting my love of rock ’n’ roll in sync with Joan Jett.

“Somebody’s in a good mood,” Peggy said, closing the front door behind her. It had gotten to be a habit, already, that we had a cup of coffee together on the summer parlor in the morning. Mostly, we talked about nothing much—her parents in Hoboken; the kid sister taking Library Science at Rutgers . . .

“My God, Archer, are you making
breakfast
?”

Peggy, I knew by now, didn’t indulge in breakfast. She apparently ran on caffeine, and the occasional hot dog or slice of pizza.

“Scrambled eggs,” I said, looking over my shoulder at her. “Just as easy to make two helpings as one. Want some?”

“You a good cook?”

“No, I’m a lousy cook. But even I can make scrambled eggs. Which I’ll just be doing, whether you want any or not.”

“Sure, what the hell,” she said. “You want I should make toast?”

“Think you can handle it?”

“You’re lookin’ at a pro, Archer. Where’s the bread?”

“Fridge.”

I started the frying pan warming, cracked eggs into a bowl, added milk, shredded cheese, pepper, whipped it all up with a fork and got down to business.

We carried our plates and mugs out to the summer parlor, sitting cross-legged on the deck rather than bothering to unfold the chairs, and had breakfast, bathed in sunshine.

Peggy sighed, put her plate aside, picked up her mug and leaned against the railing.

“So, what’s the occasion?”

“For making breakfast? I was hungry.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think I’ve heard you sing before. Pretty good voice, but you could use better music.”

I eyed her. Today’s T-shirt was black, with a bat picked out in black sequins on the chest.

“What do you suggest, musically?”

“Rasputina. The Creatures. Abney Park. Vernal Equity. Poe . . . You never heard of any of these bands, have you, Archer?”

“I’m a classic rock kinda girl,” I confessed.

“Sometime when I’m not working my butt off, I’ll get you down to my place and play you some real music. With beer. And a pizza. I know what’s due a guest.” She sipped her coffee, staring at me over the rim.

I picked up my own mug, and glanced out over the beach. A perfect day.

“I hear there’s a big party tonight,” Peggy said. “The crew were talking about it. You going?”

Still looking out over the beach, I blinked, feeling like an idiot.

So, about that good mood, Kate
, I said to myself, kindly.
That wouldn’t happen to have anything to do with the fact that today is the day before the summer solstice, would it?

Midsummer Eve. The day that Borgan’d said he’d see me again.

The day that all of the
trenvay
and those townies who did gather on the beach at the base of Heath Hill at full dark, and threw themselves a helluva party.

I hadn’t been to a Midsummer Eve in years, naturally, but I had vivid memories of it. Tarva had been my escort, under strict orders from Nerazi and Gran, I now suspected, to be on his very best behavior.

“Did I spoil a surprise?” Peggy asked.

I shook myself and looked back to her.

“Sorry; got caught up in a memory,” I said, trying to sound matter-of-fact. “It’s the Midsummer Eve party—kind of a townie tradition. Sure, I’ll be there. You?”

“I don’t wanna crash a private gig,” Peggy said, sounding careful, “being as I’m from
Away
. . .”

Oh. So she’d found out what Away meant, in the context of a Mainer’s conversation; and it sounded like she’d found out from one of the folks who used it as a pejorative, instead of a geographical distinction.

“Well, you’re in an interesting position,” I said, employing what I liked to think of as tact. “You’re from Away, sure. But you’re working with Jens’ crew. If they didn’t want you to know about the party, they wouldn’t’ve let you overhear them talking about it. So, I’m guessing you’ve got a sideways invitation.”

“Sideways invitation?”

“Nobody’s
invited
to Midsummer Eve. People just show up. If somebody
invited
you, then they’d be treating you like a stranger.”

“But they made sure I heard them, so now I can show up, too? Just like a regular?”

“If you
want to
,” I said, because this was important, too. “No pressure. If you think it’s going to be outside your comfort zone, you’re not required to come.”

Peggy chewed her lip, eyes half-squinted.

“So, I can compromise? Come by, show the flag, and duck out, if it’s too wild for a Jersey girl?”

“That, too,” I agreed. “It’s up to you.”

I finished off the last of my coffee, and nodded at Peggy’s mug. “Refill?”

She shook her head. “Nah. I better get down to The Mango.”

“Awful early.”

“Got paperwork.”

“Keep this up, you’re going to be a crispy critter a lot sooner than later.”

“I’m tough,” she said and rolled to her feet.

I did the same; we gathered up the plates and silverware and carried them back to the kitchen.

“Thanks for breakfast; it was great,” Peggy said. She opened the front door.

“See you tonight.”

“Good deal,” I said, but she’d already closed the door behind her.

If you turn your back on the ocean and walk up Walnut Street, over the train tracks, past the old condos, and on up the hill past the new condos, too; about three-quarters of the way to Portland Avenue you’ll come to a place where a blacktop driveway intersects the sidewalk between two pretty white houses.

Nothing unusual there. But, if you follow this particular driveway back between the houses, and keep on walking straight into the trees at the place where the drive elbows to the right, you’ll strike the remains of an old road.

Follow that to the edge of the marsh, and you’ll come to the place where the Kite Track used to be.

Back in 1892 or so, the Kite Track had been a big deal—a mile-long trotting track made out of hard clay, said to be the fastest track in the world. When light harness went out of style as a sport, in the mid-1920s, the track closed. It reopened in 1936 as a pari-mutuel track, a stop on the Grand Circuit; closed again in the 1950s, and opened for one last, halcyon fling as a motorcycle track in the late 60s.

After that final closing, the marsh took back its own. Nobody remembers the old track anymore, or would much care, if you told them.

I
knew about it because when I was a kid I’d
listened
to the stories my gran told me. And, as Guardian, it was my business to know.

The reason I was walking out to the remains of the Kite Track on this particular and perfect Midsummer Eve morning was because I’d caught my second positive ID on a quiet zone last night, and I’d come to see what there was to see.

The sense I got from the land was one of informed curiosity, something like having a seasoned young hound at my heels; alert, but relaxed. The marsh was pleasantly bustling as birds, insects, mice, and other small creatures got on with their lives, and the growing things drank down the sunshine in quiet satisfaction. Underfoot, the ground was slightly spongy.

Behind me, I heard the full-throttle roar of a speeding motorcycle. I spun,
jikinap
tingling at my fingertips, ready to blast the fool coming down here on a cycle, along the broken road,
at that speed
. . .

But there was no motorcycle racing toward me over the marshland. At my heel, the land stood calm. According to my eyes, I stood among the brush and bramble of the marsh. My hair was warm under the sun’s persistent caress, and I smelled salt and mud and grass on the moving breeze. I heard the sweet, piercing song of a hermit thrush, stitching through the cycle’s roar like gold thread.

I closed my eyes. Carefully, trusting the land to keep me from a misstep, I walked forward, the sounds of the marsh enclosing me, including the constant noise of a racing motorcycle.

The land barked a warning.

I stopped and opened my eyes. Just three steps ahead was a pool of black water.

Mindful of the ground, which had gone from spongy to soggy, I approached the pool, squatted down on my heels, and sent out a small feeler.

I received various impressions: cold, brackish mud, an insistent tug that must, I thought, be the tide going out. Nothing else. Marsh water, that was all. No sign of
trenvay
care or consciousness.

I retracted the feeler and straightened slowly. I could still hear the cycle, roaring along a track years ago returned to marsh.

Now, I’ve never met a ghost. I won’t say that there aren’t any—a woman in my position has to keep an open mind—but, as far as I understood the literature, if the cycle was a ghost, it ought to keep running the track that wasn’t here, ’round and ’round, ’round and ’round. The noise I heard was constant; unmoving; one sound among all the myriad sounds of the marsh. Almost as if the marsh had gotten the sound of a racing motorcycle engine stuck in its collective consciousness, like I’d had “Walking in Memphis” stuck in my head since breakfast.

I frowned, turning that last thought around so I could get a good, hard look at it.

Well, why not? The Kite Track had been on the land here for almost eighty years—not a long time, as the land measures time, but certainly long enough to be noticed. There was also a certain intensity of emotion attached to racing—from the spectators and the participants, human and equine.

What if the marsh
remembered
the track? If that was the case, and its memory was motorcycles—a sound already starting to fade—then it might be that when it faded completely, the marsh would grow less . . . contemplative, and return its voice more fully to the united song of the land.

It was a theory, anyway.

And, if true, it meant that there had to be, somewhere within the confines of the old track, a
trenvay
—the spirit and the heart of this place.

Eyes open, I walked the outline of the old track, the land coursing ahead of me now, questing. The motorcycle stuck with me, snarling against the everyday sounds of the marsh.

I saw two white-tailed deer, startled a fox, and got cussed out by a blue jay, but otherwise managed to return to my starting point without encountering a
trenvay
of any description.

Well, then.

I turned and strode off, striking for the track’s center, the land running ahead—

The land barked; the impression I had was one of tentative welcome. In the next instant, I saw her . . . and teetered on the edge of revising my opinion about ghosts.

She was tall and naked, and she was so very thin that it seemed the strong sunlight shone through her. She glowed like an emaciated moon, twiglike fingers twisted together before her.

Then she spoke, and laid the notion of ghost to rest.

“Guardian?” Her voice was sweet, weirdly evoking the song of the hermit thrush. “Do I hear
Guardian
?”

“You do,” I said, coming close, until I heard the land whine softly. “I’m Kate Archer.”

“Why are you here? Nobody comes here. Not anymore. I’m all alone.”

“Not alone,” I said, taking one step closer, ignoring the land’s worry. “In fact, I was coming to see why it was so quiet hereabouts, and to remind you . . .” I let that trail off . . . temptingly, I hoped.

She shook long, verdant hair back from her face. Her eyes were as black as marsh water.

“Remind me? All I have are memories.”

“You have more—or less, according to your own choice. As Guardian, I’ve missed your voice in the land-song, without ever having heard it. You sequester yourself with your memories and impoverish us all.” I bowed my head. “Which is, as I said, your choice. I only came to remind you that—today is Midsummer Eve.”

The black eyes widened in the narrow face.

“It means nothing to me.”

“As you say,” I answered, and turned toward the entrance road.

I hadn’t gone a dozen paces, when I heard her say, sharp and sweet: “Wait.”