Spirits in the Park (3 page)

She pushes through the brush, Tackapausha at her side, worry tearing at her heart. Buck had not returned the night before from his visit to her father and she does not know what to think. Her father-in-law's face does not appear disturbed, but judging by the speed with which he leads her on, he feels something is wrong. Buck should have been back by now. What has happened to her beloved?

She stumbles; she'd been up almost the entire night. Last night, she'd been unable to sleep and had decided to travel toward the edge of the park by starlight to meet her husband on his way home. But instead of finding him, she'd happened upon a very strange procession moving through the trees, led by a familiar face that sent her ducking for cover behind some thick bushes. Willem Kieft, the black-eyed first adviser, guided a party of spirits into the park under the cover of night, some holding torches while the others bore shrouded boxes upon their backs. Recklessness overpowered her better sense. She and Buck had often wondered about Kieft; she would not let the chance to discover one of his secrets slip away. So she followed alongside them unseen, all night, as they traveled north through the new wilderness. Kieft set magical snares as he walked to punish pursuers, but she stayed close enough to spy where he placed them and thus avoided them easily. Even still, she lost the party at the base of the Great Hill, and when Kieft finally reappeared, he was alone. What had he been doing? What was hidden up in the treacherous mountain passes of the Great Hill? Not foolish enough to tackle the climb alone, she had raced home to tell Buck all about it as the night sky brightened into early dawn. But he had never come home. So all thoughts of Kieft and his secrets flew from her mind as she and Tackapasuha set out to find what had become of her husband. Which led them here . . .

They step out of a small copse of trees. Before them looms the wide circle that forms the southwest corner of the park. Well-dressed mortals in their horse-drawn carriages rattle around the circle as they make their way downtown, completely unaware of the spirits emerging from the park into their midst. Suddenly she gasps as her husband bursts into view, racing across the circle while dodging the trotting horses and fine carriages, a look of desperate horror on his face.

“Beware!” Buckongahelas yells as he approaches them. “It is a trap! They have betrayed us!”

“I don't understand,” Tackapausha says haltingly at her side as a wave of horror washes over her. “Who has betrayed us?”

“Hamilton!” Buck calls back, crossing the last bit of road to join them. Olathe reels as if struck. “We must hurry! He has betrayed us all . . .”

A shot rings out, overpowering all other sound. Buck stumbles, his face startled. The white shirt he had donned to curry favor with her father suddenly blossoms red as her husband, her heart, sinks to his knees, mouth opening in pain, before falling over to land face-first in the dirt. There, he lies still.

The world slows around her as her beloved bleeds into the ground before her. In the center of the busy traffic circle stands a man with a pistol in his hand, the horse-drawn carriages passing in front of him, hiding, then revealing him, over and over again. The smoke from the gun obscures his face, but something about the way he carries himself is familiar to her.

“Meester,” Tackapausha whipsers next to her, his fierce voice promising murder or worse, and she realizes that the man behind the pistol smoke must be Harry Meester, who had always been her friend. So many betrayals, it tears at her heart . . . but at the moment she cannot think about the man with the pistol. She needs to get to her husband. But before they can cover two feet, a brilliant blue light shoots up before them, cutting off their view of the city. They bounce right off it as if it were stone. Throwing themselves against the barrier, she and Tackapausha hammer and shout, but they cannot break through. The trap has been sprung and she is caught in its snare. She drops to her knees, reaching up to clutch at her wampum necklace as the tears begin to fall unchecked . . .

She runs through the woods, the necklace dangling from her hands. The man chasing her is near; she can hear the disturbance in the brush behind her. She does not have much time. She knows it will be her death if he catches her. She has uncovered Kieft's secrets and her life is forfeit. If only she had understood what she had seen up there on the mountain. She thinks of the sheet of parchment she took from the cave, the one treasure she had recognized. Before the man chasing her gets too close, she can use the magic it teaches to protect herself. But the price is steep and she might not even survive the invocation. Yet she can think of no other way out.

She never should have set out from the Munsee camp alone. But she couldn't stay there. No one seemed to blame her, but they couldn't look at her, either, and she understands why. Tackapausha had sunk into a deep depression; the death of his son and the betrayal by his friend hit him hard. He had begun to speak bitterly about revenge, which made Olathe unbearably sad. Through the gods' treachery, the wars between Munsee and Newcomer will come again, laying waste to Mannahatta. Maybe Kieft's secret hidden in the high reaches of the Great Hill, incomprehensible as it may be to her, would be the key to averting catastrophe. After all, it seems a bit too coincidental to her: Kieft hides his boxes of strange items in the cave the night before all of Central Park is encased in an impassable barrier? Far too convienent for her liking.

But the frightening truth is that there is no one left for her to tell about what she'd seen up on the mountain. She is all alone now. She grasps at one slim hope, the last resort of last resorts before she turns to the parchment in her hand. She will leave a trail behind for the one person she swore never to talk to again: her father. Perhaps when the Trap is opened, whenever that may be, he will come looking for her. It is unlikely, given how the two of them left matters, but it is all she has to hold on to. After everything, she still loves him; maybe he still loves her as well. It isn't much, but she knows no other option with her pursuer so close behind.

She closes her eyes to concentrate, setting a charm onto the necklace that will call to her father if he comes within fifty paces, a trick Sooleawa the medicine woman herself taught her. Then he will wear the necklace, learn of her fate, and, hopefully, follow her trail, starting at the cave atop the Great Hill. She checks the half a token she keeps in her pocket to make sure it is safe. She'd left its other half in the cave—its magic called out to its brother in her possession, serving as a beacon that was to lead her back to Kieft's hidden treasure room up on the mountain. But with her pursuer almost upon her, her plans must change. Now she must hope that her necklace leads her father to that cave, where the half token she'd left behind waits to guide him to her, wherever she might be. If she lives, he will find her. If not . . . she pushes away the fear and lays her necklace down, beneath a newly planted elm, and begins to cover it with leaves, all the while checking over her shoulder for signs of he who pursues her. Come quickly, Father, she prays. Come quickly . . .