Tapping the Dream Tree (46 page)

Elsie joined her by the open trunk and looked inside. She picked up the top drawings.

“These are really good. Who do you think did them?”

Adie shrugged. “Who knows. Maybe Aunt Lillian.”

“I didn't know she could draw.”

Elsie continued to explore the trunk while Adie used the vantage of a second floor window to see if she could spy any sign of Aunt Lillian or their missing sister.

Under the loose drawings Elsie found numerous sketchbooks, each page filled with sketches of the hills around the house. They were like what Elsie did in her own journal, cataloguing the flora and fauna, only the drawings were so much better than hers. Further in she found stacks of oil paintings on wood panels—color sketches done in the field in preparation of work that would be realized more fully in a studio. Under them were still more drawings and sketchbooks. Many of these had a childlike quality to them and were done on scraps of brown paper and cardboard.

She looked at the paintings again. There was something familiar about them. It was when she came to one depicting a black bear in a meadow clearing that she caught a sharp breath.

“What is it?” Adie asked.

“I've seen the finished painting this was done for. Or at least I've seen a picture of it in a magazine. The original's hanging in the Newford Museum of Art. But that means …”

She started looking more carefully through the paintings and drawings and began to recognize more of the sketches as studies for paintings she'd seen in various books and magazines. Then she found what she was looking for inside one of the earlier sketchbooks.

“Look at this,” she said.

Adie gave the pages a quick study. From what she could tell somebody had been doodling various ways to write their initials.

“L.M.,” she read. “What does that stand for do you think?”

“LilyMcGlure.”

“And she is?”

“Apparently the name that Aunt Lillian painted under,” Elsie said.

“I thought she was a Kindred.”

“I don't know about that. Maybe she changed her name. Maybe it's just a pen name. But this is amazing.”

“Why?”

“Why.”
Elsie repeated. “The Aunt Lillian we know is really Lily McGlure. What could be more amazing than that?”

“So?”

“So, she's famous. They often talk about her like she was one of the Newford Naturalists, even though her work was done a few decades after their heyday. But you can see why, when you look at her paintings.”

Adie couldn't, really, but she didn't want to seem more ignorant than she probably already did, so she said nothing.

“She's supposed to have studied with both Milo Johnson and Frank Spain,” Elsie went on, “though there's some dispute about that, considering how they disappeared at least twenty years before she started to paint seriously.”

“How do you know all this stuff?”

“I don't know,” Elsie said. “I read about it and watch the Discovery Channel. I just find it interesting, I guess.”

Adie gave the trunk a thoughtful look.

“When you said these two artists disappeared,” she said, “what did you mean?”

“Oh, it's one of the big mysteries of the Newford art world. They were out painting in the hills around here and they just vanished …”

Elsie's voice trailed off and she gave her sister an anguished look.

“We don't know that anything happened to Janey or Aunt Lillian,” Adie said. “I'm sure it's just like we thought, they're just out hunting ‘sang.” She took the sketchbook from Elsie's hands and put it back in the trunk. “Come on. Let's close this up and go back outside.”

Elsie nodded. She placed the drawings and paintings back on top of the sketchbooks. Closing the trunk lid, she stood up and followed Adie back to the stairs.

“What do we do now?” she asked. “Do we stay? Do we go looking for them? Do we go home?”

“See, this is why we really need a cell phone,” Adie said. “Or even two. We could call Mama right now and ask her what to do.”

“But we can't.”

“I know. Let me think a minute.”

They stood out on the porch, looking out across the garden to the orchard, where Root still kept his vigil by the old apple tree.

“We should put the cow back in the barn,” Elsie said. “Or at least in the pasture.”

Right now the cow was in the garden, munching on the runner beans that grew up a pair of homemade cedar trellises on the far side of the corn.

Adie nodded and fell in step beside her sister.

“There sure seem to be a lot of bees around here today,” she said as they reached the garden.

Elsie grabbed the cow's halter and drew her away from the beans.

“They're gathering the last of the nectar,” she explained, “so that they'll have enough honey to get them through the winter.”

“I suppose,” Adie said. “But these don't seem to be collecting much nectar. It looks to me like they're just flying around.”

Elsie studied the bees. Adie was right. The bees were ignoring the last of the asters and such and seemed … well, they seemed to be searching for something, but for what, Elsie couldn't tell.

“That's just weird,” she said.

“Everything about this morning is weird,” Adie said. “From the way Root's acting and these bees, to how there's just nobody around.”

Elsie nodded. “I think we should put Henny back into the barn and go home. Mama will know what to do.”

“I suppose.”

Adie hated the idea of having to turn to their mother for help. She liked the idea that Mama was there, if they should need her, but she much preferred to solve her problems on her own.

They were halfway back to the barn when Adie suddenly put her hand on Elsie's arm.

“Do you hear that?” she asked.

She needn't have bothered. Elsie had already stopped and turned to look at the woods beyond the orchard herself.

“It sounds like bells,” she said.

Adie nodded. Bells and the jingle of bridles, And now that they and the cow had stopped moving, they could also hear the faint hollow sound of hooves on the ground. Many hooves. Adie reached for Elsie's hand, to take comfort as well as give it, when the riders came into view.

They were like knights and great ladies out of some medieval storybook. The men weren't wearing armor, but they still had the look of knights in their yellow and black livery, with their plumed helmets and silvery shields. The women didn't ride sidesaddle, but they wore long flowing dresses that streamed down the flanks of their horses and trailed on the ground behind them. On either side of the riders ranged long-legged, golden-haired dogs with black markings—some cross between greyhounds and wolves.

Neither the riders nor their animals seemed quite right. They were all too tall, too lean, their features too sharp. A nimbus of shining golden light hung about them, unearthly and bright. The whole company—men and women, their mounts and all—were so handsome it was hard to look at them and not feel diminished. Adie and Elsie felt like poor country cousins invited to a palatial ballroom, standing awkwardly in the doorway, not wanting to come in.

“This can't be real,” Adie said.

Elsie made no reply except to squeeze her hand.

The riders came down from the meadow, footmen running along behind, and circled around the two girls. The footmen notched arrows in their bows, aiming them at Adie and Elsie.

“Well, that was easy enough,” said the woman who appeared to be leading them.

It never made much sense to Laurel that they would still be weeding the garden in September when most of the vegetables had already been harvested. But that was the chore Mama had set her and Bess to while the younger twins were in charge of cleaning the house. Of course they weren't just weeding. They were also gathering errant potatoes and turnips and the like that had been missed during the earlier harvest, putting them in a basket to take inside later. When they were done weeding, they were supposed to turn the soil on the sections they'd weeded. After that, one or more of the other girls would spread compost over it all and that would be it until spring.

Mama liked a tidy garden, everything neat and ready for next year's planting.

“We should've gone with Adie and Elsie,” Laurel said.

Bess shrugged. “This'd still be waiting for us when we got back.”

“I know. But I'm bored. This whole weekend's just all too bor-ing.”

Last night's dance at the Corners had been cancelled, no one was exactly sure why. But there were rumors and gossip, as always. Bess had heard from the postman that the building had become infested with rats and so the county had closed it down. Martin Spry, a fiddler who lived down the road from them, had told Laurel that someone had gotten themselves knifed at a stag the Friday night before and the police still had the building cordoned off for their investigation. But Mama said all of that was nonsense.

“Mrs. Timmons told me the Jacksons got called out of town,” she said. “Something about one of their grandkids getting sick and by the time they heard, it was too late to get anyone to take over for the night. That's all.”

Maybe, maybe not, Laurel thought. All she knew was that they hadn't got to play out since last weekend. Hadn't been playing, hadn't been dancing. It was just school—their last year, thank god; they'd turned eighteen a couple of months ago and would be graduating this June—chores, and watching interchangeable videos on the music channel.

Laurel leaned on her hoe. “I really wanted to play that medley of Ziggy Stardust tunes that we worked out—just to see the faces on the old fiddlers.”

The twins loved the old tunes and songs, but they also had an inordinate fondness for music from the seventies and eighties which they kept trying to shoehorn into old-timey arrangements with varying degrees of success—everything from Pink Floyd to punk and disco.

“Instead,” Laurel said, “all we have is boredom.”

“Way too much, too,” Bess agreed.

“If only something interesting could happen around here.”

It was at precisely that moment, as though called up like an answered wish, that they heard the fiddle music come drifting down the hill and across the pastures to where they were working in the garden. The twins lifted their heads as one.

“Do you hear that?” Laurel asked.

“I'm not deaf.”

“Who do you suppose it is?”

“Don't know,” Bess said. “But it's not Marty.”

Laurel nodded. “The tone's too sweet to be him.”

“Doesn't sound like anyone we know,” Bess added after they'd listened a little more.

Not only was the player unfamiliar, but so were the tunes. And that was irresistible.

Laurel laid down her hoe. “Are you thinking what I'm think-ing?”

“Always.”

Bess brushed her hands on her jeans and the two of them went into the house to collect their instruments.

Ruth leaned on the windowsill she was supposed to be dusting and watched Laurel and Bess walk toward the woods with their instrument cases in hand.

“How come they get to blow off their chores while we're stuck in here?” she said.

Her thirteen-year-old twin Grace joined her at the window. “They just thought of it first, I guess.”

“I guess. Hey, you know what would be funny? If we went down and put all those ‘taters and such back in the ground.”

Grace shook her head. “Too much work. You know what would be funnier?”

“What?”

“If someone hid their instruments and replaced them in their cases with stones wrapped up in T-shirts so the cases would still weigh the same.”

Ruth turned to her twin with a grin. “You didn't.”

“I'm not saying I did or didn't. I'm just saying it would be funny.” She paused, then grinned as well. “But I sure thought they'd find out before now.”

“If there'd been a dance last night,” Ruth began.

Grace nodded. “And there they'd be, invited up on stage and opening their cases.”

They started to giggle and slid down onto the floor with their backs to the wall, unable to stop, the one constantly setting the other off.

“Mama's going to kill us,” Bess said as they started across the pasture. She carried her banjo case with an easy familiarity to its weight.

“Only if she catches us,” Laurel said. “I figure we've got two or three hours, maybe longer if she stops in to see Mrs. Runion.”

Beth smiled. Mrs. Runion was a sweet old woman who lived on the edge of town and could talk your ear off if you gave her half the chance. Granny Burrell used to say that she'd been born talking, but Mama never seemed to mind. Mama was like Janey, in that she enjoyed visiting with old folks, saying, “All our history lives in those who've been around as long as Mrs. Runion. When we lose them, we lose a piece of our history unless we take the time to listen to what they've got to tell us.”

Beth supposed she half-understood. She and Laurel felt the same about music and, while they weren't much for sitting around chatting with someone like Mrs. Runion, they saw nothing odd about making a two-mile hike up some bush road to spend the afternoon and evening listening to some old fellow scratch out tunes on his fiddle, or maybe rasp his way through one of the old ballads.

Music was something that needed to be passed along, too. Or at least the old songs and tunes did.

“She hasn't seen Mrs. Runion for a couple of weeks,” Bess said, “so it's a good bet she'll stop in today.”

Laurel nodded. “Will you listen to that fiddler play.”

“I haven't heard a tune I know yet,” Bess said.

“I just can't imagine who it would be, out in our woods like this.”