The Ancient One (3 page)

“Well, if you really want to know . . .” she began, before her voice trailed off. She loosened her quilt and slid forward in her chair. Casting her eyes around the room in mock suspicion, she whispered, “Drinking fennel seeds can make you invisible.”

Kate giggled, dribbling some tea down her chin. “So that’s why Billy missed me?”

Aunt Melanie savored the question, then replied, “Yes, but it only works on people as big as tugboats.”

They both burst out laughing. Aunt Melanie shook so hard that some of her tea sloshed onto her quilt. “Of course,” she added, “the bigger they are the more fennel seeds it takes.” She dabbed at the spilled tea with a tattered kerchief from her pocket.

“I thought maybe those neon green shoelaces you gave me scared them off,” teased Kate.

“Really, now,” answered Aunt Melanie, pretending to be insulted. “Those laces have nothing to do with neon. They’re bright, that’s all. Like new green leaves on the first day of spring.”

“More like the sign in front of Cary’s Tavern, if you ask me.”

Aunt Melanie shook her head. “No taste in your generation, none at all.” She winked at Kate. “Of course, there was no taste in my generation either. We’re the ones who invented supermarkets and eight-lane highways.” Then all at once, her mirth evaporated. “All the same,” she muttered, “it’s hard to believe they’d try something like that.”

Kate studied her closely. Her thickly woven Cowichan sweater, milky white and decorated with rows of tiny black eagles with wings spread wide, bunched up against her chin so that she looked almost like an owl peering out from a small snowdrift. From each of her ears dangled a string of silvery shells that clinked together gently whenever she turned her head.

No other person in Kate’s experience was quite like Aunt Melanie, certainly no other schoolteacher. She could be playful as a kitten or solemn as a tree stump. Something about her just didn’t seem to belong here in the middle of rural Oregon. Yet that wasn’t it, exactly. Aunt Melanie didn’t seem so much out of place as she seemed, inexplicably, out of
time.
There was something mysteriously ageless about her, both younger and older than her years, almost as if she belonged in some other century.

Kate especially enjoyed the times when Aunt Melanie—usually crunching on a peppermint—shared some of her knowledge of Native American lore. She knew as much as anyone alive about the Halamis, a people who vanished so long ago from this area that their lives were almost completely veiled in mystery. Sometimes Kate would return to the cottage to find a Native American friend sitting by the fire with Aunt Melanie, trading speculations about why the Halamis disappeared so suddenly, almost without a trace. And Aunt Melanie’s library on Halami life and culture was so good that professors, researchers, and archaeologists from all over the region often stopped by just to borrow a book or check a reference.

Yet it was less the lore than the telling itself that Kate so loved. There was an air of elemental peacefulness in Aunt Melanie when she told some of those nearly forgotten stories, customs, and recipes, an air she seemed to inhale and exhale in deep drafts. More than once Kate had wished that some of that peaceful quality might enter her own being and choose to stay, at least for a while.

This week, however, there had been no time for Halami lore. Whatever was on Aunt Melanie’s mind, it crowded out almost everything else. She was more relaxed right now than she had been since Kate’s arrival. Maybe whatever was in the brown envelope had solved the problem, or at least made it better.

“So tell me, what was in the envelope?” she ventured, trying her best to sound casual.

Aunt Melanie, who was looking at the fire, started. “Oh, just some papers—legal papers.” She worked her jaw for a moment. “I really don’t want to talk about it, dear. Maybe another time.”

Sensing it would be fruitless to push, Kate forced herself to rein in her curiosity for the time being. She took one of the still-warm oatmeal cookies piled on the plate on the knotted spruce table in front of the fire, dunked it deep into her mug, let it drip into the tea for a few seconds, then took a hearty bite. “I love dunking,” she said through a mouthful.

“You definitely have Scottish roots,” observed Aunt Melanie, her expression more relaxed again. She reached for one of the peppermint candies resting in an abalone shell next to the cookies. Pulling off the plastic wrapping, she popped the red-and-white striped sweet into her mouth. “No doubt about it.”

Placing her mug on the table, Kate gazed across the room to the rickety bookshelf behind Aunt Melanie. In addition to notebooks, articles, and unpublished treatises about the Halamis, it was stacked haphazardly with books on trees, edible plants, and forest ecology. Her eyes followed the lines of the warped living-room window, its sill crowded with a small painted drum, a slab of bark from a Douglas fir, a bag of twisted roots, and a delicate miniature basket that conjured up the image of a Halami woman skillfully weaving it long ago. The room seemed more like the local natural history museum than part of someone’s house.

Next to the fireplace rested the walking stick, the deeply carved markings on its shaft reflecting the shifting light of the fire. For the first time, Kate noticed that the face of the owl’s head looked oddly human from a distance. The beak could almost pass for a jutting nose; the mouth was more like a man’s than a bird’s. Only the enormous eyes, yellow and unblinking, were unmistakably those of an owl. They seemed to be watching her closely, observing her every movement.

Just then, a gray cat with white paws padded into the room. Athabasca (called Atha for short) had lived with Aunt Melanie for nearly a decade and was still limber enough to catch an unsuspecting bird on a low-hanging branch. As she passed the fireplace, the cat made a wide detour around the walking stick, as if sensing some secret danger. In two bounds, she leaped to the piano bench and then to the top of the old upright that had never been in tune as long as Kate could remember.

Kate turned in her high-back chair so that the crackling fire could warm her other side. She could almost see steam rising from her damp jeans under the quilt.

“How do you do it?” she asked suddenly.

“Do what, dear?”

“You always seem so, I don’t know, so comfortable being in lots of different places, or really times, at once. In this house things that are centuries apart feel so natural together. It makes me feel—well, amazed.”

Aunt Melanie crunched down on her peppermint and eyed her pensively. “Is that all you feel?”

Shifting her position under the quilt, Kate said slowly, “I guess . . . I guess it also bugs me a little. Maybe because there’s part of me that would like to be that way too. Connected. Part of something. I mean, I don’t even really feel at home in my own town, in my own time. About the only time I feel like I belong there is when I’m shagging balls to somebody behind the house for a few hours. Pretty weird, huh?”

Aunt Melanie stroked her chin, considering the question. “No,” she said finally. “It’s not weird. Maybe your hometown just isn’t big enough to hold you. The world is a big place, you know, full of all kinds of connections. You might find that you’re one of those people meant to touch many different times and places. That requires certain gifts, you know.”

Kate shook her head. “Whatever they are, I’m sure I don’t have them.”

“Don’t be so certain.” A slight grin formed at the corners of her mouth. “Maybe what you need is a vision quest.”

“A what?”

“A vision quest. The Halamis, when they got to be your age—aren’t you thirteen or so already?—would go off to some remote place in the mountains, sleep alone, fend for themselves for a while. They’d come back with a new understanding of themselves, of their own power.” Observing Kate’s glum expression, she added, “Forget that. All you really need is a little more humor about yourself.”

Again Kate shifted, drawing the quilt closer. “I suppose I have a lot to laugh about.”

“We all do.” Aunt Melanie leaned back in her rocking chair, which creaked loudly. “I hope you at least appreciate how much it’s meant to me to have you here this week. I’m afraid I’ve been rather distracted.” Her expression clouded. “But there never was a time when I needed good company like I do right now.”

Kate lowered the quilt and leaned forward, her long braid coiled upon the tabletop. “Aunt Melanie, why is some lawyer sending you mail? And why did they want to steal it? Seems like something pretty strange is going on.”

Aunt Melanie’s already wrinkled brow wrinkled even more. “You’re right about that, dear. Stranger than you know.” She sighed, and her dark eyes concentrated on Kate. “But I don’t want to get you involved. The kind of help I need is more than any human being can give, I’m afraid.”

“But—” protested Kate.

“No buts. That’s all I have to say.” A sudden idea came to her. “I’ll let you help with one thing, though.” She found Kate’s knee beneath her quilt and squeezed it gently before reaching for her walking stick. “How would you like to come give me a hand in the kitchen? I’ve got all the makings of a good salad set out. You do that while I do the salmon. It’s getting on toward supper time.” She set her mug on the table with a thump of finality.

Pouting, Kate protested: “Are you sure there’s nothing else I can do?”

Aunt Melanie started to say something, then caught herself. “You can peel the avocado.”

Kate shook her head. In a beaten tone, she muttered, “You share another thing with Grandfather. Total, complete, absolute stubbornness.”

Feigning a frown, the woman asked, “What’s the matter? Don’t you like avocados?”

“Sure I do. I just—”

“Enough,” said Aunt Melanie, raising a weathered hand. “I know you’d like to help, dear, but you can’t.” She rose from the rocking chair, leaving her quilt crumpled on the seat. Then, forcing a smile, she added, “I’m glad you like avocados. Me, I can’t get enough of them.”

Kate stared at her blankly.

Her brow again deeply furrowed, Aunt Melanie whispered, “Don’t worry about me, dear, I’ll be fine.” She pivoted on the walking stick and started toward the kitchen.

Just then they heard a loud banging on the front door.

III:
V
ISITORS

Two sodden figures faced them on the porch. Closest to the door was an older man, tall and gaunt, whose torn gray jacket hung on his body like a loose sack. His crystal blue eyes, though strangely sorrowful, looked as if they belonged to a much younger man. Behind him stood the red-haired boy who had tried to steal the brown envelope. He shifted nervously, peering down at his shoes.

Aunt Melanie regarded them solemnly. Finally she said, “Good day, Frank.”

“Wish it was,” the man replied, his voice joyless. “Hasn’t been a good day in this town for near on eight years.”

Kate moved closer, so that her arm was lightly touching Aunt Melanie’s. Several seconds passed with no one willing to speak. Then Frank broke the silence.

“Look, Melanie,” he began. “We’ve been friends a long time, you and me. Helped each other out a few times. More than a few, in fact. I didn’t come over here today expecting to change your thinking, but I wanted to warn you. The temperature in town is getting hot. Real hot. People are bound to do almost anything to keep the sawmill running.”

Aunt Melanie studied him without emotion. “Including stealing other people’s mail?”

The red-haired boy lifted his head. As his eyes met Kate’s, they narrowed with anger. She returned the favor, staring back icily.

“I’m not excusing that,” said Frank earnestly. “But you’ve got to remember what it’s like for all the folks who work like hell beating tan bark just to get through the day. When you start bringing in some fancy lawyers, they get mad. And for good reason.”

“They were my last resort, Frank. I hate lawyers as much as you do, and you know it. You and the others wouldn’t listen to reason, no matter what I tried. You were about to destroy the whole crater, before we even know what’s up there. The injunction gives us all a little time, that’s all.”

“People don’t need time, they need jobs.” His face reddened. “For heaven’s sake, Melanie! Sometimes I think all you care about is owls and trees. Not people.”

Aunt Melanie stiffened. “Of course I care about people. Why else do I spend all my days laboring with youngsters?” She shot a glance at the red-haired boy, who avoided her gaze. “But you can’t just keep on destroying the forest without giving something back. Look around, will you? Clear-cuts everyplace. If we’re having tough times, the fault belongs to all of us—me, you, and everybody else who let the forest get cut faster than it could grow back—not the folks who want to save the few remaining scraps.”

“I’m not disputing that,” retorted Frank. “But people have to eat somehow.”

Aunt Melanie’s voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. “Those old trees were God’s first temple, and now they’re almost gone.”

At that, Jody spoke, though without looking at Aunt Melanie. “The preacher says trees weren’t made in God’s image. But men were.”

The white-haired woman looked at him sadly. “I wish, Jody, you’d use your own good head instead of just repeating whatever Reverend Natello says. Then maybe you could decide for yourself what’s right.”

Jody continued to stare at his shoes.

“You might try to ask the reverend a few questions,” added Aunt Melanie in a gentle voice. “Ask him whether God made all the creatures of the earth, including the ones we’re wiping out. Or you could remind him of the Psalm that says
the righteous shall flourish . . . like a cedar in Lebanon,
and then ask him why there aren’t any cedars left in Lebanon now. Ask him why the people cut them down so fast they never grew back.”

“I wouldn’t waste his time,” snorted the boy.

“That’s enough, Jody,” snapped Frank. “I didn’t bring you along to act rude.”

“Then why did you bring him along?” demanded Aunt Melanie. “To hear you spout the same old wisdom that got us into this holy mess in the first place?”

A pained look crossed the logger’s careworn face. His shoulders sagged from his drenched clothes and something still more weighty. “Understand me, Melanie. I’m only trying to do what I can to keep this place from becoming a ghost town.”