Page 8 of The Seekers of Deer Creek

“But you couldn’t take the risk then, and you can’t take it now.” The anger went out of Calla’s words. “I wish you could see yourself the way I see you. You’re meant for bigger things than this. Thanhim.”

“Don’t. I’ve never once said anything cruel about Wayland.”

“No,” Calla said knowingly, “you wouldn’t, would you?”

They sat at an impasse. Then Calla got up. “I’m driving to Rathmore this weekend. Come with me. Or don’t. I’ll be there, with or without you.”

“You’re leaving? Again?” Vivi winced at the note of plaintiveness in her question.

Calla looked as if she wouldn’t reply. She was at the door, her hand onthe pull, the silver band gleaming from her finger. Vivi had an urge to pull her back, to tie her to a chair.

But then Calla returned to the table. She put her arms around Vivi from behind and squeezed her tightly, chin digging into Vivi’s shoulder. Vivi caught the scent of citrus, mixed with turpentine, and something more animalic, a yawn of milky breath. No one in the world could ever smell like Calla.

“Happy birthday,” Calla said in her ear. “You look fucking amazing for a crone.”

“Don’t forget your folder.”

“Consider it my gift to you, Bee.”

Vivi sat in the lab long after Calla had left, staring at both items in front of her. A sketch in charcoal. An enigma of a letter, promising mystery and revelation in equal measure. Both leading her into a place that she’d fought to forget. As she fell asleep, head cradled by her arms, the rain shushing quietly around her, she saw only blue, as wide and capacious as a sea.

Chapter 3

Vivi smelled fear as she ran through the woods of her youth, her ankles tattooed red and wispy from brambles, the leaves mouth-wet under her feet. She didn’t know what she was chasing, only that it was close, so close, and if she could only find her footing, she’d be upon it.

Was the fear coming from her, or was it outside of her? She was of the woods, coursing through its tunnels like a skein of electricity, inseparable from that buzz of nocturnal life. She could run forever.

But there, in the dirt. A paper boat, like the leaky oneTu?nhad piled onto during his heart-stopping journey across the ocean. The boat was a clue, an invitation. It began to drift through the leaves, winding a sinuous path through the elms. As the boat parted the grass, it grew and grew, until it was the size of a real ship looming in the trees. The giant boat stopped at a clearing bathed in the most exquisite shade of cornflower. At its center, a shadow stood waiting.

The shadow flickered, vanishing in spots, deepening in others. Dancing in and out of consciousness, indecisive about whether it wanted to stay or go.

The shadow crept closer. It mirrored her father’s jawline, his uncut tousle of hair. It pressed its cold finger onto Vivi’s cheek, against the star-shaped freckle below her left eye.

Back to the beginning.

Then she saw that it wasn’t her father after all. Vivi was staring into her own face, streaked with mud and the patina of dead foliage. But where her eyes should have been, where her pupils should have zeroed in, there was a void of such unimaginable darkness that she felt herself sinking into the cool sponge of the earth, wanting nothing more than to escape the primal terror of being unseen.

Morning light burned against her eyelids. Her neck hurt in four different places. Calla’s manila folder was still in front of her, shut now, even though she’d sworn she’d left it open before she fell asleep. Reality and dreams were twining together, as they used to when she had night terrors as a child. She hadn’t experienced them in years, but the aftermath was the same. Adrenaline and nausea, a wave of psychic dislocation.

The door to the lab opened.

“I keep telling you to get a futon in here if you’re going to stay up all night working,” Samuel said. He was holding a coffee carrier and a ziplock bag with three misshapen pancakes inside.

She swept aside the residue from her dreams. “What’s in the bag?”

“Allegedly, dinosaur pancakes. Phoebe and her Yaa made them. Pheebs insisted I bring you some. They’re edible, if unbeautiful.”

Vivi bit into one. “Yum, brontosaurus. Tell her thank you.”

“Hurry up, then. We’re going to be late.”

She swallowed. “For what?”

“Delivery day!Blue Mirroris arriving in fifteen minutes on the dock.”

Vivi dusted herself off and raced to the door. Laughing, Samuel followed.

A few hours later, she was back in the lab,Blue Mirrorseton an easel near the window. The painting had been examined, logged, photographed, and admired within an inch of its life. A new acquisition, especially a century-old one, brought with it an institution-wide fanfare. The archivist, arainbow-haired recent graduate, hurried to pack the papers of provenance in their acid-free boxes, as avid as a hen clucking over her young. Even Dylan and Smith deigned to drop by the unloading dock to watch the activity.