Chapter 7 #3
I looked more closely at her face, my inborn skepticism rising. Mom got so mad when we all went to see a magic show, and I spent the whole time trying to explain how the magician did the tricks.
But the old woman knew he came from the river. How could that be? I asked her what else she knew. What would become of us, Wolf and me?
The old woman waved a hand. She said something like, “I only saw what I saw. You came. You stayed. It was good. Isn’t that enough for right now?”
I thought about it, certain the woman wasn’t up to anything nefarious, but also sure she was a little bit crazy. Still, this place is way better than our tent.
She frowned, then refilled the water glass herself, drank it down, and nodded. She offered to hold the baby and talk me through making us all some dinner.
So I placed the baby into her frail arms, noting that if she dropped him, he’d only roll onto her mattress and blankets.
Oh, the look that came into her brown eyes then was something else.
Bliss, maybe. I haven’t really given a crap about another person for a long time, other than Wolf.
Even before I left home… I loved my mom, but it always felt like I was loving her from behind an invisible wall.
There was always this barrier between us.
Between me and everyone. It was made by the secret I had to keep. I knew that much.
But there was no such barrier between me and my baby.
And as the old woman held him close, after he was warm and fed and content, something moved inside my heart.
At that very moment, her old brown eyes shifted, took hold of mine and held, and held.
She said all that happened to me had brought me there.
And that this was a good place. Then she said her name was Sage.
I know it’s her chosen name, not her given one.
I don’t know how I know it—I just do. I went through her cabinets and searched among the barrels where dried beans and grains were stored.
Sage held the baby and called out instructions.
Fetch in wood and kindle the fire. Take the bigger pitcher to the pump and bring back water to pour into the pot.
Swing the arm, pot and all, over the fire and put the lid on to keep the ashes out. Then prepare the vegetables.
She had potatoes, carrots, and onions in bins or hanging from the ceiling in braids. I added beans and some of the barley. There’s a lot of food stashed in this place.
After the veggies and grains, I added herbs, plucking from bunches Sage pointed out, her namesake, and rosemary and thyme.
She told me how to grate a turmeric root over the pot, then I ground black pepper right on top and gave the blend a stir.
The most important ingredient, Sage told me, remained. But I’d have to go out back to get it.
I hesitated, unsure about leaving her alone with Wolf, but he seemed more content with her than I’d ever seen him.
He was patting her face and babbling his life story.
So I went out past the Wile E. Coyote rock.
There were shaded beds in trenches two or more feet deep.
Pots of greens lined them. They had pallets propped on either side, leaning against each other, forming a roof-shaped shelter over the plants, but looking like a pile of junk from a distance.
The pallets were slatted, but they still reduced the amount of sun on the green leaves.
There were various types of greens in pots. I crawled along on hands and knees, using the plant shears Sage had lent me to snip a few leaves from each type of plant.
I filled the bowl, squished the contents down, and filled it again, repeating this until I couldn’t get any more in. Then, as instructed, I rinsed the greens at the well, shook them dry, brought them inside, and dumped them into the pot.
I stirred the stew, then went to take the baby from the old woman.
Her eyes met mine, and her smile stayed in place. She let me see how welcome we were and how happy she was to have us, and it felt so good. I can’t explain it.
Well, Wolf fell asleep in her arms.
She already looks far better than she did when we arrived at her doorstep. Maybe she was mostly just thirsty, hungry, and lonely.
Sage nodded toward a corner, where a burlap sack covered a shape.
I went over there and pulled the sack away. There was a wooden cradle with a still shrink-wrapped baby mattress inside, brand-new.
I was stunned and shot her my questions with my eyes.
I asked why she had the cradle, a little of my natural suspicion coming back.
Sage was busy untangling her white hair from the baby’s fist. He’d fallen asleep with a handful and didn’t seem inclined to let go.
She told me how she gets by, selling and trading her herbs, plants, and paintings at a local flea market every weekend.
She’d traded for the cradle and mattress after that vision she’d had.
She said with my help, we could grow more herbs—enough for formula and diapers and vaccines, all the things a baby needs.
I blinked. I could hardly believe what she was saying and asked her if she really meant it. That she wanted us to stay.
She nodded and sank back down onto her bed again, probably exhausted after being so sick and immobile. She said her bedroom used to be the loft, until it got too hard for her to go up and down the ladder. Said it could be mine now—that a young woman needed some privacy.
Then she added that before I made up my mind I should know, she’d decided not to die just yet. I smiled at her. I couldn’t help it. I’ve smiled more since walking into this shack than I have since leaving home.
We have a place now, Wolf and I. And we have Sage.
I think we might be okay.
Wolf
Wolf closed the journal and lowered his head. He looked beside him at Camellia, who’d been riveted while he’d read.
“You okay?” she asked. “How do you feel about all this?”
She searched his face. Firelight danced in her eyes. Night insects whirred and, far off, a coyote yipped a lonely song.
“It feels like another layer of knowing. Like some of the missing pieces are snapping into place.” He lowered his head, took a deep breath of the air, smelling the river and the hot smoke from their fire.
Looking into her eyes too long was doing things to his heartbeat.
“I figured if Mom wasn’t my mother, Grandma Sage probably wasn’t my grandmother.
” He shrugged. “I mean, I should’ve figured, us being three difference shades of humanity.
But what are the odds? That she just went hiking and found her?
That Gram Sage was expecting her? That seems like a lot. ”
“Oh, come on, what if Grandma Sage really was in tune, somehow?” Camellia asked. “She said she thought she was near death. I’ve heard stories like that before. Haven’t you?"
“Sure, but…” He lifted his brows. “Do you believe in that kind of thing?”
“Why not? It’s more fun to believe than not to,” she said. “Don’t you?”
“No, I don’t think I do.”
She blinked at him as if he’d sprouted antlers. “You survived a trip down the Rio Grande as a newborn, and you don’t believe in…anything?”
He shrugged. He’d never given that sort of thing much thought until now, but it would make him seem shallow to admit it.
“You should at least be open to the possibility,” she said. “You never know.”
He rolled his eyes.
“Okay, fine, new topic. You want to know my takeaway from tonight’s reading?”
He met her eyes again, nodded twice.
“We can probably find that shack, if there’s anything left of it.”
His jaw dropped and he clamped it again. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that.”
“I can. You were distracted, filling in the blank parts of your history. I think there are more pieces to be found in this park. I think that shack’s the first one, and I think it’ll lead us to the next.”
He sighed, shaking his head in wonder, then said, “You’re kind of brilliant, Camellia Rio.”
“I think it’s more that you’re kind of distracted.”
“I am, for sure.” And not just by the diary, or being so near the spot where he’d been found in the river, though both those things were a constant background hum.
No, it was something more immediate, or a mix of things.
The quiet, and the underlying rhythmic song of whatever bugs were whirring and chirping in perfect million-part harmony, and the darkness all around them seemed to push them closer.
The lure of the fire, snapping nearby, cast orange light and amber shadows across their faces.
It was intimate, and the air tasted of woodsmoke. He cleared his throat.
Something shifted between them, there in the quiet. Something changed. He wondered if she felt it, too, looked to see, and got stuck in her eyes.
“It’s cold.” She said it, he thought, for something to say, but her eyes were still locked with his.
“Should we—?” he began.
“We should get hot cocoa!” She jumped to her feet with the words. Then, looking toward the path added, “Or something else warm. There was a place near where we got the sandwiches. It gets dark so early this time of year. It’s only”—she glanced at her phone—“eight twenty-one.”
“The Rio Grande Cantina,” he said. “That was the name, wasn’t it?” It was only a fifteen-minute walk. He’d scared her, he realized. Or something had. Maybe she’d felt things shift between them, too. And this was her reaction.
Not exactly a big green light.
He didn’t like making her nervous, and he hadn’t meant to reveal his attraction or make her uncomfortable.
“There was a camping gear place near there, too,” he said, trying to figure out how to ease her mind. “We could even grab a second tent, if—”
“We might need all our body heat in one, as chilly as it is tonight,” she said.
“Besides, I trust you.” She reached for his hand, and when he took it, tugged him out of his chair.
“Besides, there’s a room-divider that zips right across the middle of the tent, if you get out of line.
” She narrowed her eyes at him in mock menace.
She was witty and quick and dang near the prettiest thing Wolf had ever seen.
They started walking together, their hands parting naturally but touching now and then as they headed up the path from their campsite to the narrow, paved lane and then down it toward the village.
They walked in silence, while he tried to put words together.
He liked to think before he spoke, so his words meant something when he said them.
It took until they were entering the small cluster of buildings for him to say, “That means a lot to me, you saying you trust me. I trust you, too, Camellia, which is weird, because I’ve been raised to not trust people. ”
“I know you have,” she said. “And I also know you trust me. I mean, you’re letting me read your mother’s journals. That says a lot.” She sent him a crooked smile.
“Don’t let that feel like pressure though, as far as the case goes,” he said. “I know you’re only human.”
“Dang, here I was hoping you thought I was supernatural.”
You kind of are. Wolf bit his lip to keep that particular thought from leaking through.