Now Nest sat in the darkness sipping at her can of pop and reflecting on how unfair life could be. Out on the river, in a sea of blackness, the running lights of powerboats shone red and green, motionless on the becalmed waters. There was no wind; the air had gone back to being hot and sticky, and the taste of dust and old leaves had returned. But the sky was thick with clouds, which screened away the moon and stars, and rain was on the way. Nest wished it would hurry up and get here. Maybe it would help cool things down, clean stuff up, and give everyone a fresh attitude. Maybe it would help wash away some of the madness.
A stray firefly blinked momentarily in front of her face and disappeared in the darkness. Somebody in a lawn chair sneezed, and the sneeze sounded like a dog’s bark. A ripple of laughter rose. Robert made a comment about the nature of germs in people’s mouths, and Brianna told him he was gross and disgusting. Robert stood up and announced he was off to buy some popcorn and would anybody like some? Nobody would, he was informed, and Brianna said he should take his time coming back, maybe even think about going home and checking his mouth in the mirror. Robert walked off whistling.
Nest smiled, at ease with herself. She was thinking how comfortable she felt, sitting here in the darkness, surrounded by all these people. She felt sheltered and safe, as if nothing could touch her here, nothing could threaten. How deceptive that was. She wished she could disappear into the gloom and become one with the night, invisible and substanceless, impervious to harm. She wondered if Pick was having any luck. She tried to picture what the sylvan would do to defend her if the need arose, and couldn’t. She wondered if the demon was out there, waiting for her. She wondered if John Ross was waiting, too.
After a time, she began to think of Two Bears, wishing that he was still there and could help her. There was such strength in him, a strength she didn’t feel in herself, even though he had told her it was there. They had names of power, he said. But hers was the stronger, the one with true magic. He had given her what he could; the rest must come from her.
But what was it he had given her? That brief vision of her grandmother as a young girl, running wild in the park with the feeders and the demon? An insight into her convoluted and tragic family history? She didn’t know. Something more, she believed. Something deeper, more personal. Think. It was his desire to commune with the spirits of his people, the Sinnis-sippi, that had brought him to Hopewell, but it was her ties to the magic that had drawn him to her. Your people risk the fate of mine, he had warned, wanting her to know, to understand. No one knows who my people were. No one knows how they perished. It can happen to your people, too. It is happening now, without their knowledge and with their considerable help. Your people are destroying themselves.
We do not always recognize the thing that comes to destroy us. That is the lesson of the Sinnissippi.
But he might have been speaking of her father as well.
She stared into the darkness, lost in thought. It was all tied together. She could feel it in her bones. The fate of her friends and family and neighbors and of people she didn’t even know. Her own fate. The fates of the demon and John Ross. Of O’olish Amaneh, too, perhaps. They were all bound up by a single cord. lam not strong enough for this.
I am afraid.
She stared at nothing, the words frozen in her mind, immutable. Then she heard Two Bears’ clear response, the one he had given her two nights earlier.
Fear is afire to temper courage and resolve. Use it so.
She sat alone in the darkness, no longer comfortable with pretending at invisibility, and tried to determine if she could do as Two Bears expected.