Lucy didn’t seem to notice. Pinpoints of blood pocked her face where the bugs had gotten her, and her palms were raw from wrestling with vines.
“Give your hands a rest.”
She said, “No,” but she complied.
Getting through wasn’t easy even with my pushup-tightened arms. Hers had to be numb. I ripped and sliced, wondering how much grace time we had. Knowing we were leaving an obvious trail for anyone who followed.
“Even if you find her,” I said, huffing, “after all this time, she won’t look like a person. There may be nothing left at all. Animals carry off bones.”
“I know. I learned that at the trial.”
The trough deepened and I had to fight for balance. Lucy was looking up at the trees.
Something lacy? Trees of all kinds were everywhere, an untidy colonnade rising through the undergrowth.
It was two-forty. The sun had peaked and was falling behind us, dancing through holes in the overgrowth, a tiny, brilliant mirror.
A new sound: more of the groundwater, a trickle that recalled the one I’d heard driving up.
The kind of moisture that hastens decomposition.
“Even if you find her, what will you do?”
“Take something back with me. They can do tests and prove it’s her. That’ll be evidence. Something.”
I heard something snap behind me and stopped. Lucy had heard it, too, and she peered at the forest behind us.
Silence.
She shrugged and wiped her face with her sleeve. It was hard to gauge how far we were from the lodge house. I tasted my own sweat and felt it sting my eyes.
We started walking again, coming upon a knotted mass of thick, ivylike vines with coils as hard as glass. It refused to yield to the shovel. Lucy threw herself at it, yanking and tearing, her hands wet with blood. I pulled her away and inspected the plant. Despite its monstrous head, its root base was relatively small, petrified, a two-foot clump of burl.
I chopped at the shoot right above the root. Dust and insects flew, and I could hear more animals fleeing in the distance. My biceps were pumped and my shoulders throbbed. Finally, I was able to sever enough tendrils to pull back the clump and let us pass.
On the other side of the vine, things were different, as if we’d entered a new chamber of a great green palace. The air cooler, the trees all the same species.
Coast redwoods, great, repeating roan columns, spaced closely, their top growth a black fringe. Not the three-hundred-foot monsters of the north, but still huge at a third that height. Only a scatter of ferns grew in their shadows. The ground was gray as barbecue dust, mounded with leaves and bark shards. Through the fringe, the sun was a speck of mica.
The fringe.
Lace?
Lucy began weaving through the mammoth trunks.
Heading toward something.
Light.
A patch of day that enlarged as we ran toward it.
She stepped into it and spread her arms, as if gathering the heat and clarity.
We were in an open area, bounded by hillside and the same kind of mesquite I’d seen on the highway. Beyond the hills, higher mountains.
Before us, a field of high, feathery wild grass split by dozens of silver snakes.
Narrow streams. A mesh of them, thin and sinuous as map lines. The water sound diffuse now, delicate. . . .
I followed Lucy as she made her way through grass, stepping in the soft ground between the streams.
Down to a mossy clearing. Centered in it, a pond, brackish, a hundred feet wide, its surface coated by a pea-colored scum of algae, bubbling in spots, skimmed by water boatmen. The globular leaves of hyacinth floated peacefully. Dragonflies took off and landed.
On the near bank was another cabin, identical to the others.
Rotted black, its roof a fuzz of lichen, a decaying door dangling from one hinge.
Something green running nearly the width of the door. I ran over.
Metal. A plaque, probably once bronze. Grooves. Engraving. I rubbed away grime until calligraphic letters showed themselves.
Inspiration
I pushed the door aside and entered. The floor was black, too, ripe as peat, oddly sweet-smelling. Through empty window casements I could see the flat green water of the pond.