“Of course.” Garth felt a tick of curiosity. “You really aren’t here to kill me?”
Frank pinched the bridge of his nose. Garth had the impression he was watching the outside of a serious internal monologue.
“I’m here to ask a favor. You do it, and we’re all square. It’s my daughter. She’s the only good thing in my life anymore. And now she’s got it. The Aurora. I need you to come and look at her and . . .” His mouth opened and closed a few times, but that was the end of his words.
A thought of his own daughter, of Cathy, came to Garth’s mind.
“Say no more,” Garth said, snipping the thought off and letting it flutter away, a bit of ribbon in a stiff wind.
“Yeah? Really?”
Garth held out a hand. He might have surprised Frank Geary, but he hadn’t surprised himself. There were so many things that couldn’t be helped. Garth was always glad when he could. And it would be interesting to see this Aurora business up close.
“Of course. Help me up, would you?”
Frank got him on his feet, and after a few steps Garth was fine. The doctor excused himself for a moment, stepping into a sideroom. When he emerged he carried a small black case and a medical bag. They went outside into the night. Garth brushed his hand through the branches of the lilac tree protruding from the back left passenger window of his Mercedes as they went to Frank’s truck, but refrained from comment.
10
The fox limped away from the grassfire the burning woman had started, but he carried a fire inside him. It was burning inside his lower back. This was bad, because he couldn’t run fast now, and he could smell his own blood. If he could smell his blood, other things could, as well.
A few mountain lions still remained in these woods, and if one caught wind of his bloody back and haunch, he was finished. It had been a long time since he had seen a mountain lion, not since his mother was full of milk and his four littermates were alive (all dead now, one from drinking bad water, one from eating a poison bait, one taken in a trap that tore her leg as she squealed and cried, one disappeared in the night), but there were also wild pigs. The fox feared them more than the mountain lions. They had escaped some farmer’s pen and bred in the woods. Now there were lots of them. Ordinarily, the fox would have had no problem escaping them and might even have enjoyed teasing them a bit; they were very clumsy. Tonight, though, he could hardly run. Soon he would not even be able to trot.
The woods ended at a metal house that smelled of human blood and human death. Yellow strips hung around it. There were metal man-things in the weeds and lying on the crushed stone in front. Mixed in with the death scents was another, something he had never smelled before. Not a human smell, exactly, but like a human smell.
And female.
Putting aside his fear of the wild pigs, the fox moved away from the metal house, limping and occasionally collapsing on his side while he panted and waited for the pain to subside. Then he went on. He had to go on. That scent was exotic, both sweet and bitter at the same time, irresistible. Perhaps it would take him to a place of safety. It didn’t seem likely, but the fox was desperate.
That exotic smell grew stronger. Mixed into it was another female smell, but this one was fresher and clearly human. The fox paused to sniff at one of Lila’s shoe prints in the loam, then a patch of white stuff in the shape of a bare human foot.
A small bird fluttered down to a low-hanging branch. Not a hawk this time. This was a kind of bird the fox had never seen before. It was green. A scent drifted from it, humid and tangy, for which the fox had no context. It fluffed its wings self-importantly.
“Please don’t sing,” the fox said.
“All right,” the green bird said. “I rarely do at night, anyway. I see you are bleeding. Does it hurt?”
The fox was too tired to dissemble. “Yes.”
“Roll in the web. It will stop the pain.”
“It will poison me,” the fox said. His back was burning, but he knew about poison, oh yes. The humans poisoned everything. It was their best talent.
“No. The poison is leaving these woods. Roll in the web.”
Perhaps the bird was lying, but the fox saw no other recourse. He fell on his side, then rolled onto his back, as he sometimes did in deer scat, to confuse his scent. Blessed coolness doused the pain in his back and haunch. He rolled once more, then sprang to his feet, looking up at the branch with bright eyes.
“What are you? Where did you come from?” the fox asked.
“The Mother Tree.”
“Where is it?”
“Follow your nose,” said the green bird, and flew off into the darkness.
The fox went from one bare webbed footprint to the next, pausing twice more to roll in them. They cooled him and refreshed him and gave him strength. The woman-scent remained quite strong, that exotic not-quite-woman-scent fainter. Together they told the fox a story. The not-woman had come first and gone east, toward the metal house and the shed that was now burned. The real woman had come later, back-trailing the not-woman to some destination ahead, and then, later, returning to the stinking metal house with the yellow strips around it.
The fox followed the entwined scents into a brushy brake, up the other side, and through a stand of stunted fir trees. Tattered webs hung from some of the branches, giving off that exotic not-woman smell. Beyond was a clearing. The fox trotted into it. He trotted easily now, and felt he could not just run if one of those pigs showed up, but glide away. In the clearing he sat, looking up at a tree that seemed made of many trunks wrapped around each other. It rose into the dark sky higher than he could see. Although there was no wind, the tree rustled, as if talking to itself. Here the not-woman smell was lost in a hundred other traces of scent. Many birds and many animals, none of which the fox knew.
A cat came padding around from the far side of the great tree. Not a wildcat; it was much bigger. And it was white. In the dark, its green eyes were like lamps. Although the instinct to run from predators was bone-deep in the fox, he did not move. The great white tiger padded steadily toward him. The grass of the clearing rustled as it bent beneath the dense fur of its belly.
When the tiger was only five feet away, the fox lay down and rolled over, showing his own belly in submission. A fox might harbor some pride, but dignity was useless.
“Get up,” the tiger said.
The fox got to his feet and timidly stretched his neck forward to touch the tiger’s nose.
“Are you healed?” the tiger asked.
“Yes.”
“Then listen to me, fox.”
11
In her prison cell, Evie Black lay with her eyes closed and a faint smile on her lips.
“Then listen to me, fox,” she said. “I have work for you.”
CHAPTER 16
1
Clint was about to ask Tig Murphy to buzz him out through the main door, but Assistant Warden Lawrence Hicks came buzzing in first.