I could just keep backing away, let this midnight traveler travel along, but my conscience twigged. It wasn’t even dawn. She was alone. Why would she be out here alone?
Car accident? Lost? Kidnapped? Injured?
I sighed and scratched at the welts on my neck and ear. I’d see if she needed help. That’s all. Then I’d send her on her way.
Before I could move toward her, she called out.
“Hey there!” Her voice carried soft and low, like a mourning dove. She raised her hand and waved, bracelets rattling down from wrist to elbow. “I need to talk to you. You there. I see you!”
“’Course,” I muttered more to myself, and maybe to Lu, if she was listening with those sharp ears of hers. I strolled out of the brush onto the road, stuck my hands on my hips. “How can I help you?”
She was older than I’d thought. Her white hair drawn away from her round face like carded wool that bunched and puffed. Wrinkles fanned the corners of her button eyes, folding down her knobby cheeks to bracket her mouth. Her nose and chin stuck out in a way that said she’d spent a lifetime standing her ground and speaking her mind.
“Do you need help?” I repeated.
“Me?” she asked, a little out of breath. “Oh, no, dear, not me. Not me at all.” She stopped and twisted at the waist, looking at the fields on both sides of the road like she wasn’t sure where we were.
She wore practical clothes: trousers under a skirt that draped to mid-calf, and sensible hiking boots. Her coat was too large, full of bulging pockets, and she had several shirts layered beneath it.
But it was her jewelry that caught my eye. Beads, mostly, strings of them, around her neck, her arms, her ankles. Some round and soft, but other rougher shapes of wire wrapped stone, wood, shell.
All of it together gave her a sound, a song. Beads clacked like spring rain on a hollow log, wood and shell hushed like dry leaves shifting in an autumn wind. She was rivers and birdsong, the soft poetry of the world.
“Are you all right?” I asked, falling into the sound she carried around her, wanting more of it, sure there were voices, pipes and drums just on the edge of my hearing.
“I am now.” She planted her hands on her hips and nodded. “I’ve been looking for you, Brogan Gauge. You and Lula. And now I don’t have much time. I blame you for that. You couldn’t have stayed on the Route to make it easy for me?”
Chills ran down my arms and tightened the skin between my shoulder blades. She appeared human. But I was pretty sure she was not.
If not human, what kind of monster, creature, or god was she?
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I stepped backward, wanting space, wanting room between her and me. Wanting space between her and my people in the truck.
She didn’t move, didn’t lift a damn foot. She sure as hell didn’t take a step. Yet she was still right there in front of me—drawn forward as I moved backward—just as close as if I’d never moved.
“Of course you don’t know what I’m talking about. You haven’t met me yet. But when you do, you’ll understand. There are things I need, and things you need even though you won’t like it when you find out. But then, you might. You might like this, Brogan Gauge.” She sucked a tooth and tipped her head to one side, considering me.
“What are you?” I knew ghosts. I didn’t like them, but I could recognize one from half a state away. This woman, or whatever she was, was not a ghost.
Didn’t look like a god either. I had a knack for knowing when a god was around. Both Lula and I had always been good at spotting god power.
But that didn’t mean it was impossible for a god to fool us, to find a way to hide their power from our sight. There were a lot of trickster gods roaming the world.
“What am I?” She chuckled. “I forgot we do this. It’s been, well, time doesn’t matter, does it? Until it does, and then. Of course. Of course. Then it will matter. But until then…”
She leaned forward and peered up at me. Like a bird staring up a tree.
No, like an owl sighting prey.
“I am your future.” She grinned and there was a jack-o’-lantern gap in her front teeth. “Well, I’m your now, too, now. Currently, is what I’m saying. We’ll meet. You’ll understand. Just don’t skip the pop, all right? Stop at the pop and it’s all going to make sense.”
I ignored all that, since none of it made any sense. “Are you a god?”
Her eyes went wide, setting off an accordion of lines up her face from chin to forehead.
“Oh.” She choked back a laugh. “No. No, not at all. Do Ilooklike a god to you? I thought you could tell what a god looks like in any form. Aren’t youthatBrogan Gauge?”
“Ma’am,” I said. “I don’t know you, and you sure as damn don’t know me. Just because you used my name doesn’t mean I believe you are some kind of mind reader.”
