She did, at first in halting, scattered sentences as though she wasn’t sure where to begin. She’d fallen in love with a man and planned to stay here in White Water since he worked on the trains all over but had family and land here. Her husband and her two kids were with their grandparents down the mountain a ways going fishing this week, which was why she was there alone.
She’d been an acrobat, dancing with the horses same as Mairi. Our daughter wasn’t happy with the carnival since the owner’s brother, Paulie, had arrived to help run it, but Alice wasn’t sure why Mairi hated the man. She speculated that he’d been making passes at our daughter but said that May wasn’t one to complain.
The trouble in White Water came when the main carnival tent caught fire, stalling them from moving on, though nobody was hurt. Then dynamite had been found on the tracks by the train bridge that crossed the Grand White River gorge.
“That was the last time I saw May,” Alice said. “That night. She said something about the train schedules, seemed real upset. I asked my husband later, he said that the payroll was due to come through early the next morning. There were a lot more people around back then, though the town was already draining on account of the mine being low.”
“Someone was planning to blow the tracks and rob the train?” Raina asked. She drummed her long fingers on the table and I reached out without thinking and stilled them with my own. I knew she wanted answers about Mairi, but people had to tell their story at their own pace.
“I think May knew about it,” Alice said. “She was acting weird that day and then she said she had something to do. After that I guess somebody left a note for the train marshal to check the tracks and that’s when they found it.”
“The marshal listened?” Raina raised her eyebrows.
“The note was wrapped round a stick of dynamite, so yeah, he listened. My husband, he was just an apprentice then, he saw it. Said the handwriting was real loopy, like a fancy woman might write.”
My heart began to dance inside my rib cage as a lump blocked my throat.
“That’s why you think it was Mairi.” Raina said what I couldn’t find the voice to.
“She went up the mountain and later that night the mountain came down. A section of the old mine collapsed, everyone said it was probably an accident, but the timing wasn’t too accidental. They dug for days but found no bodies. There’s an old lodge up there and the rock slide missed it by inches. Paulie bought it, still runs the place as a gambling hall.” Alice made a face. “He’s not likely to give you answers. Maybe you’re scary enough to make him.” She said that last to Raina.
“I’ll go and ask him,” Raina said, baring her teeth in a grim smile.
“The flowers keep blooming,” Alice said, her blue eyes fixing on my face. “Even in winter, right through the snow. That’s why I’d hoped that... that May was all right. But she isn’t, is she? Not if you’re here.”
I didn’t know what the flowers meant. We witches can learn the words and focus our will and pull the life force from inside ourselves, use the right materials to try to invoke the power we want to exert on the world, but sometimes the magic doesn’t work and sometimes it works in ways we’d never expect. Being a witch was more art than science. All I knew was that Mairi had left a piece of herself here, high in the mountains, in a garden overflowing with color and joy.
“I think I’d best go talk to Paulie,” Raina said, standing up.
“Follow the trail after the station, you’ll see the sign with the dice on it. I don’t know what he’ll have to say, though. Not much good goes up or comes down that mountain.”
“I’ll fit right in, then,” Raina murmured.
I followed her out of the house, waiting until we were alone outside before I said, “You didn’t saywe.”
“That’s cause you’re not going with me.”
“Hell I’m not,” I said, hands on hips. “You said we’re seeing this through.”
“Something bad is here, Cass,” Raina said. “I smell the rot in the breeze. I don’t know what I’ll find up the mountain, but trouble ismyjob.”
So she’d used me to talk to people and now she was done, back on her crusade, leaving me to wait. I took a deep breath of the flower and magic around me, pulling its warmth into my chilled bones.
Raina dropped my bag at my feet and leapt up onto the Nightmare’s back, taking my silence for agreement. I could no more have stopped her riding away than I could hold the wind in my hands.
But I was done staying behind. I picked up my bag and started walking.
“Cassidy.” Alice’s voice stopped me as I reached the edge of the garden. “May saved a lot of people, you know. She probably saved my husband’s life. He would’ve been on that train. If it had gone down into the gorge, I don’t know how many would have died. Maybe all of them. I didn’t know if I should say anything since I didn’t want you going up there, but if you’re going to go anyway, well, Paulie and some of the muscle he always hung around with went up the mountain that night. He didn’t help with the search either, even though he was already at the old lodge.”
I turned to Alice but couldn’t manage a smile. “Thank you,” I said. “I think this garden blooms because she loved you and love doesn’t end, even when we’re gone.” I held out my hand and Alice put her palm in mine, her eyes bright as the summer sky with unshed tears.
“Be careful,” she said.
I let her go and turned to face the mountain.
Raina would get there ahead of me, but it didn’t matter. I was here, and I was going to see this through for the sake of my stubborn, beautiful wife and my stubborn, beautiful daughter. I was done waiting.
There was no sign of the Nightmare outside the lodge as I stepped out of the towering pines into a huge clearing. The signs of the rock fall were still evident in the large boulders and swath of treeless land cutting like a gash down the mountain. The lodge itself was a two-story log and stone building that had seen better days. Three horses were tied, untacked, to posts outside, their tails flicking lazily in the morning sun.
