Errantry: Strange Stories (23 page)

But now it was spring, and since we didn’t have any money really to pay Winter for it, he put us to work clearing brush. Cody is my age, almost fourteen. So we’re hacking at this brush and swatting blackflies, and I could tell that at any minute Cody was going to say he had to go do homework, which was a lie because we didn’t have any, when Winter shows up in his pickup, leans out the window, and yells at us.

“You guys wanna quit goofing off and come watch someone do some real work?”

So then me and Cody had an argument about who was going to ride shotgun with Winter, and then we had another argument about who was going to ride in the truck bed, which is actually more fun. And then we took so long arguing that Winter yelled at us and made us both ride in the back.

So we got to the place where Winter was going to work. This field that had been a dairy farm, but the farm wasn’t doing too good and the guy who owned it had to sell it off. Ms. Whitton, a high school teacher, was going to put a little modular house on it. There’d been a bad drought a few years earlier, and a lot of wells ran dry. Ms. Whitton didn’t have a lot of money to spend on digging around for a well, so she hired Winter to find the right spot.

“Justin!” Winter yelled at me as he hopped out of the truck. “Grab me that hacksaw there—”

I gave him the saw, then me and Cody went and goofed around some more while Winter walked around the edge of the field, poking at brush and scrawny trees. After a few minutes he took the hacksaw to a spindly sapling.

“Got it!” Winter yelled, and stumbled back into the field. “If we’re going to find water here, we better find a willow first.”

It was early spring, and there really weren’t any leaves out yet, so what he had was more like a pussy willow, with furry gray buds and green showing where he’d sawn the branch off. Winter stripped the buds from it until he had a forked stick. He held the two ends like he was holding handlebars and began to walk around the field.

It was weird. Cause at first, me and Cody were laughing—we didn’t mean to, we couldn’t help it. It just looked funny, Winter walking back and forth with his arms out holding that stick. He kind of looked like Frankenstein. Even Ms. Whitton was smiling.

But then it was like everything got very still. Not quiet—you could hear the wind blowing in the trees, and hear birds in the woods, and someone running a chain saw far off—but still, like all of a sudden you were in a movie and you knew something was about to happen. The sun was warm, I could smell dirt and cow manure and meadowsweet. Cody started slapping blackflies and swearing. I felt dizzy, not bad dizzy, but like you do when the school bus drives fast over a high bump and you go up on your seat. A few feet away Winter continued walking in a very straight line, the willow stick held out right in front of him.

And all of a sudden the stick began to bend. I don’t mean that Winter’s arms bent down holding it: I mean the stick itself, the point that stuck straight out, bent down like it was made of rubber and someone had grabbed it and yanked it towards the ground. Only it wasn’t made of rubber, it was stiff wood, and there was no one there—but it still bent, pointing at a mossy spot between clumps of dirt.

“Holy crap,” I said.

Cody shut up and looked. So did Ms. Whitton.

“Oh my God,” she said.

Winter stopped, angling the stick back and forth like he was fighting with it. Then it lunged down, and he yelled “Whoa!” and opened his hands and dropped it. Me and Cody ran over.

“This is it,” said Winter. He pulled a spool of pink surveyor’s tape from his pocket and broke off a length. I stared warily at the willow stick, half expecting it to wiggle up like a snake, but it didn’t move. After a moment I picked it up.

“How’d you do that?” demanded Cody.

“I didn’t do it,” said Winter evenly. He took the stick from my hand, snapped off the forked part, and tossed it; tied the surveyor’s tape to what remained and stuck it in the ground. “Wood does that. Wood talks to you, if you listen.”

“No lie,” I said. “Can you show me how to do that sometime?”

“Sure,” said Winter. “Can’t today, got a towing job. But someday.”

He and Ms. Whitton started talking about money and who had the best rates for drilling. The next time my mom drove past that field, the drill rig was there hammering at the ground right where Winter’s stick had pointed, and the next time I ran into Ms. Whitton in the hall at school she told me the well was already dug and all geared up to pump a hundred gallons a minute, once she got her foundation dug and her house moved in.

Not long after that, Winter announced he was going to Reykjavik.

It was after school one day, and Winter had dropped by to shoot the breeze.

“What’s Reykjavik?” I asked.

“It’s in Iceland,” said my mother. She cracked the window open and sat at the kitchen table opposite Winter and me. “Why on earth are you going to Reykjavik?”

“To pick up my wife,” said Winter.

“Your wife?” My eyes widened. “You’re married?”

“Nope. That’s why I’m going to Iceland to pick her up. I met her online, and we’re going to get married.”

My mother looked shocked. “In
Iceland!”

Winter shrugged. “Hey, with a name like mine, where else you gonna find a wife?”

So he went to Iceland. I thought he’d be gone for a month, at least, but a week later the phone rang and my mom answered and it was Winter, saying he was back safe and yes, he’d brought his wife with him.

“That’s incredible,” said Mom. She put the phone down and shook her head. “He was there for four days, got married, and now they’re back. I can’t believe it.”

A few days later they dropped by so Winter could introduce us to her. It was getting near the end of the school year, and me and Cody were outside throwing stuff at my tree house, using the open window as a target. Sticks, a Frisbee, a broken yo-yo. Stuff like that.

“Why are you trying to break the house?” a woman asked.

I turned. Winter stood there grinning, hands in the pockets of his jeans, his gimme cap pushed back so the bill pointed almost straight up. Beside him stood a woman who barely came up to his shoulder. She was so slight that for a second I thought she was another kid, maybe one of the girls from school who’d ridden her bike over or hopped a ride in Winter’s truck. But she didn’t have a kid’s body, and she sure didn’t have a kid’s eyes.

“Justin.” Winter squared his shoulders and his voice took on a mock-formal tone. “I’d like you to meet my wife. Vala, this is Justin.”

“Justin.” The way she said my name made my neck prickle. It was like she was turning the word around in her mouth; like she was tasting it.
“Gleour mig ao kynnast per.
That’s Icelandic for ‘I am glad to meet you.’”

She didn’t really have an accent, although her voice sounded more English than American. And she definitely didn’t look like anyone I’d ever seen in Maine, even though she was dressed pretty normal. Black jeans, a black T-shirt. Some kind of weird-looking bright blue shoes with thick rubber soles, which I guess is what people wear in Iceland; also a bright blue windbreaker. She had long, straight black hair done in two ponytails—one reason she looked like a kid—kind of slanted eyes and a small mouth and the palest skin I’ve ever seen.

It was the eyes that really creeped me out. They were long and narrow and very very dark, so dark you couldn’t even see the pupil. And they weren’t brown but blue, so deep a blue they were almost black. I’d never seen eyes that color before, and I didn’t really like seeing them now. They were cold—not mean or angry, just somehow
cold;
or maybe it was that they made me feel cold, looking at them.

And even though she looked young, because she was skinny and her hair didn’t have any gray in it and her face wasn’t wrinkled, it was like she was somehow pretending to be young. Like when someone pretends to like kids, and you know they don’t, really. Though I didn’t get the feeling Vala didn’t like kids. She seemed more puzzled, like maybe we looked as strange to her as she did to me.

“You haven’t told me why you are trying to break the house,” she said.

I shrugged. “Uh, we’re not. We’re just trying to get things through that window.”

Cody glanced at Vala, then began searching for more rocks to throw.

Vala stared at him coolly. “Your friend is very rude.”

She looked him up and down, then walked over to the tree house. It was built in the crotch of a big old maple tree, and it was so solid you could live in it, if you wanted to, only it didn’t have a roof.

“What tree is this?” she asked, and looked at Winter.

“Red maple,” he said.

“Red maple,” she murmured. She ran her hand along the trunk, stroking it, like it was a cat. “Red maple . . .”

She turned and stared at me. “You made this house? By yourself?”

“No.” She waited, like it was rude of me not to say more. So I walked over to her and stood awkwardly, staring up at the bottom of the tree house. “Winter helped me. I mean, your husband—Mr. Winter.”

“Mr. Winter.” Unexpectedly she began to laugh. A funny laugh, like a little kid’s, and after a moment I laughed, too. “So I am Mrs. Winter? But who should be Winter’s proper wife—Spring, maybe?”

She made a face when she said this, like she knew how dumb it sounded; then reached to take my hand. She drew me closer to her, until we both stood beside the tree. I felt embarrassed—maybe this was how they did things in Iceland, but not here in Maine—but I was flattered, too. Because the way she looked at me, sideways from the corner of her eyes, and the way she smiled, not like I was a kid but another grown-up . . . it was like she knew a secret, and she acted like I knew it, too.

Which of course I didn’t. But it was kind of cool that she thought so. She let go of my hand and rested hers against the tree again, rubbing a patch of lichen.

“There are no trees in Iceland,” she said. “Did you know that? No trees. Long long ago they cut them all down to build houses or ships, or to burn. And so we have no trees, only rocks and little bushes that come to here—”

She indicated her knee, then tapped the tree trunk. “And like this—lichen, and moss. We have a joke, do you know it?”

She took a breath, then said, “What do you do if you get lost in a forest in Iceland?”

“I shook my head. “I dunno.”

“Stand up.”

It took me a moment to figure that out. Then I laughed, and Vala smiled at me. Again she looked like she was waiting for me to say something. I wanted to be polite, but all I could think was how weird it must be, to come from a place where there were no trees to a place like Maine, where there’s trees everywhere.

So I said, “Uh, do you miss your family?”

She gave me a funny look. “My family? They are happy to live with the rocks back in Iceland. I am tired of rocks.”

A shadow fell across her face. She glanced up as Winter put his hands on her shoulders. “Your mother home, Justin?” he asked. “We’re on our way into town, just wanted to say a quick hello and introduce the new wife—”

I nodded and pointed back to the house. As Winter turned to go, Vala gave me another sharp look.

“He tells me many good things about you. You and he are what we would call
feogar
—like a father and his son, Winter says. So I will be your godmother.”

She pointed a finger at me, then slowly drew it to my face until she touched my chin. I gasped: her touch was so cold it burned.

“There,” she murmured. “Now I will always know you.”

And she followed Winter inside. When they were gone, Cody came up beside me.

“Was that freaky or what?” he said. He stared at the house. “She looks like that weird singer, Boink.”

“You mean Bjork, you idiot.”

“Whatever. Where is Iceland, anyway?”

“I have no clue.”

“Me neither.” Cody pointed at my chin. “Hey, you’re bleeding, dude.”

I frowned, then gingerly touched the spot where Vala had pressed her finger. It wasn’t bleeding; but when I looked at it later that night I saw a red spot, shaped like a fingerprint. Not a scab or blister or scar but a spot like a birthmark, deep red like blood. Over the next few days it faded, and finally disappeared; but I can still feel it there sometimes even now, a sort of dull ache that gets worse when it’s cold outside, or snowing.

That same month, Thomas Tierney returned to Paswegas County. He was probably the most famous person in this whole state, after Stephen King, but everyone up here loves Stephen King and I never heard anyone say anything good about Thomas Tierney except after he disappeared; and then the only thing people said was good riddance to bad rubbish. Even my mom, who gets mad if you say something bad about anyone, even if they hit you first, never liked Thomas Tierney.

“He’s one of those people who thinks they can buy anything. And if he can’t buy it, he ruins it for everyone else.”

Though the truth was there wasn’t much that he wasn’t able to buy, especially in Paswegas. People here don’t have a lot of money. They had more after Tierney’s telemarketing company moved into the state and put up its telephone centers everywhere, even one not too far from Shaker Harbor, which is pretty much the end of nowhere. Then people who used to work as fishermen or farmers or teachers or nurses, but who couldn’t make a living at it anymore, started working for International Corporate Enterprises. ICE didn’t pay a lot, but I guess it paid okay, if you didn’t mind sitting in a tiny cubicle and calling strangers on the phone when they were in the middle of dinner and annoying them so they swore at you or just hung up.