Lifting the Sky (16 page)

Now, even as I looked at them, the lines lifted and faded like fog in the sunlight.

That afternoon clouds gathered and hovered like spaceships over the badlands. Pot and me, we squeezed through
the fence like old pros. It was late, but it was the longest day of the year. We had oodles of time before dark.

Ravens exploded from my tree as Stew Pot loped up the hill. I picked up their gift of a long blue-black feather and stuck it into my pocket. I had my feelers out for Shawn as I climbed, but they only picked up my tree. I was glad. Today I just wanted to sit on my hill and
think
.

I'd searched through the old encyclopedias and found out that the word “ley” was connected to light, or to a meadow open to the sun and therefore filled with light. It said that the ley lines were series of straight lines that linked all of the Earth's various landmarks into a network of ancient tracks. So I wasn't the only one who'd ever seen them. Maybe I really wasn't plumb out of my mind….

The lines had reminded me of the bluish white light that streamed out of my fingers. As I'd loosened the fence wires up on the hill I'd noticed a faint, cool, smooth-feeling energy pushing up against my hands. So even if I could only see the lines when the light was just right, I figured I might be able to
feel
them if ever I wanted to explore this some more. Those lines had to mean something.

I sighed. For sure the lines led to special secret places. I'd probably never get to explore them, since all I'd seen just happened to be on Indian land….

The ley lines were long. I wondered how far my own light could reach. I stuck out my hands and pointed my fingers toward the badlands. I concentrated as hard as I could on making my light stretch out farther and farther. After a
while I could see the light from my hands stretching out in a line toward the horizon.

I was so intent on waving my hands about and watching the light that I didn't hear Shawn come up behind me.

“You doin' some kind of sign language?” he asked.

“Cripes!” I yelled. “You 'bout scared the living daylight outta me!” Then I slapped my hand to my forehead. Ohmygod!
Living daylight
was what I'd just seen!

“What kind of sign language was that?” Shawn asked.

“None of your business,” I snorted. “Maybe I was just talking to the hills and the trees. Maybe I was signing to those alien spaceships hovering over the badlands.”

Shawn didn't answer to that. He twisted his mouth in a smirk and reached down and scratched Pot's ears. Who of course acted as if he'd never gotten a pat on the head in his whole entire life.

“What do you do all day out in the hills when you're not busy sneaking up on people?” I snorted. “You and your horse. What's his name?”

“Tivo. We just ride. Look about.” Shawn scratched at the dirt with the toe of his boot and then reached down and picked up a rock.

I picked one up too. We looked at each other. Shawn took a step toward the ridge and stretched his arm back. I did the same. He nodded, and we lobbed the rocks as hard as we could. They arced in midair and nearly collided and then hit the ground with just inches between them.

I reached up a hand and we hung a high five.

For some reason I could feel a happiness fill up inside
me. I swallowed it down and then asked in my most serious voice, “You look about. For what?”

Shawn shrugged. “Nothing. Well, okay, something.” He scratched around for another rock. Swooped it up. “A rainbow, okay? I'm looking for a rainbow, if you gotta know.”

“Oh, right. You're out there looking for rainbows. Of course. And a pot of gold, maybe?”

“I shouldn't have said anything. Forget it.” He dropped the rock like a hot potato and turned and walked toward the ridge.

“Because,” I said quickly to his back, “if you're looking for rainbows, I see them all over.”

“Yeah, right,” he said, and kept walking.

“Really. Like you, for instance. You're a rainbow. For such a grump you're amazingly bright.”

But then he turned and stared at me. I could see him weighing this. Wondering if I was making fun of him, or what. “What do you see?” he asked.

“You really want to know?”

“I asked, didn't I?”

“Well, I see lights. Mostly around people, but they're everywhere—trees and rocks sending up fat waves of light….” My voice trailed off. I'd never talked to anyone except my mom about them.

Shawn had gone still as a fence post. “Auras,” he said. “You actually
see
them? You're kidding.”

“I've always thought of them as just the ‘lights.' They're everywhere. Seeing them is nothing special.”

“The living daylight …,” Shawn said almost to himself.

I gave him such a big grin that my cheeks hurt. “That's exactly what I see. What do you know about it?”

“That's the name my great-grandmother gave me. ‘Sees the Living Light.' But I don't. I don't see any kind of light, living or dead. She—” Shawn stopped.

I could sense that he was close to clamming up, so I made a big fuss about finding the right place to sit, trading a big rock for the ground and then for a twisted juniper root. Then I sat really still, just looking up at him.

Shawn lifted his shoulders and let out a huge breath.
“Whew,”
he said. “I've never talked about this.”

“Well, me neither, so we're even,” I said.

“Okay. My great-grandma,” he said slowly, as if choosing his words very carefully, “she was a full-blood Shoshone who married an Irishman. She used to tell stories. Before she died, when I was six, she told me…” He stopped and sucked in his breath, as if he'd suddenly realized he was telling all this to a white girl. He searched my eyes.

“It's a long story, okay?” he went on. “So my great-grandpa was a white man, a sheepman, but also an amateur geologist and archaeologist. He and my great-grandma would go and camp out with their sheep. He'd climb and explore the mountains while she gathered herbs for her medicines. She knew all the plants, and what to tell people to take if they were sick. People would come from all over to see her. She could tell at a glance where they hurt and see what was wrong with them.”

I nodded. “You probably won't believe this, but I can do a little of that too,” I said. “See where there's a hurt place, I mean. I don't know a thing about herbs.”

“I wouldn't tell you this if I didn't believe you,” Shawn said.

I nodded. The silence grew until I could almost hear the grass growing.

“My great-grandma went places most of us don't,” Shawn finally said. “The places where spirits live. We don't go there out of respect. White people go there because they don't understand or respect these places.” He frowned at me, but I didn't say anything. I knew this was true.

“So she went with her husband, and he'd go exploring and sometimes they discovered things she'd later tell stories about. Sometimes she'd have dreams and see into the future. There was one story she told only to me. It was about my name. She said one day I would see the same way she did. But it wouldn't happen, she said, until I came to a certain place of power, a place of the spirits, she called it.”

I was so stuck on his words my eyes must've been huge as an owl's. “So that's what you're looking for?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Shawn said. “It's a rainbow. A petroglyph of one, actually. But even the elders don't seem to know of it, or if it really exists.” He glanced quickly at me and then down at the ground. I could tell by the way his lights had flared and then shrunk back close to his body that already he was thinking he shouldn't have opened up like he had.

I didn't know what to say, all I knew was that I felt as if I'd been hit in the chest. I was half scared I'd cry.
Cripes, why'd I get snivelly at the least little thing? Actually, it wasn't little—it was huge, what he'd told me. For sure the biggest secret his heart held … I sniffed and wiped my nose on my sleeve.

A shadow had inched over us as we talked. The clouds over the badlands now looked like triple-decker scoops of peach ice cream.

“I'd better be gettin' back,” Shawn said.

“Yeah, me too,” I said.

I pulled the raven feather out of my pocket and held it up to him. “Ravens fly all over these mountains. They must know things we don't,” I said. “I don't understand what this rainbow is that you're looking for, but if it's out there, you'll find it.”

Shawn took the feather from my hand and studied it as if it really might hold some secrets. Then he carefully tucked it into his shirt pocket. He gave me a “thank you” kind of nod, scratched Stew Pot under the chin, and turned and walked to the ridge.

“Catch you next time,” he said. “Friend.”

Brandings don't just sneak up on you. I should've suspected something was up when I came down off the hill and found Mam practicing roping. She'd made a steer's head out of a tin can stuck on a stick and jammed into a hay bale. After supper she whipped up a batch of fresh, hot, melt-in-your mouth peanut butter cookies, handed me two, and packed the rest into a sack. But my head was so full of what Shawn and I had talked about on the hill that somehow none of this set off alarm bells.

So I was caught totally off guard when, first thing the next morning, Mam spouted out, “We're branding today.”

I clomped my elbows on the table and screwed up my face.

“I didn't tell you last night,” she said as she spooned out three bowls of oatmeal and put one on the floor. “I knew you wouldn't sleep if I did.”

“Yuck,” I muttered. In my head I was screeching,
No
way! I've got plans! The beavers have gotten ahead of me—I've got dams to undo! The weeds are taking over the garden. I should clean up the mess in my room. And besides, this is the day I was going to let Light of the Dawn go….

Not one bit of this hit the sound waves.

“Mr. McCloud is sending a crew, but an extra hand's always handy,” Mam said into my thoughts.

I looked wildly around the kitchen as if some excuse to escape would pop out of a cupboard. Then suddenly out of nowhere I got this incredible thought. I could use
light
to heal things. Maybe I could be a veterinarian or a doctor one day… or maybe even something that doesn't yet have a label. It was almost as if I heard a voice booming out of the sky saying, “Okay, Blue Gaspard. Now's your chance. Get out there. Prove you can do it.”

“Count me in,” I said.

Mam's eyebrows shot up in surprise.

“But I've got a few things I've got to do first.”

Her mouth twisted. She'd expected excuses.

“No, really, I've got to feed the calves and let the fawn out….” I stopped. She was right. With my history, she knew I'd find a way to get there when they'd just about finished. The fawn could wait. The calves couldn't.

I whizzed out to the mudroom, dumped milk starter into the calves' bottles, dashed back, poured water into the bottles and shook. Pot's eyes zipped up and down with my hands—sometimes the nipple popped off and he got the spilled milk, but not this time.

“Don't be long. We'll be short-handed, I reckon.
Mac…” Mam didn't go on. She rinsed out her cup and carefully sponged off the counter and then picked up the sack of cookies. “He's bringing lunch for the crew,” she finally said. “I'm taking these down for a snack. I'd better go saddle up.” Her lights flushed the rosy pink color of sunrise as she slipped out the kitchen door. Pot padded after her, but she'd closed the door without even looking at him.

I rolled my eyes. “Now, don't go getting your feelings hurt,” I said. “I can't remember when she ever lighted up like that just at the thought of someone.”

I tried to picture lights the color of sunrise around her back when she'd been with my dad, but somehow all I could remember were the colors of dark rainy days.

But time was wasting. Even before I got to the pen I could hear Lucky Charm and Wonder Baby mooing, their noses already up to the gate. “It's a good thing you're not little bulls,” I said as I sidestepped to keep from getting stomped on. “I'll cross my fingers that you're still too little to brand,” I said when I closed my babies back up. But I knew I was kidding myself. They'd almost caught up with the other calves, and now I couldn't use Wonder Baby's broken leg as an excuse for her not to be branded. I only hoped Mr. Mac would come up and not send one of his men to brand them.

I ran back to the kitchen and carefully rinsed out the bottles. I should wash the breakfast dishes too.

I took a deep breath. I'd have to face it. There was no getting around it. Somehow I'd get through the branding.
I'd try really hard to do a good job, even if it was just carrying a bucket.

The cows had already been rounded up and the calves sorted when I got to the corrals by the barn. The bawling calves, and the cows left with them to help settle them down, stirred around in a holding pen that'd been set up beside the corrals. Three horses stood pawing the ground, their reins tied to a horse trailer hitched to a pickup. I didn't see Mr. Mac's big diesel truck.

I climbed over the high corral fence and hopped down beside a man who was crouched over, scratching both knees. He slowly unfolded, putting one hand on a knee and the other on a hip as bit by bit he stood crookedly up. I wasn't surprised to see spurts of light streak out from all sorts of places. I was pretty sure there was hardly a space on his battered old body that hadn't been busted or broke.

“Mornin',” he said. He tipped a hat that looked as if it'd been run over by a herd of stampeding cattle. “I'm Slim John Aikens.”

He jerked a hand missing half a thumb at a man who limped across the corral. “And that's Jakey Jones,” he said. Jakey turned and waved at me. He was almost but not quite as crooked and sparkly as Slim John.