The Tree Shepherd's Daughter (5 page)

"I know this is very different from L.A. But you don't
know how different it really is. Until you do, you'd better
stick close to home."

"Home is 125 Hemlock Drive, Los Angeles, California. I'd love to stick close to home, Zeke."

His shoulders tensed, but he turned and walked on.

As she followed her father through the maze of furniture, she ticked off a mental list of her life goals: finish high
school, attend college, then law school. She would become
a lawyer like Mom had always wanted her to. Maybe she'd
make partner one day. That had always been Mom's dream,
and she'd throw herself a party when it happened.

"Did Ms. Talbot tell you anything about my luggage?"
she asked. "The stupid airlines lost everything."

Her most valuable possessions were inside those suitcases. The tangible objects that connected her to Mom: the purple
jumpsuit that Keelie had worn on the first day of kindergarten, her tattered Boo-Boo bunny, and the scrapbooks with
Mom's pictures. She didn't think she could look at them
right now, but she wanted them back.

He shrugged. "She gave me your folder. We didn't really have time to talk. She said everything I needed was
in the file: vaccination record, birth certificate, and school
transcript."

Sudden tears trembled on her lower lids. She widened
her eyes a couple of times to spread the tears around so
that she didn't have to wipe them away. Everything he
needed to know about her, in one folder? He didn't know
anything about her. He'd missed most of her life. Now
her mother's attorney had reduced her existence to three
pieces of paper. Keelie turned her head. She wouldn't cry.
She would never let her father see her cry.

Thunder boomed, and rain splattered the saturated
ground. Crowds cheered from the jousting field, too excited or too dumb to get out of the rain. Keelie wondered
if her golden knight had won.

Lightning forked across the black clouds, the brightness
blinding her for a second. Fire burned her. Her head felt
as if it were splitting. "Help," she cried. "In the meadowfire."

Dimly, she saw her father, mouth open, staring at her.
"What? Fire, where?"

Keelie clutched her head, trying to hold back the
pain. "There's a tree on fire. In the meadow. It's calling
for help." Her father took off running, leaving her there, alone, and without an aspirin. What was going on? Was
she getting voicemails from trees now? Where the heck
was this meadow?

She sat on the flagstoned floor, not trusting the nearby
wooden chairs, in case they sent messages through her
backside. She didn't know where to go, so she'd wait for
her father to return. She knew where she ranked on his
priority list. Dead bottom.

As soon as she could, she'd call Laurie and get their
plan moving. Keelie had to get back to California.

"So what should I call you? Zeke? Lord Heartwood?"
Keelie sat on her father's overstuffed green sofa, swaddled
in a leaf-colored quilt, a mug of hot tea in her hands. Her
straggly wet hair tickled her cheeks as she looked around
the apartment above the shop.

It had taken him two hours to return, and it would
serve him right if she died of pneumonia. At least she'd be
with Mom.

"Call me Dad."

"How about not?"

"Knot's the cat. I'm your father."

"Well, you don't act like one. Why'd you take off like
that? It was just a dumb tree."

His smile faded. "How did you know that the tree was
on fire? Did you see the lightning bolt hit?"

Keelie was relieved he'd supplied the answer. "Yeah.
And I saw smoke."

He didn't look like he believed her. "I ran because fire
is very serious up here. We live in a forest. If it had spread,
our lives would be in danger."

"Oh. That's the first thing anyone's said that makes
sense in this wacky place."

From the window beside her, she could see the jousting
arena at the bottom of the hill. The jousters were gone,
and the field was empty except for a couple of workers
picking up garbage.

She wondered if her golden knight had won and pictured him bending down for a kiss from the girl with the
perfect Goldilocks hair. She frowned. Bad image. She
needed to imagine him kissing her.

What was she thinking? She wouldn't be here long
enough to hold his hand, much less kiss him.

"So, what'll it be? Dad?" Her father was still angling
for a title.

"How about not?" She'd already called him that, but it
was a mistake. She'd been swept away by the moment. "Dad"
sounded so intimate, so close. Everything they were not.

"How about Father, then?" He picked up his own mug,
embellished with a leaf motif.

"Formal, but acceptable," she said. "Do you prefer Zeke or Lord something or another when I talk about you to
others?"

He grinned at her. "Lord something or another? Now
who's being formal?"

She grinned back. Despite her recent dark mental
trend, she was usually pretty nice. And she was pleased
that they were having their first normal conversation. She
didn't want him totally out of her life. Where would she
go for holidays?

She wondered what kind of freak show Thanksgiving
celebration they'd have here. It would probably include
that evil hairball.

After her father's return she'd fallen into a mud puddle as
she was preparing to climb the shop stairs. Her capris were
soaked, stained with brown slime, all because that stupid
shop cat tripped her again. On purpose, she was sure of it.

As she sat in the cold puddle, her underwear glued to
her skin, she'd seen the cat run up the steps past her father,
who gave him a stern look before he jumped down gracefully to join her.

Her father reached down to scratch the cat's ears. He
lifted his chin and purred, eyes closed.

"What's with that cat? I never knew you had one."

He sighed as if already exhausted from dealing with
her. "You have to watch out for Knot. He's a sneaky cat."

She looked at her father, incredulous that he owned a
cat. He'd had time for a cat, but not for a daughter? "You
know Mom was allergic to cats."

"So she said." He didn't sound convinced. So now Mom
was a liar, too? "Knot is different from most cats. He was the only cat your mother would pet." He smiled at some
long ago memory. "We used to be a happy family, believe
it or not."

Goose bumps flecked her skin. A happy family. Keelie
searched her father's face and saw pain in his eyes. Maybe
at one time they had been a happy family, but he'd screwed
it up when he left. Any chance they had to be a family
again, just the two of them, was haunted by that fact.
Thirteen years of nothing did not entitle him to be called
Dad or Father. She'd call him Zeke.

The cat opened his eyes and looked at her, almost as if
issuing a challenge. Could cats be that smart? She wanted
to boot his heinie out the window.

The cat was a relic from her childhood, from the time
when Mom and her dad were together. She stared back at
the evil feline. It didn't seem that old. How long did cats
live?

"Knot must be really old."

"Very. But he comes from a line of long-lived felines.
He might outlive us." Her father smiled.

"Hypothermia kills millions every year, Zeke. I may be
the next victim."

"There's a big tub in the bathroom," he said, pointing
to the only real room in the apartment. "You can wash out
your clothes in the sink. I put the bag with Tarl's costume
by your bed. You won't have to wear them for long, just
until we get your luggage from the airline and get you fitted for decent garb."

She wrinkled her nose at the memory of the hideous mud costume. "Thanks, I think. At least they're dry.
What's garb?"

"It's what we call the costumes we wear here. Since
this is a Renaissance Faire, you'll have to wear Renaissance
costumes, at least during the day when the mundanes are
about."

"Mundanes? It sounds like a disease."

He laughed. "They can seem like one, too. But it's just
what we call the visitors."

"Oh." She put a world of feeling into that little syllable.

He looked at her, silent. "Of course, we also call them
our bread and butter, and we're always polite to them.
Courtly, in fact."

"I won't forget it." Did he think she was a baby? She'd
wear the clown outfit until her sweater set and capris were
washed and dry. He could wait to hear that she wasn't
about to dress like the inmates in this asylum.

Meanwhile, she'd call the airlines and use her lawyer
voice to demand that they find her luggage and return it to
her. Mom would be proud of her for taking action, being
firm, and for Keelie thinking of herself as a lawyer.

She'd use the lawyer voice to keep the "mundane"
clothes, too. No way she'd play one of Oz's little Munchkins.

Her father went downstairs and she jumped up to examine her new home. Temporary home, she reminded herself. The main living area was an airy, open room. Wind
chimes hung from the four huge wooden beams that
crossed the ceiling. The white walls were hung with tapestries full of unicorns and flowers. Two areas were curtained off, carving out private rooms. One had the curtain pulled
back with a tasseled silk rope. A tall, wood bed was inside,
its high mattress covered with colorful pillows. A homely
paper sack was on the floor next to it, a red hand print
clearly visible on the yellow cloth spilling from the top.

She walked around, not touching anything, her eyes
jumping from one thing to another, trying to take it all in
at once. It was like walking into a fairy tale house.

A sense of belonging and freedom welled up inside of
her, although this was the total opposite of her California
home. Mom preferred the dark cherry wood furniture that
had belonged to her Grandmother Jo. The huge pieces
had always seemed so oppressive, and they had not been
friendly. She avoided it, preferring her own bedroom's
chrome and fiberglass retro look.

The tinkling chimes made a constant music, a soothing song. She smiled. Mom would have called it drafty.

Keelie noticed a cluster of framed photographs on a
corner table. She walked over and picked up a frame with
hearts carved across the top. Keelie, age six, grinned back
at her, proud of her missing teeth.

All the photographs were of her. He had every school
photo taken of her since she attended kindergarten, including last year's ninth-grade picture.

She spun around as the door reopened behind her.

"Keelie, I'll be in a meeting by the front gates until
late, and then we can talk," said Dad. "If you're hungry,
grab something from the fridge. Don't wander off. It gets
dark fast."

Keelie spun on her bare feet. "You're going back to work? I just got here." She wanted to be alone, but it
seemed unfair of him to desert her. Of course, he was good
at it. He'd had practice.

"I want to spend time with you, too, but there's a Faire
vendor's meeting."

"I'm so sorry Mom picked such an inconvenient time
to die," she shouted. She froze, shocked. She wasn't an
out-of-control freak. What was happening to her?

He looked stunned. "No, Keelie, that's not what I
meant at all."

Her face hurt from holding back the latest round of
tears. "Just go, okay? I need time alone." She sobbed and
swallowed hard to stop the next sob from bubbling up.

"When you get dressed, you can go explore," he said.
"There's lots to see, although everyone's closed up. Stay
away from the Shire." He sighed. "You can stay up here,
too, if you wish. Ms. Talbot said that you'd be here next
week, so I'm not ready for you, but since you're here, we
have to make do. It's my responsibility to care for you, and
that includes financially, with my business. That's what I
meant, Keelie. You're not a burden or an inconvenience."

He walked over to her and kissed her on the cheek.
She accepted the kiss but didn't look at him. She really did
need time alone-her stomach rumbled-and some food.
She was hungry and confused.

After he left, she found the little bathroom behind a
plank door. A huge claw-footed bathtub with a hand-held
shower took up most of the room, along with a gleaming
porcelain sink, the bowl painted with twining green leaves.
She found fresh towels in a basket and lavender-scented soap in the tub. This was more like it. It reminded her of
the bathrooms at Chico Hot Springs, where she'd vacationed with her mother.

Cleaning up took a long time, but at last she was mudfree. She felt like a different person, especially after she
dressed in the stupid clothes the mud man had loaned her.
Just as she'd suspected, she looked like a fool. She thought
of the beautiful girl with the pink and gold hoopskirt and
the perfect golden hair, the one who would be kissing Sean
the golden knight. Keelie looked down at the frayed pink
ribbons on her purple bodice. She peeked over her shoulder. The red handprints on her bottom all but glowed on
the yellow skirt. The blouse was dingy, but clean. At least
her skin was free of crusty mud. She should have packed
an extra outfit.