Page 26 of Backpacking through Bedlam

She nodded. I considered.

“Well, they have a concept of death.” Memories of my grandparents’ congregations, and my father’s, swam through my mind. “They know when one of their holy figures dies, and they deal with it in their own way. But they’d remember you forever. The mice here still perform rituals dedicated to my great-grandparents. And they never forget anything.”

“That seems sad.”

“I guess it is, in a way,” I agreed. “But it means nothing’s ever lost, and even when your family is far away, they’re always at least a little bit with you.”

“Sorcerers used to use them as living spellbooks,” said Thomas. “They would teach their magic to their mice, and the mice would preserve it, so that even if something happened to the original sorcerer, the magic would endure. They kept paper ledgers as well, but a spellbook that couldn’t be stolen, couldn’t be confiscated, and could run under its own power if challenged? That was something special.” He sighed, long and slow and tired. “I had time to wonder, while we were locked in that abysmal place, whether the scarcity of Aeslin might not have been in some way orchestrated by our common enemy. The crossroads hated sorcerers so.”

“Thomas!” I pushed myself out of the chair, spilling tailypo in all directions, and hurried to the couch. His eyes were still closed, his head tilted toward the ceiling. Kneeling, I smoothed his hair away from his forehead, leaving my hand resting there when the gesture was finished. “How are you feeling?”

“As if I’ve run a marathon with neither food nor water, and no prizes waiting at the end.”

“But there was a prize waiting at the end of this marathon,” I said, as encouragingly as I could manage. “We’re home.”

“Home?”

“Buckley. Your place.” I laughed. “We still have my family home, but it’s being rented out right now, and I never actually moved back there.”

He opened his eyes, finally, and blinked at me. “Why not? You always complained about how far we were from the woods.”

“Far?” asked Sally. “Did the woods move while you were away? Because that tree line is like five feet from the rear of the house.”

“It’s fifty yards, almost exactly,” I said. “Far enough that the roots don’t reach. The house where I grew up is only slightly closer, but the way the fields are laid out, some of the more ambitious trees have roots that make it all the way to the house. It’s nice to know they’re there. But no, silly, I didn’t want to leave our house just so I could be closer to the trees. Moving would have meant admitting this was going to take more than a few months, and by the time I had to face that, moving would have taken too much time. And I couldn’t explain it to the tailypo, and it would have felt like giving up. Like I was admitting I’d never be able to bring you home.”

“Alice . . .” He began to push himself up. I shifted my hand to his chest, pushing him gently down.

“It’s okay. Stay on the couch. I’m going to call Cynthia, let her know we’re home, and ask her to send someone over with whatever’s for dinner at the Angel tonight. Phoebe’s hamper is lovely, but we need something more filling than baklava and jam. I’m sure Cynthia will be thrilled to know I finally found you and won’t be crashing through her windows anymore.”

“I’m fine,” he protested, before yawning broadly and nestling deeper into the couch. “I’m just going to rest my eyes for . . . a second . . .”

“Sure thing, sweetie.” I kissed his forehead and stood, turning to Sally. “Keep an eye on him, okay? If he wants to get up to do anything more strenuous than using the bathroom, call me.”

“Where are you going?”

“Phone’s in the kitchen,” I said. “It’s an antique, but it works. So where I’m going is to arrange for dinner, and make sure there’s nothing dead and rotting in the fridge. And then I’m going to come back, and eventually he’s going to wake up, and we’ll give you the house tour together so we can all take showers—the hot water’s surprisingly good in this old place, courtesy of our son replacing the hot water heater every few years out of some weird sense of filial duty—and you can find yourself a bed. But first, there will be dinner. And we will enjoy the fact that we’re in a place where nothing’s trying to kill us, and tomorrow I will introduce you to the Galway Wood.”

Eight

“The relationship between Alice Healy and the Galway Wood is inexplicable and strange. Someday I’ll understand what it means, assuming she hasn’t already buried me there.”

—Thomas Price

The old Parrish place, Buckley Township, Michigan

THE PHONE WAS ABSOLUTELY an antique. I’m not up on modern technology by any measure, and even I knew it was ancient. I cradled the receiver between my cheek and shoulder as I dialed, then moved to check the fridge. I didn’t usually leave things there to rot when I went traveling, but “usually” is not the same as “never.”

The phone rang four times before there was a click and a familiar voice said, “You’ve reached the Red Angel, this is Cynthia speaking, how can I help you?”

“Cyn, it’s Alice,” I said.

“You’re back!”

“We are,” I confirmed. “And I was hoping whatever you had on for dinner would stretch a little farther.”

“You could have just come to the bar, you know. No one here’s going to run screaming from the sight of a human.”

“Not so much an option yet.” There was nothing in the fridge except for a few bottles of beer and some ancient condiments. I was pretty sure the mustard was old enough to vote. “Oh, and if you have someone who could go on a grocery run tomorrow, the cupboards are bare over here.”