The Last Handful of Clover - Book 2: Gifts Both Light and Dark

2.18 Under the Juniper Tree

Slowly, like so much of his past, he began to forget her face.

His years as a living person became painted in pastels, as if the edges were blurring with age, and running together. He wondered if his memories were even real, or if his life as a boy crossing the plains with his parents had been any more than a mad ghost's dream. He had not been reset in years, and he wondered if even the site of his death was just fantasy, or a failure of his memory.

Billy had yet to see any other ghosts. And he was convinced that whatever had happened to him and Mattie had happened to them alone. For a reason he was not worthy to know, God had chosen this strange and agonizing path for the two of them. He did not know why, but he also knew it was best not to question the will of God.

Perhaps, if I am patient enough, he thought, one day God will explain it all to me.

In the fall of 1887 Mattie had suffered a reset, and Billy had sensed it while sitting with a condemned man, in a small prison cell in the north. And although he had planned to sit with the man until his execution, as he had with many others, something about Mattie's reset seemed especially wrenching, and especially violent. With a deep sigh, he left the cell, and began the long walk back to Round Valley. Guided, as he always was, by the tug in his mind that pointed him forever toward the mad little girl, like a compass.

It was on this journey that Billy's world changed.

Billy was walking through the desert and was now less than twenty miles from the cabin. It had been raining that morning, but the rain had finally broken and the clouds were letting in scattered rays of sunlight. The play of the sharply angled autumn light on the wet sagebrush and sand was especially beautiful to Billy's eyes, and he contemplated it with no thoughts other than his joy in the handiwork of God.

When he saw the old woman, sitting under an especially large juniper tree, he wasn't at first sure what he was looking at. Despite the rain, she looked completely dry, and sat in a cross-legged position, with her hands folded neatly in her lap.

As he drew closer, Billy was convinced that what he was looking at was the corpse of an old woman. Her dress was hammered doeskin, and although it did not appear wet from the rain, he could see two deep red stains on the front. Clearly, she had been killed and left here by a passing brigand, or abandoned by her tribe. Seeing her filled him with both sadness, and a sense of wonder. Despite the wounds she had suffered, her face seemed calm and at peace. Her eyes were closed, and it was easy to convince himself that she was not dead, just sleeping.

Walking up to the figure, he knelt down and looked at her face. She was as still as a stone. He was just about to move on, when suddenly the woman he thought was a corpse opened her eyes.

Billy had never seen a ghost, so he was not aware that he was looking at one. But he also felt a shiver of terror and thrill run down his spine when not only did she open her eyes, but she tilted up her face and looked directly into Billy's eyes.

And smiled.

It looked like she had been waiting for him, and the look she gave him made him think that his arrival had brought her great joy.

His mouth was dry. He attempted to speak, but nothing came out. He hadn't spoken aloud in many years, and his tongue writhed in his mouth, trying to remember how to make those sounds.

Finally, he croaked out a raspy "Who..."

The old woman clearly heard him, but at first, she didn't respond. She just continued to gaze at him with those soft brown eyes, and a look of great joy. He knew, in that moment, that the old woman knew him. That she had known him for a very long time. And that she had been waiting here in the desert for him.