S. Stirling - Dies The Fire

The hills pushed closer to the creekside road, and fresh-painted board fences appeared to their left. She pulled in slightly on the reins, calling out a soft whoa! to the team, and the wagon slowed to an ambling walk as they came level with a tall log-framed gate on the north side of the road.

"Is this your place?" Sally asked.

"No, it's the Fairfax farm," Juniper said, pointing with her left hand. "They're the last house below me. It's not really a working farm, more of a hobby place for the Fairfaxes – they're retired potato-growers from Idaho."

She stood, resting one hand on the brake lever beside her and shading her eyes with the other; it was a warm day for March, and sunny, full of fresh sweet odors; they were traveling by daylight, now that they were so close to home.

The gravel-and-dirt road they were on ran east up the narrowing valley of Artemis Butte Creek; half a mile ahead it turned north to her land. It was all infinitely familiar to her, even the deep quiet, but somehow strange: perhaps too quiet, without even the distant mutter of a single engine. The Ponderosa-style gate Mr. Fairfax had put up when he bought the fifty-acre property three years ago was to her left, northward; the little stream flowed bright over the rocky bed to her right.

Hills rose ever more steeply to either side, turning into low forested mountains as they hemmed the valley in north and south; behind them the road snaked west like a yellow-brown ribbon, off towards the invisible flats of the Willamette. A cool breath came from the ridges, shaggy with Douglas fir, vine maple and Oregon oak.

"You can't see my cabin from here, but it's that way," Juniper went on, shifting her pointing arm a little east of north, up the side of the mountain.

"It's in the forest on the slope?" Sally asked.

From here, there didn't look to be any other alternative; the ground reared up from the back of the Fairfax place to the summit three thousand feet above; most of it at forty-five degrees or better, with no sign of habitation. Eastward ridges rose higher to the Cascades proper, snow peaks floating against heaven.

"No," Juniper said. "You can't see it, not from here, but there's a break in the slope-the side of the hill levels off into sort of a bench along the south side about four hundred feet up. There's a long strip more or less level, a meadow a mile long and a quarter wide. The creek crosses it from higher up, then turns west when it hits the head of this valley where the hills pinch together, and the road follows it. Right after the Civil War my ancestors arrived and spent two futile lifetimes trying to make a decent living off that patch up there. Maybe it reminded them of East Tennessee! But it stayed in the family when we moved into town in my great-granddad's time."

"Not very good land?"

"Middling, what there is of it that isn't straight up and down, but Lady and Lord, it's pretty! There's two creeks and a nice strong spring right by the cabin. All but the bench is in trees, near eight hundred acres of our woods, and more forest all around and behind it. We Mackenzies got to Oregon just a wee bit late for the share-out, you might say-story of our line since we left County Antrim for Pennsylvania in 1730, always just a little behindhand for the pickings."

"Eight hundred acres sounds fairly substantial."

"Not if you're a farmer, and the most of it's hillside! My great-uncle Earl the banker kept the farm as a summer place, and bought more of the hills about; he was a hunter, and dabbled in what they called scientific forestry. Then the good man left it to me, the unwed teenage mother, the family's shame, the sorrow and black disgrace of it; everyone said he was senile. Mind you, I'd been spending summers there all my life, and was a bit of a favorite of his, and he adored little Eilir. Well, who wouldn't?"

Sally seemed to hesitate, then spoke: "Your family has been here a long time then? I thought you sounded. well, a little different." She smiled. "I'm sort of sensitive to accents; I spent my teenage years trying to shed mine."

"Ah, different I am," Juniper said, grinning and dropping further into a stage-Irish brogue for an instant. "Me sainted mither was a fair Irish rose, d'ye see? From the Gaeltacht, at that- Achill Island ."

In her normal voice: "She met Dad while he was in the Air Force, over in England; his side of the family are Scots-Irish with a very faint touch of Cherokee. Mom had a genuine brogue, bless her, and spoke the Gaelic to me in my cradle; and for my type of music, a hint of the Celt does no harm professionally, so I make a habit of keeping it up. Did make a habit."

"Just the opposite for me. My father was Air Force too- Vietnamese air force, of course. He flew us out in a helicopter, but I don't really remember-"

Juniper held up her left hand and pulled the horses in;

Sally fell silent at the sharp sudden movement. Then Juniper set the brake lever and stood, shading her eyes.

Terry and Eilir had been tearing along the roadside verge, playing some game; he'd even picked up a little Sign over the past few days. Cuchulain had been romping along with them when he wasn't chasing rabbits real and imaginary.

Now he stopped by the gate and looked uncertain, running back and forth a bit with his tail down.

"He smells something he doesn't like," Juniper said, handing over the reins and picking up her crossbow; Dennis was carrying his ax instead.

Dennis caught the same clue. He'd been walking by the horses' heads; now he stepped away, pushing back the brim of his cowboy hat. His right hand went back and down along the haft of the ax hooked over his shoulder, lifting and flipping it to hold slantwise across his thick chest. Short commons and hard work had started whittling down the beer belly; now he looked like a shaggy ill-kept barrel rather than a melancholy pear.

"What's wrong?" Sally said sharply.

"Nothing except the fool dog, for now," Juniper said; she spanned the spare crossbow before she handed it to Sally.

Then her own went into the crook of her arm. "But I'd better take a look."

She whistled; Terry looked up and touched Eilir's arm, and they came back to the wagon.

Look after him, and keep an eye out, Juniper signed-too rapidly for Terry to follow, so that the boy wouldn't take alarm; he still had nightmares.

Be careful, Mom, Eilir replied, getting her own weapon from the wagon and slipping a bolt into place.

"The Fairfaxes friends of yours?" Dennie said as they let themselves through the gate and started cautiously up the laneway that wove between two grassy green slopes.

"Not really friends," Juniper said, her eyes roving.

About half the Fairfax place was wooded, the steeper northern section; the merely hilly half towards the road and the creek was in pasture and fenced with white boards, apart from a bit in some bluish green grassy crop she didn't recognize and a substantial orchard. They cut kitty-corner northeast through the ancient gnarled fruit trees; it was apples mostly, with some cherries, only recently pruned and sprayed after years of neglect. Blossoms showed tender pink and frothy white, scenting the air as the two walked beneath.

The house wasn't visible from the road, being tucked into a steep south-facing hill with a pond in front of it and then more hill beyond, with grass blowing on it among the blue camas flowers.

Too quiet, she thought. Doesn't feel like there are people there.

Aloud: "Not unfriends either, for all that they're strong Mormons and went pale when they realized I was an actual living breathing Witch. Frank does me favors with his tractor now and then, and his wife gave me some jam she made last summer, but it's a nodding acquaintance."

"You afraid someone less neighborly has moved in?"

"Just fearful in general, Dennie. Hush."