Seized: Book One of the Pipe Woman Chronicles, Page 2

Chapter 2

  To say that I was uncomfortable at work the next day would be an understatement. For one thing, I don’t function well on less than eight hours of sleep. When I’m tired, the first thing that always deserts me is the filter between my brain and my mouth. Given what I suspected was going on, I was terrified that I would blurt out the wrong thing to the right person, or the right thing to the wrong person, or something.

  For another thing, I did not want to run into Brock, but I also did not want it to look like I was avoiding him. We had been circumspect about our relationship so far – people knew we were dating, but we avoided flaunting it around the firm – but it was unusual for us to not touch base at least once or twice a day. And now we were engaged, for goodness’ sake. I should have been inventing excuses to stop by his office and catch him alone, for whatever we might have time for before his next call. Instead, I found myself going the long way around from the elevators to the coffee station, and keeping my office door shut more than I usually did. I mentioned to a few people that I was trying to get through my to-do list in order to leave early for the weekend, and hoped my colleagues didn’t think I was being weird.

  I was so busy covering my own tracks that it didn’t occur to me to wonder why Brock hadn’t sought me out, either, until close to lunchtime. I mean, on one hand, I was relieved that I hadn’t had to ride herd on my tongue around him. But on the other hand, where the hell was he?

  Frowning, I grabbed my purse and sauntered down the hallway toward the ladies’ room, which was on the other side of the elevator lobby, past the coffee station, and past Brock’s office. I glanced quickly inside, and then stopped dead and stared. The door was open, the lights were out, and his laptop was gone.

  I pivoted and approached his assistant, whose carrel was right across the hall. “Where is he?”

  She looked up briefly. “Brock? He’s been at a client meeting out of the office all morning.”

  “Really?” I asked. You mean I’ve been sneaking around like a criminal for nothing? “Any idea when he’ll be back?”

  She consulted the calendar on her computer. “Not until late this afternoon, it looks like.” She clucked her tongue in annoyance. “I wish he would let me put all of his appointments on his calendar. I scheduled two calls for him this afternoon, and now he’s got the whole day blocked off for this meeting. I’ll have to reschedule these calls.” She glanced up at me. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to go off on you. Did you need me to get a message to him?”

  “No, no,” I said, “it’s not urgent. I’ll send him an e-mail.” We both smiled the smiles of professional pleasantry, and I went on my way.

  By four o’clock, I was sure my brain had melted into slag. I grabbed my laptop to make it look like I intended to work at home, and told my assistant, Tess, that I thought I had done as much damage as I could do that day and would see her in the morning. She laughed and asked me whether I was going to do anything special for Armageddon Day.

  “Armageddon Day?” I asked, feeling a guilty blush creep up my neck.

  “Oh, you know, tomorrow. The big winter solstice. The last day of the Mayan calendar. The world is supposed to end and so on.”

  “Oh, right, right. Guess I’d better pick up my dry cleaning tonight.”

  “Don’t bother. If the world ends, you aren’t going to need it.”

  We exchanged giggles and I headed to the elevators. I couldn’t help glancing into Brock’s office on my way past. It was very dark now – almost like a cave, with odd shadows gathered in the corners. He had clearly never made it in. Nor had he e-mailed me all day, or called. Of course, I hadn’t gone out of my way to try to contact him, either.

  Being engaged was just swell so far, thanks.

  Living in LoDo has its advantages, one of which is that my office is a fifteen-minute walk from my apartment. It has disadvantages, too – the lack of a decent grocery store chief among them – but then again, there’s always takeout. I decided to stop at Yoko’s in Sakura Square, near the Buddhist temple, for a rice bowl.

  Darkness was falling rapidly as I left my office building and started west on 20th Street. But the street lights were coming on, and some of the restaurants had dressed up their storefronts with Christmas lights. The temperature was also falling as night came on; I was glad for my long down coat and gloves. I pulled my beret out of the coat pocket where I’d shoved it that morning and perched it on my head at what I hoped was a perky angle, using my reflection in a shop window as a guide. As I adjusted my hat, I noticed a man leaning against the building on the opposite side of the street. That struck me as odd – he wasn’t one of our regular street people, and we were in the middle of the block, nowhere near a bus stop. I turned to get a better look at him, but he was gone. Must have ducked into the building. But I knew he hadn’t had time while I turned around. Maybe he was finishing a cigarette when I noticed him. Except that he hadn’t been smoking.

  I shrugged mentally and continued on. I’d gone about another block when an owl suddenly swooped past me, hooting. Startled, I grabbed onto my hat and stepped back. The owl hooted again, flew another hundred yards or so down the street, and then veered up and into the darkness.

  “Okay, things are getting just a little too weird around here,” I said aloud, and then clapped my gloved hand over my mouth. I looked around, a little wildly, but there was no one nearby to have made a suggestion to – never mind that there had been no command in my comment, anyway. Breathing harshly, I picked up the pace and nearly ran the rest of the way to the restaurant.

  Yoko’s has good food, but it takes a while to get it. The wait gave me time to get myself together, so that by the time I had my order in hand, I was beating myself up mentally for getting so spooked.

  I stepped out of the restaurant into a gust of wind that nearly took my beret off. Clapping my free hand to my head, I turned slightly so that my back was to the wind – and across Sakura Square, there was the same guy I’d seen in the window near my office. I was sure it was the same guy – I recognized the jeans jacket with the shearling collar and the work boots. He didn’t move from the spot where he was standing, leaning casually against a planter, but he tipped his hat to me.

  Thoroughly creeped out, I hailed a cab for the remaining four blocks.

  Safe at home, eating rice and tofu with a fork (I’ve never gotten the hang of chopsticks – Brock tried to teach me long ago, but finally declared me a hopeless case and refused thereafter to eat Asian food with me), the whole thing seemed silly. Lots of guys in downtown Denver wear jeans jackets with shearling collars. People have lots of reasons to loiter around doorways and in public squares, even when it’s cold. Maybe he was a new homeless guy. Maybe he was just being polite, for goodness’ sake.

  I had a billion and one excuses for the guy being there. The owl, though – the owl didn’t fit into any plausible scenario. That block had been far too well-lit, and too well-traveled at that time of day; a predator would typically stay in the shadows, watching for prey, waiting to swoop in for the kill.

  Unless I was the prey.

  Oh, come on, I chided myself. This is ridiculous. Why would an owl be stalking me?

  I had no more reason for that than I had for a white buffalo calf to bow to me. Yet I couldn’t shake the thought that it was true.

  The buffalo calf made a reappearance in my dreams that night. Again, I was wearing that white coat, with my hair in braids; again, the little animal separated from his mother, trotted over to me, and lay down before me in the dust. Again, I bent over to pet him. And again, a bird woke me up – but this time it was the mournful hoot of an owl.

  I shot upright, heart pounding, and waited a long time in the dark. But I did not hear the owl again.

  I sat up for hours, until dawn. As the sky began to lighten, I e-mailed Tess that I would work from home that morning, after all. Then I reset the alarm for eleven o’clock and finally, with the sun�
�s rays warming the edge of my duvet, I drifted into a few hours of dreamless sleep.

  Shannon’s office was a block off Grandview in Old Town Arvada, not a terrible drive from her West Highland triplex. I found a spot on the street and backed in, marveling at my parallel parking skills despite two consecutive sleepless nights.

  Her office door opened into her waiting room. It was decorated in calming shades of mauve and lavender, with Rorschach-blot artwork on the walls and not-too-comfy chairs ringing the perimeter. Near the inner door, Shannon was making small talk with a woman in sweats. Shannon saw me and waved; the woman smiled at me on her way out.

  “I can’t help it,” I murmured. Shannon quirked an eyebrow at me while she grabbed her things: tote bag, coat, purse. “Whenever I see one of your patients,” I continued with a sly grin, “I can’t help but wonder what they’re here for.”

  She rolled her eyes and shoved the tote bag at me while she shrugged on her coat. “Did you eat?” she asked, and then looked more closely at me. “Wow, you look like hell. Didn’t you sleep last night?”

  “No, and not really,” I answered, holding open the door for her.

  She paused. “Should I drive, then?”

  “Again, no,” I said. “You hate driving in the mountains. I got a few hours of sleep – enough to get us there and back in one piece.”

  “Okay,” she said, drawing out the first syllable as she locked the door behind us. “But if you start hugging the shoulder, I’m taking the wheel.”

  “What’s in the tote?” I asked as I fired up the car.

  “Clothes,” she said. “I forgot to tell you, we’re supposed to wear loose but modest clothing. I brought a long cotton skirt and a t-shirt for each of us.”

  “Fashionable,” I said. “Is there anything else I need to know about the upcoming end of the world?”

  “Sneer if you feel you must,” she said with a little tilt of her head, “but when we’ve all achieved a higher level of consciousness, you’ll be singing a different tune.”

  “Which one?”

  She laughed. “I don’t really believe it, either. But wouldn’t it be great if we really did join together into a single global mind?”

  I’m a natural skeptic, but I’m not a jerk. I hated to douse the light of hope in her eyes. So I said, “Only if you’re in charge of deciding what happens next. There aren’t many people I would trust not to screw things up. But you? You, I would trust.”

  “Well, thank you. I would trust you, too.”

  “Oh no,” I said. “You wouldn’t want me in charge. After the shambles I’ve made of my life this week?”

  “Tell me about your dreams,” Shannon said, just like that. I hadn’t mentioned my dreams to her at all, and yet here she was, asking for details. That’s why I want her running the new global hive mind.

  Anyway, I told her – about the dreams, about Brock’s no-show since his proposal, and about my weird walk home the night before. And about my resurfacing memory.

  “You had forgotten all of that?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “Yeah. I guess I just quit thinking about it after we moved to Lafayette. God knows I didn’t want anybody there to realize that I was the buffalo calf girl. I’d had my bellyful of teasing at my old school.”

  “Maybe that’s how that guy knows you,” she said.

  My sleep-deprived brain took a minute to catch up. “The guy who gave you the handbill, you mean?” I thought it over and shook my head. “I’m sure he wasn’t in my class.”

  “Maybe he was connected to the farm somehow.”

  “Dunno. Maybe. I’ll have to do some digging.”

  “Or you could just ask him,” she said. “If he’s there today.”

  “If he’s there, I will definitely do that,” I told her. “Now tell me about all of the wonderful, terrible things that are supposed to happen today.”

  “Well,” she began, “actually, it should have happened already. The point of exact balance was at 4:12 this morning.”

  At 4:12 that morning, or thereabouts, an owl had hooted in my dreams. I mulled that over while she explained briefly about magnetic pole shifts and tsunamis, plasma orbs and crop circles, galactic superwave theory, and the return of Quetzalcoatl.

  “You know, of course,” I said when she stopped for breath, “that nearly every culture has a hero who’s supposed to return to save his people when they need him most.”

  “Of course,” she said. “And if Quetzalcoatl really does come back to help the Mayans, he’s not going to have much use for us usurpers.”

  “A fair point.”

  We were nearly to Boulder by this time. Shannon punched up the GPS on her phone and pointed to an intersection up ahead. “Turn left there.”

  The county road I turned onto began to rise in elevation. We entered a canyon, the road hugging the wall on Shannon’s side of the car. I could see a creek bed to my right, through the naked branches of the aspens. Creek side cottages appeared every so often.

  “Sure would be nice to have one of those,” I said.

  “I’ve thought about it,” she said, “but I’m afraid of getting trapped back here when it snows and not being able to get to work ‘til spring.”

  “I imagine the county plows the road,” I said, and then added, “sometimes.”

  “That’s what worries me,” she said, and then pointed to the right. “Here.”

  “Here?” I looked in disbelief at the two wheel ruts that appeared to go straight up the canyon face.

  “That’s what it says,” she affirmed. “And there’s the sign, so this must be the place.” Next to the road, tied to a tree, was a wooden sign. Burned into it was the logo from the handbill – a buffalo, flanked by bear fetishes on either side. “Can you get up there?”

  I downshifted and said, “Let’s find out.”

  The road was rough, but navigable, and the grade got easier after a few hundred feet. Another few hundred feet ahead, we drove out of evergreen forest into a clearing that seemed to cling to the mountainside: the eastern side of the clearing looked out across the plains, with no comforting guardrail along the edge of the cliff.

  Ahead of us were nestled a couple of buildings, including a tarp-covered igloo shape that I took to be the sweat lodge. In front of the lodge was a fire pit; the blaze was already going and a man sat there, placing large rocks around the perimeter. Farther back was a public restroom or bathhouse. A wickiup stood to one side, so close to the cliff edge that it made me nervous to look at it.

  Two men emerged from the wickiup. Both were tall and broad-shouldered. The older man went hatless, his white hair gleaming in the gathering dusk. He wore fringed buckskin, tunic and pants; a small headpiece decorated with feathers was clipped to his hair at the back of his head. His feet were bare.

  The younger man was in modern dress – jeans and a plaid flannel shirt. A cowboy hat shaded his eyes. He, too, was barefoot.

  “Hello!” Shannon called, getting out of the car. I trailed after her. “I’m Shannon McDonough, and this is my friend, Naomi Witherspoon. You invited us to a sweat for the solstice.” She addressed the last sentence to the younger man, who tipped his hat silently in reply. Something about the guy seemed familiar to me, but I couldn’t get a good look at his face – it was all in shadow under the hat.

  “Welcome,” the old man rumbled. “Thank you for coming. I am Looks Far Guzmán, a medicine man of the White River Ute tribe. This,” he continued, gesturing with one hand, “is my grandson, Joseph Curtis.” The grandson replied with another slight tip of the cowboy hat.

  “Oh, you’re Ute,” Shannon said with a polite smile. “That explains the bears on the invitation. Isn’t the bear sacred to your tribe?”

  I had to give the old man credit; he was more patient with us white girls than I would have been in his place. “That’s right,” he replied. “Many things are sacred to us. Bear is sacred. Buffalo is sacred. Th
is place where we are standing is very sacred. In the old days, before the white man, the Ute roamed throughout Colorado, and in Utah and parts of northern New Mexico. In the winter, we set up camp on the Western Slope, on the other side of the Rockies. But in summer, we ranged far, hunting and gathering and trading with other tribes. These mountains were our home.” Slowly, he looked around us. “We used this cliff top to greet the sun every morning – and,” he said, almost confidentially, “to track the buffalo.” We all turned to gaze out across the plains to the east, dotted now with farms and ranches. Far in the distance, the lights of metropolitan Denver were coming on.

  Then, suddenly, my view shifted. The sun was high overhead, and the vast plain was vacant except for thousands of buffalo, and a handful of men on ponies, chasing them.

  I blinked, hard, several times, and the buffalo – and the sunlight – were gone. I glanced back at the old man, who was staring at me. I couldn’t read his expression. “Thank you for coming,” he said again.

  I nodded, then found my voice. “Thank you for inviting us,” I said. “Some weird things have been happening to me lately. I’m hoping to get some answers today.”

  “I will do my best,” Looks Far said. He glanced then at Shannon. “We are nearly ready to begin. You should change clothes – you will be more comfortable in lighter, looser clothing. Did you bring...?”

  Shannon held up her tote bag and grinned. “We’re all set, Mr. Guzmán. We’ll meet you at the lodge in a few minutes.” I followed her to the short dirt path to the restrooms at the back of the property.

  Before I could tell her about the vision, or whatever it was, that I’d just experienced, she spoke. “It was Joseph,” she said under her breath.

  Befuddled as I was, I drew a blank. “It was Joseph who...?”

  “Gave me the invitation. I didn’t recognize him at first, with his hat pulled down over his face, but it’s him. I wonder why he’s trying to hide from us?”

  We entered the structure. In the back was a wooden enclosure surrounding a pit toilet; I was suddenly grateful for the cold, as it was keeping down the inevitable smell. Attached to the front of the privy enclosure was a sort of tent over a timber frame. Wooden cubbies lined the far wall. “Do you think we’re the only people here?” I asked as we undressed and put our clothing in the cubbies. I’d locked our purses in the car and hoped Shannon had brought me a skirt with pockets, so I could keep the car keys on me.

  “Apparently.” She handed me a white tiered skirt (with pockets, I noted gratefully) and a pale blue t-shirt.

  “Don’t you think that’s odd?” I asked. “Should I leave my underwear on?”

  “Up to you,” she replied, donning a similar ensemble, although her skirt was beige and her t-shirt was green. “I’m gonna ditch my bra, though.”

  “Good idea. But why are we the only ones here?” I persisted.

  She popped her head through the neck opening of the shirt and shrugged. “Maybe no one else is coming. Maybe they couldn’t get off work. Ready?”

  Telling Shannon about the incident just now suddenly seemed less important than getting into that sweat lodge. I finished stuffing my clothes into the cubby. “Sure. Let’s get this over with.”