`Oh, please!' Nest moaned.
`Sure, it's easy for you to go off to your big school and your other life, but words like "commitment" and "responsibility" mean something to some of us: He stamped hard on the picnic table. `I thought the least you could do was to spend some time with me this weekend, this one solitary weekend in the whole of this autumn that you've chosen to come home! But no, I haven't seen you for five minutes, have I? And now, today, what do you do? Go off with that Keppler boy instead of looking for me! I could have gone to the graves with you, you know. I would have liked to go, as a matter of fact. Your grandmother was my friend, too, and I don't forget my friends…. He trailed off meaningfully.
`Unlike some people,' she finished for him.
`I wasn't going to say that'
'Oh, not for a minute: She sighed. Robert came by to apologise for his behaviour last spring at the funeral'
`Oh, that. Criminy' Pick knew right away. They might fight like cats and dogs, but they confided in each other anyway.
`So I had to spend a little time with him, and I didn't think it would hurt if we walked over to the cemetery. I was saving the rest of the day to work with you, all right? Now stop complaining'
He held up his twiggy hands. `Too late. Way too late'
`To stop complaining?'
`No! To do any work!'
She hunched down so that her face was close to his. It was a little like facing down a beetle. 'What are you talking about? It isn't even noon. I don't have to go back until tonight. Why is it too late?'
He folded his stick arms across his narrow chest, scrunched up his face, and looked off into the park. She always wondered how he could make his features move like that when they were made out of wood, but since he had a tendency to regard such questions as some sort of invasion of his personal life, she'd never had the courage to ask. She waited patiently as he sighed and fussed and littered about.
`There's someone here to see you,' he announced finally.
`Who?'
`Well, I think you had better see for yourself'
She studied him a moment. He refused to meet her eyes, and a cold feeling seeped through her. *Someone from before?' she asked quietly. `From when my father… ?'
`No, no!' He held up his hands, quickly to calm her fears. `No one you've met before. No one from then. But …' He stopped. `I can't tell you who it is without getting myself in deeper than I care to go. I've thought about it, and it will be better if you just come with me and ask your questions there:
She nodded. Ask my questions where?'
`Down by the bayou below the deep woods. She's waiting there'
She. Nest frowned. `Well, when did she get here?'
'Early this morning: Pick sighed. `I just wish these things wouldn't happen so suddenly, that's all. I just wish I'd be given a little notice beforehand. It's hard enough doing my job without these constant interruptions:
`Well, maybe it won't take long,' she offered, trying to ease his obvious distress. `If it doesn't, we can still get some work done in the park before I have to go back:
He didn't even argue the point. His anger was deflated, his fire burned to ash. He just stared off at nothing and nodded.
Nest straightened. `Pick, it's a beautiful October morning, filled with sunshine. The park has never looked better. I haven't seen a single feeder, so the magic is in some sort of balance. You've done your job well, even without my help. Enjoy yourself for five minutes:
She reached over, plucked him off the tabletop, and set him on her shoulder. `Come on, let's take a walk over to the deep woods'
Without waiting for an answer, she rose and headed for the hedgerow pushing through the thin branches into the park. Sunshine streamed down out of a cloudless sky, filling the morning air with the pale, washed–out light peculiar to late autumn. There was a nip in the air, a hint of winter on the rise, but there was also the scent of dried leaves and cut grass mingling with the pungent smells of cooking that wafted out of barbecue grills and kitchen vents from the houses bordering the park. Cars dotted the parking lots and turnoffs beneath the trees, and families were setting out picnic lunches and running with dogs and throwing Frisbees across the grassy play areas ahead.
On such days, she thought to herself with a smile, she could almost imagine she would never leave.
`Pick, if we don't get back to it today, I'll come home again next weekend,' she announced impulsively. `I know I haven't been as good about working with you as I should. I've let other things get in the way, and I shouldn't do that. This is more important:
He rode her shoulder in silence, apparently not ready to be mollified. She glanced down at him covertly. He didn't seem angry.
He just seemed distant, as if he were looking beyond her words to something else.
She traversed the central open space to the parking lot serving the ball diamonds and play areas at the far end of the park, crossed the road, and entered the woods. The toboggan slide stood waiting for winter, the last sections of the wooden chute and the ladder that allowed access to the loading platform still in storage, removed and locked away as a safeguard against kids' climbing on and falling off before the snows came‑It never seemed to help much, of course. Kids climbed anything that had footholds whether it was intended for that purpose or not, and the absence of stairs just made the challenge that much more attractive. Nest smiled faintly. She had done it herself more times than she could count. But she supposed that one day some kid would fall off and the parents would sue and that would be the end of it; the slide would come down.
She walked through the hilly woods that marked the beginning of the eastern end of the park, alone now with Pick, wrapped in the silence of the big hardwoods. The trees rose barelimbed and skeletal against the autumn sky, stripped of their leaves, waiting for winters approach. Their colours not yet completely faded, the fallen leaves formed a thick carpet on the ground, still damp and soft with morning dew. She peered ahead into the tangled clutter of limbs and scrub and shadow. The forest had a bristling, hostile appearance. Everything looked as if it were wrapped in barbed wire.
Her long strides covered the ground rapidly as she descended to the creek that wound out of the woods and emptied into the bayou. How much bigger the park had seemed when she was a child growing up in it. Sometimes her home felt the same way too small for her now. She supposed it was true of her child's world entirely, that she had outgrown it, that she needed more room.
`How much farther?' she asked as she crossed the wooden bridge that spanned the creek bed, and started up the slope toward the deep woods.
`Bear right,' he grunted.
She angled toward the bayou, following the tree line. She glanced involuntarily toward the deep woods, just as she always did, any time she came here, remembering what had taken place there five years earlier. Sometimes she could see it all quite clearly, could see her father and John Ross and the maentwrog. Sometimes she could even see Wraith.
`Has there been any sign of him?' she asked suddenly, the words escaping from her mouth before she could think better of them.
Pick understood what she was talking about. `Nothing. Not since. .
Not since she turned eighteen two summers ago, she finished as he trailed off. That was the last time either of them had seen Wraith. After so many years of having him around, it seemed impossible that he could be gone. Her father had created the giant ghost wolf out of his dark magic to serve as a protector for the daughter he intended one day to return for. Wraith was to keep her safe while she grew. All the time she had worked with Pick to keep the magic in balance and the feeders from luring children into the park, Wraith had warded her. But Gran had discerned Wraith's true purpose and altered his makeup with her own magic in such a way that when Nest's father returned to claim her, Wraith destroyed him.