Sitting on a footbridge that arched across a rushing creek, her little girl legs dangling over the side as she gazed down at the cold water rushing below.
I moved toward her, following a fern-choked path through old redwoods, but Circe Whistler didn’t notice me.
Of course, the sounds I made were hardly sounds at all, and what the little girl would have heard had she been listening was masked by the hollow sigh of clear creek water flowing to the sea.
Silent as an evening breeze, I stepped onto the bridge.
“I always keep my promises,” I said.
Circe looked up with startled blue eyes that were as clear as the October sky.
A smile bloomed on her face. “I’m glad you came back,” she said.
“So am I.”
I sat down next to her, and Circe looked into my eyes. She saw nothing there to make her wary or afraid. But she was afraid of questions, questions she had to ask.
Questions are never good. She said, “Did you find out-”
“The truth?”
She nodded.
“Yes, I did,” I said. “Later, I’ll tell you everything.”
“Promise?”
“I promise,” I said.
We sat in silence, in shadows beneath heavy redwood bowers. Somewhere above the sun was rising, but we could not see it, and we could not feel its warmth.
“Look!” I said.
A steelhead shot through the water like a bullet, fighting the current every inch of the way. A flash of scale like living sunshine, a splash of the steelhead’s dark and powerful tail, and then it was gone.
I stared down at the dark water, rushing so fast, and at the shadows that waited there.
The shadows didn’t move at all.
I drew the K-bar from behind my back.
The knife wasn’t what it had been. I knew that.
Maybe now it was something different.
My fingers parted. The blade started down.
Gleaming like a steelhead swimming upstream to die.
The K-bar sliced through the shadows without the slightest splash, and then it was gone.
The water gleamed like silver.
“Will you stay with me?” Circe asked.
“I’ll stay.”
The creek whispered below, the soothing sound of water rushing to the sea.
Circe reached out and took my hand.