The longer she stared at it, the blacker it became, black and ruffled like a monstrous bird. She knew that there was nothing there. How could a giant raven be flying over her bed? Yet, she was sure that she could see it rising and falling and constantly altering its appearance, and she began to feel a chilly dread of what it was going to do to her.
She carefully reached out with one hand toward the nightstand. She found the cable that led to her bedside lamp and tried to locate the switch. Up above her the dark shape spread wider until it was covering almost the entire ceiling.
She found the switch, and she was just about to turn on the light when the shapedroppedon her with a rush of feathers and freezing-cold wind. She cried out"Aaahh!"and threw up her hands to protect her face, knocking the lamp onto the floor.
She waited. Silence. She opened her eyes and gradually lowered her hands. The bedside clock said 2:57. The room was still dark, but she could sense that there was nothing there. She climbed out of bed and groped her way over to the main light switch. When she turned it on, she saw that her sheets were violently twisted, as if she had been fighting, and that the red pottery lamp was broken into three large pieces. David had brought her that lamp from San Francisco.
She went to the bathroom for a drink of water and stared at herself in the mirror. She hadn't noticed before, but she was beginning to get dark circles under her eyes, as if she were ill or very tired.
She was still standing there when Daisy appeared.
"Mommy? I heard something."
She tried to smile. "That was only me. I was having a bad dream just like you did."
"It wasn't you."
Holly turned around and put her hands on Daisy's shoulders. "There's nobody else here, pumpkin. I promise you."
"It wasn'tinside. It wasoutside,tapping at my window."
"Honey, we're three stories up. Nothing can tap against your window."
"It sounded like a bird."
"A bird? How do you know?"
"I could hear its wings. It was tapping against the window with its beak and it was flapping its wings too."
Holly said nothing but bent forward and kissed the top of Daisy's head.
"It was a bird," Daisy insisted. "It was a bird and it was trying to get in."
Mirror Lake
They reached the cabin at Mirror Lake just before noon. The water was so still that it reflected a perfect upside-down world with dark sawtooth pines and scatterings of red-and-yellow maple leaves. The cabin itself was painted a rusty red, with a gray shingle roof and a veranda running the length of it. It stood on a small promontory on the southeastern side of the lake, next to a sagging wooden jetty where an old green rowboat was tied up.
Doug climbed out of the Voyager and stretched. He was wearing a logger's jacket in orange and brown check, with a lamb's-wool collar and a cap to match. "Smell that ozone!Haaahh!Smell that pine!Haaahhh!"
Katie wore a bulky maroon sweater with elks on it and a knitted hat pulled down low over her forehead, so that she looked like an affluent bag lady. "I thought Ned would be here by now. He only had to drive up from Government Camp. I hope he'scoming."
Holly walked to the very edge of the lake. She was wearing black: a black windcheater with a fur hood, black jeans, and black leather boots. Although her world was always silent, she could almostfeelthe silence here. Beyond the lake, above the treeline, Mount Hood loomed, only three and a half miles away, ghostly and grand.
This close, the mountain's gravity was overwhelming, even though its whiteness made it almost invisible. She felt as if it were pulling her toward her destiny with a greater force than ever before.
"What do you think?" asked Doug, joining her at the lakeside.
"It's beautiful. So peaceful."
"You should be here when the geese are mating. It's like a traffic snarl."
Katie called, "Are you going to give me a hand with the shopping, Doug?"
"Sure thing. Did you remember the pickles?"
"I sure did. I bought some of those Rocotillo peppers you like too."
Doug was silent for a moment, and then he said, "My grandfather built this place. He used to say that you could stand by this lake and talk to God."
They carried their bags into the cabin. It was chilly inside, and musty, but as soon as he had taken his case to his bedroom, Doug took the fire screen away from the gray stone hearth and started to build a fire. Katie led Holly through to a small bedroom at the back, with pine furniture, a hand-sewn quilt on the bed, and a view of an overgrown yard, with bracken and rusty-colored ragwort.
On the wall hung a small oil painting of a woman standing in a field. She was wearing a blue apron and a bemused smile, as if she couldn't understand why anybody would think that she was interesting enough to paint. Not far away from her, perched on a single fence post, was a large black bird with ruffled feathers.
Holly went through to the kitchen, where Katie was unpacking the shopping. "We'll go down to Lyman's Hotel for lunch; you'll love it. But this evening I'm going to cook my famouschuletas veracruzana."
In the living room, Doug had already got a good fire crackling. The living room had a high ceiling with exposed rafters and was furnished with big, comfortable couches upholstered in flowery chintz. The rafters were hung with copper pots and pans, and all around the walls there were glass cases containing stuffed fish: salmon, trout, steelhead, and sturgeon.
"My grandfather was mad for fishing," said Doug. "See that baby at the far end? That sturgeon? That weighed nearly fifty pounds."
Suddenly he lifted his finger. "That'll be Ned."
He opened the front door and Holly saw a bronze Land Cruiser parked next to Doug's Voyager. Katie came out of the kitchen and said, "You're going to like this guy, I promise you."
"What did I say?" Holly retorted. "No matchmaking, if you don't mind."
"How about a beer? Come on, I know it's a little early, but this is our weekend off."
"Sure, I'll have a beer."
Doug came back into the cabin, closely followed by Ned.Well,thought Holly,at least he isn't a short, pudgy guy with a comb-over.In fact he was tall and broad-shouldered, with wavy reddish-blond hair and clear caramel-colored eyes and a square, suntanned face that put Holly in mind of Robert Redford but thirty years younger and with a much thicker neck. He was wearing a navy sports coat, a blue-checkered shirt, and Armani jeans.
"Holly, this is Ned Fiedler. Ned, I'd like you to meet Holly."
Ned nodded and grinned. Then he made both of his hands into Y shapes and made a pulling-apart gesture, after which he pointed directly at Holly and made a circular gesture over his head.
Holly smiled. "I'm sorry I lip-read but I don't sign. Signing has a totally different grammar, and I never needed to learn it."
Ned flushed. He looked helplessly at Doug and said, "What do I do now?"
"Youtalk,that's all," said Holly. "So long as I can see your lips, I can tell what you're saying. And thanks for trying to learn some ASL . That was very considerate of you."
"Was I any good at it?"
"Well, I think you just about managed to say 'How you, big hat?'"