“It’s just those kids going off alone, with all those spirits inside them, all of those manitous. That really scares me. What do you think I felt like this morning, giving Toby his lunch and wondering if he wasn’t even my son at all, but some kind of ghost out of the past? I’m just standing there doing something really normal, like making sandwiches, and for all I know he might go off on that trip and never come back.”

Harry laid a hand on his shoulder. “Stop feeling so guilty, will you? It’s not your fault this has happened, even if it was your ancestor who led Misquamacus here. I mean—what control could you have possibly had over that? There’s nothing we can do until the medicine men show themselves. We can’t kill the children; we can’t even take them away from here. Apart from the fact that Misquamacus would prevent us, the police would probably arrest us for kidnapping, and we wouldn’t do anybody any good sitting in the Sonoma County pokey.”

Neil released the brake, and drove the pickup out of the Bodega school yard without saying another word. He didn’t even look back in his rearview mirror to see Toby and his classmates being ushered by Mrs. Novato onto the bus. Harry turned around in his seat, and saw how solemn and unsmiling the children were, and a sensation of sick tension began to rise in his stomach. He knew just what Neil meant about a storm brewing. It could have been the unusual humidity, or the soft but uncomfortable wind. But it could have been the beginning of the day of the dark stars, too.

*

They met John Singing Rock at the bus station. He was fifty years old, his face creased with the soft crisscross wrinkles of a South Dakota Indian, but his eyes were sharp and bright, and he walked across the concrete parking lot to greet them with the tensile step of a man twenty years younger. The last time Harry had seen him, his hair had been short and swept back with brilliantine, and he had worn a creaseless mohair suit. But modern trends had obviously blown with the winds across the plains of mid-America, because his hair was longer now and kept in place with Gillette Dry Look, and he wore a camel-colored sport coat and bright red slacks.

He set down his suitcase on the concrete and held out his arms. Harry embraced him, saying nothing, and for a moment they stood there close, while the other bus passengers looked at them with curiosity.

Harry stood back, still holding Singing Rock’s hand. “You look like you’ve been shopping at Gucci,” he grinned. “And what’s this with the hair?”

Singing Rock touched his graying sidepieces. “I had to give up that greasy kid’s stuff,” he said. “It kept leaving marks on my tepee.”