He hurried after Anna and Tag, who had started back down the trail. He slanted a glance at the sky. They would stay another hour, he decided. He wanted to get them away from this place before the scent grew much stronger.

C H A P T E R

5

A quarter mile along the trail they came upon a sign that read Here there be Music. Charles was becoming quite fond of the signs scattered around the settlement with abandon. He wondered if the sign maker had intended a large-scale pun on the name of the town.

Here there be signs, thought Brother Wolf with amused agreement. Signs in the Wild.

Brother Wolf had not spoken to him in words before they had found Anna. He was pretty sure it was because Brother Wolf didn’t trust Anna to read the images he’d used to communicate with Charles.

Our da always regretted he didn’t take the time to learn our mother’s tongue, Brother Wolf told him unexpectedly. He always wondered what stories she would have told him, what thoughts of hers he will never know. If he could have talked her out of dying had he been able to argue with her more effectively. I chose not to make the same mistake.

Charles wondered how Brother Wolf knew that, because he was sure his da had never said so much in his hearing. Not that he remembered, anyway.

Given the sign, Charles wasn’t entirely surprised when the trail dropped through a copse of trees and ended in an amphitheater. Most of the basin was natural, a trick of the regional geology that backed the flat clearing with stone cliff faces to reflect sound on three sides.

But it wasn’t untouched by human hands. Nature had never gathered all of the seat-sized boulders into a circle. They weren’t large boulders; a strong human could have rolled them, or they could have used the four-wheeler he’d seen signs of. He wondered absently if they’d taken the machine with them or if it was somewhere around here, hidden in the forest, even as he registered that some of those stones had been there much longer than three years. Had Leah’s people moved them? Had there been a Native tribe here at one time?

The tree stumps had been moved here during the time of Wild Sign, though; he could tell by the chain saw marks. The stumps had been used to fill in the gaps between rocks, as well as to form the bottom half of the arrangement, so there was a full circle of crude seating. Wild Sign folk, at least, had not used the area to perform before an audience; they’d used it to perform for themselves.

The amphitheater alone would have been interesting enough for Tag to bring them here. But he’d had a better reason—Charles understood why he’d wanted them to see it rather than explaining. The impact was startling.