Page 1 of The Forest of Lost Souls

ONE

THE PAST IN THE PRESENT

1

HARBINGER

The white mountain lion, an albino female, is rarely seen in this county, though she seems to roam only here. The astonished few who have caught a glimpse of her remember the place, the day, the hour, and the circumstances as vividly and indelibly as they recall any event in their lives. Like others of her species that are of a more common coloration, she mostly sleeps by day and stalks the world in darkness. Whether she appears pale and fluid in a shadowy forest, striding through a meadow at dusk, prowling a ridgeline in little more than starlight, or crossing a highway at night, her eyes like yellow lanterns, she is beautiful and terrifying, a majestic three-hundred-pound predator that inspires awe and terror in the same instant, a kind of sacred love.

She has been seen in a moonlit cemetery, gliding like a spirit among the headstones. She has lazed on the steps of a church in the first radiance of the hidden sun before it rose above the mountains. She has been observed drinking at dusk from the water in the deep lakelet that formed in what was long ago a stone quarry. These sightings and certain others have led some to attribute to her a dire prognostic power. They claim she’s an omen of death because a groundskeeper died of a heart attack a day later in that cemetery, because the minister of the church perished in a rectory fire soon after the lion’s dawn visit, and because two children drowned in the quarrypool less than twenty-four hours after the big cat drank from it. Those who give credence to this superstition call her Azrael, after the angel of death. Of course, people die with regularity whether Azrael appears or not. Perhaps the only death she will truly foretell is her own, when her twenty years are behind her and she retreats to some place deep in the forest, there to lie on the couch of her own everlasting sleep.

2

THE WATCHER IN THE WOODS

For three days, a watcher takes up various positions among the trees. Because he moves only within purple shadows as the traveling sun elongates them, he apparently believes he can’t be seen. When he startles a flock of birds roosting overhead, he must assume their sudden, noisy eruption into flight means nothing to the woman whom he’s observing. Judging by the frequency with which his binoculars reflect sunlight and reveal his position, Vida decides that the watcher is not experienced at surveillance. When he indulges in marijuana, he seems to think she cannot smell it when she’s sitting on her porch, at a distance of perhaps forty yards. However, her senses have not been dulled by the riotous mélange of odors common to places that are said to be more civilized than this rustic realm.

Although city-born, she’s been gone from that place for twenty-three years. The metropolis is a memory so faded that it seems to have been no more than a dream.

She has long been of the land. She’s been formed by the truths of the wilderness, by the wonder and the myths that nature inspires, by hard experience, by love and loss, by the prophecy of a traveling seer in a white robe and yellow sneakers.

The watcher among the trees does not worry her. The forest is hers not just by day but also by night, when the moon is herlamp whether it has risen or not. She knows most of the paths, and when she does not know the way, the children of the forest will lead her where she needs to go, in safety. Sooner or later, the watcher will come to her with a confidence that he will learn is misplaced.

3

SHE

In Vida’s dreams, the forest goes on forever. If in reality it has limits, it is nonetheless so vast that a full and happy life can be lived within its columned chambers and in the open meadows that it encircles. Among the inhabitants of the forest are mountain lions and bears, which are to be feared, although they are less dangerous than some human beings. As for wolves, she fears them not at all.

Her five-room home is of native stone and timbers, with a slate roof. It was built seventy years earlier under the supervision of her uncle Ogden. The house stands in the foothills and backs up to the woods. The front porch faces a meadow fifty yards in diameter. Great mountains loom on three sides; on the fourth, the descending phalanxes of trees are little thinned by the valley where, at the moment, a still mist lies like a frozen river.

Throughout the residence, the floors are red-brown waxed concrete. Walls paneled in golden pine have been shellacked to a soft gloss. Although the bedroom is small, it is large enough. The eat-in kitchen is a generous space, likewise the bathroom and the library with its hundreds of books. Her workshop, where she cuts gemstonesen cabochonand polishes them to perfection, is slightly larger than the room in which she sleeps.

The property lies remote, beyond the service of all public utilities. Propane provides gas for cooking and fuels a generator.A deep well issues a sparkling flow as pure as the headwaters of Eden.

Uncle Ogden didn’t want a phone. After he died at the age of eighty-five, ten years ago, Vida installed a satellite dish on the roof and, through it, obtained cell service. She hasn’t made more than ten calls a year since then, mostly to arrange appointments with a doctor and dentist in the nearest town, which is more than nineteen miles away.

Although homeschooled, she’s never used a computer other than the one in her phone. What she knows of social media appalls her. She has no need to stream anything. A turntable linked to quality speakers summons music from her uncle’s collection of vinyl records. Otherwise, her entertainment needs are provided by books and nature.

Should she wish to assess the current condition of the world beyond these woods, she has a radio. She rarely turns it on. Because she has lived her life in pleasant seclusion, she has never been subjected to the tide of misinformation and fearmongering that seems to be the news as the authorities shape it; therefore, she recognizes agitprop for what it is.

This Monday morning in May, as she prepares breakfast, she listens to Arthur Rubinstein’s recording, with the Guarneri Quartet, of the Brahms Quintet for Piano and Strings in F Minor, opus 34. As always, this music moves her, though not to tears as it did in her youth. She is now twenty-eight.

Somehow, the music evokes from the humble kitchen a grand sense of place. The morning light shimmering in polished pine cabinetry; the black-and-white two-inch ceramic tiles that checkerboard the countertops; the O’Keefe and Merritt six-burner three-oven stove from 1949; the Philco refrigerator of similarvintage: Everything speaks of dependability, of an age when proud manufacturers could not have conceived of a policy of planned obsolescence, when often the consumer was knowledgeable enough to repair most appliances. The kitchen is a timeless space in a world where time erodes all else.

Having learned much from her uncle, Vida has, since his death, replaced the compressor, condenser fan, and evaporator fan in the refrigerator, and has maintained all the systems on the property.

After eating breakfast and washing the dishes, she threads a supple leather holster onto her belt and inserts a can of bear spray in it. She has firearms but never carries them on her placer-mining expeditions.

Burdened with only a cooler that contains flexible cold packs and two bottles of water and a protein bar, she leaves by the front door and engages both deadbolts. The back door is likewise secured.

The metal casement windows feature pairs of twelve-inch panes with a sturdy center post. Even if the glass is broken out, neither pane is wide enough to admit anyone above the age of five.

There is a basement where she stores canned goods and freeze-dried food in vacuum drums. The lower realm has no window or exterior door; the only entrance is from inside the residence.

Behind and to the north of the house stands a smaller building of stone. It contains a backhoe, a riding lawn mower, a workbench, an extensive collection of tools, the generator, and racks of spare propane tanks.

Included is a stall for her midnight-blue 1950 Ford F-1 pickup. Thirty-two years ago, her uncle added rack-and-pinionsteering and replaced the engine. The vehicle is a workhorse and a beauty.

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