Page 11 of Crossroads Magic
I braked, and checked in the mirror. Nothing on my ass, which was good. I wouldn’t have to pull off into the soft snow on the side of the road. I put the car into reverse and backed up a hundred yards, and studied the parallel, packed tracks heading off westward-ish.
“That’sit?” Ghaliya said. “That’s what we can’t miss?”
“It’s the only westward turn-off this close to town,” I pointed out. “I guess you just get used to turn-offs that look like this if you live here.” I put on the indicator—pure habit, for there was no one around to care that I was turning—and put the car back into gear. I steered onto the twin tracks and wondered if the hump of untouched snow between them would scrape the bottom of the car. The Ford Focus didn’t have a very high clearance.
For a moment or two, as the car wiggled and the tires fought the steering wheel, I gritted my teeth and wished Ihadrented the four-wheel drive. A big truck with four feet of clearance. That would take a couple hundred dollars to fill, and would go through gas at a gallon a mile or something stupid like that.
Then the wheels settled into the tracks and the car straightened out and my heart calmed a little. “That’s better,” I murmured, carefully steering along the twin tracks.
“Look at all the snow,” Ghaliya said, her head turned to look out her side window. “It goes for miles and miles and it’s all flat and…pretty. It’s actually sparkling in the sun.”
I didn’t dare look away from the track. “Take a photo for me,” I said. “I’ll look at it later.”
I had to assume there was an official road under my tires. Otherwise, we could have been cutting across a farmer’s field, for all I knew. The flat white snow Ghaliya was admiringdidspread out in front of us, the white perfection ruined by the track snaking across it. Ahead, a line of trees began. The track headed directly for them and as I got closer, I could see the track bend to pass between the trees that grew close to either side.
As the car moved between the trees, the light instantly dimmed. The cloudless blue sky disappeared. The trees grew very close to the track.Road, I corrected myself mentally. It wasn’t a track, it was a road. Most of the trees edging it were pine trees of some sort, and they all looked identical.
I realized I was leaning away from my door, as if I was afraid that the trees would scrape it, or punch right through it. As if leaning away from the door would stop that from happening.
“Bit crowded in here…” Ghaliya muttered. She’d stopped munching on the chips.
“But the snow in the middle has dropped down. There doesn’t seem to be as much among the trees, either.” I’d stopped worrying about scraping the snow with the bottom of the car. But my heart was thundering along, anyway.
We sat in tense silence as I carefully steered the car. The track wound and bent. I guessed that the tight curves and bends were to dodge clumps of trees. Which was odd, because most road crews, these days, tended to chop down anything in the way, tear stumps out, cut right through hills, fill up gulleys, and build their roads as straight as possible.
How oldwasthis road? Everything in New York was a lot older than anything in L.A. At least, it felt that way. Was this one of the original trader tracks? Was this a route that someone like Hawkeye fromThe Last of the Mohicanshad travelled? A road that old would bend around trees and other obstructions.
I glanced in the mirror. The open field we’d crossed was long out of view. The winding track also meant that all I could see behind us was more trees.
“You doing okay?” I asked Ghaliya, just to hear the sound of my voice. From the corner of my eye, I saw Ghaliya jump.
She gave a shaky laugh and rolled down the top of the chip bag, in a temporary seal, put it on the back seat and brushed off her fingers. “Looking forward to getting there,” she confessed.
“Me, too.”
I was strongly tempted to turn on the radio, for the normal sound it would create, but didn’t want to take a hand off the steering wheel.
The car rolled on, the back end giving the little wiggles that meant the tires were losing traction. What would happen if they lost all grip? Would we spin out?
I slowed down even further. We were travelling well under the speed limit now. “My soul for a big truck with fat tires with deep treads,” I breathed. “Screw the gas consumption.”
“You’re doing way better than I would on this stuff, Mom.”
I gave her a quick smile. “Thank you.”
A few minutes later, the trees ended. And just ahead were houses, all crowded up along the road we were on.
Next to the closest house was a green road sign.
Haigton Crossing. Population 133.
The sign matched every other road sign we’d seen announcing a town since leaving Syracuse, but here it looked odd and out of place.
Yet I took comfort, seeing it. Someone in authority had put that sign there. Wewereon an official road. And we were in the right place.
“Look for a hotel,” I told Ghaliya. “It has got to be easy to spot,” I added.
“It’s right there,” Ghaliya said, pointing.
