He sought out the next blue blaze. There were countless stone surfaces along the Billy Goat Trail, but none etched with mason’s marks. The photo he’d seen at Kelsey’s studio showed the mark on a stone block, but blocks served no purpose along this high route. The trail descended to cross a drainage that emptied into a small cove, then quickly climbed back up a wall of rocks on other side.

When the trail and the river began to curve out of Mather Gorge, he reached a sign post. Beside it was a spur trail through the woods that the sign said was a shortcut back to the towpath. Thinking the less-traveled paths held more promise, he followed the spur, which wound past boulders and a dark, translucent pool before meeting the towpath near the upper end of Widewater. Towering sycamores mocked him across the water from the Maryland berm. He turned left onto the towpath, looping back toward Great Falls.

What am I doing, he wondered? Circling time-worn paths along the river and the canal, searching for a mason’s mark and a trinity of sycamores. An old photo and a dried-out note were the two fragile threads tethering his search to the real world. “In your search for me you may find the truth.” Maybe the truth awaiting him had nothing to do with Lee Fisher’s fate, or with the money, the killers, or the dead. Maybe his vulnerability was the truth, and maybe Emmert Reed’s albino mule was really an albino whale. Yet he knew that walking away would extinguish a mystery and curl up a hidden dimension of the world.

The towpath crossed a bridge over a small cove that bit into Bear Island, its head sealed by a wall of mildewed, block-shaped stones. He stopped to look at the wall and wonder why it was there. If the ground behind it was higher than the water, the wall would serve no purpose. If it was lower, the wall would prevent the canal from draining into a depression on Bear Island. But the canal could easily fill a swampy depression and then recover its desired level; the wall still wouldn’t be needed.

Unless it was more than a depression behind the wall. Maybe it was a drainage. He remembered the drainage he’d just crossed on the Billy Goat Trail, shortly before climbing to the spur trail. Maybe the wall blocked a draw that ran all the way to the river. In that case it might be there to prevent the canal’s exsanguination. He crossed the remainder of the bridge and found an entry point into the woods.

Working a diagonal, he aimed for the opposite side of the stone wall. He ascended a mound through dry foliage and found an oblong pond on its far side. Just past the head of the pond to his left, the ground rose to the back side of the wall. To his right, the tail of the pond was obscured by scraggly trees where the shoulders of the drainage drew together. The gentle grade before him was covered with matted brown grass and the truncated spears of trees felled by beavers. But no water was flowing, so while beavers had been active here, the pond wasn’t their work. He circled toward the head of the pond and picked through a tangle of vines and branches.

The stone wall was about his own height, and he walked along it examining its stones. The faces were too flat and the edges too straight to be natural. Since there were no meaningful gaps between them, the stones must have been cut by masons to make the wall watertight. No marks were etched on their faces. The path to the far side of the pond was blocked by imposing boulders, so he retraced his steps across the grassy slope. The tail of the pond was bordered by a thicket of saplings sprouting from the steep banks on both sides. Broken shadows loomed inside the thicket, extending into the water and leaving only a slice of pond visible between them.

He followed the crest along the side of the pond and down past the thicket that held the shadowed forms. Their backs faced south and were brightly lit – two old stone walls, screened by the tangle of brush. Seven feet high with flat faces, straight edges, and a body-length gap between them. The walls merged with the shoulders of the drainage. He pursed his lips and whistled softly. It was a stop-gate.

Why here? He glanced at the tail of the pond, which meandered left around a bend with the drainage, and grasped the stop-gate’s purpose. Not to keep the canal’s water in, but to keep the river out. If this drainage led all the way to the river, then it was also a backdoor to Widewater during floods. A path for the river to reclaim its severed finger.

He picked his way along the bank toward the near wall and his eyes settled on a waist-high block on its right edge. Amidst white and green lichen, an eroded symbol was carved on its face. Kelsey Ainge’s mason’s mark! He felt compelled to touch it, but it was out over water of unknown depth. He pushed through saplings to the wall and found a foothold on its face. Cracks and bumps served as handholds, and he was able to edge out far enough to trace the mark's outline with his fingers.

Vines and moss were sprouting from cracks between the stones as the woods slowly engulfed the stop-gate. Looking across at the opposite wall, he saw two saplings growing in dirt that had accumulated on its scalp. His fingers stiffened, so he shifted back and dismounted from the wall. Retreating for a broader view, he noticed that the near wall was also lidded by a layer of dirt, moss, and dead vines. No trees, but three pale sticks visible through the vines. They were vertical and aligned, which seemed odd.

He climbed the slope and beat his way down through the thicket toward the top of the wall. The pale sticks were crosses, planted in the shallow dirt near the far edge, above the stone with the mason’s mark. He stepped carefully onto the top of the wall and knelt in front of them. The crosses were made from broken sycamore branches stripped of bark and lashed with twine, and each was annotated with black ink. The shaft of the nearest cross bore a single word, two letters above the arm and two below:

t

h

e

n

The second cross had writing on both its arm and shaft. Vin didn’t recognize the name.

1

9

Miles Robin Garrett

7

2

The third cross bore a single word, or perhaps two, written on the shaft above and below the arm:

s

o

o

n

How soon, and what? The ink was still dark and the crosses were planted too lightly to remain upright for long. Planted for him, he felt certain. He uprooted them one at a time. The buried ends had been carved into rough points and the top ends were broken to form sticks of the desired lengths. They felt dense and heavy, not long dead.

Who was Miles Robin Garrett and what happened to him in 1972? The year resonated for a reason Vin couldn’t place. If the words referred to a sequence in time, how long ago was “then”? And how far away was "soon"?

With the crosses in one hand, he retreated up the shoulder from the top of the wall, climbing through the thicket. A penetrating chill struck and he felt the presence of someone or something watching. Heart pounding, he flashed a glance toward the head of the pond. A light breeze pushed a fleet of ripples toward him. He swiveled toward the legion of tall boulders guarding the far side of the pond, but saw no sign of the presence he’d sensed.

As he turned back to the slope, his foot hooked the root of a vine and he went sprawling. Left hand still holding the crosses, he extended his arms to break his fall. His elbows hit first, followed by a snapping noise and a sharp pain in his hip as his knees, chest, and face collided with the hillside.

“Shit!” He released the crosses and pushed himself to his feet, then brushed the dirt and grass from his face and hands and assessed the damage. His hands were dirty but uncut. He swept debris from his sleeves and the knees of his jeans as a stinging pain arose in his left hip; he pulled up his jacket to find its source. A finger-length gouge was turning from white to red and beginning to bleed freely. Raising his arms must have exposed the skin, he thought, and his hip must have fallen on one of the carved ends of the crosses. He pulled a folded bandanna from his pocket, moistened it with saliva, and drew it gently over the wound to clear the dirt and blood. It’s a large scrape, but superficial, he thought after cleaning it to get a better look. He pressed the bandanna to the cut and tightened his belt to keep it in place.