Slowly, cautiously, Thomas floated nearer to Macky and Darrow land.

He sighed inwardly and thought: One of the slaves or Indians hiding in the great cavern the night Dies Drear died had to be an ancestor of Macky and his brothers. That had been more than a hundred years ago. Probably an Indian, Thomas mused.

He and Mac Darrow stood watching each other. Every now and then a seeping gray flow of mist would come out of nowhere to ride Macky’s shoulders. Then Mac Darrow would appear to be moving.

Wasn’t Macky’s father’s name River? Thomas wondered. Yes, name of River Lewis. And his grandfather was River Swift. One ancestor was River Thames. And one of Macky’s brothers was River Ross. Probably part Indian, at least.

All was still in the woods. Snowflakes, slapping and scraping thinly. And trees, dark and dripping, unmoved by the excitement Thomas felt at seeing Macky up close. The two of them, alone together after so long.

Thomas glided through the snow, not lifting his feet out of it until he had reached the old maple. There he stopped and leaned against the tree trunk. Macky hadn’t moved, being, as he was, at the edge of his family land.

“What are you doing out here?” Thomas called. They were maybe fifteen, twenty feet apart. His voice sounded flat and heavy to him.

“Just … out here,” Macky said. “Huntin’, like I thought you was until I saw you got no gun.”

“Oh,” said Thomas. “Well. Did you catch anything?”

“Guess you didn’t hear what I said before,” Macky said.

“What was that?”

“That this ain’t a day for man nor beast. For huntin’ nothin’.”

“Oh,” Thomas said.

“You can see the trails of them beasts, though,” Macky said. Shyly he looked down and to the side, not quite able to meet Thomas’s gaze. “You want to come over, follow the trails?” Said so softly Thomas almost missed it.

Thomas thought about going over. Oh, he wanted to. But he had to say, finally, “I can’t come over there.”

“Well, you might could, anytime you wanted,” Macky said. “Nobody over here’s gonna stop you. But if you think your daddy would mind ...”

Thomas slid down, his shoulders touching the tree, and sat with his back against the trunk. Thomas knew his papa would mind. Macky’s dad would mind, too.

“You’ll get your britches wet sittin’ in the snow,” Macky said.

“What? Oh, my pants, you mean. I don’t care about any britches!” Thomas said.

Mac Darrow crouched low with his hands folded between his knees. His gun was cradled against his chest. “What you so mad about?” he said.

It was true, Thomas was angry. He didn’t know how to put it into words. “I’m not mad at you,” he said at last.

“At my brothers, though.” Macky studied his hands.

“I didn’t say that,” Thomas said. “But they weren’t too nice, you know. Sneaking around, messin’ up our kitchen …” He remembered it as if it happened yesterday. Food spilled everywhere, spoiling milk. Macky’s big, dumb brothers, entering the house and doing damage. At last he and Macky were talking about it.

Macky nodded, as Thomas listed the devilment the Darrow men had done.

“… sneaking in the house at night through the hidden passage and slapping those triangles on the walls.”

Mac Darrow stared. “What?” he said.

“You know,” Thomas said, “those triangles, like the ones the slaves used to find their direction north. Really a cross reading. Only we found the ones your brothers made and put there, trying to scare somebody. And they’re grown men, too. But we got them back for it.”

Macky studied Thomas for a long time. One minute he looked as if he wanted to apologize for his brothers. The next minute he seemed astonished about something; then, confused. He looked and stared so long Thomas began to get a notion about something. But then he was reminded of something else he wanted to talk about. “Guess what?” he said, “My great-grandmother is coming to live with us. She’s almost ninety.” It sounded friendly, to say that.

Macky must have thought so, too, for he nodded, interested. He got up, saying, “You mind if I come over there? We can follow trails of beasts from over there just as easy.”

“Why do you call them beasts?” Thomas asked as Macky came over.

“Mama calls them beasts. You never met my mama.”

“No. I don’t think I’ve seen her, either, all these months. Have I?” Thomas said. “At church?” It seemed odd now that he hadn’t met her.

“Nope. She’s an invalid,” Macky said. “She stays in bed mostly.”

Thomas tried not to look surprised. He’d never heard of anyone’s mother being an invalid. Maybe if Macky’s mother was eighty years old, she might be one. He would’ve liked to have talked about it right then, but Macky went on.

“My mama likes to tell old-timey stuff,” he said.

“Really?” Thomas said.

“Yeah. Not much else to do when you are lyin’ down, being sick, then gettin’ well over and over.” He sighed. “King beast of the woods is one she tells.”

“One what?” Thomas said.

Macky gazed at him. Serious and burly he was among the trees. He had a smooth, expressionless face. “Just about who in the woods is smartest. It changes,” he said.

“I’ve never heard about anything like that before,” Thomas said.

“It’s old-timey stuff,” Macky repeated. “Mama says, in olden times there was an Indian maiden girl always used to run through here. She had long black braids and a dress made out of buckskin, too.”

Macky crouched down again, a little away from Thomas. He still may have been on Darrow land. But an invisible line was hard to read. Thomas was uneasy without a gun when a Darrow had one.

“Really?” Thomas heard himself saying. “An Indian girl?”

“Well, it’s what Mama says,” Macky said. Then, slyly, he grinned at Thomas. “And the story goes, not one man Indian could catch her. She’d come upon you in here, and like a breeze, she’d blow on by. Time you try to overtake her, she’d be so far ahead couldn’t nobody catch her.”

“She had a head start then,” Thomas said.

Macky pursed his lips. “A young Indian man hid around, watching for her. He saw her and started to race her,” he said. “She looked at him once, and he couldn’t catch her. Others tried, but none ever could catch her.”

“Why couldn’t they?” Thomas asked, getting into the story. “An Indian man was used to running, I bet, and could outrun any woman.”

“You think so? Well, she wasn’t any woman. Turns out she was a ghost.”

Thomas caught his breath. The slow grin spreading across Macky’s face didn’t register. A ghost! he thought. Slave ghosts were said to haunt the “crow” house of Dies Drear, but he’d never seen one. Old Pluto said he had, though. Said he’d even seen Mr. Dies Drear himself. Thomas noticed the silence then. He shivered all at once. “That’s a ghost story,” he managed to say.

“Well, might could be it is,” Macky said mockingly. “It’s what Mama told me.”

“Is an invalid someone who is sick all the time?” Thomas asked. He was asking before he knew he would.

“My mama’s not sick so much,” Macky said. “Mainly it’s how she acts sometimes.” He seemed to ponder this. “She gets out of bed once in a great while, but we never know when.”

“You mean, she won’t get up every day?” Thomas said.

“Maybe two, three times a year,” Mac Darrow said. “ ’Casionally every two months or so.”

“Well, that’s really too bad,” Thomas said. He wasn’t sure what to believe.

“Oh, we don’t mind it much,” Macky said. “Me and Pesty walk Mama down along the highway when she gets up. She likes that.”

“That’s right, she took Pesty in. … How could your mother take care of a baby if she was an invalid?”

Mac Darrow smirked. “She’s not invalid all the time. Just sometimes when she lies down for six months.”

“Well, I never heard of anything like that,” Thomas said. “Pesty never once mentioned it.” It finally came to him that Macky might be putting him on just to be important. “Maybe your mother’s not any invalid,” Thomas said.