More Than Magic

Chapter Two-1

Chapter Two

About a quarter of a way into the mountains, Nick had to admit that Matt was right—he hadn’t really looked at trees in a long while. And he’d never seen anything quite like the colorful show these mountains put on. But as Matt had also said, a bit further up and this season’s show was over: the trees were bare.

And Nick could see how easy it could be to get lost up here, especially after dark. It wasn’t exactly foggy, but the signs pointing the way seemed to blur and fade as his lights hit them, and shadows nearly obscured the entrance to the place where he was staying. Everything seemed a bit hazy. Even the rock and wood sign proclaiming Woodruff Herb Farm & Cabins, brightly lit and well-kept, seemed to blend into the surrounding vegetation as if it had grown there. He had to concentrate to see the stone posts that graced either side of the entryway.

Maybe the flight and the drive up from Asheville had taken more out of him than he realized. This last bit, up a blacktop road barely qualified to be called one, with hairpins and drop offs that would likely take your breath in the light of day, had squeezed out his last bit of adrenaline, and he had been running on reserves for a long while.

He drove up next to the post on the left where the rental agent down in Asheville said the keypad was mounted and rolled down the window of his SUV. There was a tremendous crack somewhere in the trees, followed by a crash and a cascade of noisy echoes. At least his reflexes were solid. His hand had moved smoothly under his jacket before he realized it must have been something falling out there in the woods—something large falling out there in the woods. Now it was completely silent once more.

Shaking his head, he entered the code the realtor had given him into the keypad. The gate, sitting back from the road in the shadows, swung open quietly. No doubt somewhere up there some kind of alarm had just gone off. Taking a deep breath of the moist air, he drove through.

In addition to warning him that he would find it hard to see the signs for Woodruff Farm and likely get lost up on the mountain because “everyone else did”, the locals at the Trailhead Tavern back in town had filled him in a bit. They were more than happy to tell him about how sinful it was that he had missed the great whitewater rafting and the peak fall color up here, in addition to the fabulous cooking of someone named Ouida up at the farm.

They also told him things he already knew from his research. Logan Woodruff, locally known as “The Woodsman”, was a brilliant botanist and the owner of the farm. He’d passed away only a few months ago. His granddaughter, Grace Woodruff, had inherited the place—actually the entire mountain.

Then there were those that spoke of Ouida’s cooking and said it was famous because of the herbs she used, the ones “Miss Grace” had been cultivating up there for retail and wholesale trade until she shut down production last month.

The owner of the tavern, who apparently was also the cook, had proceeded to prove it to Nick by serving him mountain trout “pulled right out of the river today” that tasted better than anything he’d had in quite a long time. Perhaps it was the air up here. But the waitress insisted that it was the herbs—Woodruff Herbs.

That had set off a debate at the next table about why Miss Grace had shut down production. Nick had managed to glean from the multiple conversations around him that this was evidently sacrilege to some of the old-timers.

They’d said that her great-great-grandfather had built his fortune on those herbs and on the Woodruff reputation for purity and efficacy. Some folks even attributed magical qualities to the stuff. The Woodruff label on a bottle meant something.

That comment had brought raucous laughter from some parts of the room, and comments about whether the fortune had been built on sang or shine.

At that point, Nick had wondered if he should’ve taken Matt up on that dictionary. He knew what shine was, but sang had been a verb the last time he checked. Then someone had muttered that maybe Nick was a “Revenuer” and the conversation had turned to other things: how the tourist trade would be during the upcoming season, what or who the Trail would dump on their sidewalk this week, how the ski runs really needed snow this year—and not just that stuff they blew out of those machines neither, and so on. Though some of it piqued his curiosity, none of it had really touched on Nick’s particular interest in these mountains of theirs.

It was apparent to Nick that, just like in any small town, there were some secrets hiding beneath the surface here and clearly not a lot of love for “Revenuers”, but he was pretty sure the folks in that room were just that—folks. The feeling that Matt had always called Nick’s “scum radar” had only pinged once, when a grizzled looking old guy in an ancient Army fatigue jacket paid his bill and left.

Then again, his usually reliable gut instinct had been a bit unpredictable lately.

It was somewhat intriguing that the lingo of the herb trade—diluting and cutting and purity—sounded like something else entirely to his ears. And the locals’ comments on the quality of the Woodruff Herbs were too much like the buzz in Atlanta over Smoky Mountain Magic. Too many coincidences. And he had long ago learned to be suspicious of coincidences.

Even more interesting had been the brief speculation about why his hostess at Woodruff Herb Farm, the mysterious Miss Grace, decided to stop production. And why she had given up “making a doctor”, according to the young thing with a nose ring who took his money at the register. Obviously the cashier didn’t plan for anything to derail her ambitions. She had made it very clear to Nick she was getting out of the mountains as soon as she could, and could not comprehend why anyone who got her M.D. down at Chapel Hill would suddenly shut herself off up in a holler “like some old witchy gammer or hippie freak”.

But so far, the farm didn’t look like a witch’s lair or a hippie hangout. The road was some sort of gravel, but it was nonetheless well kept and smooth, unmarred by potholes. And he could tell the drive was carefully landscaped to look natural but not wildly overgrown. Now that the entry was behind him the only illumination was moonlight slanting through the trees, transforming everything outside of the reach of his headlights to dappled pools of shimmering gray limned with auras of silver.

Nick shook his head and took another deep bracing breath, wishing he had filled his thermos with some of that coffee from the Tavern. It seemed he was going to be driving up this silvered tunnel of trees forever.

Then the road suddenly spilled onto a moonlit meadow, a vast stretch of grass that he was halfway across before he realized how high up he had come from the city onto this mountain. He slammed on the brakes.

Stretching out before him was a sweeping vista: smoke-wreathed ridges of earth and tree marching into the distance, lit here and there with what seemed to be reflections of the vast sweep of stars above his head, like some huge inland sea.

He didn’t remember putting the SUV in park and stepping out, nor walking onto the grassy verge, but some time later he found himself there, a bit damp and chilled, gazing up at the stars burning just out of his reach. There was a crick in his neck and he wondered how long he had been standing like that.

For a moment, looking up, he had the sensation that he was standing on something living and breathing—like some immense creature slumbered beneath the stars, its huge heart beating slowly beneath his feet. He looked down quickly to reassure himself that he was, in fact, standing on the earth.

Letting out a shaky breath, Nick unclenched his hands.

Uttering an expletive in reaction to all this seemed sacrilegious somehow.

When he managed to make his way back to his SUV and clamber in, he realized how much colder it was up here than down in Asheville. Hopefully the cabin he had rented had lots of extra firewood, because he planned on building a nice roaring blaze.

Steadfastly avoiding the view that lay just beyond the silvered meadow around him, he followed the instructions on the stone and wood signposts that directed him to the cabins and toward the lights he could see through the trees on the other side of the meadow.

The locals were wrong. The danger wasn’t in getting lost. The danger was in losing yourself. And strangely, he had the strongest sense that he had been here before, under these stars, on this mountain.

*****

Pooka’s deep warning bark outside the lab door first alerted Grace, then the gate alarm bleated twice, bringing a muttered protest from the chicken house. She glanced at the clock. Good grief. Who on earth would be coming in this late? And using the gate code?

She yanked off her lab coat and hair cover, and grabbed her jacket from the rack. Had she forgotten something? Or someone? It was possible, given her state of mind of late. But just in case, she decided to head for the house to get her shotgun.

Perhaps it was a late delivery, or pickup. She hoped it wasn’t Eddie giving up early on his long-delayed fishing trip. Or Ouida deciding she really couldn’t get along with her younger sister for two weeks. Or a guest for the cabins. Please let it not be that.

She remembered checking to make sure that all the guests on the schedule had been refunded their money and placed elsewhere in the area. But she vaguely remembered an email from the rental agency that handled the cabins earlier this week. She hadn’t read much past the first sentence, which had been the usual plea for her to consider reopening for the holiday season.

Pooka danced around her as she ran toward the house and pulled her cell phone out of her jacket pocket. Blowing out an exasperated breath at her deteriorating mental state, she called the rental agency owner’s cell phone.

“You forgot,” was the amused, if a bit sleepy, response.

Grace’s heart fell. “Okay. My apologies for the late hour, Trish. What did I forget?”

“I knew I should’ve called to confirm again when he came by today to sign everything. You’ve been a bit distracted lately. But then the phone rang—”

“Not your problem, Trish. It’s my fault.” Grace sighed. “Confirm what?”

“You have one guest we couldn’t find a suitable alternative for. And he wouldn’t accept a refund. He even offered to pay you a bonus to make up for the inconvenience. I emailed you on Monday to ask if you’d mind one straggler for a week.”

“And I didn’t answer.”

“So, I assume he’s just come in your front gate.”

“Mmm hmm.”

There was a sigh and a rustle on the other end. “Hold on a sec.”

Grace slowed down and Pooka ran circles around her.

Wonderful, just what she needed. An unexpected guest, and without Ouida around to run interference. All because she couldn’t even manage her email.

“Okay.” Trish came back on the line. “His name’s Nick Crowe. Passed the background check with flying colors.”

“Not one of our regulars?”

“No. But he had lots of great references. Recovering from an illness of some kind. Bringing his own supplies. Willing to cook all his meals for himself up there,” Trish recited patiently. “I’m reading from the email I sent you.”

“But Ouida’s off.” It was a half-hearted excuse. They offered a breakfast buffet every morning in the sunroom and a cookout or special buffet on weekend nights, in addition to selling individual picnic lunches and providing cooking classes featuring the farm’s herbs.

“Willing to cook all his meals for himself.”

“But the reputation of the farm. I mean, the organic—”

“I went through all that with him. He said he wasn’t looking for a health spa.”

“Health spa? Health spa? What, with massage and—and—” Grace sputtered.

“Yeah. Definitely a city guy.”