the process.”
Less than two hours later, we pulled off Highway 61 and into a wayside rest stop. The area was dense with white and Norway pine. The smell of tree sap drifted through my open window. I got out and slammed the door behind me. Bees buzzed in the lilac and honeysuckle planted alongside the parking lot, but the air was full of a much bigger sound. In fact, it reverberated as if a freight train were rushing by, or a low-flying airplane. In my mind’s eye, I could picture the black river churning on the rocks, recklessly rushing for the precipice before becoming Copper Falls. If Maighdean Mara didn’t kill us, it would only be because we were already cut to ribbons.
I looked up at Calder, questioning.
“We’re not going to swim over the falls, Lily. Unless, of course, you have a death wish.” He looked down at me. “Don’t answer that.”
“I guess I assumed that was the only way down.”
“If Maighdean Mara exists, all the stories say she lives behind the falls. Not at the top and not in the falling. Besides, check out all the cars. Tourists aren’t really big on witnessing double suicides.”
“Just the sadistic ones,” I said.
“I’m going in from underneath,” he said, “and we’re hiking down.”
Calder took my hand and pulled me toward a brown state park sign that marked a break in the trees and a path that wove down a steep cliff toward the water. Cuts had been made in the side of the hill that were supposed to be steps, but there had been so much erosion over the spring, they were little more than places to catch some traction. I used saplings and pine branches to hold myself from skidding all the way to the bottom.
The sunlit entrance to the path vanished behind me, and the shadow of the woods grew deeper. I stopped midway down and picked up a half-empty pack of cigarettes some careless hiker had dropped. The topsoil slipped below my feet and I stopped again, my ears picking up a high-pitched click. A stick snapping underfoot? I searched the woods but could see no one. Still, the back of my neck prickled. I could swear someone was watching. I started to ask, “Calder, do you—?” but he’d already reached the bottom.
I sidestepped the rest of the way, catching my feet on lichen-covered stones. By the time I reached the rocky shore, my hands were covered in pine sap and embedded with grit and silt. But I couldn’t be bothered to scrub them in the lake.
The scene blew my mind. Above us, the black river hovered at the crest before plunging fearfully to the jagged rocks below. The copper-colored water rolled and thrashed. Enraged, it roared and twisted through the gorge, transforming into a silvery spray that vaporized on the air. At our feet, the water seethed as if it were boiling.
“Makes the hike down look like a wise choice, doesn’t it?” Calder yelled as he crouched at the water’s edge, turning over large, round stones and digging underneath. I watched impatiently as Calder proceeded to excavate the dark rich earth, coating his bare arms.
I would have helped, but I didn’t know what I was looking for. After a while, I sat down on a rock. Minutes turned into an hour of rock turning and muck burrowing. Calder moved several yards away from me, raking through a layer of small stones with his fingers. Then he stopped.
He looked back at me, then at the ground. I watched as he dug his hand into the soft sand and turned over a large stone heavily coated in black silt, but I thought I saw a green glint in the filtered sunlight. He thrust both arms down into the muck, elbow deep. “Holy … I can’t believe it.”
“What is it?”
“No way.” His fingers scraped at the ground, digging a hole in the saturated earth that kept collapsing in on itself, but he kept digging, finally exposing a long handle, decorated with agates and a thick copper wire wound into complicated spirals and coils.
He tugged, huffing with exertion, the ground sucking back, until he fell backward and, like the boy King Arthur, held up his prize: at the end of the copper handle was a twelve-inch dagger engraved with ancient runes.
“Are you kidding me?” I yelled, barely able to hear my own voice.
“I can’t believe it,” he said again, turning the dagger over and over in his hands. “Geez, it’s got a