out a hand and striking Emily a hard blow on the chest, where the acorn rested in the silken pouch. “She said nothing to me, her true daughter. She left me with nothing more than a body to burn.”
“I’m sorry,” Emily whispered.
A small, bitter smile twisted Lawa’s lips.
“You will be sorrier, Basket of Secrets,” she said, her voice exultant and despising. “Sorrier than you can possibly imagine.”
Emily and Stanton did not speak for a long time after they rode out of the Miwok camp. They rode in silence as sunset gilded the flanks of the high, jagged Sierra and the waning half-smile of the moon crept slowly up the northern horizon. As night gathered, Stanton rode a little ahead, kindling a magical brand to light the way. She heard him whistling absently to himself.
After midnight they stopped in a sheltered copse well away from the main road. It was cold, and Emily sorely missed her buffalo coat. It wasn’t safe to light a fire, so all she could do was wrap her arms around her knees and shiver.
“Here.” Stanton dug into his saddlebag. He unscrewed the top from a small silver flask and handed it to her. Sniffing it, she discovered it contained whiskey.
“Strictly medicinal,” Stanton said. “It will help keep the chill off.”
Emily lifted the bottle to her lips and took a drink. It burned like hell going down, but it was a better class of spirit than she’d tasted before. It warmed her from the inside out and blunted the edge of her weariness.
“Not too much.” Stanton took the flask from her when she went to raise it again. “Medicinal, remember?”
He tipped the flask to his own lips, then returned it to the saddlebag. Then, taking one of the horse blankets, he came to sit down next to her, his side pressing against hers. He wrapped the blanket around them both. She basked in his warmth, ignoring the fact that the horse blanket smelled, without a doubt, far worse than the buffalo coat ever had.
“Not exactly proper,” he said. “But propriety won’t do us much good if we freeze to death.”
Emily suddenly remembered Mrs. Lyman’s words about not drinking anything Stanton gave her. And Mrs. Lyman certainly wouldn’t have approved of Emily cozying up under a horse blanket with him. Emily blushed at the thought. She was suddenly very aware of the feeling of his body against hers. It wasn’t an unpleasant feeling. All in all, more pleasant than she would have expected. She put her arm through his and curled closer. Just to avoid freezing to death.
Stanton cleared his throat, but made no move to remove her arm from his. “Well. Let’s review. You are in possession of an acorn into which a Miwok holy woman has transferred her spirit. You’ve also gained a complete mastery of the Miwok language, which almost certainly is not coincidental.”
“Indeed, it is one useful little nut,” Emily said. The whiskey and Stanton’s warmth were already working in tandem, making her head heavy with sleep. Her hand drifted to the silk pouch around her neck, to touch the hardness of the acorn there. How could something as large as a soul be encompassed in such an infinitesimal place? “Do you really think that Komé’s spirit is … here? With us?”
“I don’t think Lawa was being metaphorical,” Stanton said, after some consideration.
“But she was alive when we left,” Emily said.
“Bodies and souls are surprisingly autonomous things,” Stanton said. “Some men can live a long and healthy life without any soul at all.”
Emily pondered this, then discarded it as not particularly pertinent.
“How long can she stay in there?” Emily said.
“The acorn is alive,” Stanton said. “The tiniest spark of life, but life nonetheless. She can live as long as the acorn lives. A few months, a year perhaps. But the human spirit, especially the spirit of a powerful practitioner like Komé, is far too large to fit inside an acorn for long.”
“And then what?”
“Then she dies,” Stanton said.
“But couldn’t she go to another acorn?” Emily asked. “Or into a flower or a tree or something?”
“She could,” Stanton said, “but it is dangerous magic. Repeated metempsychosis results in terrible degradation, both intellectual and moral. The more times a spirit is transferred between vessels, the more of itself it loses.”
Emily stared at him blankly. He rubbed a thoughtful thumb against his lower lip and tried again.
“Once a spirit is emancipated from the body to which it was originally bound, it loses much of its sense of