People will say that the tale I am about to tell means many things. It is a mark of human nature, after all, to assign meaning that resonates within an individual's range of understanding and need for there to always be a meaning for what happens in life.

No matter what they may tell, however, as the woman to whom this happened, I reserve the right to tell the meaning I have assigned. If I am asked, and some day I will be no doubt, I will say it means that searching for unfamiliar songs can often remind one of the places where one still belongs and to which one can long to return.

I have a longing to hear an old, familiar song as it is borne upon the wind that comes only for me. My past will linger upon its refrain; his past will be the poetry in its verses. And long after the song's echoes leave with the wind, I will hear it as an unfamiliar song that reminds me of when we met.

My uncle Billy had always handled the hiring of the hands on the ranch. But ever since my uncle's passing, my father had to rely on Jed to handle such things. Jed, my dad said, has as good an eye for a broad back and steady seat in the saddle as he does for what's under the saddle.

On an early fall day, we stood on the porch as Jed drove up in the truck, its battered carcass too tough to give in to even the sand pitting. Riding in the bed of the truck was the first batch of ranch hands to be picked by Jed all on his own, during a solo recruiting trip in Tucson.

We were waiting, my father and I, to see how Jed had done. My father was confident he'd done well; I was unwilling to allow as how anyone could step into one of my uncle's most important roles. Even if we had to go on, I wasn't ready yet for this part of what that meant. Maybe if Noah was still there, but he wasn't. I felt like I was the last one, the final wall holding back the onrush of time marching on without my uncle around to make life fun.

My father was standing at the top of the stairs in that classic pose of his: arms folded over his barrel chest, legs wide, chin down, hat tilted to shade his eyes. I was leaning against the porch railing.

That is what I'll someday say to someone who wants to know this.

This was when I first saw Cort Dawson. Even if I didn't realize it at the time.

I will describe perhaps the way it had been a bad summer in terms of loss. First, my uncle Billy, for whom we did everything and nothing could keep him bound to us in life. And then my brother Noah decided he wanted to leave the ranch to find out if another life was meant for him. It was also a bad summer in terms of weather because the sun had done more than its normal baking of the desert. It had made even those of us used to it begin to dread what the rays would do each day when we woke. The winds had sucked and howled in storms that didn't even do us the courtesy of a spit of rain.

Perhaps I would remember to say that I felt as if the winds of summer had taken me along with them when they left. But I was still here. Still on the ranch. There was a time when I couldn't stop dreaming of leaving; but in that moment of waiting with my father, I couldn't think of one reason to go.

It was a nothing moment, I suppose, in the grand scheme of life. Cort was just another man climbing out of the back of the truck coming back from Tucson after picking up new hands for the season. How many guys over the years had I seen climb out of a truck at the beginning of the season? I have lost count.

Someday, maybe, I will say that I saw Cort and somehow took note that this was one hand I'd not lose count of. But I'd be lying if I were to ever say that. Not that much of what I might have to say about Cort wouldn't be taken as a lie by some.

But they'd be people who don't know that sometimes there's a wind that carries through the mountains to me and it sounds like thunder but feels like the down of a thistle. I believe those winds seek a person out. They are the winds of home that never lose track of you, no matter where you are in this world.

I might have been young, and Lord knows I was, but I was already a woman. He was the man who made me glad to be one. I just didn't know it yet.

We had needed six new men this season. We usually got better carry over but the summer had been dusty to drive a man to fits ... and, besides, when Noah had announced he was leaving us, too, I'm not the only one who wondered how this place would make it without him and Billy. Jed might have been a good foreman but it was Uncle Billy who banked Jed's quick temper back. It was Billy who treated the hands with a touch of hard dignity that instilled in the men a sense of loyalty that had made so many sign up to stay with us each new fall. While my dad could be aloof and hard to read if you didn't know him, Noah was open and easy. And it was Noah who got right in with the hands, working alongside, making friends for life.

"What do you say, Rach?" my father asked me.

"I thought he was bringing the new colts with him this trip," I said.

He turned and grinned at me. "Girl, you never let me down."

"I'll be over at the stable. I think Marco can use a hand and these guys look like they're more interested in the bunkhouse than the horses," I said.

"You're gonna give your old man gray hair before his time."

"Daddy, you've been going gray for five years. Don't blame it on me."

"Tell Mary Lou we got six new mouths tonight."

The tradition at this ranch was to count the hands as some part of our extended family. It had been easier with Noah around. He just had the knack. And Uncle Billy was one of those men that says what he means and makes you feel respected. Now it'd be up to my father to somehow instill this sense of surrogate family. But that's tough because he was also the big boss and men that are hands are often funny about that. They are suspicious of it.

All of this made me uneasy. I never lost the feeling that the changes that were happening meant more than I wanted to see. Perhaps I didn't want to see them. I know for sure I didn't want to think about the fact that my father was two years older than my uncle. Loss upon loss. How much longer before I lost them all?

But the change in tempo that overcame the ranch with the influx of six new hands was welcome in that environment of loss. This was a gain, this was new faces, new ways, new hopes.

First night it was our way to have the new hands and the old over to the main house's wide sweeping expanse of dusty yard that held the middle ground between the house's back door and the wide show paddock. Mary Lou, our housekeeper, set up a barbecue for feed. Me and old Sam were her helpers on such occasions.

We set up long tables, plastic table clothes, a keg, a pit, enough sides to please any man. After everyone had moved through the lines and they'd sat down to eat, I hung back and just regarded the sight.

Men everywhere I looked. The only other woman other than me was Mary Lou, our housekeeper. It's her title, sure, but it fair does not do justice to the woman's role in our lives. She was my surrogate mother and sister. She was old enough to be my father's sister but she had always seemed so young. Until Billy died. Something went out of her. I think what kept her going was that me and Noah needed her.

I wasn't supposed to know about her and Uncle Billy. I have spent hours in the dark crying on her behalf. Maybe I will never understand why they hid and pretended we didn't know.

My eyes swept across the men at the tables. They ate with little grace. They were unfamiliar with each other. The old hands would need melding with the new hands. We would all need to become familiar with their ways. Who among them would be the ones we would grow close to? Who would wash out within the first month?  Who would someday merit our allegiance, our trust and our faith? Who would stay beyond the first season? Who would be the bastard? Who the rogue? Who the slow, the quick, the horseman, the range hand, the guide, the carpenter, the follower, the leader?

I hoped that within a month, it'd be easier. I longed for when we'd all be used to each other. But it's tough when there are so many new people around. It was quieter than it should have been. The new men didn't say much. The old hands talked lower to each other because they weren't yet ready to include the new guys.

If Noah had been there, he'd have made it fun by now.

My father chose his own way forward with these men. He rose up, gave a little talk, welcomed them all. Told them they'd work hard, be paid fair and be treated like men. One step out of line, they'd be on his bad side. After that, dismissal came fast and sure around here.

He gave them the standard talk about the tourists who'd be coming in a few weeks. About how their job, their primary job, was tending the horses and minding the chores of any ranch. But as a guest ranch, there'd be a bit of an extra dollop of work related to the visitors. Whether it was teaching them how to ride or guiding them out on trails or showing them how to help with tending the horses... those were all the kinds of things we'd seen needed a special care.

No romancing the ladies who come to visit, my father said. The new hands looked at each other. A few raised their eyebrows. The old hands just smirked. More than a few looked a sly glance my way.

First rule that was always broken had to do with romance and the lady visitors. Men don't pay that no mind. How can they? These women come in here looking for a cowboy to fit their dreams. If they don't find him, they'll make believe they have.

And it isn't only the single women.

You know, if it was only the single women, there probably wouldn't be much of a problem. Boys will be boys and girls will like it, if you catch my drift.

Nonetheless, my father felt duty-bound to have this rule and pretend his best to enforce it. I've only seen him really carry through twice. Both times were married ladies. If their husbands had gotten a mind to it, both times there would have bloodshed.

Worst thing you could do, my father said that night like he said to every new batch of hands, was to forget you were here earning an honest living on a working ranch. Work hard, keep your nose clean, watch out for the stock, abide by the foreman at all costs. You do that, my father told them, there's always a place for you here.

My father is loyal.

It's why, I suppose, he never remarried after my mother passed. I was seven. I barely remember her. Noah's told me stories. Mary Lou, as well. Uncle Billy once told me I had her smile and her confident stride. My father never says much more than that she was a woman above all others.

There are times, such as that night, that I watch my father... my dear father. And I wonder. I truly do. He loved my mother. Would there never be another woman he'd love? Why had he walled himself up inside this ranch and never once tried to find another love for the rest of his life? I never thought I could ask him that. I didn't want him to think I had stopped loving my mother... the love of his life.

The woman he remains loyal to even after all these years.

What is it like to have that kind of love? That kind of loyalty?

He is also loyal to this ranch. It's one big reason why we stick it out. Ups and downs, we ride it out. It's a safe place that took my mother a while to find. We do not leave despite some tough years. No matter what, this land demands a loyalty from us if for no other reason than that it has sheltered us and nurtured us. Noah said he didn't want to live his whole life in one place. Daddy says that Noah has to leave to make his way home.

So I feel in this first season that Noah is gone that I am sitting vigil for his return. Daddy's sure he's coming back, some day.  I hope he is right. I hope the loss of Noah is not permanent.

I hope he has my father's loyalty to our blood and our place on this earth. I fear, I truly do, that perhaps the only person left in my family who feels that same loyalty is me. It battles with my desire to follow the wind when it comes for me.

The question I imagine I'll be asked in that future time when someone wants to know is: when was it really that I first took notice of Cort.

When?

That's a tricky one. But it is a fair question to ask.

For sure, I had to have seen him hop out of the truck that first day but I had my mind so on other notions that I can't call up the exact memory. The one I can call up is when I noticed him that first night at the barbecue. But it wasn't like I noticed him and some thunderbolt from the sky zapped me in two and said, "That was a warning shot."

It was more like I noticed he was going to be popular with the lady visitors. Mary Lou said as much, too. 

"There's trouble on two hooves," she said to old Sam. I didn't even have to turn around and see where she was looking. I'd noticed him maybe a full minute before. It's why I'd turned around to tend to the pit. Because I'd seen him as he suddenly broke from the group, meandering over a bit to stretch over the paddock gate and kind of gaze off, like he was seeing the future herd that'd gather there once the ground was something other than ankle high sandy dust.

What was it that I noticed, I imagine someday I will be asked. I will probably smile. Will I say the truth? Will I admit that it was his body?

He walked with a stride that made it appear he knew exactly where he was heading and exactly what awaited him when he got there. He had broad shoulders. Lean hips. Incredible thighs. Arms that swung ever so slightly as he strode. He didn't hook his hands in his pockets, like so many of them do. His hair was deep chestnut brown. It was on the long side, blunt cut, swaying as he walked. It blew back from his face when the wind gusted. He wore blue jeans that had seen better days but still had plenty of bad days left in their wear. He had on deep brown boots that disappeared under his straight jeans but I would have bet anything they came only part way up his calves. He wore a brown t-shirt that clung and gave as he moved; it was easy to see his outline and shape under it.

Men who look like that, I wonder if they are simply used to women gazing at them. Even if you are not attracted on some level, it is a male form that invites admiration.

He leaned in against the gate, hooked a boot in the lowest rung. If I am ever asked, I will admit this: that in that moment of observing him, I hoped he would be handsome. This was when he turned back toward the rest of us. And I saw that, yes, he was indeed rugged and handsome. He was all that... and more. Something that reached through that night and made me drop my chin as I observed him. Something palpable. Something so masculine it nearly made me realize my purpose in life would be to serve him in any way he would prescribe.

Before I could stop looking at him and making up an idea in my mind about exactly what romantic past had led him to this ranch, he turned his face in my direction and caught me looking.

There was an appraisal in that gaze he directed at me. It was open and frank. It was a man looking at a woman to size her up for fit.

Not long after that, with Mary Lou's appraisal of him lingering in my ears, he approached where I stood, carving the shank of beef that was the primary attraction in terms of food at one of these barbecues. He smiled at me. It did something to his eyes that is hard to describe. It was as if they came to life.

I found myself holding still. Not a breath escaped me. He tipped his hat, told me his name. I don't honestly remember what I said to him. He told me later, much later after he knew me well enough to tease me, that I'd said to him, "As far as names go, that one seems to suit you fine."

I do remember his answer. He said to me, "You have no idea how relieved I am to know I meet with your approval in at least one aspect."

During dinner, I sat next to old Sam toward the bottom of the table. I kept peeking over at Cort. He didn't seem to look at me at all. Once, Sam nudged me and I looked up to see my father looking at me and then looking at Cort. Like he knew I'd been watching him a lot more than was wise.

When we were cleaning up, I was scrubbing the table down with my hands and I was watching Cort walking away, toward the bunkhouse. There was no doubt about it. Mary Lou had him pegged from the beginning. He definitely was sex on two legs.

But that wasn't the only reason I stared at him walking away.

It was because there was an aura around him that I'd never seen around any man before in my entire life.

So that was the first time of any real note that I saw Cort. That was when I first really noticed him.

In the first days after the arrival of the new hands, Jed would bypass the house every morning and head straight for the bunkhouse. Eventually, we knew, he would fall back into the routine established long ago in which the foreman came to Mary Lou's kitchen for breakfast. But just then, he devoted that time to some sort of extra oversight of the new men. So he was joining them for the day's first meal instead. Those first days were important; it was up to Jed to be sure and get the new hands acclimated, to see what each one could really do.

Some were destined to care for the horses. Others would work the horses on the trails and rounding up the colts and mares that ran the paddock. Others had skills we needed for maintaining or fixing the property.

Of the old hands, we'd been able to hang on to a core of men who knew the ropes and could lead the new men. The two guys who cooked had stayed on. They fended for the hands' meals and then on the trails when we had visitors wanting to spend long days out. Mary Lou had broken the cooks in three years earlier. So now all she had to mind was the main house, which was plenty. Old Sam had been with us for so long that he'd earned a softer billet, as my father had once said when he asked him to come over and help Mary Lou with doing what needed doing around the main house.

And then there were holdovers like Marco, who quietly and diligently went about overseeing the stable. I liked being with Marco. He never minded me tagging along. He taught without words. He showed me that the right touch on a horse counted for more than could ever be described.

I spent a lot of those first days of the season riding away from the ranch. My excuse was that I needed to check trails before the visitors came. The truth was that I spent too many hours out on my horse, riding the winds. Mary Lou said it was grief. Marco said it was finding the new place I'd have after I got used to all the losses. The truth was that the feeling of being lost drove me to seek some new connection to the land. I was also searching for the wind's reassurance that I still had a purpose and a connection.

If in some future year someone was to ask when it was that I first had a real conversation with Cort, I would have a good story to tell.

Marco took to Cort right off. He talked Jed into putting Cort in charge of the guides this new season. It happened this way:

It had been Noah who'd always led the guides.

I had figured to step into that duty this year.

But Marco never once imagined that this was what I had planned so he decided in his own mind within the first two weeks that Cort was the one who was best in that job.

Marco asked me one morning if I'd take Cort with me that day when I went riding. If I'd start teaching him the trails, so he'd be ahead of the others when it came time to pick someone to take the job of leading the visitors on the trails and the round ups when they came later in the year.

We were in the stable; Marco was getting a mare ready for me to take out for an early morning ride. I had brought coffee; we pretended I was bribing him with it. But really, truth is, Marco felt like someone needed to take my uncle's place with me. So he doted on me; and I let him because it meant a lot to him to matter so much to me. And here he was, asking me to do something that went totally against what I wanted most of all.

I looked across at Marco, his face wavering in the steam of the coffee coming off my cup as I was sipping.

"I do believe Jed might have other thoughts about where he needs his men to be today," I said to Marco. "The new colts are coming in today. All hands needed, right?"

"Maybe. Maybe so." Marco looked off toward the stable door nearest the bunkhouse. "Good thing I already talked to Jed about it, ain't it?"

"I got things I was needing to do out there. If you're so set on this, then you take him out."

"You got something against this fellow already?"

"Nope. Just wasn't looking to spend a day with some dumb wrangler, is all."

This was the second time I heard his voice. It came from behind me. It was soft but it was so definite that from that moment on, I would have known his voice no matter what it was saying, no matter the distance, no matter the tone.

The voice behind me said, "You never know what cross you can bear until you're called to the challenge."

When I turned toward the voice, I tried hard to cover the way it flustered me to be face to face with him. Here I was, wanting the very job he was after. What woman doesn't have this momentary internal war when she's wanting something bad enough to fight for it only to find herself blushing and biting her lip when her opponent turns out to be a man she's felt some instant attraction for? He was trouble walking around disguised as a man. I felt a distinct quickening to my pulse.

Unbidden, I had this instant thought: come to me now... I know you're on to me... that everything is coming down on me... Show me your true face.

Despite myself, I wanted to like him, right from the beginning. But I also wanted to fight that instant feeling of being sucked in by a man who looked as fine and quick as him. Even for me, this close up encounter with Cort was about more than him being so manly it leaked out of him when he put his attention directly on you. No, there was something definite, even if I couldn't define it. Looking back, I would have to say it was his bearing. And his voice. And his eyes.

But more than that, it was that he seemed almost shy with me, even if he was standing his ground and disguising it with a bit of bravado. It was the most affecting atmosphere.

For all I noticed, there was much I missed.

"If you're not up to the challenge of showing me the trails..." Cort said to me.

"I didn't say that. I just..."

"You just what?"

"I just think it's a waste of time."

"Because I'm not gonna get the job?"

"I would say so."

"You think someone else is more qualified? Marco didn't seem to think anyone else..."

"Marco doesn't know who all might be interested, does he?"

A slow smile came over Cort's face. He looked down at his dusty boots and kicked some rocks aside. "I see."

"You see what?"

"Oh, well, I see that you must be wanting your boyfriend to have the job."

"I don't have a boyfriend and even if I did..."

"No boyfriend?" he asked me, his eyes regarding me from beneath lashes that half hid the sudden mischief glinting there. "Pretty little girl like you? I bet you got more boys buzzing around you than any honeycomb's got bees."

"That is none of your... I am not a honeycomb and I don't... I'm not a girl. It's not boys who... I'm more qualified than you."

He frowned. Looked over at Marco. Back at me with wonder. "Ah. I see. You want the job for yourself."

"Well, I think I would be the best choice."

"If you are so confident then surely you have no objection to showing me the trails and that way we can compete more fairly?"

I opened my mouth to say "no." But instead, I narrowed my eyes at his implied challenge. And then he turned around to lead one of the horses from her stall. The way he spoke to her, touched her... almost crooning to her. I was taken in by this wholly unexpected and odd juxtaposition of gentleness from a rough ranch hand.

I am no weaker nor am any stronger than any woman who finds herself face to face with a man she finds attractive and who also happens to be standing in the way of what she wants to achieve. Somehow, we so often give way in the face of that. We do seem to find the way to sublimate our goal when desire for a man intrudes so directly.

He had the horse saddled. He smiled lazily at me as he swung up to the seat. Without even really thinking about it, I climbed up atop my own mare and led the way from the stable.

"So you don't have a boyfriend..." he said to me just as we got into the sun. I glanced back at him. He was smiling at me, teasing me with voice and body language.

"I don't need a boy. If I ever meet a man, you can be sure that'll be when I get interested," I snapped back at him just before I turned away and goaded my sweet mare to kick up her heals a bit. I heard him chuckle behind me. I grinned to myself.

For the rest of the ride on the trail, I barely spoke to him with anything that approached real civility. I took him up the north trail and wound him back the pass trail. At lunch, we shared the sandwiches and coffee that Mary Lou had packed. We sat at an arroyo and I tossed stones across at a prairie dog hole whenever I got the urge to look at Cort. Up close, the attraction was worse.

On the way back, I made him lead to see his trail sense. I watched his seat in the saddle. He had an ease of the reins. He clucked to the horse and she trusted him as much as he trusted her.

If anyone ever wanted to know the moment I developed an active crush on him, it was then. It was that afternoon. It was a lonely woman looking at a man so much a man that he made her yearn to be a woman he might notice as a woman. Nothing more than a woman. Notice me. Don't sit there in that saddle and treat me as if I am the owner's daughter and therefore a figure off limits or to be used as a way forward. Every other man would notice me; why won't you? Notice me. I am a woman who could give you comfort because even this casual, I know you need comfort.

If someone would want to know when I realized he was worth more than a simple crush, it was later. But not too much later, though it was after he'd been named the chief guide. And it was after the first visitors came.

My father refused to override Jed in this matter of chief guide.

"I am more qualified than anyone else here. I know the trails better. I know the pace to set. I will never take chances with guests. And, more than that, I know the land. No one else left does," I told my father as I made my case to him the night before our first visitors of the season were due.

"Jed's the foreman," he said.

"Daddy, you're the owner. I think you can pull rank."

"Tell you what, Rach. You can be the assistant. How's that?"

"The assistant? Daddy? Are you crazy?"

"Like you said, you know the trails, plus you always have been good with the guests. Most important, you do know the land, just like you said. So, let's do it this way. Jed's guy will be in charge but you be there to do the things you do better than he will. Eventually, he'll learn."

"We all know there are some things he'll never learn. Besides, why should I train him when I can do the job now, without training?"

"Because Jed's the foreman."

"Jed's an ass."

"Take it or leave it, Rach. But if you don't want to help that way, then Mary Lou can put you to work around here. Which wouldn't be such a bad thing. One of these days, you're gonna wish you'd learned what she can teach you."

My father wants so much for me. If I could be my mother's daughter? I am trying. I know the costs of that. I am willing to pay every ounce of silver. My family's legacy weighs both light and heavy upon my shoulders.

Life springs eternal. This is not a losing streak; it is how the future finds its way. The wind... does he hear it as I do? As I know my mother did? Why is it that Cort invades my every dream of the future and my every smell of the wind?

That night is the night, I will tell the tale someday, in which what was to come began to take shape.

In the full moon's crystal glow, I rode out. On the south trail, my horse and I picked the path. Even before we reached the cave, I was already half in a trance. Once there, I burned sage and I counted stars and I danced skyclad, with my eyes open. I asked the land for its favors; I thanked it for all it was to us.

The wind. The water. The earth. The fire.

It was always the wind that gave to me.

A vision that included Cort came from nowhere. Some say the wind comes from nowhere. They are wrong. And I was, too.

The first few weeks dragged on. Visitors in those weeks were a mixture of repeat customers and a few brand new people. We called the ones who didn't ride or barely rode the term: walkers.

In the third week, one of the walkers arrived looking for a cowboy adventure. These were always the ones who shook things up. It could be just a weeklong fling or it could be a crush that was not acted upon. Trouble came when it turned into something more, something that either person involved would risk their regular lives for when it came right down to it.

This walker was pretty open about what she was hunting that week. And it wasn't wrangling horses. It was a cowboy she thought fit her ideal fantasy. She was single, Italian and pretty. When she set her sights on Cort, I was not surprised. When he looked back with hunger, I was disappointed.

I had no right to be. But there it was. It simply was. That's what happens when a woman develops an active crush. It might be irrational, but it's what is.

Every Friday night, which was typically the final night of a weeklong trip by visitors, we held an outdoor barbecue as a sort of punctuation mark of the week. Guests liked it; it was often their chance to really celebrate all they had done and seen that visit.

We'd build a bonfire; tell stories around it. I never told stories on those occasions because those were for "cowboy" stories. My stories were told out on the trail; they were about the veneration for the land and the animals. My trail stories were also about history and the gentle mysticism that had found root here.

That night, the final night of the Italian woman's visit, the bonfire crackled. Old Sam told the first story as everyone settled back with a cup and stared into the flames. I happened to turn to follow a spark that lifted above us and then drifted south.

Standing at the corner of the main house, I spied the long-legged outline I knew was Cort. Walking toward him was the Italian woman. They were two silhouettes in the semi-dark. And then they slipped around the corner.

I believe I was the only one who noticed.

He took her walking up an arroya so near the ranch's wired pastures that I wondered if this meant he had no real regard for her.

I watched.

If there was talking, I heard none of it. I stood in the shadow of a rock pile at the base of the mesa's rise. He spread a blanket. I called the wind; it broke my sweat. I doubt it broke theirs. I suspect they didn't want it to.

It never ends, the memory of his body with hers. It's not enough to slake my own body's wet heat and want of a man that can make me moan as he made her moan. It seemed so gross, so crude as I watched them. It could be worse. It could have been me who was there with him, beneath him, feeling him inside me, sweating, grunting, calling out, coming in the roughest of the rough of the desert.

I stumbled away after he rolled off of her little body.

That night, my dream took me soaring. When I woke, my sheets were bathed in my sweaty dream. This land of mysticism is an odd place for such dreams. But then, it's an odd place for my family to have settled. Noah says it was simply a good place to grow.

We are accepted here. In large part, it is a benevolent acceptance. What mysticism that flows in our veins is welcomed here. It is the magic we have that is respected as some kindred proof that we are good stewards of the land.

For if the land did not accept us, the magic would not be possible.

I am the one who has joined what we brought and what we found.

Uncle Billy used to say this made the move here worth it.

I hate that it was necessary that we left the land of our ancestors but that was done before I ever had a say in anything.

People here, people of this land I should qualify, do know of us. They provide a kind of shelter because they respect our magic even if it is different from theirs.

In return, we help keep the land safe for their future generations who will need it then just as we do now.

We all know, in our family and our trusted ones, that tales are told. It is one reason we practice out of sight. A tale is one thing; proof is another.

When was it that I became aware that Cort had heard some of these tales? That is something that will be of interest in the future. And it is a good question to ask.

Was it when I took note of his increasing interest in my herb garden?

If I am honest, if I do not allow hindsight to blind me to what I really knew in the moment, then I would have to say that this interest did nothing but make me nervous. Having a man on whom you have an active crush become interested in an activity of yours that is more than a hobby can be quite nerve-wracking.

Mary Lou said to me one evening, after she'd stood on the back verandah, watching me watch Cort lope away from where I'd been tending the herbs, that some things are inevitable.

"What things would those be that you are speaking about tonight?" I asked her as I rinsed by tools off in the utility sink near her kitchen.

"You're sweet on a man," she said.

I looked over my shoulder at a face more dear to me than any other woman's. "You talking about that hand?"

"'That hand'?" She clucked once and then again before saying, "Cort. Don't pretend you don't know his name, Rachel."

I wiped my hands on my jeans; she clucked at me once more as she tossed me a towel. 

"I'm not sweet on him. He just asked me some questions about the herbs. And that's all."

"You been raised around these kind of men your whole growing up years. Girl, just don't be forgetting what trouble they can cause a gal."

"I am not a little girl. Give me some credit."

"He's trouble. Just don't let him be your trouble."

"I don't even like him. He acts so superior, always bossing me around when we're on the trails. He's forgotten who taught him the lay of this land."

"Oh no."

"Oh no what?"

She shook her head at me. "You just try and remember what he is. Don't go getting all hot and bothered ... don't lose your head, girl."

"Mary Lou, you have nothing to worry about."