Free Indigo Moon by Gill McKnight Page A

of a belt strapped tight around her waist. The pant legs were long and she had to roll them up like a seaside paddler. There were thick woolen socks, but no shoes.
    In a flash of inspiration, she ran into the living room and knelt to peer under the couch. Her luck was in. Ren’s discarded snow boots lay under there from last night. She hauled them out. They were far too big, but she stuffed the toes with extra socks until she could stomp around quite happily.
    The day had opened up, filled with excitement and purpose. She had explored the inside of the cabin, now she would explore the outside and see where she had ended up on this strange journey. She would have loved Ren to be her guide and was a little disgruntled at being abandoned yet again. Tamping down her anxiety at Ren’s mysterious comings and goings, she stopped to steal one of Ren’s coats from the hanger behind the front door, a waxed jacket that swallowed her. As an afterthought, she snatched a wool hat and crammed it on her head, then she stepped outside.
    She took a deep breath that made her convalescing lungs tingle. She felt giddy with the clean mountain air. Isabelle looked around. The cabin backed up under a wall of mountain before the ground rolled away to a steep meadow. A swath of fir and spruce flanked its exposed east side and kept the worst of the weather at bay. This was where her visitor had disappeared to last night, stealing into these trees. New snow had covered any tracks that might have been left, but Isabelle didn’t care. This morning the world had opened up to her, and what a beautiful world it was.
    There was no furniture on the porch, no chair or table. No one sat here and looked out at the stunning views on a snow-sharp morning such as this, and Isabelle thought it a shame. Frosted treetops pointed up from the valley floor, twinkling like candied minarets. They shivered in the swirling wind that blew from the surrounding mountains, throwing ice in the air in a million crystalline points of sunlight. It was a small, deep valley, no more than two miles across surrounded by steep walls of forest and the snow-capped peaks beyond.
    The ground below the porch steps was churned and muddy from multiple comings and goings. A well-used path led straight to the meadow. Below, she could see the sharp pitch of a shingled roof.
    Isabelle followed the trail to find a small barn and two long, low outbuildings that looked like old stable blocks or storage rooms. They huddled around a large, open-ended gravel yard. The snow was cut up by several sets of tires. It was used as a parking area but this morning it was empty. She glanced around. No one was about. Uncertain of where to go next, she noticed the barn door stood ajar. The gleam of a tractor grill winked out from the shadowy interior. Isabelle slid through the opening into the dry and cozy gloom.
    The barn smelled of clean straw and engine oil. Hand tools hung on hooks, and canisters and storage bins lined the walls. The tractor was an old Case 400. Isabelle walked around it, her hand skimming the burnt orange paintwork. She knew the tractor make, it was a showpiece dating back to the fifties. She liked that something this big and solid meant something to her.
    A battered motorcycle was propped against a workbench. Was it Ren’s? Did she rebuild these old vehicles? Isabelle wished she knew. She wanted to build up an image of Ren as much as she wanted to understand herself. They were both mysteries to her.
    Toward the back of the barn, straw bales were stacked six feet high. Some had toppled over and the straw had burst into a large, disordered mound. The center of the mound was indented, and several old blankets were scattered in the depression. Isabelle stood and examined the large nest-like shape. What slept there? Maybe dogs?
    “Ren?” a sleepy voice asked from the straw. Isabelle watched in amazement as the far edge of the nest rustled, then erupted, and a face peeped out at her. A young