I clamp my mouth shut and glare at him.
“It’s one of the things I like most about you,” he admits.
“Well, can you blame me?” The wide sweep of my arm encompasses the city, the ships, and the bay. “They say it’s one of the most perfect harbors in the world. Canyon deep all the way through the Golden Gate, but shallow in the shelter of the bay.”
He turns his head toward the water, which is fine by me, because I like his profile as much as any other part of his face. Peony shifts beneath me. We’ve all stopped to take in the view, but the folks around us are starting to glare, like we’re taking up too much space.
The muddy street overflows with people bustling by foot and cart and horse, with faces and fabrics from all over the world. A brand-new warehouse goes up before our eyes as workmen scamper up and down the scaffolds. Beyond the warehouse rise the hills of the San Francisco peninsula, the slopes covered with every manner of building, house, and tent. The air resounds with voices shouting in a hundred languages, hammers pounding, wagons creaking.
Jefferson says in a soft voice, as if we’re all alone, “Those ships look like the woods after a wildfire. No leaves, no branches, nothing left but barren trunks standing up against the sky.”
I see it through his eyes. A forest of abandonment. “What will happen to them all, do you think?”
“They’ll get scavenged. Used for building up on land. Some might be turned into prisons, like the one we saw on the Sacramento River.”
The one holding my uncle Hiram, is what he doesn’t say. We’ve been through a lot together, Jeff and me. I reach out and clasp his fingers with mine.
“Will the two of you stop mooning over each other?” Becky Joyner asks, from the wagon behind us. “You’d think nobody in the world ever fell in love before the two of you invented it.”
“Becky!” Heat fills my cheeks, and I drop Jefferson’s hand.
She grins at me.
Becky sits with Hampton on the wagon bench, holding the reins of a team of cart horses we bought at Mormon Island. The one on the right, a chestnut with a wide white blaze, tosses his head in impatience.
“I don’t care if the two of you make eyes at each other all day like lovebirds in a cage,” she says, “but can you carry on with it after we get my house? If we don’t run into any snags, we can shop for your wedding dress and then head home as early as tomorrow.”
I frown. This is not the first time we’ve had this discussion. “Jeff and I don’t need a fancy wedding, and I don’t need a fancy dress.”
“Nonsense. We’re family now, and your family wants to see this done right.”
“Jefferson?” I plead.
The traitor holds up his hands in mute surrender.
Hampton quickly schools his grin. “We might even have time to get a proper suit for the groom,” he suggests with a perfectly straight face.
Jefferson and I glare at him.
“All right, folks,” Becky says. “Let’s go get my house.”
I urge Peony toward the docks, and the wagon rattles behind. We carefully make our way down the slippery, muddy slope until we reach the dock described in the letter.
“That’s it!” Becky calls out.
I swing a leg over Peony’s back to dismount, but as soon as my feet touch the ground, my legs turn to jelly, and I stumble.
Becky jumps down from the wagon, and Jefferson leaps off Sorry, so that within seconds I have someone at each elbow, steadying me.
“You all right?” Jefferson asks.
“Just need get my bearings,” I say, suddenly breathless. There’s no need to explain the problem—they all know my secret.
Gold has been singing a muted song for our entire journey here, sometimes from far away, sometimes buzzing in my throat. But this, when my feet touch ground here . . . this is like hearing a chorus of a thousand voices.
Softly, so only Jefferson and Becky can hear, I say, “I think it’s all the practice I’ve been doing, learning how to control the gold when I call it to me. It’s made things . . . sensitive.”
“How bad?” Jeff asks.
“It’s everywhere—like trying to sip water from a flood.”
“What do you mean, everywhere?” says Becky, looking around in consternation. “I don’t see—”
“Everywhere,” I whisper.
My gold sense is always strongest when I touch the earth. Men are digging a hole in the street outside the warehouse to sift gold flakes from the dirt—there are two ounces to be found if they’ve half an eye. A block farther, a couple of children sit outside a tavern, where they lick the heads of pins and use the wet tips to pick gold dust out of the sweepings, speck by speck. They won’t get much for their labor, but each mote of gold burns like a tiny ember. Buttons and watches and brooches and hairpins flare all around me. Gold is in almost every purse and pocket. My own significant store of gold, in Peony’s saddlebag, brought along for an emergency. The locket dangling at my throat. A half-dozen nuggets in Jefferson’s right trouser pocket—he’s been carrying them for months, ever since we escaped from my uncle’s camp. And, in a little velvet clutch tied to her waist, Becky has more than a dozen gold coins—
A group of laughing, dirty-faced children plows into us, setting the horses to bellyaching. They are no older than Olive or Andy. A few apologize with “Sorry, ma’am!” and “Sorry, sir!” while others shout “Tag!” and “You’re it!” before dashing away.
Becky brushes dirt off her skirt, as if the children’s behavior might be contagious. “So rude. I have to wonder where their mothers are.”
“Becky, where is your—?”
I sense her purse, or rather the particularly shaped pile of gold coins in her purse, moving away. I scan the crowded street ahead.
There—a towheaded little scamp, rapidly disappearing among taller bodies. Without taking my eyes off him, I hand Peony’s reins to Jeff. “Hold this,” I say, and I start running.
The boy is small and quick as a rodent, disappearing behind people and barrels and wagons. I’m not really pursuing him, only what he carries, and all the other gold around me is a distraction, like trying to follow the buzz of a single bee in a hive. But my practice pays off. With focus, I hear the unique melody of Becky’s gold, not quite overwhelmed by a cacophony of overlapping songs.
I have him in my sights. “Hey! Stop!”
He glances over his shoulder, sees me gaining, and pumps his legs even faster, dodging carts and barrels. His head is cranked around, eyes wide with fear, when he careens into a young woman, maybe even younger than me. Her hair is dirty blond, her skin is darkened by the sun, and her secondhand calico dress—too loose on her by half—is dimmed by dust and wear. She clutches a small cloth bag to her waist like it contains all her possessions in the world. The boy bounces away and falls down.