“No,” he said, trying to restrain his delight now that she seemed to be opening the door into Godiva a crack.
“Any case, there isn’t much more to tell. I loved mysteries, especially the funny ones. Discovered I was really good at figuring out whodunnit before the people in the book. Thought I’d try writing my own, and had so much fun, yadda yadda. Listening to writers blab about writing is about as exciting as watching them write, which is the equivalent of watching paint dry. Though, for the writer, it might feel at times like you’re climbing Mount Everest, your butt has never actually left the chair. And here I am, yapping on about it. Wow, this is a lot like driving in California, flat road, flat, rocky land with little growing on it, lines of mountains in the distance. Except for these funky-looking touristy places.”
“Farther on there are some architectural monstrosities from the forties, fifties, and sixties,” he said, fighting against disappointment that she’d shut the door once again.
Had he done something? No, she was looking avidly out the window, soaking in the scenery.
So he bit back the questions, and for a time silence reigned as they passed old adobe houses left to wind and weather. But just as the landscape began to change to patches of shrubbery on ridges and hills, with the occasional tree, Godiva said in a reminiscent voice, “I also loved travel books. Describing places I knew I’d never get to. Oh, look, are those deer?”
There were indeed deer peacefully cropping under the branches of some beautiful blue spruce.
Godiva had her phone out, and snapped pictures of the deer as they drove toward the signs pointing the way toward the Grand Canyon. After that she was far too busy looking around for wildlife for conversation. Rigo smiled to himself, finding her eagerness was exactly the same as it had been when he first met her sneaking time to visit the horses.
They reached the entrance at last. The traffic was sparse, so parking was easy. “It’ll be maybe an hour walk from here,” he said. “But trust me, the rim is worth it.” He wanted to see her face when she first looked out over that vast area.
“I could really use some exercise,” she said as she clapped a sun hat on her head, and pulled her cane out of the trunk. “This looks like a nice path. All these pretty rocks lining it. So will we be hauling ourselves up a mountain?”
“No, when they say rim, they really mean rim.” And he went on to point out that the national park named Gooseneck was even more spectacularly abrupt. One moment you’re driving along flat ground, with a small fence ahead. You walk up to that low fence, look out over an abrupt drop straight down thousands of feet to the San Juan River winding below.
They followed a clump of tourists, Godiva grinning, camera in hand, as they passed the signs for the Grand Canyon rim.
Then suddenly they were there.
She halted, and drew in a long slow breath as she gazed wide-eyed out over the layers and layers of wild geological action over millions of years. The vista was vast, the rocky formations exalting in their forms. The river looked like a ribbon far below.
“Wow,” Godiva breathed. “Wow.”
“That limestone layer?” he murmured, bending toward her, though the other people around them were too busy with cameras to glance their way. “That was formed at the bottom of the sea. I was told that that limestone got up there, nine thousand feet above sea level, during a war between krakens and dragons epochs ago.”
“Okay,” she muttered. “I would have scoffed a week ago, but now nothing will surprise me. Krakens? Of course there are krakens.” She smiled up at him from under the brim of her sun hat. “Wouldn’t you love to go flying out over that mega-canyon?”
He bent down again and whispered, “I did.”
She grinned in delight. “Of course you did. And?”
“It was just as astounding as you can imagine. The air currents so strong I soared for miles without having to do much more than bank.”
“I wish I could fly,” she sighed. “Always wanted—hey. Where are those people going?”
“There are all kinds of tours and walks. Some are for rock climbers, others less strenuous, but even so, it’s really hot at the bottom of the canyon.”
She seemed completely oblivious to the sun beating down directly onto the dark brim of her hat. Rigo’s basilisk stirred within him, heightening his awareness of a shift in the winds flowing over the canyon.
“I don’t want to go all the way down,” she said. “Just a little ways, so I can see some of those sediment layers up close. Especially those ones at an angle. Imagine what kind of forces tipped them like that!” She bustled toward one of the pathways, moving like the hummingbird he remembered.
He cast another doubtful look upward. The sky was bright blue, but the basilisk smelled thunder on the wind.
Rigo looked toward Godiva, halfway down the path already. She halted behind a clump of people gathered at a point where several trails led off.
“ . . . and we’re seeing a possible storm on the doppler,” a park ranger was saying as Rigo caught up. She pointed to a bulletin board. “So we’re cancelling the one o’clock trail rides . . .”
Rigo turned to ask Godiva what she wanted to do, but she wasn’t beside him. He turned, in time to see her vanish around an outcropping glittering with mica.
He caught up. “They’re issuing storm warnings,” he said. “We have an hour’s walk back to the car.”
“Eh.” She waved her phone upward. “It’s blue sky overhead! They just have to be extra cautious. And I don’t want to go far. I only want to get an unimpeded shot of the river way down there. I think I’m going to have to add a road trip into my next book, just so I can fit this in. It’s too spectacular to waste.”
And off she went, the cane tapping. He noticed she didn’t lean on it all that heavily, but mostly seemed to use it as extra support for her footing, yet she still moved quickly.