The Druid Gene Read Free

canyon wall like a shelf. Adam assembled a lightweight camp stove and pulled out a package of dehydrated soup. Darcy arranged his bedroll inside the tent then came to join him, wrapping her own sleeping bag around herself and turning on their small LED lantern. Darkness was settling quickly inside the canyon. Temperatures could range by as much as forty to fifty degrees in the desert between day and night. Despite the growing chill, she was surprised to notice she really didn’t feel as terrible as she’d thought she would.
    Adam handed her a baggie of whole-grain crackers. “Some carbs will help you warm up quickly, Darce.”
    She took them gratefully and smiled at him. “So, okay. This is pretty amazing. Sorry I complained.”
    He looked pleased with himself and handed her a packet of almond butter. She squeezed its contents into her mouth while the soup heated up. It was sticky, rich and satisfying. She resisted asking for his.
    “You mentioned the People use this place? What for?” Adam was multiracial—part black, part Asian, part Native American. One of his grandfathers was a member of the White Mountain Apache Tribe. Adam had never made much of that during their college days in Ohio. He just sort of passed as an ambiguously brown guy, with people always asking him where he was from. Since moving back to Phoenix after graduation, he’d been exploring the Native aspect of his heritage more. She envied that to some degree though she worried about him getting involved with what she could only call mysticism, something she was excruciatingly sensitive to because of her own upbringing.
    But at least he was connecting with that group better than she’d ever connected with either of her own. She acted “too white” for most African Americans she knew and she would never be anything more than the token black friend for most whites. Neither group could truly understand her experiences. They were too far out of both of their comfort zones. Darcy lived in the space between two cultures, legitimately belonging to both, but never fully accepted by either. She was a piece without a puzzle. A minority within a minority.
    But Adam understood only too well. It was a common bond they shared.
    Adam rose carefully so he wouldn’t knock over the precariously balanced stove and took her hand. He led her across the gorge to an open place where someone had left several tall, narrow stacks of flat stones. There was a gnarled and twisted shrub nearby, covered in waxy blue berries and emanating the woodsy, pungent scent of juniper.
    “Do you feel it, Darcy?”
    Her eyebrows drew together. He was being uncharacteristically cryptic. She wasn’t sure where this was going and she was getting uncomfortable. “Feel what?”
    “The energy of this place.”
    She blinked slowly and dropped his hand. She didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but if he was starting down some shamanistic path…she couldn’t go there with him. He knew that.
    She stood there, staring blankly at a stack of stones, probably placed there with some kind of religious intent. She couldn’t decide how to remind him that she had spent her childhood powerlessly watching her mother become sequentially obsessed with a multitude of gurus and belief systems, each time declaring it was the one true path, trusting, being drawn in, and often scammed. Before Darcy had moved in with her dad, there’d been many months of not eating much besides ramen, peanut butter, and government cheese, because her mother had given all her hard-earned money to another cybercriminal preying on those who desperately needed something to believe in outside themselves.
    He knew her well enough to interpret her silence correctly. “Hey, no! No, no, no. It’s not like that.”
    She searched his earnest face. “What’s it like, Adam?”
    “No one completely understands it, but they’ve documented some weird stuff. Even the government has done some kind of geological survey, here and at other