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Chapter Twelve

E ven though Ben had been able to identify the letters as Ogham, an ancient Irish alphabet that had been in common use more than fifteen hundred years ago, its angular shapes inspired by the Roman alphabet, he knew he was a long way away from truly being able to decipher what those carvings meant.

Each of the letters in Ogham corresponded to a particular tree, and Ben hadn’t been too surprised to learn that the one which figured most prominently in the carvings was Daír, symbolizing oak.

However, he’d also realized when he tried to do a straight translation of the letters that whoever had put those symbols there hadn’t simply been writing out English in the Ogham alphabet.

No, what he came up with seemed like complete gibberish, a language that Google Translate certainly didn’t recognize.

He supposed it was possible that the letters had been scratched into the tree by someone who didn’t really know what they were doing and had been mostly messing around with an alphabet they’d found online but didn’t understand in the slightest.

That seemed the simplest explanation, anyway.

Or possibly the ancient Irish letters and the supposed gibberish they represented were part of a far more elaborate code, even though he couldn’t understand why anyone would want to go to that kind of trouble with something hardly anyone would ever see.

It wasn’t as if the code had been carved into a telephone pole on Main Street or one of the birch trees that shaded the walkway into City Hall.

For now, he had more pressing business to attend to, namely, going to the stationery store and having the flyer/posters printed out so he could hand them off to Sidney.

It had been good to go to her house for dinner the night before, even though she’d been extremely casual the whole time and had done everything she could to let him know it wasn’t a date or anything even in the general neighborhood of one.

He’d respected her wishes and played it cool.

Sure, it had been frustrating to have her sitting so close to him on the couch as they looked at his laptop’s screen together, to see the way her warm brown hair slipped over her shoulder as she leaned forward…

to smell the sweet scent of her shampoo…

but he wasn’t stupid enough to actually try anything.

For now, he needed to be glad that she viewed him as an ally — and to leave anything else off the table until she decided whether she was all right with being something more than just partners in an effort to let the citizens of Silver Hollow know that allowing Northwest Pacific to tear up chunks of the forest wasn’t in anyone’s best interest.

Like every other establishment on the town’s main street, Paper and Quill was a charming place, with racks of cards and fancy papers and fountain pens and all sorts of fascinating items that, if not strictly necessary, seemed to be perfect for impulse purchases.

Behind the counter, though, was the sort of big, professional printer you might expect to see at Kinko’s, and the woman who worked there had a bit brisker manner than he was used to from the town’s denizens.

“Four copies of each of these files, got it,” she said as she took the thumb drive from him. “Full color, I assume?”

“Yes,” Ben replied, even as he hoped the cost of the printing wouldn’t be too high.

The night before, he hadn’t been thinking about that — and neither had Sidney, he guessed, or he was pretty sure she would have offered to pay for it.

He had no real idea as to her finances, but since it seemed clear she was living in the house her mother and grandmother owned and she didn’t appear to have any real burden of debt…

well, except for student loans, he assumed…

she quite possibly might have more spare cash on hand than he did.

But it seemed that Paper and Quill didn’t charge big-city prices, since the entire order only cost him around ten bucks.

He happily handed over a couple of fives, thanked the woman for her help, and then headed outside.

Today, the clouds had descended again, but they were patchy and thin, promising at least a bit of sunshine as the day wore on.

He figured he’d take it.

Package of flyers in hand, he headed over to the pet shop. Sidney was helping a client as he came in, an older woman with a tiny chihuahua peeking out of the oversized purse she carried. Ben hung back, pretending to study a display of hand-tooled leather collars, until their business was concluded.

But then the woman left, and Sidney immediately came out from behind the counter.

“Are those the flyers?”

“Yep,” he replied. “How many do you want?”

“Most of them,” she said promptly. “I’ll put one in my window, and then I’ll hand out the others to business owners I know will be sympathetic.

I was thinking you could put one up on the bulletin boards in the library and at City Hall?

Those are public spaces, so you don’t have to get permission to post flyers there. ”

He could tell she was doing her best to make this easy for him, and it made sense. She was the one with connections in town, after all, and would probably do a much better job of persuading those who might be reluctant to get involved that this was a cause that affected all of Silver Hollow.

“Sounds like a plan,” he said, then paused. Might as well ask the question, he supposed. “Are you expecting any blowblack from this?”

“Probably,” she answered at once, although she didn’t appear overly concerned.

“Jim Tillman will probably come in here and try to get me to see reason or whatever, but I’m just going to tell him it’s a free country and I’m allowed to express my opinions.

Anyway, I’m pretty sure the general sentiment will be on my side, since no one wants to see the forest torn up.

Everyone knows you have to clamp down pretty hard on these companies — if you give them an inch, they’ll take a mile. ”

Sadly, that was only the truth. While Ben would have liked to believe corporations existed that played fairly and didn’t break the rules, his personal experience was that they’d usually do whatever they could to get away with all kinds of crap if they thought no one was looking too closely.

“Well, that’s good to know,” he said as he opened up the bag of flyers and handed the majority of them over to Sidney. “Any other place you want me to post one of these?”

“There’s also a sort of town bulletin board at the artist co-op at the end of Main Street,” she replied. “It’s right across from the library, so it’ll be easy enough for you to put one there, too.”

That seemed to be that. Even though he knew asking the question would sound far too obvious, he also didn’t want this to be their only meeting today, not when he still had no clear idea as to how long he planned to stay in Silver Hollow.

“Okay,” he said, then allowed himself a mental breath. “Do you want to meet up tonight after work to talk about how everything went?”

For the longest moment, she only gazed back at him, her expression unreadable. Ben did his best not to let any hope show in his face, nothing except mild interest in comparing notes and seeing what reactions — if any — the people in town had to their new conservation campaign.

But then her full lips quirked just the slightest bit, and she said, “Sure. You can come over around six-thirty. Can we do pizza, though? If I keep feeding you my grandmother’s leftovers, I’m going to run out pretty fast.”

He thought she was teasing him, even though he didn’t know her well enough to say for sure. “I didn’t realize you had a pizza place here in Silver Hollow.”

“Of course we do,” she responded, now openly amused. “It’s not on Main Street, but what kind of self-respecting town would we be if we didn’t have pizza?”

A fair assessment, he supposed. “I’ll pick up the pizza. What would you like?”

For a second or two, she only looked at him, lips slightly parted as if she intended to say he didn’t have to go to all that trouble. However, she must have done the mental math and realized she’d fed him the night before, so it was only fair that he take care of things this evening.

Besides, by six-thirty, she would have been home already, and it seemed kind of silly to have her come back downtown to pick up a pizza when he could just grab it on his way to her house.

Yesterday he’d walked because it had been a fine, mild day, and it wasn’t that far, but today he’d drive just to make sure the pizza arrived at her place piping hot.

A lift of her shoulders, and she said, “I like their all-meat version, but if that’s too heavy for you, I’m fine with pepperoni. Or even just veggie,” she added, now looking a little worried, as though she’d just paused to determine if her suggestions might be completely off base.

True, the one time they’d eaten together, they’d both had fish, so she probably had no idea whether he was a carnivore or a vegetarian who occasionally shook up his diet with a little seafood.

Luckily for her, he was just fine with a meat pizza.

“No, we can go for the caveman special,” he said with a grin, and she smiled back.

The bell attached to the door handle jingled, and another older woman came in, this one without a dog in her purse.

Well, it was the time of day when most people would probably be at work, even if it was remote from a home office, so it made sense that the majority of Sidney’s customers right now would look as if they must be retired.

Not for the first time, he wondered what the people in Silver Hollow who weren’t in the service industry did for a living.

Worked in Eureka, probably; the city wasn’t so far away that it wouldn’t be a manageable commute.

“See you at six-thirty, then,” Sidney told him, and he took the cue, tilting his head at her in acknowledgment before he headed outside.