g allen thompson

The first chapter, free.

Prelude: Morrison

Letter to Jess, unfinished, found later in María's journal

I'm trying to explain the feeling and the words won't come. You know how sometimes you walk into a room and forget why you came? It's like that, but with everything. I'll be grinding ochre and look up and three hours are gone and I can't remember painting. Derek asked me yesterday what I'd made and I couldn't answer. I looked at the canvas—my canvas, my brushstrokes—and didn't recognize it.

Or I'll wake up at 3 AM certain someone's watching through the studio window. I get up, check, there's only the pines and the dark. But the feeling doesn't stop. Like the trees are leaning closer. Like the paintings are looking back.

You asked if I'm okay. I said yes. I lied.

I don't know how to tell you that something's wrong when I can't name what it is. I don't know how to say I'm scared when there's nothing to be scared of. I don't know how to explain that I need to leave when I don't know where I'm going or why.

Except I do know where. I can feel it pulling. South. The mountains. I have to go.

You're going to be angry. Derek's going to be hurt. I'm sorry. I love you both. I do.

But I have to go.

Te quiero. Always.

—M

P.S. I'll call when I get there. I promise.

Part One: The Studio

María's hands were rust-red with ochre when she realized she'd painted the same canvas three times.

She stepped back from the easel, nearly tripping over the coffee mug she'd set down—when? This morning? Hours ago? The coffee was cold now, a film across its surface. Late afternoon sun slanted through the studio window, turning the air golden with dust motes that swirled in the light like something alive.

The painting in front of her showed mountains and pines, the familiar shapes of Morrison pressed into burnt umber and yellow ochre. The same composition she'd scraped down yesterday. And the day before that. And possibly the day before that, though her memory of last week had gone soft around the edges, unreliable.

She set the palette knife on the worktable with a hand that shook.

The studio smelled the way it always did—linseed oil and turpentine, the mineral scent of pigments, the faint sage she burned sometimes to clear the air. Usually that smell grounded her, made her feel connected to something older than thought, older than language. Earth and stone ground to powder, mixed with oil, spread across canvas. Alchemy. Magic.

Now it made her nauseous.

She'd built this space herself three years ago, back when the landlord said she could use the detached garage if she fixed it up. Derek had helped—insulated the walls, installed the good north-facing window that gave her clean light all day, built sturdy shelves for her materials. Her pigments lined those shelves in glass jars like small universes: burnt sienna from clay she'd dug near Red Rocks, yellow ochre from a quarry in Golden, raw umber she'd mail-ordered from Italy, the deep red ground from rocks she'd hauled back from a camping trip in Utah. Each one a color pulled from the earth itself, each one something she'd touched and transformed.

She loved this room. It was hers in a way nothing else had ever been—not her bedroom in her parents' house growing up, not her dorm room at CU Boulder, not even the bedroom she shared with Derek now. This was where she became herself. Where she made sense of the world by grinding it into powder and spreading it on canvas.

Except for the last three weeks, she hadn't been making sense of anything.

She walked to the window, pressed her forehead against the cool glass. Outside, the afternoon was ordinary: scrub oak and ponderosa pines, the dirt driveway leading up to the house, the red rocks of Morrison rising in the distance like the broken spine of something ancient. Beautiful. Safe.

So why did it feel wrong?

A magpie landed on the pine branch closest to the window. Black and white, iridescent blue on its wings. It cocked its head and looked directly at her.

She jerked back from the glass.

The bird didn't move. Just watched. Like it knew something.

She crossed to the utility sink and turned the water on too hot, thrust her hands under the stream. Red water pooled in the basin—ochre dissolving, circling the drain. Then pink. Then faint rust. Then clear.

She scrubbed her hands with the bar of orange soap that smelled like mechanics' garages, watched the red fade from the lines of her palms, from under her nails. Her hands looked strange to her. Familiar but not. Like someone else's hands she was borrowing.

When she looked up, her reflection stared back from the small mirror above the sink.

Same face. Dark hair pulled back in the messy bun she always wore to paint, a few strands escaping around her temples. Brown eyes, darker than Derek's, lighter than Jess's. High cheekbones she'd gotten from her mother's side—Nuevomexicana, though her mother had been born in Denver like María, that connection to New Mexico a generation back, fading. Skin that tanned dark in summer, paint smudges on her cheek she hadn't noticed until now.

Her face. Her ordinary, 28-year-old face.

But the way the light hit it, or the angle of the mirror, or something else she couldn't name—

She looked like someone being watched.

She grabbed the towel, dried her hands too hard, dropped it back on the hook. The canvas would have to be scraped again. Tomorrow. Or never. Right now she needed to get out of this room that suddenly felt too small, the walls pressing in, the paintings leaning toward her like they wanted something.

She locked the studio door behind her—something she'd never done, there was nothing to steal, it was just paint and canvas—and walked up the path toward the house.

The magpie followed from tree to tree, calling its harsh, rattling song.

Part Two: The House

Derek was in the kitchen chopping vegetables when she came through the back door. He looked up, smiled that easy smile that had made her fall for him three years ago. He was handsome in an understated way—tall, lean from hiking and climbing, hands permanently stained with wood dust no amount of scrubbing would remove. Those hands that built beautiful things. Those hands that knew how to touch her.

"Hey," he said. "How'd it go today?"

The lie formed before she could think about it. "Fine. Good."

"Yeah?" He set down the knife, really looked at her. "You sure? You look—" He paused, searching for the word. "I don't know. Tired? Or something."

"I'm okay." She crossed to him, kissed his cheek, felt him trying to read her face the way he'd learned to over three years together. "Just need a shower. I'm covered in paint."

That was true, at least. Paint on her hands still, under her nails, probably in her hair. She could feel it drying on her forearms where she'd rolled up her sleeves.

"Jess is coming by after dinner," he said. "That okay?"

Her stomach tightened. "Yeah. Of course."

Of course Jess was coming. They had standing dinner plans on Tuesdays. The three of them, easy and comfortable, the polyamory that had seemed so natural when it started two years ago. Derek had been nervous when she'd first mentioned Jess, the woman she'd met at a gallery opening, the immediate attraction. But he'd said yes. They'd talked it through. Set boundaries. Checked in. Made it work.

And it had worked. It did work. She loved them both. Differently, but completely.

So why did the thought of seeing Jess tonight make her want to run?In the bathroom she stood under water too hot, watching ochre spiral down the drain in rust-colored ribbons. The shower was one of those modern ones with the rainfall head Derek had installed last year, water coming from everywhere at once. Usually she loved it. Now it felt like being caught in something she couldn't escape.

She scrubbed her skin with the loofa until it turned pink. Washed her hair twice. Stood there until the water started to go cool and she had no more excuses.

When she came out, wrapped in Derek's old CU sweatshirt and yoga pants, the kitchen smelled like garlic and cilantro and cumin—he was making his black bean and sweet potato tacos, the ones she always said were better than any restaurant. The smell should have made her hungry. She felt nothing.

"Ten minutes," he called from the kitchen.

She sat on the couch, pulled her knees up, stared at the wall where three of her paintings hung. A landscape she'd done last year of the Flatirons at sunset. An abstract in blues and grays she'd made after a hard week. A portrait of Derek and Jess together on this same couch, laughing at something off-canvas. She'd been proud of that one. Caught something true about them, about the three of them.

Now the paintings looked flat. Dead. Like photographs of a life that belonged to someone else.

Derek brought her a beer—Left Hand Milk Stout, her favorite from the Longmont brewery—and sat beside her. "You've been quiet lately."

"I'm okay."

"María." His voice was gentle. "You say that a lot. But I don't think you are."

She took a long drink of the beer. It tasted like nothing. "I'm just tired."

"Is it your work? Because you've been in the studio every day and I haven't seen you bring anything up to show me. Which is fine, you don't have to show me everything, but usually you—"

"It's not my work."

"Then what?"

The question hung there between them. She could feel him wanting to help, wanting to fix it the way he fixed furniture and broken hinges and wobbly table legs. But this wasn't something that could be fixed with wood glue and patience.

"I don't know," she said finally. And that was true too. She didn't know.

Headlights swept across the window. Jess's Subaru pulling into the driveway.

María's heart started beating too fast.

Part Three: The Conversation

Jess came through the door the way she always did—confident, present, filling the room with her energy. She was wearing her work clothes still: the Patagonia fleece she practically lived in, yoga pants, her long blonde hair in a braid down her back. She'd come straight from the wellness center where she taught yoga and saw therapy clients in the afternoons.

She took one look at María and stopped.

"Okay," she said. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing. I'm fine."

Jess set her bag down, crossed to the couch, sat on María's other side so she was bracketed between them. She took María's hand. Her fingers were warm, strong, familiar. "María. You're not fine. You haven't been fine for weeks. Talk to me."

Derek leaned forward on María's other side. "We're worried about you."

The two of them, united. Loving her. Wanting to help.

She pulled her hand away, stood. Walked to the window. Looked out at the darkening yard, the pines going black against the bruised sky.

"I need to go to Taos for a while," she heard herself say.

Silence behind her. She didn't turn around.

"Taos?" Derek's voice, confused. "New Mexico?"

"I have family there. My tío Esteban. I haven't seen him in years and he's—" The lie built itself, smooth as oil paint. "He's getting older. I should visit. Check on him."

"How long?" Jess asked. Her voice had gone careful. Her therapist voice, the one that meant she was trying not to react.

"I don't know. A few weeks maybe."

"When were you thinking?" Derek stood now too, came to stand beside her at the window. She could feel his confusion radiating off him like heat.

"Tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?" His voice cracked. "María, what the hell—"

"I know it's sudden—"

"Sudden? We have dinner plans tomorrow night with Rachel and Tom. You promised you'd come to my mom's birthday on Saturday. You've got that gallery showing your work in Denver next month that you've been preparing for—"

"I'll be back for that."

"Will you?" Jess stood now too, approached slowly like María was a spooked horse that might bolt. "Because this doesn't feel like a family visit. This feels like you're running away from something."

María turned to face them both. "I'm not running—"

"Then what is this?" Jess's voice was steady but María could see the hurt in her eyes, the confusion, the fear. "Because something's been wrong for weeks. You barely sleep. You're distracted all the time. You won't talk about your work. And now you want to leave tomorrow for a family member you've mentioned maybe twice in two years? Help us understand."

"I just need to go."

"Why?" Derek's hands were clenched at his sides. "Give us a reason. A real one."

How could she explain? The dread that had no name, no shape, no logic. The way her paintings looked at her when she turned her back. The certainty—bone-deep, undeniable—that something was watching, waiting, pulling her south toward mountains she barely remembered.

"I can't explain it," she said finally. "I just know I have to go."

Jess stepped closer. "Is it us? Is this about the relationship? Because if you need space, if something's not working—"

"It's not you. Either of you."

"Then what?" Derek's voice rose. "Because you're asking us to just accept that you're leaving tomorrow for an indefinite amount of time to visit an uncle you barely know. That makes no sense, María."

"I know it doesn't."

"So help us understand!" He was angry now, hurt breaking through. "We love you. We're trying to support you. But you have to give us something."

She looked at them both—Derek with his carpenter's hands and his patient heart, Jess with her yoga wisdom and her fierce loyalty. Three years with Derek. Two years with Jess. This life they'd built together, this strange and beautiful arrangement that worked because they all chose it every day.

And she was about to walk away from it.

"I'm scared," she whispered.

They both went still.

"Of what?" Jess asked softly.

"I don't know." The words came harder now, pulled from somewhere deep. "Something's wrong. I can feel it. In the studio, in the house, in my sleep. Like something's watching. Like something wants—" She stopped. "I know how that sounds."

"Like you need to talk to someone," Jess said gently. "A therapist. Not me, a real one. Maybe a psychiatrist if—"

"I'm not crazy."

"I didn't say that. But anxiety, depression, even some kinds of psychosis can feel exactly like what you're describing. Feeling watched. Feeling unsafe. Disassociation—"

"I'm not having a breakdown." María's voice was harder than she meant it to be. "I'm not. This is real. I can feel it."

"Feel what?" Derek asked.

She closed her eyes. Tried to find words for the thing that had no words. "A pull. Like a hook in my chest. Pulling me south. Toward the mountains. Toward—" She opened her eyes. "I have to go. I don't expect you to understand. But I have to go."

Jess and Derek looked at each other over her head, having a conversation in glances the way they'd learned to do. Coming to some kind of agreement.

"Okay," Jess said finally."Okay?" Derek stared at her. "That's it? She says she feels a mystical pull toward the mountains and we're just going to—"

"We can't stop her." Jess's voice was level. "And if she needs to go, then she needs to go. Right?"

It wasn't really a question.

"I'm coming back," María said. "I promise. This isn't—it's not leaving leaving. It's just—"

"You can't promise that." Jess's eyes were wet now. "You don't know what you're walking into. You don't know what this is."

"I know. But I have to go anyway."

They talked for another hour. Sat on the couch, the three of them, Derek's tacos getting cold on the counter. Jess cried quietly. Derek paced. María held her ground, hating herself, hating that she couldn't give them a better answer, hating that the only truth she had was one they couldn't understand.

Finally Derek said, "Let us drive you. At least let us do that. It's five hours, you're exhausted—"

"No." She said it too fast. "I need to do this alone."

"Why?"

"Because I do."

Jess wiped her eyes. "Call us every day. Every day, María. And if you need us, if anything feels wrong—"

"I will. I promise."

More promises. She was making so many promises she didn't know if she could keep.

Around ten they left—Jess to her apartment in Golden, Derek to the bedroom they shared though he'd probably sleep on the couch tonight. The air was thick with things unsaid, with love and hurt and confusion all tangled together.

After they left she sat in the dark living room for a long time, listening to the house settle around her, feeling the pull grow stronger with every minute.

She should call her mother. Should explain. Should—

But she was already moving, already packing.

Part Four: The Leaving

She packed in the dark, pulling clothes from drawers without looking, throwing them in the duffel bag she used for camping trips. Jeans, t-shirts, sweaters for the cold mountain nights. Hiking boots. Her good jacket.

In the studio she loaded plastic bins with supplies: brushes, palette knives, canvas boards, her grinding tools, jars of pigments wrapped carefully in newspaper. The good pigments, the ones she'd made herself. She couldn't leave those behind.

Her truck—a '98 Toyota Tacoma, forest green, running more on stubbornness than mechanics—sat in the driveway. She loaded it in the dark, working by feel more than sight, trying not to wake Derek. Bins in the truck bed, duffel bag behind the seat, her sleeping bag and camping gear just in case.

The last thing she packed was her journal—the leather-bound one Jess had given her for her birthday, barely used, too nice to write in. She grabbed it anyway. And the cigar box where she kept letters, photos, things that mattered. She didn't know why. Just that she might need them.

She stood in the driveway at 4 AM, the house dark behind her, the pines rustling in the pre-dawn wind. Somewhere up the canyon a coyote called, lonely and wild.

She should leave a note. Should—

But Derek and Jess already knew. There was nothing left to say that she hadn't said.

She got in the truck, turned the key. The engine turned over on the third try, coughing to life. Headlights swept across the garage, the studio, the life she was leaving.

She backed out of the driveway slowly, like any sudden movement might wake someone, might make this real.

At the end of the block she looked in the rearview mirror one last time. The house was just a dark shape now, windows blank, giving nothing away.

She took C-470 toward the interstate and didn't look back again.

Part Five: The Drive

Morrison fell away in her rearview mirror as dawn broke over the Front Range.

The red rocks caught the first light, bleeding orange and gold against the pale sky. She'd grown up with those rocks—climbed them as a teenager, hiked the trails with friends, brought Derek there on their third date. She knew every formation, every trail, every place where the light hit just right.

She'd painted them a hundred times.

Now they felt like strangers watching her leave.

The highway swung east along the foothills and onto I-25, through country she knew by heart. Usually she loved driving south, the way the city fell away and left just road and mountains and sky.

Now it felt like descending into something.

She passed Castle Rock, then Monument Hill, where the highway rose and fell and Pikes Peak appeared in the distance like a promise. After that, I-25 settled into its true character—straight, flat, monotonous. Four lanes of asphalt running south along the eastern edge of the Rockies, mountains to the west but always distant, always unreachable from here. The highway hypnotized her. White lines disappearing under her hood, mile markers ticking past, the landscape repeating itself in subtle variations: mesa, ranch, exit sign, mesa, ranch, exit sign.

Colorado Springs sprawling east toward the plains. Pueblo with its steel mills. She barely registered any of it. Set the cruise control and let the truck carry her south while her mind went quiet, emptied out, nothing but the hum of tires on pavement and the pull growing stronger in her chest.

She should be thinking about what she'd say to Esteban. Should be planning how long she'd stay, when she'd call Derek and Jess, what she'd do about the gallery show in Denver. Should be questioning this entire impulse, this running away from her life based on nothing but a feeling.

But her mind wouldn't hold those thoughts. They slipped away like water, leaving only the road and the mountains ahead and the certainty that this was right, this was necessary, this was inevitable.

South of Pueblo the landscape changed. Less green, more beige. High plains rolling away to distant mountains, the earth itself going harder, drier, older. This was the country her mother's family came from—somewhere south of here, near the New Mexico border, land her great-grandfather had worked before moving the family north to Denver for jobs, opportunity, something better.

She'd never been south of Pueblo before.

She stopped for gas in Walsenburg, bought coffee that tasted burnt and bitter from a gas station that smelled like air freshener and old hot dogs. A man at the next pump stared at her too long. She got back in her truck, locked the doors, pulled out too fast.

The coffee was still too hot to drink but she sipped it anyway, burning her tongue, welcoming the sharp sensation that felt like proof she was still here, still present, still herself.

Trinidad appeared suddenly—small city pressed against mesas, last stop before the border. She should have stopped. Should have stretched, eaten, thought things through. Instead she kept driving, following signs for Raton Pass.

The highway began to climb.

The road narrowed as it climbed toward the pass, curves coming sharper now, tighter. The truck labored on the grade, engine whining, losing speed on every rise. Guardrails on her right, drop-offs she tried not to look at. Wind hit her broadside—fierce, gusty, pushing the truck toward the center line. She gripped the wheel tighter, leaned forward, focused on keeping it steady.

But the views—

Between the curves, between the moments of white-knuckled concentration, the views were staggering. Behind her, Colorado spread out vast and brown, the plains she'd just crossed visible all the way to the horizon. Ahead and below, New Mexico opened up like a secret—red mesas and dark volcanic rock, distant mountains in shades of blue and purple, sky so enormous it seemed to curve at the edges.She'd seen mountains her whole life. Lived in their shadow. Painted them over and over. But these were different. Older, maybe. Harder. More patient.

At the summit—7,834 feet, the sign said—the state line ran across the road. A second sign welcomed her to New Mexico, Land of Enchantment, in faded paint. There was a pullout. She pulled in, got out on shaking legs. The wind tried to rip the truck door from her hands. She had to lean into it to walk to the edge.

From here she could see both states: Colorado behind and above, New Mexico ahead and below. The border was just a line on a map but standing here it felt like more than that. Like a threshold. Like a point of no return.

She thought about turning around. Getting back in the truck, driving north, calling Derek and saying she'd been wrong, she'd made a mistake, could she please come home.

But even as she thought it, she knew she wouldn't. Couldn't. The pull was too strong now. Had been growing with every mile south and now, standing at this threshold with the wind trying to push her over the edge, it was undeniable.

Something ahead wanted her. Needed her. Was waiting.

She got back in the truck and continued down into New Mexico.

The road dropped toward Raton, curves still tight, her brakes hot from constant use. The landscape changed with every curve—pine giving way to piñon and juniper, green turning to red and gold, Colorado disappearing behind and above her like something she'd dreamed. By the time the road leveled out she could smell her brakes smoking.

The pull grew stronger with every mile.

Around noon she pulled into a rest area outside Raton.

She got out, stretched legs that had gone stiff from sitting. The wind was different here—dryer, harder, carrying the smell of sage and distance. The sky was bigger somehow, pressing down enormous and blue.

She felt small beneath it. Small and exposed and strangely right.

A family was having a picnic at one of the concrete tables: mother, father, two kids with matching Finding Nemo t-shirts. The mother smiled at her. "Heading south?"

"Taos."

"Beautiful country up there. We're from Texas, first time in New Mexico. It's—" She gestured at the landscape, the sky, searching for words. "It's something else."

María nodded, got back in her truck, pulled back onto the highway.

The woman was right. It was something else.

The land here was redder than Colorado—iron in the soil, blood in the earth. The mesas rose like altars against the sky. The light had a quality she'd never seen before, thin and sharp and gold, like the air itself was painted.

She passed through small towns with Spanish names that rolled off her tongue like prayers—Raton, Springer, Cimarron. Gas stations and cafés closed for siesta, adobe houses behind chain link fences, churches with crosses that caught the sun.

Her mother's mother had spoken Spanish at home when she was young. María's mother had understood it but never spoke it, said there was no need, they were Americans now. María had taken it in high school and college, could read it better than speak it, but the words felt right in her mouth—old and familiar, like something inherited.

By mid-afternoon she was climbing west out of Cimarron through a canyon so narrow and dark it looked like the earth had cracked open. The road hugged the canyon wall, the river a white ribbon of snowmelt beside her.

Then the valley opened up and she saw them.

The Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

She pulled onto the shoulder without thinking, stopped the truck, got out. Stood there while semis blew past shaking the ground beneath her feet.

The mountains rose west of the valley like broken teeth, massive and ancient and patient. Snow capped even in late May, the peaks sharp against the blue. Wheeler Peak—she remembered the name from a geography class, highest point in New Mexico—stood above the others, white and watching.

Sangre de Cristo. Blood of Christ. Named for the way the peaks glowed red at dawn and dusk, alpenglow turning the snow to blood, to fire, to something that looked alive.

Something in her chest loosened. The pull that had been there for three weeks, growing stronger every day—it was this. These mountains. This place.

She'd never been here before but her body knew it. Recognized it. Like coming home to a place she'd never lived.

The wind smelled like sage and pine and stone.

She got back in the truck, hands shaking now, and drove up over the last pass and down the long canyon toward Taos.

The canyon road spilled her out onto Kit Carson Road and into the center of town. Adobe buildings, art galleries, tourists in hiking boots and fleece. The town had that high desert look—brown and beige and the red of clay, prayer flags snapping in the wind, vintage pickups next to new Subarus.

She didn't stop. Drove through town and out the other side, following signs she barely registered, turning onto smaller roads, dirt roads, following the pull.

Until she found it.

A mailbox with "Solano" painted on the side. A dirt driveway leading through pines toward a small adobe house. Beyond it, the mountains rising sharp and close, close enough to touch.

She pulled up beside the house and sat there, engine running, not sure what to do next.

The front door opened. A man came out onto the portal—older, weathered, silver-haired. Tío Esteban, though she barely recognized him. It had been fifteen years at least since she'd seen him at that family gathering in Denver. He'd been younger then. Everyone had been younger.

He stood on the portal looking at her truck, at her, and even from here she could see something in his face.

Recognition. Resignation. Fear.

Like he'd been expecting her.

Like he knew why she'd come even though she didn't.

She turned off the truck. The silence that followed was so complete she could hear the wind in the pines, the mountains breathing, something older than words welcoming her home.

She opened the door and stepped out into the thin mountain air and the life that had been waiting for her.

Tío Esteban didn't smile. Didn't wave. Just stood there watching as she approached.

And when she got close enough to see his face clearly, she saw tears in his eyes.

"Mija," he said softly. "You shouldn't have come."

But they both knew she'd had no choice.

The mountains had called.

And she had answered.

* * *

Ochre and Bone is available on Amazon.

Want to hear when the next one’s out?