“Okay.”
Liv followed him down the two sets of stairs, still marveling at the opulence surrounding them. Liv had never been in a rich person’s house before. Everything seemed heavy and expensive-looking. Even the doorknobs appeared precious and untouchable, though Stephen yanked on them as if he hoped to rip them from the heavy wood doors they protruded from.
In the forest, Liv breathed easier, and she noticed Stephen too seemed to calm.
“You don’t like your house?” she asked after they’d walked for several minutes.
“I can’t wait to get out of there,” he muttered.
Liv puzzled at his answer. She couldn’t imagine wanting to escape the beautiful house.
“I’m leaving town tomorrow for a few days,” Liv told him. She didn’t know why she told him. It wasn’t as if he’d asked.
“You are? Where are you going?”
“To stay with my Uncle George.”
Stephen nodded but looked away from her.
When he looked back, his eyes were troubled.
“Guess I’ll have to swim on my own,” he told her.
Chapter 7
August 1945
Liv
“George, how did you meet my mother?” Liv asked. She lay stretched out on the rug near the hearth in George’s cabin, inhaling the sweet scent of pears roasting over the fire. She’d heard the story a hundred times, maybe more, but she never tired of the tale.
“Fate brought your mother and I together, Volva. The manipulations of man are helpless against it.”
“But why does she say you seduced her?” Liv’s mother rarely spoke of the one night she’d spent with George, but the handful of times Liv had begged her to share, she implied that the devil’s song lured her to the Stoneroot Forest.
“Because your mother was raised in the fires of the church and among the furies of western men. How do we question our creator? It is difficult, and your mother is a good and pious woman. She believes she committed a mortal sin. Not you. You are pure in the eyes of her God, but she… she is not.”
“But that’s not true.”
George held up a hand.
“I know that, and you know that. But only your mother can unburden herself of such ideas. The morning I met her; I woke to a pale blue flower drifting down to my bed. The flower landed on my chest. I picked it up, strapped on my boots and walked into the forest. I knew the place where the blue flowers grew. I found your mother there, wailing into the blossoms as if her dead beloved might be hidden amongst them. We talked for many hours. When I left, she followed me back here to this cabin, where we ate roasted hare by firelight. I’m sure it is the only night in your mother’s life where she experienced magic. Not me,” George laughed. “But in the world. She gazed into the fire and saw a girl running through the woods with long, billowing hair and fierce brown eyes. She saw you, Volva. We created you that night and, in the morning, I returned her to the blue flowers. You were her pathway out of the darkness, child. You do not realize it now, but as you grew, as she returned to her mother-self, she shirked off the burden of her grief and lived once more.”
“She cried for years,” Liv murmured.
“She still cries,” George agreed. “We all cry. There is much pain in these lives. But you are wrong in why she cried. She cried because she longed for the freedom she saw in her only daughter. Even before you arrived, she knew you would not suffer her fate. You would be born free.”
* * *
Liv woke on the little straw bed in the corner of George’s cabin.
Someone pounded on the door.
“Volva, open up,” George called.
Bleary-eyed, Liv stood and fumbled the door open.
George stood outside with a boy, no more than eleven or twelve, hoisted in his arms. The boy’s eyes were closed and his lips purple. His wet, reddish hair hung across his ashen forehead.
“He was fishing. He must have fallen in the lake…” the woman babbled, following George into the cabin.
George laid the boy on the rug in front of the hearth.
The boy’s mother followed; her eyes bloodshot from crying. Liv saw a darkening purple bruise on the woman’s cheek.
Liv said nothing, but watched as George moved his hands over the boy’s head, and then to his neck, and finally to his belly. As he pressed into the soft places on the boy’s abdomen, George frowned. He opened his mouth and peered inside.
“Volva,” he said to Liv. “Gather some dandelion root.”
George turned to the boy’s mother.
“He did not drown. He consumed nightshade.”
Liv stepped from bed and slipped on her shoes, hurrying out the door.
In early summer, the dandelions were plentiful. She dug with her bare hands, since she had prepared no tools, and George insisted an unfortified tool could do more harm than good.
When she returned to the cabin, the boy’s mother sat on a wooden chair, moaning and rocking back and forth. George did not shush her. He took the root from Liv’s hand and added it to a jar of other herbs.
“Volva, put your hand here.” He took Liv’s hand and pressed it to the boy’s soft belly.
George stood and went into the kitchen. He scooped water from a large drum into the jar.
As Liv sat, she felt a pulsing beneath her fingers, as if something wanted to escape from the boy’s body.
“Will he die?” the mother asked, balling her hands into her skirt and squeezing.
George shook the jar and gazed at her.
“We will know soon, my dear.”
Tears gushed down the woman’s face, and she recommenced her rocking.
George returned to the boy, the jar in his hand, a hunk of smoky quartz in the other.
Liv pulled her hand away as George rested the quartz on the boy’s throat.
“Get the drums, Volva.”
Liv hurried to the cupboard by the bed and retrieved two oval-shaped drums. They were old drums that had traveled with George across seas. Reindeer hide worn smooth and stretched over a piece of wood, bent into a circular shape. Symbols decorated the hides. The twin ravens of Odin had always been her favorite of the images. She gazed at the two black birds locked together, more like one bird with two heads.
George tilted the jar over the boy’s face, releasing several drops into his open mouth.
Satisfied, he sat back and took a drum. Liv held the other in her lap and, following George’s hands, she began to pound the drum. The rhythm was slow at first, and then quickened. George murmured in the language of his ancestors. Liv barely heard him beneath the beating of the drums.
As they pounded, Liv slipped into a trance. She drifted from room and into sky. She soared over green-topped mountains and deep valleys filled with flowers.
The drum pounded in unison with her heartbeat. The rhythm of her blood matched the thrumming.
Voices called out from the blurry edges of her vision.
Another, clearer voice broke through her reverie.
“Come back, Volva,” George whispered.
She blinked, her head lolling to the side, and the cabin slid into focus.
The boy no longer lay on the rug. His mother held him, though he was big and awkward in her arms. She crooned into the boy’s ear.
He was awake, face sweaty and hands clutching his mother’s arms as if he’d clawed his way back from the land of the dead.
And Liv knew, as she watched his sunken, haunted eyes, that he’d done just that.
* * *
The first time Liv saw Mrs. Kaiser, she gazed at the woman in awe. She seemed transported from the marquee posters. She looked like a Hollywood starlet, with silky black hair curled and fastened with a sparkling comb behind her ear. She wore an emerald green city dress with puffed shoulders and a pearl neckline. Her eyes were big and dark, and her lips painted red.
“What are you looking at?” Stephen asked, stepping to the window beside her.
He gasped when he saw his mother clim
bing from the polished black car and yanked the curtains closed.
“What?” Liv asked at the alarmed look on his face.
“You have to leave. Come on. Hurry.” He pushed her toward the door and down the hall, but as they neared the top of the staircase, the front door opened and they heard the woman’s shoes on the polished floor.
He jerked her back, and Liv started to cry out, but Stephen clamped a hand over her mouth.
He threw open another door and shoved her inside just as his mother’s feet pounded up the stairs.
Liv gazed at another narrow set of stairs. He’d pushed her into the doorway that led to the attic.
“What are you doing?” Stephen’s mother asked, her voice cold and filled with suspicion.
Liv took a few steps up the stairs, watching the door.
“Nothing. I heard the door open, and I was coming to see…”
“To see me?” Mrs. Kaiser snapped. “I’m sure. Go make tea. I’m exhausted. Bring it to me in the parlor.”
Liv heard the woman’s hard shoes clack down the stairs.
Stephen cracked the door open.
“Shh…” He put a finger to his lips and led Liv down the stairs.
“Is she angry?” Liv asked, but Stephen’s lips were pressed in a tight line. He shoved her out the front door, closing it quietly behind her.
Liv hurried down the porch steps and toward the tree line.
She paused and looked back, catching the smallest flick as a curtain fell back into place in one of the lower rooms. She hoped it had been Stephen watching, but she didn’t think so.
* * *
Stephen arranged a cup and saucer on a silver tray. He added a small bowl with cubes of sugar, a glass pitcher of milk, and a single piece of chocolate.
When he stepped into the room, his mother was draped across the burgundy crushed-velvet sofa in her slip. She’d loosened her hair from the clip, and a curl fell across her forehead.
He set the tray on the table and lifted her steaming cup of tea.
As he reached toward her, her hand shot out and caught his other arm, holding it firm. Her fingernails dug into the soft flesh of his wrist.
“Who is she?” his mother asked.
Stephen’s hand started to shake. A drop of tea splashed from the cup and burned his finger. He winced and tried to steady his arm.
“I… she…”
“Drink it,” she told him, releasing his hand. “Drink it, now.”
He looked at the tea, tendrils of steam rising from the liquid.
“Drink it or you’ll spend the night in the cellar.”
“She lives in town. She’s harmless, Mother,” Stephen tried to explain.
“Drink it,” his mother shrieked.
Stephen lifted the cup to his mouth and opened. The tea scalded his lips and tongue, and he choked as it burned the back of his throat. He didn’t dare spit it out on her Persian rug. Tears streamed from his eyes as the hot tea blazed a scalding trail down his throat and into his stomach.
When he’d swallowed the last dredges, he returned the cup to the tray.
His mother watched him steadily, her eyes hard.
“Go make me another,” she snapped. “And then get out of my sight.”
That night, Stephen barely slept. His mouth and throat ached. He drank three cups of milk, but the burning did not subside. He fell asleep just as the morning sun crested over the trees beyond his window.
Chapter 8
September 1965
Mack
Mack woke to the sound of something hitting the floor with a thud. He sat up and squinted into the room, unable to make out any movement in the darkness. Fumbling the lamp on next to his bed, he gazed toward his door, still firmly closed.
Misty lay at the end of his bed, the fur on the back of her neck raised and a low growl emitting from her muzzle. Nothing in the room had been disturbed. He scanned the meager furnishings, a dresser with a little portable radio, a wooden chair he’d stacked his clothes on, before climbing into bed. No shadows stirred on the knotty pine walls.
“What do you think, Misty?” he asked, leaning down to stroke her red-brown fur.
He waited, listening, but heard nothing else.
Probably the wind, he figured, laying back down. He closed his eyes and heard another sound: the slow creak of footsteps in the room above him.
Misty let out a single loud bark and stood up on the bed.
Mack sat back up and listened. The footsteps had stopped, but now his heart had caught on to the noises and it thudded behind his breastbone. Mack was not prone to panic. He stood six feet four inches tall and weighed two hundred pounds. He could more than take care of himself. But his mind flashed on the corpse in the woods.
The sensation of being watched returned, but in the closed bedroom, nothing could see him. Unless they peeked through the tiny slit beneath the curtain, he reasoned, but the sounds he heard had not come from outside the cabin.
“Stay here, girl,” he told Misty, shutting her in the bedroom. Other men would have sent the dog ahead of them, but Misty was pushing ten years and excitement could kill her as quick as anything else. He would need Misty in the days ahead. Leaving Tina would not be an easy task. The thought of doing it without his pup made his heart ache.
He eyed his rifle propped next to the couch and opted for a baseball bat instead.
The upper floor consisted of a single large room with slanted ceilings, and Mack had to duck as he walked up the stairs. He gazed across the room. The blinds on the single window were lowered, but as he studied the opposite wall, his breath caught.
A figure stood there, a man as tall as Mack himself. His back faced Mack, as if he stared at the wall.
Mack’s hand shot out and flicked on the lights, raising the baseball bat in his left hand. He took an automatic step backward as light filled the room.
The man no longer stood at the opposite wall.
Cheap plastic blinds and a picture of a buck standing in a meadow were the only objects before Mack.
Mack’s heart hammered in his ears, and he walked across the room. There was nowhere for a person to hide. Two twin beds stood against one wall, a long chest of drawers on the opposite. He stared at the shag carpet as if he expected to see footprints, but the fabric appeared undisturbed.
“Damn, Tina,” he grumbled, returning to the stairs. When he’d told Tina about the cabin, she’d delighted in sharing a story about her cousin’s friend Marty who went camping for a week and disappeared without a trace.
“They found his shoe a year later,” she’d said, picking at her disgusting grapefruit and challenging him with her made-up eyes. “Nothing else, just a shoe.”
Of course, it wasn’t only Tina. It was the dead man in the woods. Who wouldn’t be spooked after a thing like that?
He flipped off the light and hurried down the stairs, returning to his room and sitting on the edge of the bed for several minutes.
Misty licked his face, but he nudged her away, listening.
Only the quiet of the cabin surrounded him. He laid down and slept.
* * *
The morning arrived crisp and sunny. Misty bounced around the cabin like a dog half her age. Mack fed her a can of dog food before giving in to her persistent pawing at the door and letting her out. She bounded into the wet grass that sparkled in the early sun.
He brewed coffee and sipped it black at the little kitchen table by the window. He watched Misty crouch and spring and run wildly in circles. He wished he could tell her to slow down; her ticker wasn’t built for a decade of racing, but even if she understood, her instincts would override his good sense.
He thought briefly of Tina eating her grapefruit and nursing her hangover with a glass of seltzer water. And then he thought, as he inevitably did, of Diane.
Diane had moved out on a Tuesday, taking the cracked leather bag that had belonged to her father stuffed with a week’s worth of clothes and toiletries. It hadn’t been the first time
she’d left, and Mack had ignored her, scraping the burn off his frying pan and pretending not to watch as she climbed into her Buick and sped away.
Afterward, he’d sat at the table, drank his coffee, and insisted she’d be back just like every other time. Later, he realized she wasn’t coming back, not for good, not even for a night this time. She did come back a week later with her brother’s pickup truck. They loaded her stuff, and she handed Mack her house key with tears streaking a trail down her pale cheeks.
Mack had drawn her close and whispered in her ear.
“Don’t go, Diane. I swear, I’ll never buy another bottle. I mean it this time. I’m done.”
She’d let out a sob, buried her head in his chest, and then, without a word, she ran to her brother’s truck and climbed in.
Diane’s brother Dennis had offered Mack a wave and a sympathetic smile. Mack liked Dennis. They’d shared an easy friendship over the years.
But Dennis knew the stories of Mack’s drinking. Late nights stumbling in half-cocked, sometimes angry.
He never hit Diane, never had and never would. But he broke the little glass swan her father had bought her when she was eighteen. It was a cherished gift from a beloved, and dead, father. An irreplaceable gift, and it had been the last straw.
He’d broken plenty of other things before that: plates, coffee mugs. He’d even kicked a hole in the wall once. The morning after his drunken outbursts, he’d wake ashamed and swear to Diane he would join AA; he’d never take another drink.
Sober, Mack wouldn’t even paddle his dog for pissing on the floor; but drunk, a dormant anger rose up and lashed out at anyone willing to get close enough to see it.
Diane wasn’t perfect. She was a stubborn beast who dug in her feet about the most preposterous things, like replacing the leaky faucet in the kitchen. She preferred to let the old faucet run a steady drip into a grimy bowl beneath the sink because the faucet had character and belonged in their old farmhouse.
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