by Willa Reece
But then CC’s head poked around the corner of the door he’d used for his rapid exit with a yowl that startled me. I always saved Lu’s shop for my last stop so I could linger and visit awhile. I wasn’t prepared to transition from music and laughter to whatever was going on in the oddly silent kitchen that had obviously disturbed the cat so much he was complaining to me about it.
“Traumatized by a cold stove?” I joked, but it was the most natural thing in the world to leave the kitchen and follow the cat as if he knew where I needed to be better than I knew myself.
The kitchen wasn’t the only room in the house that was silent and chilly. When I’d left that morning with a basketful of tea, tisanes, balms and powders, Granny had been in the pantry. We had barely spoken, as was our early a.m. routine. But now the emptiness of her kitchen radiated outward until the whole Queen Anne seemed lifeless and dull.
CC’s feet were the only sound and he padded them lightly as if he tiptoed up the cherrywood staircase on purpose, whisper soft. I followed his lead, placing my feet quietly, the whole time straining my ears trying to hear evidence of what the old wisewoman was up to.
We ended up at Granny’s bedroom door where we didn’t surprise several visitors who acted as if our arrival was expected. Cookie Cat sashayed into the room and jumped up on the bed to lie on a crocheted throw beside Granny’s pillows. I stopped at the doorway, blinking. My hostess was bundled under a colorful patchwork quilt. Her face was starkly pale against the quilt’s bright floral pattern, created by thousands of hand-stitched cotton pieces.
“You’ve met Sadie and Joyce. This is another friend of mine. And yours too, of course. Kara… this is my Mel,” Granny said. I’d seen Kara before. Morgan’s Gap was a small town and I was already accustomed to many of its faces even if I didn’t know them by name. Unlike Sadie, Kara wore dramatic makeup and her hair was a wild shock of bottle red. But it was her clothing that most drew the eye. Kara loved what Sarah had called “hand work.” Crocheted vests, patchwork skirts, knitted caps—even in the summer. She always made me smile whenever I saw her unconventional look on the street.
“Everything is going to be fine,” Joyce said. She was placing a black lacquered tray decorated with a Japanese pagoda and vivid cherry blossoms across Granny’s lap. On the tray was a china cup filled with steaming liquid and a plate of dark brown, buttered bread.
“What happened? What’s wrong?” I stepped over the threshold with every intention of claiming a place among the strange group. Granny and I hadn’t spoken much since I’d messed up with the bees. I hadn’t explained to her that I was planning to stay with her. At least until next semester. Every time I thought to bring it up, she had looked too tired for conversation.
I knew I’d failed some kind of unspoken test at the apiary. I didn’t think my apology at the park negated that.
Granny was propped up to access her snack, but she was obviously weak. I’d known she was old, but this was the first time she seemed ancient. She carefully picked up the cup with both hands and sipped the slightly green liquid, and as she swallowed the lines on her face stood out in sharp shadows against her pallor like chiseled clay.
Sadie was arranging a kaleidoscope of dried beans on the top of an antique bureau while she murmured inaudibly under her breath. Her black skinny slacks and gray flyaway sweater were too businesslike for the giant mason jar in her arms that held the multicolor beans she fished out one by one for her seemingly inane task. She wore tiny studs in her ears that turned out to be glass honeybees when I looked closer. I thought about her entire body covered in pulsing bees and shivered. The pattern she created from the beans reminded me of the mandalas I’d seen on silken scarves sold by sidewalk vendors in Richmond.
Kara wore an outfit like the women who sold those scarves alongside handmade jewelry or artisanal soap from colorful pop-up stalls at weekend flea markets. Her skirt was tie-dyed and voluminous, swirling around her bare ankles in a riot of blues and purples and greens. Her top was a chunky sweater knitted with what seemed to be leftover skeins of yarn of every shade. She was adding more dried herbs to a smoking porcelain bowl by crumbling them in her fingers. Gems set in silver rings on every finger sparkled as a pungent, but not unpleasant, aroma filled the room.
“No, dear. Three for the task is all I need.
“Three to strengthen.
“Three to recharge.
“Three to protect,” Granny said. She’d swallowed all but the dregs in her cup and Joyce accepted it when Granny gave it to her. She didn’t set it aside. Instead, she looked at the stuff left in the bottom of the cup and tsked like she’d seen something worrisome.
Three. Three. Three. The number echoed in my mind like something I should note, but then I was distracted from the echo by something else Granny had said. Protect?
“What’s happened?” I asked again. My question came out as a croak. Not cool, but until now I hadn’t realized how much of my guard I’d lowered with Granny since I’d come to town. I stood nervously several feet away from the sick woman, pretty sure I should turn around and run away instead of experiencing the concern that was constricting my throat.
“She expended too much energy to call you h—” Kara said.
“Here. To call you here,” Sadie interjected. She flicked her eyes at Kara and then away too quickly for me to interpret the silent communication that seemed to pass between them with the glance.
“I came because Sarah told me to. Before she died,” I corrected.
Sadie turned from her finished bean art with an empty mason jar in her hands. She’d taken thousands of dried beans from the jar to create the pattern on the bureau near the bed where Granny lay. I followed the beans around and around until I grew dizzy. I had to look away or risk being sick on the bedroom floor.
“One of the reasons,” Kara nodded. “Our lives are nudged by millions of choices every day. Coffee or tea? A coat or a sweater? One lump or two?”
“Some of us learn to nudge the nudges,” Sadie said.
“You took more than a nudge. And that kind of a shove doesn’t come cheap,” Granny said. She laughed with a sudden hoarse bark that shook her shoulders and rattled in her chest.
“Maybe you should see a real doctor,” I said. I stepped toward the bed, but Joyce gracefully rose from the chair beside the bed and met me halfway.
“Instructing a novice at her age has taken a lot out of her these last few weeks. She needs to detach and rest,” Joyce said. “Before we all come together for Gathering at the end of the summer.”
She still looked like a Sunday school teacher, but one with a little “dancing in the pale moonlight” behind her gentle blue eyes.
“Gathering?” I asked. I stayed where I was. Who was I to challenge the edict of these older women? Guilt gnawed at my stomach at the very idea I was the one to blame for Granny’s illness. I’d failed to protect Sarah. I’d failed the bees. And it turned out my epic stubbornness might be hurting Granny too.
“To celebrate the end of summer and the final harvest before the fallow time of winter. We gather. All of us on the mountain and from the mountain,” Sadie said.
Granny nibbled on the bread from her tray. “This year you’ll feed the yeast in the wildwood before we bake the bread,” Granny said. The other three suddenly looked at the woman lying on the bed as if she’d surprised them. “This is the rye from last year. We commune with the baking and the breaking of the bread at Gathering. And some loaves are taken home by each of us. It helps keep us connected to the wildwood and each other.” Her eyes were unfocused as if she was remembering a hundred years of Gathering in days long past.
“Fresh is best. We can help her now, but Gathering will be what she most needs. To commune with the wildwood is the best way to recharge,” Joyce explained.
“It’s time. Time for you to move to the Ross cabin. I’ve done all I can do for you here. I would have liked more time to prepare you for the end of summer, but…” Granny sighed and closed her eyes. The
three other women in the room trained their eyes on me and I suddenly had to look away from their intense curiosity. They must see me as an interloper. A newcomer who didn’t even fully believe in the wisdom they practiced.
Wisewomen.
Witches.
I’d been happy to help Granny. To dabble in recipes and remedies. The days and weeks had passed, but I’d barely begun to scratch the surface of this town’s secrets, and suddenly I was faced with a much more serious choice than I’d expected. Was I going to take this as deep as it seemed to be leading me? Just when I’d decided to stay with Granny, I was to be sent away, deeper into the wildwood and its strangeness, all alone.
“It would have been sacrilege. The way your friend’s mother was killed. The murderer didn’t only take her life. He or she tainted the locust tree…”
I hadn’t mentioned the Sect women following me after I’d confronted Moon on the street. I hadn’t told anyone about the Sect man almost running me down. Morgan’s Gap seemed warm around me. Wrapped in the hug of small-town ways, my occasional nervousness had been easier to shrug off.
But then Moon had followed me home.
My heart thumped in my chest and the cool wash of adrenaline flowed beneath my skin. I was being sent into the wildwood where the Ross women lay sleeping, marked by the twisted, twining roots of black locust trees. I could hear the cree-cree of the straining rope that had held Sarah’s mother’s body. Another Melody. Dead and gone. Murdered.
There was death and danger in the wildwood.
There was also life.
Which way was I being nudged to go?
Twelve
The days were already shorter. The leaves had the slightest hint of drying around the edges, but it was enough to cast a golden-brown hue over the entire forest as if a determined army of fairy decorators were manically gilding everything before autumn could take away their palette. In Richmond, I’d barely noticed the seasons, especially since Virginia seemed to have only two—a long drawn-out summer that was by turns mild to blazing hot and a winter that hit hard and fast and was unrelenting for two to three weeks around the first of the year.
But on the mountain autumn approached with a tangible taste in the air. The higher elevation and the abundance of trees was part of that flavor. Summer was mossy and verdant and sweet. Fall was ripe and lush and slightly bitter like a strong cup of espresso left out in the night until it settled and chilled to a thicker, darker brew. You could see autumn coming in the lengthening shadows and the shortening of midday, which gave rise to an age-old instinct to gather in and huddle close against the encroaching darkness.
My move to the Ross cabin got a later start than I’d intended because I’d wanted to complete one more delivery for Granny before my rounds became a weekly rather than a daily routine. Those lengthening shadows greeted me when I pulled up to the house and I second-guessed my decision to follow Granny’s instructions. Of course, Sadie, Kara and Joyce wouldn’t have listened to any argument. Their love for Granny ran true and deep. Her word was law. And they were a force to be seen when deployed on her behalf.
I was here.
The ancient minivan I’d borrowed from Kara was packed with supplies.
I tried not to think of Reverend Moon stalking after me on a shadowy street. Or how easy it would be for the Sect to find me way out here all alone. I refused to be scared away. I’d thrown a Louisville Slugger I’d found in Granny’s umbrella rack in the back of the van with the rest of my things. I’d borrowed it without compunction because (1) I would absolutely use it, and (2) in Granny’s houseful of oddities, she’d never notice it wasn’t around.
I exited the van. The sound of wind rustling the drying leaves was my welcome. The forest sighed with wafts of musty leaf decay that also heralded fall. But it was rich and pleasant. I breathed in the scent of the wildwood, thinking of Sarah and Granny and, yes, the biologist. This was Jacob’s wildwood too. Jacob of the mossy eyes and mysterious intensity.
I retrieved an overnight bag from the backseat and picked up a box of kitchen essentials. I’d left my laptop in town. My phone barely worked this far out. Internet would be impossible without a satellite provider. Melody Ross must have seen no need to be online. Even without the laptop, I would have to make numerous trips to haul everything Granny had sent with me inside—blankets, sheets, towels and more. The elderly woman had obviously never lived out of a backpack. I had closed out the apartment in Richmond with a couple of phone calls. What clothes and keepsakes I hadn’t been able to part with had fit in a few bags and boxes that now sat in a closet at Granny’s house.
Granny had also packed me a tin of her valerian tea. I set it on the counter with no intention of brewing it. If dreams came, so be it. I needed to be open to whatever clues Sarah’s memories revealed about what had happened to her mother.
Eventually, if I was going to live this far out, I was going to have to buy a car of my own. Kara and Joyce were going to come and pick up the van tomorrow. I hated I’d had to inconvenience them as much as I had. I wouldn’t need much cash, but as a barista I hadn’t been able to put a lot of money aside. My savings would be depleted sooner rather than later. A cheap car. A very cheap car.
That would be a problem for another day.
For now, I carefully climbed the creaky front steps and tried to ignore the sound of the porch swing’s chains. I balanced the box on one bent knee to fish the key to the cabin’s front door from my jeans pocket.
A flurry of faded brochures and pamphlets fell when I opened the screen door. They’d been left sandwiched between the screen and the glass of the front door. I saw the logo of a natural gas company on several of them. And the “No Pipeline” slogan on several others. It seemed representatives from both sides had been busy visiting the community, even all the way out in places like this.
I would take my box inside and then come back to scoop up the trash.
Granny had assured me that she and her friends had kept the inside of cabin clean and tidy. I had to lean against the unused door to make it open, but I was met by the fragrance of lemon furniture polish and a trace of bleach. The air was slightly too warm and stale from being mostly undisturbed and there was that expectant feeling of a vacation home inhabited infrequently—ready, waiting.
At that, I paused.
The hair on the back of my neck stood up. I reached quickly and felt for a wall switch. Granny had said the electricity had never been turned off. Relief shamed me when an overhead light fixture with an old-fashioned amber glass globe illuminated the room. But the relief was short-lived. I had braced myself, but not enough. Of course, I knew this place from my dreams. I’d seen this living room and the kitchen beyond before. I had descended those stairs with my heart pounding in my chest.
More evidence that my connection to Sarah had been real and deep and impossible to define in ordinary ways.
My load was heavy and I wasn’t backing out now.
I pushed myself forward into the great room and over to the kitchen counter where I deposited the box of supplies. The living room furniture was covered with plain white sheets. I dropped my bag to the floor and reached to uncover the couch and two armchairs. Only a little dust was disturbed and with it a stronger bleach scent from the sheets themselves. I folded them and found the hall closet after opening a closet lined with wire shelves first and a small, dated bathroom second. I guessed the closet with wire shelves was a pantry. It was closest to the kitchen and held an impressive store of canning supplies—brand-new and ready for use—empty jars, lids and rings. There was also a large pot on the floor with an interior metal basket meant for boiling the jars to sterilize and seal them.
I was supposed to find an abundance of ripe blackberries in the garden and turn them into preserves. My cottagecore duties continued, but, as usual, there was more to every seemingly simple chore than met the eye. A wisewoman’s goal was to nurture the connection between man and nature. And to use the connection to help and heal her community. The
bees had shaken me with how deep that connection could go. But canning blackberries I could handle. Hopefully. Granny had gone over the instructions with me several times to clarify the faded recipe in the remedy book. I had brought sugar with me along with my groceries from town.
The hall closet was empty except for a box filled with framed photographs. I shied away from those for now and forced myself to continue exploring.
Unlike in my nightmares, Sarah’s mother’s old room was completely empty. I was glad. It was bad enough the layout of the cabin matched my dreams. I closed the door of the empty bedroom, trying not to shiver at Sarah’s memory of that morning.
It was late afternoon by now. I flipped on every light I passed. I was alone. There was no one to witness my need to keep the shadows away. But the hair on the back of my neck refused to settle and my pulse continued to race.
Facing my fears. No big. Why did it feel like playing Russian roulette? The next door or the next might prove my nightmares real. The stairs were especially chilling. Granny had told me the spare bedroom was up there. Neutral territory where I planned to sleep. But I would have to walk past Sarah’s old bedroom to get there.
Ready. Waiting.
Every floorboard creak and every door sigh only contributed to my mood. The cabin was both too quiet and not quiet enough. Granny had advised me to flush the taps before use and to open the windows at night for fresh air and natural air-conditioning. There was also an oscillating fan in the van to dispel the heat that could accumulate upstairs from the tin roof.
I could have gone out to the van for the other supplies. I didn’t. It would be a retreat. I knew it and refused to give in to the impulse. Sarah had been my home. And this cabin had been Sarah’s. I wouldn’t be afraid here. I squared my shoulders and took a deep breath to calm my racing heart. Then I took each step more firmly than the one before until by the time I reached the small landing I was walking more naturally. Only then did I blush because I’d been creeping around on tiptoe like an intruder before.
