But Arthur wasn’t one of the voices in the shadows; he never had been. Alice kept his bed in clean sheets and neatly made. She wouldn’t live here forever, and she worried about who would care for it when Paul returned and they moved to a place of their own. Mum did not speak of that; she never spoke of Paul at all if she could avoid it. Aunt Polly and Mum would sit at the long table, drinking the thick, strong tea that she and Mum favored, both whispering about things that they didn’t think Alice could hear. It was as though she were a child again. But she was a woman, worthy of sitting at the table in her own right, but she never took her place beside them. Instead, she preferred to stay in her childhood room and whisper the day’s events to Arthur.
The wedding had been small and odd. Haphazardly planned to beat Paul’s departure for Vietnam, it was held after the Sunday service in the same way that Alice’s ill-begotten plans to the poor, dull-witted boy back in school had been meant to happen. Paul’s mother and sister sat in the front row. Two of his brothers joined them, the oldest now off in Vietnam himself, the younger leaving in another month, and the other exempt for reasons that Paul refused to talk about. On Alice’s side, her Mum, Aunt Polly, and a handful of churchgoers who lingered on after the Sunday service. Alice wore a short, boxy ivory mini-dress with a lace collar and matching high-heeled ivory boots with a sprig of heather in her hair. Mum had been horrified, but it was Alice’s one rebellion. The entire affair was only happening because Mum had heard Alice and Paul talking marriage in the living room. She had begun planning, but this time no one would pull the plug. Alice held her breath, swallowed the rising ball of doubt in her gut, and stepped forward. The dress was one of her own making, modeled after one she had seen in a magazine. Alice wasn’t a prize at tailoring, but could operate the foot-pump sewing machine well enough and the dress looked nearly professional, so long as no one looked too closely. The elderly pastor who had been a rabbi in his past life had since passed, and his son was now leading services at the tiny church. Alice remembered him as a quiet boy who seemed to melt into the very walls, but now he stood at the head of the church, leading the service and smiling kindly at Alice.
Mum had made some calls, and as she and Paul walked down the aisle to the common room where a wedding dinner waited, a lone piper dressed in a clean if somewhat ragged suit played “Highland Cathedral.” Later during the dinner, as the plates of roast beef and mash were being passed around, Alice would ask her Mum where she had found the man, who had swiftly poured himself several shots of Jameson and was now dozing in a chair by the rectory. Mum would tell her that Colorado Springs was short on pipers, and beggars can’t be choosers, and not to go too hard on the man; he was Irish after all, and it was hardly his fault.
Paul had had too much to drink, and Alice had to walk him into the rented room that Paul’s mother had given them as a wedding present. Two nights in the rented room by the mountain lake. It wasn’t exactly a honeymoon, but it was what it was. Alice had some money saved up and had wanted to go on a proper trip, but Paul had talked her out of it. He was leaving in a week; he didn’t want to go out of town even for a night, so the rented room by the lake was all there was to be. Paul passed out nearly as soon as Alice deposited him on the bed. The next night, he had sat quiet and moody as they ate dinner at a rustic wood table in a café by the lake. Alice had felt a pain in the pit of her stomach and hadn’t stopped him when he abruptly stood and walked out the door. She’d found him some time later sitting on the shore of the lake. He was due to report to the Air Force base in Colorado Springs in five days’ time, and his hair was cut in a tight crew cut, making his eyes appear alien huge. She sat next to him, watching him gaze out at the rippled moon reflection.
“You’re going to come back. I can’t explain how I know it, and you wouldn’t believe me if I tried, but I can only tell you that you don’t die in Vietnam. You come back home,” Alice said softly.
Paul had turned his head to face her, his expression unreadable and his hazel eyes cloudy.
“I know the stories about you, Alice Grace Kyles—I mean Coslet. Creepy. That’s what the guys at the cave used to say about you. Pretty, but creepy.” He gave her a half-smile.
“Oh, that’s a lovely thing to tell your bride on her honeymoon,” Alice retorted, but she was secretly relieved to see the fog that had surrounded him since he’d awoken with a fierce hangover lift.
“It’s true. Creepy. One of the guys said that every time you were around, the lights would go on the fritz, and he would have to go back in the cave and change the bulbs again, even if he’d just done it. Another said you’d answer questions he hadn’t asked yet, and you didn’t even seem to know you were doing it. One of the girls, the blond one with the weird nose—Janice? Janet?”
“Marty. Her name was Marty. But you’re right about her nose, it was weird,” Alice muttered, her lips twitching in a grin.
“Marty, that’s what I said,” Paul said in a teasing voice. “Marty said that one day you told her how sorry you were about her boyfriend, but he was a dog anyway, and she’d find someone better.”
“What’s creepy about that?” Alice asked. She remembered Marty with the nose that ended in a stub, much like a piglet’s. Her boyfriend had also worked at the cave and smelled of sausages and dirt.
“At the time you said it, nothing had happened. Marty told us that she had no idea what you were talking about. And then a day or so later, she found him making out with that dark-haired girl with the lisp in the lower cave during a party,” Paul replied.
“Huh,” Alice said softly. “Well, it wasn’t creepy; anyone could see that coming if they were paying attention. But I don’t think that girl had a lisp normally; she had braces on her teeth.”
Paul leaned forward and reached with his hand to stroke her neck, his fingers wrapping themselves in her loose hair. Alice immediately felt a bolt of electricity fly up her spinal cord, the first hint that this strange boy could ever be a lover.
“I know all sorts of things, Alice Grace Coslet. I’ve been watching you for longer than you know. I had no idea how to approach you and no clue you’d ever pay me any mind. I don’t know how to do this, and I am scared to go to Vietnam. But if you say I’ll come home, then I believe you. I don’t know what home means, and I suppose that scares me even more than the bloody war.” His pupils were wide, the blackness threatening to engulf the thin line of hazel entirely.
“We’ll figure it out together,” Alice whispered.
That night Paul had fumbled his way into bed, and amidst comically wretched awkwardness, Alice found herself in his arms, and the path that had showed itself to her so long ago shone clearly.
But now Alice lay on her childhood bed, listening as she had always done to her Mum and Aunt Polly gossip at the kitchen table. She stared at the ceiling and wondered if the paths she saw were true or merely one of many possibilities. She wondered if there were another world where Arthur grew to be tall and strong. She wondered if there were a path in which she and Tiburon lived together in a house in the countryside, away from the wildness of the city. She wondered if there were a world where Paul didn’t come home, and yet another in which she was allowed to live her life alone, not bound by the decisions of others.
As she closed her eyes, Alice drifted into a dream: a stack of thin squares of muslin cloth sat upon a dark and ancient tabletop. A woman with raven hair and ageless eyes looked up at her and smiled in a way that was both kind and terrifying. Without speaking, the woman dropped a pinpoint of indigo ink onto the stack, and Alice was struck with an awareness of time and reality. She saw all the paths occurring on top of each other, simultaneously, none greater than the next, but different. She felt the black ink on her left wrist pulse in time with the universe, and the raven-haired woman smiled and turned her own left wrist to reveal a matching mark.
As Alice slept, a force of nature shifted in her cave far away, across the ocean in a place long forgotten to the memory of man. Come home, the creature whispere
d, come home. Alice woke, her heart calm and certain. She was bound for greater things; there was a memory just out of reach that grew ever closer. She needed to be patient and watch the signs as they unfolded, not be distracted by the obstacles of an ordinary life.
SEVERAL GENERATIONS OF DAUGHTERS passed, and the line began to forget. The mark of Ingwaz was no longer inked into their left wrists, and soon bits of ancient knowledge began to become hazy and distant. The traits of their entirely mortal fathers began to outweigh those of their ancient matriarchal line. Their innate ability to hear the voices of the dead ones or see the patterns of fate in a palm or a flash of a thought became parlor tricks and seen as oddities as opposed to the link to a noble and fearsome hag. The vibrations set forth by Cailleach became fainter, but not quiet entirely, and in her cave hidden well among the lowland hills, Cailleach still felt the presence of the line of powerful women that she had created. She had stopped taking mates after the cruelty inflicted upon her daughter in the village so long ago, and the farmers and townspeople no longer left her gifts of salt or dried meat. She still observed their harvests and daily life by gazing into the still, black water that kissed the shores of the underground lake. She sat by the shores of the black lake: a great, molting reely-mouse who hardly drew breath and meditated upon the persistence of truth that she had always known lay intertwined in the jagged lines of Ingwaz, and while it was somewhat dormant, it was far from dead.
By the time Moira Blair was born in the Saltmarket District of Glasgow on the first night of winter, it was no longer an accepted truth that she would be the only daughter. In fact, she came into a world already occupied by two older brothers. The vibrations of the ley lines ticked in the rhythm of Moira’s blood, and she was seen as an exceptionally odd child. While her brothers would scream and run in the fields outside of town, chasing the red squirrels and anything else that moved, Moira could be found building a fairy mound out of bindweed and thistles. She talked to herself often, although the conversation was largely one-sided as though some invisible person was answering back. Her mum and dad exchanged looks and let her go on about her ways. She was a child, after all, and no harm came from childhood oddities.
As Moira grew, she learned to read the runes from an old woman who lived on the lane. Everyone knew the old woman’s brain had been rotted away by the scarlet fever, and Moira’s mum worried about her daughter spending so much time with the sad old thing, but it was an ultimately kind gesture to give such a woman company, so they allowed it. Moira knew the woman’s brain was far from rotten but didn’t tell anyone, as the perception allowed her a great deal of freedom. The old woman had told Moira on their first meeting that she had a gift, and that she could teach her how to use it. Moira had started visiting her every day, and every day they would talk and study. Moira learned to read the rune stones and the lines on the palm of a hand. She learned to speak to the voices without making a sound and to summon the spirits of the deceased by going into a meditative state. The old woman taught Moira everything that she had suspected in the fields as a child: that the fae and the witches that everyone said were stories existed in a world just beneath waking life, and they watched human comings and goings at their will.
One day as Moira was walking down Bell Street on errands for her mother, she saw a flash behind her eyelids. A well-to-do woman in the dress of the gentry was crossing the street when a horse and carriage came roaring around the corner, run free from its owner. The woman stopped still, terrified, and the horse reared up, coming down upon her. Moira could see the thick, dark blood mixing with the Scottish mud and hear the screams of the onlookers as they watched helplessly from the sides.
The vision ended as fast as it appeared, and Moira stood dazed. Just then, a woman in the same upscale dress crossed in front of her and started into the street. Moira moved on instinct and ran to her, grabbing her by the arm and pulling her back to the side. The woman let out an outraged cry that was cut short as a horse and carriage ripped around the corner and barreled down the now-unobstructed street. The woman stared at Moira for a moment and stuttered. Moira’s hands and body were shaking uncontrollably, and she dropped the packages of bread and cheese she had just bought and ran home.
The woman, as it turned out, was the Lady Elsbeth Crane, eccentric wife of a wealthy merchant and trader. Her interest in the occult arts was seen as an embarrassment to her husband, tolerated by her friends, and ignored via healthy bribes to the local polis. After the incident in the street, Lady Elsbeth set about finding the girl who had seemed to predict the runaway carriage and saved her life. It wasn’t difficult; the cheesemonger remembered to whom the package belonged, and it was thus that Moira Blair, an odd daughter and unknowing heir to an ancient line of hags, came to live in the great house of Lady Elsbeth Crane as adviser and counsel.
Moira read the cards for Lady Elsbeth and her curious friends. They asked her to call the spirits of their fathers, mothers, and dead husbands. Sometimes the spirits answered; sometimes all Moira could do was offer counsel that did not require the sight but rather a kind heart and common sense. She became known among the gentry ladies of Glasgow, and soon the curious and wealthy from Aberdeen, Edinburgh, and even London were lining up at Lady Elsbeth’s door for a chance to see the young medium.
She never resorted to the cheap tricks of the day. Other women and men called themselves mediums and planted tricks to make it appear the spirits were among them. They used fishing line to pull tiny bells hidden in the corners of the room; they rigged tables that would flip and spill the candles and incense to the ground so it looked like an other-worldly tantrum. But Moira Blair never needed such novelties. She had an assistant flash a refracted light back and forth before her eyes, and she would feel herself cross the mist into the next world. Once there, the dead ones would congregate, waiting their turn to speak. She would call out for him or her in question, and with rare exception, they appeared. They talked to her of wrongdoings, last words of love, and occasionally the scurrilous actions of the living who were asking for contact.
In time, Moira Blair lived in her own grand house on Cathedral Court overlooking the Necropolis, with a vast stretch of land fanning out behind the manor and a caretaker’s cottage nestled deep in the woods on the edge of the land. She still read the runes and always came to rest on one in particular: the jagged, intersecting lines of Ingwaz. She suspected that this symbol had a far greater meaning for her than she would ever know. She taught her own daughter the art of summoning the dead and reading the lines in the palms of hands. She taught her that with the right sort of concentration, you could summon the wind and rain. Moira Blair lived a long life, free from illness and full of peace. Her daughter grew up learning the old ways as they existed in a new world, and far off in the lowland crags, the Cailleach celebrated the resurgence of the ancient energy.
THE LEMON-YELLOW AUSTIN-HEALEY SPRITE is gone. Alice stood at the shipping dock for well over an hour before a gruff officer came huffing over and told her the car was nowhere in their stock. Forms, he said. There were forms for her to fill out, and the Air Force would investigate its loss and compensate her if its loss was found to be their fault. However, his dismissive air made Alice quite sure the Air Force would most certainly not be finding itself liable. Still, she filled out the forms and caught the bus back to the base, all the while trying not to think about how she should have been speeding down the roadway with the top down on the sporty little roadster that she had ordered from London before she left for the UK. Alice had never had a car of her own; the little Dodge she drove back home was a hand-me-down that her Aunt Polly’s gentleman friend had rebuilt. It hiccupped and coughed and frequently refused to start. Upon learning that she was to be living on the Air Force base outside a town gloomily called Seven Mile Bottom, she had taken her savings and splurged. The lemon-yellow convertible was horribly indulgent, but at the time Alice had been feeling very sorry for herself, so it was a small price to pay.
But now it was gon
e. In another month, Alice would see an officer with stars lining his uniform speeding across the base in her lemon-yellow Austin-Healey Sprite. Paul would try to explain to her through her rage that it wasn’t uncommon for the officers to pilfer property from the shipping dock. It was her fault, Paul would say, for ordering such a flashy car; what exactly did she think would happen? Alice would shoot daggers with her eyes and add the injustice to a growing list of grievances. But right now, as Alice climbed off the bus, flashing her identification at the gate guard and walking down the narrow path to the married airmen’s housing, she had other grievances to stew on. She had been here about three weeks, and already she was beginning to see that life on the base was not going to work. For one, she had a job, which set her apart from nearly all the wives who had been following their husbands around from base to base. Alice had been employed by the American Secondary Academy in town to teach junior-level science. She was due to start in a week, and as it stood, she would have to take the eternally slow bus back and forth, adding three hours to her commute.
Alice had already looked at listings for rooms in town. She could afford it, and that fact irked Paul more than he was willing to let on. Alice didn’t much care what angered him right now. Her arrival in this desolate part of England had been onerous to say the least. Nearly ten months had passed without any communication from Vietnam. Alice had found herself in the Air Force base’s Family Affairs Office seeking any information they could give her. He was alive, she knew that; the military was swift to deliver that news but didn’t seem to care much about the total lack of correspondence. Finally, they had tracked him down to a base hospital. He had been suffering panic attacks following an incident at the airstrip. No information was offered about the incident or how long or why he was at the base medical center. A month later, he would be transferred out of Vietnam and sent to Seven Mile Bottom in the UK. The official reason was listed as “psychological stress,” and it made Alice hold her breath for a long moment, remembering the vacant stare he had had so often and the flashes of anger and rage he tended to.
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