by Dora Badger
teeth rattled. That was right, too; that was fine.
“Weak as the rest of them,” the creature said, then: “Lorelei.” Its voice was distant, urgent.
“Wake up.”
Joseph snapped awake at once, spasming frantically. Pain lanced through his wasted body. He staggered when the creature set him back on his feet. He tried to shove it away, but it held fast.
“Calm yourself,” the large woman said. Joseph relaxed at her jagged-silk voice, the same one that had yanked him from his sudden doze. He glanced around, almost believing all the living and dead of Piquette would have awakened at her call.
The creature released him and Joseph fell to his knees. He scrambled for the coal, gathered the spilled blooms. The firedog’s light was more than ample; it took only a few moments to find it all. Joseph spent a few seconds smoothing the crushed yarrow stems, taking his time to gather his wits before facing that man-shaped thing’s flat ebon gaze once more.
Joseph cradled the coal and the yarrow in the crook of his arm and pressed his other hand to the ground. His cane had fallen out of reach; standing without it was a slow, wretched business. Joseph’s head spun with hunger and with the lingering aftereffects of the man-shaped thing’s hypnotic crooning. When he regained his feet, Lorelei spoke once more. Her hair and form shimmered in the firedog’s flickering light: dark-haired and curvaceous, blonde and muscular, captivating and terrible and every inch full of razzmatazz.
“This is no demon you’ve come to meet,” she said, “No devil or imp, no fiery ifreet.” Lorelei’s rich, searing voice dragged Joseph’s attention from the howling pit in his stomach. She spoke in a fast-paced, cadenced patter. Her spiel would almost be at home in the auction-house, but it had a lilting, suggestive air the old sheep-sellers at the State Fair could never hope to match. She circled their little group, moving with a natural, arresting grace.
“He is the god of lust and wanderlust, god of the wet red hunt and the soft wet cunt. The vicious god of speckled cats small and large, of cats blacker than night and bright as the sun. He is Charley Cat –” She extended one enormous arm with a flourish, and the little spotted wildcat leapt onto it. It sat upon her forearm as if it were a fence, curling its tail around her wrist and into her palm.
“–and this is his sister Jenny, the most collected, most self-contained of all felines in this world or any other.”
“Charley Cat? That’s – a curious name for a demon.”
A vicious yowl shredded the air, and a furred weight slammed into Joseph’s chest. Jenny clung to his vest. She pressed her claws into the side of his neck, hurting him but not yet rending his flesh.
“Wrong religion,” Charley Cat snarled. Jenny bared her teeth.
Joseph raised his hands.
“They’re gods,” Lorelei repeated. “And don’t let ‘em scare you just now, hon.” She reached over and plucked Jenny from his chest. Lorelei cradled her in her big arms and chucked the wildcat under her chin until she began purring in a deep thrum.
“They came to parley,” she continued, “and they’ll at least hear your terms.”
Charley Cat grinned all around, ebony fangs glinting in the firedog’s light. He scooped up Joseph’s cane and made a small ceremony of handing it across hungry to him.
“Of course we will,” Charley Cat said. “I do not kill those who bring offerings to the crossroads – not without first hearing them out.”
“Well, I am relieved to hear that, sir,” Joseph said. He smoothed his vest, tried to still his shaking hands. “May I inquire as to the nature of that…beast?” he tipped his cane toward the flickering firedog.
“That is my dog,” Charley Cat replied.
“Nut-Meg,” Lorelei added.
“And are you a goddess, madam?” Joseph asked.
Lorelei laughed. It was a cutting, shattering sound. Joseph felt his loins quicken with each note.
“Oh no, young man,” she replied. “I’m just a singer.”
“And the best talker on this side of the world,” Charley Cat declared. “She brings stories to life, this one; better, she can turn any tip.” Lorelei cast him a practiced oh-you glance that set Joseph’s blood fizzing even as he recognized it as pure theater.
Charley Cat squatted on the other side of hungry and gestured for Joseph to sit across from him. Joseph’s knees ached far too much for that.
“Thank you, sir,” he said, “but I believe I will stand.” He bent as well as he was able and presented the items in the crook of his elbow to Charley Cat. The creature – Joseph could not quite think of this nude, merry fiend as a god – reached up and collected Joseph’s offering. He frowned.
“You bring a rock. And some sort of…dying chokeweed?”
“Coal,” Joseph replied. “And yarrow.”
Charley Cat cocked his head, gave a curious, purring growl.
“Yarrow is for health,” Joseph said.
“Mmm. Your folk assign meanings to the most useless things.” He threw the flowers to the ground and tossed the coal to Nut-Meg. The firedog pawed at the stone. Charley Cat leaned over and stroked the word Joseph had carved into the dirt.
“A rock, a flower, and hungry.”
“That isn’t something I want. It is something I am.”
Again: the cocked head, the odd growl.
“I had the yellow fever for four full weeks, could barely take in broth. And I’ve fasted for two weeks to prepare for our meeting tonight.”
“Why?”
“I was advised to prepare my body and soul as if I were to meet the Savior Himself.”
Charley Cat laughed. Joseph made a private vow that he’d punch Dickie Beaubeau in his fat, lying face when he saw him next.
“The flower is for health, then,” Charley Cat said. “And the rock?”
“I want this land to be prosperous.”
“You should have brought wheat.”
“We need prosperity less in farming than in coal.”
“Ah. That could be difficult.”
“Coal abounds throughout Kentucky,” Joseph said. His automatic exhortation had the feel of habit, which was no surprise. It was something he’d said many a time, after all, when he was haranguing his extended family. He’d finally said it with enough authority to convince them to move with him from civilized Atlanta to this brutal, supposedly rich country.
“Not here. You chose the wrong place for that stone.”
“Surely you can fill this place with coal, as Beaubeau claims you turned the granite-riddled earth and sucking swamps of Hudsonville into rich farmland.”
“Perhaps. If you accept my terms.”
Joseph’s throat clicked. Beneath Nut-Meg’s soft crackling, he thought he heard a noise. He looked up at his home, but the firedog’s bright light set the rockface aglow and he couldn’t see a thing at the top of the Bluff. Charley Cat already had terms in mind, then…of course he did. Best to add something to his side of the balance before the demon spoke again.
“I’ve also brought my hickory cane,” Joseph added.
Charley Cat shook his head, turned away. “What hickory offers is closed to your kind.”
“Security is closed to us?”
Squint. Growl.
“Hickory is a solid wood. I want my people to be safe.”
Charley Cat laughed. “Meaningless associations, or the wrong ones,” he said to Lorelei. “There is no safety here,” he told Joseph. “Do you know nothing about this dark and bloody land you’ve claimed?”
“Kentucky is far tamer than many places across this nation.”
“This is not a settling place,” Lorelei said. The trees overhanging the crossroads dipped their tops at the sadness in her voice. “It has ever only been a hunting ground, a burial ground, a waystation on the path to better things.”
“The First People knew this,” Charley Cat added. “You and yours lay claim to any accursed space. But stay here long enough, and this land will turn its terrible attentions toward you.”
>
Joseph drew himself up. “We can make our way here.”
“You can. With my assistance.”
“How?”
Charley Cat roared and extended his claws. Joseph scrambled back, but stopped when Charley Cat dug his talons into the dirt of the crossroads. A thick red ooze pulsed from the gashes he gouged into the earth. Charley Cat raised his gore-coated hands and muttered in a deep, growling language. The filth began to darken in Nut-Meg’s flickering firelight. Soon it was black as Charley Cat’s eyes. It sank into his claws until it was fully absorbed.
Charley Cat walked to the edge of the road, where the deep forest began. He sliced the trunk of an old oak with one long, black nail. The tree moaned, and a small, child-shaped mist slipped from the cut. Charley Cat spoke to it in that growling language of his. The mist wavered and thickened and replied with the sound of wind in tree leaves. Charley Cat held out his hand and the tree-spirit skittered around his palm. The earthblood Charley Cat had drawn from the crossroads pooled in his hand and coated the tree-spirit. When it was fully covered, the spirit returned through the gash in the oak’s trunk. Charley Cat smoothed the cut until it sealed. He returned and squatted in the dirt, staring over hungry into Joseph’s eyes. Charley Cat stuck three of his claws into his mouth and sucked on them with abandon.
“Now the trees will protect us?” Joseph asked.
“Now that particular tree will do you no harm,” Charley Cat replied. He flicked his long tongue along the edges of his talons.
Joseph looked around at the forest pressing in around them, rolling up and down the hills for miles in every direction.
“If you
