by Celia Roman
Her eyes narrowed into thin slits. “How big?”
“Big. You got one of them attachable water jugs for a hamster or something?”
“I’ll round one up.”
She shook her head slowly and her gaze drifted back to the critter, like she couldn’t help ogling it. I didn’t blame her none a’tall. The critter was like them Cabbage Patch dolls what was all the rage way back when: So ugly, it was cute.
“I can’t believe I’m agreeing to this,” she said.
“Believe it, sister.” I backed up a step and jerked a thumb over my shoulder. “Hate to run, but I got an appointment in a few minutes. You need me, just holler.”
“Oh, you can count on that.”
I left her there with the critter and tried to stamp out the guilt eating a hole in my innards. BobbiJean hadn’t never dealt with monsters before, what I knowed of, though she was familiar enough with tales of my shenanigans. The critter wouldn’t bother her none, long as she kept her fingers outta the cage, and BobbiJean was too sensible for that.
On the other hand, she done married Jazz, crazy, artistic feller that he was, and if that weren’t a mite insensible, nothing was.
I arrived at my appointment at the Tallulah Ranger District station a scant five minutes early. The forest ranger was waiting for me in the main lobby and I recognized him right off. Was the same man what’d told Riley he couldn’t find sign of the painter me and David found dead. When I saw him, the name Dori give me clicked with his face and I about kicked myself for not remembering sooner.
Dean Whittaker was maybe five ten and had the lean build of a through hiker. His sandy blond hair was cut short and stylish, and his thin, sunkissed face carried the faintest hint of laugh lines. He held out his hand as I approached and grinned. “Hey, Sunshine. Good to see you again.”
I shook his hand long enough to satisfy propriety, then let go and stuffed my hands in the back pockets of my jeans. Lordy, I’d about had enough of shaking folks hands here of late. “You, too.”
“Come on back. I marked the spot where I found the Kildares’ dog on a topo for you.” He shook his head and pivoted away from me, toward the far side of the lobby. “Good thing it was wearing tags or I wouldn’t have known who to call.”
Billy loved that dog with ever ounce of his little boy heart. ‘Course he put tags on Ol’ Blue.
I shoved away the automatic pang of sorrow and followed Dean into his office, a spacious room filled from one end to the other with clutter. Two desks was shoved into the space, each holding a newish laptop and the sorts of paper and binders I associated with official office work. Maps of every size, shape, and kind hung on the walls, nigh on obscuring the eggshell white color. A row of double-doored cabinets took up one wall, their doors locked tight.
Dean stopped beside one of the desks and riffled through a stack of loose papers, then pulled out a topographical map from the middle and spread it flat as he could across his desk. His finger run along the surface and tapped a spot, then slid a little farther away and tapped again. “This is where I found the Kildares’ dog, and this is where you found the panther, from what I could gather.”
I stepped up close and eyed the curvy line representing Patterson Gap Road. “That’s about right.”
“Too bad we couldn’t find it. Big cats are so rare here.” He sighed as he rolled the map up. “You see any more, let me know. We’ve got a tagging program going.”
“Sure thing.” I took the map from him and tapped it against my thigh. “Say, you hear about any unusual painter activity around here? Cats stalking humans or some such?”
He leaned a hip against the edge of his desk and shrugged. “Riley told me you and BobbiJean were attacked by a panther the night of the wedding.”
“Not attacked. Just scared outta our breeches.”
“Wish I’d been there.”
A laugh sputtered outta me. “What for?”
“So I could’ve seen the famous Sunshine Walkingstick in action.”
His grin was loose and friendly, not condescending a’tall, so I matched it with a rueful one of my own. “You been hearing tales what ain’t true, more’n likely.”
“Small town gossip,” he said, and I had to agree. Rumor run thick through the Georgia pine, faster’n the wind when a juicy story cropped up.
I thanked Dean kindly and said my goodbyes, then hotfooted it over to Injun Bob’s and picked up the critter from BobbiJean. Sure enough, she rounded up an old water bottle whilst I was gone and affixed it to the side of the cage.
“It drink any of that?” I asked.
She shook her head and pursed her bow lips into a moue. “I think it’s dying.”
I looked at it sharp like. “What makes you say that?”
“It hasn’t moved an inch since you left.”
“Maybe it’s just shy.” Or maybe it was waiting for the right moment to strike. I took the towel from her and throwed it over the cage. “When’s the honeymoon?”
A dreamy smile pushed the concern off her face. “Next week. I can’t wait, either. This’ll be my first cruise.”
For once, not a drop of envy pricked me. “You need anything beforehand, holler.”
Her doe eyes went wide. “Why, that’s right. You owe me a big favor.”
I laughed and teased with her a bit more, then grabbed up my caged critter and went home. There was only so much human contact I could handle in one day, even for friends, and I about reached my limit for today.
Chapter Twelve
Old Mother was standing on the porch when I pulled up next to the trailer, wearing a filmy white dress. No shoes. Was that a seer thing or did she just like to wander around barefoot?
I heaved a sigh. First I got a new pet in the critter huddling in the bottom of the birdcage, and now this. What was next? Teus showing up claiming I killed another one of his pets? Or maybe I’d be lucky enough to have one of them painters jump outta the woods at me.
Hey, ever day was a barrel of surprises at the Walkingstick homestead.
I left the critter where he was and climbed outta the IROC. Old Mother’d stand there all day, needs be, and I weren’t anxious to tick her off, seeing as how the last time she was here she painted hex signs up and down the front door. Dear Lord, please let her not do that again. I was still trying to scrub off the last’uns.
“Howdy, there,” I called as I jogged across the parking area. “You want some tea or something?”
She fixed them midnight eyes on me, unblinking. “The warnings have been given. Why do they go unheeded?”
I bit back another sigh. So it was gonna be like that, was it? “I ain’t got no warnings lately, ‘less you count Fame’s.”
“Famous Carson, the justice bringer.” Her eyes took on that far off look and her next words were deep and ancient and not in her voice at all. “His time will come, Sunshine Walkingstick.”
A shiver snaked down my spine. I heard that voice and similar words before, just not in the here and now. Your time has come. Was that the warning Old Mother said I got?
Her arms raised up ‘til they was parallel to the ground and her head rolled back on her shoulders, like she was a puppet controlled by some unseen force, possessing no will of her own. “She came to the mother of the spirit as she was born, she of two worlds.”
Uh-oh. I knowed what this was leading to. “You want me to understand, Old Mother, you can’t use no hoodoo speak.”
Her body swayed under the force of an unseen wind and her arms yanked higher in the air. “One natural, one learned. It is within the light, hiding itself from she who snuffed the light’s spirit.”
I hooked my hands on my hips and rolled my own head back, fixing my gaze on the cloudless sky hanging serene and blue above us. The woods was silent around the trailer, like the forest was holding its breath. Me, I knowed better’n to send my lungs on vacation. No telling how long Old Mother’d go on like this. Could be holding my breath might just make me pass out, and if I did, how was I gonna
reap the benefit of her visit?
Assuming I could interpret her words this time. Last time, I paid no never mind and look what happened. A catfish tried to drag me to Teus’ home under the lake and I had the tattoos to remind me of my folly ever single time I stripped to bare skin.
A thump drawed my attention back to the porch. Old Mother was on her knees, her hands straight up in the air, her body rocking back and forth. “She stole what can only be given. She claimed what can never be bought. The dream speaks in the holy of holies. Beware the two. Beware the two.”
Old Mother collapsed onto the porch, her chest heaving under ragged breaths. I vaulted up the steps two at a time and knelt beside her. “You ok?”
“The light approaches,” she murmured.
“The light you was speaking on?”
“Light is everywhere, Sunshine. We make our own and receive it as well, until the dark consumes us in its eternal quest to quench its thirst.”
Well, that was clear as mud. I filed the words away for later study, what good it’d do, and patted her back tentative like. Never knowed how a seer like Old Mother’d react to being touched. Seemed right smart to use caution.
She pushed herself upright. Her willowy arms trembled under her slight weight. I straightened the neckline of her dress over a shoulder the color of the richest ebony. Her head swung toward mine and her midnight eyes focused on me for the barest second.
“Mama?” she whispered in a familiar voice, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood straight up.
“Henry?” I said, my own voice hoarse and thin. “Is that you, baby?”
“Mama?” she said, only deeper, then she said it again and again, and ever time she repeated the word, her voice got lower and stranger, ‘til the final mama was croaked out like nails scraping across a chalkboard.
Her eyes filmed over and rolled back in her head, and in that demon filled voice, she spoke long and hard in a language I never heard before, some guttural mix of hisses and bites what lashed out at me, pressing the breath outta my lungs, squeezing my heart tight in its grip. Blood welled into my head, heating my skin, and my tongue lolled outta my mouth, and my fingers fumbled with that unseen hand choking the very life outta me, searching for a way to end the pain.
Old Mother snapped upright and pointed one thin finger at me, that eerie white film still covering her eyes. “Heed the old man’s warning.”
The hand lifted away from me and I sucked in a deep breath as my heart skipped into a rapid fire rhythm. Agony radiated from my chest outward, leaching the strength from my limbs. The world went sideways and my hands flopped onto the porch, and the last thing I remember, Old Mother stood above me, looking down on me with her mad, mad eyes. “You should’ve paid attention, Sunshine,” she said, then the deep wood took me into its black soul, and I was no more.
I groaned and lifted a hand to my aching head. Dear Lord, Old Mother packed a punch. Things kept up like this, next time she seen something, I was liable to need a doctor.
A soft palmed hand smoothed over my cheek. “Easy, darling.”
I risked slitting an eyelid open, waited through the stabbing pain, and at last focused on the woman sitting beside me. “Missy? What’re you doing here?”
“Caring for you.”
She leaned down and touched her lips to my forehead, and them same old smells hit me, strong and sharp and achingly vivid. Fresh mowed grass in the spring, a tomb closed to the night air, swords clashing on a bloody field, and something new, the vision of an ancient man sporting a long, white beard, his hand held toward me.
I shook it off. What was Missy’s was hers alone to keep. She wanted me to know something, she’d surely tell me.
I rubbed a hand over my face, scrubbing away cold sweat. The muscles in my chest pulled and a deep agony shoved a gasp out of me.
“What is it, darling?” Missy asked.
“Nothing,” I mumbled, a whopper of a lie if ever there was one. “Time is it?”
“Seven thirty or so.”
Lordy, had I been out that long? What, about four hours since I got home? I slit my eyes toward the window, squinted at the thin light streaming through the curtains. Seemed a mite strong for that time of evening, but who was I to say what was right or wrong? Right then, seemed like I was lucky just to be lying there.
“In the morning,” Missy continued.
Panic slammed into me. I sat straight up in the bed, unmindful of the pain lingering in my torso. “What?”
She patted my hand, wrapped it in both of hers. “Trey found you half an hour ago. You were lying on the porch fully dressed and cold as stone. What happened, Sunny?”
I flopped onto the mattress and stared up at the water stain curling across the ceiling. “Old Mother come to see me yesterday.”
Missy’s hands clenched mine in an iron grip. “Tell me.”
I related what I could remember to her, something about warnings and how I should heed ‘em, and rounded the tale out with the pain give me by Old Mother’s vision.
Missy slumped back, her shoulders hunched. “That sounds an awful lot like a heart attack to me.”
“Naw,” I scoffed. “I’m too young.”
“No one is too young for heart problems.” She clucked her tongue, heaved a sigh, and them violet eyes of hers went firm. “You’re going to a doctor and that’s all there is to it.”
I opened my mouth to protest, and her violet eyes glinted. “I can take you or Fame can. Your choice.”
I snapped my jaw shut. Like as not, Fame’d dump me in the woods for a day or two for back talking him the other night, or worse. Being family wouldn’t excuse me from payback, only mellow it a little. I’d as soon avoid any if I could help it.
“All right, all ready,” I muttered.
She beamed at me and patted my hand again. Good little girl, the pat seemed to say, and I scowled whilst she chattered on about how the rest of my week was gonna go.
The front door opened and closed, interrupting a litany of words like bed rest and stay off your feet and no work for a while. Heavy footsteps hit carpet and linoleum, and a minute later, Riley filled the bedroom’s entrance. His auburn hair sticking up ever which way and his skin was ashen under his tan.
Missy twisted around toward him. “You’re just in time. Sunshine and I were discussing the rules for her week off.”
He nodded once and stuffed his hands in the front pockets of his jeans. “What can I do?”
“How about asking me?” I said.
He glanced at me and away, and a faint smile curved his mouth upward. “I can take the week off and stay with her.”
“You’ll do no such thing.”
Missy smacked my leg, effectively shushing me, and it was then I realized that I was stark nekkid under the covers.
I yanked ‘em to my chin and glared at her. Fine thing, it was, when a woman’s own kin neglected to fill in important details.
“That won’t be necessary, Riley,” Missy said, like I hadn’t uttered word one. “We’ll look after her during the day.”
“I can be here at night.”
And just like that, my whole week was planned out for me.
When did ever body forget I was a grown woman fully capable of taking care of my own dang self?
Missy and Riley chattered on for a few minutes more, then Trey stomped into the trailer and hollered for Missy, and Riley slipped into the bathroom to fill the tub so I could take a hot bath.
A bath, not a shower, like I was still five and my stick straight hair was up in pigtails.
Gentry arrived a minute after that and the distinct sound of a fingernail flipping against thin metal echoed through the trailer.
“Don’t open that cage,” I hollered, and Riley poked his head outta the bathroom, scowling at me like I lost my mind.
Maybe I had. The past day was a surreal blur in my memory, too weird to be anything outside of imagination. I pinched my arm hard and yelped (Yup, it hurt.), and Riley shook his head and retreate
d to safer climes.
Gentry poked his head in my bedroom holding the birdcage by the top handle. “This cage?”
“That’un,” I said, gentle as I could. “Find some lettuce or something and poke it in there, wouldja?”
His face lit up like it was Christmas and away he went.
Me, I flopped over on the bed and muttered ever curse word I ever learnt into my pillow.
Chapter Thirteen
Soon as the front door closed on my kinfolk, I flipped the covers off my legs and rolled outta bed.
Like he had some sorta sixth sense, Riley appeared in the bathroom doorway, filling it from top to bottom and side to side, and scowled at me. “Get back in bed, Sunny.”
I scowled right back and yanked the covers back over me. Dang Missy’s hide for stripping me down. “I got stuff to do.”
“You can do it after you see a doctor.” He strode across the room, snatched the covers away, and lifted me in his arms. “Bath’s ready.”
I clutched his shoulder, not a bit ready to give in, ‘specially since stubborn was the only thing standing between me and him. “You said to get in bed.”
“And now I’m saying take a bath.”
Faint humor underscored the mild spoken words. My scowl deepened and, ornery cuss that I was, when he set my feet on the bathroom floor, I shooed him out and locked the door behind him.
That’d learn him to mess with Sunshine Walkingstick.
The bath was warm and steamy and scented with the rosemary and orange bath oil Riley dug up from a supply give by a client for services rendered. A mild infestation of pixies, if I remembered correct, and I usually did.
I pinned my hair up and stepped into the bath, and while I was soaking, turned my noggin to figuring out how to slip my handlers so I could get some work done this week. The warm water lulled me into a stupor before any ideas turned up, and I pulled the tub’s plug no closer to solving my dilemma.
My limbs was shaky and weak as a newborn foal when I got out. I weren’t fool enough to believe it was the water what sapped my strength. My mouth twisted into a frown. What in tarnation did Old Mother do to me? Weren’t no ordinary vision, sure as tootin’. Last time, I lost a morning. This’un, she mighta actually done some damage on top of the stolen hours.
