Jolene

by Mercedes Lackey

  Aunt Jinny shook her head. “I unnerstan’. I do. But I’m a-gonna tell y’all no. Thet wagon is full ’nuff, wi’out y’all, but thet ain’t the main reason. Y’all ain’t strong ’nough yet t’bear Ducktown. ’Member thet y’all felt sick in Soddy? An’ when y’all got near t’ Cleveland y’all started feelin’ a liddle sick agin?”

  Reluctantly, she nodded.

  “Wall, Ducktown’s a hunnert times worse nor Soddy,” her aunt told her sternly. “I keep a-tellin’ y’all thet, but y’all don’t seem t’ get it in yore haid. Nothin’ grows there. Not a garden, not a tree, not hardly a weed. Some people, they don’t feel th’ pizen. Some, they do. Some, like thet pore liddle dead baby, it kills them daid. I ain’t a-makin’ thet up jest fer foolin’ y’all. Y’all wanta find out that pizen is gonna do thet t’y’all?”

  Numbly she shook her head.

  “Wall then. There’s yore answer.” She set off back up the hill, and Anna perforce followed her.

  But she suddenly realized as the end of the trail came into view that the visit to the Holcrofts had brought up as many questions about her aunt as it had answered.

  7

  TODAY Anna was dealing with a particularly complicated receipt. Aunt Jinny had written in smaller letters than usual to fit everything on the page of the book, and there were a lot of ingredients. This wasn’t a receipt to be making any mistakes on, either; it was specifically for “Winter Fever,” a dangerous illness that could carry off even a strong man in his prime. Anna concentrated on getting every letter and number of it exactly right, focusing so fiercely that when a shadow fell over her, her immediate reaction was annoyance that her light had been blocked as she looked up.

  And then she froze. Because standing in the doorway, blocking off the sun, was an Indian.

  She knew that it had to be an Indian; the man had long, flowing black hair with a single feather tied into it, and a fancy leather vest with beadwork on it, though he also wore a perfectly normal collarless linen shirt with gaiters on each arm and perfectly normal dungarees, the trouser-type rather than the ones with a bib like Aunt Jinny wore. A shriek of shock died in her throat, as her mouth dried instantly, and all she could think about was stories of scalpings and massacres.

  “Virginia, am I disturbin’ y’all?” said the man, politely.

  Aunt Jinny looked up from her potion-making. “Not a-tall, Old Raven. I been expectin’ y’all fer a couple days. This here’s m’niece, Anna. Come on in.”

  The man came further into the cabin, making no noise at all. So this must be one of the Cherokee that her aunt had mentioned as living in the holler. As Anna’s heart slowly stopped racing, she looked up at his grave face. He appeared to be older than Aunt Jinny by the gray threading his black hair, but she couldn’t tell how much older.

  And a second man, who could have been the twin of the first at a much younger age, came in behind him. He was holding two dead rabbits by their hind legs. “We got rabbits t’trade fer honey, Miz Jinny,” the younger man said.

  “Two rabbits? Seems fair,” Jinny agreed. “I figgered y’all was about due t’ trade fer some, tha’s why I been expectin’ y’all. Anna, this here is Old Raven an’ Young Raven. I told y’all ’bout ’em. They lives futher up th’ Holler.”

  Anna told herself not to be a goose. Aunt Jinny wouldn’t leave her cabin door open all the time if there was the slightest chance of danger. And now she was embarrassed for thinking what she had about them. They were both striking men, with their strong features and long black hair. But what was most astonishing about them was their economical way of moving. They didn’t fidget, or shift their weight from foot to foot. They remained absolutely still until the moment they moved, and when they moved, they did so silently and precisely. Young Raven was dressed like his father, with the addition of a bone choker at his throat, and his shirt was a deeper shade of brown. Both of them wore their shirts over their dungarees instead of tucked in, and had leather belts around their waists that supported a variety of pouches and sheathed knives. Both of them carried rifles slung over their shoulders.

  Young Raven took the rabbits to Aunt Jinny, who laid a flour-sack towel over what she was doing to prevent anything from being disturbed. But Old Raven examined Anna closely, uncomfortably closely actually, as if he was looking for something. Aunt Jinny put the rabbits up for the moment, reached to the shelf that held some of her sweets and jams, and passed the younger Cherokee a sealed pot of honey, then exchanged a look with the older man.

  And there was a bit of unspoken communication in that moment that Anna would not have seen if she had not been paying attention. Old Raven slightly raised his right eyebrow. Aunt Jinny cocked her head in Anna’s direction and gave a slight shrug. Old Raven pursed his lips a little, then nodded so very little it might not have happened at all. And Aunt Jinny smiled, ever so faintly.

  And then it was over, making Anna wonder what on earth they had just said to each other. It was about her, she thought—but what did it mean?

  But there was no time to think about it. Aunt Jinny invited the men to sit down at the table and poured them some of her tea, and offered cornbread, both of which were accepted. While they sipped and nibbled in silence that was very much a contrast to Mrs. Holcroft’s chatter, her aunt deftly skinned and quartered the rabbits, and added them to the soup pot. “’Scuse me while I go stretch these here hides,” she said then, and before Anna could say anything, she was out the door.

  Anna looked down at her hands, awkwardly, and then to look as if she was doing something, capped the ink, cleaned the quill, and blew on her page to dry it.

  “Anythin’ y’all’d like t’know ’bout Lonesome Holler, liddle Anna?” asked Old Raven, ever so politely. “Me’n my kin been here since the days afore the white men came. There ain’t nothin’ ’bout this holler we don’t know.”

  She looked up and something sprang into her head. “I heerd,” she began, hesitantly. “I heerd that durin’ th’ War, there was bears here, what couldn’t be shot, keepin’ the sojers away.” She looked up shyly. “Was there really? Whassa spirit bear?”

  Old Raven smiled very faintly. “Th’ Ole Men tol’ this t’me when I was a boy, so it must be true,” he said. “A time ago, there was a clan called Ani’-Tsa’guhi an’ there was a boy in that clan who’d wander away for days inter the mountains. An’ he never et in his house, jest slept. An’ his parents begun to notice his hair was a-growin’ out all over his body. So they arst him what was a-goin’ on, an’ he finally tol’ ’em he was a-eatin’ jest fine in the mountains, an’ th’ food was better there than with th’ clan. An’ he tol’ ’em, ‘Iffen y’all fast fer seven days an’ a-go with me, all y’all will allus hev enough t’eat an’ y’all will niver hev t’ work fer it.’ So the whole clan had a palaver with th’ headman, an’ they decided t’ do thet. An’ they fasted, an’ off they went, an’ they started t’look like th’ boy. With hair all over. ’Nother clan heerd of this, an’ they sent messengers t’talk to ’em, but th’ Ani-Tsa’guhi wouldn’ come back. ‘Y’all call us yanu from now on,’ they said, an’ then they said somethin’ else, on account’a they figgered they owed somethin’ t’ th’ rest of th’ nation. ‘An’ because we’re one nation, iffen y’all gets hungry, here are the songs t’call us by. Call us an’ we’ll come an’ give y’all our very own flesh. Don’ worry ’bout killin’ us, y’all cain’t, an’ we’ll live ferever.’ So they taught th’ messengers the songs, an’ went on, but when th’ messengers looked back, all they saw was a big drove of bears a-goin’ inter th’ woods. Th’ Ole Men tol’ me this when I was a boy, so it must be true.”

  Well, that didn’t really answer her question, but she felt it was rude to persist any further. Unless—

  Unless Old Raven meant that there were such things as spirit bears, and that they were the unkillable bears that had driven off the Yank and Reb soldiers to protect the Holler, and that they had once
been humans and Cherokee.

  “Bears ain’t a-gonna bother th’ Root Woman an’ her kin, Anna,” said Young Raven. “Not niver, not nohow.”

  Well that answered a different question, though how Young Raven could be so certain of that, she was entirely unsure.

  Her aunt was back before the silence became awkward, and the two men stood up to go. “Thenkee, Virginia,” said Old Raven. “It’ll rain soon. We’ll come by the day arter with mushrooms.”

  “I’d admire thet, thenkee,” her aunt replied. “I’m still a-showin’ Anna here what she needs t’larn, an’ she ain’t ready yet t’ traipse ’round the woods too far from my house.”

  Old Raven smiled faintly, made a sketchy little salute with his hand, and then the two of them were gone, as silently as they had arrived.

  Aunt Jinny looked down at the half-finished receipt. “Uncap thet ink an’ get back t’writin’, Anna,” she said. “Y’all ain’t done an’ y’all still need t’learn how t’put the potion t’gether.”

  That night after supper, Aunt Jinny asked her if Old Raven had said anything to her. She bit her lip, because she didn’t want to irritate her aunt, but Jinny had asked her, and she knew she had to tell the truth. “I arst him ’bout the spirit bears what Mrs. Holcroft tol’ me ’bout,” she said, carefully.

  “An’ what’d he say?” she replied.

  “He tol’ me a story ’bout a Cherokee clan what turned inter bears an’ live ferever,” she answered. “But thet didn’ answer m’question a-tall.”

  “Didn’ it?” her aunt countered. “Wall, when y’all arst Old Raven a question y’all don’t allus get a straight-out answer. Most times, y’all get a answer what leads t’ th’ answer, iffen y’all think ’bout it enough.” She got up and headed for the front porch. “I’m a-gonna set a spell outside. Issa nice night, an’ them fireflies is purdy t’watch.”

  Before Anna could say anything, Aunt Jinny went out to sit in her chair in the dark on the porch, leaving the only light in the cabin that which was coming from the banked coals on the hearth. Anna didn’t particularly want to go out on the porch; it was chillier than was comfortable for her in her nightgown, and she didn’t want to climb up into the loft to get Mrs. Sawyer’s gifted shawl only to climb back down again just to sit on the porch. The fireflies and stars might be pretty, but she got bored with them a lot quicker than Aunt Jinny did. So she moved her stool closer to the stove and tried to puzzle out what Old Raven had been trying to tell her.

  Was it that there really were bears that couldn’t be killed? Was it that he and his son knew how to control bears in general, somehow? Was it both? There was magic in the Bible, after all; Pharaoh had had magicians that had fought a magic battle with Moses. They’d turned their staffs to snakes and everything. The Preacher back in Soddy hadn’t talked much about magic, except around Halloween, when he’d do at least one sermon on the evil that came of “playing” with it, on account of it was pretty much guaranteed that there’d be parties that night of girls that were courtin’-high trying to cast spells to figure out who they’d marry. Mostly he was too busy with the sins of drink, lust, and disobedience to fret much about witchcraft. Back home, none of those serious sins had worried Anna; she didn’t drink, she never hardly even thought about disobeying, and as for lust, well—she was never around boys much, and when she was, they paid no never-mind to her.

  And now her wandering mind took that, and ran off with it, and the pressing issue of magic gradually took a back seat to the issue of young men. Or rather, a particular young man. But what about Josh Holcroft? came the persistant thought. He sure weren’t ignorin’ y’all, Anna Jones!

  She found herself blushing and getting a little warm and uncomfortable, but somehow in a good way. And why bother thinking about witchcraft when there was a young man who had finally smiled at her?

  The more she thought about meeting him again, the more distracted she got. This was such an entirely new situation for her, the sheer novelty of it alone could have occupied her for hours.

  And she might indeed have sat there, drowsily thinking about Josh, wondering if there was a way she could get Aunt Jinny to send her down to the Holcrofts for something so she could find out if this was just her overactive imagination or he really did. . . .

  Except right about then was when she looked up for a moment saw . . . it.

  It crept out from underneath the stove—even though there was no “underneath” there. It was small, about waist-high to her; in fact, it looked very like a wizened little old man, with long hair and thick beard as gray as fog. Except it had cat-ears, and blazing eyes. It didn’t seem to be aware that she was there.

  This changed as she gasped. It reacted to the sound by disappearing instantly back under the stove, leaving her to wonder if she had even seen it at all. Had she fallen asleep and actually been dreaming? She got up and felt the place where it had been, but couldn’t tell any difference in temperature between one piece of floor and the next.

  And how could it have gotten under the stove? The thing was a gigantic piece of solid stonework!

  Finally she stood up, hugging herself and shaking a little. There were only three possibilities here. She could be going mad. She might have been dreaming. Or the creature had actually been there.

  She closed her eyes and told herself to be sensible. She wasn’t going mad; at least, she didn’t think so. And that creature could not possibly have been there. That left the middle. And if she’d fallen asleep without even realizing it, next to the stove—

  —then she definitely should be falling asleep in bed instead.

  She went around to the ladder and climbed it, trying not to hurry, hoping that the feeling of being watched was all in her imagination. And when she got into bed, she pulled the quilt over her head. Tonight was not the night she wanted to see eyes staring down at her from the rafters.

  * * *

  She woke up, not thinking about Josh or the strange vision of last night, but of the two Cherokees who had visited them yesterday. Almost everything about them had been—unexpected. And when she sat down at the little table, her aunt had that look in her eye at breakfast that warned Anna that Aunt Jinny was about to say something Anna would probably find uncomfortable. So to forestall her, Anna asked the first thing that came into her head.

  “Aunt Jinny, why do them Ravens talk jest like us?” Because it had seemed odd, hearing familiar accents and words coming from them. She wasn’t sure now what she had expected before they spoke, but it hadn’t been that.

  “Because they is us, fool girl,” Jinny said a little crossly. “Up till Jackass Jackson got it inter his fool haid t’ Remove them Cherokee, most of ’em had farms like ourn, an’ shops an’ trades too, an’ went t’ school alongside our young’uns, and ever’thang y’all kin think of. Iffen y’all walked inter a Cherokee cabin wi’ yore eyes closed an’ opened ’em when nobody was around, y’all couldn’t’a told the difference.” She scowled. “Thet no-good trash Jackson reckoned he’d buy hisself some votes, I guess, by Removin’ ’em and givin’ their property t’ no-accounts.”

  “It seems kinda strange they’s on’y th’ two or three of ’em,” she said, thinking out loud.

  “Wall, I dunno ac’chully how many Cherokee is back there in the holler,” her aunt admitted. “I know I tol’ y’all it was on’y two or three, but I ain’t sure. On’y one who knew for sure was my Granpappy. I niver see nobody but the Ravens, so there could be a whole tribe livin’ quiet-like back thar. Come t’think ’bout it, there prolly is, or at least, a couple famblies. Holler’s big enough fer all of us. Ain’t no biznez of mine. Figger they’s at least one tribe Jackass Jackson didn’ cheat outa their land.”

  It was very clear that, even though the Removal had been decades ago and Aunt Jinny could not possibly have firsthand knowledge of it, she had inherited a fearsome grudge against President Andrew Jackson along with her farm.r />
  But . . . it kinder sounds like it’s justified.

  “Me an’ Matt Holcroft oughta figger out how t’transfer th’ deed t’them one-a these days,” she finished. “But they ain’t no rush. Matt’s deedin’ his farm t’ Josh or Jacob, an’ my place’ll be a-goin’ t’ y’all, an’ neither one of y’all’s gonna mess with th’ Ravens.”

  That astonishing statement surprised Anna so much that you could have knocked her over with a feather, and she tried to think of something else to ask about, now that she had—she hoped—gotten her aunt onto something other than whatever thing Jinny had wanted to bring up. Why give this place t’me, when she said she has brothers an’ sisters? she thought. And she was about to ask how many relatives she actually had, when Jinny shot her a sharp glance.

  “And y’all ain’t gonna distract me none, missy,” she said. “They’s somethin’ I aim t’show y’all terday. ’Tis ’bout time y’all knowed about y’all’s real inheritance.”

  Jinny made some odd gestures in the air. Odder still—a little scary in fact—her fingers left glowing golden trails in the air!

  The sight held Anna paralyzed for a moment, and she could not believe her eyes. But what happened next made her yelp and jump on top of her stool, like a silly goose seeing a mouse.

  A dozen strange little creatures came running in the front door. Not animals, but not anything she had ever seen before either. Some of them looked like the dolls she’d made out of twigs and leaves. Some looked like rough clay figurines. There was even one that looked exactly like the tiny Indian man she had thought she’d imagined in the loft of the Sawyers’ barn!

  But then her aunt called out, “Domovoy, come forth!” and that hairy old man she had been sure was a waking dream crawled out from under the stove.

  The things surrounded her, and she didn’t know whether to shriek or faint.