Jolene

by Mercedes Lackey

  Instantly she felt ashamed of her tone. Just think of it, how it must have eaten at him, never having anything he had created just for himself. It would be something beautiful, because she already knew he that he loved and, more to the point, could make beautiful things. Just because he wanted to, and for no other reason than that.

  She wondered what that would feel like, to set free that part inside of you that made beautiful things, and hopped off her stool to go stand at his side, one hand unobtrusively on his arm, staring at the stone. “I thank I’d be a-skeert t’ cut inter thet stone, it’s so purty,” she said at last.

  Now, once again, he finally looked at her. “Thet’s part of it,” he admitted. “I cain’t go an’ do somethin’ thet’ll mar it in any way. So I gotter thank this through. I gotter plan ev’ liddle bit. It’s all gotter be right.”

  “Let th’ magic he’p,” she suggested, surprising even herself. Where had those words come from? But she knew it was the right suggestion, even as he looked at her with pure astonishment.

  “How?” he blurted, taking his hands off the stone.

  “Le’s jest give up on y’all larnin’ t’ scry,” she replied, though it pained her greatly to say it. “At least fer now. Jest—put yore hands on thet stone. Let th’ magic kinder sift inter it. Mebbe y’all cain’t see ary flaws on th’ outside, but let th’ magic see if there’s any hidden. Let th’ magic tell y’all where th’ stone’s weak, an’ where it’s strong. Oncet y’all know thet, y’all will prolly hev some ideer of what kinda shape t’carve, an’ the shape’ll tell y’all what t’carve.”

  The look in his eyes gratified her so much she forgot her earlier hurt. And his next words made the sting of the fact that these things came from Jolene ease. “I swan, Anna May Jones, y’all’s th’ smartest gel I iver did see! How’d y’all thank of all thet? Not even Jolene tol’ me the like!”

  How had she thought of it? Maybe it was the things she’d learned this summer: how to use her magic with the earth and all the things that grew on it, instead of against the earth, forcing the earth to do things it didn’t want to do. Maybe it had been learning to do instead of be told what to do. Maybe it had been learning to feel and think before she acted magically.

  “It jest felt right,” she replied. “Try it. Jest a liddle. See iffen thet works fer y’all.”

  He took a deep breath, placed his hands on either side of the stone again, and closed his eyes, the better to see the magic. For her part, she put one hand around his back and onto his right forearm and the other on his left forearm, pulled in magic from the stream of it running beneath the earth nearby, and let it slowly trickle into him to help his. And through him, she got a sense that this was working; he was seeing the piece of stone in a new way, right inside it, sensing everything she had promised he would.

  But he was not used to working with magic for very long, and before too long it started to all slip away from him—not in a catastrophic sense, but as if his internal “eyes” blurred with fatigue, as if the tools were slipping from fingers too tired to hold them. She eased away from him and watched as his hands dropped from the stone, his shoulders slumping with exhaustion.

  “Y’all need rest,” she said firmly. “Rest inna bed.”

  “Oh,” he replied, grinning wearily, “straw ain’t so bad.”

  “Bed’s better.” She gave him a little shove toward the door into the barn. “Y’all go et somethin’ an’ git some sleep.”

  Hopefully McDaran’s spell over his family had worn off, now that he was gone, so they’d see Josh was exhausted and fuss him into some good food and adequate rest. An’ I hope they’s feelin’ guilty too, she thought. They shouldn’t oughta hev done thet to him, spell or no spell.

  But as she trudged up the lane to the cabin, her own steps were heavy, and her thoughts as gray as the clouds gathering overhead. Jolene had certainly taken notice of Josh . . . which was the very last thing that Anna had wanted.

  Now she knew what Jolene was—more or less—and this was not some simple town rivalry of two girls after the same boy. Now she knew why Aunt Jinny kept hammering on Niver get atwixt Jolene and what she wants.

  And now Jolene knew everything Anna hadn’t wanted her to find out. Now she knew what kind of a craftsman and artist Josh was. Now she knew he had magic! And Great-Granpappy had said in his book that Jolene had a habit of trying to claim artists and craftsmen for her own. Did that extend to artists and craftsmen who were magicians?

  Likely. Prolly that makes her want ’em more.

  Had she actually claimed him, with her gifts of tools and seductive stone?

  No . . . he’d’a tol’ me if she’d got him ter make some sorta promise. She wanted to smack herself in the head now for not warning him before she had sent him off to bed—but there had been so much going on, and she hadn’t yet told him what Jolene was, and would he even believe her if she did without some proof?

  The proof’s there in thet stone. Iffen thet there stone come outa the Burra Burra mine, I’ll et it m’self.

  She was so wrapped up in her own thoughts that it wasn’t until she was over the stile and halfway to the porch that she looked up and saw Aunt Jinny waiting there for her, with a letter in her hand and a stricken look on her face.

  She ran the rest of the way and seized Jinny’s hands in her own. “What happened?” she all but shouted.

  “Oh, honey-chile,” Jinny blurted, her voice cracking. “Yore Pa’s daid. An’ yore Ma done kilt hersel’ arter.”

  18

  AUNT Jinny pulled her into the kitchen and pushed her down on a stool. Anna felt as if she must be in a nightmare. Any moment now, she’d wake up, and everything would be fine again. Jolene wouldn’t be looming over Josh like a hawk mantling over prey. McDaran wouldn’t be stalking her. Ma and Pa—

  But she wasn’t asleep. She sat there, feeling as if something had stolen all the breath from her lungs, her stomach a knot, and knowing there was no escape into waking from this.

  The letter had consisted of two pieces of paper. The first was the official notice from some official in Soddy. It was a simple, harsh, two-line statement: Pa had died of Winter Fever—which was the official way of saying the mines had killed him with their smoke and dust—and Ma was dead as a suicide.

  The other was from one of the neighbors, elaborating a little more. Pa stopped being able to work, then to get out of bed, and then just didn’t wake up, all in the course of two weeks. The neighbors to whom Ma regularly sold potions knew nothing about his death until they noticed Ma hadn’t come out of the house all day, went to see if she needed help, and found him stone cold in his bed and her dead next to him, hanging from the rafters. They went to get the authorities, who had been mighty displeased. A death in one of the Company houses was expected, but how dare Ma taint the place with her suicide!

  But there was more. As if that was not enough.

  Yur sis left owin a powerful lot to the Company, the letter went on. They sold everthin in the house an it weren’t nuff to cover hardly anythin. They’s likely gonna try an find Anna May an git it from her one way or tother.

  Everything—everything gone. Ma, Pa, what little they had—all gone, as if it had all been swept away in the Great Flood. She didn’t even have something to remember them by. She’d had no chance to say goodbye. If she’d been there, could she have saved Pa? Could she at least have saved Ma? And they were buried by now, in an unmarked pauper’s grave, probably without even so much as a ten-minute graveside prayer. She felt as if she ought to be weeping, but all she could feel was emptiness.

  Maybe that was because Ma and Pa hadn’t ever really been to her what Josh’s Ma and Pa were so clearly to him. Because Ma had been so wrapped up in Pa that she had nothing to spare for Anna—and Pa had been so wrapped up in himself he had nothing to spare for anyone. Maybe that was why she couldn’t weep. Because the emptiness had been there all along, bu
t it had been hidden by their physical presence, by the fact that she could say “My Ma is Maybelle Jones an’ my Pa is Lew Jones.”

  And now she couldn’t say that, the illusion of a family was gone, and the emptiness was just there, no longer hidden.

  All that she could feel was a kind of flat, gray despair, that everything, everything, was so horribly falling apart. Ma and Pa, dead. Billie McDaran bound and determined to get her for some reason of his own. Jolene—with her sights set on Josh.

  As she sat on a stool in the kitchen, feeling too numb and too overwhelmed to move, she finally picked one tiny incomprehensible bit out of both of those letters and looked up at her aunt, who was hovering over her anxiously, as if she expected Anna to swoon or have hysterics. “What’d thet letter mean, thet the Company was a-gonna try an’ find me?”

  Jinny straightened up, her mouth a hard, thin line. “Yer Ma an’ Pa left a debt, an’ their near kin—thet’s y’all—is responsible fer thet debt.”

  “But—how?” she gasped. “I didn’ go git thangs from th’ Company store!”

  “No, but y’all lived in th’ Company house an’ et what yore Ma got from th’ Company store,” Jinny pointed out, scowling at the injustice of it. “Thet’s what they’ll tell a judge. By their reckonin’, y’all inherit debt jest like y’all inherit anythin’ else. Iffen y’all cain’t pay it, they c’n make y’all work it off, or go to jail.”

  She blinked, shocked. “Go to—but—thet cain’t be legal, c’n it? There ain’t no indenture no more, is there?”

  Jinny shrugged helplessly, as Anna’s stomach turned into icy knots, and her knees went weak. “Oh, they ain’t a-gonna send y’all t’jail, not when they c’n sell yore debt t’ some’un else. Folks’ll do thet, buy a debt, t’git a free sarvant outen it. An’ thet’s what they’ll do.”

  Anna whimpered a little in the back of her throat. “They’ll—take me? Away?” Hauled away—where? Away from Aunt Jinny, away from Josh, to be someone’s unpaid slavey—

  “An’ whoever gits yore debt’ll jest keep a-pilin’ more y’all owes fer yore room an’ board,” Jinny continued. “Lincoln was s’pposed t’ hev got rid’a thet, but—” She shrugged. “It’s th’ Companies. They own th’ judge, an’ th’ judge’ll say y’all owe th’ debt, work it off or go t’jail. They say it ain’t ‘indentured servitude’ on account’a there ain’t no contract, so it’s all legal.” She shook her head. “But thet ain’t the wust thang I c’n think of. Iffen Billie McDaran finds out ’bout this, he’ll go buy your debt, sure as sure, an’ come a-lookin’ fer y’all with sheriffs an’ bailiffs. He’ll take y’all, legal, an’ with the sheriff t’ he’p him.”

  By this point she was in so much of a panic that she could not move. She could only sit there, frozen, looking up at her aunt with horror.

  Jinny stood beside Anna, looking into nothing for a long time. Finally, she seemed to make up her mind. “I’m a-gonna talk to Old Raven. I’ll git him t’pass y’all along t’ Oklahoma. He c’n do it ’long the secret ways he got, where no sheriff’s gonna git wind of y’all. From there, y’all c’n git inter Kansas without no one knowin’ there’s collectors huntin’ y’all. I got a brother in Kansas; y’all c’n stay with him till all this blows over.”

  Now the tears began, pouring down her face silently, as she gasped out sobs. “But Josh—” she wept.

  Jinny took her shoulders in each hand and shook her, hard. “We got time. Time ’nuff fer y’all t’run down thar fust thang in th’ mornin’ an’ ’splain ev’thang y’all need to t’ Josh an’ Matt an’ Maddie. We got mebbe three days at best, an’ surely one at wust, afore th’ Company gets a bailiff here arter y’all.”

  “But—” She stuttered through what Jolene had given to Josh, and what she had said to him. Aunt Jinny’s mouth compressed, but her voice stayed steady.

  “Now y’all lissen t’me, girl, an’ lissen good. Y’all remember what Granpappy wrote ’bout him an’ Granny? How set they was on each other?”

  She nodded, vision blurring from the tears of despair.

  “Wall, either Josh feels thet way ’bout y’all, an’ it won’t matter what Jolene tries oncet he knows what she is an’ what she’s gonna arst him, or he don’t, Jolene’ll take ’im, an’ y’all are well shuck of him!”

  Horror joined with panic and grief. “But I cain’t niver—”

  Aunt Jinny shook her shoulders again. “What’d I say? Iffen it happens, y’all are well shuck of him! Y’all wanter be treated like yore Pa treated yer Ma an’ end up like her? Better git yore heart broke now, when it c’n mend. An’ mebbe y’all ain’t gonna be in love agin, but thet ain’t th’ end of the world. There’s plenty more t’life than bein’ in love.”

  Jinny’s face had a peculiar look to it that Anna couldn’t understand.

  Jinny went and got one of the rags that served them as handkerchiefs, giving it to Anna. “Cry yoreself out, blow yore nose, an’ lemme go talk to Elder Raven. We gotter git our plan an’ git it a-goin’ afore the bailiffs or sheriffs or, God forbid, McDaran shows up.”

  She gave herself up to tears, sobbing her heart out. In days at best, hours at worst, everything in her life would be gone. She’d be trekking into the west with nothing but what she could carry, heading for the dubious shelter of a total stranger, each step taking her further and further away from everything and everyone she loved. The bottom had dropped out of her universe, and there was nothing left for her.

  * * *

  She didn’t sleep a wink, and in the morning she paced back and forth in front of the door until Aunt Jinny finally decreed it was probably late enough that the Holcrofts were also awake and about, and she could run down the lane to talk to them, and Josh.

  “Josh’ll prolly still be eatin’ breakfus’,” Jinny said, holding her by the elbow so she couldn’t run off until Jinny had said her piece. “So mind y’all don’t say nothin’ bout magic nor Jolene ’round ’em. Jes’ tell ’em ’bout yer Ma an’ Pa, an’ th’ Company debt, an’ how y’all’s a-gonna go stay with—somebody—till th’ Company gives it up. Thet’ll be ’bout a year, I reckon. Mind, y’all ain’t niver gonna be able t’set foot in Soddy agin, but I don’ thank thet’s gonna make y’all lose any sleep.”

  Numbly, Anna nodded.

  “Don’t tell ’em it’s m’brother,” she continued. “What they don’ know, they cain’t tell McDaran iffen he comes ’round usin’ his Glory on ’em. Don’t tell thet t’Josh, neither.”

  “But—”

  “What he don’t know, he cain’t tell Jolene, an’ cain’t tell McDaran,” she said sternly. “Would not surprise me a-tall iffen it was Jolene thet tol’ McDaran ’bout y’all in th’ fust place, oncet she found out y’all an’ Josh was courtin’.”

  Anna felt as if yet another plank in an increasingly shaky support had been knocked out from under her. “But—why?” she wailed.

  “T’git y’all outen th’ way, a’course,” Jinny said, as if she was an idiot. “She ain’t human. Y’all might thank she was yore friend, but thet don’t make y’all her friend. McDaran uses Earth Glory, same as she does, an’ accordin’ to Granpappy, she’s got as much innerest in miners as she does crafters. Which means she don’ give two hoots an’ a holler ’bout what them mines does t’ the land around ’em, I reckon. I figure she’s as innerested in helpin’ him as in helpin’ y’all. An’ she purely does not thank like a human woman. An’ I warned y’all.” Jinny sniffed. “Tarnation, by her lights, she might figger she’s a-doin’ y’all a favor, by puttin’ y’all with someone with more magic power an’ more money than Josh. Y’all cain’t hold her t’what humans thank is good an’ proper. She ain’t human.”

  “I’ll ’member,” Anna promised, her stomach turning and churning and tears rising up in her throat until they practically choked her. “Please, Aunt Jinny, lemme go!”

  Jinny released her elbow. “Go,” she s
aid. “An’ git right back here. They’s a limit t’what I c’n do t’ pertect y’all.”

  She flew out into the deep gray morning, in too much of a state to care about the chill ground on her bare feet. She cursed herself now for not having thought of using the scrying mirror to keep watch on Josh, so she could have had those last few hours to cherish when they were torn apart. There was scarcely any light under the trees in the lane, and she stumbled and nearly fell too many times to count, only momentum and the need to see Josh keeping her on her feet.

  But when she emerged from the trees, she stopped dead for a moment.

  She knew immediately that something was wrong, because the farmhouse had lights in every window, and Holcrofts running in and out of every door.

  As she sped toward the house, Maddie somehow caught sight of her in the dim light, and waved frantically at her, face full of relief. “Anna!” she called, as soon as Anna was within hailing distance. “Y’all got Josh with y’all, right?” Her voice turned from relieved to a combination of relief and scolding. “What was y’all thankin’ of, gallivantin’ aroun’ in the woods this time of—”

  But her words brought Anna to a paralyzed halt, and Anna was close enough for Maddie to see what must have been her expression of horror. “N-n-n-no!” Anna stammered. “I ain’t seed him since yesterday! I jest come a-runnin’ down here t—where’s Josh?”

  Without waiting for an answer, she whirled and ran for the barn and the workshop. There was very little light, but what there was, was enough to tell her that her worst fears had been realized. The roll of tools and the block of malachite were gone.

  There could be only one explanation.

  Jolene had taken Josh.