Bell Weather

by Dennis Mahoney

  “Yes!” Molly said, precisely as a leaden cloud, a forerunner of the approaching storm, dimmed the glaring sun.

  She hadn’t seen Tom since his one brief visit to the house, but even three weeks later, he seemed to her as present as he had been that morning in the river when she floated in his arms, buoyant with his warmth. He was busy at the tavern, Benjamin had told her. She worried that he remembered her as cold, dead weight. But, oh!—how she would like to speak with him again, and to find in him, perhaps, another kind friend.

  Abigail walked out the back door carrying Benjamin’s medical bag and said, “You’re wanted at the smithy. Luger crushed his foot.”

  She had tied her hair back strictly so her forehead stretched, heightening her eyebrows. It gave her a look of supercilious attentiveness, recalling Mrs. Wickware, and yet her heron’s neck and poise were reminiscent of Frances, instilling in Molly a dual urge to hug her and recoil.

  Benjamin took his bag and left for the smithy at once, his ruminative mood giving way to action, and after he was gone Abigail said to Molly, “There are several more stalkers mangling the pepperstem. I trust that you can cripple them yourself unassisted. When you’re finished, you may come inside and help me boil linen.”

  She went inside without waiting for an answer, and Molly turned to the pepperstem, where three more stalkers had indeed been overlooked. It took her five minutes to extricate and replant them, and then she noticed the sprig of nyx that Benjamin had left behind, its small purple blossoms looking duller than before. She picked the flowers up and ran around the front of the house, but Benjamin had taken his horse and ridden out of sight.

  Wind gusted up Center Street, swirling petticoats and dust, and there was thunder in the west and a smell of scoured tin. Gray-green clouds darkened and descended. The tavern stood in the distance on its hillock near the river. She could make it there and back in very little time; why not go alone? She wasn’t a prisoner, after all. Yet she doubted Abigail would allow her to leave instead of boiling linen, so she ran down the street without bothering to ask, hoping to deliver the nyx, say hello to Tom, and hurry back to the house before her absence was discovered.

  She passed the common where the cows chewed the moist new grass. Next came the meetinghouse, bone white and fronted by a steeple, rarely used for several years—so Abigail had told her—since the local minister had been eaten by a catamount. A confidential air deepened off the common, partly from the overarching trees along the street but largely from the neatness and compactness of the houses. Most were single story, with a sharp peaked attic—a partial second level where inhabitants would sleep. All were simple in design, with pairs of windows at the front, central chimneys, white clapboards, and variously colored trim—crimson, green, indigo, buttercream, black.

  However similar in style, they had character from age and many features of disfigurement. A window cloaked in ivy leaves fluttering with birds. A mangled weathervane, its arrow pointing up as if to blame. One small house, immaculately clean, had settled at an angle and tilted to the left, enough so that a ball might roll across its floor. Another, lacking shade, looked permanently parched. Still another looked warped from a lifetime of rain. Molly tried to imagine the differences inside—how it felt to look out instead of looking in.

  Wind blew her east, down the street toward the river. Branches swayed and lightning flickered in the storm-heavy dark. Every citizen in sight was hurrying indoors and no one paid attention as she sprinted past, feeling weightless with the gusts shoving at her back.

  She reached the end of Center Street and looked across the river, where the vast eastern forest seemed to spread out forever. Lightning lit the water and the woods stark white. Thunder cracked close, sounding like a pistol shot. She smelled the burnt powder, felt the tremor up her arm—only memories, but strong enough to make her think of Nicholas.

  Ice-sharp rain needled at her face, and the wind bent the trees and whitecapped the river. She ran against the gusts, up a slope and sopping wet. She couldn’t see a thing through the broad sheets of rain. Hail fell in bursts, coating patches of the ground and pinging off her forehead and cleavage, hard as glass. It annihilated the sprig of nyx—nothing remained except for the stems—and Molly wiped her face and tried to see the tavern. A broad fork of lightning fractured overhead. She saw an old wooden sign swinging off a post: a faded orange, stuck with cloves. Beyond it, glowing windows.

  Then a woman ran toward her from behind, drenched and laughing. She was young and unafraid and splashing up mud, a pretty silhouette emerging from the storm.

  “Come on!” the woman said.

  Molly took her hand. They hiked their skirts, ran beneath a sycamore tree, and raced toward the tavern’s storm-flickered door.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The young woman kept Molly’s hand and pulled her up the stairs inside the tavern’s front door, looking backward with a fling of wet brown hair and laughing as if the storm was the best kind of fun. Molly glimpsed the taproom’s lantern-lit chairs and followed her up, into the darkened staircase, down the second-story hall, and into a tiny room.

  The woman closed the door. She passed the rain-lashed window overlooking Root and lit a candle with a tinderbox. The room glowed alive. The walls were pale, creamy green and decorated with a dozen dried bouquets. Atop a tidy chest of drawers lay a hairbrush, a hand mirror, and a picture book of Rougian dresses. Molly sneezed and dripped water on the threadbare rug.

  “I’m Bess,” the woman said with candlelit eyes. She popped off her shoes and dropped her garters and her stockings. “And you,” she said, “are Molly. I saw you when they pulled you from the river. Tom’s my cousin. I’ve wanted to meet you since he saved you but it’s work, work, work, clean this and carry that. Tom is always seven places in his head and not a one of them is fun. Not to call it fun—the danger you were in—but oh, I’m glad to meet you! Were you really almost dead?”

  Molly backed against the door, overwhelmed and yet delighted by the breathless introduction. They were of equal height and weight, similarly aged. Molly had darker hair and whiter skin—Bess looked permanently sun-kissed—and yet they resembled each other enough, even in their contrasts, to make them like the subjects of the same bold painter.

  Bess continued shedding clothes with sisterly immodesty, too diverted by her own flying thoughts to wait for answers. “You truly don’t remember where you came from?” she asked, stepping out of her sodden skirts. “What were you doing in the river? Maybe you were poisoned! Isn’t it maddening and thrilling? You could be anyone, after all.” Bess removed her stays and stood in nothing but her shift. It showed her body, pretty and lean with dimpled knees and tiny breasts. “It’s like misplacing a favorite locket and retracing where you’ve been, except you can’t remember where you’ve been and the locket is really yourself.”

  She hung her clothes to drip in front of the unlit hearth, then tugged a sheet off her bed and handed a corner to Molly so the two could dry their hair beneath the canopy of linen. Then she handed off the sheet and said, “I need to change my shift.”

  Here she finally paused and waited for Molly to turn. Molly averted her eyes but there was something—Bess’s reticence? her jittery tapping foot?—that made her sneak a look when Bess dropped her shift. Her naked ribs and spine wavered with the candle. She had welts across her back, not quite scars and not quite fresh. Hail beat the roof and skittered down the shingles. Rain lashed the glass. Molly squeezed the locket at her chest and looked away.

  Bess finished dressing in a clean, dry shift and said, “It’s laundry day—I haven’t any shifts for you to borrow. At least wring your skirts out and change your muddy stockings.”

  Bess pulled a fresh pair of stockings from her drawer, guided Molly into a chair, and knelt down before her. After twisting Molly’s hems and taking off her shoes, Bess startled her by reaching up to untie her garters. She peeled the filthy stockings off Molly’s cold legs and held her feet against her own bare knees, looki
ng up.

  “Thank you,” Molly said, shivering in the pause.

  The thunder had abated to a deep, constant rumble, and the windswept rain hushed around the room. Molly’s soles began to warm. A light from outdoors made the room look greener, giving a hint of renewal to the withered flowers on the walls and infusing Bess’s face with weird, ghostly tones.

  Bess settled on her heels and said, “You must remember family.”

  Molly shook her head.

  “Your parents?” Bess said. “A sister or a brother?”

  “No.”

  “They say you came from Umber and you really do remember and you’re only keeping secrets. If it’s true, you can tell me,” Bess offered in a whisper.

  Molly stood and crossed the room, goosefleshed and bumping into the corner of the bed. She backed against the windowpanes and hugged herself tightly, hearing Abigail’s voice condemning her deceits, and she was just about to stammer out another weak lie when Bess seized her arm and tugged her from the window.

  “What are you doing?” Molly asked.

  “St. Verna’s Fire!”

  Molly twirled around to look and marveled at the source of the peculiar tinted light. The rain and wind had lessened and the lightning had subsided, but the gloom was faintly lit by strangely glowing objects. Part of a tree, from its uppermost leaves to its middle, smoldered green like embers through a stained-glass pane. The leaves remained intact while the light moved and spread.

  “Keep away from the window,” Bess said. “It isn’t safe.”

  But Molly drifted forward, curious and awed, and Bess ignored her own advice and followed at her side. The meetinghouse steeple was a pale green spire. Several peaked roofs, puddles in the road, fence posts, and barrel stacks streamed luminescence. A pushcart filled until the color overflowed. The light kept shifting, fading in one place and surging up brighter somewhere else. Molly touched the windowpane and filaments appeared, glowing and electric where her fingers met the glass. She felt a tingle, pulled away, and tried a second time.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a kind of clinging lightning,” Bess said. “Dr. Benjamin obsesses. How I hope he sees it!”

  “It’s gorgeous,” Molly said.

  “Look! It’s gotten Scratch!”

  A cat ran below from the river past the tavern, trailing fuzzy sparks and yowling out of sight.

  “The poor thing!” Molly said.

  “Scratch has weathered worse.”

  The darkened figure of a boy appeared beyond the sycamore. He ran toward the tavern, looking every which way, until the glow gathered in and lit itself upon him. It started with his hands and rippled to his face and then he stopped. Light drifted like vapor off his head.

  Molly ran toward the door.

  “No, you can’t!” Bess said.

  Molly left the room and hurried up the hall as Bess began clattering through her drawers for more to wear. She ran downstairs, almost falling on an oddly warped step near the bottom. Static shocked her when she reached toward the handle of the door.

  Someone grabbed her arm. Molly shrieked. It was Tom.

  “There’s a boy—” she said.

  “I know.”

  “But someone has to—”

  “Don’t,” he said.

  He smelled of horse and pinewood and fiery agitation. Molly felt his pleasurable wringing of her arm, tight as when he’d held her in the middle of the river.

  “Let me go!” she said.

  “It’s dangerous. You can’t.”

  She tried to hit him. Tom caught her slap and then her hair was in her face and Molly steamed, red and heaving in the cramped little stairwell. No matter how she squirmed, Tom’s hold could not be broken. She could shout or kick or struggle but she knew it wouldn’t work, so she kissed him very hard and blew directly into his mouth. She had done it once to Frances; it had startled her immensely. Tom reacted just the same and let her go. Molly bolted.

  Out the door and into the rain—she saw the child all afire. Tom shouted and pursued her but she’d never lost a race, and now she felt the spur of furious defiance. Cowards! Molly thought. To leave a child in the storm! She cut her heel on a stick and slipped around in the mud but she was close enough to see the boy’s terrified expression.

  “No!” he cried. He raised his hands and warded her away.

  He’s only frightened, Molly thought, neither heeding him nor slowing.

  Tom pounded up behind her, faster than expected. The boy was straight ahead, spectral green and sizzling. Molly reached to grab him and connected with his hands. She saw a flash and heard a crack—had something hit her head?—and then the ground was falling upward and the green went black.

  * * *

  “Her heart is beating.”

  “Dr. Knox!”

  “Is she breathing?”

  “Doctor, my son.”

  “Quiet, plea—”

  “I’ll not be quiet! She can die for all I care!”

  Voices came to her in wool—heavy, wet, dense—with a fine, high ring. Molly opened her eyes and Benjamin was close, kneeling over her and smiling. He was rain-soaked and dripping with his hand below her ear, reading Molly’s pulse and holding her head above the floor. Bess was muddy in a robe and peered over his shoulder, looking powerfully relieved that Molly had revived. Tom was at her side. His hair was wet and ratty, he was scarecrow stiff, and he appraised her with a look of hard-bitten fury. Molly wondered if he’d clubbed her on the head when she was running.

  Wishbones dangled from the rafters overhead. How had she gotten inside, in what appeared to be the taproom? A man with frizzy eyebrows stood before a small group of patrons, all of whom regarded her with kindly curiosity, and somewhere out of sight, a woman called hysterically—and angrily, at length—for Dr. Benjamin’s attention.

  The boy! Molly thought, sitting with a jolt.

  Her body felt heavy and her skull was hard to lift, full of odd motion like a half-set pudding. Molly groaned. Her vision wavered and her limbs throbbed and tingled. A smell of hammered metal, very like a smithy, burned her nose when she exhaled, as if the odor were inside her.

  “The boy,” Molly said. “What happened to the boy?”

  “Nearly dead!” cried the out-of-sight woman with conviction.

  “He is well,” Benjamin said.

  Before he could elaborate, the woman carried on, saying the boy was not well but deaf as stone, and cooked from skin to marrow, and if the doctor insisted on caring for the girl instead of her own innocent son—

  “Mrs. Downs,” Tom said, so coldly that the woman stopped, leaving nothing but the ringing in Molly’s sore head.

  She turned and saw the boy behind her near the bar, grubby from the storm but otherwise intact. His mother, Mrs. Downs, stooped tearfully beside him. She was an ample, frilly woman with a wide straw hat, the brim of which rested on the boy’s wild hair. She looked at Molly with ferocity but dithered as she stared, as if surprised to see a girl rather than a devil.

  “Are you deaf as stone?” Benjamin asked the boy.

  “No, sir.”

  “Do you suffer any pain?”

  “Only prickles,” said the boy, “like I slept right strange.”

  “I assure you, Mrs. Downs, you have nothing grave to fear.”

  “I don’t understand,” Molly mumbled at her feet.

  “It was St. Verna’s Fire,” Benjamin said, unabashedly delighted. He appeared to struggle greatly not to question her at once about its character, its force, its bodily effects. “The charge is quite benign, equipollent I would say to commonplace static, till an uncharged object—you, in this particular instance—releases and ignites its marvelous potential. It is rare,” he continued, “but familiar here in Root. The charge would have harmlessly diffused in several minutes.”

  “I’m sorry!” Molly said directly to the boy.

  He responded with a scowl and rubbed the prickles from his arm. He blamed her, Molly knew—he had tried to war
d her off—and his resentment made her ribs tighten like a corset. Bess caressed Molly’s back but the pressure hurt her muscles.

  “Please, you must believe me,” Molly said. “I didn’t know.”

  Tom stepped up and said, “I told you it was dangerous.”

  His shadowy face and untied hair gave him a savage aura but his anger lacked conviction and he shifted, self-aware, as if the issue weren’t the lightning but the fact that she had kissed him.

  “She didn’t know the nature of the danger,” Benjamin said.

  “I told her not to go.”

  “I thought…,” Molly said but quickly shut her mouth.

  “What?” Tom said, leaning in close.

  She forced herself to straighten up. He tried to stare her down. The tingle in her limbs traveled to her heart until her blood felt charged, hot enough to hiss.

  “I only meant to help,” she said. “I thought you were a coward.”

  The room collectively inhaled and everyone looked at Tom. He moved his lips as if to speak and seemed to stammer in his thoughts, by turns offended and surprised and finally dumb as wood.

  “Insolence!” said Mrs. Downs. “You were warned and acted anyway with reckless disregard. I have more than half a mind to speak to Sheriff Pitt and see you held accountable.”

  Tom reacted as if she’d thrown a burning log across the room, striding away to placate her and, as far as could be heard above the reignited chatter, defending Molly’s act from criminal complaint. The curious patrons returned to their table in the front of the taproom. Benjamin sat Molly in a chair beside the hearth where she could warm herself, and Bess brought her a hot mulled cider that settled her nerves, if only slightly, after standing up to Tom.