Bloodstone

by Gwen Hunter

  “I don’t trust you, young man.” She focused on Harry, her head reared back. Throwing out her hands, flesh wobbling in soft bags along her arms, she said, “Your aura is a dark brown where it rests against your skin, the somber shade of a deceiver and a swindler. I sense malfeasance in your soul, a darkness that removes you from God.” Her tone dropped, sonorous and deep. “Hidden sin follows you. Old cruelty.”

  “Aunt Matilda as gypsy queen,” Evan whispered into my ear. “Ever seen her?”

  I shook my head no.

  “Very theatrical. I saw her go into it once when I was visiting years ago. A state tax man was giving her heck and she started telling him about this little perversion he had with his toy poodle. The guy turned and ran.”

  I squirmed. The description was uncomfortably close to what Jane had done to her pediatrician. My niece watched the conflict with wide eyes.

  “And you, young man.” Ignoring Wiccam, she turned to the third man, Detective Jack Madison. “You stand at the apex of light and dark. Death stands square in your path and at your right hand. You have much to lose or gain from your decisions today. You also have an unfortunate tendency to slovenliness and overeating, like a bovine at pasture, grazing without thought. If you are not careful, you will grow fat like your uncle. I foresee a lifelong struggle for you.”

  Her eyes closed a moment before her lids popped open. She speared the detective with her eyes and sniffed at the air around him. “I suggest you get that nagging issue of blood looked at. It isn’t cancer yet, but it will surely develop into that dread disease should you continue to procrastinate.” Madison took two quick steps toward the door, his face paling, then suffusing with what almost looked like relief.

  “As for you,” Aunt Matilda finally faced Wiccam. Her eyes widened and she retreated a pace, one hand on the Tarot cards scattered on the table. A subtle change came over her, a drawing in, a gathering of forces. She gripped one of the crucifixes that dangled around her neck. “You are earth and fire flowing together,” she said, using the tone she employed only for readings, “darkness and burning. One who has chosen the shadow path, the path of darkness. Your life and choices are utterly divorced from reality.”

  The words were familiar but for an instant I couldn’t place them. Then I remembered. Jane’s reading. The Hagall Spread. A chill crawled down my spine on little insect feet. To Aunt Matilda’s side, Jane wavered on her feet. Her eyes closed slightly, face going slack.

  “You bound the Ace of Swords with lies and earthly chains. You seek the King of Cups to do him harm, but you seek in vain. The Knights battle against you and the Queen of Cups binds you.”

  “What does all that nutty stuff mean?” Evan whispered in my ear.

  I shook my head. I had no idea. “Gibberish.” But I didn’t really believe that. It almost made sense at the edges of my mind. It meant something to Aunt Matilda. And I was afraid it meant something to Jane, too.

  Without looking, Aunt Matilda reached out and picked up a single card. “This is for you.” She held the card out to Wiccam. It was Death on its white horse. “You do battle with the light. Blood will spill. Death will come with darkness.”

  “That’s enough,” I said, shaking the insect of fear off my shoulders. I wasn’t sure why I was so disturbed, but I wanted to put this farce to bed fast. “I don’t know what you guys want, but you’re scaring my niece.” Jane’s eyes opened at that and she blinked slowly. “Say your piece and get out,” I said.

  Wiccam turned to me and bared his teeth in a smile. He knew me. Instantly. He knew my gift, the holes in it, the wall around it. He came toward me fast. I thought for a moment he might hit me. Instead he strode on out the door and down the steps. After a moment, Boone and Jack Madison followed. And they were gone.

  Aunt Matilda fell into a chair at the table, her head in her hands. “Oh, merciful heaven. What awful souls.” She wrenched in a deep breath and sat straight, still the melodramatic woman I remembered from my youth. She began gathering her scattered cards.

  Jane moved around the table until she could see both Aunt Matilda and me. “Say something,” she demanded. Aunt Matilda pressed her lips together in a tight line. “Say it. He has a wall, like Aunt Tyler’s,” Jane said. “He’s creepy and mean.” Jane looked at me. “He wants to kill you. He wants to do bad things to you and he wants to make a baby with you. And he can’t decide which he wants more.”

  The stool beneath my backside was too hard, too circular, too flat. Whoever designed seats like this either had no concept of human anatomy or had a wide sadistic streak. Ignoring my discomfort, I switched on three tumblers, each polishing bloodstone beads for the Valentine’s Day sale, and secured an unfinished, irregular-shaped bead in the drill press. Checking the position of the bit, I slowly rotated the wheel, lowering the wet drill. Even through the ear protectors, the sound of drill and tumblers created a cacophony of high-pitched, grinding, whining noise. Damp bloodstone dust blew into the air, bouncing off my eye protectors and respirator. The drill punched through the stone, and I pulled the particle-mask/air-filter off my sweaty face.

  The odor of bloodstone was bitter and sharp, a distinctive scent. I often thought I could tell what stone was being drilled just by the smell, though that was surely fancy. A new shaped bead in place, I rubbed my face and reapplied the mask and ear protectors, whirling the wheel down to bore a new hole. It was mindless, numbing, backbreaking work.

  For comfort’s sake, I could have stood while drilling, or pulled in a chair from the front of the shop, or even sat on a pillow. But I was feeling like a failure, a useless, washed-up, has-been. Or better yet—a useless, washed-up, never-quite-was. Yeah, that was me. Never quite was a St. Claire, never quite an athlete, never quite a singer, poet, dancer, skier, artist, never quite a success at anything except cutting and shaping stone. I felt morose, self-pitying. Ill-natured, ill-humored and worthless, that was me. The drill bit punched through. I put on another. Again and again, until I had drilled enough for a half-dozen sixteen-inch necklaces.

  I was sweating profusely, so intent on my work I was unaware of the world around me. When something tapped my shoulder, I jerked, whirled, and almost fell off my stool. Grabbing a mallet, I reared back and almost hit Aunt Matilda.

  “Spit and decay,” I cursed. I slammed down the mallet, turned off the drill press and tumblers, and yanked off my masks and ear protectors. “I could have killed you!” I shouted.

  Aunt Matilda lifted her chin in a gesture that clearly said, You could have tried.

  “What?” I demanded, hearing the sullen tone in my voice.

  “You are not a failure.” Her eyes spit sparks. “You are exceptional.”

  “What?” I threw the masks to the worktable.

  “If you are going to project so loudly that every receiver for miles can hear, then at least project the truth.”

  “Which is?”

  “You were ripped from the financial and emotional protection of the St. Claire environment when you could barely toddle. You were raised by a frightened, weak-minded woman who would rather run than face down her own demons. When she died, you were left to a coldhearted, sick man who barely allowed you space to grow up in and gave you no emotional support whatsoever, and who then passed away without seeing to your education or your future. And, you survived the transition from child to gifted without losing your mind.”

  “Well, whoop-de-doo. So I had a lousy childhood. This is supposed to make me feel better?” I slid from the stool to the floor and planted my feet.

  “Yes. You are now a resourceful, capable young woman, a talented, though blocked, St. Claire who taught herself—by the seat of her pants—how to utilize her gifts. You are a designer of one-of-a-kind jewelry, with a successful line, a flourishing online catalogue and a financially prosperous business. You not only survived what would have stunted or destroyed most young girls, you feasted on it. You forced that barren life to give you what you wanted.” Tears gathered in her eyes with the force of her
pronouncements. “You grew up, made friends who will stick beside you unto death, made a place for yourself, and learned how to love.” Faltering, the sparks of her anger died, drowned in her falling tears. She brushed them away and touched my cheek with a gentle finger, the flesh warm and wet against my cold skin. “I am proud of you. Deeply and intensely proud.”

  I stared at her, this queen in a denim skirt and chambray tank top, and didn’t know what to do. Tears prickled my own lids. I backed away a step, my progress halted by the work-table against my spine.

  Aunt Matilda smiled sadly and said, “You are not perfect. You have a terrible temper, a deep and abiding fear of being abandoned, and a tendency to put yourself down. You are poor at math because it bores you, and you never bothered to learn how to play the guitar your brother gave you before he left you to the callous care of that horrid Lowe man. But you know how to love.”

  My tears fell, making twin tracks through the bloodstone dust.

  Aunt Matilda wiped her face and took my hand, tucked it into the soft flesh of her elbow. Pulled me through the workshop to the small restroom, an unheated nook with a toilet and sink. She pushed me toward the sink. “Wash up. You look like a miner, or the Hulk after someone let all the air out of his bulk.”

  Meekly I turned on the hot water, let it warm, and washed bloodstone dust off my face, arms, hands and neck. Wet bloodstone dust had coated my exposed flesh, leaving pale ovals at eyes and nose, and turned me into a greenish-reddish comic-book monster. It made my skin stiff. I really needed a shower, but that would have to wait.

  Cleaner, I left the bathroom and spotted Aunt Matilda standing at my workbench. Her worn, well-thumbed deck of Minchiate Tarot was placed in the dead center of the table. To its left was her Bible, a big, leather-bound book with her name embossed in gold. To the right was my mother’s tin box, open, as if to display all my mother’s ceremonial possessions. Mama’s crucifix was draped on top.

  Head lowered, Aunt Matilda stared at the items, her fingers clasped in front of her, her arms bare to the chill of the room. I had never seen Aunt Matilda wear a coat, sweater, or sleeves of any kind. In the Low Country, that was reasonable. Here in the mountains, in the cold of winter, it looked odd to see her standing thus, in the chill of the room.

  Sensing my thoughts, she said, “I do not expect you to understand who I am or who the St. Claires are.” Her head lifted. Through the little window above my workbench table, she stared at the brick wall of the building beyond. “Some of it you won’t listen to. Some of it might frighten you. You aren’t ready yet. But I can tell you that you are a wonderful, good person. That if Davie has a chance in the world of being found alive, it will be because of you.” She turned sad eyes to me a moment before she gathered up the cards, the box and Bible, holding them close to her chest.

  I wondered what she had intended to do with them. I had a feeling that, whatever her plan, she had changed it unexpectedly. Thoughtfully, she moved from the bench to the doorway. Like a pull toy being drawn by the string of her will, I followed her through the shop where Jubal and Noe were both helping customers. Neither looked up.

  We started up the steps to the loft. “I can’t sense Davie,” she said finally. “I have tried to scan for him numerous times since he was taken and I get nothing. I can remember only a few times that has happened with St. Claire family members, and always when they are deeply stressed. But you, with your damaged gift and untrained mind, with your fears and trembling, you can reach him. And that is because of your love for him and his for you. I will trust this love to bring him home. And I will help as I can.”

  A sense of relief washed through me as she intended it to, born manipulator that she was. But I couldn’t make myself add, “the old battle-ax,” even if only in my thoughts. Something had changed between us. I didn’t want to damage our newfound accord, or whatever it was.

  “Now. As to Jane.” Her voice was hollow in the echoes of the stairwell, our feet shushing beneath us. Aunt Matilda glanced at me, lips tightening for battle. “I am willing and eager to train Jane to use and honor her gift. But I can train her only one way—the only way I know—with the Tarot as a focus and fulcrum. Not to tie her to the devil, as your mother taught you, but to open her mind, to give her young brain visuals for concepts and theories for which we have no words. If this is anathema to you, I will pack and go.”

  I sighed and rubbed my forehead where a headache was starting. It hammered and sang at the fringes of my brain. “I have one question.” The words drilled into me as I spoke them, piercing the edges of my mind. I stopped at the top of the steps, one hand on the knob, my eyes on the dirty butterfly-strip bandages. There was bloodstone dust ground into the edges and into my cuticles. The dust was reddish, like old blood. Old wounds. “Why didn’t anyone come when I came into my gift? You knew about Jane when her time came. You had to have known about me.”

  Aunt Matilda didn’t touch me. I was grateful for that. She shifted, the sound bright in the echoing hall. “Your uncle was dying. You had met my husband, William.”

  I remembered a wizened older man who sat on the front porch, whittling, carving small animals out of swamp oak, cherry and hickory. He was a quiet man, engrossed in the wood. I had a lop-eared bunny somewhere carved by him and gifted to me. He had smiled when he placed it in my palm. The Goth bunny came to mind, the one I had used to test Jane. Had I taken the image from the carving? I nodded. “I remember.”

  “Will was diagnosed with cancer. He lived with the disease for years, taking different types of chemotherapy, trying all sorts of treatments. He ate only green, raw food, organically grown. He saw Cherokee healers and shamans and European herbalists and practitioners of Eastern medicine. He drank teas and took supplements. He lived for almost ten years. But when you were thirteen, he began to decline. He was dying when you came into your gift. And I sat by his side and held his hand. Loving him to the very end. And by that, by that dedication, that love we shared, so utter and complete, I failed you.”

  Suddenly I knew where the lop-eared bunny was. I could see it in Mama’s trunk, in the corner, on its side in the dark. Alone. Once again, tears fell down my face, burning where they touched my weather-chapped skin. “Teach her. I don’t know enough to help her and I have a feeling that Jane is a lot stronger than I would ever have been.”

  I opened the door to my loft. The television was on, music from The Little Mermaid filling the open space. Across from the door, Jane kicked and hit an imaginary opponent. It reminded me of me, kicking at things that weren’t there. I took a deep breath. “Thank you for coming, Aunt Matilda. I didn’t know what to do for her.” I looked at my aunt, a short woman, like me, her eyes on a level with mine. And I took my fear in my hands like reins. “And while you’re here, would you teach me, too?”

  Happiness suffused her face, leaving her glowing. Aunt Matilda patted my cheek once and held her hand there. “I would be honored, my dear.”

  12

  Friday, 4:27 p.m.

  I knotted six Valentine’s Day necklaces in record time, the focal stone hearts for each shaped from our dwindling supply of the most vibrant bloodstone. The beads were natural ovals from less colorful rough, silver or gold roundels crafted by Jubal, and glass beads picked out by Noe to complement her part of the design. We would need close to seventy-five necklaces, if this year’s demand matched last year’s, and an equal number of earring sets and bracelets—Noe’s specialty. This year she was crocheting some of the bracelets, adding lots of little venetian glass beads and seed beads, and duplicating the look for the dangly earrings that she knotted into molded hearts. Very art deco.

  After I scrubbed the filth off my hands and peeled off the dirty butterfly-strips, I showered and changed. The flesh was knit beneath so I smeared on a bit of antibiotic ointment and applied a Band-Aid. Downstairs, I helped with the final rush of Friday-afternoon shoppers, making myself available to help close up shop. Business was good, even with the unpredictable weather. I sold three ch
arm bracelets to a Knoxville businessman on his way home from a convention in Atlanta, wrapped them for him and then convinced him to look at a tribal-art piece Noe and Jubal had created. He took that for his wife, and mentioned an interest in a “black stone” necklace for his anniversary. I showed him a mixture of snowflake obsidian and black onyx in extra large nugget-shaped beads, designing on the spot a fine, removable pendant I would cut from the best snowflake. He was charmed—and a lot poorer when he left the shop than upon entering.

  When he walked out the door, I spotted Gail Speeler sitting in my favorite wing chair. Her face was drawn and pale, dark circles beneath her eyes, her hair piled up in a smooth chignon, the kind my curly tresses typically straggled out of in an ugly tangle. Jubal rolled his eyes over the shoulder of a client to let me know he had spotted her and couldn’t get to her first.

  Gail stood the moment I was free. It was clear she was waiting for me. Goody, goody gumdrops. Is this my lucky day or what?

  She was wearing a business suit with a deep V-neck and a necklace, one of last year’s lapis-and-silver-bead designs that Jubal, Noe and I had worked on together as a special creation for a local politician. The beads were made of glass, heated and embedded with delicate gold droplets, the denim lapis cab carved into a tulip and polished to a luster. The lapis pendant was in a setting of gold leaves and a delicate stem, one Jubal had taken great pride in.

  The necklace marked Gail as having dated Zeddy Anderson, a county councilman. Zeddy had been married for over twenty years and still was. Zeddy had been at the council meeting where the tree huggers had booed Hornsburn. Gail Speeler really got around. All this went through my mind in a flash as she approached.