Hill Magick

by Julia French

  The taxi came late and by the time she arrived at the car rental office it was pouring again. Silver ribbons of water coursed down the margins of the streets, and even the fast setting of the wiper blades was barely enough to keep the windshield clear. What a day to start the rest of my life, she reflected, turning onto Baleen Street.

  As she drove toward the outskirts of the city the houses began to thin out, and by the time she reached the turnoff for Highway 24 there were only sporadic reminders of civilization in the form of an occasional billboard advertising Yarwich Eats! and the Blue Ribbon Bed and Breakfast. Twelve miles out of Yarwich the road became steep and hilly. Spiky patches of dried burdock and thistles poked defiantly through the mat of frost-slaughtered weeds and made cross-hatch patterns against the barbed wire fence running alongside the highway. Streaks of vivid autumn rust, yellow, and red smeared across the wet limbs of the trees like oil paint. A flock of blackbirds wheeled against the slate-colored sky in perfect unison and then, moving as one creature, plunged suddenly westward and was lost in the woods beyond.

  Rachel opened the window a crack to allow the rich scent of moist bark and earth to creep into the car. She inhaled it like a perfume, absorbing it as a sponge absorbs water. If only Mark would decide to move out of the city! But that was her old way of thinking. Soon it wouldn’t matter what Mark decided. She would be making her own decisions, living her own life the way she wanted it to be.

  Whap-whap-whap-whap-whap…the steering wheel shuddered in her hands, and she fought to regain control. The car veered right and she pulled the wheel over hard but too far, swerving over the white center line, heading for the deep drainage ditch on the left side of the road.

  Rachel leaned on the wheel with all her strength and wrestled the vehicle back over the line. Whap-whap-whapwhapwhapwhap…a chunk of flattened tire fell away and the car jounced. Instinctively Rachel’s foot stamped down hard on the brake. The car skidded out of control, spinning on the rain-slick pavement. The black claws of rain-soaked tree branches whirled past at dizzying speed.

  No, no, no! she heard herself yell. She forced her foot off the brake and began pumping the pedal rapidly. God, God, save me please…

  Summoning her last ounce of strength, she jerked the wheel over hard. Like a living thing, the car responded, bounded over the line and plunged into the drainage ditch.

  Chapter Five

  There was a pleasant bubbling sound like a waterfall in Rachel’s ears. Her head ached and her legs were cold. She opened her eyes and saw greenish-brown, stinking water covering the windshield. The brackish liquid was seeping through the floorboards in a gurgling fountain, and it was already up to her calves. She fumbled for the latch of her safety belt and popped it open. Small bits of slime clung to her hand and she made an involuntary sound of disgust. The car had landed at an angle with the rear end sticking out of the water-filled ditch. The windshield and front windows were covered with ditchwater, but the ones in the back were clear. She had no way to call for help. Her camera case had been flung into the back seat during the accident and was wedged into one of the rear footwells.

  Catching sight of it, she cursed her stupidity. What do you want for your birthday this year, Rachel, a camera or a cell phone? Oh, I’d love a camera, Mark, what on earth would I do with a cell phone? Rachel bit her lip hard. Idiot!

  If she wanted to live, she had three choices. She could open one of the doors and hope the resulting inrush of water wouldn’t pin her against the seat and drown her. She could try to break out one of the side windows, but at the rate the water was rising she would only have a couple of minutes to try to break the tough safety glass. Last, she could try to break out of the rear window, which would remain above the water line longer than the side windows.

  She fumbled the glove compartment open, brackish water licking her hands, but there was nothing she could use to break a window, only an owner’s manual and a tire gauge. Her decision had been made for her-she would have to wait for the car to fill with water, then force open one of the doors.

  Due to the water pressing against the outside of the car she wouldn’t be able to open a door until the water level on the inside of the car equaled the level in the ditch, and because of the car’s steep angle the water would have to touch the inside roof before that could happen. The car would be almost entirely under water, but she would still be able to breathe if she could fit her head in the small space between the rear window and the top of the back seat. It would be a very tight fit.

  The water had crept up over her knees. Rachel swung her legs over the gear shift and grabbed the seat belt strap from the back seat, pulling herself between the front seats and away from the rapidly filling front end. The air was growing stale. The rear window was fogged with her body heat, but Rachel had never been so cold. She found she was shaking uncontrollably, and her head felt as though it would split open. The evil-looking water had entirely covered the front seat, and she stared at it in fascinated horror. What if she couldn’t get one of the doors open after all?

  Behind her came a gritty, crunching sound. Rachel twisted around and saw the head of a hammer withdrawing from the hole it had smashed in the rear window. Through the bleary spider web of cracks, she could see the hammer rise again.

  “Cover your eyes!” she heard somebody shout, and she put an arm over her face. There was another crunch, and another. Something hard landed on her head, and the piece of broken glass was quickly and gently removed.

  Rachel dropped her arm and saw that half the window had given way, littering the space around her with hexagonal bits of safety glass. The other half still clung to the frame but there was enough room for her to scramble through. Something rough and smelly flapped in her face, and she realized that her unknown rescuer had thrown down an old burlap bag to line the hole.

  “Grab my hand,” came the voice, rough and urgent.

  Rachel reached out and took hold of the hand stretching through the window. With her other hand she reached down, tugged the camera case free, and looped the strap around her wrist. She braced her legs against the back of the driver’s seat, pushed off, and almost flew through the opening onto the trunk of the car. Exhausted and shivering, she felt the man’s strong hands help her onto her feet. She looked behind her at the car. It was slanted nose-down at a terrible angle, buried in water over the back wheels. She felt another even smellier cloth tucked around her shoulders, larger than the burlap bag and only slightly softer. She clung to the horse blanket as though it were a life preserver, and looked up into the face of her rescuer.

  The first thing that struck her was his eyes. Almost almond-shaped, they were an intense, penetrating blue. Why, they’re like mountain lakes, she thought. The man’s hair was brown, longish, sun-bleached almost to blond in places. His features were strong and his face deeply tanned, the face of someone who spent most of his waking hours outdoors. A red flannel shirt and faded jeans hung on his lanky frame, and on his feet were a scuffed pair of old cowboy boots. The man’s voice was soft and slow, almost drawling, with a trace of accent that she couldn’t place. Her impression was that of a man who knew himself and his environment thoroughly and was at peace with both.

  “You got a regular goose egg there.” The man indicated her forehead, and she put up a cautious hand. The lump was large and painful, but she wasn’t seeing double and she didn’t feel nauseous or faint.

  “You saved my life.”

  “You were lucky, is all. Where’re you headed?”

  “I’m going to Yarwich to pick up my husband. If I don’t get there in time he’ll be worried.” She restrained herself from adding that Mark was a police officer, knowing that the embellishment would make her lie too obvious.

  The man wasn’t fooled. “You’re right to be cautious. You don’t know who I am and I don’t know who you are. My name’s True Gannett. I live ten miles that way.” He pointed westward a
long the road, and she saw that his hands were long-fingered and graceful, like an artist’s hands. “I got a phone there. You can call for a ride.”

  “Thanks, but I think I’d better call from Maddington.” According to the map she’d studied before she left Yarwich, Maddington was the nearest town. “If you could give me a lift into Maddington I’d be grateful.”

  “You’ll catch a chill. You could use a hot drink first.” The man surveyed her wet clothing. “Come home with me and you can call your husband from there.”

  Hurting, wet, and freezing, she could walk to Maddington by herself or go with this stranger to his house and call for help. There must have been an odd look on her face, for the man stooped down and picked up the hammer he had used to smash the windshield.

  “Here you go,” he told her, not unkindly, and she took it. He had saved her life and had handed her a weapon with which to defend herself from him if she felt the need. I’ve lived with Mark too long, she thought sadly. I’m becoming scared of all men, not just Mark.

  Without further comment the man walked over to the dented Ford pickup parked on the shoulder of the road. He opened the passenger door and motioned for her to get inside, and after a moment Rachel followed him. Inside the truck it was dry and warm. She snuggled into the malodorous horse blanket and looked around her at the worn upholstery, cracked dashboard, and whatever it was that was hanging from the rear view mirror. At first it appeared to be simply a knot of dried plant material and feathers, but as she stared at it she noticed that it had been intricately woven into a pattern alternating squares of feather with squares of plant matter. The checkered effect was pleasing, and she wondered what it meant.

  “Did you make that yourself, Mister Gannett?” She pointed toward the object.

  He nodded. “It keeps me safe.”

  “It’s beautiful. You should sell them. You’d make a lot of money.”

  “I don’t make them to sell.”

  His unresponsiveness to her compliment made her wonder if she’d offended him.

  As they drove, Rachel found herself staring at the overflowing drainage ditches on either side of the road. Death traps, she thought with a shiver.

  “The rain in these hills,” the man confirmed, seeing her interest. “Sometimes there’s too much, sometimes too little. Today we got a whole month’s worth, but last month we got next to nothing.”

  “In Yarwich it all runs into the harbor.”

  “I knew you came from the city.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “You’re carrying a camera and you speak nice.” He chuckled, and Rachel didn’t know what to say. She was even less prepared for his next question. “Are you religious?”

  Why was he asking her this? “A little,” she said, hoping she wasn’t riding with a fanatic, but his next remark dispelled her anxiety.

  “I wanted to warn you. My house isn’t like most other folks’ houses. Don’t be offended by what you see.”

  “I’m not very easily offended.”

  “You might be. I do things for people. That’s why I have some things in my home, but don’t be scared.”

  Rachel’s hand crept toward the handle of the passenger door. “What sorts of things do you do?”

  “I find lost things, heal the sick, and help folks who need help, and I’d be pleased if you’d call me True.”

  She let go of the handle. By sheer chance she had met with a dying breed, one of those fiercely independent hill men who lived by their wits, doing whatever came to hand to survive. Did he have a family to support? Perhaps she should give him something for his trouble.

  The hills were becoming steeper. The truck rounded a sharp bend, and Rachel winced at the motion.

  “How’s your head, Mrs. –?”

  “Jeffries. It’s okay,” she fibbed. “My name is Rachel, by the way.”

  “Rachel, like in the Bible.” He nodded. “That’s a pretty name. There’s a good herb tea for headaches. When we get home I’ll fix you a cup.”

  The man had seen through her pretense of feeling all right, and Rachel wondered if he also knew that she hadn’t been going to pick up her husband. Not that it mattered any more, as she was fairly sure True Gannett wasn’t going to do her any harm. She allowed herself a quick glance at his face. The man did have remarkable eyes.

  “What kind of tea is it?” she asked.

  “Willow bark’s best for a simple headache like yours.”

  “What about other headaches?”

  “For a nervous person I’d mix up some rosemary, scullcap, and sage. Peppermint tea’s good for a headache with a stomach ache. For a headache that makes you want to cut your own head off, feverfew’s the best.”

  “So you’re an herbalist. What else do you do for a living? You said you found lost items. You must be very observant.”

  “I have some good equipment I like to use.”

  “What sort of equipment?”

  “A dowsing rod works well, but sometimes I use the pendulum.”

  “I thought dowsing rods found water.”

  “Mostly,” he acknowledged, warming to his topic, “But you can use one to find buried treasure, lost children and dogs, all kind of things. I like a hazel rod, but other folks might favor willow or peach wood.”

  “When did you start dowsing? When you were a child?”

  “Some folks are born with it, some learn it, some never get it. I was born with it.” There wasn’t a trace of egotism in his voice. He was merely stating a fact.

  “What does it feel like?”

  “I don’t know. Like dowsing.” He shrugged. “Like the other stuff. We’re almost home.” The truck slowed, turned right onto an almost invisible track, and the woods swallowed them whole.

  The farther into the hills he’d driven the thicker the woods got, but along this rutted track the trees seemed especially closely packed. Their limbs twined around one another like protective arms, and the arched branches over their heads had laced their fingertips together to form a narrow tunnel. Rachel loved trees, but these trees didn’t seem welcoming. In fact, they exuded a decidedly unwelcoming aura. Maybe it was the strange angles of the branches or the unusually heavy wrinkles in the bark of the trunks, but she didn’t feel comforted at all.

  “This road’s bumpy,” True warned her, and he was right.

  When Rachel was a child she had spent one summer with an aunt who owned a farm in Ohio. The rutted gravel driveway from the farmhouse to the road was a quarter mile long, and she remembered enjoying the rough, bouncing trips in her aunt’s old car as though they were carnival rides. However, she wasn’t ten years old anymore. “Bumpy” didn’t begin to describe the jerky and halting motion of the truck, and there wasn’t a word in the English language for the trail of narrow mud puddles which True was now following.

  With one hand, Rachel pulled the horse blanket up over the back of her neck to screen it from view of the trees. With the other hand she held onto the edge of her seat to keep her head from bouncing off the roof of the truck. “You must be lonely way out here!” She had to shout to make herself heard over the creaking of the axles.

  “Not much. Folks stop by for medicines and suchlike.” True twisted the steering wheel, and the truck jounced up and down violently.

  “Do your trees ever come alive?”

  “What?”

  “I said, how much further?”

  “Not far.”

  I’ll bet, thought Rachel, shifting her rear end away from the broken spring in the passenger seat. This is going to take forever.

  Chapter Six

  Without warning, the pickup flew into a large open space and jerked to a stop. To the left of the truck was a rowan tree, branches studded with next year’s buds like embryo bullets. In back of this sentinel stood a sprawling one-
story cabin of gray weathered boards. The dented tin cylinder chimney and tarpapered roof spoke not of utter poverty, but of scarcity and just getting by. There were no outside steps, just the ground and then the threshold. True politely held the door open for her and she stepped inside.

  The first thing Rachel saw was a huge wall-to-wall built-in bookcase. It dominated the room, and the shelves were crammed with an amazing collection of found objects: the articulated skeleton of a fully-grown rat, a lump of what appeared to be genuine amber, a brown earthenware dish engraved with some design she didn’t recognize, a blue and white figurine of a milkmaid with a chip off the bottom of her skirt, the shed carapace of a cicada, a Mexican pottery burro, a pierced brass incense burner shaped like a bell, and a God’s Eye made of purple and red yarn wound around crossed Popsicle sticks. There were a hundred other things, but it was too much to take in at once.

  “It’s like a museum!”

  “It’s not very tidy,” True replied, edging a stray clothespin on the rug out of sight with his foot.

  “What is this?” Rachel picked up a piece of flattened metal from one of the shelves. True reached forward, took the coin out of her hand, and tossed it deep into the crush of objects on the uppermost shelf, where it clinked against the pottery burro.

  “Best not to touch that,” was his only explanation.

  The rest of the living room was sparsely furnished, but orderly. A worn brown sofa and an overstuffed chair that had seen better days competed for space on the threadbare oriental carpet. The curtains which covered the picture window were utilitarian brown, and a framed print of a wheat field hung over the red brick fireplace. A coffee table and the tarnished brass lamp balanced upon it completed the picture. There was no TV in the room.