Once Upon Forever

by Becky Lee Weyrich

  “Suit yourself, but it’d do almighty wonders for that head cold of yours.”

  “I’d better not mix that with my medicine, ma’am.”

  Cluney watched as her hostess poured a generous portion of white lightning into the dipper, then took a deep, long sip.

  “Ah-h-h!” Redbird sighed, eyes closed, head tilted back in satisfaction. “Wooter outdone hisself on this here batch.”

  Shadows had begun to cloak one side of the mountain. It was growing late. Cluney could feel herself getting more fidgety by the minute. But she knew there was no rushing Miss Redbird. The woman would say what she had to say, all in her own good time.

  Suddenly, Redbird set down her gourd and turned her full attention back to her guest. Without preamble, she said, “You don’t remember nothing back from your early years growing up, do you, child?”

  Startled by the woman’s abrupt question, Cluney shook her head and leaned closer. “Not a thing, ma’am.”

  “Well, that ain’t surprising. You see, the secret I been waiting to tell you all this while is that you wasn’t reared here like Rachel always claimed.” Redbird paused dramatically, allowing her statement time to soak in.

  Cluney realized she was trembling. She fought to find words, but could barely get them out. “Then where?”

  Redbird scratched her thatch of white hair with one long nail and shook her head. “Can’t say as I can answer that question, ’cause you never said yourself. The night you showed up on the mountain, you was scared out of your wits. Then you collapsed right there on the doorstep and was out of your head for nigh onto a fortnight. When you finally did come around, you couldn’t tell us your name or where you come from or who your folks was or nothing. It was like you dropped out of nowhere—maybe fell right down out of the sky.”

  “There was nothing to give anyone a clue as to who I might be?”

  Redbird’s eyes focused on the dainty necklace Cluney always wore. “You had that there polished bit of moonstone ’round your neck, but nothing else out of the ordinary.”

  Cluney’s hand went to the thin, silver chain at her throat. She touched the small, round, pearly blue stone and it warmed against her fingertips.

  “I brought this with me?” she whispered. “I never knew.”

  “There was a lot you never knew and maybe never will know. You knew you were scared, though. You was just a-babblin’ on and on about someone after you—gonna get you.”

  “Who?” All Cluney remembered was waking up with a man and a woman staring down at her—two total strangers with kindly faces. The next she recalled, they were explaining to her gently that she’d had a bad fall and burned her arm when she dropped a lantern.

  “Who was after me, Miss Redbird?”

  The woman shook her head. “You never could tell us that. As I said, you never told us nothing ’cause that was exactly what you knew. Whoever or whatever frighted you, scared the wits clean out of your head. Oh, you was a smart girl, no doubting that. You learned real fast, then got that scholarship to college and all. But as for recalling what happened before you came here, it was like you just locked it up somewhere in your mind ’cause it was too fearsome to be allowed to wander about in your thoughts. After a time, you claimed that whatever fragments you did recall was no more than pieces of a nightmare from falling and banging your head.”

  “Hysterical amnesia,” Cluney said under her breath. The very thought chilled her through. People who had committed terrible crimes or been victims of heinous acts often reacted in this manner. What in her past was so horrible that all these years later she still couldn’t face it?

  “But you didn’t fall down no stairs,” Redbird went on to explain. “Least not after you come up to the Summerland cabin that night of the full moon. Rachel and Lonnie just figured that was as good a way as any to explain things to you, and they wanted you to stay with them real bad. They’d lost their only son in a mine cave-in, you see.”

  “Yes. They told me all about my older brother,” she said wistfully. “It always made me feel sad that I couldn’t remember him.”

  “You never knowed Horace Summerland, is why you can’t remember him. He died three years ’fore you showed up here.”

  “There was a full moon that night I came?” Cluney asked, her head spinning.

  “Yep, and the brightest moonbow you ever seen. It was a beaut!”

  “Wooter says there’ll be a moonbow tonight,” Cluney said, her thoughts drifting.

  “That Wooter!” Redbird gave a snort—half amusement, half disgust. “He claims he knows ever’thing. So how come he don’t know when I should plan my wake for? Tell me that!”

  “Will there be a moonbow tonight, Miss Redbird?” Cluney ventured.

  “Of course! But Wooter don’t know that for sure. Only I do. Him, he’s just guessing.”

  “Do you think the bride of the falls will show herself?”

  Many people over the years had claimed to have seen a young woman dressed all in white at the top of Cumberland Falls in the mysterious glow of the moonbow. Cluney herself had never witnessed this phenomenon, but she knew plenty of folks who said they’d seen the bride.

  Instead of answering her young friend’s question outright, Redbird asked another. “Are you fixing to go to the falls tonight, child?”

  “I thought I might,” Cluney answered. “One last time before I leave.”

  “Then mayhap you’ll see her.”

  “Have you ever seen her, ma’am?”

  Redbird nodded and took another sip of Wooter’s ’shine. “Many’s the time back in the olden days,” she answered. “She’s a right sad woman. Lovely as a angel, but with grieving in her eyes and tears on her pale cheeks. I’ve heard her wail, too, calling out to him that she’s lost. It’d just break your poor heart to hear her. Loved that man, she did. Loved him something powerful!”

  “Wooter claims that wailing isn’t the bride’s, that it’s just an owl hooting,” Cluney said.

  “Wooter Crenshaw don’t know diddley squat!”

  Cluney looked down at her lap to hide her smile. Wooter and Redbird were best friends and worst adversaries. Both claimed to know everything about the mountains and the people who’d inhabited these parts—past and present—and each claimed that the other knew less than nothing. They had practiced this mountain-style one-upsmanship for decades. Everyone else tried never to side with either of these ancient souls for fear of incurring the wrath of the other. Cluney carefully sidestepped Red-bird’s comment.

  “Wooter warned me not to go to the falls tonight.” She gave Redbird a sidelong glance. “Why would he do that?”

  Miss Redbird sniffed indignantly. “’Cause he’s a old fool!” she snapped. Then her craggy face settled into gentler lines and her voice softened. “He just don’t understand, is all, honey. ’Twere it up to Wooter, he’d never let the sun go down nor the moon come up. He don’t like to see time slipping away. He mourns them that’s gone and wants to hold his dear ones close forevermore. Just look how he treats them two ’coons.” She leaned close as if she meant to impart another secret to her guest and whispered. “Take it from one who knows, they ain’t his ma and pa!”

  “Really?” Cluney gasped to keep herself from laughing.

  “Don’t tell Wooter I told you. He’d be mighty upset. He knows, of course, but he’s got hisself convinced otherwise. That’s just my point, though. Wooter don’t want nothing to change—not ever. But there comes a time when all things must change, and we ain’t got no right to try and stop them from it.”

  A male cardinal flitted through the woods, perched on the porch railing, and cocked his head at Cluney. For a moment, she was distracted by the bright bird’s intent gaze. Then she realized that Miss Redbird had yet to answer her question about Wooter’s warning.

  “I don’t understand what all this has to do with my going to the falls tonight.”

  The mountain woman scattered a handful of sunflow
er seeds, then sighed wearily. “I was working up to that, honey. Me and Wooter don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things, but we both know that if you go to the falls tonight something’s gonna happen. Something that’ll change things around here from now on. I’ve had this abiding feeling all day that there’s a end coming, and a new starting-over about to happen.”

  Cluney stared at the woman whose eyes now glistened with unshed tears. She never thought to question this premonition. Everyone on the mountain knew that Miss Redbird had been born with a caul and had second sight.

  “Well, of course, Miss Redbird. I’m leaving for California tomorrow. That would explain your feeling of an ending and a new beginning.”

  Redbird shook her head. “Nope!” she said firmly. “You won’t never see Californy, child.”

  Cluney felt a tremor run through her. What was Miss Redbird saying—that she’d be killed in a wreck on her way?

  As if sensing the younger woman’s distress, Redbird added, “You won’t never get no farther west than the next mountain over. Still, you’ll be taking a trip, mark my words. A right long trip, at that.”

  “But how can I go anywhere if I never leave here?”

  “There’s ways,” Redbird answered cryptically. “As you come here, so you’ll depart.”

  Cluney half rose from her chair, so startled was she by what the woman implied. “Do you mean I’m going back where I came from? But how can that be when I don’t know where I was before I came here? And what if I do go back and they are still looking for me?”

  Suddenly, Cluney was shaking with fright. She had no idea who they were, but even though she remembered nothing of her past, she sensed how dreadful that time had been. She had no desire to return to that netherworld from which she had escaped ten years ago.

  Miss Redbird rose abruptly. She reached down and took Cluney’s trembling hands in hers. “It’s time you was going now, child. There’s a need for you.”

  “A need?” Cluney mumbled, so unnerved suddenly that she could barely think straight.

  “Yes, honey. He needs you, and there’s not much time.”

  “Who?” Cluney begged. “Who needs me?”

  “That’s for me to know and you to find out, child. I’ve told you all that’s fit to tell. The rest is up to you. I reckon you better be on your way now.”

  For some strange reason beyond Cluney’s comprehension, Miss Redbird’s words almost made sense to her. She knew she had to go, although her destination remained a mystery. And she knew that he would be waiting there for her, although she had no idea who he was or why he needed her.

  “How do I find him?” Cluney asked as she was getting into her van.

  “Just go back the way you came,” Redbird called from her rocker. “He’ll be waiting for you there.”

  Cluney’s mind was spinning, her heart racing. For years she had yearned to find out Redbird’s secret. Now that she knew it, she was more confused than ever. Thoroughly shaken and totally distracted, she choked down the van three times before she managed to get it started. When it finally coughed to life, she leaned out of the window and called, “I’ll see you soon, then, Miss Redbird.”

  “’Tain’t likely,” the old woman said under her breath. “’Tain’t likely a-tall, Larissa.”

  Bouncing over rocks and in and out of potholes, Cluney charged down the mountain at a much faster speed than was safe, but her mind was not on her driving. Her big purse flew off the seat, scattering its contents all over, but she never slowed down. She was bursting to talk to someone about the things Miss Redbird had told her.

  “Thank God for B.J.,” she mumbled as she turned onto the highway.

  Once she reached the restaurant’s parking lot, she realized the things from her purse had all spilled out.

  “What a mess!” she grumbled.

  Digging under the seat, she tried to retrieve all the junk that had rolled in all directions—lipsticks, tissues, wallet, plastic pill bottles, a package of condoms, fingernail files, shoelaces, a can of Mace, earrings, chewing gum, and an assortment of toiletries from a motel bathroom—anything she might possibly need during the course of a day at school. Finally, she was satisfied that she had recovered everything. She stuffed it all back into the scarred leather shoulder bag and climbed out of the van.

  A short time later, she was waiting at one of the tables in the pizza place when B.J. came through the door, right on time.

  “Over here!” Cluney called.

  “Hey, girl, the thought of traveling must make you hungry. I figured I’d be waiting a half hour as usual before you showed up.”

  Cluney waved her friend into the booth impatiently. She was in no mood for idle chitchat.

  “What’s happened?” B.J. asked.

  It didn’t take second sight to know that something extraordinary had transformed Claire de Lune Summerland since the two women had parted outside the college library several hours before. She looked pale, weary, older, in fact.

  “Don’t tell me the van broke down on you.”

  Cluney shook her head. “No, no! Nothing that commonplace. I went to see Miss Redbird.”

  “And she made you eat bats!” B.J. couldn’t help cracking jokes when she got nervous. And she was certainly picking up jittery vibes from across the table.

  “I wish she had,” Cluney said. “They’d have been easier to swallow.”

  Quickly, Cluney filled B.J. in on Miss Redbird’s tale of her uncertain origins.

  “So, nobody around here knows where you were born, where you came from, or who you really are?” B.J. rubbed her bare arms. “Gad, I’m all goosebumps, girl! Are you sure she was telling you the truth?”

  A pimply faced college student in a greasy paper hat came by and interrupted to take their order. Once he ambled off, Cluney said, “Miss Redbird would have no reason to make up such a tale. And it all fits, B.J. The fact that I can’t remember anything before my supposed fall and those nightmares I’ve had all these years about trying to run away from something or someone.”

  “Well, did she tell you who’s after you?”

  Cluney took a deep breath, then shook her head. “No, that’s the worst part. Miss Redbird claims she doesn’t know. I think she knows more than she was willing to tell me.” She reached across the table and gripped B.J.’s smooth, dark arm, drawing her closer for more privacy in the crowded room. “But, get this! Redbird says I’m about to go back where I came from.”

  “You mean California?” B.J. whispered back. “You started out there as a kid?”

  “No. Miss Redbird said I’ll never see California.”

  “That old woman’s crazy as a tick!” B.J. snapped. “Not that I wouldn’t like to see you stay here, but what right’s she got scaring you so, trying to make you call off your trip?”

  Cluney swallowed hard, struggling with a lump that had suddenly formed in her throat. For some unfathomable reason, whenever she thought about Miss Redbird’s statement that he needed her, she had to fight hysterics. She’d been in love not so long ago. She’d been engaged to be married, in fact, until the accident at sea one dark night when Lieutenant Jeff Layton’s jet flew into the Mediterranean instead of onto the flight deck of the carrier. Oh, yes, Cluney knew what love and the loss of love felt like. And this man who was waiting for her—whoever he was—surely, was someone she had loved long ago. Perhaps someone she still loved.

  She felt B.J. shaking her arm. “Hey, snap out of it, Cluney! What’s come over you? You were a million miles away just now.”

  “Not a million.” Cluney tried to smile, but failed. “Only a few thousand. I was thinking about Jeff and the crash.”

  “Don’t tell me that old witch-woman brought that up, too!”

  Cluney shook her head and dabbed at her damp eyes with her napkin. “No.” She sighed. “Only by association. You see, Miss Redbird said that I have to go back because there’s someone waiting for me. A man who needs me. She also said that tim
e is running out.”

  “What the hell’d she mean by that?”

  With a shrug, Cluney admitted, “Beats me! All I know is, I have to go.”

  “Where exactly are you going, if not to California?”

  A sheepish look stole over Cluney’s face. “I’m not sure. To be perfectly honest, I haven’t a notion. I do know, though, that I have to go to the falls tonight. Miss Redbird says there’ll definitely be a moonbow.”

  “So?” B.J. said, uncomprehending.

  Again Cluney shrugged. “I don’t know, B.J.,” she admitted. “Maybe I’ll see some sign or something in the moonbow that will give me a clue to where I’m supposed to go. Miss Redbird didn’t explain.”

  “Lord a-mercy!” B.J. swore. “I think you two were up there this afternoon sipping on Wooter’s ’shine.” She leaned across the table. “Here, let me sniff your breath, girl.”

  “Cut it out, B.J. You know I don’t drink that rotgut. I’m completely serious about every word I’ve said. And I’m worried, too. Real worried!”

  Their waiter set their large, deluxe pizza between them and for a time the pair fell silent as they dug into the steaming hot mass of cheese, tomato sauce, olives, sausage, and pepperoni.

  The metal platter was half empty before B.J. broke the munchy silence. “I think we need to figure out where you came from and what happened to you before you go running off half-cocked. Can’t you remember anything from back then?”

  Cluney continued chewing, but now with a thoughtful expression on her face. Finally, she said, “I have a few jumbled-up memories, but I’m pretty sure they come from that nightmare I keep having, not from anything that actually happened to me.”

  “Well, tell me,” B.J. insisted.

  Cluney stared into the pizza plate as if it were a crystal ball and she were seeing the scenes there. “I remember a fire and someone screaming for help.”

  “Someone? Who?” B.J. prompted.

  Cluney frowned and shook her head. “It’s not a who? It’s animals—horses maybe. Can horses scream?”

  “Beats me! What else?”

  “People running. Men! Running after me!” She looked up suddenly, her face stricken. “They’re trying to kill me, B.J.”