The Tramp (The Bound Chronicles #1)

by Sarah Wathen

“Don’t be so superstitious. It was like ancient fireworks.”

  “Uh-huh…”

  John sent her a sly look over his beer. “So, the feasting lasted from early in the morning until late at night, long after the newlyweds retired for the evening to their wedding tent, to consummate the union.” John lifted his eyebrows once or twice suggestively. “Champion’s long, uncut hair hung around his chiseled abdomen.” Candy snorted and almost blew her drink out through her nose. “You like that? But before our hero could make his move, thunk! He was taken out cold, with a heavy wooden club from behind.”

  “Oh, no. Was he killed?”

  “No, not dead, just knocked out. A villain emerged from the shadows behind Beloved, shoved a gag in her mouth, and pulled a bag over her head. Another burglar grabbed her feet, and the group of thieves silently made away with our poor princess. Not that they needed to be too quiet, remember the raucous party going on all around?”

  “Of course. No one would hear.” Candy bit her knuckle. “But who would do such a thing? Everybody loved Champion and Beloved.”

  “Yes, and a warring tribe that hadn’t been invited to the party knew that. They didn’t love Beloved and they sure as hell didn’t love Champion.”

  “Why?”

  “Champion was a fierce warrior.”

  “Right. And, Beloved?”

  “Who can really love someone so beautiful—so perfect—yet, so beyond reach?”

  “But did they hate her for that? Seems unfair.” The beer had numbed the edges, but she still felt the injustice of the ages. Maybe more so because of the beer.

  John dismissed the question with a mock frown: she wasn’t derailing his story. “They were a band of fierce, raiding nomads, and they wore terrifying animal masks to frighten their prey when they attacked. They named themselves things like Pouncing Cougar…”

  “Only the aging widows looking for new young husbands, though, right?” Candy couldn’t help interjecting the obvious.

  “Okay, Pouncing Leopard, then. Slashing Bear, Stinging Viper—stuff like that. We’ll just call them the Animals, because their tribe was a lawless pack, with no real leader. They had been waiting for the right weapon to use against Beloved’s and Champion’s peaceful tribes. Because, though the Animals were cruel and fierce, they were a smaller band.”

  “The peaceful tribes put all their eggs in one basket. Stupid,” said Candy, taking a swig.

  “Exactly.” John fixed her with one long finger, pointing so close it almost touched her nose. She stretched out her neck and kissed the tip, and John’s face crumpled into confusion and hilarity at once. “Okay. Anyway... don’t worry, the Animals didn’t want to harm Beloved. Not really. They tied her up and hid her away as a hostage. The next morning they made their demands known.”

  “What were their demands?”

  “That’s not important.” John waved those details away, apparently not having polished that part of the story yet in his mind. “You know, Indian stuff—land disputes, territory, hunting zones, trading rights. What is important is that the debates went on and on for weeks, while Beloved was held captive. She was held for so long, in fact, that the lowly slave the Animals had assigned to her began to fall in love.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “His name was Chewing Spider. Or, that’s what the Animals named him when they captured him during a raid years before. He was considered the lowest of the low, and was regularly beaten and ordered to do all of the dirtiest work, like picking up horse manure in the campsite or cleaning carcasses after a hunt or…”

  “Tending to a woman’s womanly needs.”

  “Right. He was ready to escape his horrible life of slavery. And when he found out that the deliberations between all three tribes might finally be coming to a close, with Beloved poised to be returned home…well, he decided it was time to try. With her.”

  “But, Beloved was about to be rescued.”

  “Yeah. She wanted to go back home, not escape with the slave guy, right? So, naturally, when Chewing Spider forced her to leave with him, she started screaming and going crazy. He covered her mouth, trying desperately to silence her before she alerted his torturers.”

  “Torturers?”

  “Of course, torturers. The Animals were cruel, marauding beasts, remember? Anyway, he only meant to silence her. He didn’t mean to push so hard, for so long. He was just scared…” John looked down at his hands, affecting desperation.

  “He suffocated her.”

  “He did. When the Animals found out that they lost their bargaining tool, they were furious,” John nodded at Candy’s gasp. “They made quick work of Chewing Spider. They returned Beloved’s body to her people, as a paltry peace offering. She was buried facing the rising sun, to encourage a happier future in the afterlife. Champion refused to ever marry again, and he became a warmonger, taking out his sadness on his rivals with great savagery for the rest of his days. And Chewing Spider? Well, his soul haunts the land, still. He pines for his darling Beloved, tormented by the knowledge that it was his own hand that extinguished her beautiful flame.”

  “Poor Chewing Spider…”

  John sat up straight and stared at her, dumbfounded. “What? What about poor Beloved, or poor Champion?”

  “It’s a sad story all around.” Candy sighed and looked at the sky. Somehow the stars helped her regain normality. That story was so weird, but somehow so familiar. She loved it and hated it at the same time. “That was a love story?”

  “Don’t be so sure. They say that when you hear the wind whistling through the high mountain passes in Shirley County, that’s Chewing Spider crying for Beloved. And when you feel the hair stand up on the back of your neck and you catch your breath in the dark, that’s Chewing Spider trying to take your breath away, just like he did Beloved’s.”

  “Oh—a real ghost story, then,” Candy sighed with relief, the unsettling tale suddenly making sense to her. “Good one. I think I’ll have a hard time turning out the light tonight.”

  John tweaked her nose in an avuncular way, like he was ten years older than she was. “Glad you liked it.”

  The odd spell over their side of the campfire was dispelled like a soap bubble popping against a cashmere sweater, delicate and evanescent no matter how gently handled. Hard to remember the point of blowing soap bubbles once you’re older, but you can call up an image of one like a physical thing in your brain. Something about that seemed important to Candy just then. So fleeting, but there’s always a wet soap mark on your clothes after a soap bubble dies. Like a dream you can’t quite remember, but casts a weird mood over your whole day. A shiver ran up her spine, but she shook it off and smiled. “Loved it. That was one of your best yet.”

  “Thank you.”

  Candy tried to replay all the details of John’s story in her head, figuring she would have to hear it a couple more times before she knew it by heart. She sat next him trying to get her thoughts together, like osmosis was possible between humans, until she realized John was unnaturally quiet. “Are you okay, John?”

  He remained still for a moment, before he looked up at the sky. His eyes focused on clusters of stars, a planet, the moon—just as hers had—before he confessed, “That story actually came from a dream I had last night.”

  “Really? Tell me about it—”

  “Hey, there you are,” Reagan popped around to their side of the fire. “I thought I saw you guys talking all serious over here. We’re doing s’mores, come on.”

  John took her hand and they followed Reagan around the fire. As predicted, the Bennett kids did brave the party for their share of the gooey, melted chocolate desert sandwiches, a bonfire requirement at the Robinsons’s. They trouped out as a group, but Candy noticed one was missing.

  “Where’s Gage?”

  John shrugged. “Sulking upstairs. Grandma thinks he stole one of her china dolls.
”

  “One she made?” Grandma Pearl’s baby dolls were beautiful, every meticulous detail handmade, from the delicate porcelain faces to the crocheted eyelet collars on their dresses. “Whoa, she must be pissed.”

  John nodded; his expression dire. His grandma was known to be strict. Candy wondered if she still kept a paddle and couldn’t help but feel sorry for Gage. Fourteen was a little old for paddling, but she wouldn’t have put it past Grandma Pearl.

  “Did he really steal it? That’s weird,” she lowered her voice. “The Bennett’s are usually so…disciplined.”

  “And weird,” John whispered, pulling her to a seat at the fire opposite his cousins after they got their marshmallow sticks.

  Uncle Pat was strumming some acoustic spirituals on his guitar. After several refrains of “Awesome God,” and “How Great Thou Art,” which everyone knew or at least hummed, he closed with “Amazing Grace.” But, when John’s Aunt Beth started singing just a little too fervently, raising her hands to the sky and closing her eyes in exultation, the rest of the crowd fell silent. By that time, Carol and Zoë had already licked their fingers clean enough to pick up their instruments, and the three launched into “Oh Susanna” again, a tune which Candy knew the girls were attempting to perfect.

  “Just one more, Zoë, and time to get into your jammies,” Aunt Cammy reminded her daughter, just as her husband began picking along on his banjo next to her. “Garrett—when did you bring that out?”

  “I just got it from the car,” he shrugged, and then composed a hopeful question on his face.

  “Okay, two more times.” Cammy relented, knowing how the two brothers, Pat and Garrett, loved to play together. “Don’t make it too long of a jam…until after the girls go to bed, anyway.”

  Grinning widely, Garrett blended into the rhythm with gusto. Even the Bennett kids stayed huddled together by the fire watching the musicians for a while.

  “Hey, John.” The little boy Peter tapped on John’s stomach. “Are you going to stay at our grandma’s tonight?”

  “Oh. I don’t know, buddy.”

  “We’re all sleeping in the bunk bed room. And we have sleeping bags, too,” Peter said, clearly not thrilled to be the only boy bunking together with a bunch of girls. The babies, Joshua and Alex, didn’t count. They would probably sleep with their mothers anyway.

  “Yeah, John. You don’t want to sleep alone after that ghost story, do you?” Candy chimed in. “I’m staying here, too.”

  “Wonder how long Grandma Pearl’s will be overrun with Bennetts,” John said under his breath, watching his Aunt Beth hustle her kids inside to get ready for bed. Secular time was over. Their dad was kicked back by the beer cooler, absorbed in discussion with Candy’s dad, and a discussion with George Vale could last until everyone passed out. “Easy decision. Let me just get a few things.”

  §

  Candy padded through the living room, bleary-eyed. If she was so tired, why couldn’t she just sleep? Maybe staying out late with Sam was catching up to her. She didn’t care.

  “Sleep’s over-rated anyway,” she yawned, plopping down on the cozy sectional. “Ow.” Something hard poked her in the rump as she sat, and she turned to investigate. It was one of the photo albums they had been looking at, sticking out from under a pillow.

  Selkie eyes… Candy opened the book to the page of her mother that Reagan had turned to earlier.

  “Where do we get them?” Candy searched her memory, trying to think of any other family members that had the same dark eyes she shared with her mom. No one she could recall. She scanned the top of the bookshelf, wondering how far back the pictures went. Her grandma had once shown her the faded black and white photographs from her own babyhood, from the 1930s. There weren’t many.

  “Can’t sleep, Miss Candy?”

  “Candy, Candy, Candy.”

  Her Uncle Tommy and his nurse were descending the carpeted stairs, he holding onto her arm with a goofy grin plastered on his kind face. Tommy usually stayed in an assisted living facility, ever since Grandma Catherine had gotten too old to care for him properly. Grandma liked to have him spend the night whenever there was a large family gathering, though.

  “Oh, yeah. You, neither Uncle Tommy, huh?” Tommy didn’t answer, but walked over to look at the photo album Candy held in her lap. He craned his neck to see the picture of her mother.

  “Suzy.” He smiled and began petting her hair in the picture. Candy wondered whether he understood that his sister was dead.

  “Suzy touch my head,” Tommy said and brought his hand to his forehead. He started petting his own hair.

  “She touched your head, Tommy?” his nurse asked, looking at the photo of Candy’s mother. “When you had a headache?”

  Tommy nodded. “Suzy touch my head.” Candy looked at the nurse, her brows knitted together in question.

  “Tommy gets headaches a lot,” she supplied with a shrug.

  Candy sort of remembered that from when she was little and Tommy still lived at home. Sometimes he would cry at night because of it. “Oh yeah...”

  “Suzy touch my head,” Tommy confirmed, then began to wander toward the kitchen.

  “Looks like someone wants a midnight snack,” his nurse said, catching up to him and taking his arm. “You hungry, Tommy?”

  Candy could hear her uncle repeating “Suzy,” his voice echoing as they entered the kitchen. She looked down at her mother’s face. The photograph was beginning to fade. She ran her finger down her face, petting her hair as Tommy had done.

  “Suzy touch my head,” she heard him say from the other room.

  “Weird,” Candy murmured. But there was a thought, nagging at the edge of her consciousness. What was that thing Grandma Catherine said about Candy’s mother?

  “Suzanna was always a little touched, I’m afraid.” “Touched” was Grandma’s euphemism for crazy. Still, what a coincidence.

  “The gift is usually passed down, mother to daughter,” that fortune teller lady said. I wonder if the crazy was passed down, too. If she was crazy.

  After Candy’s mom had thrown herself in the Tenakho River, that was most of the family’s estimation—Suzanna McBride was crazy. That was how everyone explained her mom’s death to Candy when she was little. It always seemed a rather flimsy explanation. Suddenly deciding she wanted to be gone before Uncle Tommy reemerged from the kitchen, Candy snapped the photo album closed and shelved it next to a book that looked much older.

  Hhhmmm…

  She plucked out the older book and flipped it open to find her grandma’s careful scrawl inside the front cover, “McBride, 1900-1930.” Candy tucked it under her arm and glanced around to make sure she was alone, then stashed it in her backpack by the door before heading back upstairs.

  chapter twenty-three

  “Amanda, wait up,” Gracie bleated, then tripped over a tree root. “Shoot! Your flashlight is better than mine.”

  Amanda also already knew the way to the Blue Spring; she scouted the path earlier by herself, before the daylight faded, to make sure the ritual went off without a hitch after midnight. The Witching Hour. Her mom had picked up the group of friends from Gracie’s house that morning and took the girls to the Jameson residence to hang out, while some of the other parents went to the festival. Amanda and her friends had no interest in attending what they called the Hippie Hillbilly Show, and her mom hadn’t minded missing it that year either, for some reason.

  They had planned to each go their separate ways that evening, but then Amanda heard her mom and dad arguing about some shack in the mountains where kids—including Sam Castle—went to smoke pot. After hearing them mention the famous Blue Spring, she knew that shack must be close to Lindsay’s house and quickly cooked up a scheme for a nighttime adventure. She could tell Lindsay’s mom was annoyed to have them over, but they all begged that it was the last Saturday of the sum
mer. Aunt Meghan really couldn’t refuse gracefully after Amanda’s mom had watched the girls all day. The only missing piece was Jessica, who was never allowed to spend the night anywhere but home on Saturdays. She always had to attend the sunrise Catholic mass the next morning. She was welcome to invite friends to her own house, but any guest would also be required to rise and shine early (a mistake Amanda had only made once).

  “You’ll just have to miss out, Jess,” Amanda had taunted her friend, while she begrudgingly helped them compile the clearest pictures of Antonio from Il Vagabondo’s fan page. “I’ll put in a good word to the gods for you.”

  “How much farther is the spring?” Gracie whined.

  “Here’s where the path goes down around the bluff and then the spring’s right over there.” Lindsay shone her flashlight down a steep path through some sparse trees. “Be careful guys, it’s kind of slippery.”

  Amanda peered over the edge of the bluff in the opposite direction and saw the shack, but she decided to keep that knowledge to herself.

  For now…

  She had investigated the musty hideout when she came alone earlier. There wasn’t much inside but a few barely homey touches, like a kerosene lamp, an old loveseat and a folding chair. Really ugly drawings all over the walls. A wooden spool had been made into a table, with an ashtray and some magazines lying on top. It all looked very masculine and sort of dirty.

  Nothing wrong with a dirty boy, though, Mr. Castle.

  “It’s smaller than I imagined it, from the reading Ms. Collins gave us,” Gracie said when they finally reached their watery destination. Amanda knew she was attempting to calm her nerves by making light of their errand. There was nothing small or inconsequential about the Blue Spring.

  Amanda glanced beyond the tallest pines overhead, at the glowing orb dancing in and out of billowy clouds. “Good, the moon is full tonight,” she remarked with satisfaction. “That will make our spells even more powerful, ladies.”

  “Can’t we call them ‘wishes,’ please? It sounds so much less evil.”