More Than Magic (Books of the Kindling)

by Donna June Cooper

  Nick was quiet as they approached a black granite marker etched with stars. Pooka loped up and sat next to the left hand grave, his accustomed place.

  “Hi, Pops,” Grace said softly, then explained. “He had this stone redone for Gram not too long ago. I think he would’ve preferred we just plant a tree on him, wouldn’t you, Pops? But he’s beside her now, where he always wanted to be.”

  She set the basket down and pulled out one of the wreaths Ouida and Jamie had made, laying it carefully beneath the headstone then leaning over to kiss the top.

  “I will find out what’s wrong with the mountain,” she whispered. Then she walked back to where Nick stood.

  He was still gazing upward, giving her at least an illusion of privacy.

  “Pops, this is Nick. A very nice gentleman who’s gotten me rather tipsy and silly tonight. I think you’d approve.”

  Nick cleared his throat. “Celebration time?” He held up the towel-wrapped bottle.

  “Yes.” She matched his tone, and held out her hand for a glass, which he pulled carefully out of his coat pocket.

  Nick unwound the towel from the bottle, and took the foil and wire off the cork. He then took the towel and covered the top of the bottle, slowly pushing the cork out with his thumbs. There was a soft pop and he pulled the towel away with a dramatic flair.

  “You are far too familiar with a champagne bottle, sir,” she said, laughing, holding up her glass.

  “One can never be too familiar with a champagne bottle, ma’am,” he responded, pouring it full.

  Grace waited as he filled his own glass. She cleared her throat and faced the stone, lifting the delicate champagne flute to the stars.

  “Happy birthday, Pops. I miss you, you old reprobate.” She drank her toast and managed not to cry.

  When she looked back, Nick was standing behind her, raising his own glass. Pooka walked up to push his warm muzzle into her hand.

  “You all right?” Nick asked, taking a sip.

  Grace rubbed Pooka’s ears. “Just miss him. You do too, don’t you boy?”

  “From what I’ve seen, he’s left a wonderful legacy.”

  “Yes. That he has.”

  “So.” Nick held up the bottle and she held up her glass. “Where to from here?” He refilled her glass.

  “Granny Lily.”

  “I think I need to hear more about this lady,” Nick said as they walked through the headstones to the oldest part of the cemetery with Pooka trailing behind them. “Given that she invades your dreams.”

  Grace held the full glass carefully as she walked over the uneven ground. “She is my great-great-great-grandmother. Lily Loreena Hickey Woodruff.”

  “Great-great-great?”

  “Yes. And my great-great-great-grandfather, Zachariah Logan Woodruff, lies there beside her.”

  “That’s amazing— Your family history’s all here on these stones, isn’t it?”

  “Most of it. There’re a lot of stories out here.” Grace pointed her flashlight at the two headstones, pitted with age, names and dates nearly obliterated by time, standing there in the grassy soil. “And this is where they start.”

  She set down the basket once more and pulled out another wreath, laying it carefully between the two headstones.

  “Hello Granny Lily,” Grace said. “I wanted you to know that Tink’s in complete remission. Cured. She’ll grow up now and dance and, maybe, have babies.” She leaned closer and whispered. “But I think you already knew that. And you probably also know that I’m about to do something that’s equally irresponsible, so if you have any words of wisdom, please share them now—loudly and with special effects.” She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and drained the glass completely this time. When she walked back, Nick’s eyes glinted silver in the moonlight.

  “So—Granny Lily?” he asked again.

  Grace took a deep breath. “Granny Lily was a healer—an Appalachian Granny Woman. A witch.”

  “Witch?” he paused a moment, digesting the word. “You’re kidding, right?”

  Grace shook her head and started walking away from the cemetery and back into the meadow. “Granny Witches weren’t witches in the sense we think of today. They were the midwives and healers of the community. For folks isolated up in these mountains with no medical care, they were the doctors.”

  Nick followed behind, taking a quick sip of his champagne. “Witch doctor?”

  She grinned at him. “Well, yes. In the sense that a witch doctor is the healer in their community. The shaman. The expert in herbal medicine.”

  “Witch doctor,” he repeated.

  “It’s a tradition that’s passed down in families. In this case from mother to daughter to granddaughter. One woman per generation,” Grace went on. “Some claim it goes back to ancient times.”

  Nick stopped. “So, are you—”

  She faced him. “What?”

  “A witch?”

  Nick watched Grace smile and hold out her glass. “Hang on to this for me.”

  Nick stared at it for a moment, wondering why she didn’t just answer “no”. Then he took it carefully, holding the bottle under his arm.

  Shaking out the blanket, Grace laid it on the grass and knelt down, holding her hands up for her glass and the bottle, which he handed over.

  “Sit,” she said smiling up at him. “Pretend it’s a picnic.”

  As if on cue, Pooka ran to see what they were up to. When he realized no food was involved, he resumed scouting the edges of the meadow.

  Nick paused, wondering if he should make a dash for his SUV and get off this mountain while he still could. But something made him sit.

  “So,” he took a deep breath, as if he was about to set foot on some strange new world he didn’t understand. “Witch?”

  She twisted sideways, managing to sit gracefully on the blanket without spilling a drop of champagne. He was beginning to wonder if she had faked being tipsy.

  “Remember, I said not in the ‘double, double toil and trouble’ kind of way.”

  “So, no cauldrons or eye-of-newt things going on?”

  “Well, actually, the old cauldron you see in the front yard of a lot of Southern homes used to mean there was a Granny Witch in the house, but—”

  “Don’t you have one of those in your garden? Full of flowers?”

  She smiled. “You noticed! Yes. Like that. But no evil spells or hexes.”

  “So you are a witch?”

  “Well, no. I was talking about Granny Lily. I’m—” She stopped, suddenly thoughtful.

  “So, you’re not a witch?”

  “You know, I’m not sure.”

  Nick frowned and drained the rest of his champagne, holding out his glass. She poured it full and sat the bottle on the ground beside the blanket.

  “I would think you would notice something like that,” he said. Of course she’s a witch McKenzie, she’s had you under her spell since she met you.

  “Look, I probably shouldn’t have used that word. People don’t know about the Granny Witch tradition at all, and they automatically think black cats and broomsticks and pointy hats. It was mostly about herbal medicine and midwifery.”

  “Can you deliver a baby?” he asked.

  “Well, certainly.”

  “And you practice herbal medicine.”

  “Yes.”

  “Sounds like you’re qualified. Maybe over qualified.”

  “It’s not that simple. Some of them did divination and water dowsing. It’s a tradition requiring training and practice. The Granny Witch passes down all her lore to her designated successor and teaches her everything she knows.”

  Grace looked off toward the cemetery and he followed her gaze. The headstones were just distant shapes in the moonlight.

  “So your mother— No, that’s your father’s side of the family.”

  “Exactly. And anyway, the tradition stopped with Granny Lily. She quit practicing and didn’t pass it on to any other female relative.”r />
  “But you said she’s been wandering into your dreams. Does she wander anywhere else?” He looked around them at the silvered meadow and the dark trees, but nothing seemed menacing—just the opposite.

  “No. Only in my rather intense dreams. And I’m honestly not sure what she’s trying to tell me.”

  He tried to figure out where she was going with all this. Maybe it was the wine. “Well, it sounds like it might be a good thing for your bottom line. You could get additional business these days just by saying you were the descendant of a shaman or medicine woman. I wouldn’t use the word ‘witch’ though, even if they don’t burn them anymore.”

  “Why did you say that?” she asked in a sharp tone. In the moonlight, her eyes shimmered green and her pale face was almost translucent, surrounded by flyaway tendrils of dark red. She might be a witch, but she was the most captivating witch he had ever seen.

  “What? What did I say?”

  “About burning?”

  “Well, they used to— Didn’t they? I mean—”

  “That was in a completely different culture. Here the Granny Witch was essential in the community. The people of these mountains were nothing like that. Granny Lily was burned accidentally.”

  “She was— What?”

  Grace picked up the bottle and poured her glass full, then downed it without ceremony and was about to pour another.

  “Whoa. Slow down there.” He took the bottle and her glass gently and set them both in the grass. “Now, what’s this about burning? Your granny was burned?”

  Grace let out a long breath. “Great-great-great. And yes. Accidentally. In a fire.”

  “She wasn’t killed though. The headstone said—”

  “No. Badly burned. Disfigured. She lived a long life.”

  “A very long life, if I read the stone right.” He connected some dots and took a guess. “This was the fire that started that feud you were talking about, with your neighbors.”

  “Yes. But it was an accident. A bunch of Taggarts and other people were gathered outside the cabin and things got out of hand. One of the Taggarts threw a rock at my Grandpa Zach. It broke a window, and knocked over an oil lamp onto Granny Lily’s dress.”

  “An oil lamp.”

  “It was terrible. It didn’t destroy the cabin, but she was horribly burned. Everyone thought she wouldn’t make it, but she recovered. Only, after that, she was rarely seen by anyone outside of the family. And when she was, she was covered head to toe, even wearing gloves on the hottest summer days. We have a family portrait with her in it, but only half of her face is showing.”

  “That is tragic. What started the rock throwing?”

  “A misunderstanding.”

  “About?”

  “A patient.”

  “Someone died?”

  “No. Someone lived.”

  “Someone lived?” he repeated.

  “Someone lived who shouldn’t have.” She was looking back toward the cemetery, not seeing him at all.

  “And they were upset about this?”

  “Whooping cough was killing their children. They were desperate. She wasn’t even a full-fledged practitioner yet. She was still young and learning. But the word got out that she had cured a boy—”

  She stopped for a long moment and Nick considered refilling her glass to ensure the words would keep flowing.

  “Wasn’t that what she was supposed to do?” he asked.

  Grace shook her head. “This was different. Normally, all they could do was hand out decoctions and syrups and hope the child was strong enough to keep breathing through the coughing spells. But this boy had gone from suffocation to complete health in a matter of moments, and Lily had fainted dead away.”

  “So they thought it was—”

  “Magic,” she said, so softly he barely heard her.

  That word again. Nick decided to refill his own glass instead.

  “It wasn’t long before everyone with a sick child was at the door demanding that Lily cure them. Panicky, desperate people with their dying children in their arms coming all that way. And Grandpa Zach was trying to keep everyone calm when one of the Taggarts threw a rock.”

  Nick could picture it. People pressing forward, trying to get her to touch their child. Lily cowering inside, maybe watching through the cabin window as her husband held them back. An angry mob that no doubt disappeared right after the accident.

  “After that Granny Lily focused on finding and growing herbs on the mountain and making up a few herbal remedies that Grandpa sold along with the ginseng. Eventually, their son Jeb expanded the business, and so Woodruff Herbs was born. But no Woodruff woman ever wanted to be a Granny Witch again.”

  “Except you,” Nick said.

  “No. Not me. Not in the traditional sense.” Not at all, given the choice.

  Grace leaned back on her hands and gazed up at the sky. Long ago she used to lie here in the meadow trying to imagine that the stars were down and the earth beneath her was up and managing, only for a moment, that dizzying certainty that she was going to fall. She felt that way now.

  “Most people are either completely serious or completely absurd when they drink. I think you do something different. I’m just not sure what it is,” Nick said.

  “I love medicine. I love herbs.” She lowered herself onto the blanket. “I only ever wanted to be a medicine hunter—look for medicinal applications for plants from the rain forests, protect them from further destruction while finding new drugs.”

  “Sounds like a great ambition. Why don’t you?”

  Someone lived.

  Nick’s face appeared above her, blocking the stars. “Are you going to pass out?”

  She laughed and sat back up, nearly bowling him over. “No. Are you?”

  He stared at her for a long time. “I think I already did.”

  “Well, stop looking at me and look up. We’re here because I promised Pops I’d come here now and again to get my head straight.”

  “That will take a lot of visits,” he quipped, then leaned back on his elbows.

  “It’s a good thing you’re a guest and I have to be polite to you,” she said.

  But Nick had gone quiet, his eyes on the stars.

  “Amazing isn’t it?” she said.

  He made a noise of assent.

  “You should see this meadow in early summer when the rest of the stars show up.”

  Nick looked at her. “The rest of the stars?”

  “The ones that fly,” Grace said, smiling at the memory. “Pops caught me coming in one summer evening with a mason jar absolutely full of fireflies. I had punched holes in the top and felt as if I had my own personal lantern. I’m sure the fireflies felt differently about it.”

  “Did your Pops tell you to let them go?”

  “Pops never told us to do anything. Pops told stories. We had to figure out what they meant.”

  Nick grinned. “Okay, what was the story?”

  “Well, Pops said his Papaw—”

  “His grandfather or the one who was part-Cherokee?”

  “No, not his great-grandfather. This isn’t a Cherokee legend. At least, I couldn’t find anything like it anywhere in the literature. They don’t have any stories about—” She made a face at him. “You’re getting ahead of me.”

  Nick lowered his head in apology, motioning for her to continue.

  “So, his Papaw told him that the Mother—Mother Earth—used to sing to her people. And they would bow their heads and listen at her caverns to hear her voice. Her song was so beautiful that her people danced across the hills as her spirit wove its magic through the valleys below them. It was so beautiful that some of the stars came down to perch in her hair—” she pointed to the tall meadow grass and the woods around them, “—and listen. And as they listened, some of them began to flash in time with the music, filling the hills with brilliant light that ebbed and flowed with her song.

  “But then her people turned away from her, and tried to crea
te their own music and their own magic. When they did, the Mother went silent, and the stars were trapped here, waiting for the Mother to sing again. And now and again, in some parts of the woods, the stars sing for the Mother, flashing in unison, hoping her voice will join them once more.”

  For a moment, there was only silence on the meadow.

  “So, when you catch a star in a jar—” Grace mimed the action of putting a top on a jar, “—there is one less voice for the Mother to hear, one less chance that she will sing again for us. And your part is to let the fireflies go—” she mimed taking the top off the jar and shaking it into the air, “—and join in the great song.”

  “Catching stars in a jar,” Nick repeated, understanding her reaction to his comment earlier about the champagne.

  “Well, that’s the tale he told me. But there is more,” she said. “I was…I don’t know, all of seven or eight when he told me that. And being full of righteous certainty about the needs of Mother Earth, I proceeded on my own personal campaign to free every firefly that our guests on the mountain had captured—first preaching and persuading, then moving on to grab and release.”

  She grimaced playfully when he laughed. “This was not funny to the owners of those mason jars, but it did result in recruiting a large army of firefly release specialists when Pops had to repeat his tale to all of my victims and their parents to get me out of trouble. He added that tale to his story-telling repertoire every summer, and, as a result, many fireflies have been freed by our converts.”

  “Saving the world, one firefly at a time,” Nick said. “But is that thing about the flashing in unison true? Do they really do that?”

  “Oh yes! And you must see it some time. My brother Daniel says he saw it once up here, out in the woods, but the most well-known spot is over in the Smokies—Elkmont. There are videos of it, but nothing can capture really seeing it happen in person. Daniel and Jamie insist it is all about math and something called phase synchronization. But I prefer to call it singing to the Mother.”

  She slid back down to watch the moon and stars do their stately promenade across the sky. Everything paled to insignificance beneath this vast sweep. Nothing mattered, and yet nothing was impossible.