“Did I do the right thing?” I asked the night. “Have I made the right choice?”
Nothing answered. The earth never did. Neither did God, so far as I’d ever heard. But I felt good about it, about the choice I had just made. And maybe that was enough.
A splotched shadow moved across the ground, four legs in dappled shades of moonlight, looking like a headless cat. “Torquil, You coming to give me an answer to my question?”
The cat, her black head invisible in the dark, walked up to me, and leaped across the blanket into my lap, where she curled and relaxed, her breath a soft purr. And that was an answer. Torquil had been wild, a loner, a people hater who’d hung around just for the rats and voles that came to my garden and for access under the front porch when it rained. And then Paka and Occam and the others came, and suddenly she was curious and accepting. She bumped my hand with her head, asking for attention.
Torquil was tamed.
Was that what the people who visited tonight wanted to do to me? Tame me?
Maybe my life as a loner and a hermit and an independent woman was over. Maybe it had been about to be over for a long time and I just hadn’t noticed.
In the distance, gunshots rang out, staccato and overlapping, echoing through the night. Creatures moved uneasily, not liking the sound of gunfire resounding over the ridge separating the church grounds from mine. This was night target practice, not hunting, and far more firepower than usual.
Through my hands and both soles, I felt someone walking along, outside the boundary of my land and my full awareness, even as extended as those boundaries had become following the death of Brother Ephraim. It was as if the watcher knew where they were and stepped just beyond where I could sense him. He walked to the broken deer stand and stopped, unmoving, for a long time. Then he slipped away, off my land, and was gone.
Belowground, something dark raced around and around the boundaries of Soulwood, as if learning the limits of its prison or searching for weaknesses in the wood’s walls. It felt frantic, and to my knowledge, this hadn’t happened the only other time I’d fed the woods. But it would settle. Surely it would.
I went inside to sleep, in the tiny bed I had claimed so long ago, upstairs in the nook that was mine, had always been mine, even when living with John. Even when I’d had wifely duties to accept. When we were done with marital relations, I’d always left and come upstairs under the eaves, uneasy in Leah’s bed and unable to rest with John’s snoring.
I brought a stack of books to bed, fearing I wouldn’t fall asleep tonight, with all my questions, with the house somehow continuing to ring with the noise of people. And with three cats on my bed. That was foreign, especially with Torquil being so demanding. She chose to curl up under my chin, purring. I just hoped she didn’t have fleas. I perused the books by a single lantern (the solar batteries having been mostly drained by the guests and all the lights we’d used), trying to clear my mind, but it raced, uneasy, excited, fearful.
Sleeping alone in my house had never been challenging, not with my early warning system in place. Soulwood Advance Security System. I made an acronym of the name and thought that SASS worked well. It was funny, and I wished I had someone to share it with. I rolled to my side and closed my eyes, but they popped back open. I picked up a novel to read when sleep fled from me. Long after I usually was asleep, I finished the romance book and threw it across the room. It made me feel weird and uncomfortable and not myself. And more lonely than ever. People in the real world and the fictional world were baffling. Purely mystifying. Moments later the lantern flame sputtered and died, taking the last of the light and leaving me in the dark, alone but for the cats.
* * *
Thursday morning came with the cold, though not quite cold enough to coat the grass with ice, not yet cold enough to sparkle frosty white in the dark of early morning. In the predawn, still in my nightgown with thick socks on my feet, I lit a lantern and stumbled around the house, washing up, stoking the stove, putting on the percolator. I prepared a breakfast of the last of my eggs, the last of a loaf from yesterday’s bread, and honey, fully waking up only when the coffee hit my system. I ate and studied the material Rick had left me, paying close attention to the photographs of the girl. I memorized the new list of questions Rick wanted me to answer.
When I was satisfied that I knew what he knew and also what he didn’t, I dressed for the day. Missing my dogs. I still so missed my dogs, and never more than in the morning, when I’d usually turn them outside to guard the premises and sleep in the sun. But I wasn’t going to risk getting another dog, not while I could be still be in danger from the church. The cats were sneaky. They’d survive anything except a sharpshooter’s long-range, carefully placed hit. Cats wouldn’t come when called. They were half-wild, still, or had been until Paka showed up. They wouldn’t wag their tails hoping for treats while someone targeted them from inches away.
I let the cats out into the garden with the admonition, “Watch out for hawks.” Cello and Jezzie raced to the patch of catnip and rolled in it, vocalizing loudly. Torquil started digging instantly, chasing a vole. “Get it and eat it, Torq.” A second later she had the vole in her teeth and another second later it was dead. She looked to me and I said, “That’s a good girl. I’ll bring you some fresh cream for dinner.” She sat and started eating her raw breakfast.
Satisfied that they would be okay for the day, I loaded my truck up with late-season veggies, a variety of dried herbal teas and spicy meat rubs in plastic baggies, some natural flea collars I’d sewn, each containing my herbal flea repellent, and some jars of honey I had traded for. I folded the last bit of cash money into a pocket. It wasn’t my day at the stand, but it would be handy to sell some stuff today to buy groceries. Feeding six extra mouths was pricey. Next time they’d have to bring the food and feed me.
In the yard, I extended my senses to discover that the land’s boundaries were empty of churchmen. For the moment, the destruction of the deer stand had been successful. But that wouldn’t last.
Remembering my hat, which I’d left in the truck, I went across the damp grass and opened the passenger door. It squealed, old metal on old metal. I lifted my hat. Beneath it was a folded piece of paper. Like something torn out of a notebook, spiraled side ragged. My heart did something strange, a painful beat, as if it knew what was there. I reached in, my hand pale in the cab light. Took the note. Opened it.
In a blocky print, the note read,
I HAVE SMELLED YOUR SISTERS.
COME HOME OR THEY ARE MINE.
It wasn’t signed. But it was Jackie. It had to be.
SEVEN
The vegetable stand was at the base of the hills, in a crossroads where cars backed up to drop off kids at a school, where commuters slowed on the drive into Knoxville, and where the through traffic was heavy in mornings and evenings. The building was nothing more than a kid’s playhouse that had outlived that job and been repurposed to more profitable ends. I was the first to arrive, and I keyed open the dead bolt and turned off the alarm, one that went straight up to Old Lady Stevens’ house, alerting her that someone was here who was supposed to be here.
I swept out the night’s spiders and a blacksnake that had chosen to winter here. I didn’t mind the snake—it kept out the rats—but some customers got a bit riled at the thought of snakes. I rearranged the canned goods, placed my offerings on the shelves (with prices clearly visible on the tops), and the veggies in baskets on the porch railing. My vegetables were large, sweet, unblemished, and firm, the best veggies anywhere in the Knoxville area. I never took any home.
In the rafters, strapped to the collar ties, stirrups hanging, there was a Western saddle, an Australian saddle, and a jumping saddle, along with half a dozen sets of reins, a set of well-used saddlebags, a hackamore, and other horsey stuff. Quilts weren’t kept in the little house, but brought each day by the women who made them, along with handmade baby clothes, and leather-worked pocketbooks and belts. Some of the pottery from the potter in Oliver Springs stayed here overnight; so did the canned goods. Most everything was priced with a business card so lookers could contact the people later via e-mail, go to Web sites, and see more offerings. I didn’t have a Web page, but I was thinking about making one. If I could figure out how it was done, I could do it all through the library. And maybe even open a PayPal account, dealing with the establishment and the government.
The shop was small, but it held a lot, and had three small handmade rocking chairs on the front porch—for sale, of course. There was also a bulletin board with business cards advertising such things as hay, split wood, well diggers, septic system installers, antiques stores, farms, horseback-riding lessons, gunsmiths, and much more, with little spaces on the shelf below where visitors could find extra cards to take with them. My cards were there too, with my e-mail address on them, even though I could only access it through the library system. I neatened up the business cards and threw away some that had become sun-bleached or moisture-wrinkled.
When I was done, I unchained the rocking chairs and sat down in one to wait on Sister Erasmus, my mother’s friend and the church’s winemaker. Not that there would be any wine sold here, not with the laws on alcohol and the taxation problems. It was just too much trouble for the small bottler to deal with, but lots of horse trading and bottle swapping went on under the table. The rest of us pretended not to see.
Sister Erasmus drove up at six thirty, gave me a stern nod, and started unloading her truck. She brought many of the same kind of items the church sold at the market, but at lower prices, since none of us had to pay for booth rent. I helped her carry hand-stitched quilts and dough bowls and set them up along the railing and banisters of the low porch. When most of the toting was done, she looked me over with severe eyes and pinched lips. “I heard tell you was caught by the churchmen wearing them overalls. It’s good to see you in a skirt; proper clothing for a woman. I like your hair bunned up. You look like your maw-maw when she was a young’un.” She took her accustomed place in a rocking chair, and I sat in another one, tipped back with my toes, and rocked, the runners thumping on the uneven porch boards.
“How’s Mama and Maw-maw?” I asked after a polite spell.
“They’re fine. Or as fine as they can be with you gone. Living aside from the church, in sin.”
“I’m not sinning,” I said, my tone impassive.
“Your daddy would like to see you settled and safe. Back in the arms of the church, as a good and proper woman should be.”
My daddy. Who had colluded with the colonel to marry me off to the old pervert. And who would collude with someone else to marry me off. Except that Priss had said he had refused to allow my sisters to go with Jackie as concubines. Maybe Daddy had learned something new. But Priss was right. I wasn’t strong enough to protect my family, not alone. I touched the note through the cloth of my pocket.
I have smelled your sisters.
Come home or they are mine.