Page 18

Chapter 18

Fern thought about the Manson family. She thought about the Zodiac Killer. She thought about Richard Speck. They were surrounded by strangers, and the strangers were adults, and one of the strangers had a gun. She clutched Rose’s arm, trying to shield her belly with Rose’s body.

“Get up here where we can see you,” the woman with the rifle said.

Something popped in the fire but they didn’t move. Behind them came a crash of branches and a girl said, “They’re alone.”

“You sure?” the woman with the gun said.

“No, I’m making it up, Pagan,” the girl said.

There was a softer crash in the underbrush and the tall woman—Pagan?—spun toward it, rifle springing to her shoulder.

“Holy Mother,” another woman said. “Pagan, it’s Mags.”

An old woman, topless and dirty, wearing a cloth diaper, emerged from the bushes behind them. She grinned toothlessly, then seemed to focus on Fern and came straight for her. Thin hair floated around her skull, a wispy beard clung to her chin, her eyes were glassy and black like a doll’s, and her tongue danced across her lower lip, leaving her chin hairs wet.

“Choco bars?” she asked. “Yums?”

The old woman reached Fern and stood too close, smelling like dirt and urine, her breath reeking of raw garlic. Fern cringed back as the woman’s hands ran over her duster, grabbing at her body, searching for pockets.

“No, Mags,” the girl behind them said, and Mags looked at her. “They didn’t bring you any yums. How about it? You two Blundering Betties brought anything for Mags?”

The old woman licked her lips, glittering eyes running up and down Fern.

“Would you put that down,” another woman snapped at Pagan. “You just about poked a hole in Mags.”

The woman lowered her rifle but turned back to Fern and Rose.

“Names?” she said.

“Decima brought them,” the girl behind Fern and Rose said, walking between them. “So, you know, they’re cool. She’s a good dog.”

She crouched down and scratched Decima’s heavy skull.

“Aren’t you a good dog, Deccy?” she cooed.

The dog squinted in pleasure and her tongue lolled. The girl was the scrawniest thing Fern had ever seen, like a shaved squirrel. Her small, sharp face looked older than her body, like it had done some hard living.

“If we’re through being unpleasant,” an older woman said in a calm, tea-party voice, “why don’t you two girls come introduce yourselves.”

The two of them approached the fire. Around it sat women, most of them young, but the woman with the tea-party voice looked the age of Fern’s mother, sitting primly with a straight back, hands folded. A dark-skinned woman built like a football player sat with a banjo in her lap. Firelight flickered over her like she was carved from stone.

Behind the fire, a big tan VW camper and a blue van were parked. Clotheslines were strung between them, and logs piled up beside. A rough kitchen had been set up around an old tree stump. Farther back in the darkness Fern made out a big canvas army tent.

The woman holding the rifle sat, laying her gun across her knees, but she kept her eyes on Rose and Fern. Across the fire, an earth mother with an Indian blanket draped over her shoulders nursed a baby. Immediately, Fern felt the threat evaporate. Killer hippies wouldn’t have a baby with them. The woman gave Fern a smile.

“Her name’s Sparrow,” she said, and looked at Fern’s belly. “When are you due?”

“August fourteenth,” Fern said.

“Does anyone here know the librarian?” Rose asked. “What’s her name, Fern?”

“Miss Parcae,” Fern said, watching the baby’s tiny fists clutch his mother’s breast.

He looked so peaceful.

“What’re your names?” the older woman asked politely.

“I asked first,” Rose said.

Fern realized she needed to intervene. She pulled her eyes away from the baby.

“I’m Fern and this is Rose,” she said. “We’re not allowed to use our real names. We’re from the Home, back in the woods, out by the highway.”

“Very smart,” a bone-thin woman said from across the fire. There was no meat on her skeleton. Fern could see ribs xylophoned down her chest. “Names have power.”

“Miss Parcae told us to come,” Fern said.

“Where is she?” Rose asked.

“She’s here, man,” the kid who’d followed them out of the woods said. “You strolled right into the middle of her coven.”

Fern looked at the women sitting in a circle, their faces softened by firelight: the proper older woman sitting up straight, the nursing mother, a heavyset girl with an open face still dusted with pimples sitting shoulder to shoulder with the skeleton girl. The big woman with the banjo, ignoring everyone. The scrappy little squirrel who’d followed them out of the woods, cutting up an apple with a Boy Scout knife and feeding a wedge to Mags, who crunched it eagerly but with great difficulty, between her back teeth, juice running down her beard. The woman with the rifle, the hand of the frizzy redhead beside her resting on her knee.

“Take them over to Miss Parcae, Periwinkle,” the prim older woman said. “I’m sure she’s expecting them.”

“As if she’d bother to tell us,” Pagan grumbled.

A college-looking girl, cleaner than the others and wearing bell-bottomed jeans and a brocade vest, sprang to her feet.

“Come on, you guys,” she said. “I’ll take you to her lair.”

She led them away from the firelight. It had killed their night vision so the woods around them looked black. Something squirmed into Fern’s left hand and she looked down. The girl was holding her hand, pulling her forward. She looked over at Fern and grinned.

“Periwinkle,” she said. “I’ve been with these yo-yos for about a year. They’re pretty intense.”

“Who are they?” Fern asked.

All this walking through the woods made her short of breath.

“We’re witches,” Periwinkle said, like it was the most natural thing in the world. “Molly and Polly are the quiet ones. They used to be hopheads, but witchcraft keeps them straight. There’s Dolores and her daughter, Joy, who was playing the fiddle. There’s Star and her baby. Journey, with the banjo, and you got the twenty-two-caliber welcome from Pagan. Her old lady’s Celestia.”

“Who was the hag with the beard?” Rose asked.

Periwinkle’s face got serious.

“That’s not cool,” she said. “We all take care of Mags.”

Ahead of them, an enormous black shadow emerged from the darkness, and relief spread through Fern as she recognized the bookmobile. It was parked on a dirt road. Soft yellow light glowed through its screen door.

Periwinkle stepped up on the floating step, pushed open the door, and led them inside. The librarian’s desk had a camp bed in front of it now, covered in blankets and handmade pillows. The floor was covered with candles stuffed into the necks of old bottles and dropped inside grimy jelly jars, casting shifting light over the spines of the books.

The skylights were open and cooler air flowed down the main aisle. Propped up in the camp bed, her back against the desk, was the librarian. She wore a white shift and her hair hung loose. She had a maroon blanket woven from strips of rag pulled over her shoulders, but she didn’t look warm. She saw Fern and her face creased into a smile.

“At long last,” she said. “Only, I’m afraid you’ve caught me on one of my low nights.”

Periwinkle let Fern and Rose step past her.

“Sit,” Miss Parcae said. “Do you want water? You must be parched.”

Periwinkle handed them a damp canteen and Fern took a sip. The water was cold and tasted like metal. Fern held Periwinkle’s hand for support as she lowered herself to the floor.

“Cut the baloney,” Rose said, still standing. “We’ve got business.”

Miss Parcae chuckled, which turned into a coughing fit.

“Are you all right?” Fern asked, offering her the canteen.

The librarian waved it away.

“Oh, you know how it is, my poppet,” she said. “You get to be ninety and it’s a good day when you see the dawn.”

“You don’t look ninety,” Fern said, because it’s what her mother had taught her to say.

“Well, my treasure,” the librarian said, “being allied with the forces of darkness helps. Would you please sit, Rose? You’re making yourself nervous.”

Rose tried to stare the librarian down, then gave up, put one hand on Fern’s shoulder, and painfully lowered herself to the floor.

“Now,” Miss Parcae said. “Flattery aside, what can I do for you? I don’t have much strength tonight and they keep you girls under lock and key. I’m sure we don’t have much time.”

Rose opened her mouth to say something sharp, and Fern jumped in.

“I’ve been reading the book every day,” she said. “And, like we told you, we’re reading it to find out how to help our friend Holly. You met her that night? She did the ritual, too?”

“The older I get, the less patience I have with beating around the bush,” Miss Parcae said.

“I need to know how to hurt them,” Rose interrupted. “They took my daughter away. My heart’s desire was to have her, so cool, you’re another liar. But now I need a spell to hurt them back.”

Miss Parcae’s eyes drifted, and she seemed to think about something that had nothing to do with them for a moment, then they flickered back into focus.

“Peri,” she called. “Be a dear and bring some tea. I could use a little fortification.”

The girl left the bus.

“A spell is a funny thing,” Miss Parcae said. “Especially for one’s greatest desire. It takes the time it takes. Sometimes it takes a lifetime to notice its effects. It’s not all hey presto, dear.”

“We don’t have a lifetime,” Rose said. “They stole my baby.”

“A mother’s grief is a terrible thing,” Miss Parcae said. “I could make you forget the child. What you don’t remember doesn’t hurt.”

For a moment Rose didn’t seem sure of herself. Faint banjo music wafted through the bookmobile’s screen door. A fiddle joined in. Fern felt 1970 fade away around them. They could be in a campsite a hundred years ago, talking to a witch.

“No,” Rose said, shaking her head like she was chasing away a fly. “The pain’s all I have left of her. I want to make them feel it. I want to hurt them. Bad.”

“But,” Miss Parcae said, “power without mercy is cruelty. And isn’t that what you’re subjected to now?”

“Don’t give me that ‘both sides are equal’ crap,” Rose said. “Show me how to fight.”

Miss Parcae leaned forward, locking eyes with Rose. Fern thought she looked excited, but it might have been the way the candles reflected in her eyes.

“What is it you want, Rose?” she asked. “Be clear. Be precise. Say it out loud.”

Rose didn’t speak for a long moment. Then she said, “I want to show them what it feels like to be helpless. I want to show them what it feels like to be me.”

Miss Parcae fell back against her pillows. The bookmobile bounced slightly as Periwinkle came in the door. She slipped past them and sat on the edge of the camp bed. She didn’t carry a tea tray. Instead, she handed Miss Parcae an enormous, loosely rolled cigarette. She struck a wooden kitchen match and held it to one end. Miss Parcae sucked it gratefully, then let out a mouthful of tarry, resinous smoke that smelled like Christmas trees.

“That hits the spot,” Miss Parcae sighed, then held out the joint to Rose and Fern. “Would you girls like some tea?”

Fern shook her head.

“Are you going to help us or are you going to sit there all night and get high?” Rose asked.

Miss Parcae smiled.

“I’ll help you,” she said. “I’ll show you how to use power as you ask. I don’t think you’re ready, but what does that matter to me? You’ll either learn to control it, or it will control you. And, Fern, dear?” She looked at Fern sadly, but that might have been the grass. “Is this what you want?”

Fern felt the room getting cloudy. She didn’t know if it was the smoke or the night, but everything felt like it was changing too fast and she knew she was being asked to make a serious decision.

“I just want to save Holly,” she said. “Like, I’ll help Rose with whatever she wants, but I just want to save Holly and then I want to go home and have everything go back to the way it was.”

“You’ve come too far for things to go back to how they were,” Miss Parcae said. “But I can see you haven’t realized that yet. Periwinkle, take Fern to the fire. I think this should be between Rose and myself.”

“But I can help,” Fern protested, feeling like she was being sent to the little kids’ table.

“No, dear,” Miss Parcae said. “This is where Rose’s path diverges from yours. You lack the heart for revenge.”

Periwinkle helped Fern up as Rose pulled herself closer to Miss Parcae. The last thing Fern saw as she went out the door was Miss Parcae taking an enormous drag on her joint, then holding Rose’s hands. Fern felt like she’d been judged and found wanting.

Periwinkle helped her stumble through the dark.

“It’s okay,” Periwinkle said. “She has reasons for what she does. Mostly.”

“I could have helped,” Fern said.

“She may be old,” Periwinkle said, “but one thing she doesn’t need is help. Even if she should ask for it sometimes.”

The banjo and fiddle music got louder as they approached the fire, and Periwinkle helped her sit down on a blanket. She handed her the canteen again, and Fern gratefully drank the metallic water and let the music wash over her. The big dark woman played banjo, and a young woman who looked like she could be Fern’s neighbor back in Huntsville played the fiddle. The fiddle chased the banjo through the song, caught it, and the two tangled, then the banjo lay down, the fiddle ran away with a scamper, and the song came to an end.

No one clapped, but they all seemed at peace. The nursing baby had fallen asleep in its mother’s arms. The rifle was gone. Fern had been raised to feel like she needed to offer something when she was in company.

“Thank you for letting us interrupt your evening,” she said. “I didn’t get your names.”

No one spoke and she wondered if she’d said the wrong thing, then the proper older woman said, “I’m Dolores, and this is my daughter, Joy.”

She nodded to the fiddle player, who gave Fern a nod back.

“You met Mags,” the skinny squirrel girl who’d followed them through the woods said. “I’m Little Robin. Big Robin got busted up near Myrtle Beach.”

No one else introduced themselves and the conversation lapsed again. Fern tried to think of something.

“So you’re Miss Parcae’s coven,” she said. “I guess you’ve all pledged obedience and loyalty to her, too?”

“As long as it suits the coven,” the nursing mother said.

The logs shifted and a swirl of sparks rose into the air. Across from Fern the old, half-naked woman snored against the shoulder of Little Robin, completely abandoned to sleep.

“Is she all right?” Fern asked.

“Mags carries a heavy burden,” Dolores said. “We all do our best to help.”

“Not all of us,” Periwinkle said.

Dolores gave her a look and Periwinkle gave it back. Fern sensed tension run around the circle like an electric current.

“So,” she said in a cheerful voice. “Do y’all live in the woods all the time?”

Everyone turned to stare at her, even, after a moment, the skinny woman. Little Robin spoke.

“We’re always moving,” she said. “Because they’re always looking for us. We never stop.”

“Who’s searching for you?” Fern asked.

“They hate us,” Periwinkle said. “We’re loathed and despised in every time, in every country, in every culture. In New Guinea they say we dig up the bodies of dead babies and eat them. In Zambia they say we sleep with our brothers and fathers and murder newborns. The Hopi say we kill our kin to prolong our lives. In Germany they say we steal men’s penises and hide them in birds’ nests.”

A surprised laugh escaped Fern.

“Gretta von Reid was strangled for that,” Dolores said primly.

“I’m sorry,” Fern said.

“They say we spoil milk and steal children,” Periwinkle continued. “That we murder the innocent and ruin crops. That we bring disease and eat human flesh. You know why they say all this?”

“Because you’re witches?” Fern asked.

“Because we’re women,” Periwinkle said. “Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Jew—the one thing they all have in common is that they hate us. For hundreds of thousands of years, they’ve hated us. So we have to live in the shadows. And still they hunt us. From Nigeria to Salem to Madagascar, they come and round up old women and little girls. Sometimes they force them to drink poison. The ones who die are clearly witches. The ones who only get sick are allowed to go home until the men show up at their houses hunting witches again.

“In Indonesia, they make little girls reach into pots of boiling water and pull out burning stones. If their hands blister, they’re guilty and are killed. They throw us into rivers and ponds and if we dare swim to save our lives, we’re guilty. They hang us and burn us, they beat us to death and leave our bodies where they fall. They bury us alive and drag our families from their homes. They torture us, and strangle us, and hack our corpses to pieces and feed them to their dogs.”

Mags gave a sudden cry and lurched up, eyes wide, seeing something that wasn’t there. Her toothless mouth flopped open.

“Oh!” she cried. “We’re running! Always running! We can’t let them find us! Run, Mother!”

Everyone looked at her, but no one moved. Her voice dripped with terror. She looked across the fire and locked eyes with Fern.

“They chained you to the post, Mother,” Mags said, her lips working around her toothless gums. “I was only little and they chained you to the post and Father made me watch. He used his thumbs to hold open my eyes and I saw your face through the flames. The lips that kissed me sputtered like sausages, and your eyes, you always had such pretty eyes, even Father said you had such pretty eyes, they boiled and steamed in their sockets and your hands that braided my hair shriveled into black claws. And you were still alive, Mother. You were still alive until the smoke covered my face and suffocated me. Smoke made of you, Mother. Oh! Oh!”

She began to sob, pathetically and shamelessly. She turned her face into the shoulder of Little Robin, who wrapped her arms around the old lady’s shaking shoulders.

“How old is she?” Fern asked, very quietly.

The women looked at each other, then Dolores spoke.

“Mags was born at the end of the last century as best we can tell,” she said. “But she’s one of the lucky ones. Her mother lives inside her, and her mother’s mother, and her mother’s mother’s mother, going back long before the Burning Times. She carries the line of the Sibyl in her head and her heart, preserving their collective memories until she one day passes them on. But all those voices and memories make her confused sometimes. For most of us, it can be quite lovely.”

Fern looked at the old woman, weeping like a child.

“It doesn’t look lovely to me,” she said.

Dolores got up and came to Fern. She knelt in front of her. Her hair was long and tied back, but her fingernails were clean and her face was freshly scrubbed. She could have been one of Fern’s mother’s friends, only without any makeup or jewelry.

“Imagine,” she said, “being able to talk to any woman who came before you in your line. Imagine never having to be alone. In your darkest hours, your mother and her mother and her mother are there to guide you. Their wisdom stretches back hundreds of years. Only a few of us carry our line, and Mags had difficulties when it was her time. She took the Sibyl’s line, but not easily, and it broke something inside her. But not all of us are like that. With myself or Miss Parcae, the memories and voices in our heads are sources of strength.”

She smiled at Fern.

“I carry the line of Diana,” she said. “I can remember so much. I remember sitting in the doorway of my house, carding wool and watching the road for my boy to come home, and how blue was the sky, and how warm was the sun, and all my neighbors were worried about their sons fighting over the seas, but I’ve seen it in my morning milk that he’ll come safely home. Before that, long before that, I walk in the wildwoods, Fern, surrounded by hazels and oaks older than man, a wood so enormous that you can walk from one end of the country to the other and never feel a drop of rain. But it wasn’t a wood to me, it was my apothecary. The elder leaf cures coughing, the burn jelly stops infection, wormwood and bishopwort for headaches, and lady’s mantle for spasm. I could read the woods.” She laid a hand on Fern’s belly. “Imagine if death was not the end, Fern. Imagine if you could stay with your daughter and lead her through the dark times long after your body is gone. There is nothing more beautiful. Truly. I don’t know how lonely I would be without my line living on inside of me, sharing my life.”

Fern didn’t know what to say. She looked through the fire at Mags, who still sobbed. Dolores’s daughter, Joy, came and stood beside her mother, one hand on her shoulder, holding her fiddle by the neck.

“And one day, Mom’ll be gone, but she’ll still be with me,” Joy said. “As long as there’s one of us left, our line never ends.”

“Miss Parcae isn’t a librarian,” Dolores said. “She is the library.”

Journey plucked a banjo string. Joy helped her mother stand.

Fern tried to think of something to say after that.

“So what brings you all to Florida?” she asked.

“Miss Parcae has her reasons,” Dolores said. “She wanted us here and we respect that. She’s only been wrong once or twice before.”

“More and more often these days,” Periwinkle said, real quiet.

“Hey,” Rose said behind her.

Fern thrashed around and saw Rose in her white T-shirt. She looked glum.

“Did you get it?” she asked.

Rose nodded.

“I’ll take you back,” Little Robin said, and passed Mags to Celestia beside her.

Her weeping had died down, and now her lips moved soundlessly as she stared into the fire with wide, frightened eyes, mumbling responses to voices that no one else could hear.