by Willa Reece
“Why do you think they found me instead of Sarah?” I asked. I wasn’t ready to change the subject, not even for an urgent matter at hand.
“Because Jacob Walker’s mother told Hartwell Morgan’s father what I had done. Tess was never really one of us. But I trusted her and she betrayed that trust. Her husband had died. She was an attractive young widow. I never saw a Morgan yet who could resist a vulnerable woman. He seduced her and she told him everything. It didn’t much matter back then. The old Morgan didn’t have the same ties to Reverend Moon that Hartwell has developed. Oh, he enjoyed deviling me and the others about it. Threatening to expose us. But it was only a game to him,” Granny said. “He must have passed on what he knew to Hartwell before he died. Long before then, Tess had learned better than to trust the Morgan family. She had taken Jacob and left Morgan’s Gap. But she couldn’t take back the secrets she’d revealed.”
“So Hartwell must have told Moon what his father had known. About the babies you and the other wisewomen had ‘stolen.’ Then, Melody openly stood up to Moon. More than anyone else had dared. And Hartwell was willing to help Moon silence Melody because he’d gotten in with the Sect too deeply. He owed Moon for the land. For Violet,” I said.
“For more than Violet, probably,” Granny said, with a grim set to her mouth. “When Melody had the audacity to fight Moon, he must have killed her. But it might not have ended there. He would have been furious that Sect children were being raised by ‘heathens’ elsewhere,” Granny said.
“And if Hartwell decided Sarah knew too much and was a danger to his political aspirations, he wouldn’t rest,” I added. “She didn’t know as much as he thought she did. Melody had sheltered her from the worst of it. But he couldn’t have known that. His paranoia and misogynistic personality would have assumed a free wisewoman was trouble. Especially the daughter of a wisewoman like Melody Ross.”
“He might have decided if he tracked down all the Sect babies we’d saved he would eventually find Melody’s daughter,” Granny said.
“We moved around a lot. Our caseworker despaired of finding us placements. Because I wouldn’t stand for…” I began.
“I know it wasn’t perfect. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in thirty years. But I still believe what I did was better for you and the other babies we were able to smuggle away than the Sect settlement would have been.”
Granny’s shoulders were rounded and her chin quivered low. I jumped up and wrapped my arm around her, leaning my cheek against her mop of curly hair. My curls meant something more now. Something I would explore later when the shock wore off. But I was glad I’d accepted the garden’s call before I knew my heritage. My connection was more than tradition. It had been completely a matter of choice.
“You saved me and you gave Sarah years she wouldn’t have had,” I said.
“I didn’t understand until that morning Sarah found Melody’s body that we were really dealing with life and death. Abuse. Neglect. Certainly, danger and freedom. But I never realized the Sect would go that far,” Granny said. “I think Melody knew. And she still didn’t back down. The night she was murdered I was busy in town. A breech birth. But she must have tried to protect the Sect woman who had come to her for help. Moon had had enough. Sarah wouldn’t have been an impediment. He would have assumed he could silence her at any time.”
“And Hartwell Morgan. How far did he go to help Moon?” I wondered. Hartwell had blood on his hands if he’d helped the Sect at all. It was hard to imagine the shiny politician actually involved with hands-on violence.
“He comes to the settlement. He hurts the girls he visits. Reverend Moon doesn’t care,” Lorelei said from the hall.
Lorelei stood at the bedroom door with the swaddled baby in her arms. My gut convulsed and I had to swallow hard against a sudden rush of bile that burned the back of my throat. Hartwell Morgan was as much of a monster as Moon. Granny had lived a long time. She’d heard it all. But Lorelei’s confirmation of what she’d probably suspected made her face go white as parchment. Neither of us spoke. I, for one, couldn’t. We went to help Lorelei use the bathroom and settle the baby in a drawer we’d taken from the dresser and lined with a quilt. We placed the makeshift cradle beside her when she came back to bed.
Sick rage gnawed at my insides and Granny was no longer pale. Her anger had livened her cheeks with red spots of color and she looked less like a dry and dusty mummy ready to give up. She was the first to break the silence.
“I will try to get you and this baby off the mountain, Lorelei. Down to Richmond where we can help you disappear. But it won’t be easy,” Granny said. “And it might be dangerous.”
“I been living dangerous for a while now. The Sect men are raised to be mean. They say it’s their right. And we don’t have say in nothin’ that goes on. When Hartwell started visiting, some of the older women tried to stop it, but they quieted down after a couple disappeared. That’s when I knew I had to run away before my baby was born,” Lorelei said.
“Have they gotten so used to killing women that get in their way?” I asked.
Granny didn’t reply. She tucked the blankets around Lorelei and then pulled me out of the room. I took one last look at the baby, sleeping peacefully beside her mother. What kind of life would she have? The ache of wanting it to be better than her mother’s or mine ate me up inside.
Granny asked for the phone when we got back to the living room. I looked out the back door at the wildwood while she called Sadie. The amber glow of the porch light didn’t illuminate very far into the woods, but I watched as a fox came and sat on the path. It could probably see my silhouette in the window of the back door. There were probably hundreds of foxes on the mountain, but I felt like I was looking at my fox. The one I’d seen earlier that night and hunting on a frosty morning. The one I’d seen in my dreams. He watched the house for a long while and then turned and disappeared into the shadows where the amber porch light didn’t reach. In the background, Granny murmured directions to Sadie, telling her that we might be in greater trouble than we’d realized.
“They’re going to come for her, aren’t they?” I asked. I’d thought the anxiousness of the day had been explained by Lorelei’s arrival. But now I realized it hadn’t diminished. I could feel something else was coming. The knowledge prickled my skin and made my blood feel thick in my veins. Granny was a formidable woman and I was no slouch. I’d fought with everything I had my whole life, including my fists. But we had no weapons and we couldn’t even call the sheriff because he was on Reverend Moon’s side.
“They’ll come for her. But we’ve got friends too,” Granny said. CC stood up and yawned with a mighty stretch on the sofa. I hadn’t seen Charm since before the mother and baby arrived. I pressed my thumbs into my forefingers where the fresh pricks still tingled. Reminding myself that I wasn’t alone.
Granny saw the movement. She couldn’t possibly see the two tiny red dots on my scarred hands, but she nodded. At one time, long ago, she must have decided to complete the ritual herself.
“Welcome, child,” Granny said softly. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears. My decision had been one she’d invested in body and soul. She’d sacrificed flagging energy reserves to teach me and guide me along the way without pushing because she’d known I had to decide for myself.
I went to her and she raised her gnarled and wrinkled hands, palms facing me, in front of her chest. I reached out and she showed me how to press our fingertips together, not clasped, but touching. Palm to palm, prick to prick. I’d never noticed the slight indention in each forefinger. They’d been lost in the calluses and stains caused by her life’s work.
“Wildwood born,” Granny whispered, honoring the new life we embraced when we’d embraced our connection to the garden, the forest and the land.
“Wildwood born,” I replied.
The air was suddenly filled with the faint fragrance of blackberry jam, dill, peppermint, dandelion wine and rye bread. Each scent came and went like
a memory, but richer, fuller, more. And with each scent I remembered the people I had shared them with. This was our mountain. It had claimed us as we had claimed it. And now it was time to defend it.
Twenty-Nine
Beams of light shot through the windows of the house from in front and behind at the same time, then a skittering knock sounded at the back door. It took me a second to understand that powerful flashlights in the hands of multiple people were being trained on the cabin.
“We need to stop them from taking her or the baby for as long as we can,” Granny said.
“They’ll have to kill me to take that baby,” I replied. I knew then with a cold, certain exhilaration that I’d never needed a baseball bat for home defense. All I’d ever needed was a lifetime of struggle to hone my own sharp heart.
The quiet, almost scratching tap came again at the door. There was a teasing quality to the sound. As if the person knocking was being purposefully playful with his knuckles against the wood. It made me shudder. I had no hope of sending them away. I knew there would be a fight, but I went to answer the door as if crazed misogynistic freaks often came calling at the cabin in the middle of the night.
“How can I help you?” I opened the door because keeping it closed would have immediately escalated the situation. Moon stood there. His curled fist raised to tap, scratch again. The flashlight beams glinted off and around him like strobe lights. This was only me asking a visitor what I could do for them. No more. No less. Reverend Moon’s black suit and starched white shirt wasn’t stained with Melody Ross’s blood. But it was easy to imagine him bloodied. The thirst for blood was in his playful knocks and the curve of his ugly smile. I tried not to imagine his hands crushing Melody’s windpipe and driving her to her knees. What had become of the baby she’d delivered that morning? Had it died along with its mother for daring to want a different life than fate had given them?
There were at least ten men behind Reverend Moon. They all had flashlights pointed at the cabin and me. My vision was dazzled and I raised my hand to shield my eyes.
“We are looking for one of our own. A runaway. She’s had issues with hysteria before. A danger to herself and others,” Reverend Moon said.
Now I could see a few women with the men, off to the side and without lights of their own. Moon motioned for one of them to come forward and she did so meekly as if pulled on a string I couldn’t see.
“Give us Lorelei and the baby. Let us take them back home where they belong,” the woman said. The other two women whispered “where they belong” like eerie echoes. The hair raised on the back of my neck. They must have known how near her time was. And still they had chased her through the woods and hounded her to exhaustion. I well knew how they could wait and watch. They’d wanted her to come to me. This was never going to end with simply finding a runaway. Like Melody, I was not going to get out of the way. The sick rage in the pit of my stomach had long turned to ice. I fought the rise of despair. I’d been here before. In one house or another. A foster father friendlier than he had any right to be. A foster mother too quick with a pinch or a kick. A doctor who took the exam a few caresses too far while his nurse looked the other way. No one to protect me. No family. No friends. Alone in the world.
Lorelei and the baby weren’t alone. They had me.
“You’ve come through the wildwood tonight. To my back door. This isn’t your settlement. This is the Ross cabin. And you’re not welcome here,” I said. To Reverend Moon and his men. To the women who would enable him. I stood in the doorway and a breeze from the forest ruffled my curly chestnut hair.
Reverend Moon seemed fascinated by the play of hair on my cheek. He narrowed his eyes and looked at me. Hard. Was my mother still living under his control or had he killed her years ago?
“I’ve seen you before. In town. Yes. But… she’s one of yours, isn’t she?” he asked Granny over my shoulder. I could feel the presence of the older woman behind me, but I didn’t turn around to check on her. I faced Moon and focused every bit of energy I possessed toward keeping him outside.
“Oh, it’s more complicated than that, as you well know. No one belongs to me. Or to you. It’s the wildwood that we all belong to,” Granny said. “There are many who live in your settlement who aren’t Sect any more than I am. The wildwood has them and they have the wildwood, deep in their hearts where you can’t corrupt it.”
“No!” Reverend Moon shouted. The other Sect men and women followed his lead, shouting their protests and cursing Granny’s blasphemy.
Reverend Moon slammed into me with surprising force considering his age. I’m no lightweight, but against the whole crowd that followed him, I didn’t have a chance to shut the door. Moon grabbed fistfuls of my hair and jerked me down to my knees. I cried out for Granny, Lorelei and the newborn baby. But two of Moon’s men took my arms as I struggled to my feet in spite of the pain in my scalp that brought tears to my eyes. Moon didn’t let me go. He liked the tears. He liked to hurt. Worse, there were more Sect people at the front door. The bolt I’d installed had held, but it did no good at all when one of Moon’s women slid it back and opened the door.
“Take them all,” Moon commanded.
No one argued even though one of “them” was a tiny, mewling baby who shouldn’t be taken out in the cold, damp night.
Granny must have known she’d be no match for the burly Sect man who took her cruelly by the upper arm. She raised her chin and went where he pulled her as if he was leading her onto a dance floor.
But the look on her face. Even through the tears in my eyes, I would have thought twice about jerking her around. The Sect man didn’t seem to care.
“Be careful. Don’t hurt her,” I said. Lorelei had locked herself in the bedroom with the baby, but it took only a few determined kicks to the interior door for the lock to bust. They dragged Lorelei into the hall. She clutched the baby to her chest, but when the women who had unbolted the front door jerked the bundle of blankets from her only a pillow fell to the ground.
I stopped mid-shout when I realized the bundle had been a decoy. Muffled cries came from the bedroom and it didn’t take the Sect people long to find the baby Lorelei had carefully hidden in the drawer we’d padded with blankets as a makeshift cradle.
“Stop fighting,” Moon said, pressing his face close to mine. His hands had tightened and I could feel the clumps of hair he gripped loosening from my scalp. I hadn’t realized I’d still been writhing and kicking to try to get to the baby. I would have continued until Moon was left with nothing but bloody hair in his hands if Charm hadn’t appeared on my shoulder.
I froze as if I’d obeyed Moon, but it couldn’t be helped. My jerking might hurt the tiny mouse no one but me had noticed so far. Plus, there was nothing I could do against the crowd of Sect men and women who had us now except watch, wait, hope for a window of opportunity… For what, I didn’t know.
My stomach roiled and a trickle of warm liquid trailed down my forehead into my left eye. Moon had made my scalp bleed. I blinked it away. I didn’t care about my injuries. Only my friends mattered.
“Bring them,” Moon ordered. He pulled and I followed. The men on either side of me were ready if I didn’t and Charm was cuddled against the side of my neck beneath the hair Moon didn’t have in his hands. I could feel him holding on, hiding, waiting breathlessly in the same way I waited.
For what, I wasn’t sure.
My sick stomach plummeted when Moon led the way through the backyard and onto the wildwood path. Even though I cooperated, he pulled me in fits and starts because he enjoyed my distress. I couldn’t help crying out at the first few surprising jerks, but then I sank my teeth into my lower lip to keep quiet no matter how much he hurt me. I was hunched over, but because of Moon’s height I still managed to see some of what was happening.
Helplessness burned in my chest. It hurt more than my scalp.
Lorelei was begging for her baby. The woman who had opened the front door had her wrapped in only the cloth di
aper Granny had fashioned from a towel. And she wasn’t cradling the baby. She held her carelessly, ignoring her weak cries of distress.
“Please. Let me take her. She’s cold and afraid,” Lorelei said.
“You have done this. You have brought this on yourself with your shameless turn to heathenism,” Moon said. He stomped without pausing up the path.
And then I knew.
He hadn’t come to take Lorelei and the baby home. Even if we had given him the baby, he would have dragged us from the cabin.
Just as he must have dragged Melody ten years ago.
“Where are you taking us?” I already knew. The beams of light from the flashlights many of the Sect people held already illuminated the wildwood garden in the distance… and the black locust trees’ branches that scratched at the night sky. I fought Moon’s grip to turn my head enough so that I could see Sarah’s sapling as he pulled me into the clearing.
“Your people will learn to stay away from our women with your filthy concoctions and your demonic brews,” Moon said. “Or I’ll send you all to the Maker to face His judgment.”
“Doesn’t your Maker frown on murder?” Granny asked. I could finally see her. Still straight, with her shoulders back even though, from the looks of the man’s grip on her arm, she’d been pulled up the path almost as roughly as I had been.
Moon suddenly dragged me into the garden over the dormant flower beds and toward the black locust tree with the crooked limb just right for a rope. I stumbled and cried out as my lower lip came free of my teeth.
“I am my Maker’s hands and feet and voice in this world. And I go about His business. Abomination must be stopped. We don’t kill. We cleanse.” If Moon shouted it would have been less sickening, but he chose to utter “cleanse” close to my face again so that his hot spittle burned my cold cheeks.