But he didn’t hear them calling her a witch and he didn’t care for their sighs anyway. He’d never wanted anything from this one-train town until he saw the daughter standing on the sidewalk.
He took what he wanted from her, and she got what she wanted from him, and soon enough her belly was rounder than it had ever been before.
The three women at the top of the hill wanted nothing from the princeling except what they’d already gotten—the seed that planted the next daughter. But the princeling’s father didn’t believe this.
The only interest those three women could have, in his mind, was in dollars and cents. That was all he cared about and so that was what everyone else must care about, too. He had a very fine match arranged for his lustful princeling with another baron’s daughter, and he was not about to have his carefully laid plans spoiled by a red-haired tart showing up on his doorstep with a squalling babe and claims of paternity.
That baby, he decided, could never be.
The daughter sat at the window of the house on the hill and sewed clothes for her coming daughter and thought fondly of her time with the dark-eyed princeling but more fondly of the day when her own red-haired child would arrive.
The father of the princeling sat at the desk inside his enormous monstrosity of a house and thought fondly of the day when the threat to him and his own would be gone.
First he tried sending a man to the house on the hill with money. The old crone who answered the door had, the man later told the father, looked upon him like one views a crawling thing in the dirt. She shut the door and never touched the sack that he held out to her in offering.
The father imagined then that he had offered a price too low. Well, that was no matter. He’d half expected this, though he always tried to pay the least amount for what he wanted the most. Of course they would want more to stay quiet.
What he did not know was that the princeling, against all expectation, had fallen in love with the red-haired witch and wanted, above all things, to see his daughter and hold her in his arms. He had no interest in the arranged match and told his father so, and then he went to the house on the hill and told his lover that he wanted to marry her.
This was a thing that had never happened before, for the three were always careful to choose men that would happily abjure their responsibility.
Still, though it was unexpected it was not entirely unwelcome to see the princeling on his knees before the daughter, offering her a silver ring infused with his love. It would not be such a bad thing, they decided, to have a man about the house. They might even learn to live as others did.
So the daughter said yes, and there was more joy than could be imagined in that house on the hill.
But the father of the princeling could not allow such joy.
It fit with none of his plans.
And so he planned anew, to make his world right again.
* * *
* * *
Her name was not Daughter, but Elizabeth, and her lover called her Liz, or Lizzie, or Eliza, but never all of the syllables unless he sighed them out in her mouth in the dark of night.
The princeling’s name was Charles, and he was the fourth of his line to be given the mighty name that was attached to many surnames, but he preferred to be called Charlie.
All through the long hot summer Charlie and Liz planned for their life together and their daughter (for of course it was a daughter growing inside Liz’s belly—the three only gave birth to girls).
Charlie had an idea that they might build a little house for themselves—not in town, not beneath the scowling face of his father’s house, but in the forest. While he respected the mother and grandmother of his Lizzie, he also longed to have his wife for himself. Lizzie, though she had always been content to be with her mother and grandmother, agreed that a snug little nook under the trees was just the thing for them.
So every morning Charlie went out into the woods (though he never walked near the lightning-struck tree—he was a happy man and had no need of ghosts and shadows) and chopped down trees and cut and sanded them and made a little cabin in the woods.
This cabin he made deep in the trees, far from the town and the hill. He wanted no friendly visits from neighbors, nor prying faces that would pass gossip in the general store. He only wanted his wife and his daughter and their circle of love.
You might think that in this living place that the trees would be angry at such use, but Charlie always planted a little seed to replace the ones he took down, and the ones that were cut and sanded could feel the love that he layered into the walls and so they were content too.
His soft princeling’s hands grew hard and callused, and his slim princeling’s shoulders grew round and strong. His face, so white from years spent lounging in parlors, turned brown under the glare of the sun and soon it seemed that anyone from his old life would not even recognize him.
But his father recognized him. His father would always know him whatever Charlie’s disguise, and his father thought that it was a disguise, a whim that he would outgrow. How could his son, his son, the son of one of the wealthiest men in the Midwest, want to spend all his life in poverty with the slattern who’d seduced him? It couldn’t possibly be, though the evidence of his eyes told otherwise. He would save his child, though, save him from the unhappiness that was the only possible outcome of this match. And then Charlie would marry the girl his father had chosen, and their wealth would double and their standing in society would triple, and all would be as it should be.
By the end of summer Elizabeth was nearing her time and Charlie was nearly finished with their new home, though he had not yet allowed Elizabeth to see it. Every day she watched him walk and whistle into the cover of the forest, carrying his sack of tools and a lunch she packed for him. Every day he would return to the hill with a pleased smile on his face and she would glance at him hopefully and he would say, “Not quite yet.”
She knew he only wanted to surprise her, to make it special, but she was burning with curiosity and decided one day that she would follow him into the woods.
Now Elizabeth had rarely left the hill since her belly started to grow. When she did she was always accompanied, by her mother or grandmother who glared away any impertinent questions about her marriage, or by Charlie, who laughed them off with that easy way of his (he had not forgotten what it was like to be a princeling, after all, or how to charm).
This was because they all wanted to protect her—from rude tongues at the least, but the mother and grandmother felt the growing menace from the baron’s side of town and wanted to keep their daughter, and her daughter, away from harm.
The grandmother and mother would never have allowed Elizabeth to go out on her own, and so she slipped away while they were busy with other tasks.
We all know what happens when we are too curious, when we stray out of bounds, when we don’t stay within our borders. Sometimes, adventure happens and our lives are changed forever, our borders expanded and our horizons stretching far into the distance.
But sometimes, terrible things happen and our lives are destroyed forever, our borders shrunk to the size of the pain in our hearts, our horizons dimmed.
Because, you see, Charlie’s father—the baron from Chicago who had Saved the Town, the man who would not be thwarted—had set one of his servants to watch the hill, day and night.
This servant, he was not the sort of servant that you keep in your house and allow to serve coffee to the neighbors. He wasn’t even the sort that might black your boots or care for the horses in the stable. He was the sort that you pass money to in the shadows, the sort that you only see when the gleam of his eyes and the gleam of his knife shine out of the darkness.
This servant saw Elizabeth’s red hair reflecting the sun and her round figure moving slowly from the hill to the trees. He knew his time had come. He knew what was expected of him.
So Elizabeth followed Charlie, and the man with the knife followed Elizabeth.
The scream that followed seemed to rent the whole world in two. It cleaved through the air, brushed across the treetops and made them shudder. It arrowed through the town, made heads turn and mouths whisper. And it pounded against the windows of the house on the hill and made the mother and the grandmother sink slowly to the ground, arms wrapped around one another.
Charlie heard his Elizabeth scream. He dropped his bag of tools and his carefully packed lunch and ran, ran, ran following the fading gasps of that scream through the woods.
But it was too late, for the man with the knife knew what he was about and what he was being paid for (that sort always do), and he had done his deed and disappeared back into the shadows before Elizabeth’s cry faded away.
Charlie found his lover, his wife, the mother of his child thrown upon the ground like garbage and there was blood everywhere, so much blood, blood pooling around her and running into her beautiful red hair and staining the silver ring he’d given her. Her life was gone and so too was the life of the child within her and Charlie fell to his knees and took them in his arms and wept.
The trees all around nodded in sadness and the wind cried with him and the animals of that dark, dark forest bent their heads.
The creature that lurked in the shadows under the lightning-struck tree heard the signal from the hill. It was awake now, and hungry, and knew its time had come.
Charlie picked up the blood-soaked thing that used to be Elizabeth and carried her through the woods, and through the town toward the house on the hill.
When he passed the townspeople, some of them cried out at the sight of him and others tucked their mouths behind their hands and whispered that they knew it would come to this; that Kind of Woman could only come to this end.
The women chittered and chattered and said that Elizabeth was probably meeting men in the woods while her poor devoted husband had been off building a cottage for her and when he found out he stabbed her to death.
It never occurred to them, not to any of them, that Charlie’s father—the great baron from Chicago, the man who saved the town—had set a wolf upon his son’s wife.
The mother and the grandmother were standing at the door, dry-eyed and sober, when Charlie reached the top of the hill. Very gently, oh so gently, they took their daughter and the daughter inside her from the man who’d loved them both.
“We’ll take care of her now,” they said.
The mother kissed him on his left cheek, and the grandmother kissed him on his right cheek. He nodded to them and they all knew that this was the last time they would see one another, for Charlie had work to do now.
He turned away from the house on the hill and started toward the huge frowning edifice that hid his father. His heart beat very steadily and his feet followed its cadence as he deliberately marched through the main street letting everyone there see him and the blood on his clothes.
The town constable tried to approach Charlie (he was the constable, after all, and people with blood-soaked clothing were of interest to those who would uphold the law), but Charlie only stared at the constable until that worthy lawman sputtered and backed away and suddenly remembered he had to be elsewhere at that very moment.
Charlie marched up the steps of his father’s house and knocked on the door with his bloodied hands. The door was answered by his father’s butler, and the butler’s eyes widened in surprise as he took in the young master’s appearance.
“Bring me to my father,” Charlie said.
The butler bowed his head and wondered how the young master had gotten into such a state, but it wasn’t really his place to speculate, so he followed his orders and brought Charlie to the breakfast room.
His father was reading the daily papers from Chicago (carried specially for him on the train every day) and eating toast. Of course word had already reached him of the terrible tragedy in the woods, but it was not for Charlie to know that, so when he looked up from his coffee it was with an expression of mild puzzlement.
“Charles? This is a surprise. You look a mess. Why don’t you wash up and we’ll have breakfast together.”
He said these things because he expected his child to listen and to obey, because he thought now that the slattern was dead Charlie would return to him. He didn’t see the look in Charlie’s eyes, didn’t realize that he’d lost his child forever that day. But he didn’t live long enough to regret it.
The servants in the kitchen heard the sound of a struggle, of breaking china, and then a brief, angry cry. When the maid and the footman rushed in they found the master on his back on the table with a butter knife embedded in his throat. The young master stood calmly before him and when they stared at him he said, “Take everyone in the building and get out of the house.”
It never occurred to them not to follow his orders. There was a strange resolve about him, something that shimmered on the air, and they didn’t want any part of it.
A half hour after all the servants filed out of the largest house in town they saw the smoke billowing from the windows. A moment later the young master came out on the porch and stood before the door with a rifle in his hands.
The fire brigade was called and they rushed to the house, but when they tried to climb the steps Charlie raised the rifle and told them to keep off. When they protested that they didn’t want other buildings to catch fire he told them to do what they must for those other ones but to leave his father’s house alone.
When the conflagration was at its highest and the whole town had come out to watch the spectacle of the baron’s house burning to the ground, Charlie calmly walked inside and was never seen again.
As for the mother and the grandmother, well, the town had long called them witches.
So witches they would be.
* * *
* * *
There had always been the knowledge of witch-lore in their past. Only witches would have settled on such a lonely hill near the lightning-struck tree, for people with no magic chose to stay out of its direct line of sight.
But that had been long ago, the stirring and the spells, the witchcraft and the magic. That was the work of their grandmother’s grandmother and her daughter and her daughter. The practice had mostly faded out since then, with the exception of a few household spells to help plants grow or to make the dust fly out the window instead of settling on the floor.
The magic hadn’t faded even if the practice had. The spark was in their veins, and their grief and anger fed it. The memories of all the spells of their foremothers waited on their tongues.
They knew how to raise the Dark Thing that slept in the woods beneath the lightning-struck tree, the Thing that watched for the signal from the hill. It was hungry, so hungry, and it was waiting.
It had been waiting for so long.
* * *
* * *
The spell needed blood to make the charm stick, for nothing was as powerful as blood magic. But blood they had aplenty, from their own veins and from the body of Elizabeth. There were other things that were needed, too—herbs from the garden, and spiders torn from their webs, and symbols drawn on the floor and the walls, and the silver from the ring Elizabeth wore.
They laid the remains of their daughter and their daughter’s daughter in the center of the big room where they had once laughed with her. Then the grandmother and the mother joined hands and began to chant.
The townspeople were still gathered in the center of town, watching the baron’s house burning to the ground and the baron’s son with it. When the witches began their chant all eyes turned toward the hill, for the spell carried across the air and into the woods.
The Dark Thing that lived there opened its eyes.
The people of the town huddled close to one another, for there was a chill in the air that pierced flesh and bone and fi
xed its clawed hands around their hearts.
The voices on the hill rose and fell, and the people of the town waited for the blade of the axe that loomed over them.
The mother and the grandmother were furious in their grief, and so they laid the curse upon all the town and all the descendants of those who lived there.
That all were complicit was the witches’ most fervent belief, for the people had wanted the baron and his money and it was nothing to them if he killed their daughter.
If money was what they wanted, then money they would have. The town would always be prosperous, and everyone would always have what they needed.
But every year they would lose a daughter, just as the witches had.
No family would be exempt, and no family could leave. They and their bloodlines were now tied inextricably to this land and this woods. If they tried to leave, they would find themselves returning, though they would not know why.
And to make sure the charm was firm, the witches blessed all the women of the town (and their daughters, and their daughter’s daughters, and so on until the end of time) with fertility. There would always be daughters for the sacrifice.
But the mother and the grandmother, they were too old to have more daughters, and after their daughter was gone their line was ended.
But the curse would go on and on even after the witches were gone, even when the house on the hill became an empty haunted place for a time, before another woman brave enough to live there arrived.
The children of the town forever after would huddle in sight of its blank staring windows and dare one another to touch the front door, and then they would all run back down the hill screaming.
Still, it didn’t quite look like a curse. You see, the town did prosper, that town with the house on the hill. All around them other towns withered and died, their industry drying up and moving to other places, other countries, but this town never faltered.
The Ghost Tree Page 12