Jolene

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Le’s git loaded up an’ outa here,” Matt said to her aunt. “By noon this town’ll be a oven.”

  “Got no argument from me,” Aunt Jinny agreed, and got to her feet. Anna followed a moment later.

  And that was when the strange man came around the corner that Jolene had vanished around.

  He was big and strong and surprisingly healthy for a miner—for a miner he certainly was, given his massive physique, in a town where the only real employment was mining. Black-haired and blue-eyed, he strode down the middle of the street as if he owned it, as if he was wearing a “flash” suit and smoking a big cigar, not a collarless linen shirt, brown moleskin trousers, and bracers and smoking an old cheroot. Urged by instinct, Anna looked at him with that inner eye—

  And sure enough. There was the Glory.

  Except he had no shields, and the Glory was wrong . . . twisted somehow. Not a glowing gold, but a muddled, ugly color that actually seemed to take its strength from the poisoned earth.

  “Go in th’ store, Anna,” her aunt ordered in an undertone. Anna did not argue. She felt a fear of this man she could not rationalize but did not care to fight. She whisked just inside the Company store door and peeked around the edge of it.

  “Wall, Miz Jinny!” the man boomed. “Didn’ ’spect t’see y’all here t’day!”

  “Josh and Matt had bizness, an’ I tagged ’long,” Jinny said shortly. “Got weary of hoecake. Reckon on bread an’ pie fer a while. An’ afore y’all ask, left yer potions with word fer Cooper in th’ Company store.”

  “Good,” the man grunted. “I’ll fetch ’em later.” He moved a little, as if he was going to examine the load, but Matt moved casually to the side of the wagon, intercepting him. Matt didn’t say anything, and he wasn’t rude, but the action made it very clear he didn’t appreciate the man’s attempt to snoop in his business. “Wall, howdy, Matt,” the man said. “Josh been doin’ some work fer Cavenel?”

  “Jest delivered it,” Matt said shortly.

  The man laughed, which was scarcely an appropriate reaction to someone deliving a grave marker. “No lack’a work fer yer boy in this town, aye! Reckon plantin’ stones is easier’n plantin’ corn!”

  “Not really,” Josh replied to this singularly tactless statement.

  “Wall, wife’s expectin’ us fer dinner,” Matt interrupted.

  The man laughed again. “Niver took y’all fer hen-pecked, Matt Holcroft,” he jibed.

  “Thet’s ’cause I ain’t. What I am is hungry.” Around the corner of the door, Anna saw Matt motion to Josh. “An’ y’all’ll haveta pardon me, but I wanter get t’thet dinner.”

  The man laughed again, tossing his head back, but moved out of the way and down the street without so much as a word of farewell. After a moment, Aunt Jinny gestured to Anna, who ran out and hopped into the back of the wagon with Josh.

  Because everything about that man made her want to get out of Ducktown as quickly as she could.

  And not much longer after that, they were on their way out of town, the mule moving considerably faster than she had on the way in.

  She and Josh had made themselves tolerably comfortable seats with the straw, the bags, and the parcels. Josh cradled a blue and white pitcher in his lap with great care. Anna eyed it.

  “She’s called th’ Blue Willow pattern,” Josh said, noticing where she was staring. “Ma sets a lotta store by it. I got it fer her as a present. It’s got a purdy liddle story in the pattern. Wanter hear?”

  “A’course!” she said instantly, and he rolled the pitcher to the side so she could see the design.

  “It’s Chinee, see?” he said. She didn’t see, since this would be the first time she’d ever seen anything Chinee, but nodded. “See, here’s a palace, an’ here’s th’ willows all ’round, an’ here’s a bridge an’ th’ island it goes to. So th’ story goes, here in this palace was a Mandarin. Thassa kinda rich man like a prince. His name was So Ling. An’ he had a be-yoo-tiful daughter, name’a Kong-see, an’ he promised her as a wife t’ this fat ol’ rich man. But she went an’ fell in love with her Pa’s servant Chang. Her Pa found out ’bout it an’ built a big ol’ wall around his house t’ keep her in. Here’s th’ wall. Then he sent fer the rich man—see, there he is, a-comin’ on his boat. But Kong-see an’ Chang ran away on th’ rich man’s boat while her Pa was givin’ him dinner, an’ got t’ the island there, where my finger is, an’ they lived happy fer a while. Then her Pa found out where they was, an’ he sent them three sojers, here on th’ bridge, to cotch ’em, an’ kill Chang, an’ drag Kong-see back t’marry th’ ol’ rich man. But them Chinee gods, they got wind of what was ’bout t’happen, an’ they turned Chang and Kong-see inter these two doves up here, see ’em? An’ they flew away an’ lived up in th’ clouds with th’ gods, ferever.”

  “All thet on a pitcher!” she marveled. “Issa purdy story, y’all was right.”

  “Me an’ Pa, we allus tries t’git Ma a Blue Willow piece when we c’n, ’cause she do admire thet story,” he said. “Th’ mercantile don’t carry Blue Willow, it on’y carries Country Roses. So we gotta wait till we gets some Company scrip t’get it.” He settled the pitcher back in his lap. “This time, Pa had a liddle left over from fall when folks in town buy bacon an’ smoked hog from him, an’ Cavenel paid me most in cash an’ a liddle in scrip, an’ ’tween us we got ’nough fer the pitcher.” He grinned up at her. “Ma is a-gonna be over th’ moon. She’s been a-hankerin’ fer th’ big pitcher fer a purt long time.”

  “So, did Mistuh Cavenel like yore statchoo?” she wanted to know.

  “So much he sent over t’ the Hoppers t’ see it, an’ they come an’ Missus Hopper cried an’ right away wanted t’hev it in th’ parlor, an’ Mistuh Cavenel talked up me makin’ a liddle one outa marble.” His grin told her the result of that.

  “Boy should’a made his own bargain,” Matt grumbled.

  “An’ he’d’a got half what Cavenel got ’im,” Aunt Jinny said. “Boy’s usin’ Cavenel’s tools. Cavenel could charge ’im t’ use ’em an’ he don’t. The cut he took ain’t nothin’ compared t’ th’ deal he made. ‘Do not bind the mouths of the oxen what threshes yore grain,’ Matt Holcroft.”

  “Still—” Matt began.

  “Still, let ’im watch an’ learn afore y’all throw ’im offen th’dock t’swim.” Aunt Jinny seemed irritated, and Anna thought she knew why. That strange man—she got the feeling that her aunt felt forced to deal with him in a civil fashion, and didn’t like it one bit.

  It could just be because he was a powerful magician. Not as powerful as Jolene, but more so than Jinny.

  As if her aunt had heard her thoughts, Jinny sighed. “Sorry, Matt. Don’t aim t’be so prickly. Thet there Billie McDaran—”

  “Y’all don’t hev t’ tell me, Jinny,” Matt half-scolded. “Thet man’s mean as a rattler an’ a liar an’ a cheat, an’ cain’t nobody lay a finger on ’im on account’a he’s the Burra Burra foreman! I’m jest glad I ain’t gotta hev truck wi’ him. An’ I dunno why y’all do when y’all cain’t stand him.”

  “I ain’t doin’ it fer him, lemme put it thet way,” her aunt said, mysteriously. “So Josh, y’all c’n start a-countin’ hatchin’ chicks now, I reckon.”

  “Yes’m,” Josh said happily. “Cavenel’s a-gonna send me th’ marble too, when Mistuh Strong takes ’nother load of ingots t’ Cleveland, so we ain’t gotter go inter Ducktown fer it.”

  * * *

  Matt Holcroft took their goods all the way up to the stile over their fence so they wouldn’t have to walk. He didn’t do it with the wagon, however, which would likely not have fit down the lane. He did it with a little cart that was just big enough to hold their purchases and not more more, and looked absurd when hitched to the mule. It was so small, in fact, that he led the mule rather than driving it. They’d stopped to make a trade with Maddie Holcroft fo
r butter and cheese, two things Anna had barely tasted in her life. To Anna’s amusement, in the brief time Jinny’d been inside the Company store, she had bartered the potions she had left for two saucers of Maddie’s coveted Blue Willow, with the express purpose of trading them to her.

  Matt turned the cart and led Susie back home. That left the two of them ferrying the purchases one package at a time over the stile and up to the cabin. Anna marveled at herself. Why, before she’d left home, she could scarcely lift half a load of laundry—now she was toting entire bags of flour all the way to the cabin and stacking them too! She was beginning to feel more than well—she was beginning to feel strong, and she very much liked that feeling.

  Aunt Jinny made up a cold dinner of fresh ’maters, pickles, and cold ham and a few other odds and ends, and they sat down to it once everything had been put away, eating in silence for most of it. Finally Aunt Jinny spoke.

  “I don’ want y’all next or nigh thet Billie McDaran,” she said. “He’s as pizen as Ducktown.”

  Anna looked up from her food, licking the butter carefully from her fingers. They’d both just scraped a thin layer of it over their cornbread, making it serve as a treat at the end of the meal. “I got inside when y’all tol’ me, but I seed ’im. I reckon he didn’t see me none.” She nodded in agreement with what her aunt had ordered. “Y’all’s right, Aunt Jinny. He’s pizen. He’s got th’ Glory, but it’s all twisted wrong.”

  Her aunt pursed her lips before she spoke. “I’d’a thunk it was him as pizened Ducktown in th’ fust place, but it was pizened afore he got there. He thrives on th’ pizen, though. His heart’s as black as his hair. He needs me, on account’a th’ way he thrives on pizen. He cain’t grow nothin’. An’ he needs m’potions. So he won’t cross me. But y’all—he’d et y’all up and spit y’all out, jest ’cause he kin.” She thumped on the table with her knuckle to get Anna’s full attention. “Hear me, now! Y’all’s a purdy liddle gal. Y’all know what happens t’ purdy liddle gals with men like thet?”

  She shook her head.

  Her aunt tsked, briefly cursed her Ma for a fool and an idiot, and then told her.

  “Likely, he’ll try an’ beguile y’all. Use thet there twisted power of his t’git y’all so tangled up in his wiles thet y’all’s as bad ’bout him as yore Ma is about yore Pa. On’y, there ain’t a-gonna be a weddin’ an’ a ring; there’s gonna be a beddin’, with no weddin’. Then he’ll git tired of y’all, an’ boot y’all out, an’ there ain’t gonna be a honest man or woman thet’ll so much as look at y’all arter thet. But wust is, he’ll beguile y’all jest enuff that yore guard is down—then he’ll take y’all howsomever he fancies, an’ mebbe wust of all, they’ll be a chile out of it.”

  By this time, Anna was feeling sick and terrified, no longer strong. If the cost of staying here, if the cost of having the Glory was she had to be afraid of the likes of Billie McDaran—maybe she didn’t want to be here at all anymore!

  But that was when her aunt slapped her lightly on the cheek. “Stop thet,” she said, harshly. “Yer frettin’ afore anythin’ has happened. Now y’all listen t’me. Mebbe he knows y’all’s here, mebbe he don’t. He mighta heered somethin’, but he don’t know what y’all looks like, so right now he ain’t innerested. He’s as lazy as a hog with a full belly. So he ain’t gonna come all this way jest t’hev a gander at y’all. As long as he don’ know what a purdy liddle thang y’are, as long as he thinks y’all’s jest as homely as me, he ain’t gonna care ’bout y’all. So stop a-shakin’.”

  Anna took several deep, shuddering breaths, which didn’t help as much as she would have liked, but nodded.

  “T’other thang—y’all ain’t stronger than him yet, but y’all will be. Iffen I git my way, by th’ time he lays eyes on y’all, there won’t be a thang he c’n do t’ y’all, an’ y’all c’n snap yore fingers in his face. I aim t’make y’all inter a woman what ain’t afeerd of man nor beast.”

  Her face took on an expression of icy bitterness. “I’m a-gonna tell y’all a story I ain’t niver told no one but my Granny an’ Old Raven. Them troopers weren’t th’ on’y ones what come a-sniffin’ round our farm in th’ war. We got drifters an’ deserters sneakin’ through, lookin’ fer whatever they could steal. One on ’em caught me all alone i’ th’ woods. I shouldn’t’a been there alone, but—” she shrugged. “I wanted nuts, an’ my brother wouldn’ go with me an account’a he was a workin’. I dunno iffen the rat was Yank or Reb, or jest plain trash—he had a blue coat an’ gray trousers and stunk like a skunk, he caught me off-guard, an’ he had me on th’ ground an’ my skirt up afore I knowed he was even there.”

  Her knuckles were white as she clenched her knife, and she looked down as she paused, and slowly put the knife down.

  “I weren’t gonna abide thet. He didn’ even git as far as gittin’ his trousers down. An’ I killt him,” she said flatly. “Or, the stag I called did. Ten points through the lungs. He was a long time dyin’, an’ I watched, all of it, t’make sure he was dead. Then I called in the wild pigs, an’ left ’em ettin’ him. Thet is the kinda woman y’all’s gonna be. Y’all c’n do better’n me, iffen y’all have to, once y’all learn enough t’be in yore full power.”

  Silence for a very long time, as Anna thought this over. This was a side of her aunt she had never seen—but hadn’t she kind of . . . guessed at it?

  Do I want t’be thet kinda woman? One what don’t need a man ter keep her safe?

  “How?” she asked, finally.

  “Them liddle critters y’all been seein’? They ain’t nothin’. They’s thin’s out there what y’all c’n call thet I cain’t, what makes a bear look like a pup. Once y’all knows ’nuff, an’ y’all makes yore alliances, ain’t nothin’ an’ nobody c’n bring y’all no harm.” She looked down at the remains of her dinner, and ate it. It seemed to settle her, since she looked back up at Anna and nodded. “Mostly I want y’all t’ stay as clear’a thet snake Billie McDaran as y’all possibly kin till y’all knows thet stuff.”

  “I don’t want nothin’ t’do with him,” Anna protested. “He makes my skin crawl. When I seed him in Ducktown, what I seed make me purt near sick.”

  “He should make y’all sick. But I need y’all t’ shield ’gainst him too. An’ don’ lissen t’anythin’ he says. He’s got some hoodoo I ain’t niver seen afore, what beguiles folks. Even them as should know better.” Aunt Jinny shook her head. “Even me fer a liddle bit, afore I woke m’self outen it. It works without potions, an’ he don’t seem t’call on nothin’, he jest does it with his voice. Might be part’a thet there twisted sorta Glory he got. I’ll swear thet’s how he got the Mine Foreman job, an’ how he keeps it, given thet he don’t spend half th’ time at the mine thet he should.”

  Then she laughed sardonically and added, “An’ I guess I should be grateful, seein’ as how the less ore comes outa thet mine, the better off everybody in th’ Basin is.”

  They did the few dishes there were, then went off to the garden for harvesting, and following the harvesting, some preparation and preserving. Aunt Jinny did a lot of drying of her vegetables and fruits, especially things like corn, which she took off the cob, dried, and “parched,” and beans. But she had other ways of preserving things too—potatoes and sweet potatoes and winter squash were still holding from last year’s harvest in the root cellar, and onions stayed sweet and sound for quite a long time—so Aunt Jinny said—when you braided the leaves and hung them up in the shadow.

  That would not have been enough to distract Anna from the terrible things her aunt had told her—except that the afternoon turned out to be another lesson in magic. First, though, she partly disrobed and took off her corset, with a guilty look at her aunt, who had paid so much for it.

  But Aunt Jinny just chuckled. “I druther y’all kept thet for Sunday best, an’ even then, not till y’all sew a cover fer it,” she said. “Abby’s a good
woman, but she got no notion what farm work’s like. It ain’t like standin’ behind a store counter all day, which is all she does, on account of I know she’s got a maid a-doin’ th’ heavy housework.”

  Anna carefully folded her treasure in a bit of leftover petticoat and put it with the unsewn pieces of her winter skirts and coat. She was looking forward to sewing a cover for it, though.

  They had an overabundance of tomatoes, and Anna didn’t see nearly enough jars to preserve them all. But Aunt Jinny instructed her to quarter enough to fill the sieve and leave the pieces to drain into a bucket. When enough juice had been drained, her aunt poured the juice into a pitcher, replaced the bucket, and sat down next to the bucket on one of the stools.

  “Watch,” she said, and sketched two signs in the air over the sieve full of quartered fruits, and let Glory drift down onto the sieve. And the quartered tomatoes began to shrivel.

  Within moments they were hard little nuggets, as dry as rocks and the color of dried blood, and the bucket beneath them had a couple of inches of water in it. Aunt Jinny tipped the tomato nuggets out into a basket and told Anna to quarter up some more tomatoes, while she poured the water into the water barrel next to the sink. “This here’s the purest water y’all ever will find,” Jinny said. “There jest ain’t nothin’ in it, ’cause I kept ever’thang else in the ’maters. It’s wuth savin’.”

  “What’d y’all jest do?” Anna asked, industriously quartering fruit.

  “Simplest thang we c’n do. I tol’ the water t’leave.” Her aunt chuckled at Anna’s expression. “Water don’ like earth. Wall, thet stands t’reason. Even mud, let it set even without usin’ th’ Glory, an’ th’ water’ll rise an’ th’ earth’ll settle. I jest made thet happen fast an’ completely. Same thing’d happen iffen we sliced them ’maters thin an’ left the slices t’dry in the sun, but these nuggets store easier, an’ nothing I make in th’ winter needs sliced ’maters.”