Spells for the Dead

by Faith Hunter

  Back on the porch, I scooped some soil from the bucket I kept there for quick rooting and added it to the vampire tree, re-covering the roots. I also snipped off the browned end of the lavender rose’s stem and tapped the cut end into a bottle of Rootone before I set the stem into a small pot of Soulwood soil. My fingers lingered a moment on the soft petals of Occam’s gift, and my heart lightened, remembering the way he had brought it up from behind his leg.

  About half the time, roses could be rooted from single stems, though it was better to cut one fresh off the bush after the flower had withered, and the rose hip was beginning to form, and place it into willow water. I had no willow water on hand, but I figured I might have better-than-even odds, since I used Soulwood soil. I had checked and Sterling Silver was out of patent, so I could legally root it. Legally grow it. I watered the soil, gave it a boost with my own power, and placed it where I thought it might be happy.

  I hoped it rooted. I wanted a plant out of Occam’s first rose to me.

  Back inside, I didn’t see or sense or hear Esther. I hoped Mud hadn’t killed her and buried her out back.

  Or worse, fed her to the land. Or chopped her up and put her in the stew.

  The cats were hiding under my bed. The bedroom floor around them was spotless. They rushed out and jumped on the bedspread, all three of them staring daggers at me. I sighed again and said, “I’m sorry. I’ll see what I can do.”

  Jezzie sniffed at me and claimed my pillow. Torquil turned her dark head away and started to clean her nether regions, in clear disapproval. Cello mrowed, rolled over, and showed me her belly, asking for a rub. Even knowing that the belly rub request might be a ploy to give her an excuse to scratch me, I sat on the bed and rubbed her for the comfort it brought. I wasn’t a cat lover. I was a dog person. But the cats had claimed Soulwood, and that meant they had claimed me. And they had been the best of company for months, ever since the werecats had tamed them. They missed Occam in my bed. So did I. I missed his scent on my pillow, missed his cat warmth against my back in the night. But for now, the cats were my distraction and my excuse to keep from confronting Esther.

  Back in the kitchen, I turned on the new electric kettle for tea and started a pot of coffee. I also put a bottle of Sister Erasmus’ wine in the refrigerator. I seldom yearned for anything stronger than wine. Right now I understood the desire for a good stiff drink.

  I had dithered long enough. I climbed the stairs to the upper bedrooms.

  The entire upstairs had been remodeled. The four newly painted bedrooms now all opened onto the landing, and there was a full bath with divided areas: a double sink area, a dedicated shower and tub area, and a water closet, all according to the church standards, but ultramodern and sleek. Everything was white. And here again everything was lined up perfectly and everything gleamed. “Oh, Esther,” I whispered.

  My sister had been keeping a room here, for when she sat with Mud, on those rare evenings and weekends when I had a case that kept me away from home. I paid her a few dollars an hour, and while she was here, she had use of an empty room for her oversized quilting frame, a bedroom to call her own, and all the food she wanted to cook. It had worked out great on paper. Not so great in reality, as Esther had been more of a permanent guest for the last month.

  And now Mud said that Esther was essentially living here?

  I stood outside her room and debated knocking. I decided not to, because if she was asleep, I was not waking her. That made me a coward, but I could live with being a coward.

  Carefully, I turned the knob and opened her door. Esther was lying on the old iron bed’s mattress, on top of the quilt she had made. She lay on her side, her arms around her huge belly, her dress tucked discreetly around her knees, asleep. Her blond hair was braided but not bunned up; the tail was curled across the pillow she had pulled down from the top and green leaves and vines trailed across the white case from her hairline. Her fingertips were growing leaves as well, curling from her nail beds.

  Esther’s leaves were different from mine, which were very dark green with reddish petioles and veins. Esther’s were like spring maple leaves, pale and beautiful. With the baby hormones, they grew fast, faster than mine ever did.

  At the side of the bed were three suitcases and four oversized plastic tubs of quilting supplies and cloth. As if she had moved in over the last two days.

  Esther’s eyes fluttered open and she met my gaze. She had been crying, eyes red, tear-sand in the corners. We stared at each other for a while before she shoved up with her arms and let her feet fall down, until she was sitting on the bed. Her belly protruded like a huge Hubbard squash and she stuffed a pillow between her back and the iron bedstead for support. She rubbed her back the way Stella Mae’s sister had when she complained about needing lumbar support.

  “You’un have something to say?” she demanded.

  “No.” I had learned the value of silence at PsyLED.

  Her reddened eyes narrowed. “’Cause a you’un, I’ll never find a new husband.”

  The accusation cut. It wasn’t true, but it hurt all the same. I wanted to yell, throw things. But . . . that was what my sister wanted. She wanted to gain control through anger and emotion and a big fight. One I would have to apologize for afterward because she would be upset and crying and it would feel as if it was my fault. Esther manipulation.

  I didn’t do what she wanted. “Why do you need a husband?” I asked calmly.

  Esther’s face twisted into pure horror. She clamped her mouth shut.

  “Women don’t need men to take care of us,” I said. “We’re fine on our own. We can protect our own land, put out our own fires, provide for ourselves. Needing a man to be fulfilled makes him your god, not your partner.”

  Her lips turned in and she bit them closed. Tears welled in her eyes and trickled down her cheeks.

  I was speaking heresy according to the church. I knew how hard all this was on her. I understood. But her condition and her life were not my fault. I hadn’t made Esther grow leaves. I hadn’t made her what she was. Genetics had. I steeled myself against pity. “Why did Jed ask for the divorce? He knew you were growing leaves. He helped you hide them from the church up until now. What made him want out?”

  Esther wiped her face with the back of one hand, the motion reminding me of Catriona, in the jail. “He’s been talking to Jackie Jackson’s old faction. They’re making him believe lies. They say it ain’t his baby. They say I laid with a demon in the woods.”

  I wanted to laugh, but she was deadly serious. And there was the Green Knight, who was sentient or near enough to count. And who knew what a sentient tree might do with a willing tree-woman. Then I remembered the punishment given to Esther by Jackie Jackson. The thought chilled me. Terrified me, if I was honest.

  “Did you have sex with a tree-man?” I asked, my voice steady, calm.

  “No. Ain’t no such thing as a tree-man.”

  Softly, gentle as a falling feather, knowing I was trespassing into deeply personal territory, I asked, “What about Jackie Jackson? Is there any chance he’s the father?”

  “No. Not him. I had me a menses after he . . .” She stopped, her eyes turned away. She shuddered and then continued, “. . . After he punished me.” Punishment in church vernacular meant rape. “I know for sure and certain who the daddy is. I know the very day Jedidiah and me got me pregnant.” She looked down at her belly and rubbed it with the fingers of one hand, as if her stretched skin was itching and painful. Her eyes followed her leafy hand. Softer, she said, “I remember every single moment. The very minute. It was magical and wonderful.” Her face hardened. “And yet he stood up in devotions this morning and divorced me in front of the entire church, claiming I was unfaithful to him.”

  “Do you want to be married to him?”

  Esther raised her eyes to me, and I could see thoughts running around in the back of hers, chasing
each other, half-confused, half-determined. Her voice firmed. “I love him. I want him to love me. If’n he don’t, well, I reckon I’d rather be alone than be an unloved wife in a house full of loved wives.” She held my gaze as if the answer to her next question was the most important thing she had ever asked. “How . . . how did you’un do it?”

  “Get away from the church?”

  She nodded.

  “One day at a time. Just like you will, if that’s what you decide. You’ve been having trouble with Jed for a while. You’ve been here off and on for a month, grieving your loss of humanity and being afraid of being alone and uneducated with a child and no home. But unlike me, you’re not alone. You can get education. You have people who will show you how to live independently. You don’t feel strong, but you are, and so the main thing you have to do is stop grieving and stop letting him hurt you.

  “You have to start making decisions and follow through. You’re cleaning the house like a madwoman, but you’re being lazy about everything else.”

  Esther flinched. Being called lazy was the worst insult a churchwoman could be called.

  I went on. “You have to be willing to learn how to live outside the church. Being willing means learning a new way to work, a new way to live, a new way to be.”

  Esther held out her hands and whispered, “If’n I stay at the church, someone will try to drive the devil outta me for growing leaves. Someone will take me and punish me again.” Our mama had been punished, which was why I had a half-brother who wasn’t Daddy’s. Esther had suffered the same kind of punishment, which likely triggered her leaves. “Someone will kill my baby for being a devil child. The older ones will call for me and my baby to be burned at the stake.”

  “Like a witch,” I said, “but we aren’t witches.”

  “That’s what you’un say,” she said, holding up a leafy hand.

  “We’re genetic mutants, likely from being interbred for so many generations.”

  “That’s disgusting,” Esther said, but without the anger she had expressed the first time I explained about us.

  “I’ve told you about trauma, especially sexual trauma, as it relates to stimulating the secondary genetic mutations of plant-people.” Esther had been punished by a churchman, had been raped. We had talked about it, quietly, in the dark of night, after Mud went to bed. “The more violence, and the more we stay in contact with the earth, the more plant-people we become. It’s likely that pregnancy hormones have the same effect, because that’s so hard on the body.”

  Esther raised her eyes from her hands on her belly to me. “You’un got your’nself a plan for me?”

  “I’m not telling you what to do. But I have advice.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “The next step after a man has demanded divorce? The wife can demand counseling by the elders. They don’t tell us that, but it’s in the church constitution.”

  Her chin tucked in surprise. “We’uns have a constitution?” She sounded incensed. “Like with rules even the menfolk has to follow?”

  “Yeah. Not that anyone follows it. Sister Erasmus slid a copy into my wine delivery a month or so past and I spent a weekend reading it. It’s interesting.”

  “Well, I’ll be a dinosaur on Noah’s ark.”

  I chuckled quietly. “To request counseling and a hiatus in divorce proceedings, we need to be willing to tell the truth about your condition.” She looked confused, so I pointed at her hands. “The leaves. The real reason he’s declared divorce.”

  “So who would I talk to? What elders will keep that kinda secret?”

  I smiled, and it was my PsyLED smile. Not a sweet one at all. “An elder who had a devil dog in his lineage. Because they come from the same kind of inbreeding as plant-people.”

  Esther’s gaze turned inward. “Oh,” she said. “Them devil dogs . . . I never thought . . .” Silence stretched between us, and I waited, letting her think things through. Slowly, her shoulders went back. Her eyes dried. Her chin lifted. “I knew one. Lemme think on this a while. You’un made coffee? I smell it.” When I nodded, she said, “Let’s take a coffee break and eat the pumpkin bread Mama Grace baked.”

  A coffee break is what the mamas used to do midafternoon, after a long day in the garden, or preparing and canning vegetables, or bending over a sewing machine, a loom, a quilting frame. It wasn’t a break in the work load, but more a time to do something less active in the heat of the day, like snap peas, hem a dress, sew on buttons, darn socks. It had often been a time of laughter and problem solving while the young’uns were napping. It was tradition. The good kind.

  “That sounds like a good idea,” I said. “Anyone planning on going to war with the church should start with a strong cup of caffeine. Or in your case, a strong cup of decaf coffee or herbal tea.”

  “You’un take the fun outta everything,” she grumbled. But Esther followed me down the stairs, listening to my suggestions and options for her future. Before Mud came in, my elder sister and I drank our way through a pot of herbal tea and half a pot of coffee, and ate half the loaf of spicy bread, while discussing potential plans of action. Esther never lost a narrow-eyed look of deep deliberation. I had a feeling that a corner had been turned, hopefully in a positive way, though the look in her eyes was stern and calculating. Under the table, I crossed my fingers for luck, though the church said that was a sin.

  * * *

  * * *

  Mud came in the door with Cherry at her heels, chattering about the health of the greenhouse seedlings and more mature plants in the uncovered winter garden. “We’uns is got—we have turnip greens and collards and varicolored baby beets and four kinds of winter squash in the outside garden. We also got bunches of little rooted rosemary in pretty shapes like one a them bonsai trees. I think I can tie ’em up with bows and sell them at Sister Erasmus’ little shop during Christmas break.” She told Cherry to “down” on her pallet and poured herself a cup of coffee, liberally doused with cream and sugar, talking about scheduling a round of fall canning with the Nicholson women. She joined us at the table, stopped, and looked suspiciously back and forth between us. “You’uns is mighty quiet. Why’s that?”

  “She’s having coffee and I’m having steamed weeds,” Esther said.

  “We’re planning on going to war with the church,” I said.

  “That ain’t no surprise. I’m in. As long as she ain’t living with us.” Mud pointed to Esther.

  “She’ll be here a while,” I said placidly, sipping my coffee.

  Mud slammed her cup onto the table and said, “I don’t want her living here. You and me get along jist fine. She’s all, ‘Do this, and do that, and it’s my way or nothin’.’”

  I said, “Esther?”

  “I been a pain. I’m sorry.”

  Mud’s mouth turned down in the Nicholson frown. “You’re . . .” She looked at me. Sat in her chair. Brought her cup to her mouth and sipped her coffee. Set it down. “Well, that ain’t fair. I hardly got to fuss at all.” I wanted to laugh, but she went on. “Okay. The mamas would say you done gave me an apology. For what? And what you gonna do about it?”

  I hid a smile. The church was awful about most things in life, particularly where women were concerned, but one thing they were good at teaching was problem resolution. Mud seemed to have been a stellar pupil.

  “I been trying to impose order all around me,” Esther said. “According to Nell, it’s ’acause I got no control over my own life or future or marriage. Or I had no control. That’s for the apology.” She took a careful breath and wrapped her arms around her baby belly. “We’uns got potential plans for my future and a solution to our fighting. So as long as I’m here, a guest in your’un house, I promise not to try ’n’ make you’un live like I want. This is your’un house, not mine,” she repeated.

  “The animals?” Mud asked, wary.

  “The cat
s and Cherry can stay in. I don’t like it, but I don’t hafta. But. You’un clean up after the critters every single day, including the hair on the floor in the corners, and you change the litter on the back porch.”

  “Are you okay with that?” I asked Mud.

  “I don’t know. She ain’t been the reasonable type. She’s a churchwoman through and through when it comes to control and manipulation. She’s used to being taken care of, like a horse in a barn, told what to do and when and how. Being independent ain’t easy.”

  Esther sucked in a sharp breath. “That right there is mean.”

  “Maybe,” I said, “but it’s the truth. The positive part is that you won’t be facing the changes in your life alone. We’ll be here to help you.” I looked at Mud, putting steel into my gaze. “Deal?”

  “Oh, all right, dagnabbit,” Mud cursed in church-speak. “Deal. Besides, I been thinking. Jed will have to return your dowry, so maybe you can buy land to claim like Nell done.”

  “Buy land? Land of my own? Like, off the church grounds? With a house on it?”

  I had been thinking along those lines and while Esther wouldn’t have enough money to buy a house townie-style, there were other options open to her. “Why not?” I asked.

  Esther scowled, an expression I had felt on my face. It was that Nicholson scowl, as familiar as my own hand. “Ain’t no money left. Jed used the dowry to buy our’un house from the church. Maybe we’uns can . . .” A peculiar expression fell over her face.

  I didn’t know where Esther’s thoughts went, but she got up and began setting the table for supper. “Mindy, will you’un please bring in the slow cooker?” she asked.

  “Mud,” my younger sister said. “Mindy is my church name.”

  “Humph,” Esther said, severe and stern. “I done made us stew fer supper. Oh. And . . . I know it ain’t my place, but I got a dozen laying hens at my house at the church, so I second the idea of Mindy getting chickens.”