Compulsion

by Martina Boone

  The yunwi and the Fire Carrier and trying to find Cassie’s lost fortune? They all seemed like problems now, but Barrie would find solutions.

  Pausing at the bottom of the terrace steps, Barrie spotted Pru picking up the mammoth blue bowl from beside the three-tiered fountain. Despite its size, Pru lifted the bowl easily, braced it against her hip, and lugged it toward the far edge of the maze, where roses and carefully tended flowers edged the boxwood hedges.

  Barrie went to join her. “What’s that bowl for?”

  “Cuttings.” Pru lowered the bowl to the ground and knelt beside it to trim a rose from the bush with her pruning snippers.

  Barrie lifted an eyebrow and swept a glance down the neat rows of blossoms along the hedgerows. There wouldn’t be a single flower left if Pru filled a bowl that size every day the garden was open to the public.

  “Exactly how many tables are there in the tearoom?” she asked.

  Pru sucked in her cheeks. She studied the bowl as if she had never seen it before, then slowly raised her eyes to meet Barrie’s gaze. “The bowl isn’t only for cuttings. I also use it to leave nuts, fruit, and honey for the yunwi.”

  “That’s what you meant by appeasement?”

  “It doesn’t matter what I call it, so long as it keeps the spirits happy. I feed the yunwi, and they maintain the garden. That’s one less thing I have to worry about.”

  “Is it? If the yunwi are so happy, why are they taking the house apart?”

  “I don’t know!” Hunching her shoulders, Pru looked away.

  Barrie blew out a breath of exasperation. “I’m sorry, Aunt Pru. I don’t understand any of this. How can you be afraid of the Fire Carrier and not the yunwi, when he’s basically only here to guard them?”

  “The fact that he locked them up doesn’t mean he’s necessarily any better than they are.” Pru used the green-handled snippers to gesture around the garden. “Look around. How could I possibly keep up with all this by myself? Daddy fired the help after Lula left. He holed up in the library until he died. Watson’s Landing started to fall apart, and no matter how hard I worked, I couldn’t keep up. I’d come out here in the evening and eat a sandwich while I did the weeding. Then one night, I was too tired to eat. I came back the next morning, and the sandwich was gone, and so were all the weeds.” Her chin rose and her eyes grew defiant. “I suppose that’s the bottom line. The yunwi have never bothered me. They were willing to help me, and Daddy wasn’t.”

  Daddy sounded like a piece of work.

  For the first time Barrie took inventory of the garden: the gravel paths unsullied by weeds, hedges neatly trimmed, lawns manicured and unmarred by a single leaf. Everywhere flowers bloomed.

  Her aunt and her mother really were alike. Pru had made her peace with the yunwi and taken refuge in the garden, never mind what happened on the rest of the property. Lula had hidden inside the house, inside herself, inside her pain.

  Pru seemed to be finished talking. She settled down to work with her back turned to Barrie, and her humming and the snick of the shears and the shush of the river all combined into a lulling rhythm. Barrie was too tired to dig for information anymore. It was easier to lose herself in the simple, repetitive task of cutting flowers, and not to argue.

  It was only after she had been lost in thought awhile that she noticed the shadows skittering at the periphery of her vision. They vanished when she turned her head, and returned when she went back to the flowers. More curious than worried, Barrie sat back on her heels, pretending to concentrate on cutting flowers. Sure enough, the shadows sprang back to life. As long as she didn’t look at them, they danced and swayed in time to Pru’s melancholy humming. Watching them, Barrie didn’t see the snake until her hand was nearly on it. She shrieked and scrambled back.

  The snake slithered deeper into the lilies and stopped with a snip of tail exposed.

  Appearing beside Barrie, Pru patted her on the shoulder. “It’s only a rat snake. You scared it as much as it scared you.”

  “I highly doubt that.” Barrie removed a glove and wiped the sweat dampening her hairline.

  “It never hurts to be cautious. Just because that one was harmless doesn’t mean it couldn’t have been poisonous. There are copperheads, water moccasins, even rattlers around here. The dangerous ones mostly have triangular heads and elongated pupils. You’ll learn to tell them apart soon enough.”

  Barrie had no intention of getting close enough to look any snake in its eyes.

  The snake shimmied the rest of the way into the clump of lilies, and from there rustled away beneath the hedge, presumably to chase mice somewhere else. Assuming there were mice to chase. So far, Barrie had seen only birds, squirrels, and insects—including a few bird-size mosquitos—and, of course, the fat, pink earthworms the peahens were always chasing. She’d heard frogs from the marsh and seen the nearly human-shaped footprints left by raccoons—or maybe that was the yunwi, for all she knew.

  Barrie raised her eyes to the shadows darting across the green expanse of lawn to the edge of the woods. She tried not to focus on the pull coming from somewhere amid the trunks and tangled underbrush, but the more she tried not to feel it, the more she felt the compulsion calling her from deep within the trees. She sat back on her heels.

  “Leave those woods alone. I can see you looking at them.” Wiping her forehead with the back of her wrist, Pru left a smudge of dirt behind.

  Barrie struggled to spool in her awareness, the way the Fire Carrier spooled the flames after they’d been spread across the water. “Don’t you feel the draw from in there, Aunt Pru? How can you not feel it?”

  “Feel what?” Eight’s voice came from a few yards away.

  “Nothing.” The denial was automatic, uttered before Barrie remembered she didn’t have to hide her gift from him. Or from anyone else on Watson Island. It was too new a feeling to provide much relief.

  She stared at Eight resentfully. She hadn’t heard the growl of his car or the slap-slap of his flip-flops, but that was because he was wearing rubber-soled boat shoes. He needed to wear a cowbell around his neck to warn her when he came over. And why did he and Seven worry about someone sneaking in through the front gate, when the two of them, or anyone else for that matter, could walk up from the river anytime they liked?

  Eight’s green eyes gleamed with amusement. “I came to invite you out on the boat. I promised Dad I’d pick up steaks for dinner tonight, so I’m heading into town.” He turned to Pru. “You need any groceries from the farmers’ market?”

  “I’d love to save Mary a trip. I’ll make you a list.” Pru flicked a warning glance from Barrie to the woods and tugged off her gloves.

  “What was that about?” Eight asked, watching Pru hurry toward the house.

  Barrie started to say something biting about how he should know what Pru was thinking, but it wasn’t worth the argument. “Long story,” she said.

  He studied her a moment. “I’ve got time if you want to tell me. I’d hoped you’d be done being mad at me about the Beaufort gift.”

  “I’m not mad.” Barrie started off after Pru.

  Although, suddenly, she was. Of course she wanted to tell him what Pru had said, but she wanted him to ask because he wanted to know, not because she wanted to tell him.

  “How can I tell what’s real between us when you are always eavesdropping on what I want?” she asked. “If I can’t keep anything private from you, I’m not sure we can be friends. That’s not an equal relationship.”

  “Knowing why someone wants something is always more interesting than knowing that they want it. I can’t know the why unless you choose to tell me.”

  Barrie stopped on the path and turned to face him. “So share one of your secrets. What’s the most important thing you want? And tell me why you want it.”

  His eyebrows dropped, and his mouth opened and closed without a word. Barrie waited. But when Pru came out of the house with her list, Eight practically loped off to meet her.

 
Barrie’s hands curled into balls of frustration. Eight could have given Barrie an answer. Any answer. Instead he’d chosen to avoid the question. The Beaufort gift would never give her that luxury. Eight would always know what she wanted. Just once, someday, it would be nice for them to have a conversation that didn’t devolve into her wanting to shout at him.

  He and Pru met Barrie on the path, and she snatched the grocery list from him and stuffed it into her pocket. She marched toward the dock.

  “Come on. Don’t be like this.” Eight kept pace beside her.

  “Then stop using your Beaufort gift.”

  “Stop in general?” He raised his brows. “Or stop using it on you?”

  Barrie considered that a moment. “Can you stop? Because Pru claims she quit using the Watson gift—but then, she says her gift was never as strong as Lula’s. And mine got stronger when my mother died.”

  “It’s more of a first-born thing. My sister still sees what people want, but it’s easier for her to decide if she wants to act on what she knows. I have a harder time not giving in to people. It’s a constant battle for me, and I think it’s even worse for my dad.”

  “Exactly.” Barrie nearly sighed in relief that he understood. “Pru doesn’t want me to use the gift, but the compulsion just gets stronger if I try to ignore it. She doesn’t understand what that’s like. The woods, a drawer in the library, the closed-off wing upstairs—the pull keeps getting more intense. I can’t imagine living like this for years or even months.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  Barrie ignored him. “My grandfather told Pru and Lula the gift is evil,” she said.

  “What do you think?” he asked in a neutral tone.

  The crushed white shells on the path were blinding in the full morning light, which made it all the more strange to see how the shadows chased one another. Barrie raised her eyes to the river, where the dock and the tall reeds gave way to a channel of coursing water.

  “You may as well ask if a snake is evil because it’s venomous,” she said. “Is it wrong for the snake to defend itself or kill to eat? Like you said, the why always matters. We can use our gifts badly, or we can use them well.” That was even more true for Eight than for her.

  “Are we still talking generalities, or about you and me specifically?”

  Barrie shrugged, curious to see what he would answer if she didn’t specify.

  “It’s hard to choose not to help someone when I know what they want,” he said, “but what I decide defines the kind of person I want to be. What people want isn’t always good for them—or for other people.”

  The path and lawns sloped toward the water, and the shadows playing at the edges of Barrie’s vision seemed more agitated the nearer they came to the dock. She hadn’t been down to the river yet. From there, the old Watson and Beaufort rice fields sprawled to her right on both banks, mirror images in tangles of thick, green foliage. Alligator territory.

  Downstream, the broken columns of Colesworth Place rose like clenched fists against the sky, while behind them puffed-up McMansions marked where the Colesworth fields used to lie. Maybe that was proof enough that the Watson gift was necessary. Without it, would there be enough money to keep Watson’s Landing from being parceled off into tiny lots?

  Barrie cast Eight a sidelong glance. “Did you know Pru leaves food out for the yunwi every night?”

  Eight stopped on the dock. “What? Why?”

  “So you know about them too. And you didn’t think to mention that last night either.”

  “That’s not the point. Why is she feeding them?”

  “Because they help her in the garden. On the other hand, they also seem to be taking the house apart, which makes no sense. According to what Cassie said, the Fire Carrier is supposed to stop them from doing that—”

  “ ‘According to Cassie’ being the operative phrase. Nobody knows much about the yunwi.”

  “Somebody has to know something. Will you help me? Ask your dad, or look up ‘yunwi’ on the Internet? I would do it myself, but Pru doesn’t have a computer, and I don’t have my phone.”

  Eight read her for a moment. “If I say I will, can you promise you won’t do anything stupid?”

  Barrie bristled. “Stupid?”

  “Hunting for answers where you shouldn’t.” He strode toward the boat as if he knew he had made her mad and was getting out of firing range.

  She stepped out onto the long, floating portion of the dock. The boards swayed and the water flowed through the rushes all around her. Apart from one summer of lessons, Barrie had never learned to swim. And while Eight’s boat looked bigger than it had from the balcony, it rocked precariously beneath her feet as Eight helped her on board.

  He dug a life vest out of the seat compartment. “Here, put that on,” he said. “And would you grab a couple of Cokes from the cooler in the cabin while I untie the dock line?”

  The sun-bleached vest smelled of fish and salt. Barrie buckled herself into it before she leaned into the tiny cabin and rummaged in the cooler. Icy condensation stiffening her fingers, she brought up the two Cokes as Eight jumped in. The boat pitched with the sudden movement, and she had no way to hold on.

  Eight set down the can she handed him. “You doing all right?”

  “Fan-damn-tastic.” She settled herself on the bench.

  Smiling faintly, he focused all his attention on her another moment before ducking under the horizontal arm of the mast to settle beside the motor. He pulled the cord, one long, sharp movement that made his muscles flex. How had Barrie not realized how strong he was? The motor sputtered and spat water before finally kicking in.

  She hadn’t seen the boat under sail yet. She wasn’t sure if she was disappointed not to see it now, either.

  “No point trying to go without the motor when the wind comes straight over the bow like this,” Eight said, reading her again. “You’d spend the whole time ducking while we tacked—turned—to keep the sails full. Which is what makes the boat go. Sailing, get it? There’s a reason they call that a boom.” He grinned and pointed to the arm extending off the mast.

  “Go ahead. Laugh.” Barrie tugged on her life vest strap to make it tighter. “I’ve been on a boat exactly once before this.”

  It wasn’t until she looked down that she realized how much her hands were shaking at the memory of her mother’s funeral, of the boat rising and falling in the swells beneath the Golden Gate Bridge. Was it only a week ago that she had leaned over the side and done her best not to throw up as she’d scattered Lula’s ashes? She slid her hands beneath her thighs. This wasn’t Lula’s funeral. Lula’s ashes were long gone, drifting somewhere in the Pacific, a continent, a lifetime away.

  “I thought you wanted to come with me.” Eight’s tone went flat. “I know you did.”

  “I do.”

  Worry and hope stirred in Eight’s eyes. He didn’t move, but he suddenly seemed closer. Closer, the way he had been in the parking lot when he had almost kissed her. Barrie turned to look out across the water to break the spell.

  “You’re exasperating sometimes, you know that?” Eight said. “Also, I’ve been sailing my whole life. You’re perfectly safe.”

  “Which is exactly what someone always says in the movies just before the disaster hits.”

  “This isn’t a movie, and it happens to be true. Anyway, the river isn’t deep. You can trust me.”

  Barrie turned her face into the wind and the fine spray kicking up from the bow. The chug of the motor drowned the shush of the river. Eight steered out into the current and turned the boat downstream.

  Like a switch turned from off to on, a sudden ache of loss hit Barrie, along with a sharp pain in her head. She looked back at the dock and house, waiting for the pressure to abate. It didn’t, though. Come to think of it, it had subsided yesterday only when she and Eight had returned back to Watson’s Landing. Unlike her normal reaction to a lost object, the pull and the headache hadn’t diminished with distance
. Instead, like now, they had grown stronger, and no amount of rubbing at her temples released the tension.

  She tried not to panic. There had to be a reasonable explanation.

  They passed the Colesworth dock, and she looked up the low hill to the eight jagged columns. Set farther back, the ordinary two-story house where her cousins lived was overshadowed by the size and eeriness of the ruins.

  She distracted herself by kicking her feet against the bench. “Do you suppose there could really have been something valuable buried there all these years?” she asked.

  “Why not?”

  “How can they know it’s there and not know where to find it? Isn’t it more likely that whatever valuables they had were looted by the Yankees?”

  “Listen to you, sounding all Southern already.” Eight laughed as Barrie rolled her eyes, and in the sun and wind he looked like the boy she had seen playing with his dog across the river that first day. It was only now that she realized she hadn’t seen him that carefree since.

  “Treasure hunting is practically a Southern pastime,” he said. “Seems like half the families in Georgia and the Carolinas have ancestors who buried the family jewels and silver when they knew Sherman’s army was heading in their direction. If the men were killed and only children or women or slaves survived to tell the story, exactly where the stuff was hidden never got passed along. How something might have gotten lost at Colesworth Place isn’t what worries me. I’m more concerned with what happens if there’s nothing for you to find. Don’t kid yourself. Wyatt came by last night for a reason. If he’s that eager for you to find their lost fortune, what’s he going to do when you don’t?”