by R. K. Ryals
In the Land of Tea and Ravens
By R.K. Ryals
Copyright © Regina K. Ryals, 2014
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Acknowledgements
Writing a book is a lot like making a pot of tea. You start by finding the right mix before measuring it and heating the water. Once it’s finished, you let it steep a while, and then you drink it slowly one sip at a time. There are a lot of people involved in this mix that I want to thank. To my husband, who is diligently behind me in everything I do. To my children, because you are my life. To my sisters, who help inspire me every day. To Audrey Welch, because without you, tea would taste a lot more bland. I love you. To Christina Silcox, because sharing tea and this journey with you has made it so much richer. I adore you. To Melissa Ringsted, because we have taken so many journeys together, and because I’ve realized over time that I’m a “but” girl. I know you’ll understand this. To Eden Crane, who gave this book its absolutely brilliant and intriguing cover. You are impressively beautiful and talented. To Melissa Wright, because I’m not sure when this journey became so personal for us, but it’s created a lasting friendship I couldn’t live without. To everyone who supports these books, I love you. To Bree High. Elizabeth Kirke, Whitney Deboe, Ashley Morgan, Alicia Lane Kirke, Jessica Johnson, Lisa Markson, Nanette Bradford, Katherine Eccleston, Ashley Ubinger, Beth Maddox, Vicky Walters, Katy Austin, Amy McCool, Julia Roop, Pyxi Rose, Alexis O’Shell, Anne Nelson, Jessie de Schepper, Derinda Love, Jodi O’Brien, Merisha Abbott, Tina Donnelly, and so many, many more. All of you truly inspire me! And to the fans: you make every day worth it. Your words and your kindness mean so much. I can’t thank you enough for reading. It truly means the world. Sharing the love of reading one book at a time! From my heart to yours!
To my grandmother, because you taught me that there is nothing in this world more potent than a little tea. To Melissa Ringsted, because I know life often puts us in a dark place and leads us down impossible roads. Yet, at the end of each path, there is always a new beginning. To my readers, because sharing tea is often better than drinking it alone.
We had a kettle; we let it leak: Our not repairing made it worse. We haven’t had any tea for a week... The bottom is out of the Universe.
~Rudyard Kipling~
~1~
Once upon a time, in a kingdom far, far away, in a land quite similar to our own, there lived a poor merchant, his humble abode next to the sea. The merchant had three daughters. His two eldest were beautiful and talented. The youngest was not as lovely as her sisters, but she was kind. She was not gifted, but she had a certain affinity for tea …
~The Tea Girl~
It started with a ceramic coffee cup, the handle too big for her hands, a small place in the top chipped away. It was a well-used cup, the color faded by time. There was nothing special about it, nothing remarkable. It was a plain brown mug, thick and comfortable when held.
It was simply a cup, old and empty. Cold and alone.
It began and ended with a cup.
The sun was just beginning to rise when she approached the house, the hot Mississippi wind beating at her long, thin cotton skirt and white tank top. Her long, mousy brown hair was piled on the top of her head, tendrils of it clinging to her neck.
It was simply a cup.
A rotund man with thinning hair and a sour face climbed down tan brick stairs, a handkerchief clutched in his hand. Occasionally he swiped his forehead with the cloth, his cheeks flushed by the heat.
“It’s going to be a scorcher today,” the man murmured.
The young woman didn’t answer him. Her eyes were glued to a small brown table sitting next to a whitewashed rocking chair, the paint peeling off of it. On the table sat a plain brown coffee mug.
It was simply a cup.
“There ain’t much left,” the man added. He waved at the house. “There’s a bad termite problem. It’s going to have to be torn down.”
Once again, the woman didn’t answer. She didn’t care about the house. There were memories there, of course. Old ghosts that floated in and out of the scene. Spirits only the girl would understand. Memories. Old memories.
She saw only the cup.
“You can take whatever you’d like. No reason to lock the place up.”
When she didn’t reply, the man simply left, muttering something about an ungrateful generation before climbing into his dusty black Altima and driving away. The car threw up dirt, turning the golden morning cloudy, the sun burning through fog to shine down on wilted, brown fields, old sheds, and flowers growing wild in an overgrown garden.
Her fingers touched the mug, her hands gripping it.
“Talk to me,” she whispered.
Her eyes fell closed, a thousand emotions descending, cloaking her. It made her thin shoulders shake, her wavy hair growing curlier in the expanding heat. Birds whistled at her, the heavy scent of honeysuckle almost suffocating in the thick, humid air. Moisture beaded up along her brow and rolled slowly down the side of her face.
It should have been a simple cup, but it spoke a thousand words, said a million things. The woman who owned it was as existent in this moment as she had been in life. The silence was louder than a scream, the quiet full of murmured words that would never be spoken aloud again.
“Talk to me,” she repeated.
The cup was hot in her hands, her palms having heated it.
Here, the cup said, it’ll make you feel better. There’s nothin’ more potent than a little tea.
Tea. It had been Old Ma’am’s cure-all for everything. It had silenced coughs, fevers, and broken hearts. Tea. It cured it all.
The young woman sat on the edge of the rocking chair, her hands still gripping the mug, her back falling against the old wood. Creak, the chair said.
Back and forth. Back and forth.
The girl’s eyes lifted, her gaze falling on a long dirt road, the sun highlighting Dogwood trees and hanging willows. Across a field full of waist-high grass, another house sat, the two level home having been owned by the same family for generations. It sported new paint the color of a robin’s egg, the wrap-around porch recently whitewashed.
The cup in the woman’s hands felt too empty.
Listen closely, m’dear, the cup said. There’s a whole universe inside of this old ceramic mug. It’s comforted many a soul.
She waited for the comfort now.
A low rumble filled the air, dirt rising as laughter filled the morning. Distant growling machines chased away the birds, the roaring sound bleeding into the silence.
Tall grass bent as three four-wheelers careened into view, the ATV’s staying to old paths and trails that swept from the house across the field to the older condemned house where the young woman sat now.
The riders slowed when they saw her, one four-wheeler breaking free of the rest. The young man waved the others on, his forehead creased as he shaded his eyes against the sun.
“You a ghost?” he called.
He was a handsome man, the T-shirt he wore missing the sleeves. They’d been cruelly cut away, leaving the fabric frayed. The sun brought out auburn highlights in otherwise plain brown hair, the front a little long. He had a strong nose, his face tanned. A large tribal tattoo covered one bicep, his muscles tensing as he brought his four-wheeler to a stop just below the porch.
“You don’t look like a ghost,” he said as he switched off the ATV.
The girl didn’t answer him. He noticed she had hazel eyes
, the color more brown than green in the sun. It was the kind of brown that reminded him of hot chocolate in winter. She couldn’t be much older than twenty, but there was an entire world painted behind those doe-like eyes.
He gestured at the robin egg house beyond. “Grayson Kramer,” he introduced. “My family owns the house across the way. Do you need help?”
The girl’s gaze met his, her hands clutching the coffee mug in her palms until her knuckles turned white. If she’d been strong enough, her grip would have shattered the cup.
“She once said the world could be cured by a sip of tea,” the woman whispered. Her gaze fell to the cup. “Just one drop of warmth, and there’d be no reason to hate or to hurt.”
His gaze followed hers to the mug.
“Must have been a potent cup of tea,” he teased.
Grayson thought he saw a flickering smile, but it was gone as quickly as it had come. The girl was too young to look so troubled.
“Do you think she was crazy?” the girl asked.
The question threw him, and Grayson sat taller, his blue gaze moving to the house beyond her shoulder. Broken glass and dark, white shrouded furniture stared back at him. It was the perfect haven for ghosts. A sense of unease traveled down his spine. The girl had never volunteered her name. She was simply a lonely looking stranger with wide, soulful eyes, a small nose, and hair that took up entirely too much room on her head. She was too corporeal to be a ghost.
“The woman who lived here?” Grayson inquired.
He hadn’t grown up in the area. His parents owned a home just north of the Gulf Coast, but they’d visited his grandparents often in the summer, and he knew the area well enough. A twenty-five-year-old nomad, as his parents liked to call him, Grayson was a jack of all trades, taking driving, mechanic, construction, and welding jobs wherever he liked before moving on to something different. He’d had quite a bit of trouble with the law, and he’d chosen to retreat to the country. His grandfather’s health had declined over the years, and he’d come to north Mississippi to help him with his land.
The girl stared at him.
Grayson cleared his throat. There was something about the girl’s gaze that disconcerted him, as if she saw something no one else could see. Maybe she could. Ghosts could do anything.
“I’ve heard things about the woman,” he said finally, “but I didn’t know her. She died recently, I understand.”
The girl never blinked, her fingers slowly caressing the cup in her hands.
“She wasn’t crazy,” the girl mumbled fiercely.
Grayson’s sense of unease grew. “Can I call someone for you?” he asked.
The young woman inhaled, her eyes falling shut. She rocked slowly. Creak, the chair said.
Awkward silence passed between them. Leaving seemed wrong, but staying seemed like an intrusion somehow.
“If you’re okay …” Grayson began uneasily.
His gaze was drawn to her face. She hadn’t seemed a remarkably beautiful woman when he’d stopped in front of the house, but she’d transformed, her features suddenly ethereal and distracting.
The roaring sound of incoming four-wheelers broke his trance. His grandfather was too weak to do much on the farm he’d spent years expanding, so Grayson had hired hands to help him. Daniel Stevens and Freddie Graham were both young men, the money from the hired work helping Daniel pay for college while it helped Freddie feed a young, unexpected family.
“Everything okay?” Daniel called out.
The girl’s eyes opened, her gaze distant. Standing, she clutched the mug to her chest, the brown cup clashing badly with her dust-speckled tank top.
“Lyric,” she breathed, her graze dropping to Grayson’s. “Lyric Mason.”
With that, she sauntered down the stairs, a floral scent tickling Grayson’s nose as she swept by him, her gypsy-like skirt billowing around her ankles.
“Lyric,” Grayson repeated under his breath, his gaze trailing her. She moved slowly and gracefully, the land surrounding her embraced her disappearing figure. There was a small car in the distance, an old Ford Tempo that looked a little worse for wear.
“You sure you don’t need any help?” he called after her.
She kept walking.
The droning sound of four-wheelers drowned out Grayson’s thoughts.
“Who was that?” Daniel Stevens asked.
Freddie came to a stop beside him. “Old Ma’am’s granddaughter, I think. I heard tell she was in town.”
Grayson glanced at him. “Old Ma’am?”
Freddie shielded his eyes, watching as Lyric climbed into her car. “The woman who lived here. She was bat shit crazy. It’s hereditary in that family.”
Grayson turned the key in his four-wheeler but left it idling, his gaze taking in the thrown up dust left by the doe-eyed girl’s vanishing car. His brows creased. A sad woman clutching a ceramic coffee mug.
“The woman who lived here was Gretchen Miller, wasn’t she? The old Miller property?” Grayson queried.
Freddie shrugged. “I only ever knew her as Old Ma’am. Nuts in the head, but a grand storyteller. Kids loved her.” He drove off then, his ATV rambling over ruts in the road. Daniel followed.
Grayson’s eyes wandered back to the house. A hot breeze worked its’ way through the area, lifting cream-colored curtains now yellowed with age. Ivy climbed up the wood-paneled walls and edged through the broken windows, the leaves clutching at the glass. Pine straw lined the cement porch, and second level shutters hung askew. It was alive, this house.
Eyes seemed to watch Grayson as he drove away, the feel of it heavy and warm on his back. The South, no matter what generation, was steeped in mystery, superstition, and folklore. As outrageous as it sounded, especially with the loud droning ATV, Grayson could have sworn he heard the rocking chair behind him. Back and forth. Back and forth. Creak, the chair said. Creak.
~2~
The poor merchant was in a desperate state. His only hope was in marrying his daughters to rich men. It so happened that the king of the realm was looking for a wife …
~The Tea Girl~
Grayson Kramer tugged his shirt over his head, leaving his muscled chest bare and facing a mirror hanging above a mahogany vanity. It had been a long day, the haying in the fields beyond his grandfather’s house having taken longer than they expected.
Reaching back, he rubbed his shoulders wearily, his gaze going to his bedroom window, to the way the warm night breeze blew lace curtains against whitewashed wood. The sun hadn’t completely set, leaving a trail of gold sitting between the earth and the dark sky above. There were no clouds. Stars sparkled, a moon that wasn’t quite full but also nowhere near crescent hanging just above the gold.
His bedroom door creaked.
“You’ll be eat up by bugs if you don’t close that window,” his grandmother’s voice chided.
Grayson’s gaze swung back to the mirror. Blue eyes stared back at him, his tanned torso lined by scars. His grandmother, Mildred Kramer, stood beside him, her gaze meeting his in the glass. She was a short woman, his grandmother, with silver hair and a face lined by stories. She squinted at him through a pair of dark-rimmed glasses, her blue eyes so similar to his own.
Her gaze traced the scar that ran from his collarbone to just below his breast. “How long you plan on hidin’ out here?” she asked him.
There was no pity in her voice, nothing except blunt curiosity.
Grayson’s gaze dropped, his fingers pulling hastily on one of the vanity’s drawers before drawing out an old black T-shirt.
He tugged it on. “I’m not hiding.”
Mildred snorted. “Can’t lie to a woman who has mothered six children, boy. That ship sailed long ago.”
Grayson’s lips twitched, but he didn’t answer.
Mildred’s hand found his shoulder. “You made a mistake, and you paid for it. You’ve got to quit punishin’ yourself.”
His jaw clenched, his gaze going back to the window. Across the overg
rown fields edging their property, the old Miller house sat like an eerie sentinel, the gold blush behind it highlighting the decaying wood.
Moving to the casement, Grayson pulled the curtain aside, his back tensing as his gaze searched the night. The Miller house distracted him, his body drawn to it. It was a magnetic pull that made the scar on his chest throb.
He glanced at his grandmother. “There was a young woman on the Miller property today. Freddie says maybe a granddaughter of the woman who lived there?”
Mildred tensed, her chin lifting. “Mayhap she won’t come back. It’d be best if she didn’t.”
Grayson hadn’t expected that response, especially from his grandmother.
He watched her. “You know her then? I’ve never known you to be callous.”
She avoided his gaze. “They’re trouble.” Her gaze found the window and then dropped again. “The whole lot of ‘‘em are trouble.” She stared hard at Grayson. “You stay away from them, you hear? You stay away. They’ll strip your soul bare and leave you to the devil.”
Grayson frowned. “They?”
Mildred’s lips went white. “The females in that family. All of them. They’re nothin’ but trouble.”
She walked out of the room then, leaving Grayson staring after her. Mildred’s shoulders slumped as she made her way down the stairs just beyond his door. There were secrets there, secrets that weighed her down.
Grayson’s gaze strayed once more to the window. The night had swallowed the house beyond the field, the darkness having eaten the gold dusk. Crickets and frogs sang, their song so loud it drowned out the silence. A breeze heavy with honeysuckle and magnolia tickled his nose and made humid condensation dance on his skin. Fireflies pricked the blackness beyond, their glow quick and fleeting.
The night was too much for Grayson. It would forever be too much. It would forever be filled with images he’d never be able to forget, pain he’d never be able to let go of.