by Kenny Soward
Marching on, they were accosted by a swarm of mosquitoes and gnats, and Lonnie found himself too distracted by swatting at them to care about much else. They seemed to come from everywhere and attack him all at once. The ground seemed to move and shift beneath his feet, bushes stretching across his path and fallen tangles of branches suddenly in his way when they hadn’t been there before.
And whenever he shook his head to clear his vision, everything looked normal again.
The gang trudged on, crashing through the underbrush one agonizing step at a time, everyone consumed with trying to keep up with the hill witch. It wasn’t until a half hour later that the witch’s voice jolted them out of their brooding march.
“We’re here.”
Lonnie stood straight, wobbling from exhaustion, and looked around. The woods had thinned out some, and he couldn’t see too far in any direction. There were certainly no signs of a house, so this must be the edge of her property or something.
In the distance, he heard rushing water.
Torri waited until they got caught up, scrutinized their sweaty faces with bemusement, then angled off toward the right, beckoning them to follow.
The sounds of frolicking water grew louder and louder, until it was a deafening din. The ground dipped, and the air cooled noticeably. Not just cool, but crisp. Fresh.
And then they were standing atop a wide boulder, looking across at a small but miraculous waterfall. Probably a hundred feet high, the water poured over the top in a turbulent wave, breaking against an outcrop where it split into into three streams and fell like long, silvery hair. Those three streams converged on a second outcrop and tumbled down into a crystal clear pond.
If he hadn’t already been witness to Gruff’s Arboretum, Lonnie might’ve been completely blown away by the beauty of the place. Still, he looked down upon the magnificent view with more than just a little awe, and it was fun to see the others’ jaws drop at the sight. Crash took in a big breath of the misty air. Jedi crouched and peered wondrously down at the waters. Even the whorchals were stupefied.
Only Makare stood stiffly with her hands behind her back, one leg cocked. Her eyes gleamed as the sun projected a rainbow above the water.
Where the falls struck, tiny ripples radiated all the way to a shore covered by short, soft grass. Some places, where it looked like someone often stood, it was a little muddier. A fallen tree limb cut across one small section, and the surrounding rocks were covered with moss.
Lonnie glanced at Torri. She wore a genuinely pleased smile at the gang’s awe.
After a while, she said, “Y’all can go down to the pond’s edge and get washed up. I don’t recommend getting in and swimming the first time. It can be a little overwhelming for some.”
Lonnie had no idea what that meant, but he thought it might be smart to heed her warning. He came down off the rock, removing his jacket and tossing it on the ground, and squatted at the water’s edge.
“Can we drink it?” Crash said, taking off his old T-shirt and tossing it on the ground.
Torri nodded slowly. “No more than two handfuls, if you please.”
Lonnie hardly thought two tiny draws from the pond would quench his thirst. He made a cup with his hand and dipped it in. The water was as clean and fresh as he thought it would be. He drew it out, placed his hand to his lips, and sucked it down. It went down cool and clean, washing the dust and dirt and pollen out of his throat. It hit his stomach, a chill radiating out through his body to the tips of his fingers and toes.
He took another drink and instantly understood what Torri meant about not taking too much. It certainly drove off the weariness that had crept in during the long climb through the hills. But more than that, it left some kind of raw energy coursing through him. Almost like he wanted to jump up and sprint through the woods right along with the deer and foxes and hares.
It was like a mental injection of pure energy. Energy, and a type of daunting optimism. He thought about Selix, all the mistakes he’d made this past year. How he’d failed the gang. How he’d let Selix die…
That’s when he saw the curse of water.
Truths became painfully evident. All that time locked in the van, robbing and stealing like a pack of wild dogs. Taking the gang for granted and making them suffer under his brooding sorrow. Part of that truth had been revealed by Elsa two days ago when they’d fucked in the field, but the pond’s crystal waters, the magic waters, made those memories painfully vivid. Every detail of the past four months was played out in real time, unwinding faster and faster in his head like an broken spring until he thought he might scream.
And then his mind calmed.
The pond magic began drawing those tragic thought out through his skin, unburdening him of his old pains like a lance to swollen, puss-filled boils. Guilt and regret oozed away. His shoulders grew light, his head clear and full of hope. Well, if not hope, at least a sort of tentative optimism. The pond water had revealed what an imperfect person he was, but it had also absolved him.
Lonnie opened his eyes, sputtering on pond water but unable to keep a big smile off his face. “Pay attention to the lady, people. Just take a little. This is fucking powerful stuff.”
He received some general murmurs of agreement from everyone, but he didn’t stop to see if anyone was doing what he said. Lonnie dipped both hands into the water and washed his arms, splashed his face, and wet his hair back. Wherever the water touched, he felt clean and wonderful.
By the time he was done, the heady feeling had mostly dissolved. He crouched there, staring into the water in a perfectly contemplative state. After what seemed like a long spell, Lonnie lifted his eyes to find the others.
Jedi lay in the soft grass, his feet crossed and his hands behind his head. A big smile lit his face as he looked up into the treetops. Crash was near Lonnie on the left, in much the same contemplative state, rubbing his chin as he gazed into the pool. To Lonnie’s right, the whorchals were kneeling in the grass with their arms thrown over each other’s shoulders. Elsa pushed her short hair back and spit some of the pond water between her lips, peering up at the tumbling water of the falls.
Makare knelt a short distance away, face buried in her hands as she gently sobbed.
Now that was different.
“All right,” Torri said. “Movin’ right along.” She jerked her head, indicating they should get up and follow her.
They left the rushing falls behind, each of them shaking off the longing for what they were leaving behind, moving up the hill again until they reached the outskirts of a vast garden. Or at least the start of some organized planting. Their path was marked by flat stones set into the dirt, flanked by rows of purple flowers about knee-high. The path twisted up and down for about fifty yards before little sections of trimmed shrubs cropped up interspersed with pots and little decorative troughs filled with wildflowers. Assemblies made of stick and twine and old brown grass hung from the trees.
They came to a tremendous square area enclosed by tall, wide-leafed trees and rusted fencing, intertwined with vines and creepers so it looked like the ground was coming alive and covering everything. The entrance to the main garden was flanked by two weeping willow trees, their fronds reaching the ground. Inside the enclosure, Lonnie gaped. Here was a far more structured and functional display. There were rows and rows of tomato plants, cabbages, and what looked like peppers and a variety of other vegetables. The path wound between cherry and apple trees, as well as some others he couldn’t possibly identify.
“I grow all my own food. Didn’t even know they had shopping centers until about twenty years ago when I had to go into Lynch because I was craving cake and didn’t have any flour to make it, since Bessie Napier died and cut off my supply.”
Crash said, “Incredible. This is wonderful. It reminds me of the sky gardens back in Hell.”
This time, it was Torri’s turn to be curious. “Y’all got sky gardens. In Hell?”
“Yes, little lady. We do.”
The other was nodding. “Like back in Hell when we had the human blood herds?”
“No. An actual people garden.”
Ingrid shook her head. “People don’t grow from the ground.”
“I’m just imagining, sister.”
“Oh.”
Torri flashed them a dark look but continued on.
Next was a garden of various wildflowers and plants, colors shocking to the eye. Tall-stemmed ones with pink petals that looked like yawning mouths. Shorter-stemmed flowers as wide as his hand with vivid purple petals and yellow irises. All of it filled out with green fern and honeysuckle wrapping around pieces of picket fencing. The path wove through it all, the air spicy to the point of pungent, making Lonnie’s nose wrinkle and itch.
Lastly were perfectly squared and raised garden plots, almost all green.
“These are my spices and roots and other ingredients.”
Lonnie nodded.
During the walk, his eyes had been drawn to a thing at the end of the garden. It was a single tree with a long trunk, bushing out at the top with tiny oval leaves, interspersed with small, bright red berries. When they got there, he put his hand against its trunk and peered up into the boughs at the fruit. It wasn’t as large as some of the other trees around but, like the cliff and pond, Lonnie could feel a tremendous amount of power reverberating through its branches.
In involuntary grin crossed his lips.
Torri walked beneath the tree limbs and continued on without saying a word.
Lonnie’s eyes followed her back. “Aren’t you going to tell us what this is?”
“Nope. Just a tree. Come on.”
Lonnie shared a look with Crash, shrugged, and followed the plodding girl.
The garden ended with the tree, and so ended the tremendous high he’d been getting from all the sights and scents assailing him. You could still catch wafts of it, but not near as much as standing right there in the middle of it all.
“Hey, wait up.”
Torri had gotten a little ahead of them, moving toward what appeared to be a house of some sort.
“At least she doesn’t live in a cave.” Jedi smirked.
Lonnie glanced to his left and saw Jedi picking apart a twig in his hands and tossing the pieces away.
“Man, aren’t you afraid she’s going to turn you into something?”
Jedi shrugged. “What could be worse than being your prisoner?”
Red flashed in Lonnie’s eyes, and before he could stop himself his left arm shot out, catching Jedi across his chest and launching him to the ground.
“You’re my prisoner because you fucked with the wrong people. Because you were on the wrong side. You got that?”
Jedi glared up at Lonnie from his now chubbier face. It was clear he didn’t like the return of his jailer’s control and determination. No, it was much easier when Lonnie had been too caught up in his downward spiral to notice what he and Makare were up to.
Too fucking bad.
Lonnie pointed at him, glancing at his sister. “It’s been a rough few months, but I just want you both to know that I’m watching again. I’m watching both of you.”
“Y’all comin’ or not?” Torri said, waiting for them in her yard.
“Yeah, we’re coming.” Lonnie left Jedi sitting in the dirt.
Torri led them up to an old house with a stone chimney set squarely in the middle of a roof made of corrugated steel or tin. A porch ran the entire length of the front and was protected by a metal awning held up by log pillars. There were two front doors to the place, set apart.
The hill woman went up the steps to the porch, turned, and fixed them all with a long look.
“This is my house. This door here,” she indicated the door to their left, “is my room. The other is yours should you need to stay very long. Anyone can sleep out here on the porch without fear.
Elsa stood with her legs spread and her hands on her hips. “Why would we be afraid?”
Torri shifted her attention to the whorchal. “Lot’s of things are runnin’ around here, miss. Guardians, I guess you’d say. Some I know `cause I put `em here. Others come and go as they please, or linger around. Some I probably forgot about. So,” her brow furrowed, “best you not wander real far from my sight. I can’t be responsible for anything that happens to you.”
Elsa made a sarcastic noise, blowing air between her lips. Yet, her pale eyes roamed the woods for one of these supposed guardians.
Lonnie said, “We shouldn’t have to stay very long. I’ll call Bess now and tell her we’re here.
“You can try to call her. Probably won’t get much of a reception.”
Lonnie pulled the little black phone from his pocket. “This is one of Bess’s phones. It’s probably got a satellite connection or something.”
Torri twisted her lips in doubt. “Like I said, you can try.” And she dragged try out like it was the most annoying word she’d ever spoken. “But I expect she’ll be around soon enough. In the meantime, y’all want some black tea? I grow the leaves myself.”
Lonnie nodded absently and walked away from the porch a few steps, not far enough to be out of Torri’s sight but enough to be out of earshot. He looked at the phone, which he’d charged in the van on the way here, and saw it still had ninety-eight percent power. He scrolled to the only contact on the phone and clicked Bess’s name. He put the phone to his ear. There was a squelch of feedback, a high whistle, and then more feedback. No matter where he walked in the yard, the outcome was the same.
Definitely no signal up here.
So, they’d wait.
Coming to the porch again, Lonnie saw Makare and Jedi sitting together, legs dangling off the edge and into the flowerbed packed full of wildly colored flowers. Elsa and Ingrid talked quietly together at the end of the porch, and Crash had taken up residence in one of two rocking chairs sitting between the doors. Lonnie’s eyes loitered across the structure. He took in leaves and twigs caught in the ridges of the roof. The flowers in trellises along the two front windows. The longish wild grass of the yard. It was a cozy spot, a place that seemed as much a part of Torri as she was of it. Less a structure and more of a piece of the land itself, like any old outcropping or forest clump.
“Hey.”
Lonnie jumped at witch’s word right in his ear, right in his damn head.
Torri shrugged as she squeezed by carrying a basket. “Sorry, sometimes my voice needs some adjusting. I’m not used to visitors, and I talk to myself a lot when I’m alone. I keep forgetting to tone it down when folks are around. I was just coming out to say I put the tea on. Need some more leaves though.” She went around to the side of the house where there was another little plot of garden.
Lonnie followed her and watched as she picked tea leaves off the plants and put them in her basket.
In a matter of fact tone, as if time didn’t matter one bit, Torri said, “I had this house built in 1905 to replace the one I had before it, which was sorely small. I needed a place to start puttin’ people when they came to see me.”
Her alluding to her old age didn’t surprise him, except for the fact she was not one of them. Not a fade ripper. Not even like Gruff. No, based on what Jedi had told them, Torri Dowe was just a regular, earthbound woman.
But what earthbound woman lived so long?
“You, uh, you get many visitors out here?”
“Used to. The past few decades things have slowed down some. Mostly because folks are parting with the old ways and goin’ to hospitals and such.”
“Does that piss you off?”
“Oh, no. I don’t mind. Hospitals ain’t always good for them, but it’s better than nothin’, I suppose.”
Torri led them back to the porch holding the basket of dark tea leaves.
“Your magic is good for them?”
“More or l
ess. Everything comes with a price though. But, you know, some folks have been paying the price for years, so by the time they get to me, they’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain. And I oblige them.” She’d been looking off into the forest, as if searching for something, then her green eyes fell on Lonnie. “C’mon, I’ll make y’all this tea and we can see if we got any common ground between us.”
“Maybe Bess is our common ground.”
The woman shrugged again. “Maybe.”
Chapter 9
Torri came out of her side of the house twenty minutes later with a big, steaming kettle. She set it on the stump between the two rocking chairs then went back inside and returned with a various assortment of ceramic coffee cups, some chipped or cracked with age on the inside.
Lonnie took his with a thanks and peered at the rose work floral design around the top. It was something you might see in a movie with old folks or grandparent types. The type of cup that might have been useful in a far fancier setting than this.
Yet, here they were.
“Most of these were gifts,” Torri explained as she handed out the cups. “Brought by thankful folk. Sometimes the families give them to me after those I healed eventually passed away, brought by their children or grandchildren who had no use for it. Anyway, they found their way into your hands. I hope it brings you fond memories of your own who’ve passed.”
Lonnie stared at his cup as Torri filled it. “You would have liked Selix.”
Torri finished pouring for Jedi, took the kettle handle with both hands, and straightened. She thought about it for a second, then nodded. “I felt her for a long time. All of you. `Cept when you got out of my range or something. Otherwise, in and out. Yep, Selix had a nice spirit.”
“You felt us? Her.”
“Yeah. My roots run real deep. Deeper than most witches, I’d say. So, I felt her all right, dreamed about her sometimes. Unfortunately, I also felt when she passed. Just like Gruff.”
Staggered with the implications, Lonnie blurted, “How long did you know Gruff? Selix said he’d been around a long time.”
Before he could seem too eager or say anything stupid, Lonnie blew on his tea and put the cup to his lips, taking in some of the bitter brew. He fully expected to hate it but was pleasantly surprised to find its heavy bite tempered by something sweet, like honey or maple syrup. Cinnamon, too. He took another quick sip, swishing it around in his mouth to savor it.