The Thickety: A Path Begins

by J. A. White

  “That’s good.”

  He turned back to his view of their land. Kara knew, from experience, that she could sit here for an hour and he might not speak another word. On some days that was enough, just being near him. But dinner wouldn’t cook itself, and she needed the answer to a question.

  “How long have you been sitting here, Father?”

  “What time is it now?”

  “Almost dinnertime.”

  “Is it?” He gave a quiet chuckle. “Looks like the day slipped away from me, then. I sat down this morning for a spell and—”

  “Did you pick the hushfruit?”

  “The hushfruit?” Father shifted uncomfortably, crossing one leg over the other. Taff did the same thing, when Kara caught him up to some kind of shenanigans. “Hmm. The hushfruit. Let me think on that.”

  Before she left for school each morning, Kara looked her father in the eyes and gave him one specific task for that day. Refill the wood box. Milk the cows. Cut the hay.

  Most times he was able to complete these chores, but lately he had been going through a bad phase. This had been the third morning in a row she had asked him to pick the hushfruit, without success. By tomorrow the fragile crop would spoil.

  Kara would have to take care of it herself tonight. She was already so tired, she could close her eyes and fall asleep right now. The sheer thought of the extra chore exhausted her.

  Father seemed to notice the disappointment on her face.

  “Are you mad at me?” he asked.

  She was. But yelling at her father would do no good. He would sob and beg her forgiveness, she would feel as though she had just whipped a small child, and they would start the process anew tomorrow. There was no point to it.

  Instead she forced a smile as she rose from the bench. “No, not at all.”

  “I’ll pick the hushfruit tomorrow. I promise. It’s just, sometimes things escape me.”

  “There’s no need, Father. You already did it.”

  “I did? Oh, that’s good. That’s very good indeed.” He stretched his arms into the air. “No wonder I’m so tired.”

  Dinner was better than expected. Taff had found some wild herbs to flavor the potatoes, and Father had actually volunteered to help, kneading the dough and spooning the rounded scoops into a cast-iron pan. While the biscuits and potatoes cooked, Kara sent Taff to pick a few of the overripe hushfruits. These she diced and tossed with their last remaining spoonful of sugar and a dash of nutmeg. She folded the mixture into a pie dish lined with dough, creating a simple but serviceable cobbler.

  By the time Kara served dinner, the mouthwatering smells from the oven had already called Taff and Father to the table. Kara would never be Mother—who could take ordinary potatoes and turn them into a dish fit for a king—but she was a fair cook, and the food vanished quickly. She liked to think it was because her family enjoyed her cooking, but she knew the truth: They were starving.

  For this reason Kara waited ten minutes before bringing out the cobbler, which she served piping hot so Taff and Father couldn’t just gobble it down. She hoped that if she could make dinner last longer, their stomachs might be tricked into thinking they had eaten a more substantial meal.

  Besides, Father was talkative tonight. Instead of just staring blankly at the table, he told them about the time that he had gotten the paddle for sneaking back into school during recess and putting rocks in the pockets of the schoolmaster’s cloak. Kara and Taff had both heard the story before, but they smiled politely and laughed in all the right places. For a few minutes, they felt like a normal family.

  Then Taff ruined it all.

  “Someone was talking about Mother today,” he said.

  Father took a bite of his cobbler and chewed it thoughtfully. It was still far too hot to eat, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  “Is that so,” he said.

  “A boy in my class. Wilson Redding. His parents own the farm out past—”

  “I know the Reddings,” Father said. He placed his fork down and folded his hands together. “What did the boy say?”

  “Wilson got in trouble. Actually he was already in trouble, and then he got in trouble again. He was clapping the erasers because he—”

  Kara held up a hand. “Wait. He got in trouble for talking about Mother?”

  “No,” Taff said. “He got in trouble because he dared James to eat a caterpillar. That was yesterday. I’m getting to the part about Mother, but I have to tell you this other stuff first.”

  Kara and Father waited for him to proceed.

  “I forgot where I was,” Taff said.

  “Wilson was clapping erasers. . . .”

  “Out the window. And Master Blackwood walked by, but instead of stopping, Wilson clapped the erasers harder than ever and got chalk dust all over Master Blackwood’s robes. Wilson told Master Blackwood he just didn’t see him, but I think he was lying.”

  “Why?” Father asked.

  “Because he told me he lied. Which I thought was weird, because usually Wilson doesn’t talk to me. But then Wilson asked me his question about Mother, and I understood.”

  Kara met her father’s eyes and shook her head: Nothing good can come of knowing.

  Father asked anyway: “What was the question?”

  “Master Blackwood had also been the one who caught Wilson trying to make James eat the caterpillar. And now Master Blackwood was going to be giving Wilson the paddle, so he was pretty mad. So . . . he wanted to know if I was like Mother. If I could make something bad happen to Master Blackwood.”

  Kara was not surprised. Others had come to her with similar questions. Children—and adults—who tried to befriend her in secret because they were interested in Mother’s supposed powers. A little too interested, in Kara’s estimation.

  “What did you tell him?” Father asked, his voice surprisingly calm.

  “I told him that everyone knows that boys can’t be witches, and I didn’t know any spells or anything like that, and even if I could, I would never hurt anyone, not even Master Blackwood, who probably deserves it. But Wilson just got mad. He told me that my mother had no problem hurting people. That she had once made a little girl eat her own tongue because she had mispronounced her name. That she could break a man’s bones by snapping her fingers.”

  Kara had heard these stories as well. These and more.

  “Is it true?” Taff asked. “Could Mother really do all that?”

  Father stared at a point just past Taff, his bearded face lax and expressionless.

  “No,” he said quietly. “And even if she could—she wouldn’t.”

  Father scooped up a fresh spoonful of cobbler.

  “This is delicious, Kara,” he said. “It’s nice that the three of us can—”

  Taff slammed down his plate. Cobbler crumbs skipped across the table.

  “Then what could she do?” he asked. “Everyone talks about her, but the stories are all different. Ryan says she could make your blood boil with a single word. Maggie says she could make the clouds swallow people whole.”

  “They don’t know anything,” Kara said. “They were just babies when she—”

  “But they’re telling me what their moms and dads said, and they knew our mother. But no one says the same thing. It’s so confusing.”

  As often happened whenever Taff became excited, he began to cough. Kara offered him a cup of water, but Taff pushed it away. She settled with stroking his back, trying to calm him down.

  “I don’t believe them,” he said, “any of them. I don’t believe what they say about her.”

  “This was a long time ago, son. Just let it—”

  “Everyone hates us, and it’s not fair. They say she’s a witch, but . . .”

  “Taff.”

  “. . . no one has ever actually seen anything.”

  “It doesn’t matter!” Father exclaimed, slamming his fist on the table. And then, quietly: “The details might be different, but in the end it’s all the same. Magic des
troyed your mother. Plain and simple.”

  Taff opened his mouth as though to say something more but instead slumped into his seat. Kara ached for him. He wanted to love his mother so badly, but he had been told his entire life that she was a monster who didn’t deserve his love. How different it would be if she were innocent. How easy to treasure what might have been.

  Father rose from the table.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “For everything.”

  He shuffled down the short hallway and closed the bedroom door softly behind him.

  He’s not even forty yet, Kara thought, but he walks like an old man.

  Taff finally stopped coughing, though his face remained flushed. Kara slid Father’s unfinished cobbler to him.

  “Someone should eat this,” she said. “It’s getting cold.”

  While Taff cleaned the dishes, Kara attended to the mess outside. By the smell of it, the manure/blood mixture had been left to fester in someone’s wheelbarrow for a few days before being packed into a pillowcase and slung against their front door. Kara went at it with a trowel, scraping away the bits that had already dried in place, and then got down on her knees and scrubbed the door with a rag until it was spotless. Finally she dumped bucket after bucket of sudsy water on what remained, liquefying the waste so it drained between the wooden boards of their front porch.

  By the time Kara finished, the last vestiges of light had been squeezed from the sky. After washing up at the well, she went inside to check on Taff. He had already settled beneath the covers of his bed; a single candle burned by his bedside.

  “Story?” he asked.

  Kara sat on the edge of the bed. Without thinking, she raised a hand to his forehead, checking for a fever. Only a little warm tonight.

  “Sorry,” she said, shaking her head. It was already so late, and the hushfruit wouldn’t pick itself. “Tomorrow. I promise.”

  “You can tell me quick and skip the boring parts. I know what happens. I just like to hear the words.”

  “Tomorrow.”

  Taff smiled at her: warm and playful and just a little bit devious.

  “You know you’re going to say yes in the end,” he said, “and you’re already in a hurry. So why not just skip the you-saying-no part and get on with it.”

  The matter settled, Taff arranged his head comfortably on the pillow and waited for her to begin.

  “Fine,” Kara said, “but just this once.” After a quick glance out the window—one could never be too cautious, not in De’Noran—Kara pulled out the book hidden beneath Taff’s sleeping pad. It was small and oddly shaped, a conglomeration of discarded schoolbook pages that had been sewn together with black thread. Easing into bed, Kara wrapped her arm around her brother and turned to the first page.

  “Long before remembrance there was a boy called Samuel. He and his sister liked to play with tadpoles and climb tall trees and dance to the music of the river, until one day Samuel was visited by a dread sickness and could play no longer.”

  The writing—ordinary and simple—was hers, but the drawings were Taff’s, and they were extraordinary. Samuel and his unnamed sister, rendered in charcoal and chalk, seemed ready to step off the page and into their lives.

  Kara lowered her voice to a whisper.

  “Though she knew it was forbidden, Samuel’s sister visited an old woman who lived on the edge of the forest. People called her Spider Lady and said she knew secret things.” Before they had written the story down—when it was just something she told Taff at bedtime—Kara had actually used the word magic. But speaking the profane word out loud and committing it to the permanence of paper were two very different things, and in the end Kara couldn’t bring herself to write the letters. The risk, if the book were ever found, was too great.

  “Spider Lady told Samuel’s sister that there was a beast called a Jabenhook that could lift the illness from her brother like an unwanted blanket, but in order to find the beast, she would have to journey into the forest and complete three tasks. . . .”

  Kara read the pages quickly, skimming over the describing parts and allowing the pictures to do the work. Taff did not seem to mind. When she reached the final page, however, his eyes opened wide. It was his favorite part.

  “The Jabenhook sat on Samuel’s chest and wrapped its magnificent, speckled wings around him. There was a glow of light, as bright as a miniature sun, and then the creature set off into the air, a mass of squirming, wormlike shadows—plump with the spoils of disease—held fast between its golden talons. And from that day on, Samuel was never sick again.”

  Taff, caught somewhere in that blurry realm between sleeping and waking, smiled gently. “The end,” he said.

  “The end.”

  His eyes opened just enough to meet hers. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful? If something like that could really happen?”

  “That sounds almost like a wish,” Kara said. “And that, as you well know, is forbidden. Besides, there is no need for wishing if you follow the Path. All your needs will be met.”

  “You don’t really believe that. Do you?”

  She leaned over and kissed him on his forehead.

  “Good night, brother,” she said.

  Kara slid the book into its hiding place, thinking once again that the story felt incomplete. What happened to the sister? She succeeded in her quest, but did she ever return from the forest? Did the siblings know happiness together? Taff had suggested that they add another leaf of parchment and give the characters a proper ending, but Kara refused: Although she wanted Samuel and her sister to be happy, she didn’t want to lie about it. Happy endings, she had often suspected, could only be earned through some sort of sacrifice.

  The night was clear and cold, as it often was in the weeks leading up to the Shadow Festival. Kara drew her tattered black cloak around her and crossed what remained of the cornfield, her boots crunching against the untended soil. Walking through the abandoned field always made her sad. She remembered playing hide-and-find among its once-flourishing stalks with her neighbors from the adjoining farms, children who would now deny ever stepping foot on Westfall land.

  It would be so much easier, Kara thought, if I could bring myself to hate them. The villagers had certainly given her enough reason, clouding Kara’s days with disdain, despite the fact that she had never hurt anyone. But Kara had always been slow to anger, easy to forgive. She saw the way they treated one another: the smiles, the easy conversation. There was good there.

  Besides, it was not difficult to understand their fear. Like them, Kara had been taught from birth that nothing was more obscene or inhuman than magic, and the idea that her mother had been a witch filled Kara with deep shame and revulsion (and occasionally, late at night, a thrill of excitement—which only increased her shame). Nothing could be more profane to the Children of the Fold than one of their own succumbing to the evils of witchcraft, and Kara, the mirror image of her mother, was little more than a walking reminder of what had happened.

  But what, exactly, had happened?

  If she knew, for certain, her mother’s role in the deaths that night, Kara thought things might be better. Even if the knowledge broke her heart, it would be easier than not knowing whether she should love her mother or hate her.

  As though searching for the past, Kara raised her lantern high and stepped into the darkness of the orchard.

  Three people had died that night; Kara knew this much at least. Her mother had been the third.

  The first death was Abigail Smythe, Mother’s childhood friend and a constant fixture at their farm. Kara remembered sitting on Aunt Abby’s lap, tracing her freckles with one small finger while Abigail and her mother laughed over what Father, with a gentle shake of his head, called “some womanly foolishness.” Constance Lamb would often be there as well, though she was Constance Bridges at that time, her face unscarred and smiling.

  Kara didn’t remember her mother having any other friends besides Aunt Abby and Aunt Constance, but they had seemed li
ke enough. The three of them were inseparable. Kara couldn’t count the number of times she fell asleep under the kitchen table, cradled against her mother’s foot, the sounds of their pleasant, innocuous conversation more soothing than a lullaby.

  Aunt Abby was married two days after Kara’s fifth birthday. Her wedding was particularly festive; although the villagers had already begun to regard Mother with suspicion, Abby, with her smiles and freckles and pies, was beloved by all. The celebration ran long into the night. The next morning the entire community, as was their tradition, worked together to raise a new barn for the couple. Aunt Abby’s body was found there two months later. She had been torn to shreds. Or her head had been replaced with that of a crow. Or maybe she had simply vanished, leaving nothing but her boots behind—there were a dozen different variations to the story. No one really knew for sure, except the fen’de and his graycloaks. And, of course, the person who had found the body.

  Mother.

  Aunt Abby’s new husband was the second victim that night. His name was Peter, and although Kara hadn’t known him well, he had once given her an apple and told her she had pretty hair. He had been found in the field just outside the barn, his body unharmed but his face frozen in a nightmarish scream.

  Taff was not due for another six weeks, but the shock of finding her friends this way sent Mother into early labor. That was what Kara had always wanted to believe. Everyone else claimed it was the stress of using her dark magic to murder her best friend. In either case Kara’s mother managed to make her way to Constance’s farm before collapsing, and it was Constance herself who delivered Taff, only three pounds and no bigger than a loaf of bread.

  Kara wondered if there had been time for Mother to hold her son before the graycloaks pounded on the door and dragged her into the night. It was something she had always wanted to ask Constance, along with where she had gotten her scars. From that night on, however, her mother’s friend ignored Kara. She had asked Father what happened many times (though less often as the years passed), but he refused to talk about it. When Kara asked if Mother was really a witch, he simply nodded and spent the rest of the day writing in his notebook.