Lavona was blinking hard. Her voice got louder.
"Then we go home an’ fold up little dresses an' jeans an' sneakers an’ ribbons an' we put 'em all away in a trunk. An’ then we git back t’ work. Or we have a party. An' we don't invite th’ wailin' an' th’ prayin' to th’ party. Y’see? They just ain't on th’ invite list."
Neither of her guests moved. Lavona stood up, wiped her palms on her apron. Then she took the toothpick from her mouth and tossed it into the coal scuttle. When she turned again to the visitors, her head was up, her eyes were bright, and her long face was creased in expectation.
Jez still looked at Lavona. Then, deliberately, she lifted her cup and took a big sip of her tea. Dicken followed suit.
"Okay," Jez said, setting down her cup.
Dicken stepped in. "First, you tell about this conjure woman."
"Mad Becky." Lavona filled her own cup, settled into her chair again. "She's one of th’ legends 'round here. Only one, two people maybe, ever seen her. Lives down in one of th’ mines. Some say as her mouth is black from eatin' coal."
She took another sip of tea.
"Dennis, th’ fella what come on her jist last fortnight, says she weren't never borned but got biled up outen a sulfer spring over near t’ Blue Stone Gap. Got reared by church folks, then run off up north t’ be a actress. Forty year later she come back crazy an’ they throwed her in a half-way house over in Princeton. She excaped, an’ taken to th’ hills. Nobody never found her, Dennis said."
Lavona paused. "Dennis is one of th’ old liners 'round here. He up an’ told his story all over Matoaka an' at th’ Apple Harvesters Grange meetin' last week.”
She sighed, then spoke more briskly. "Seems he had t’ go up t’ Powhatan Pass t’ scavenge some old iron pipe. He was a-settin' by th’ creek early one mornin' jist tryin' t’ figure how he’d git downstream with his pipe, when th’ godawfullest screamin' he ever heerd come bustin' outen th’ draw. Dennis, he hunkered down in th’ bushes so’s he could hide an' see.
"Well, th’ yellin' come closer, givin' our Dennis a purdy good scare. It were Mad Beck, tumblin' outen th’ woods an' pert near fallin' in th’ creek. Dennis said she done stood there with'n her arms spread wide an' hollerin' out a name. She jist kept a-callin' that name an’ screamin'. When she looked like she was all wore out, she taken off back up th’ hill, still a-screamin' now an’ agin, jist to be sure Old Dennis was still shakin’ in his boots."
Lavona looked from Dicken to Jez. "He said near as he could make out, th’ name she kept a-callin' was Jezzybell."
"My oh my!" said Dicken. "We are talking a first-order crone!"
"Yep." Lavona reared back and pointed at Jez. "Now, seein’ as how you are th’ only Jezebel I know, I tried t’ find you. But with all yer gallivantin' I kept missin' you. Then what? You call me on th’ company flatchannel an' tell me you been hearin' a voice callin' out to you an’ that you got t’ come see me. Well now, reckon what I been a-thinkin'!"
Jez smiled a little, her tiredness dissipated by the strong tea. "Let me tell you my part," she said. She grounded her own chair, closed her eyes in the time-honored preparation for a dreamtelling, and mustered her narrative mode.
"I had one of my seizures. And a dream. In the dream, I am holding an old flatview screen, trying to get a picture to match the sound. On every channel is a woman's voice shrieking my name. Jezzzeee-belll!"
"Cerridwen's Sweetcakes!" Lavona breathed, sinking back in her chair. Jez went on.
"I know she's trying to reach me, but all the rest of her message is garbled. I can't get sound or picture except for her calling my name. So I pray for a spirit guide. And what appears as my spirit guide?"
"Don't say!" said Lavona. "A animal, right?"
"Right," answered Dicken. "Humans are hardly worthy."
"A bear," said Lavona. Jez denied it. Lavona tried again: "King snake!" Jez shook her head.
"Think smaller," Dicken advised.
"It were a spider!"
"Closer," nodded Dicken.
"This spirit guide," Jez said, "turns out to be a slug."
"A what?"
"A slug. A banana slug. In fact a whole bunch of them."
"Slimy things. Ugly." Lavona shook her head in disgust.
"Slugs were amazing," Dicken pointed out. "They could crawl over the upright blade of a sharp razor and get only a good tickle out of it."
Jez resumed. "Well, slugs it is. The flatview screen is real quick streaked with luminous lacy lines in fancy patterns. I keep trying to figure out what the patterns are telling me since this is the answer to my prayer, right? When the screen is totally covered with this slug slime, about twenty-five of them stand up on their tails and sing to me in eight-part harmony, telling me I got to take the aerial to higher ground. It sounds like a Bach cantata, you know?" She sang, "'You must take, you must take, you must take the aerial, you must, you must, you must take the aerial, the aerial, to higher ground, to higher ground, you must take the aerial to higher ground. . .'"
Lavona and Dicken joined in Jez's laughter.
"So they all crawl on my arms and neck and shoulders for a free ride while I haul this bulky antenna unit up the hill with this vast-voiced woman yelling in my ear the whole time. Somehow I make it to the top, I set up the antenna, and I'm in immediate communication with the woman. I still can't see her, but she tells me, 'Find Lavona. Now!'"
"Goddess's Goose Eggs," breathed Lavona. She sat hunched, chin on fist.
"You know the rest," said Jez.
"I know what-all's t’ know." Lavona shook her head. "Lordy, girl!" She sat for a long quiet moment with her arms braced on her knees. "Well. I reckon we got t’ get you to her. Quincy and Brit'll take you, about sun-up tomorrow."
Jez nodded. "Quincy and Brit weren't here tonight."
"Nope. They're tree stewards, both of 'em here on three-yar assignment. Brit lived over in Prospect Dale most'n her life afore she give that up t’ study woodcare up in Ontario. She's tickled t’ be back home agin."
"Quincy?" Jez asked.
"A strange one. She trained with Brit in Canada. Yonder's where they got t’gether. But she hails from Newfound Land. Had a ear fer languages an' taught a good while afore she pledged Sylvan Renewal. She's might nigh gone native here. Even talks right." Lavona grinned. "They both love this country. They'll be downhome guides for you."
Over an hour later Lavona banked the fire and led the outlanders through the cold house up to a many-quilted bed.
* * * * * * *
Two spoons broke the low cloud cover just above an ageing superhighway, half of which had been allowed to return, as they said, and the other half of which sometimes accommodated cushcars and bicycles. The road wound southeast below the four women.
Brit was an expert guide, once she understood that they didn't need to know the history of every ridge or every cluster of trees. Gray curls seeped out from under her tight red watchcap, and her voice easily bridged the flight bubbles.
"Charlene's Town is northwest." She blew a puff of cold air in the direction of the old capital city. "Between here and there we got traces of more than a hundred company towns, all of them surrounded by mines. These hills are pure honeycomb underneath, what with natural caves and then the mining. When the Twin Quakes hit, folks got scared and moved out."
Quincy, carrying a large pack like each of the other women, was handling the double-spoon logistics while Brit talked. She spoke for all the hills to hear. "It weren't fear what took 'em away. This here was heartland to too many of 'em. They'd lived with coalmines all their natural lives. Their blood even ran black. A little quake or two wouldn't scare 'em." She sank her fists into her overall pockets.
Brit took up the explanation. "Well, nobody knows for sure what took them away. Some say folks just didn't give a care about hanging around after Empty Monday. It was home to them right enough, but home included hogs and crows and skeeters. One of the venables down in Matoaka will tell you how his daddy just set
him down one day and told him he figured ‘it warn't worth livin' a-tall if'n he couldn't have his hound dog.' Then he just took up his shotgun and walked off into the woods and never come back."
Jezebel squeezed Dicken's arm. "Fog coming up."
Immediately their guides pushed ahead to lead the group through the mountain mists. When they broke the clouds a second time it was to drop onto a frosty hill by a creek.
"We got to go on foot from here," Brit informed them, the unspoken message being that somehow it would be a breach of reverence to come the easy way. True pilgrims had to walk.
It proved to be hard going. They made their way single file up and down a cold, densely covered path where no sun could have reached — even if there had ever been a sun, which Dicken was beginning to doubt. The morning passed into afternoon before the guides pulled them up for a rest.
Brit and Quincy talked about a mine known as Upper Thirteen, and of its railroad spur. They pored over contour maps and took compass readings. Dicken refrained from telling them that Jezebel could give them a deadly accurate perception of their location, their destination, the altitude, the temperature, the barometric pressure, the time of day to the second, and the constellation at that moment ascendant on the eastern horizon. But Jez was strangely withdrawn.
They had just negotiated a narrow log that bridged a small ravine when Quincy stopped the company with a "Shhh!" that held them all motionless in the fog-filled woods. "Did you hear it?"
"Hear what?" Dicken murmured.
"Quincy hears voices a lot," Brit whispered. "She says there's something in these parts that speaks to shyers.""Shyers?" asked Dicken.
"Folks that can go shy," Brit answered. "Disappear.”
Then she added, “Quincy's learning to go shy."
Dicken began to perceive Quincy as fading, no longer with them. She blinked. Quincy was definitely there, still standing motionless, her head upturned. A trick of the fog, Dicken decided. She turned back toward Jezebel, whose hand at that moment took her own.
It was late afternoon and a psychological hundred miles deeper into the hills when the party thrashed through some brush and broke into another world. Confronting them was a huge open slip-slot freight car still bearing the block letters, Red Flame Coal Company.
The dull clouds that had so far blanketed the treetops now fell in quiet drifts over a large, sparsely vegetated clearing. Wisps and puffy billows brushed soundlessly past long-collapsed buildings, over piles of thin metal and silent rusting towers of belts and bins, cables and coils.
Jezebel broke from the group and began moving purposefully into the mists, crossing the broad clearing to its far side. She stopped at a boarded-up mine portal and turned back to her companions as if to say, "Here."
The others joined her, and Quincy began examining the layers of two-by-twelves. "Behind this is bound to be the slope shaft," she announced. "Slants so we can walk down it. Iffen we can get into it," she added, pushing half-heartedly on the heavy boards.
Jez stepped in front of her and faced the barrier. She ran her fingers over the wood and the corroding metal staves. Carefully, she grasped the critical cross-timber and closed her eyes. With slow inevitability the beam moved, nails screamed, bands snapped, and the entranceway virtually opened before them.
"Pretty impressive," Brit observed. Quincy nodded.
Dicken looked askance at her lover. "You think she's down there, don't you?"
"She's down there," Jezebel said.
The Welchtown women activated two glolobes from their packs, and the group began a descent into the wide passageway. Jez led them, outdistancing the light and looking neither left nor right. Dicken captured her and slowed her pace.
Fifty yards later, black walls surrounded them as the shaft cut its way into the coal field itself. Over their heads, decaying timbers and rusty bolts still held the black ceiling in place.
Looking up, Dicken asked, "You figure we're safe?"
Jezebel spoke in a voice Dicken barely recognized. "We're safe," she said, plunging forward again.
They followed Jezebel deeper into the mountain. At the intersection of another tunnel, Quincy secured a heavy string to the wall at waist level. She talked as she played the string out behind her, occasionally twisting it around a protruding piece of coal to keep it visible and graspable. "There was small tunnels for pick minin' but these here big passages was for the heavy machines. They could dig half a ton in less than ten seconds. An' load it onto the belt, all in one operation."
"We're actually in a network of rooms supported by big pillars of coal," Brit added. "Could get lost easy."
The footing was good, even though the air seemed staler and the dankness more pronounced. Dicken didn't like it. She didn't trust the walls not to collapse behind her, cutting off any escape.
They came upon an underground workroom where wooden shelves bore dusty tools, machine parts, hardhats, pieces of clothing. Dicken hauled Jezebel to a stop on an overturned cart. Brit and Quincy squatted, inspecting the walls.
"She's very close," Jez said. Then she looked squarely at Dicken. "I have to meet her alone."
"No," said Dicken promptly, sitting beside her.
"Yes." Jez's eyes brooked no contradiction. "Brit, Quincy, can the three of you stay the night near the entrance?"
"We could. . ." began Brit.
"Jezebel--" Dicken was in full protest.
Quincy stopped her. "I got no hankerin' to sleep down here, Bess Dicken. Maybe we ought to go back up, set up camp and get some rest. Try again tomorrow."
"Good," said Dicken. "You two go ahead. Jez and I. . ."
Jez took Dicken's head in her hands.
"I haven't often said this," she said, as Quincy and Brit moved discreetly back toward the mouth of the mouth. "You can't go with me, Dicken. There's an elevator shaft further on. Mad Becky is at the bottom of it. I can drop down to her slow. But I can't take you with me."
Dicken's face was full of consternation. She took Jez's hands in her own and held them against her cheek. Slowly she nodded. "Okay. But how long?"
Jez shook her head. "I don't know. Maybe I can meet you or leave you some message. Somewhere near here. She's not going to hurt me, Dicken. I'm sure of it. But she knows something important that I'm supposed to learn. I'll stay with her until she's ready to tell me." She reached to take Dicken in her arms. "You could go back to Welchtown. . ."
"Girl, you have lost your pluperfect mind!" Dicken pulled Jez to her feet and held her close.
Group consultation resulted in a modification of Quincy's plan. The three women would camp at the entranceway, sending Dicken back to this area at regular intervals for word from Jezebel.
Jez held Dicken and kissed her soundly before striding off into the darkness.
5 - MAD BECKY – [2088]
I must be you to know you
and only through your eyes will I ever see.
Vade Mecum For The Journey
Ever since they had landed in this forest, Jezebel had been aware of three dangers. Most tangible now, as she stood at the brink of the deep shaft, was the peril of black walls and damp, tight air. The immediate danger was the summoning of the frantic unhinged mind, now so close after beginning from so far away. Most terrifying was the threat of her own madness, the wisps of disorientation and lightheadedness that had been intensifying throughout the day. The icy wind had begun again, sweeping from the soles of her feet upward through her body, until it swirled in the rigidity of her skull; the sweat and the sweet saliva were not far away. She had to hurry.
Jezebel fashioned a short-life glolobe and dropped it into the shaft, watching it die out some forty meters below. Then, propelled toward the sisterstress of that other mind, she stepped into the void and drifted downward in the pathway of the glolobe.
She landed just as the sweat burst out and blackness overcame her.
* * * * * * *
Jezebel lay on a hard stone floor. A light whose source she could not discern showed her
she was no longer in the mine, but in a cave; clammy breeches told her she had peed. She could find no blood under her nose or on her shirt; she identified the dampness there as saliva and phlegm. Without moving, she took an internal inventory: breath near normal; metabolism galloping; head clear; body very strained, parts of it bruised. Certainly she had been in convulsions.
She closed her eyes, beginning the slow, barely perceptible stretches that relaxed traumatized muscles and calmed the body's systems. With warm torpors she dried her trews and extended her smell and kinesthetic senses beyond herself. As she called up more sophisticated scanners, she dared a deliberate movement that twisted her onto her back in the manner, she hoped, of an agitated dreamer.
Through barely slitted eyes, she determined that where she lay was not where she had fallen. This ceiling was low and smooth, and stone walls crowded her from behind and from either side. She made out a pattern of wire rectangles stretched across what would have been the fourth wall of her confines. Fencing wire, she mused.
She was in a small makeshift cage, she decided. The wire looked to be embedded in heavy rock on one side; on the other, it terminated far out of her reach in an elaborate system of bolts, stones and wooden staves.
Immediately and deliberately alert now on her survival level, Jez cautiously extended her inner sight toward the noiseless passageway from which the pale light emerged. There! Mad Becky, the old woman of her dream! Jez judged her to be no more than ten meters away.
Surrounding the conjure woman was a field of vibrating bodies. Crystals. Jezebel was sure of it. That would be the source of light. She risked again, extending a quick scan toward the being beyond the corridor: perfect physical health and vibrancy, flexible joints, many missing teeth, sharp sensory awareness, and – there it was again! – the chaos and ecstasy of a mind unbound.
Jez sent an enfoldment of greeting. No response. The old woman was preoccupied.
A heavy penetrating pulse resounded in Jez's head. She raised her eyes to the cave wall beyond her. On that wall was a moving shadow, almost sticklike in its thinness, and broken in its perpendicularity only by the lift of knees, the high swing of skinny arms, the bounce of plumes of hair. It hopped in stark justice to the beat, spinning and kicking, in repeated patterns, arms in synchrony.
The Magister (Earthkeep) Page 9