Opal just took in what was said. She stared back at the haint tree with all its blue bottles shimmering in the moonlight. The limbs swayed in the breeze. The bottles swung to different rhythms and they would occasionally tap each other. The sound was of a disharmonious wind chime—a crazy clanking chandelier.
“We got to do what we got to do. God be busy as hell, you know,” Sugar said. “If any evil spirits or witches come messin’ around here, they’re going to get trapped up in them bottles. The sun will come out in the morning and burn them up. That’s how a good haint tree works.”
“Sugar, is there a lot of evil in these mountains?” Opal asked.
Sugar blew out all her smoke and made a great effort to turn and look Opal directly in the eye.
“Child, you don’t know the half of it!”
43
Abner Worthington combed his fingers through his long wavy black hair. His normally confident face looked haggard. Dingy circles around his eyes made him look sick and raccoon-like. He stared at a blank page. The nib of his pen was dry. His bible sat unopened. No sermon was being written tonight. In fact, it had been months since he had written anything original.
His new muse hovered in the corner of his study, covered in shadow. Her mouth was ivory-white and it shimmered as she spoke. Her skeletal fingers rattled down the edge of the bookshelf, leaving blond scratches in the dark wood.
“Your precious child can be resurrected. Even now, she calls for her home. She seeks the comfort of her father’s warmth. So cold, she says. So very cold!”
Abner thought he heard Abigail’s voice in the wraith’s echoing whisper. He was mesmerized.
“But how? How is this even possible?” Abner asked.
The wraith swirled closer. It seemed angry.
“Your faith is pathetic! My mistress has the power!”
The wraith faded into the corners of the dark room, but its eerie voice continued to teach Abner.
“The right sacrifice must be made!” it insisted. “The Summerfield girl must be handed over to the conjurer. For a life to be given back, one must be taken.”
Nowadays Abner was rarely shocked by the creature’s menacing presence. It had first appeared to him many months back.
One night, deep in his grief and under the influence of too much moonshine, he had stumbled into the woods searching for Abigail. A scene in the fog appeared. He saw a fearsome boar, with his broken baby girl dangling from its jaws. He nearly went mad at the sight. Then the hallucination faded and the wraith appeared for the first time.
It served the conjurer, and the conjurer knew him. She knew his pain. She knew his secrets. And through her ghostly messenger, she made promises.
“Tell me how to bring her back,” he begged desperately. “For the sake of my daughter, I will do anything!”
The wraith was suddenly beside him. It jerked his head into the shadow of its cowl and began whispering its evil instructions into his ear.
Abner listened and listened, until his eyes were wet with gratitude.
44
Things changed between Opal and Sugar Trotter after their haint tree discussion. Sugar began to teach Opal the ways of living in the Ozark Mountains more intentionally. Opal wasn’t sure why she was getting so much attention, but she was grateful and took to the lessons. At night, in her bed and under the long hiss of the oil lamp, she wrote down Sugar’s lessons in her Double-Q Composition Book.
“Being born under the crawpappy is going to bring some trouble,” Sugar explained.
Sugar did not, as she said, do arithmetic. She somehow knew, however, that Opal had been born in October.
One afternoon, while they sat by the haint tree, Opal described what she knew to Sugar. She recounted the story of how she was found and how she came to live with the Summerfields. Sugar let Opal finish the story.
“Yep, I already knew all that.”
“You did? I didn’t think anybody knew where I came from.” Opal was shocked.
“I told Bree not to take you in. It was dangerous! No offense young lady, but you come to that house trailing a whole string of bad luck.”
“You are right as rain about that,” Opal said, glumly.
“Maybe, but Bree didn’t listen to a word I said.” Sugar burst into laughter. “No, not one word. And look, here you sit, pretty as a peach.”
Opal started laughing too. Sugar held a switch of hickory and scratched in the dirt as they giggled.
“That Bree was a good girl,” Sugar said. She composed herself and turned a bit more serious. After a while she pointed her stick up to the sky. “Now we’re going to wait here till them stars come out. There’s a few things I want to teach you.”
Opal nodded in approval, went to the porch of Sugar’s cottage, and retrieved her cane rocking chair, which Pym Wilson had made and Jupiter had bought with a secret donation from all the servants of the Worthington house.
“Here you go, Sugar,” Opal said, putting the rocker right behind the old lady.
“Humph, manners child. I like them manners. That going to help you a lot. And your dang sure going to need the help!” she said. “Now you be quiet like a mouse and let’s see what we can see.”
Sugar dozed a bit as the sun slid down and skewered itself on the tip of the barn’s copper weathervane. The light slinked down the old corrugated tin and out of view. The stars were cast out and Sugar was like a stone—quiet and meditative. Her pupil waited patiently.
“Now tell your story child,” Sugar said expectantly.
Opal wasn’t sure what to say, so she began to repeat what she knew about her birth.
“No, you’ve done said all that. Tell me something different. Your heart story girl! What does Opal (the first time Sugar had ever said her name) want from her life in this here world? Look up at the stars and tell it true.”
Opal switched gears in her mind and began shuffling through her painful memories. She felt like a fortune-teller with a stack of bad cards. Nothing good turned up.
“I’m sad a lot, I guess. I think it’s because I don’t know what to do with myself, and there isn’t really anybody here to tell me now. I wish I had known my real mother and my real father. I miss Bree and Hud. And I’m mad.”
“Yep, tell that,” Sugar said.
“Well, most of the time I’m really angry at the Hoods. They killed the only parents I ever knew. They hung Hud up in a tree like he was a deer ready for skinning. I hate them Sugar. I want to hurt them back. I—”
“Say it now!” Sugar demanded.
“I want to kill them all!” Opal said. She was immediately overcome by a wave of intense emotion. She felt the stone come alive, and she did something she never did. She broke her rule about crying. The tears came in a torrent. She cried until she couldn’t cry anymore.
“Yes, you done good girl,” Sugar said. She reached out with her rough, crinkled hand and patted Opal’s knee. Eventually Opal calmed herself down, wiped away her tears, and looked back at the stars.
“I’m sorry about all that fussin’. I know you want to teach me about the stars and their signs. I’m ready now,” Opal said.
“Oh heck girl, Sugar don’t believe in none of that crazy mess.”
That caught Opal off guard. Sugar leaned over and looked Opal in the eye.
“Here’s the truth Sugar sees: there ain’t no crawpappy, no bear, no bull in the sky that’s gonna change a bit of what we women go through. Anyone who tells you different is a fool. It doesn’t mean you got to be a fool though. You just look at them stars and you say your truth, and whatever you have to say, it be as right as them lights in the sky. Them stars are here tomorrow night, and the next. They’re going to spin around up there with the moon, and you’re going to wake up and see the sun on the other side. And these things are this way for all time, you hear? You can count on hard times, just like you can count on them pretty stars. You say what you got to say, and you do what you got to do, and you just keep on burning like you’re meant to burn. That�
��s all you need to do! Don’t you let nobody stop that burnin’ baby girl! Don’t give a damn how high and mighty they be. Don’t give a damn how white they be and how black you be. And it don’t matter if they point a gun or raise a knife or throw a hex on you. Don’t you let nothin’ stop you from shining the way you supposed to! That be your job, every tick of the clock, just like them stars, until God himself tell you otherwise.”
Sugar finished and turned back to the starry sky.
The two women sat together not speaking, Opal considering the future and Sugar recalling the past.
“Now my butt is cold as heck. Dang pretty cane chair. Never was much good for sitting, but dang fine to look at,” Sugar said as she lifted herself up and turned to her cottage.
“Pretty to look at, but not much good. Kind of like you, eh Sugar?” Opal teased with a wide, playful grin.
“Ah, see, that be your crawpappy sign showing,” Sugar said with a chuckle and a smile. “You might just make it yet, little girl. Yep, you just might!”
45
“I’m telling you Ellie, all this is making me feel like a worm in hot ashes,” Tirian complained. “Something big is happening, and I don’t think anyone understands how crazy it’s getting.”
The girl flashed her almond eyes at him and gave him a pat on the shoulder. They had been friends a long time, but he had never been confused enough to confide in her this freely.
“Let’s make sure the rift tunnels are covered with some of your enchanted gadgets. If anyone starts using them, we can do something about it,” she said.
“I don’t think the Feratu can get to us that way. That shouldn’t be a concern. There is something else going on, but I can’t quite figure it.”
“Well, when I was around our boss last, it wasn’t vampires, witches, or wereboars that he was thinking about. It was something else.”
Eltheon took an old book out of her satchel and flipped it open to a dog-eared page. She tapped her fingernail on one particular picture. They both knew the artifact. It was legendary.
“But what does that have to do with anything? It’s just one of the lost power stones.”
“See, that’s the thing, Tirian. I don’t think it’s lost anymore! And what’s worse, whoever found it has been using it.”
46
“Chimney soot and molasses be good on deep wounds. A mess of spider webs can stop a little cut that’s bleeding. It works real quick,” Sugar said as she walked along the gravel and mud of Fern Creek.
Opal took out her ragged composition book and wrote down the prescriptions.
“Now look here!” said Sugar, pulling at a plant growing near a hickory tree. “This be Holy Ghost root. You see these white flowers here. Some people call it Angelica. Good for stomach pains. It’s real good for us women. It can heal you up and protect you from hexes when you carry it on you in a white bag, like you carry that necklace of yours. You make a powder and put a ring round you and evil can’t get to you. But see here,” Sugar wandered down by the creek and pointed out a cluster of other similar plants. “These two plants are alike. One has veins going all the way to the tip of the leaves and one don’t.”
Opal studied the differences, but the plants were so similar she couldn’t tell them apart.
“This one with the long veins is the Holy Ghost root. It smells better too. This one here is Hemlock. You eat that, you’re dead. And I know you don’t want to be dead,” Sugar snickered. “No child, no one wants to be dead.”
Sugar showed Opal a knee-high plant that produced five white petals over a green base that hung like a basket under the flower. She pulled it from the softened soil. Puke root, she called it.
“You can use this if you ever get something bad in you. It will grease you up, and what you don’t want in your stomach will come out fast,” she said. Sugar rubbed the loose dirt from the root to make sure Opal saw it clearly.
She taught Opal how to find and use horsebalm for bruises and open wounds. “Get some red clay—it’s everywhere—then put that on bruises with some salt and water. You get good healing with that.”
Opal wrote everything in her notebook. Sugar showed her how to use dog fennel to ward off ticks, and how mole skin stuck to the chest with molasses will cure breathing problems.
She even taught Opal a blood stopping charm that went this way:
God in his heaven
Devil down below
Let the power come up
Let three roses grow
By the name of the son
Blood stop
By the name of the ghost
Blood stop
Blood stop
Blood stop
“Now why you think Sugar would say these words I just told you?” she asked.
“To stop the bleeding, I guess.”
“You’re right about that! But how? That’s what I want you to fix your mind on.”
“Is it a spell?”
“Girl do I look like a dang conjurer? I sure as heck ain’t no witch! Them words don’t have a bit of magic in them accept what the people you helping think they have, but that is the healing! You believe what you are going to believe. People who are sick got to have some hope, or they ain’t never going to get any better,” she said.
“You got hope, girl?” Sugar asked Opal.
Opal said yes, but it lacked enthusiasm.
“You better get it! You learn to hold hope tight. You learn to get it back up in you real quick, you hear? People can’t be with out it for long, and it is all around us, just like these plants. You didn’t know these plants did a darn thing, but then Sugar showed you different. Hope has stronger magic than all these plants, no doubt about it.”
Sugar wagged her finger in Opal’s face.
“Sometimes hope can slip away from you, it may be real quick, or it may take a long spell. But you don’t ever let me hear that you’ve lost it for good, or I’ll take a switch to your black hide. I may be old, but I’m mean! You hear me?”
“Yes ma’am,” Opal smiled.
“There is too much love in this world, and too much strength in you for you to ever give up!”
Sugar turned and walked on ahead. She pointed out other plants and revealed their mysteries. Opal followed her, repeating things under her breath and taking notes. In big letters she wrote:
Hope Is Strong Magic!
47
A cloaked man hid in the shadows of the pine forest that wrapped the massive White River bluff like an emerald skin. Above him was the peak of Caulder Mountain. Below him, the White River whipped in a frothy spin through a pool called Bat House Hole before it stretched back out and spilt into its north fork. It was dusk and the people of Liberty Creek, the only town for hundreds of miles, could be seen getting ready for nightfall.
The crystal-lined cloth of the man’s cloak reflected the scenery around it, and as the wind rippled the fabric, he seemed to appear then disappear. A swirl of black sorcery exploded before him. Amina appeared from within it. He bowed to her reluctantly.
“It’s not wise to meet this close. The Wardens have devices to detect magical activity,” he said impatiently. “You shouldn’t be so foolish.”
She whipped around and swept the man’s feet out from under him with her long staff. She hit him across his face with one end, then spun it and pinned him to the ground with the other.
“Your disrespect grows each time we meet. It makes me wonder if you’ve outlived your usefulness,” Amina scolded.
“You have my loyalty. I think you know that,” he growled back. “I’m one of the few that still honor you. You should be grateful that I’m even here.”
Amina turned toward the river and conjured a ball of purple fire.
“Your pathetic loyalty, or that of any man for that matter, is something I care very little about.” The globe of magic in Amina’s hand twirled until images of the people living below emerged. “They have lost the will to act. You would think freed slaves would smell the rot of injustice befo
re anyone else.”
“Why does Fallmoon Gap refuse to intervene? It’s outrageous. Isn’t it their duty to protect people within the realm from harm? Everything these good people have built will be taken from them.”
“Prismore has his own prejudices. Every realm that fades adds to the power he hordes,” she sneered.
“I’ve always been proud of Liberty Creek. The rifts in the Veil made this place a sanctuary for those who could settle nowhere else. Fallmoon Gap accepts the loss of Liberty Creek as necessary for the realm’s evolution,” he bemoaned. “But it’s easy for Prismore to say such things; he’s not under threat of being uprooted. At least not yet.”
“Have you done what I asked?”
“Yes. They have no idea. There was no disruption.”
“You failed the first time. I hope for your sake you do not fail again,” she said.
“Neither of us suspected she would be able to control the powerstone, much less fight off a pack of wereboars. But this time things are set. The device will be ready, as will I,” he said.
“No one is ready for what’s coming,” she laughed.
Amina swirled away in the smoky ribbons of her black magic, but her voice remained. It reverberated in a menacing whisper.
“It’s almost time. The destruction is going to be glorious!”
48
“Wereboar sees me, then I see it. I fire my gun and I miss. I put in a silver bullet and I fire again, and I hit it,” said Sugar. She had her finger cocked like she was holding a gun. She looked down her finger, squinting her eyes to aim at the imaginary wereboar.
“Woman! Come on now! Don’t listen to a word of what she’s saying, Opal,” Jupiter Johnson cracked.
“I did do it, that’s what I say. You don’t know no better,” Sugar said. She dismissed Jupiter with a wave of her hand.
“You did not shoot no big wereboar.”
“Let’s me ask you one question. Was your lanky black ass there?” She squared her fists on her two bony hips.
Opal Summerfield and The Battle of Fallmoon Gap Page 11