Lineage

by Juniper Black

  She moved weakly in the bed. She slept from the medicine more of the day than she was awake. A crow came to perch outside her window one morning and could not be persuaded to leave, and that was when Bella knew she would not last the day.

  Her husband was there in the room with her, and Robina entered to stand beside the bed. She looked triumphant and just as willful. Bella saw her open her mouth and hoped what came out of it would be gracious. Maybe she was going to ask for forgiveness or for Bella’s blessing.

  “I’m going,” were the last words Bella heard. They echoed her own thoughts as the room flashed with a bright orange light, and then all was blackness.

  ________

  Chapter: Robina

  She still remembers the day she stepped foot onto the land. How the wind swept up from the stream and drew the hair away from her face. How it stirred the leaves in the tall trees above her and caused the seeds to spiral down to the forest floor. The air was cool but the sun was warm, and the birds cooed and chirped as she walked underneath them.

  The cabin was not quite as much as she had hoped, but her husband was a capable man. She was confident they could make it a home. They would be cozy in the winter around the fire and cool in the summers on the shaded porch with the summer breeze.

  When she entered through the door, the books were waiting for her on the table. There was a thick sheen of dust that covered everything in the cabin, but the books were clear as if someone had specifically dusted them right before Robina arrived. The letter that rested on top of the first book was addressed to her, and she opened it immediately.

  “Robina, dear one,” the letter began. “I know I will not last to see you arrive, and for that I am sorry. I wanted to show you these woods myself. I wanted you to know their most secret hiding places, but now you’ll have to find them on your own. Look for the orange glow. Be ever vigilant. It will guide you when I cannot. I wanted to teach you the stories and the rights that have been passed down through our family, but these books will have to take my place.”

  Robina paused in her reading to open the top book with one hand. She thumbed through several of its pages and noticed the handwriting changed throughout the book. “These books belong to our family. The first was started by our ancestor Rebecca. While it is full of knowledge that you will find useful, you should know that there was another book before this. Much older than Rebecca’s time, it came from another country, but it was lost in these woods. I believe it still can be found. Perhaps you’ll have a tenacity I did not possess - or maybe I simply didn’t want it enough for the book to come to me. The books in front of you now hold many great secrets, but realize that it is still only a small portion of what Rebecca’s mother could recall from the book that was lost. I wish you well. I wish you contentment here in this land, and of course, I wish you power. In love, Rose.”

  Beside the books was a small carved wooden box. When Robina opened it, a flash of orange glow shimmered for a moment. Robina started momentarily, and touched a hand lightly to her chest over her sternum. Then she flung back the lid and took out the strange ring that rested inside.

  ********

  All that had been promised had been denied to her. She felt that cut the deepest.

  The rituals in the books didn’t work as they were supposed to. She tried again and again, but all her attempts yielded results that were only a glimmer of what they were described in the books as being able to achieve. Rose was supposed to have been her mentor, and instead she had been left to flail on her own. She had once tried to contact her cousin Cleo in town. She had insisted that Cleo must know something that could help her, and she had watched the muscles around her cousin’s mouth tighten in refusal.

  The years that passed only compounded her frustration. Rick’s inheritance dwindled away once the children were born, and he struggled to find work for which he was suited. He was no good at farming, and the rabbits he decided to breed kept escaping from their hutches.

  Robina began to regret her decision to marry a man she never loved. A year into this regret, their son ran away to seek out his relatives in New York. A year after that, their daughter fell into drugs, and what remained of their tenuous union dissolved completely. Rick took a place in town while Robina stayed on the Hill. She had to - she was still looking for the book of her ancestors. The one that had been lost somewhere on this Hill.

  She had convinced herself that if she could find the old book, she could finally have the power to unlock the secrets that always seemed out of her reach. Maybe the replacement book that was started by Rebecca was inadequate. Perhaps she had missed a vital detail, and if Robina could find the original writings, her life would be what had been promised.

  She used to take the family ring with her when she would wander the forest on her searches. The letter that Rose left had told her that the stone was special. It allowed the wearer to intuit the animals’ intentions. Not only animals, but the other creatures that lived in the woods. More than that, the ring kept you young far longer than would seem possible.

  Youth and beauty and magic and power. These are the things that had been promised to her when she was a girl.

  One day her daughter, possessed by drugs, crept into the house when Robina was away and took anything she thought she could pawn. The ring was only one of many items that had been taken. Any monetary value her daughter could have gotten for it would have been so small. Robina wept and screamed for hours at the trees. How much more would they take from her?

  Without the ring, Robina’s beauty began to fade along with her hopes. Her skin could not retain the youthful glow for which the other ancestors who lived on the Hill were famous. Heaped on top of the indignation of seeing her beauty fade was the reality that she continued on year after year. The Swavely women were known to be beauties, but often they were also known to die young. At some point an illness that defied all medical diagnosis would creep into their bodies. It took their youth and beauty at the same time.

  She would rather have had their fate. Robina was stranded here: aging, deteriorating. All her promised gifts lost, stolen, or hidden from her by the same entity that had enticed her to dream about the Hill in the first place.

  She had recently begun trying to convince her cousin Cora to buy her legacy. She made a promise to herself that if she succeeded, once she left her decrepit house she would not step foot on that section of the Hill again.

  This resolution didn’t stop the dreams, though. Try as she might, no sleep draught would work. Not a tea or tincture nor an entire bottle of wine she drank one night in desperation.

  Every week she dreamed of soft green leaves, spiderwebs strung between twigs that glistened with dew, and a faint orange light that pulsed close to the ground of the tree roots.

  Every morning after these dreams, she rolled onto her side in the bed and curled herself small. It wasn’t fair that the Hill taunted her. It was not her fault that the Hill had thought she was something she was not.

  ________

  Chapter: The Girl

  The figure on the forest floor was still and crumpled, and the Girl could sense even at her distance that it breathed shallowly like a dying animal.

  She crept closer stealthily, in case there were others she had not discerned. Here was her progeny Rose. Now Rose no longer. Now just the shell of what Rose was. The Girl angled her body and her head downward to the woman, and if anyone had seen in her that moment, they would not have said she resembled a girl at all. She looked like something feral with her tangle of hair and her pointed teeth.

  ********

  The Girl had slept for a while, and then emerged into the forest to find that new people she did not recognize now lived in the cabin on the hilltop. The cabin that used to belong to her and to Jaana. Their home.

  Now someone else’s home. Still, she knew they belonged to her in some way. A distant way. She had watched the woman go out into the forest with a book and try to speak to the trees. For a moment, the Girl had panicke
d that Janie’s book had been stolen from her, but when she looked closer, she could see that they were not the same. Even the words the woman spoke were not quite right. This book was a different book.

  She had followed the woman out of the trees to home - what had been her home, now this woman’s home - and when they drew near, she heard a man’s voice call for “Rose”. And then the woman had a name.

  “Rose...rose....rose,” the Girl sang the name from the shadows. She watched the woman halt her steps and slowly turn. Rose’s green eyes searched the shadows in the brush. The Girl giggled silently into her hand. Oh yes, this was one of her line. No one else would have been able to hear her call. Only one of hers had eyes that green and bright.

  Moons came and went. Snow fell and new green blossomed over and over again. She watched the woman in the forest when she gathered herbs. She saw Rose with her little ones, and then they were little ones no longer. She knew when the eldest girl fell ill, but this time her heart could not bear her inability to intervene. She couldn’t risk losing another James, another Janie. She had distanced herself and slept long periods for a reason. She was trying to forget. She was trying to mend her heart.

  She was forced to leave Rose’s girl to fate, and the line of the young woman’s life was clipped short. She tried to feel nothing, and when Rose began to wail her grief, the Girl fled to her cave. Rose’s grief sounded too like her own.

  ********

  Now here was her Rose, riddled with disease until it took her. The Girl knew this was her doing. The pact with the Ash. The corruption of the gift they had required.

  She crept closer until she could put her hands into Rose’s thick hair. Still reddish orange like the light that glowed in the woods. Not dulled with gray. Still emanating the last of her energy through the ends of the strands.

  Rose opened her eyes and saw the Girl’s face close to hers. “Finally,” she sighed. “You’re here.”

  The Girl chittered like a chipmunk and was glad that the sound made Rose smile. The smile was weak and faltering, but a smile of joy all the same.

  “There’s another coming. My niece Robina. I’ve sent for her. You’ll find her here, at the cabin.” Rose tried to raise herself up closer to the Girl, but after a moment, her failing body collapsed back to the moss beneath her. “You’ll help her, won’t you? She’ll have no one to teach her.” Rose sighed a long sigh, and the green of her eyes dulled.

  No more Rose. Only the shell of what Rose had been. The Girl cooed at the form soothingly and removed her hands from the mass of hair. She went to the wildflower meadow and returned with her arms full of flowers. She wove the fragrant colors into Rose’s locks, and when she was done, she bent to kiss the woman’s forehead.

  This was how Redvers found Rose two days later when he came to visit. He had not brought the boys with him. He had wanted this visit to be special - only between him and his mother-in-law.

  He had meant to surprise her with good news; news he had hoped would please her. God knows, she had never forgiven him for taking Cleo away to live in town. Even though the decision had been Cleo’s all along. Even though Cleo had insisted.

  He had climbed the Hill to tell her that he had called a meeting in town, and the result of which was that the land that encapsulated the Hill, the town proper, and the growing fields in a five square mile radius were unified officially under one name: Eversburg. He meant the naming as an homage to her and to his Cleo.

  He had hoped to see her smile. He had hoped to be forgiven. Most importantly, he had hoped that being in her good graces would allow him to ask her to grant him a wish one day, should he be in need. She was rumored to be capable of such miracles, although his wife stubbornly would neither confirm nor deny this belief.

  Now, he knelt in front of her cold form lying in the moss not far from the cabin, and he could not fathom who had put flowers in her hair.

  ********

  The Girl had been given a name, and names always held power. She rolled the name around in her head, but she did not speak the name. She carried it around with her for a long while.

  The niece did not come. The Girl waited and waited.

  Another fall. Another summer. And then another all over again.

  The house on the Hill stood empty, and the Girl grew impatient. She used the name. She felt how it sounded in her mouth, and she spoke it. She moved it out of her head and placed it on her tongue. She pushed it out of her lips as she threw the herbs on the fire. She called her, this Robina. She sent her dreams. She made her come.

  ********

  The Girl felt the footsteps of the newcomer and smelled the lilac scent that drifted up from her the moment Robina passed under the treed archway onto the path that would bring her to the cabin.

  She skipped across the acres so fast she was almost flying, and she smiled with joy that at last there was another.

  Another of her children’s children. Another to keep away the loneliness that had begun to blink dark, wet eyes at her.

  Later, sobbing in front of the four Ash, the Girl would ask herself what she had expected? That Robina’s heart would radiate sweet light the way Janie’s had? That the young woman would have possessed Rebecca’s unflinching passion and power? The Girl had expected Robina to greet her with a wide smile of friendship and relief that finally, after moons and moons of dreams, they were to be together.

  The Girl had stood on the path grinning madly. Her arms spread wide exuberantly while she panted to catch her breath.

  Robina blinked her eyes and looked straight through her. The Girl watched the other pass by her to examine a forest bramble flower, and the smile slid off her face.

  Robina was finally here, but she could not see.

  If she could not see the form of the Girl, she could not see the form of the Woman of the Woods.

  The Girl would not be able to teach her. She told the trees and pulled at her hair in frustration and in distress.

  “What more can be done?” the Girl asked the Ash. She turned her tear-streaked cheeks up to them in supplication.

  The trees were silent, though the wind blew softly.

  ********

  The Girl would watch the newcomers as they settled into the cabin. She watched them struggle to become accustomed to the way life was up here.

  She followed Robina one day as the woman took the book that Rebecca had made into the forest. She listened closely as Robina tried to speak to the trees, but the timbre of her voice was wrong. The intention in her heart was wrong, too.

  The Girl began to realize she had chosen wrong. She should have sent the dreams to Cleo. The Girl’s earlier efforts to woo her had failed, but she should have tried again to convince Cleo that this was her rightful place. She should have told Cleo that if she came back, the Girl would give her the child she secretly wanted.

  Too late now, too late. Here was the other. This girl who wanted the secrets that lived here but didn’t know how to sacrifice for them. The Girl could see the shimmer of want radiating off Robina, and she knew Robina couldn’t be trusted to keep the secrets of the women who had come before her.

  If the secrets weren’t safe, the Girl wasn’t safe.

  The Girl pulled her body back further into the shadows of the brush. She let her skin shade into dark green to disguise her, and it echoed the green cloud of avarice that came off Robina. The Girl’s thoughts swam in circles. Which direction to choose now that her mistake had been made. Her mind stilled on her decision.

  She let the younger woman walk by her, and then the Girl retreated into the depth of the woods.

  ________

  Chapter: Cora

  Cora had always enjoyed the woods, but she was glad her mother had belonged to one of the Swavely lines that had chosen to live in town generations ago. The land was pretty, but the life up there on the Hill was hard. It was isolated, too, and Cora had always preferred the sociability of neighbors.

  There were visits up to Robina often enough to get her fill of fo
rest air. She was all alone up there now for almost a decade. Cora went up at least once a month to catch Robina up on news from town, and of course there was the Yule log to collect each December.

  She used to bring the girls with her when they were little. Sometimes her husband took them if Robina and Rick had needed an extra hand for a project. Sophie hadn’t enjoyed the trips as much as Posie had. Cora was pretty sure Sophie was five when she said she’d rather not go up to the Hill anymore.

  When Cora asked her why, she had answered, “Bad animals,” as she shook her head no. Cora wasn’t sure what her youngest meant by that, but if she didn’t want to go that was fine with her. Posie had continued her visits until well into her teens, and eventually she had preferred to stay in town as well. Teenagers tend to become preoccupied with boys, and there were certainly no potential beaus on the Hill.

  “Not much of anything up here,” Cora thought as she shut the car door. “Nothing but trees and snow and stories.”

  The stories were the other reason she made sure to visit. Her research into the family was always a fascinating hobby. You’d learn a little detail, and if you followed it to the next person who could tell you more, that small detail for one set of the relatives turned into a whole chapter for a different line of the family.

  Most relatives - and old people in general - relished the opportunity to tell their memories. Cora had knocked on the doors of total strangers many times throughout the years. People in small towns rarely had anything new occur. A mysterious woman on your doorstep asking for stories they might have of her kin from long ago was interesting. That someone wanted to hear stories of anything they might remember was almost flattering. Cora was never turned away, not once.

  How odd it was then, that strangers would welcome the chance to talk to her, but the relatives closest to her were always reticent. Cleo’s refusals bordered on rudeness, and Robina had only recently started to reveal pieces of her life. Cora had a feeling this was because Robina had been thinking of selling her land. She had hinted more than once that she’d prefer to sell it to Cora, and she knew Cora wanted stories. For this reason, Cora wasn’t sure if Robina perhaps embellished events to seem more mysterious than they actually were. She considered that perhaps Robina was trying to peak her desire for the property.