Lineage

by Juniper Black

  Leo looked at his hands again and saw that he was glowing, too. He tried not to be afraid, but he was a little boy in this place. He heard his father’s voice from somewhere far off and tried to be brave. He looked up to the person next to him and realized they didn’t know the light was on them. He looked to the others and saw the same unawareness in all of their faces. No one here knew what was happening to them. Or perhaps the sight of their neighbor encased in a bright aura made them pretend that they didn’t see it.

  Panic was beginning to rise inside his chest. He turned to step away from the others, away from the light, and found himself facing the gaze of a deer on the edge of the woods. Not just any deer, but the largest buck he had ever seen. A body three times the size of his dream self; antlers as thick as his arms; eyes the size of his fists. Black eyes that held Leo’s gaze and would not let him look away. The buck stamped the ground. He loped from behind the treeline into the clearing. The animal's legs gathered speed, and Leo could not move from his place. His dream legs became tree roots that burrowed into the ground as the buck came closer. Leo raised his arms as the rack of antlers lowered towards him.

  Awake in the bed, Leo’s hands were clenched into fists at his sides. He willed himself to bring them before his eyes. They were his own hands, lined and wrinkled. The knuckles enlarged as they had been the last decade. He steadied his breathing. He tried to remember what he had seen.

  The buck. The darkness and the light that had obliterated it. Shapes in the black. The group of people who had surrounded him. He saw their faces. He knew their names. Milton. Mackey. Gerber. McLaren. Patterson. Boone. Old names. Old families who have lived in Eversburg for generations. Old families who kept secrets like his own.

  Leo had a sense of what had been fighting him in the dream when he had tried to assert himself. He had always dreamed of the future. He was used to seeing what was to come. The dream tonight reminded him of a story his father had told him when Leo was little. A story from their family’s past.

  The dream tonight had fought him because it wasn’t Leo’s alone.

  ********

  “Do you think Zack has dreams like this but can’t recall them?” I asked his Uncle Leo in wonder after Zack had told me his story.

  Leo shook his head. “Only the sons of the sons seem to inherit in my family. It’s not like your family. In your family, it’s always the women.”

  I wondered if Constance had gone through this process as well. Using the excuse of genealogy to get a foot in the door. Baking cakes to bring with her to make her questions more palatable.

  I think about what I know now, and how we’ve recreated that ancient circle of friendship. I think about how it was almost lost to time. If Cleo hadn’t finally let slip her stories. If Cora hadn’t made sure I heard the tale. If I hadn’t decided to stay here in Eversburg with Zack to build our own home on the land on the Hill.

  All the families have a different theory about what made the orange light. The Mackeys believe it was a natural phenomenon. They liken the event to ball lightning and believe everything in their history is merely coincidence. The Pattersons think that the little people that the Native Americans used to tell tales about called the Gandayah were up to mischief that day, and those who were on the top of the Hill got caught up in it accidently. The other families have their own varying theories they tell their children when they’re old enough to start asking questions.

  Of course, the Swavelys have always said the light was a manifestation of the love that the forest bore for Janie Swavely.

  ________

  Chapter: Violette and The Day of Lammas

  I’m waiting in the rocking chair that used to live in the large common room at the other end of the house. It’s the chair that Mom Mom used to sit in and pull me up into her lap when I was little. The one that appears in some of my earliest memories. My chubby legs seated on her pale pink nightgown. Her hands clasped around me so I wouldn’t slip off. The sparkle in her ring that used to glint up at me is the one I’m wearing now. My eyes drift around the room while I listen for the car to turn into the gravel driveway along the side of the house. I notice that the cradle that used to hold the antique dolls is empty. “Posie must have finally done something with them,” I think, and then I realize that she must have known that the baby was coming. Why else move them after protesting so long that they remain in their place? I’m staring hard at the cradle, and I remember that it’s made from Rowan tree. Hand-made by someone in the family from long ago. The wood is well preserved and smooth from centuries of different hands pressing against the sides to soothe a crying child. The nails that hold it together are handcrafted iron. The cradle reminds me that if I was a Swavely from the past, while I was in labor I would have been given a potion of Rowan berries to drink. Along with the iron nails, the elixir would protect my child from the fairies and the evil eye. No one in my family has drank the Rowan mixture in several generations, but when my time draws near, there will still be certain safeguards that my mother and sister are sure to observe.

  As much as we’ll try to only dress me in loose clothing, the baby may come on a day when we are not so prepared. The knots in my clothing will need to be undone, and the laces of my shoes untied. If my hair was still long, like my sister’s, the braids would need to be let out. Posie would most likely help me with the unbinding, while Laurel goes throughout the house unlocking the doors and the windows. The baby will need to find its way into this world. After Laurel sees to this, she’ll help Posie turn over any mirrors, so the newest Swavely soul won’t be captured.

  We won’t rub the little newborn’s mouth with whisky; we Swavelys have other means of protecting the babe. We also won’t make it clutch a coin of silver; the money in its future doesn’t concern us. But all the adult women will eat three spoonfuls of oatmeal and water so my baby will have strength and luck. A sapling will be planted with the remains of the afterbirth and join the row of trees that lines the East side of our property.

  An image of the Hill flashes into my thoughts. I see the long line of Oak trees that runs down its own Eastern border, and I wonder how many Swavelys flourished while they all grew tall and green.

  ________

  Chapter: The Girl

  There were people in the forest today, but she did not know who they were. They came to the line of Oak trees that bordered the East near where a cabin had once stood. She knew they must have been of her and Janie’s line to have made it through the barriers, but she could not see a light of any kind around them no matter what angle she tried.

  “Maybe it’s best,” she whispered to a caterpillar sleeping in its cocoon. “They are forgetting me, and I will be able to forget about them.”

  Laughter from the strangers drew her gaze to them. The Girl saw a figure among them and realized there was at least one she did know after all. She recalled the face had been here before. “Perhaps as a child?” she struggled to place the woman. “With Posie, she had come recently with Posie.” She stalked over the tree limbs to get a better view. “Yes, this is Posie’s older girl called Violette.” She smiled triumphantly that she had finally placed her. She watched Violette point out landmarks to the others. They nodded at her, and sometimes they interjected as if they were filling in details. Violette would listen and beam her beautiful smile at them. All the while, the Girl noticed that Violette would occasionally put a hand to her stomach.

  “Baby,” she called back to the caterpillar. “Another one of mine.” She was so delighted that she sang out. Only at the last moment did she remember to mask her laughter. The people below would only hear birdsong.

  Moments ago, she had resigned herself to forgetting. She was letting the relief that oblivion could bring start to charm her into relenting. She felt these people were here for a reason. Nature might not have liked what the Girl had done those many years ago, but it was not without a heart. Nature had brought these tribespeople to her today. Part of Nature is feeling longing and loss, and it should
n’t be forgotten.

  “It will make the berries in the Spring taste sweeter,” the Girl said forlornly but determined. She could hold onto the memories of her life with Jaana. Her kin would continue to come here, generation after generation, and the Girl would continue to protect them.

  “Even the blue sickness has retreated somewhat,” the Girl realized. “Maybe it’s best that these kin cease to glow. Harder for the blue to find them.” She nodded to herself about this new idea. Robina had left before the blue light found her, although it had managed to touch Cora on one of her last visits. It had only been a soft touch, like it was caressing a flower petal. One touch was enough, although the Girl knew Cora had lived with the illness for years before it took her. When her time came, her suffering was also much less than others had suffered.

  “She fell asleep one night, and the blue light filled her dreams, and that was the end,” the Girl had forgotten about the caterpillar and only talked aloud to hear herself. “Peaceful and in dreams,” that was how the Girl hoped to pass when her time came. “Not for a long, long while yet,” she sighed. Then her mood brightened as she watched the gathering move down the hill again. “So I can protect them. My children’s children.”

  ________

  Chapter: Violette and The Start of Mabon

  Darkness will be coming, and we can only embrace it. We cannot halt the shortening of the light. We can only linger over the last nice days of September and hope they bleed into October. We will hunker down in November, and when the moonlight strikes the snow that covers the town in December we will be soothed by the beauty that winter brings.

  This day is the beginning. The second of the harvests lets us shore up our food reserves and reminds us of all we have yet to do before the darkness comes. At least this is what my ancestors did. The times in which we live, it’s easy to feel disconnected to our needs. We forget that the rituals that we used to connect us to the cycles of the year were created to help us survive. They are as necessary as the nourishment for the table and the health of those who dwell within the shelter.

  Our extended family gathers from all the neighboring towns for this day that is far more important to us than Thanksgiving. We are hosting this year, and they’ll arrive by carloads bringing cases of wine, sacks of acorns, bushels of apples. They’ll bring these items dressed in their best clothes and held between hands adorned with their finest rings. By evening, the kitchen will make the entire house smell of rose and sage. The roasted root vegetables from the oven will join the quail, the game hens and the boar on the table. Mixed among the main dishes, dark red pomegranates will mingle with the acorns and pinecones. They’ll remind us of the graves that were visited earlier in the day, and where the acorns, oak leaves and pinecones were laid in honor. I’d like to say most of the cider that was taken to offer libations to the trees that surround our dead was actually used for this purpose, but I know my family better. A splash for the tree, and two swallows for the pourer.

  There will be far too many people for us to all eat at the dining table. We’ll do a buffet instead, and people will eat when they like. No one is in a hurry on this night. We’ll catch up with family we don’t get to see often. We’ll talk about the children, the work we’re doing, and how the gardens fared this past year. Someone occasionally may mention what they think the winter will bring, but mostly we try to stay in the here and now. While the sun is still shining, and the apples in the orchards make the air smell sweet.

  After dusk, the corn dollies will be taken outside to the miniature graves that await them. We’ll tuck them back into the earth. Their energy will be reabsorbed and help next year’s seeds grow lush and tall.

  Our relatives will leave as they arrived. Car by car, the families with younger children will shy away first. All but cousin Sandra who always nestles her sleepy children upstairs. She and her husband will carry them out later in the night when most of the others are leaving. The Shamokin clan will stay the longest, even though they have the farthest to drive. Loud and brassy, they’ll tell stories that make me laugh as much now as when I was a little girl. In the candlelight, their animated faces are almost caricatures. Firefighters and miners make up the bulk of them, and the men all speak with raspy, staccato forcefulness.

  They’ll leave when the wine is gone and call goodnight all the way to their cars. I’ll lock the doors and be relieved that someone has done the bulk of the kitchen cleaning. I’ll be tired but also full of a strange energy. The dishwasher will stop, and I’ll make myself exchange the clean dishes to begin another cycle of dirty ones.

  Rocket will have spent the night next door. A house filled to the brim with people and food would have been too much for him. My sister and her husband would have taken Maven and Connor home by eight o’clock, and I know Rocket will be asleep by now in Maven’s bed. I’ll let him sleep, and Laurel will bring him back home in the morning. It will be Sunday, the day that she, Posie and I have tea at the kitchen table in our pajamas.

  ________

  Chapter: Lineage

  The farmers that surrounded the area had used the name of the hill they called Eversburg as a boundary for their children’s roaming and had long told their sons and daughters to go only so far as the stream. The questioning faces of their young ones elicited different responses from their parents.

  "The waters are cold and fast there, even in the summer," one mother cautioned, not knowing if it was true or not.

  "The woods have wild creatures there that could snatch you up," an uncle eerily described in his scary fireside story.

  "Some places a person needs to be invited," one father told his mischievous boys, and that statement at least seemed more true than the other stories people in town told. "I don't know anything about sprites that look like little girls who turn into fishes or bucks twice the size they should be or birds that try to talk to people. What I do know is that land belongs to the Swavely women, and unless one of them sends you a formal request of your presence," he paused as he pointed a finger at the both of them, "you stay off that land."

  Years pass. Stories swell and then fade away until they are mostly forgotten. New people continue to blow into town until they far outnumber the old families who have remained for generations. Even most of the Swavely family itself began to forget why they were special even though the lingering sense of some vague importance still floats through their minds. The Hill remembers, though. The Hill remains untouched. There is still a ring around the land where no one save a Swavely would attempt to build and no stray person attempts to infiltrate. In a part of the country where empty lots are precious few, not one person has ever offered to buy the acreage even though the Swavelys have all moved to town. The last of their cabins fell to dust around half-buried foundations, and the land rests as it did so many moons ago. Solitary, pristine, wrapping its oaken arms around those it loved. Ever, Salome and Constance and the later generations who lie beneath the loam. Freddy and Rebecca who lie within them. Stranger and Janie who lived on in the memories of the children they made together. A spark of what remains of love for them floats down from the Hill into town like cottonwood fluff in the springtime as if seeking out the remnants of their lineage. The children of their children lie in bed at night, dreaming they are special if they could only remember how.

  ********

  The Girl perched in the stand of Ash with her crows and watched the cottonwood drift down towards the stream. The Girl had been here in these woods for so long, she could no longer remember when she came to be.

  She could recall pieces of her time here. She remembered the year when the Gandayah mysteriously vanished from the forest. She had searched their usual nesting places, but none could be found. The only remnants she could finally locate were their counterparts, the Ohdow.

  They had huddled just inside the mouth of their cave in their midnight coats of fur. They had peered back at her with their shimmering dark eyes. When she had smiled at them, they had replied with their own pointed an
d yellowed rows and had come out to greet her.

  The Ohdow had always protected the world from the menacing creatures that would sometimes seek to creep above ground from the depths of the earth. The Girl could tell, by the way the Ohdow had all gathered at the edge of their home cave, that something must be wrong below ground as well as above.

  No more Gandayah to walk the woods with her. No more threats from below for the Ohdow to stifle. No purpose for the left behind little creatures - so she gave them one. They became her protectors of the forest instead of the underworld they had always known. She showed them how to mask their forms so they could move freely above ground, and out of the caves they flourished. After so many centuries below the earth, they often took to the trees and scampered from limb to limb.

  That day seemed long ago. She had watched many others pass under this stand of Ash as the years waxed and waned. For what seemed a brief while, she had seen her own children play beneath them among the wildflowers. She had tried to join the forest with the ones she loved - to keep them here with her - and it had worked for a time before Nature found her out.

  There had been no one worthy for a long time now. The direct line of succession had been broken generations ago. That child of Belladonna’s, Robina, had seemed promising, and the Girl had even sought her out. When Robina arrived, the Girl could see that she was flawed. A green tinge of envy and avarice had made a halo around the young woman. She wanted too much. She would taint the gifts her ancestor had left.

  The Girl abandoned her quest for an heir the day that Robina had finally been coaxed from her mother’s hands from a place far away from the Hill. The Girl gave up her hope of finding another entity like her Janie. That day, the Girl began to withdraw from the Hill.

  She turned away from her perch near the Ohdow in their crow disguise and took herself along the meadow edge back home to her nest of furs and leathers. She lifted a woven blanket to look at the treasures that had been left in her safekeeping.