by Lisa Hannett
Daisy flinches, spins, says nothing.
“Stay put now,” Mag says, stepping back to see all she done. Sweat glistens beneath her widow’s peak, a delicate crown sparkling just below the hairline. The firelight adds a glow to Mag’s features ain’t no amount of makeup could match. Shadows soften the sharp angle of her cheekbones, pool in the perfect dip of her throat. Under sloppy coveralls and a man’s sleeveless shirt is a figure spandex were made for. Not an inch of fat out of place. Not a hint of orange peel on them thighs.
What a waste. Daisy sighs, half-turns away.
Miss Maggie lifts a hand. Wait.
“Whatever,” Daisy replies, heart and gaze sinking to the scuffed toes of her boots. No, she don’t begrudge what Miss Maggie done way back then. Not always. She knows how hard it burns, being sorry. “I ain’t going nowheres.”
-- 7 --
Hatchet in hand, Mag hacks twigs for kindling as she tramps through the woods to the riverside. A likely reason for her to be heading upstream instead of down towards Butcher’s, she reckons, should prying eyes spot her creeping that way. Ain’t no-one would begrudge her a bit of stockpiling, what with Fall ever-crisping the air, hardening and sharpening it into the cold axe of winter. Before that blade drops, severing folk from basic supplies, cutting them off ’til next year’s melt, Mag gathers just enough tinder to keep loose lips from flapping, but not so much as to make her later to Jax’s than already she is.
The wind nips her cheeks pink as she crunches through the undergrowth. Crabapples mash to sour cider under her feet, juice-soaked pinecones turn to pulp. Pausing every few steps, she drops her slow-growing bundle of branches. Presses the chopper between her knees to free up her hands. Lifts the hood on her long coat, tugging it over the brown knitted hat covering her vibrant hair. It won’t be but a few yards ’til the breeze pesters the cowl off her head, forcing her to stop again. She tugs the hoodstrings, but don’t bother bow-tying ’em. Just tucks them laces in with the red wisps escaping her cap. Trudges on.
Mag smells Jax’s place long before she sees it.
Near his property, the woods git mangier. Leaves abandon branches, dive groundwards, all wilted and brown as the colourman’s hill. Shrubs ain’t no more’n sheaves of wasted sticks. On the forest floor, thimbleweeds and asters and harebells is all shrivelled like corpse-fingers, reaching skyward between clumps of mushrooms, clawing at fresh air. Breathing shallow, Mag hauls a scarf over her nose and jogs to the footbridge spanning a bend in the river.
Once--maybe the first time she called on Jax--Mag brung him a kerchief full of cinnamon sticks, licorice root, and summer posies. The first of many such small gifts. “That’s some colour, ain’t it,” she’d said, opening the potpourri parcel. “Brighter’n any pennant on Vinesday floats.”
Jax had laughed, kissed her ’til she forgot about the blossoms. Mag never did ask if he sneaked them gift-flowers into a batch of dye, though she fancied he might of. She seen the gleam in them rodeo fabrics he tinted, the dark in them deer-hunter shades, the gaud in them buntings and carnival tents. Best colourman in this or any other county, were Jax. Only uses the rankest ingredients to make his dyes--green nutshells, chalk and lime, rust shavings, yellow weed, boiling piss and lots of it. All them hues gots a lick of magick to ’em, Mag reckons, on account of how bad they stink.
Amazing what folk git use to, she thinks now, sighting Jax’s cabin in the distance. Perched atop its small hill, as close to the river as it can git without falling in, it’s surrounded by birch and sycamore, blackberry bushes, thorn-studded brambles--a natural fence what keeps deer and skunks from wandering too close, tumbling into the dyeing vats he gots honeycombed across the backyard. Mag winces as the breeze changes, carrying a great wafting reek her way. She stops to wipe the sting from her eyes. Tells herself it’s a grove of lilacs compared to the off-meat tang of dead and dying bessies gusting downriver from Butcher’s.
Fancy folk may keep Jax’s business five miles away from their own lah-di-dah houses, their fresh-mown meadows, their coffee-scented Main Street--that avenue decked in awnings and pennants he made so pretty, where folk go a-strollin in fabrics dipped in his sharpest dyes--but ain’t nothing they can do to stop Mag herself slinking up to his door every now ’n’ again. Nor he to hers, any chance he gits.
Don’t tell no-one I were here, he’d warn each time he come a-callin, softening the order with a smooch and a goose. True to her word, Mag don’t let a single one slip--and why would she? The way folks natter ... and whisper ... and stare.
Ain’t nobody’s business, she thinks, what I do, what I done, and what not.
At the bridge, she stacks her meager bunch of firewood against the piling, then darts across the water and starts up the slope to Jax’s house. Halfway uphill, she sees him come out the back door. Overalls rolled up to the knee. Barefoot, but rubber-gloved. A once-gingham cloth tied like a bank-robber’s mask over his nose, mouth, and chin. Dark eyes fixed on the vats pitting his yard.
Crouching so’s he won’t spy her there, Mag watches Jax balance on the edge of an indigo-stained tank. He stirs the pot with a long metal pole, takes a few steps and attends to the next one. So on and so forth, he flows from colour to colour, placing his feet like a tightrope walker, careful but practised. Confident. Graceful, she thinks, though she won’t never use that flouncy word to his face.
Boy, what a face.
Mesmerised, Mag looks on ’til the sun dips like a teabag, steeping the world in Orange Pekoe. Right as she’s about to stand, Jax lifts his head. She decides to wait a spell longer. With the water sloshing behind her, Mag can’t hear what might of caught his attention. After a moment, he continues stirring, eyes flick-flicking toward the gravel track leading upside his cabin, through a sad copse of pine, and round to the front drive. Must be due for a pick-up or delivery, she reckons. Mail truck drops in three times daily, regular as church bells, bringing and taking Jax’s paper-wrapped parcels. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing worth hitching his shoulders up like that, nor putting that rabbit-twitch in his gaze. Except, when the visitor appears, striding down the path like he gots better places to be, it ain’t no stiff-brimmed postman come a-knocking. It ain’t no friendly, workaday caller.
From the looks of them coveralls, he drove over straight from the chop-shed. Black spatters his dark denim legs from the cuffs up to the hem of his fleece-lined jacket. Unwashed fists swinging hard by his sides.
What business does Butcher gots here, Mag wonders. And don’t he look proper riled.
Sure she won’t hear the end of it should Butch catch her skulking--here, of all places--Mag crab-walks back down the hill. Formulating excuses with each backward step, coded apologies only Jax’ll decipher. She’ll send Daisy on over later--innocent, whey-faced messenger--to reassure the colourman he’ll git his nails tomorrow. When them two can conduct this business of theirs alone.
The river burbles as she draws near the bridge, a jolly rumble Mag swears is trickster-gods laughing.
What a lark, they’s chuckling as she bends to scoop the bundle of firewood. What a joke!
“Yoo-hoo,” Mag hears as she straightens. Briefly, she looks at the rushing water, a hot curse on her godforsaken tongue. Lava glubbing in her belly, she clenches ’n’ unclenches her jaw, arse, fists. Hardly containing herself, she turns. Bares her teeth.
“Didn’t know you made house calls, Miss Magnolia,” Penny-Jean says, smugness thick as the apricot foundation on her face. Pointedly, she looks up at Jax’s hill. Slow-smiles. “Just wait ’til the girls hear ’bout it!”
* * *
Foretelling, Daisy knows, ain’t the same as real magicks. Mostly, it’s gazing crooked at a straight world. Reading signs ain’t no-one else cares to see. Understanding there ain’t no such thing as accidents, only fateful happenings. Events taking folk where they needs and wants most to be.
Whenever she can, Daisy looks for destiny’s little arrows, pointing her the hell away from Butchers Holler.
&nbs
p; And these pointers is often small. So small, most folks don’t even notice ’em. It ain’t hexery as such. There won’t be no shadow-spun horses come trotting round the room at her beckoning. No ensorcelled pollywog necklaces pulled out from her cookpots, changing hopeful young gals to mer-ladies. No muck-babies rising like dough between her glowing fingers, firming to flesh under cornflower spells. Old Gerta ain’t bothered showing her none of that type of spellcraft; the witch only taught Miss Maggie them secret ways, then she up and croaked on ’em years before Daisy were ready for such learnings--or such losings. Long before Daisy had bled.
For now, without Miss Maggie at the bench beside her--blades scraping, mini lathe whirring, dust-brushes clink-clink-clinking on the rims of varnish jars--the cabin is blessed quiet. Perfect for Daisy to indulge in her foretelling mood. On the table, clusters of candles gutter in a draught, yellow tongues speaking a soft, throatless language only fire-faeries and hags understands. Overhead, the wind’s loosing a pitter-patter of acorns on the rooftop. Curious squirrels skitter across the shack’s timber walls. Every now ’n’ again sap sizzles in the hearth, followed by startling snaps. Whooshing under it all is the pulse in Daisy’s ears, thudding excitement.
Arranged on the scarred wood in front of her, four heart-shaped bone filings make a pattern she sure likes the look of, a pattern what must promise love. One after another, them slices was sheared off the calf shoulder she’s working, each one landing just as they’s now set: points inward, rounded edges facing out, just like a lucky field-clover or the yellow petals of a prairie sundrop. Each with a tiny hole bored through their tips, just begging to be pinned.
Now that’s magick, ain’t it just.
Daisy ain’t a gal to ignore opportunity, especially not when it’s laying right there, so obviously hers for the taking.
A few minutes to herself and she’s brim-full of clever thinkings. It’s so much easier reading signs when ain’t nobody else around, noisying up her mind. Trim that pin even sharper, milk that bessie one last time, watch yer Mama’s ghost now, whet them chisels, clean them brushes, git yer hair out the way of my designs, scrub yer nails before touching that velvet, man the incinerator, charge the taser batteries, stack them logs for the fire, carry them bones ...
Daisy shakes her head. Imagine--just imagine--how many fortunes she could reckon if she ain’t had to contend with so much racket all the damn time. Guaranteed, if Mag were here to distract her, Daisy would of whisked them bone-petals straight into the dustpan without sparing ’em a second glance. She’d of missed the true meaning behind ’em, missed the chance to hook her fate. Cruel shame, that would of been. After last night’s dream of a striped mattress overflowing with carnations--symbols of passionate affairs, according to Mama’s dream dictionary--and after this morning’s encounter with Jax? Well. Someone out there were telling her to stay alert. Love were heading her way.
Ain’t no rule against her helping it along, now were there.
In a coffee mug half-filled with simmered hooch and rose oil, Daisy mixes a varnish adapted from old Gerta’s own potions. Sprigs of parsley, myrtle blossoms, crushed holly leaves git swirled in the warm liquid, and when the brew’s perfume is strongest, she dips in a stiff paintbrush and slathers each heart on both sides. As they’s drying, she rolls a leathery length of bindweed between her fingers ’til the stem’s good and flexible. Wets it in the cup, then slowly threads it through each bone-petal. Gently, she snugs ’em together, fashioning a bloom about the size of a silver dollar.
All that’s left is to find the right pin to make a brooch of this charm.
Problem is, ain’t none on the workbench close enough to finished. Daisy considers the one Miss Maggie’s been etching all week--a rectangular tie-pin, flat like a money clip, what she carved from the very tip of a Hereford’s tailbone--but knows she’ll git a hiding if it goes missing. What she needs is one what ain’t so noticeable. One Mag might even believe she herself lost.
Pushing back her chair, Daisy goes to the table’s end and tries the handles on every drawer. Locked. She rummages round the other gal’s workspace, shifting bowls of sequins, razor blades, a wood-burning kit. Nothing useful.
In the fireplace, a seething log splits with a sharp crack. Hand to heart, Daisy jolts, head whipping up at the sound. “Sweet Jesus,” she starts to say, then stops the oath half uttered.
Ain’t that particular hanging god looking after me today, she thinks with a smile, gaze landing on Gerta’s showcase above the mantelpiece. As ever, it’s them beautiful fates that loves Daisy best.
Dashing across the room, she pries a hook-nosed pin from the second-last row in the frame, gives it a quick kiss, and spins back to the table. No sooner has she used it to secure the love charm out of plain sight--it fits perfect under the collar of her dress--than a rap-rap-rap of knuckles sounds on the front door.
As she opens it, Daisy sends silent prayers up to old Gerta, Mary’s son, and all three of them hooded weavers alike. Thanking the immortal lot of ’em for pulling on their magick strings. Guiding her to this very moment. This threshold. This colourman.
“Twice in one day,” she says, suddenly bold. Grinning coy, she steps aside to let him in. Bats her lashes, now thanking God she fixed her face after lunch. “You losing yer head over me, Jax?”
-8-
“Go home,” Mag snaps, thundering into the workshop. “Shift’s over.”
Head down, she tosses the hatchet onto her cot. Heel-toes her boots off. Fumbles at coat buttons suddenly swole way too big for the slits. Fury and humiliation has clumsied her fingers, fuzzed her vision. Gran must be twisting in her grave. She whips back her hood, shrugs off the grimed jacket, hooks it on the doorknob. Unwinding her long scarf, she stares like it were a leash before jamming it into a muddied sleeve. Fool girl, Gran’d say. Hound-dogging away from Jax’s like that. As if it weren’t right, you being there. As if you ought to be ashamed.
Mag tears off her hat--yanking a few sweaty strands of hair in the process--and balls the thing with trembling hands. Bad enough she had to crawl through the cold, leaf-littered muck, inch by inch so’s Butcher wouldn’t catch sight of her. What else were she supposed to do? Saunter up for a quick howdy-do by the vats? Give Butch a nudge and a nod, saying all without saying nothing?
Don’t mind us. Nose-tap.
Just here for a short roll. A bolt. A ream? Wink-wink.
Much worse, though, were bumping into Penny-Jean Maberry like that. Didn’t know you made house calls ... The pageant gal fluffed and primped and powdered, shimmering top to toe, asking with a flutter of false lashes how her new corset were coming along, and could she pop in to collect it today? Or would Mag prefer bringing it round to her place? Didn’t know you made ... Auditions is next week, remember? ... house calls ... She can’t miss her first chance to shine, can she. And there were Mag, smeared and smutty, stammering excuses. I don’t make a habit of ... I don’t ... While the little snot smirked them bubble-gum lips of hers, and--
Giggles.
Mag spins round. Flushes to the golden roots of her hair. Ain’t no surprise Jax gots secret shortcuts from his far-off place to what’s closer to town--Mag ain’t stupid enough to believe hers is the only door he’s ever slunk up to after sundown--but even so, he could of shown some discretion, some common decency, and waited out on the stoop when he got here and found she weren’t home. Like any passing acquaintance would.
Far as folk know--and what they gots to keep knowing--is that’s all she and Jax is. Fellow crafters with a perfectly reasonable interest in one another’s trade. Some might go so far as to call them two the lifeblood of the pageant industry--ain’t no frills or frocks without their makings, right?--but can’t no-one see nothing more in their meetings. Mag don’t want none of that attention. Neither does she want no-one saying--with straight tongues or crooked--that she’s riding Jax’s coat-tails. That her pins ain’t worth the cloth they’s holding together ...
And now Penny-Jean, of all goddamn p
eople, is seen Mag where she shouldn’t of been ...
And now Jax is got it into his head to make a house call, in broad daylight, with Maberry’s loose-lipped daughter nearby ...
And now Butcher’s own gal is all doe-eyed and primed for blabbing ...
“What you doing here?”
At the far end of the workbench, Jax gots one hand on the back of Daisy’s chair, the other on the table. Leaning in for a better look at the knife in the girl’s hands. Blowing bone shavings off the blade’s edge while she whittles a cow’s rib, trimming it into a harp’s tuning pin. Shoddy, unsellable work--Mag can see that plain across the room. The ridges is too deep, the shaft too thin; the thing’ll snap if a string’s so much as waved at it. Don’t take two guesses to figure out what’s stole the child’s focus, what with the colourman bending so close like that. His whispering. Her blushing. Their giggling.
Slipping the chain out from under her collar, Mag trudges to the bank of drawers and unlocks the smallest one, hardly thicker’n a paperback romance. From its padded felt innards, she plucks three bobby pins, each capped with amethyst flowers. “Take these on over to Penny-Jean’s place,” she says, elbowing Jax out the way as she hands the bribe to Daisy. “With our apologies for the hold-up on her order. Tell her we ain’t in the habit of making no house calls, never will be. This here’s a one-off. Free of charge, no questions asked. And Daisy? Make it sound sincere, no matter how haughty the wench gits. Put on yer sweetest, sorriest face, and lie ’til she’s happy. Once yer done, call it a night.”
“But--”
Any other afternoon, Daisy would of skipped right out the cabin, trilling on this being her lucky day. A long lunch break and an early punch out? Seems Vinesday is come early this year. Not so, Mag realises, with the colourman here, dizzying her fool head like strong wine.
Sober up, she wants to say. Good, wholesome gal like you can do so much better ...