“Not too many folks read the paper hereabouts,” said Sam. “Except Westmore. He does. I can send someone down the mountain, if you like.”
I set an extra quarter on the counter. “I’ll take an old one. I might find something I missed.”
At the door, Jemmy confronted a strawberry blond woman pushing a child's antique wicker carriage. I had seen the young woman before, but only at a distance, and idly noted how quietly removed she and her carriage seemed to be.
“Good morning, Miss Clara,” bleated Jemmy as the dusty bell over the door rattled. “How’s Miss Molly Lynn this morning?”
“Just real fine, Jemmy Joseph,” smiled Clara softly. She straightened the ruffled bonnet, attentively, on the doll inside the fraying carriage. The doll, introduced as Molly Lynn, was immaculately clothed in a bright satin dress. Skillfully manicured curls framed a porcelain face, scrubbed so clean the flesh tone paint was slowly wearing away.
“And who’s your pretty friend, Jemmy Joseph?” she asked, her eyes brightly curious, her complexion clear. I noted her hair was swept back and tied with a blue ribbon. The dress she wore was a plain floral cotton print and straight out of Depression era fashion, which didn’t seem unusual for most of the community’s women.
“This here is the Yankee Doctor,” said Jemmy. “The one I told you and Miss Molly Lynn about. The one who came to see Possum.”
“Ethan Broughton,” I clarified, extending my hand. I noted how frail and cool her hand felt against my own. Through the deceiving brightness in her pale blue eyes, one could not immediately detect some disconnected place in her mind.
“Ever so pleased to meet you, Mr. Ethan,” replied Clara. “You must come and visit one of these warm afternoons, for some minty iced tea. I make a real fine rhubarb pie.”
“The best,” echoed Sam Pennock, washing out a cup.
“Yes, I’ll have to do that,” I agreed, holding the door, “thank you.” I stepped outside to the weather-worn porch and sat on the steps with the week old newspaper and well-brewed mug of Pennock’s coffee.
Jemmy Isaak balanced himself against the porch railing and peered over my shoulders.
“Will you read me the funnies?”
“Which one?” I inquired.
“Charlie Brown and Lucy!” returned Jemmy.
“Well, let’s see what we have, then.” I turned the pages. Even having read last week’s news, I hadn’t read the comic strips. Then again, I rarely did. “Ah, here we have it,” I said, sipping the coffee intermittently, as I narrated the gang's anecdote of the day.
“Jemmy,” I finally inquired, my thoughts clearing with the rush of caffeine, “why do you call the woman in the woods, Possum?”
“’Cuz she looks like a possum!” replied Jemmy brightly. He swung himself around the top of the railing when Clara stepped outside the mercantile door. She shyly refused any assistance offered and set the buggy gently on the ground, straightening the ruffles on the bonnet as she had when she arrived. I noticed the doll now held a penny lollipop in it’s molded hands.
“You remember that rhubarb pie now, Mr. Ethan,” Clara reminded in departing, “and that cooling mint tea as well. It gets plenty warm up in these hills in the middle of the day.”
I nodded appreciatively and, with a sad note of curiosity, watched as she dreamily walked away; pushing the carriage with the inanimate Molly Lynn tucked safely within.
I finished the last of the coffee and turned to retrieve another mug from inside, when Jemmy suddenly asked: “Yankee Doctor?”
“Yes, Jemmy?”
“What’s it mean to be crazy?”
“It means someone is not quite right.”
“Like Miss Clara?”
“Possibly.”
“If you’re crazy,” said Jemmy reflectively, “I don’t know as Possum can help you.”
“I don’t know if she can either,” I replied and went inside for a second mug of Pennock’s exceedingly strong black coffee.
By mid-afternoon, I swung the strap of my canvas bag over my shoulder and walked up the well-worn footpath, to make my introduction to the woman little Jemmy Isaak had so blithely referred to as Possum Witch.
~*~
Chapter III
Sunlight sifted through the tall mass of trees and dappled the profusion of blooming wild violets, carpeting the forest floor, on either side of the footpath. The monotone of an unseen cuckoo repeated from some nearby branch and I breathed in the crisp fragrance of surrounding earth with a rare exhilaration. And I thought myself unusually content, even in the face of any false sense of ease brought about by chronic indulgence in prescriptive opiates.
In my approach to the clearing, where the white oaks separated the forest from the remote homestead I was directed to find at the end of the path, a sudden hesitation visited my mind. I had been here before this. I had seen this very stage, just as it was now, only at twilight and not five nights since: in the deceptive, surreal images of a charmed sleep.
And I realized I had seen it long before then. In Prague. In slumbering landscapes beyond the ancient city walls. A clearing. A wraith-like woman. A whispering, without words. A beckoning, without command. My rationale quickly surfaced. Somehow, I had transferred a picture of this place, through imagining what it might contain with a woman who lived in the wooded hills, alone and mysterious. This did not entirely explain the sense of precognition having occurred twice, but I refused to dwell on any of that now.
The Lagori cabin stood firm and confident on the edge of the rolling hillside, despite the gradual settling of green moss and twisted wisteria vines padding the rooftop. With the exception of Pennock’s, and the one room church in the center of the Four Corners, the building was in better repair than most structures in or near the hamlet.
A large black iron cauldron, supported by crossbars, stood on the front lawn and bed linens, attached to a poled clothesline erected between two large maple trees, stirred airily in the breeze. An arranged garden, at the backside of the cabin, was enclosed with a crude fencing created from slender branch sticks. The slight sting of lye filled the air, not unmixed with the more pleasing scent of spearmint and ginger root; pungent and permeating from no one source in particular.
My observations turned to the front porch of the cabin, where an old woman sat sewing together patterns of mismatched fabrics. Two young children huddled at her feet, fingering through a basket of cloth remnants, closely inspecting one or two at intervals. Opposite this scene of passive domesticity, a sleepy gentleman leaned against the porch railing with arms folded. His features were unclear, under a wide brimmed hat lowered to shield his eyes against the glare of the sun, but one sensed a man used to taking care of the business of living.
Two women approached from the far side of the clearing, speaking in hushed tones and escorting a despondent, bleary-eyed man. On reaching the porch steps, the women sat on either side of the man, bracing his frail body as he stared, vacuously, into the thick of the forest surroundings.
The screen door swung open, disturbing the lazy slumber of two calico cats sprawled out on top of a hooked rug. A very expectant and spirited young woman stepped across the threshold and took hold of the drowsy man’s hand. The old woman and two children gathered up the basket of loose fabrics, and the five of them walked in a cluster of excited whispers toward yet another dirt tentacle leading to and from the homestead.
The waiting women guided the unresponsive man through the cabin door and returned again to the porch. Sitting on the patch-quilted cot warmed by the old woman only moments before, the two visitors gazed confidently ahead for whatever it was to occur behind the closed door.
I breathed in a concentrated breath and walked forward. The women on the porch took immediate notice, prompting the younger of the two to stand and lean over the railing. She was a plain girl, with long brown hair, wearing a simple sun-faded cotton dress. Watching her prance from the porch to meet me halfway across the lawn, I discovered she was really rather more
pretty, in a natural sort of way, than the initial distance indicated.
She motioned her hand in silence, directing me toward the hanging linens. I soon found the source of the amalgamated scents, steeping with the lye in the huge iron kettle.
“We must be very quiet,” the young woman informed me. “Have you come to see her?”
“I’ve come to meet with her, yes,” I replied. “My name is Ethan Broughton. I’m here from…”
“Boston, I know,” said the young woman. “Word travels fast up the mountain when a stranger arrives.” She held out her hand. “My name is Jolene.” She nodded toward the porch. “I’ve come with my mother and poppy.”
The mournful cry of a man in certain anguish resonated from within the cabin walls.
I frowned. “Is he very ill?”
The young woman shrugged. “The melancholia. Can’t work. Can’t do nothin’. Not when he’s afflicted anyway. He’ll be better in a little while.” She glanced toward the porch and nodded with a wave of reassurance to her mother, who, in turn, eyed her daughter’s interaction with suspicious scrutiny. Jolene turned her attention to the linens, running her hand across the cotton expanse of fabric. Satisfied the articles were dry; she retrieved a weathered basket from a hook attached to a supporting pole.“Here, then, make yourself useful,” she instructed, unpinning a linen sheet.
I cast aside the canvas bag and grasped the edge of the stiff, air scented linen and was informally introduced to the art of folding sun-dried sheets. Jolene placed the folded linen into the basket and unclasped another.
“Rumor is, you’ve come to the hill to find out about our Ana,” remarked Jolene, flashing a quirky smile, which eased some of the trepidation over arriving here at an inopportune moment.
“I’ve come to meet her with an interest in medicinal plants,” I explained, and added casually: “Nothing too menacing.”
“Folks say you’re a Wort Doctor,” said Jolene. “What do you want to know so much for? Didn’t they teach all that in those big city college books?”
I smiled indulgently. “Not everything, I’m afraid.”
Jolene stepped forward and pressed the corners of the linen sheet against the palms of my hands. “Don’t be spillin’ secrets, Yankee Wort Doctor,” she warned with a seductive whisper. “Folks around here welcome a friendly stranger, but you start spillin’ secrets and no tellin’ what’s likely t’happen.”
She took the linen from my hand and deposited it into the filled basket. She folded the last of four embroidered pillow casings and tossed it atop the others. “Well, you’re the best lookin’ Yank I’ve seen with those pretty brown eyes.” She reached out and fingered a loose coil of hair that brushed just passed the collar of my shirt. “And hair just like a girl’s,” she added softly before picking up the basket and smiling easily. “I like you, Mr. Boston, so I’m goin’ t’tell you this: always give something when you come visit this place. Always fold the linen or sweep the leaves from the porch step. Always give back. Always.”
“I will,” I agreed, taken briefly off guard by her shift in tone.
“Come and sit with us quietly, then,” Jolene said. “Poppy will improve directly.”
It was over an hour before an improved poppy exited, alone, from the cabin door and with no visible trace of his former inertia. His wife rose from the cot, where she waited passively beside her daughter, and nodded repeatedly with the confidence of one who had no doubt as to the outcome. She took his arm like a newlywed bride and stepped down the porch steps onto the grassy lawn, poppy’s expression heightened as though coming out of blindness, and aware of his surroundings, for the very first time.
Jolene paused next to the painted white rocking chair, upon which I had consumed the muted hour skimming through a field book on Appalachian wild plants.
“You take care now, Mr. Boston,” she said. “You take right good care, know what I mean?”
I knew exactly what she meant and hadn’t yet decided my full, honest reaction. A curious threat, certainly, prompted by what I couldn’t begin to imagine; which, despite its implication, I recognized as thriving with intrigue. I watched her dash down the steps and catch up quickly at her poppy’s side, pointing out a brown thrush as it flew swift and low into the brush alongside the trees.
I looked to the closed screen door. I felt rather uneasy simply remaining here on this woman’s porch, but neither did I feel compelled to knock on her door and boldly announce my intentions.
And so, I waited patiently, as the others had waited before me, and found a soulful comfort in the scents and sounds of the bordering forest. I read quietly to the rhythm of the sleeping cats and the chair that rocked with any slight disturbance, scribbling one and two word notations along the margins of the pages until the atmospheric hues began to shift. The pre-twilight blaze suggested the improbability now of any meeting with the elusive Ana Lagori and so, ignored and defeated for yet another day, I returned the book with my notes to the canvas bag. It was then the tongue of vague accusation spoke from the direction of the setting sun.
“Curiosity killed the cat, Wort Doctor,” a feminine voice succinctly disclosed. “Are you a cat or are you not a cat?”
I turned in that instant to see the most incredibly pale woman I had ever before seen. Her thigh length hair, as white as her skin, stirred like fine silk threads in the slight breeze and brushed against the fabric of her simple cotton dress. The deepening coral blaze of the sun prevented my eyes from seeing her tall and slender features to clear advantage, but I could feel her steady gaze behind large blue lensed sunglasses.
She was not amused.
Still, in this moment, I would swear an oath I never before witnessed a woman either more disturbingly imperious or as glaringly radiant. She was far younger than I would have even remotely suspected, being so much the legend on Porringer, and was, at best, five to seven years younger than my own thirty-two years.
I sensed, rather than witnessed, her sudden smirk as she stepped around the corner of the porch, and languidly glided up the wooden steps. She leaned back against the railing, wrapping her arm around the supporting pillar.
“You are the Wort Doctor all the hill is chattering about,” she said. “Come to catch a glimpse of the medicine in the woods, have you?”
“I’ve come to try to learn what may have saved my grandfather, near here, some sixty odd years ago,” I explained. I stood and extended my hand. “I really ought to introduce myself, I’m Ethan Broughton…”
She reached out and grasped my wrist with astonishing agility and studied the backside of my hand. She slowly turned my hand over and traced a finger along the lines of the palm. She then pressed my fingers into a loose fist before retracting her grip.
“Strong hands, Wort Doctor.”
“I’m not a Wort Doctor,” I replied. “I’m simply a plant biologist. Nothing more.”
“As you say.”
I presently considered if I might not have made some grave error in judgment. Her blue sunglasses now sat low on the bridge of her nose as she eyed me critically. I noted how flawless and translucent the white of her skin appeared and in the sparse distance between us, recognized the light aroma of rose and fern. I vaguely wondered if the fragrance was that of some scent she wore or, the perfume of her very skin.
“You are Ana Lagori?” I asked.
“I am,” she replied simply, her eyes intent. If she appeared to resemble the wild opossum by virtue of chalky white coloring of her skin to Jemmy Isaak, it was the very glimmer of her uncompromising violet red eyes that would have caused my own mind to draw the comparison.
“If you’d rather we meet another time…”
“You’ve come a long way, Wort Doctor,” she said, “to walk in the secrets of your grandfather. Be careful you do not misunderstand the question before you look to the answer.”
My increasing apprehension, of facing more difficulty than originally anticipated, was now equally confounded by her use of riddles. I could fee
l the trace rise of tension, in considering the next move on the chessboard of introduction.
“You need water,” she stated abruptly. “Come.”
“It’s an interesting place you have here,” I remarked stupidly, following her around the back of the log cabin to the coarsely fenced garden. What do you say to a woman who appears to look on you as little more than an intrusive annoyance? I thought miserably. I noted a small orchard, filled with fragrant blossoms on apple and pear trees, beyond the tented bean poles and isles of blooming pea vines, attached to hand crafted string nets, inside the garden.
Without answering, she pumped the handle of the well cistern several times until a blast of cold, fresh water flooded the ground at her bare feet. She took both my hands in her own.
“Drink,” she guided.
Although I might have denied my own thirst, until that moment, any self-styled resistance against her command died away when the water touched my lips. And I drank. Over and over, I drank of the welcome, clear water in my cupped hands. The liquid raced through my veins until the airflow suddenly caught in my throat, and I was forced to stay her hand. I inhaled a quickened breath and coughed with the rush of oxygen, as though instantly rising to the surface from a bottomless pond.
“The water comes from deep inside the mountain,” Ana explained simply. “Many do not realize thirst until they drink. Many do not.”
My breathing became calm and rhythmic. For a moment, I convinced myself I could see with a restored and amazing clarity. The deepening twilight held an almost mystical feeling of renewal and any threat of my former anxiety subsided with that diminishing light. It was the way the old man looked when he crossed the threshold of the door earlier. It was the way I felt now.
“It is time for you to go,” Ana declared. “There will be another day.”
I followed her swift and determined footsteps toward the front of the cabin. “I’d like to make an appointment to speak with you sometime soon.”
She picked up the canvas bag left on the porch and pitched it aggressively toward my chest. “Spoken like a city man.”
The Honey Witch (A Tale of Supernatural Suspense) Page 2