Traveller

by Abigail Drake

  “It was worth it,” he said, giving me a wink. “She makes some very tasty scones.”

  I gave him a playful punch in the arm. There was a lot about Michael I still had to figure out, but at least he’d stopped pushing me away. He’d opened the door to his heart just a crack and I did my best to squeeze through.

  When we got back to Michael’s caravan, we immediately crawled into his bed and slept for hours. I sighed contently, still wrapped in his arms as the sun began to sink low in the sky. I knew we had to go to the council meeting, but I didn’t want to leave his bed.

  Michael stirred next to me and kissed my neck. “We need to wake up,” he said, his words soft and slurred.

  “I know.”

  He stared at me in the growing darkness. He opened his mouth to speak, but was interrupted by a sharp rap on his door.

  “Time for council, Michael.” Sampson sounded tired as well.

  Michael lifted up on his elbows. “Coming, Da.” He looked down at me. “No one would think less of you if you stayed away.”

  I shook my head. “I want to go.”

  I couldn’t let Michael go through this alone. He kissed me softly on my forehead, and climbed out of bed. He paused when he noticed the gold dress on the hanger.

  “I have to give that back to Audrey,” I said. “I just haven’t had a chance.”

  He touched it almost reverently. “It looked lovely on you, Emerson.” He turned and his eyes met mine. “Really lovely.”

  “Thank you.”

  My voice was soft. He hadn’t exactly surrendered, but somehow I felt like I’d won an important strategic battle.

  We joined the others at the meeting just as the council members climbed onto the stage in their black robes. It felt very familiar, right down to the nervous feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  Mavin began the meeting. “The Dweller, Emerson Shaw, is a danger to our people. Because of her, even our Ceannfort can no longer be trusted to protect us. He brought a Moktar into our midst last night.”

  Michael paled visibly, but I almost felt relieved. At least this wasn’t about his schooling.

  Mavin continued. “And it has come to our attention, Mary’s boy was meeting a Dweller girl when he got ambushed. This is what happens when we don’t stick with our own kind.”

  Mary sat in the front, her face as still as a statue. “I found some notes from a Dweller in his things, but it has nothing to do with Emerson.”

  Mavin scowled at her. “He died because of a Dweller. That’s connection enough.”

  Monroe scratched his chin. “Perhaps Mavin has a point. We may have been too hasty allowing a Dweller into our midst. We don’t owe her our protection.”

  Several of the other council members nodded in agreement. Michael’s body tensed next to mine. This didn’t look good.

  Anselina’s eyes searched the crowd for me. She leaned forward and spoke into the microphone. “Emerson deserves to have the right to defend herself. Come here, child.”

  I stood and had to steady myself before walking to the stage. Michael got up to follow me, but I shook my head. The less the Travellers associated me with Michael, the better it would be for him in the long run.

  Anselina led me to a chair next to a microphone.

  “Tell us your name, please.”

  “Emerson Jane Shaw.”

  “Your middle name is Jane?”

  “It was my maternal grandmother’s name.”

  “Did you know her?” Anselina asked. I shook my head, not understanding her line of questioning. She continued, “And where is your mother now?”

  “She died when I was little.”

  “How?” she asked, her voice hollow and strange.

  “What are you doing, Anselina? This is a bloody waste of time.” Monroe didn’t look pleased.

  She shot him a silencing look. “I have my reasons, Monroe Spinner. Let me do this my way.”

  She turned back to me. “How did your mother die?”

  I looked at her in confusion. “Why do you want to know?”

  “Just answer the question.”

  My cheeks burned in shame, but I enunciated each word slowly and carefully. “She killed herself.”

  Anselina sucked in a breath. Something strange was happening here. I folded my hands on my lap to hide their trembling. When she asked me the next question, her face looked pale and pinched.

  “What was her name?”

  “Jillian Catherine Parker.”

  Several people gasped. Anselina’s gaze was glued to my face, and although I didn’t want to admit it, I saw the truth staring back at me through her eyes.

  “And Catherine was her grandmother’s name,” she said softly. “It’s a family tradition, you see. We give all our daughters their grandmothers’ names.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You will soon, darling.” She turned to a burly man in the audience with snowy white hair. “She has the look of our Jillie, doesn’t she, Matthew?”

  The old man squinted at her. He had ruddy cheeks and broad shoulders. He looked more like a farmer than a gypsy. “What are you trying to say, Anselina?”

  Tears swam in her eyes. “She has Jillie’s laugh. I heard it last night. Matthew, Emerson is our granddaughter.”

  Matthew walked slowly toward the stage. “Our Jillie had a child?” When Anselina nodded, he almost devoured me with his eyes.

  “Your name isn’t Jane,” I said, still trying to completely absorb Anselina’s words.

  She smiled. “Yes, it is. I’m Jane Anselina, but everyone has always called me by my middle name. I had an auntie Jane and it became confusing.”

  I couldn’t speak, but Michael walked up to the stage, shaking his head. “She’s not a Traveller.”

  Anselina pursed her lips. “Are you so sure?”

  Sampson narrowed his eyes. “It could explain why the Moktar is tracking her.”

  One of the older councilmen nodded. “They can smell Traveller blood a mile away. That’s how they catch our women and do such dastardly things to them.”

  Sampson flinched, most probably thinking about his wife. He looked like he’d aged ten years since he’d heard the news about her. I wasn’t the only one who noticed. Mavin stared at him, and she didn’t seem pleased.

  “She can’t prove it.” Mavin’s thin lips narrowed, and the gypsies started to argue amongst themselves.

  “Maybe I can.” Everyone turned to me, and I cleared my throat nervously. “I have a photo of my mother. It’s in Michael’s caravan.”

  The meeting adjourned, and we walked to Michael’s caravan together. Anselina and Matthew kept shooting furtive glances at me, like they were trying to see remnants of their daughter on my face. Sampson and the other council members stayed back, awaiting the outcome.

  I went into the caravan by myself, dug through my backpack, and pulled out the journal with my mother’s photo tucked inside. She was a stranger to me, and there was a definite possibility the strangers outside might be my grandparents. My body shook by the time I opened the door.

  As soon as Anselina saw the photo, she began to weep. She gave me a large envelope with trembling hands.

  “I brought these to the meeting with me. I planned to show them to you afterwards, in private, but I had to act when the tide started turning against you. I couldn’t let them cast you out of the compound like that, and face the Moktar on your own. It would have been a death sentence.”

  Inside were a bunch of old photographs. I looked at them one by one. My mother as a little girl with scraped knees and a gap-toothed grin. My mother as a skinny teenager, hands on hips and pouting for the camera. My mother as a young woman dressed in flamboyant gypsy clothing. I covered my mouth with my hand and sat down.

  “It’s true.” I looked up at Michael, but he seemed at a loss.

  “Can I get you some tea?” he asked.

  I chuckled, dabbing away my tears. “The English remedy for everything.”

  “Make i
t whiskey, my boy,” Matthew said, eyes meeting mine. “That’s the gypsy remedy, and you are now a gypsy, sweet child.”

  Matthew opened his arms to me, and I flew into them, crying all over his pristine white shirt. He smelled like mint and tobacco, and I realized this was my first memory of my grandfather, a monumental event. Grandma Sugar and Pappy George had always been permanent fixtures in my life. Now Matthew and Anselina were there, too, and it felt so right.

  Other gypsies walked past, trying to catch a peek of the newest Traveller, but we ignored them. Michael brought the whiskey, and sat down with us, but he seemed quiet and pensive. The news I was a Traveller had shocked him, perhaps even more than it had shocked me.

  “Her name was Jillian, but we called her Jillie. Our Jillie. She didn’t want to live the Traveller life, but we refused to listen.” Anselina swirled her whiskey around in her glass.

  Matthew patted her leg. “It was my fault. I thought I knew best. I wanted her to marry young and marry a Traveller, but she begged us to allow her to go to university first. I thought she’d get bored and drop it, but she didn’t.”

  Matthew gave me a wry smile. “I got worried as her friends married and had children of their own. I decided the time had come to arrange a marriage for Jillie, and I was a little pig headed about it. I chose a nice bloke, one I thought she’d be happy with, but she was furious. I refused to listen. She ran away, and we never heard from her again.”

  Anselina bit her lip. “Why did she kill herself?”

  I traced my finger along the edge of my glass. “I was very small when it happened, and my father doesn’t talk about it. It almost destroyed him. He never really got the hang of living without her.”

  Anselina closed her eyes, her hand fluttering to her chest like she was trying to hold her heart in place. “I understand how he feels. All those years, we hoped she was still alive, but we knew the truth.”

  Matthew reached over and clutched her hand. “Everything will be all right. We have Jillie’s girl here with us now.”

  I looked at Michael, and saw a flash of sadness in his eyes. My time here was limited, only one semester, and we both knew it.

  “Did she have problems with depression when she lived here? Did she ever need to see a therapist?” I asked as I handed Anselina back the photographs. She looked through them one by one, a puzzled frown forming on her face.

  “Our Jillie was always such a happy little soul,” she said, and Matthew agreed.

  “She never knew a cloudy day. Always full of sunshine.” He had to wipe his eyes again. There was nothing like seeing the big, tough Traveller get weepy at the thought of his daughter. Anselina held it together far better than Matthew.

  She tilted her head to one side. “Were they happily married?”

  I nodded. “Very.”

  “Did something happen before she died?”

  “Grandma Sugar told me they had absolutely no clue she might do something like that, which was why it came as such a terrible shock.”

  “A happily married, perfectly healthy, perfectly stable young woman killed herself for no good reason at all?” Anselina’s eyes met mine. “Something is off here. I feel it right to the core of my old Traveller bones. I can’t imagine my Jillie taking her own life.”

  Suddenly, I found it a little hard to breathe. “Then what happened?”

  Anselina tapped her chin with one finger, her gaze directed at some unseen point far off in the distance. “We need to find out, Emerson, and I think I know how.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Just hold your horses. I can explain it to you, but I can’t understand it for you.

  ~Grandma Sugar

  My grandparents took me to a caravan owned by someone named Veronique. Michael went to tell the council my identity had been confirmed. I was officially a Traveller, a gypsy, and a former Junior Miss Kentucky. The first two were more than I bargained for, and the last one was only because I had a pushy southern grandmother who had tried to make me into a lady.

  Grandma Sugar said, “It’s like trying to make a silk purse from a sow’s ear,” an accurate assessment. Still no silk purse, I wasn’t exactly a sow’s ear anymore, either. I was mostly confused, and after today, it had grown even worse.

  Veronique lived in a small wooden caravan painted with a colorful array of cheerful flowers. She embodied everything I’d ever imagined a gypsy would be, with long dark hair, large hoop earrings, and white blouse that slipped off her shoulders and exposed silky, dark skin. She looked around thirty, but it was hard to tell. On her head, she wore a scarf to hold back her hair, and her bright skirt billowed out around her, a patchwork of colors and patterns.

  “Hello, Anselina and Matthew. I take it this is your long lost granddaughter.” Her voice was deep and rich, and I couldn’t place her accent. It sounded like a mix of some Slavic language with French.

  Anselina put a hand on my shoulder. “This is Emerson.”

  Veronique extended her hand, and I shook it. “Pleased to meet you, ma’am.” I might be a gypsy now, but I was still southern, and Grandma Sugar had raised me right.

  Veronique grinned, a flash of white in her dark face. “So adorably polite. Please come inside.”

  Veronique’s little caravan was much larger and roomier than expected. In the center was a table with a large crystal ball on it.

  I let out a tiny squeak of excitement. I just couldn’t help it. “Is that what I think it is?”

  “Aye. It’s for the tourists. I go to the fair every Saturday with my husband to tell fortunes and read palms. It’s nonsense, but makes a pretty penny, and they like all the bells and whistles. “

  Veronique picked up the crystal ball, shoved it into a bowling ball bag, and stuck it in the bottom of her wardrobe near her shoes. I was instantly disappointed.

  I leaned forward. “But are you psychic?”

  Veronique gave an elegant shrug. “Travellers are all able to sense things, some more than others.”

  “I guess I missed out on that gene.”

  She winked at me. “You never know. Maybe you are a late bloomer.”

  Anselina folded her hands on the table. “Veronique, we need your help.” Together, she and Matthew explained what I’d told them about my mother and her death.

  “I see,” said Veronique. “And you want me to hypnotize her.”

  I’d been looking around at all of the interesting odds and ends in Veronique’s caravan, but my attention shot back to the group. “Hypnotize me?”

  “It would be the easiest way to find out what happened on the day Jillian died,” said Veronique.

  I wrinkled my nose. “Are y’all going to make me cluck like a chicken?”

  She laughed. “Not unless that’s what you wish.”

  “No thanks. That happened to me at senior prom. I didn’t find it very amusing, but everyone else sure did.”

  Veronique reached for my hand. “It isn’t like that. You’ll be awake the whole time and aware of what is going on.”

  “But I was only two when it happened.”

  Veronique smiled. “If I wanted to, I could help you remember your own birth.”

  “No, thank you.” There were some things I had no desire to know about. “I’ll do it, but where is Michael?”

  I glanced out the window, but he was nowhere in sight. I wanted him here with me. I trusted my grandparents, but they were basically strangers.

  “He had to go out and hunt. He’ll be back soon enough.” Matthew pulled off his jacket and put it on the back of his chair.

  Michael had left without saying goodbye. My heart squeezed in my chest and for just a second I found it hard to breathe. For him, it was a nightly thing, killing Moktar and being the Ceannfort, but I wasn’t used to it yet. I kind of wished he had a normal part-time job, like working at the Dairy Queen or something. Of course, the idea of Michael serving ice cream or being polite to customers was ludicrous.

  Veronique removed a gold necklace from around her neck that
had a big, round pendent dangling on it. “Are you ready?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Then just watch this pretty golden ball.”

  She swung the pendent back and forth in front me, and soon I began to feel really relaxed, like floating on a cloud. I closed my eyes and sighed.

  Veronique’s voice was low and soft. “Tell me about the last day you spent with your mother.”

  My eyes flew open in surprise. I instantly saw those memories like a movie playing in my mind.

  “I had cereal for breakfast and spilled some on my shirt.”

  “That’s very good, Emerson.” Veronique’s voice was soothing. “Keep going.”

  “My mama sang me that lullaby, the one I heard Mary sing, when she put me down for my nap. She used to sing it to me all the time.”

  I remembered it vividly. Her arms were wrapped around me, and she stroked my hair as she sang. Every so often she kissed the top of my head and pulled me closer to her soft warmth.

  “When I woke up, Mama said she would take me to the park to play.”

  “What happened at the park?”

  “It was fall. Leaves covered the ground. I wore my favorite pink cardigan. Mama had on a green sweater. It was soft and fuzzy.”

  I could almost smell the leaves and feel the warmth of the last rays of the sun as it sank in the sky. The memory, so incredibly vivid, was nearly painful, especially when I caught a whiff of my mother’s perfume.

  “I can see her face perfectly. She’s laughing because I’m trying to fill my stroller up with leaves. I’d forgotten her laugh.” I had to swallow a lump in my throat. I’d also forgotten how young and beautiful she was. Her red hair matched the color of the leaves we played in, and her eyes were very blue, the same color as Anselina’s.

  “When did you leave the park?”

  I frowned. “She got upset. She stared at the trees near the baseball fields, and I think she saw something there.”

  “Look, Emerson. What do you see?”

  I squinted, trying hard to see into my memories of the dark woods. “Shadows. Dark shadows moving under the trees. I can’t see anything else.”