A War of Daisies

by A. A. Chamberlynn

  “Were you listening to me, child?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then why were your eyes closed?”

  Felicity felt a pulse of surprise. “Were they?”

  Her mother merely glared.

  “I must not have slept well last night.”

  Her mother pursed her lips but continued. “So, what do you think?”

  Felicity just nodded and said “Mmmhmm.” She hadn’t heard the last thing her mother had said, but it was best just to agree.

  “Yes, of course you think he’s a fine young man. Everyone does.”

  Felicity’s mind raced. Her mother had to be talking about the preacher’s son.

  A sigh from across the room. “That would be a fine match.”

  The sigh, Felicity knew, was because he was white, and she was black. No matter how much money her family had, that simple fact made it out of the question. She couldn’t even begin to think what kind of strings her mother had pulled to arrange this dinner. A sizeable donation to the church, no doubt.

  “But I have other ideas for you,” her mother continued.

  “Other ideas?”

  “There’s a merchant in Blue Valley. He’s spent his time building a very successful business but has ignored finding a good woman in his life. My contacts tell me he is now of the mind to amend that.”

  The way her mother said contacts made it sound like she had a network of spies. Felicity shivered. “How old is this man, exactly?”

  “That is of no consequence,” her mother said, tone shrill, eyes icy. “You are of marrying age. Beyond, really. When I was a girl, it was customary to get married when you were thirteen or fourteen. Some still do. Consider yourself very lucky.”

  Felicity was just shy of eighteen and couldn’t imagine such a thing. “A bit antiquated, don’t you think?”

  “Watch your mouth with me, Felicity,” her mother scolded. “We’ll arrange a meeting with the Blue Valley man, Mr. Stevens, soon. After we get through with the hubbub of the annual fair. We’ll be too busy with the stores until afterward.”

  Felicity had learned long ago to shove her feelings deep within her. No one cared about them but her, after all, and any kind of verbal or physical expression was met with harsh criticism. Numbness had become her constant companion, a cool sensation like ice spreading through her, blocking her emotions, letting nothing out. Or in.

  But now, hearing her mother speak so casually of her future, as if she were some object to sell off… the lightning surged in, pulsing through her veins, arcing across her collarbones, racing up her throat to say all the things she’d been wanting to say for so many years…

  She opened her mouth, cheeks tingling from the power moving through her. And that’s when she noticed the glow coming off her fingers. Shock won out over the anger.

  “Something to say?” her mother asked.

  “No, ma’am,” she said, voice trembling.

  Her mother took the last sip of tea and set her glass down. “Go fetch your bonnet. We’re going to the butcher.”

  Felicity hadn’t finished her tea, but of course her mother didn’t care. She got up, stiffly and disjointedly, like a puppet on strings.

  “Beatrice!” her mother called.

  As Felicity marched up the stairs to her room, she heard her mother giving the housekeeper lengthy instructions on cleaning the house and preparing the meal. A few minutes later, they had the wagon hitched up and they headed down the street into the commercial section of town.

  When they reached the butcher shop, they tied the cart horse outside. Felicity followed her mother up the steps and through the swinging wooden doors of the store. A large glass case stood along the right side of the store. This case displayed the cuts of meat already prepared. Two tables on the back and left-hand walls were covered in carcasses waiting for the butcher’s blade. Chickens, ducks, and quail, mostly. The larger ones were out back, as was the roasting spit and smoker for cooked meat.

  Her mother walked gracefully to the glass counter and began to examine the cuts of meat. Felicity stood dutifully beside her, the numbness spreading over her again. She could see the other customers across the small room in the reflection off the glass, or at least a hazy version of them. So, she saw Mrs. Parker lean in close to Mrs. Wilson before she even heard their whispered-but-intentionally-not-so-quiet conversation.

  “I hear vagrants broke into their barn last night,” said Mrs. Parker. Her gloved hand cupped the side of Mrs. Wilson’s ear as if telling some huge secret, but she cast a foxy smile over to Felicity and her mother. “I can only imagine the most desperate of souls would steal from the colored folk.”

  Beside her, Felicity felt her mother stiffen.

  “Oh, indeed,” Mrs. Wilson said with a snicker. “Poor, pathetic souls for sure. I can’t imagine anything that they could possibly want.”

  The rage that Felicity had barely reined in at the house came back double. No, not double, a thousand-fold. She burned from the inside-out. No matter what they did, no matter that they were the wealthiest family in town, it would never amount to anything. And the most maddening part about it was that every single soul-crushing thing her mother forced down her throat was for the wholly pointless and impossible notion that it would.

  She knew without looking that her hands were glowing. She couldn’t contain it, or the heat within her. The glow pulsed out from her, across the whole room. Her mother shrieked, and Felicity realized in horror that she’d seen. They’d all seen. Whatever strange magic possessed her, she’d just displayed it for them all.

  But her mother wasn’t pointing at her. She was pointing at the case of meat. Felicity’s gaze drifted down, and she recoiled. Every piece of meat in the case had turned green, and maggots crawled in and out of them. Across the room, similar cries of dismay from Mrs. Parker and Wilson indicated they’d seen the same.

  Felicity felt the heat and the rage leave her, and she began to shake. What had just happened? She looked down at her hands. The glow had dissipated, but she knew, somehow, that it had caused the meat to spoil. Before, she’d thought that maybe she was just hallucinating. But now, here, her mother and the other women saw what she’d done to the meat. It wasn’t all in her head.

  Which meant there was something deeply, terribly wrong with her.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Dynah

  By the time Dynah and the doctor got back to her house, she was on the verge of hysterics. The entire ride to their homestead, the shifting black aura had clung to the doctor like a second skin. She was clearly having a mental breakdown. There could be no other explanation that made any sense at all.

  Shakily, she dismounted. The doctor handed her the reins of his horse and went inside with his big black medical bag. It took everything in her power not to flinch away when his hand came close to hers. She led the horses to the stable and tied them to one of the rails. She took her time bringing them a bucket of water, from which they both drank thirstily, then untacked Moon. He was still sweaty from their strenuous gallop earlier, so she sponged him off before placing him in the corral.

  Finally, she had no further excuses to keep from going inside. With dread forming a knot in her stomach, Dynah walked slowly back toward the house. A soft wind blew down through the surrounding trees, throwing dappled shadows across the ground, which only made her jumpier. What would she hallucinate next?

  When she stepped inside, it was quiet. Too quiet. She fought the urge to run back to her parents’ room, suddenly overwhelmed with the bizarre fear that the doctor had harmed them. But when her brisk footsteps took her to the doorway, she saw that the doctor had his stethoscope on her father’s chest, her mother sitting across from him, hands clenched in prayer.

  And still, the black shadow flickered around the doctor. Dynah shivered.

  “How is he?” she whispered, so quietly it barely carried across the room.

  Neither of them answered her. Dynah’s father didn’t seem conscious at all. His brow sh
one with sweat, and his lungs made a wet rattling sound with each labored inhale and exhale. On the bedside table next to him sat a bottle of medicine and a spoon, which it looked like the doctor had already administered.

  After another minute of listening to his lungs, the doctor rose, a grim look on his face. “Pneumonia, from the looks of it.”

  Dynah’s mother nodded, her cheeks shiny with tears.

  “Keep mopping his forehead as you’ve been doing,” he said. “Make him drink water when he wakes up. Medicine every four hours. And keep praying.”

  Another nod. The doctor packed up his bag and they showed him to the door. Dynah walked back to the barn to get his horse while he continued speaking with her mother.

  “I’ll be back tonight, but need to check on another patient first,” the doctor said as he mounted up.

  When he rode off, her mother let out a sob and buried her face in Dynah’s shoulder. Dynah patted her back, making comforting sounds. Surely her father was under the best care in the doctor’s presence, but she couldn’t help but feel immense relief that he’d gone.

  “Last night there were four of us,” her mother said, her voice hitching as she cried. “And now it’s just you and me.”

  Her mother didn’t mention Penelope specifically, but Dynah knew she worried about her, too. Everything had happened so suddenly. One moment Rodeo Queen had been within her grasp, now everything had gone up in smoke. It wasn’t fair, not one bit. And she hated herself for even thinking that at a time like this.

  “We’d better get back inside,” she said softly to her mother.

  She received a weary nod in response.

  When they reached her father again, Dynah’s mother sat down and reached into the bucket next to the bed to get fresh water. She began to dab his bright red skin.

  “The water is too warm now,” she said, raising her gaze up to Dynah. “Can you go fetch a pail of fresh water from the creek?”

  “Of course, Mama.”

  Dynah went to the kitchen to get a clean pail, then strode out the front door. She headed west into the birch forest. Not far from their house a small cascade came down from the mountains, fast and icy-cold. Before long, she could hear the rush of it through the trees. Their neighbor to the north used it, too, as it cut through the land in between the two homesteads. They had a much larger property, a ranch, really. Dynah would have a big ranch like that someday, when she married Billy or some other handsome man from Denver or Grand Junction or Tucson. She dove into her daydream as she walked to distract herself from her current predicament.

  When she reached the creek, she stepped carefully across the rocks lining the bank. It was the sort of place where you could turn your ankle quite easily. Lots of little crevices and loose stone to catch your boot. At the edge, Dynah carefully leaned over and scooped up a bucketful of clear, freezing water.

  She felt it the moment she straightened.

  A pull in her gut, like a divining rod, so sharp it almost made her cry out. Dynah doubled over, clutching her stomach with her free hand. The tug came from across the creek. The strength of it took her breath away, and the second tug made her drop the bucket, releasing an icy torrent over her boots. She dropped to her knees, the jagged rocks bashing into her. With every passing moment, the pain intensified.

  On instinct, Dynah leaned forward toward the water, toward the pull. It immediately lessened. Only minutely, but enough so that the message was clear. She had no choice but to follow it.

  She left her bucket and began to make her way, with utmost caution, across the flowing water. The creek was shallow, but the current strong. Beneath the surface, algae covered the rocks, slick and slimy and treacherous. Her boots were drenched in moments, and her jeans, too, up to the knee. Slowly, slowly she made her way across the creek. When she stepped out on the other side, her gut commanded her to go right.

  She entered the forest on the other side and began to jog. Whatever called to her, if she could just find it, maybe this feeling would go away. Dynah knew now, without a shadow of a doubt, that she was going mad. But she couldn’t not follow this feeling. The pain told her that much.

  The trees stopped abruptly, and Dynah found herself in a small clearing. Within the clearing, several small stone crosses rose from the grass. A shiver moved over her skin.

  A graveyard.

  Five tombstones, which must have belonged to the family who owned the ranch. Engravings covered each, names along with the year of birth and death. Moss crept up the base of each cross, green in some places, black in others. Somewhere off in the trees, a bird shrieked and Dynah jumped. The pain in her gut ceased as she stared down at the resting place of the five ranchers.

  Another sensation took its place.

  Something within her stretched out across the graveyard. A feeling like exhaling, an expansion. As that something within her reached out, searching, seeking, she felt them. The bodies within the earth. Bones, dry and brittle. And as her presence fell upon them, they shivered in their graves, answering her call.

  Dynah’s vision went black and her knees buckled. She staggered to the left, spun, and fainted where she stood.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Willow

  Practice began with the rise of the sun. Willow planned to ride all day from dawn until dusk, to mimic one day of the hundred-mile race. Also, being alone in the wilderness all day decreased her chances of running into any townsfolk. And most importantly, it kept her away from Zane.

  She started out heading north along the river from her house, through the red rock canyons. Then she took Harper’s Pass to cut through into the valley just north of Hawk’s Hollow. From there, she alternated between a trot and a slow gallop, heading towards the Hickory Mountains.

  At about nine, she made it to the foothills of the mountains. The sun climbed the sky above her, inching its way toward the heavens, but blazing hotter than hell. Sweat began to trickle down her back, and Willow adjusted her hat. She had to admit her shorn hair helped her neck stay cooler.

  Her stomach brought them to a stop two hours later. She’d packed a couple tomato sandwiches, and she got one out of her saddlebag and urged Bullet forward again as she ate it. After she finished, they stopped at a creek to get a drink and splash with a little water. Bullet thought that getting Willow soaked made for a great game, and as hot as it was, Willow didn’t really mind all that much.

  By Willow’s reckoning, they’d gone about twenty miles. When she got back on, they headed north for another hour, then cut down through a narrow canyon between Rattler Peak and White-Eyed Mountain. The rock here was gray rather than red, and it seemed to Willow less welcoming. A scuffle of falling rock brought her attention to several bighorn sheep climbing up the far side of the canyon wall. She kept her eye out for mountain lions as well. You never knew when one might try to leap down on you from a tree or overhang of rock. She’d once seen a horse hours after surviving such an attack, and it made her shiver every time she thought of it.

  As Willow made her way down the canyon, she heard more falling rocks behind her, and turned to look back. She didn’t see anything this time. A couple minutes later, however, she caught the sound of voices echoing off the rock walls. Voices and hoofbeats. She picked up a trot. She wasn’t in the mood to chit-chat with a bunch of cowboys or traveling merchants. It would slow down her practice run. In another mile, she knew there’d be an opening in the canyon where she could head back south, which had been her planned route anyhow.

  Soon, however, she heard shouts and hoofbeats ahead of her, too. Willow let out a groan. She’d picked this route because of its infrequent traffic, but apparently, luck was not with her today. Bullet swiveled her ears back, attentive to her mistress. Plus, she too could no doubt hear the riders approaching from both sides now.

  Willow rounded a bend in the canyon and came upon the first group of travelers quite abruptly. Her heart dropped when she saw them. A dozen men and women, rough-looking bunch. Dirty clothes and bodies that hadn
’t been bathed in who knows how long. The glint of their eyes and the set of their jaws meant trouble. Willow thought the chances of them being law-abiding citizens were low. One of them could even be her father for all she knew.

  She touched her hat in greeting and attempted to skirt around them, but it wasn’t to be.

  “Ef it it’nt the pretty boy from the town yonder,” one of the men hooted.

  Willow turned, and her heart sunk lower as she recognized one of the cowboys from the brawl outside the gun shop.

  “How a real cowboy stay so clean, I ain’t know!” said another, and this brought a whole chorus of raucous laughter.

  They formed a barrier around her, blocking the narrow path forward.

  “Let me pass,” Willow said in her most commanding voice, low and cold. She’d learned it from her mother, and it was a voice that most obeyed. A voice that held a promise.

  “I dun’t think we will,” said one of the men, squinting at her and spitting a wad of chewing tobacco onto the sandy canyon floor. “Willow.”

  Willow’s heart utterly stopped this time. How did they know her name? Her real name?

  Hoofbeats sounded behind them, and Willow felt a swell of relief, though she made sure not to visibly exhale. She turned her head slightly to see how many riders there were, while still keeping an eye on the first group. A dozen riders came into view, but as they approached, they called friendly greetings to the other group. Hoots and whistles passed back and forth.

  Damn it. She wasn’t going to get aid from the newcomers. Things weren’t looking rosy at all. Willow calculated her odds. She’d brought two guns with her today on the long ride. Two guns, twelve bullets total. She would have been hard-pressed to take down the first dirty dozen, even with an aim like hers, but two dozen? Not a chance.

  But there wasn’t much to be done for it. Willow placed a hand on the Colt in its holster at her right hip. “I’m not asking you again,” she called to the men in front of her.