The Native Star

by M. K. Hobson

  But the grimoire had indicated that the Witch must wear nothing knotted or tied or sewn or fastened while working the spell. That meant unbraided and naked. At midnight. In April. In the Sierra Nevada mountains.

  She had built a small fire, over which she’d burned the ingredients in a small brass cauldron, but the spell’s directions hadn’t allowed her to linger by it; she had to complete an intricate series of steps and turns and rhymes around the fire as the ingredients crumbled to a potent ash guaranteed to compel the eternal love of anyone who touched it. By the time she’d gotten back to the cabin, she’d been so cold that all she could do was dive under her quilt and hope that some tonsorial miracle would greet her on the morrow.

  Sighing her regret that no such miracle had occurred, she picked up her boxwood comb and began picking the snarls out from the ends.

  This was not a good start to what was supposed to be the happiest day of her life.

  By the time her accustomed plaits were tickling the backs of her knees, the sun was well up. She climbed down from the attic loft quietly so as not to wake Pap, who was snoring in the iron bedstead by the banked fire, blanketed by a half dozen purring cats. Pap had been her adoptive father for twenty years and Lost Pine’s charm maker for twice that, and all of those years had been filled with hard work. Since fever took his eyesight last summer, the work that had been Pap’s livelihood—gathering plants, compounding salves, charming buildings, reading fortunes—had fallen to Emily. She was glad to do it.

  She went to the table where items were collected in a willow basket: brushes and pots of milk paint, sticks of charcoal and a platter-size slab of white oak. The oak had been edged and planed by Dag Hansen, the most prosperous lumberman in Lost Pine, who had commissioned a protective hex plaque for the topmost eave of his big new timber shed. Taking the basket, she stole quietly from the cabin.

  Her foot was on the threshold when a vivid flash of rust-red caught her eye. A robin, the first of spring, flew from where it had been perched on the sill of the small front window. She watched it vanish into the top of a blue spruce.

  A robin on the windowsill—an omen of true love. That seemed encouraging. But less so the question it begged: true love for whom?

  Not you. The robin’s call drifted down from the spruce’s crown. Not you.

  Tucking the basket under her arm, Emily walked quickly, as if she could outrun the sound. But it followed her, high and piercing:

  Not you.

  On a grassy swale overlooking the main road from Dutch Flat to Lost Pine, where the rapidly rising sun was bright and hot in the cloudless sky, Emily set herself down to work.

  She laid the slab of oak on her lap and looked at it for a long time. It showed the signs of Dag Hansen’s strong, industrious hands. He was a good man. A good, kind, trusting man.

  He’d make a wonderful husband.

  She opened the pots of milk paint. Reaching into the silk pouch she wore around her neck, she took out the little bag of ashes. She put a generous pinch into each pot.

  Then she dipped a horsehair brush into the yellow and began dabbing carefully at the oak, muttering rhyming incantations as she laid the bright color onto the wood. She focused her intentions, concentrating on prosperity and happiness, goodwill and success, love and (Heaven help her) fertility.

  She focused closely on her work, so deeply engrossed that when an echoing “Hey there” came up from the road, she almost knocked over the pot of red. Shading her eyes with a paint-stained hand, she noticed how high the sun had climbed.

  “Hey, Em Edwards!”

  On the road, a pair of heavy bays stood in front of a stout buckboard. It was Mr. Orta, the delivery agent for the Wells, Fargo & Company express office in Dutch Flat. She waved, set her work aside, and hurried down, glad to stretch her stiff legs.

  “I thought it was you,” he said, pushing his cap back. “What are you up to?”

  “I’m painting a hex for Dag Hansen’s new shed.” Emily was aware of a high, tense note in her voice. For goodness’ sake, it sounded like she was confessing to a shooting! She licked her lips and continued. “They’re putting it up this afternoon.”

  “Folks say he’ll have the narrow-gauge track laid into Dutch Flat before summer, and you folks won’t have to wait for me to haul deliveries up to you.” He gave her a sly look. “I suppose there’ll be a dance later?”

  “I suppose,” Emily said, not wanting to talk about Dag and dancing. She craned her neck to see what Mr. Orta had in his buckboard. Two huge crates, half covered with canvas.

  “Who are those for?” She pointed.

  “Curiosity killed the cat,” he chuckled. “But I guess it can’t do no harm to a sturdy young Witch like you. One’s for that easterner, that fellow Stanton. The other’s a bunch of separate deliveries from Baugh’s Patent Magicks—an order in it for almost everyone up here, it seems.”

  Emily looked at the crates more closely. Sure enough, one was marked with the distinctive blue logo of Baugh’s Patent Magicks—a saucy genie rising out of a bottle in a cloud of smoke.

  A whole crate of Baugh’s. Emily felt like spitting in the dust.

  “I don’t suppose I could talk you into dumping that crate into a ditch and pretending it never came?” Emily gave Mr. Orta a winsome, slightly desperate smile.

  Mr. Orta chuckled awkwardly. They were, after all, joking about her livelihood.

  “Sorry, Em.” He scratched the back of his head. “I guess times change. Anyway, you need a ride? I can get you closer to Hansen’s place than you are now.”

  “No, thank you,” she said, entertaining the dramatic notion that she’d rather walk than ride in a buckboard with a crate of Baugh’s Patent Magicks. “I have to go see about Pap’s lunch.”

  Mr. Orta slapped the lines and clucked to the horses. Whistling, he disappeared beyond the bend, and Emily climbed the hill to gather up her paints. The hex she’d painted had dried nicely in the warm sun. She ran her fingers over the bright rough surface. She’d done it up neat, but the plaque was … rustic. Not shiny and precise like a hex of baked enamel from Baugh’s Patent Magicks would be.

  Damn that Baugh, whoever he was! After looking to make sure Mr. Orta was gone, she did spit in the dust, and muttered a curse, too. But her curses seemed to be of little avail when it came to Baugh’s.

  Over the past year, more and more folks had taken to buying patent magic from Baugh’s. Advertised in colorful chromolithographed catalogues, the products came in shiny pasteboard boxes stamped with gold foil and lined with blood-red tissue paper. They made Emily’s hand-sewn charm bundles and home-brewed potions look shoddy and questionable by comparison. And business had suffered for it.

  The past winter had been the worst. Paying Pap’s doctor had left them short on cash-money, and as the hungry snow months had closed around them, Emily had watched Pap’s cheeks grow hollow, his collarbones grow sharp, and his spirit grow tired. She’d gotten them through on mangy possums and stringy jackrabbits, but having to watch him starve … starve! After forty years of hard, honest work! It wasn’t fair. Something had to be done.

  And that something was Dag Hansen.

  It seemed the perfect solution. All she had to do was get him to marry her, and Pap could live in comfort and plenty. And she was no cheat; she’d take on the job of being a pleasant and loyal wife just as she’d taken on Pap’s magical work. It was just trading one job for another.

  But how to catch the prosperous lumberman? Her twenty-fifth birthday was a half year gone, which made her a pretty shelf-worn item. So she’d turned to Pap’s grimoire for help, and she’d gone to the Hanging Oak, and she’d danced naked in the light of the full moon, and she’d made the Ashes of Amour.

  Tucking her paints away, she put the hex plaque in the willow basket and didn’t look at it again.

  “I only want what’s best for everyone,” she muttered to herself. “And if you’re going to make an omelette, you have to break a few eggs …”

  Then
she stopped and pressed her lips together, resolving not to think about what she’d have to break to make a marriage.

  She climbed back up Moody Ridge to Pap’s cabin, walking as fast as she could, making her legs burn. The exertion felt good. Loose wisps of hair tangled around her lips and ears; she pushed them back with annoyance. The chickens in the front yard welcomed her with low chuckles; she scattered the lazy biddies with a swing of the basket.

  Inside, brightly colored bottles shone on the windowsills, and the bones of powerful animals dangled from braids of dyed red string. Scrolls of old vellum and parchment were rolled in stacks, ready to have spells writ upon them with eagle quills in ink of blood red or black gall. Pap’s most important tools hung above the stone fireplace: the ceremonial dagger that he called an athame, and his purple charm cap. Pap himself sat in front of a hugely roaring fire, wrapped in a bright wool trade blanket. As usual, he was surrounded by cats. Most regarded Emily with boredom, but one or two bumped their soft heads against her legs as she came in.

  “Em’s back!” Pap smiled a greeting. A barn fire in Pap’s youth had left the right side of his face a cobweb of shining pink scars. When he smiled, his face crumpled like crepe fabric.

  There was the sound of movement in the cooking part of the room (while it was screened by a sheet hung from the ceiling, it could hardly be called a kitchen), and Mrs. Lyman poked her head out.

  “I made your pap some lunch, and brought some fresh cornbread and a dried-apple pie.” Mrs. Lyman, a mining widow with no fewer than ten grown children, lived on the place about a mile over. Pap had once cured her of recurrent warts on her hands, and she had been devoted to the old man ever since. “I thought you’d go straight over to Dag Hansen’s. I reckon he’s the only man in Lost Pine can make you forget about your poor ol’ pap.”

  Emily flushed, and not just from the heat of the room.

  “There’s not any man in the world who could make me forget Pap.” Emily gave his shoulder a squeeze as she carried her paintbrushes to the table to wash. She poured water into a bowl and began working the almost-dried color from the horsehair. “But if you’ve already eaten …”

  “I’ve eaten,” Pap said. “And Mrs. Lyman’s going to stay and read to me.”

  “From Ladies’ Repository,” Mrs. Lyman added, her tone suggesting that Emily was missing a treat. She had settled into a chair by the fire and already had the magazine spread across her lap.

  Emily, however, was heartily glad that she would miss a night of Ladies’ Repository. It was a magazine that jumbled articles of an improving nature (often subtitled, quite annoyingly, “A Warning to Young Ladies”) with sickly sweet tales of love and romance. Emily much preferred it when Mrs. Lyman read from one of her mail-order subscription novels; at least they could be counted on to feature a clever mystery-solving Witch or the grand magical doings of eminent European Warlocks.

  “Go on to your dance, Em.” Pap’s voice was gentle. “You deserve a little fun.”

  “Or you can stay and listen for a while.” Mrs. Lyman tapped a luridly colored illustration on cheap newsprint. “Listen to this one I been saving out … a real juicy one! ‘Her Tragic Mistake’…”

  “No thanks,” Emily blurted, letting the brushes drop with a clatter. “I guess I had better get a move on.”

  After bolting up the ladder to her garret, Emily sat on the edge of her bed for a moment, closing her eyes and trying to swallow down her hard-thudding heart. Then, flinging open her trunk, she dragged out a vibrant spring calico that had been packed away since fall. She gave it a hard, mean shake. She debated whether to forego her long underwear; the dress would look better without the red flannel showing at the ankles and wrists. But if she shed the flannels, Mrs. Lyman would certainly notice and nag poor Pap about it all night. And after all, what did it matter? Dag was going to fall in love with her anyway.

  What a depressing thought.

  Well, at least she could spare Pap the aggravation. She left the flannels on, then slid the dress over her head and did up the blackened bone buttons. Smoothing the fabric over her hips, she then bent to retrieve an embossed morocco case from under her bed. From it, she withdrew two long, heavy hair sticks of beautifully engraved silver—one of the few inheritances from her mother. She twisted her heavy braids on top of her head and stabbed them through with the sticks. Regarding herself in her bit of cracked mirror, she rubbed stray streaks of paint from her face with a wetted thumb, then nodded soberly. At the very least, falling in love with her would not be a downright embarrassment.

  Since she’d be walking home late, and she knew from recent experience just how cold April nights in the Sierras could get, she threw on her big buffalo coat before shinnying down the loft ladder.

  She took Pap’s big leather charm satchel from its place next to the door and slung it over her shoulder. When Pap had been younger, he’d carried it with him everywhere like a badge of office—and since she’d assumed most of his responsibilities, she never went without it either. She tucked Dag’s painted hex into the satchel and pulled down the flap.

  Mrs. Lyman wagged a finger at Emily. “Now, if it gets too late, you stay in town at Annie Bargett’s, or walk home with one of my girls.” She leaned toward Pap conspiratorially. “Things just aren’t safe anymore! Why, I heard tell of the most awful spate of Aberrancies outside of Sacramento. Mrs. Foster’s boy, Harlan, he was just telling me the other day …”

  Emily slipped out of the cabin quietly, smiling to herself. Mrs. Lyman loved to talk about the Aberrancies—“the horrible, slavering monstrosities that roamed the wilderness in vast numbers; terrifying beasts of native legend that beggared description and made strong men blanch and tremble” (in the words of a true-to-life account from Men’s Adventure Monthly). In fact, Emily felt certain that Mrs. Lyman would be positively tickled if she could actually encounter one of the semimythical terrors. But while Emily had often heard talk about the Aberrancies that bothered the trains, she’d never seen one, and would be willing to swear that she never would.

  You never will now, anyway, she told herself. For you’ve set yourself to become a good wife. And good wives don’t have much to do with slavering monstrosities.

  Emily was surprised at how disappointing this thought was, but she lifted her chin resolutely. She’d take disappointment over starvation any day.

  Following the well-worn trail that led from the cabin, Emily headed down the ridge toward Lost Pine, Dag Hansen, and her future.

  Dag Hansen’s new timber shed was being raised near the planned terminus of the narrow-gauge railroad tracks he was having laid into Dutch Flat. He’d managed to build half of the side line the past summer. This year he intended to finish the job and bring prosperity to Lost Pine. The way he said “prosperity,” with such delicious anticipation and pride, made it seem as though he were talking about an actual person: a big jolly fellow with luxurious face whiskers and gold-capped teeth.

  Over the past decade, prosperity had been no stranger to Dag Hansen. He’d made good money selling his timber to the railroad companies. The new side line would allow him to send moss-covered logs down from the slopes of Moody Ridge to the mills in Dutch Flat year-round.

  Emily followed the ringing of hammers and the rasping of saws. There wasn’t much to Lost Pine—a small saloon, a smaller general store, a few diminutive homes, and the silver-gray buildings of the old timber camp. The shed was being raised at the edge of the settlement, in a big sunny clearing. The smell of fresh-cut fir hung in the air, and the clean new wood gleamed golden in the warm afternoon light. The walls had been raised already, and Dag and his men were nailing up stout crossbeams.

  Dag was large and sturdy, with cornsilk hair and elk-brown eyes, a deeply tanned face and a strong brown throat. He’d unbuttoned his shirt against the heat of the day, and the sweat filming his bare arms and powerful chest made him seem to glisten. All in all, he wasn’t exceptionally difficult to look at. A perfect target for a designing Witch.

/>   She’d known him since they were children. He had been a unique specimen of boyhood—one who did not find it great fun to do painful things to her long braids—and had grown into a stalwart, kindhearted man. Not an overly deep thinker, but an excellent lumberman.

  When Dag saw her, he laid down his hammer and hurried over.

  “Hey, Em!” he said, slightly breathless. He gestured to the shed proudly. “What do you think? We’ve made some progress, eh?”

  Emily made herself smile.

  “I painted your hex,” she said. With trembling hands, she drew the oak plaque from the satchel. Dag pushed his hat back with his thumb and smiled broadly—a smile of real pleasure. A good, kind, honest smile.

  The smile almost made Emily lose her nerve. She couldn’t go through with it, she just couldn’t!

  Then what happens next winter? a hard, determined part of her whispered. What happens next time Pap gets sick and there’s no money for medicine?

  Swallowing the lump in her throat, Emily thrust the hex plaque at Dag. He took it in his big dirt-stained hands, bringing it up to admire it.

  “That is fine!” he said. “Much nicer than one of those tin jobs from Baugh’s …” Then he paused, scrutinizing her work more closely, as if he’d found a flaw. A strange look came over his face—an abrupt, yawning discontent. He blinked in slight confusion. He looked at Emily, and there was something expectant in his eyes, as if he’d suddenly remembered that she had come to tell him a secret, or deliver a large sum of money.

  “That’ll keep your lumber safe from wandering spirits, baneful curses, fire, and most varieties of … rot.” Emily choked over the last word, her throat suddenly dry. But Dag didn’t say anything, just looked at her with odd expectancy.

  “You sure look pretty today,” he murmured. “Is that a new dress?”

  “I put away my winter clothes.” Emily felt strangely shy. “I figured it was warm enough.”