by M. K. Hobson
“You look fine,” Dag said. “Really … fine. You … ah … stayin’ for the dance later?”
“I guess,” she said.
“You know … you know, ah …” Dag’s stammering made Emily wince. Usually, he was as direct as a hammer. “This is … ah … this is just the beginning. Once the track is completed, then Lost Pine will really be on the map.” He twisted the oak around in his hands. “What I mean to say is, I plan to make real things happen here. I’ll be doing more building … probably a new house. A big house, nothing but the best.”
“Oh?” Emily felt slightly dizzy, as if her entire torso had been inflated with cold air.
“A family house.” He blushed and looked away. “Anyhow, the thing is … I’ll need more hex paintings like this one here.” He looked at it. “Such a pretty job. You’re so—” he stopped. “Anyway, maybe tonight, we could go off walking and … and talk. Talk about …”
“Sure, Dag.” Emily gave him a bright smile. She punched down the feeling of sickness in her stomach and covered it with steely resolve. She wasn’t about to lead him on a coy chase. She’d made her bed, and now she’d … well, maybe that wasn’t the right metaphor.
Or maybe it was exactly the right one.
She took Dag’s hand and gave it an encouraging squeeze.
“I’ll look forward to it,” she said.
Dag’s eyes widened with elation. He took two dizzy steps backward, grabbed his hammer with a fumbling hand, and shinnied up the skeleton of a wall, all the way up to the roof eaves. He nailed the plaque to the topmost beam, then gave a loud whoop that echoed off the mountains high above.
Dag’s men shouted at him and laughed. Emily turned away quickly, blushing. She hurried off along the granite-bouldered main road toward the timber-camp kitchen to help the women with the food. It seemed the thing to do.
The rest of the afternoon passed in a blur of biscuit rolling, china washing, chicken frying, and child chasing. By the time the platters of steaming food had been carried down to the new shed and set out on a long trestle table and the lanterns had been lit and someone had pulled out an accordion to commence the dancing, Emily was exhausted and slightly numb.
Stars glittered down through the fresh-hewn beams of the yet-unfinished roof. The night air held winter’s frosty memory, but the lively music and the large bonfire in the yard—not to mention the mugs of hard cider and the frequent nips of whiskey—kept everyone pleasantly warm.
Dag wasn’t about to let anyone else dance with Emily, so she was in his arms all the way from the waltz to the schottische and on past that to the cheat-and-swing. He kept pulling her closer. After a couple of hours of his hands resting heavy on her back, his chest pressed against hers, his lips getting closer and closer to her face, Emily felt flushed and anxious. Pushing itching wisps of hair back behind her ears, she evaded Dag’s invitation to jig-and-reel and slipped out the back in search of calmer air.
Outside, she paused under the hanging lantern, leaned against the fragrant new wood, and closed her eyes. Through the siding boards she could feel the pulse of noise and conversation, and it was like another heartbeat. A new heartbeat that would become her own, over time. She’d seen the robin on her windowsill, the omen of true love. She liked Dag Hansen an awful lot. She’d get used to his hands. She’d fall in love with him eventually, sure as spring followed winter. Pap would be provided for, time would pass, and this would become her life.
And it would be just fine.
She was still trying to convince herself of this when she heard the soft clanking of metal on metal coming from a ways off in the darkness. Reaching up, she unhooked the lantern and held it before her as she took a few steps forward.
“Who’s there?” But then, the lantern’s light illuminated the clatter, and an answer became unnecessary.
He was an angular gentleman, tall and extremely lank, hardly more than a wired-together aggregation of very large bones. He wore a dark suit of a cut too fine to have come from Lost Pine, or Dutch Flat, or even Sacramento for that matter. His name was Dreadnought Stanton.
Emily let out a sigh and prepared to be annoyed. For when it came to being annoying, Dreadnought Stanton never disappointed.
He was a Warlock, and the manner in which he typically declared this left the distinct impression that the word must be spelled in strictly capital letters. He was a Warlock, a member of a lofty brotherhood whose kind ran factories, advised ancient monarchs, and were appointed to cabinet posts in Washington, D.C.; doers of great deeds who turned the tides of war and vanquished monsters; superior men who shored up the underpinnings of reality and other extremely splendid and eye-popping things.
Dreadnought Stanton was a Warlock, and during his tenure in Lost Pine, he seemed never to tire of reminding people of that fact.
Emily was similarly fond of wondering (aloud) what such a fabulously powerful being was doing in a backwater like Lost Pine. The answer? Having studied at a prestigious institute in New York, he was on some kind of humanitarian mission to bring the light of modern magical methods to the nation’s dimmest corners. And because Pap and Emily were the only ones in this particular dim corner with any interest in magic, he’d focused his attentions on them.
The first time Stanton had ridden up the ridge on his black horse, she’d thought he was a tax collector. Or a census taker, maybe. Someone from as far away from Lost Pine as it was possible to be, at any rate. She’d stared at him until he was close enough to stare back, examining her as one would a peculiar exhibit at the zoo. Only then did she remember that it was the middle of wash day, and she was wearing one of Pap’s shirts soaked to the sleeves, old pants tied at the waist with a rope, and boots crusted with mud.
It was right then that Emily decided she despised him.
Obligingly, Stanton had gone on to give her ample reason to continue doing so. That first visit, he ended up stealing hours of Pap’s valuable nap time with a derisive lecture on how the methods the old man had used for more than four decades were ludicrously outmoded.
As if Pap needed teaching from a puffed-up pedant with a head too big for his black felt bowler. It made her blood boil. After that, Emily had been downright inhospitable, turning the Warlock away whenever he came riding up on one of his pair of expensive black horses. Then, winter snows had made the cabin nearly inaccessible, and though she and Pap had endured awful hardships, at least they’d been blissfully Warlock-free for almost five months. Now, however, with spring’s return, Mr. Stanton had shown every indication of resuming his assault on Pap’s outdatedness. He’d ridden up to the cabin once already while Emily was out, and had managed to corner Pap with a lecture on something called “new herbalism.” Pap had found it fascinating, and Emily had thought him rather a traitor for thinking so.
“Exactly what are you doing, Mr. Stanton?” Emily asked. The question hardly needed answering, for it was clear that Stanton was rummaging through the tools that the laborers had laid aside.
Stanton glanced up, and even though Emily wore her nicest clothes, he gave her the exact same look he had that first day, when her boots were muddy and her belt made of rope.
“Oh, it’s you,” he said. He returned to his rummaging. “I do hope I haven’t interrupted your hoeing-down.”
“These tools aren’t yours.” Stanton didn’t seem to notice how haughty and disapproving she was trying to sound. He straightened, a hammer in one hand and a crowbar in the other. He gave each a momentary appraisal, then threw back the hammer.
“I received an important shipment today.” He stepped over the tools and pushed past her. “From New York. And I have no means of opening the crate.”
For a moment, Emily considered whistling for Dag and his men and leaving Stanton to his fate. But she’d had enough of toying with men’s fates for one evening.
“Well, I don’t know how things are done in New York,” Emily said, “but in Lost Pine, it’s considered polite to ask before running off with someone else’s things.”<
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Stanton sighed, and even in the darkness she could see him rolling his eyes.
“Then will you be so kind as to direct me to the owner of this excellent and valuable crowbar, so that I might request the privilege of its usage?” His intonation was extravagant. “Formally, I mean.”
She showed him into the shed, and with a sharp motion, pointed a finger at Dag, who was towering among a group of friends, laughing in a huge voice.
Emily snuck a sideways glance at Stanton, hoping to revel in his discomfiture, but he was already halfway across the room, moving with long, purposeful strides. If only Dag would fly off in an uncharacteristic rage and send the pompous Warlock scurrying! But Dag was singularly unobliging. His men were clustered around him, clapping him on the back and yelling congratulations. Dag looked over at Emily, letting his eyes linger on her for a long time. Emily blushed furiously, heat rising up her throat. At the very least he could have gotten a yes before he started telling everyone!
In his transport of excitement and joviality, Dag didn’t even notice the Warlock standing behind him. Stanton’s throat-clearings went from quietly polite to aggressively cathartic, but were of no avail. He shifted idly from one foot to the other until he was distracted by the sight of women bringing in fresh platters of food. His nostrils twitched as he eyed the piles of fried chicken, the heaps of steaming biscuits, the mounded beef cutlets cloaked in cream gravy. Without another look at Dag, he tucked the crowbar under his arm and followed a steaming apple crisp over to the table. Emily watched with indignation as he took a plate and began to pile it high.
She was about to set the Warlock straight when someone raised a cry: “Besim!”
The call was taken up by dozens of voices: “Besim, Besim!” until finally a scrawny old man with scraggly black hair and skin the color of rawhide allowed himself to be pushed to the center of the dirt floor.
“It’s Besim!”
“Hey, Besim!”
“Do us a Cassandra!”
The request echoed, rippling in dozens of different voices: “A Cassandra, a Cassandra!”
Smiling toothlessly, Besim motioned to a young man standing nearby, who had obtained a pint bottle of whiskey and was holding it with eager anticipation. The young man leaped forward, proffering the bottle to Besim.
Besim drained it in one protracted guzzle.
The room exploded in congratulatory cheers. Coins rained down on Besim, thrown by the men in the crowd. Besim scrambled for these, thrusting them deep into his pockets.
“Regrettably, your lumberman is in no mood to discuss crowbars.” The voice came at Emily’s elbow. It was that insufferable Stanton, crowbar still under his arm and a brimming plate of food in his hand. He used a chicken leg to gesture at Besim. “So who’s this?”
“That’s Besim,” Emily said. She eyed the chicken leg meaningfully. “He’s one of those varmints who show up whenever there’s free food and liquor to be had.”
Stanton chewed thoughtfully as he watched Besim begin to spin. The old man gained speed as he rotated; bystanders pushed him back to the center whenever he threatened to topple over.
“What the devil is he doing?”
“He’s doing a Cassandra,” Emily muttered. She hated Besim’s Cassandras. The old man had once been a charm maker in Dutch Flat, and in his better days he’d been Pap’s biggest rival for custom. But the rivalry had faded as Besim slid into drunkenness and its concomitant poverty. These days, the only money he got was from his impromptu liquor-lubricated prognostications. These were doubly embarrassing to one of her profession in that while they tended toward the ridiculous, they proved right about half of the time—which was about the same success Pap had with his scrying.
“Fascinating,” Stanton said. “He’s a dervish.”
“What are you talking about?” Emily asked. “Pap always said Besim did Indian magic.”
“Rubbish. That man’s no more an Indian than I am. He’s a Turk. He was a Sufi holy man once, or he studied with one.” Stanton pointed to Besim’s hands. “See how his right palm is turned upward and his left is turned down? Power comes down from Heaven into the right hand and returns down to the earth from the left. All that energy rushing through the dervish’s body supposedly endows him with supernaturally clear insight into the true nature of all existence—past, present, and future.” He took another bite of the chicken leg. “I must say, though, the addition of a pint of whiskey tends to undercut the rite’s spiritual element.”
At that moment, Besim fell with a great crash in the middle of the floor, and lay moaning and writhing, holding his gut. Words began slurring out of his mouth.
“Emily … Emily Lyakhov” Emily froze. Besim wasn’t going to Cassandra about her, was he? She didn’t recognize the name Lyakhov, but she didn’t have time to think about it before Besim spoke again. “Emily, you have been doing bad magic.”
A few people turned to look at Emily curiously. She wished she could sink through the floor, except there wasn’t any floor, just dirt. Shut up, Besim, she whispered to herself, clenching her hands tight.
“You have bewitched someone for your own good. Someone who has not asked for it.” Besim spoke with the slurry slyness of a very drunk man, waggling a finger. “You have woven a fine little net, Emily. But it will not catch you what you want …”
Dag stepped forward, his hands balled into fists.
“You quit talking about … You just shut up, Besim!” There was odd, hesitant anger in his voice—anger that didn’t know where it came from. “Miss Emily wouldn’t do anything like that, and you know it! That’s not the kind of Cassandra-in’ we want.”
“You get the Cassandra you get, you cow-eyed fool!” Besim flared back. But drunk as he was, he knew which side his bread was buttered on. He fell silent for a moment, staring into space, apparently searching for a more satisfactory message from the ether. When the next message came, however, it was worse than the first.
“The Corpse Switch!” Besim shrieked, his face contorting with sudden horror. “The Corpse Switch up at Old China has failed! The dead … the dead will rise from beneath the earth!”
There was a storm of muttering. Emily stared at him, confused and appalled. Besim’s Cassandras were usually light-hearted revelations about which young scapegrace had stolen a pie from which matron’s windowsill. They were never this dire. Corpse Switches controlled the zombie miners that the mine owners bought to work their most dangerous mines—the ones that live men wouldn’t work in for any money. The zombie workers had been paupers, criminals, and other dangerous and unsavory types. Certainly not the sorts one wanted roaming the mountains without the control of a properly sorcelled Corpse Switch.
As if that weren’t bad enough, Besim was crawling across the floor toward Emily. He stopped, kneeling in front of her, clutching the hem of her dress and pressing it to his tear-slicked face.
“The dead have been driven mad, büyüleyici kadin. Driven mad by a blue star.” He looked up at her, eyes glowing like embers. “You must stop them. It is not right … that the dead … should walk the earth …”
Each successive word dropped from Besim’s lips more slowly, and after the last one he slumped at her feet, still and silent. Emily snatched her skirt away and stepped back, aware of dozens of silent eyes appraising her. She flushed from throat to scalp.
“What a pile of nonsense,” Stanton said loudly. “A Corpse Switch can’t fail. They’re made with multiple redundancies at a licensed necromantic factory in Chicago. Which I’ve toured, by the way. They have an unblemished performance record.”
Even this pronouncement did not completely satisfy the unsettled crowd. Dozens of worried eyes turned toward Dag, waiting for his verdict on the matter.
“You think there’s anything in it, Dag?” someone shouted from the back of the room.
“Aw, hell no!” Dag nudged Besim with the toe of his boot. The dervish released a loud, muttering snore. “Besim’s thrown bunk Cassandras before, but that was th
e bunkest! A blue star in a mine? Not in a blue moon!”
There was uneasy laughter at this weak attempt at humor; Dag clapped the accordion player on the back.
“Let’s have a real cheerful one!” As the music resumed, Dag called over it: “You all heard Mr. Stanton. Corpse Switches don’t fail! So let’s get back to dancing. And for God’s sake, someone drag Besim someplace he can sleep it off!”
A couple of men stepped forward to oblige, and Dag came to Emily’s side, taking her arm and drawing her close. He’d had more than a few cups of apple brandy; she could smell it on his breath as he put his face close to hers.
“I don’t know what got into that old faker tonight,” he said. He wrapped his arms around her waist and gave her a squeeze. “Let’s get out of here. Let’s go have that walk we were talking about.”
“Listen, Dag …” Emily pushed back against his embrace. “What if he’s right? What if the Corpse Switch has failed?”
Dag grinned. “C’mon, Emily. Besim’s just never got used to the idea of zombies. He’s been jumpy as a cat since Old China brought ’em in. His imagination just ran away, that’s all.”
“But shouldn’t we go up and check?”
Dag blinked in astonishment.
“Go to Old China now? Five miles straight up? On Besim’s say-so? You must be kidding!”
“No, I’m not.” She tried to speak quietly, but the cheery tune had gotten everyone laughing and talking even louder than before. “If there’s any chance what he’s saying is true—”
“There isn’t.” Dag smiled indulgently. “I mean, he said you’d been doing bad magic, too. There wasn’t no truth in that, was there?”
“That’s not the same,” Emily whispered fiercely, pushing herself from his arms. Dag looked confused. He lifted his big hand in a gesture of dismissal.
“It’s all the same, all hooey.” Dag suddenly looked extremely tired, as if all the drink and dancing had caught up with him at once. “I wish some of these people would clear out so we could go for that walk.”