“Y’all going to eat it all, ain’t ya? Not leave a bit for Bobba. Don’t anybody ever leave anything for Bobba.” She leans her head down against her gloved palm, elbow on the table, and looks out over all the dishes we cleaned, the empty pans, the dirty napkins strewn all about, me and Tommy eating everything up as fast as we can. “Now how did y’all go and work up an appetite like that?”
“We’re getting chased,” says Tommy, mouth full of dessert.
I kick him under the table.
“Gracious Lord!” says Bobba. “Now who in the world would want to be chasing y’all two?”
“The Preacher,” says Tommy. “I didn’t think he was evil at first but now I’m pretty sure he is. See, he wants to kill us.”
I kick him harder.
“Ow,” says Tommy. “Stop kicking me.”
“Then shut your mouth,” I say, then look toward Bobba. “My momma always told me that kids should keep quiet at dinner. They should eat their dinner and be quiet and keep grateful.”
I see a flash of something in Bobba’s eyes. I put my fork down and study her a minute. She’s way too big to be climbing up any rope ladder. The house would have to kneel down like a good horse to let her up in it. If she ever leaves at all. Oh, she’s got to leave. How else could she get all this food up here? Still, something doesn’t figure right. Bobba keeps making these little stitching motions with her fingers, like she’s unspooling thread.
“A preacher! My, my,” says Bobba. “Hate preachers. Awful men, the worst there is. Good enough intentions, sure, but it takes a certain kind of fool to think he can speak for the Lord. A servant’s heart, they say. Vain heart’s more like it. Preacher’s the vainest type of man. Loves power, respect, even money. Certainly money. Because there’s a fortune to be made off of God, no two ways about it. Preachers have the keys to heaven. They can bind and loose, lock and unlock. Awful lot of power preachers have.”
“Yeah, this guy is nuts. I seen him. I rode in a carriage with him,” says Tommy. “Can I have some more cobbler?”
“Sure, baby,” says Bobba. She slops a steaming, gurgling mess of blackberry cobbler down in front of him. Stuffed as I am, my stomach scoots itself over and makes some room. I can almost taste the sweet goodness in my mouth. “See, I know this preacher y’all talking about. He wasn’t so bad when he was young. Course, he got corrupted, spent his years in the desert. Desert my tail. Just wandering around, whipping on himself, talking to those fanatics up north, wanting to set folks on fire. Five years he was gone, had to be, off getting his head filled with all kinds of garbage. When he came back, well, he wasn’t the same old preacher, and that’s the truth.”
Bobba knows the Preacher? We shouldn’t be here. Why are we still here? Why am I still hungry? Why haven’t I grabbed Tommy and bolted out of here already? Her fingers twitching, pulling invisible thread. Is Bobba doing this?
“Tommy was just teasing,” I say. “Nobody’s chasing us. Just a game we’ve been playing. We got lost. We were traveling with my uncle, Uncle Gruff. We just got to meet back up with him on the road, that’s all. Then everything will be right as rain.”
“Nope,” says Tommy. “Nothing will ever be right again.”
The room goes full quiet, except for the ticking of the great big clock and the clink of silverware against the plates.
“Tommy?” I say.
“Go ahead,” says Bobba. “Tell me all about it.”
Bobba’s fingers are moving fast, unspooling and unspooling, like she’s pulling the answer from him, like she’s unwinding the truth.
“We’re going to Moon Haven because that’s where Goldeline says we’ll be safe. But we’re criminals now. I don’t think we’ll ever be safe again.”
“That’s enough, Tommy!” I jump up to my feet and grab his hand. “Thanks, Miss Bobba, but we got to go now.”
“Sit down!” she thunders. The candles flicker and darken, the whole house shakes.
Tommy’s face falls into his cobbler. He doesn’t get up.
“You don’t remember me, do you, child?” says Bobba. “You don’t remember anything. Your momma did that, put a wall up in you. She didn’t want you to have to remember anything nasty, anything unpleasant. Yep, your momma just whisked those memories right out your pretty little skull.”
I try to run, but I can’t. Invisible arms push me back down to the chair. I can feel their warm fat fingers on my skin.
“Let me go, please. I won’t tell anybody you’re here. We’ll just disappear off into the woods and be gone, like you never even saw us.”
My vision swirls and I feel so hazy. I try to stand up, to reach over to Tommy, but I can hardly move. I feel like I’m in a tub of warm water, a bath full of flowers, the scent so strong it turns my stomach and makes me float.
“Is Tommy dead?” I say.
“No, honey, but he might wish he was, before all this plays out,” Bobba says. “Y’all two got one ghastly journey to take before it’s all over.”
“Did you poison the tea?”
“The tea? Naw. I poisoned the air,” she says. “And y’all been breathing that air ever since you first stepped into Bobba’s field.”
“Why are you doing this to me?”
“Because, sweets,” Bobba says, reaching up to the great bun of gray hair on top of her head. She lifts it, showing me a bald veiny egg of a skull. Long scars streak across her head, like claw marks, or maybe even burns. Did the Preacher do that to her? Is Bobba another woman he burned? She places the wig on the table and clears her throat. She slides off her gloves. Her hands are massive, hairy, with fingernails long as wolf fangs. “It’s like the Book says, if you bring forth what is within you, it’ll save you. But if you don’t bring forth what is within you, well, that’ll destroy you. Do you understand?”
I try to run but I can’t, I can’t even move, my stomach hurts, my head throbs, all the colors blur and smear together like a meadow of flowers. Bobba grabs my head and pulls my face to hers. I can see the green-gold swirls in her eyes, smell the dead-meat rank of her breath. Her hands are cold on my cheeks and her nails dig into my scalp.
“I need you to remember,” she says. “For your sake, and for your momma’s.”
Eyes wide open, pupils spiraling into mine, Bobba kisses me straight on the lips. My sight goes black, and I’m gone.
TWELVE
I’m in a meadow. There’s a tree at the end, the same tree that Bobba’s house sits on, but there isn’t any Bobba’s house on it. In a knot in the middle of the trunk somebody wedged a book. I pull it out. It’s warm and throbbing and soft. When I open the book it makes a cry like a baby and I shut it real fast. In the limbs of the tree are about a hundred cardinals, so many I think they’re leaves at first. They chirp and flutter and all at once rise, the flock of fire flies off past the sun and I fly off too, so high the trees look tiny, the whole world the size of a gumdrop, my face pressed against the sky like it was a mirror, the cold glass on my cheek looking at my face, but it’s not my face, not quite.
It’s not me at all. It’s my momma. I’m looking at my momma.
This is a memory.
One that is too old for me to remember, a forgotten one like a scar on my head that hair grew over and covered.
It’s Momma, young and white-haired and beautiful. Momma I love you. Momma how I missed you. She smells sweet as fresh rain, like honeysuckle. It’s the smell that hurts so bad. She picks me up and spins me and it’s like I’m floating upward, like a raindrop in reverse. She kisses me and I’m so small, I’m a baby. I know this is true because it feels true, but how could I remember being so small? Her face against mine is the softest thing I ever felt.
Bobba is there too, but she’s sweeter, gentler. Her hair is real and silver and wild all over her head. She has cobbler with her but I can smell all the good in it, it wasn’t made mean and wicked like what she made me and Tommy. She hugs Momma like a sister and they are close, they laugh together.
I’m in Momma’
s house, with the thatched roof and the stove and the rocks, the ones with the little birds on them, the ones Momma taught me with. The books in the corner stacked and good-smelling, I don’t know how she got them but there were always more whenever I wanted. The lantern I used to carry when I wandered the woods at night. But I was never scared, even in the dark nighttime, because of the songs Momma taught me, the nothingsong that sparkled the air when I sang it, that protected me from all the scary stuff in the dark, the horror of night like it says in the Book, the fanged things, the wolves and snakes and wicked men, my little light out in the black woods. I would wander and sing and pretend I was a star that fell out of its tree and toppled to earth but didn’t burn out, just got small and brave and became a girl who glowed at night. It was impossible to be scared when you could glow.
The light scares the mess out of the darkness, you can believe that.
There’s a flicker in my eyes and I’m in Bobba’s tree house again, but it looks different, all ragged curtains and brown, gunk-filled plates and rats gnawing bird bones off the floor. Bobba’s hideous scowl is a foot from my face, her eyes red and ripped-looking. She slaps me.
“No!” she says. “You got to remember!”
Bobba slaps me harder and my lip busts, and I can feel the blood go hot on my chin. It’s the blood that does it, and I’m back in the forest, back wandering, and it’s cold but not horrible cold, just enough that everything has a snap to it. It’s another memory. I’m a kid again, maybe five or maybe four, and I have my cloak and my lantern and I’m singing the nothingsong but it comes out all wrong because I’m sick and my throat hurts, I croak and caw the song like a bullfrogbird, like something with leather wings that lives in the mud.
I feel sick and I feel lonely and I hate my momma for making me wander out so late, so tired. I was already mostly asleep when Momma shook me awake and said, “Put on your cloak, Goldeline, take your lantern!” and I said I didn’t want to but she said it again, “Baby darling, please, you got to, Momma needs you to. Quick! Up to it! Go now! Shoo! Shoo!” and I’ve been wandering and wandering since. Hours maybe. The rule is, when something secret happens, Momma sends me out to the woods and I can’t come back, not until she lights a candle in the window to guide me back with. That’s the rule, and never ever have I broken it. But tonight I’m sick and the night is full of crows, the clouds running fast as rabbits across the sky. A storm is coming. There’s the burned-leaf smell in the air, the stench of a bad one way far off. The trees bend and stretch. An owl looks at me with big strange eyes. I think it’s blind. Nothing in the world feels right tonight.
Even though I’m not supposed to, even though I never broke a promise to my momma before, I start my walk back to our house early, even though Momma hasn’t lit the candle. See, I know the way, these woods are my own and I can’t ever get lost in them, not anymore, not so close to our little house. I sneak right up to the window and take a peek in.
Inside is a man. He’s got his back to me. Momma’s smiling at him, this sad kind of smile I’ve never seen on her face before, like I never seen her look at anyone in my whole life. Neither of them see me. I don’t understand what’s happening, all I know is that it’s something bad.
But the wind blows and the moon dims out and it all fades. I can hear Bobba screaming at me, screaming somewhere long and far off, No! No! You got to keep going! You have to see! But I’m tired, and there’s a bed for me, I can feel it, my old soft bed, Momma’s there too, with my quilt, and it’s warm, warm, and I can’t stop myself now, and soon I know I’ll be asleep and dreaming again. I hope I hope I hope for good dreams.
THIRTEEN
I wake up slumped in a hard wooden chair. Tommy’s still face-down in his plate, but instead of cobbler now it’s just a pile of old chicken bones. I’m scared he’s dead but then I realize he’s snoring. I’ve never been so happy to hear snoring before in my whole life. We’re in a room, a small one, dusty and ruined. The table is a dead gray color, like old skin, chipped and dented. Torn shreds of paper and the covers of books cover the floor. A rank nutria hide is nailed to the wall. A rat scampers over my feet. No Bobba in sight. I try to stand but have to sit right back down again. I’m woozy and confused. Sunlight spears through a chink in the roof, and bats hang like rotten teeth from the rafters. Where am I? I pray a little to Momma.
Momma my head hurts. Momma is this Bobba’s house?
The gnawed bones on my plate, crusts of moldy bread on the floor. Is this what we ate yesterday? But it had tasted so good. It tasted as good and lovely as the house looked, like a real home for me. Was it a trick, a dream? Or was it Bobba’s poison?
Tommy’s still snoring away on the table. Ants crawl a little speckled line over his hand, medium-sized ants like watermelon seeds. I brush them off and poke him awake.
“Hey, Tommy.”
He moans a little and blinks at me. A sun shaft hits him bright on the face and makes him glow a little like a saint in a picture book.
“Are we dead?” he says.
“Nope,” I say.
“My stomach hurts.”
“Yep.”
“My head hurts too.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I didn’t get to finish dessert.”
“Better be glad about that.”
Tommy sits awake. He looks scared.
“Where is she?”
I shrug.
“This is the same house, right?” he says.
“I’m not sure.”
“But it’s got to be. It’s the same size and everything.” He sniffs the air and coughs. “Why is it so horrible now?”
“I don’t know, Tommy,” I say. “It’s like Bobba could control it. What it looked like to us, how it felt. Like she was giving us whatever we wanted.”
“She was all in my dreams,” he says. “She was huge, like a big old walrus. She kept saying, ‘Eat a biscuit! Put some jelly on it! Get a little sugar in your blood!’” He shakes his head. “I don’t feel too good.”
“Let’s get on out of here, Tommy. The rope ladder still works, I think.”
I try it out. The rope is scraggled and rough and it cuts my hands, but I make it down okay. Tommy takes a step and falls smack down in the tall grass. He stands up, then topples over and vomits. I let him finish, and then I pat him on the back.
“Was that magic?” Tommy says, wiping drool from his chin. “Last night I mean?”
“Yes, Tommy,” I say. “You believe yet?”
Even the field looks different today. Spiderwebs, maybe a hundred of them, stretch from grass blade to grass blade, and the dew makes little jewels across the thread. Bobba’s house hangs sad on the tree, drooping like a bowed old-lady head. There isn’t any book in the tree either, not like in my dream. How can this be the same place as yesterday? Other than the spider diamonds, there’s nothing magic about this meadow. It’s just weeds and ugly. Not even any real flowers, only anthills and a weird dead-skunk smell.
I don’t know what to make of my dream. No, it wasn’t a dream. It was a memory, real as I just lived it. I was remembering something fierce, something lovely and awful. I know it was important.
Then I remember Momma, her cheek against mine, being safe, a baby in her arms. I drop my hair over my face so Tommy can’t see me cry.
“I’m thirsty,” he says.
“Hold up a minute and let me get you some water.”
I’m glad to get away. My pack’s lying over in the grass, the canteen spilled out next to it. Guess Bobba chucked it out the tree house when she left. The stopper’s off. I pick it up and shake it. Empty. We don’t have any food either. I feel awful all over. But all of Zeb’s money is still there, so at least Bobba didn’t rob us.
“Old ugly warthog,” I say, and wince as a pain flashes through my skull. She tricked me, yep, maybe even poisoned me. But she gave me something too, something important. I just got to figure out what it means.
I got to get to Moon Haven, to Gruff. He’ll know what to do
. If I can get to Gruff then everything will be okay. He knew Momma, he was around her even when I wasn’t. Maybe he knows who the man in my memory was. Maybe Gruff will know what to do.
“I’m hungry,” says Tommy.
“I guess I would be too if I just yucked up my whole dinner.”
“Thirsty too.”
“Then get up,” I say, “and let’s get to walking. No food here, unless you want to kill and cook a crow.”
“Not on your life,” he says. He looks woozy and I think he might puke again.
I don’t know why, but in this moment I’ve never been more grateful for Tommy. I run over and give him a hug. He smells awful and I kind of regret it but also I kind of don’t, not at all.
“What was that for?” he says.
“You looked like you needed it.”
“What does that mean?”
“Hush up and walk, it means,” I say.
Tommy follows me out of the clearing and back into the dark creeping woods.
We’ve been walking a few hours, and we’re pretty bad lost. Tommy keeps throwing rocks in the woods, following behind me, humming to himself. I found us some berries, but they were sour, and we haven’t come to any water anywhere. I keep saying I know where we are and I know where we’re going, and Tommy keeps acting like he believes me.
But the nice thing about being lost is that, you wander far enough, you always wind up somewhere. That’s what Gruff used to say. If you’re lost, Goldy darlin’, all you gotta do is keep going. So long as you’re moving, you ain’t lost. You’re getting somewhere. I can already see the Half-Moon Inn, where Gruff will be waiting, a plate of hot chicken and mashed potatoes in front of him, a mug of ale in his hand, a fat cigar clenched in his teeth, laughing about how couldn’t anybody catch him, not some sucker Preacher anyhow. You couldn’t catch him because he was a ghost, how women trembled and men turned up their collars when they passed through our woods. That’s how he used to brag when he was good and laughing by the fire. That’s how he’d brag when he picked me up and spun me and held me close to him and we were like a family. Or at least the closest thing I’ve come to a family since my momma died.
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