I run inside and hold my momma while she cries. I cover her with my own body. I hold her and I kiss her eyes and I let her hold me too.
When she can sit up I help her. She tells me to get her certain things, roots and leaves, weird stuff she uses in her healings, and bring them to her. Some I have to go out and pick. It takes me all night but I do it. Every few minutes I come in and check on her and she seems a little better, a little less upset each time. It’s a miracle, what my momma can do. It’s her magic.
When I have all the ingredients and the sun is just breaking the trees and turning the dark world soft again, she bids me build her a fire and I do. We fill the cauldron with water, and I watch my momma drop in each powder, each leaf and root, singing all the while, singing each magic word in a language I don’t know, lovely as birdsong.
The smell fills the room, a sick oily dead smell, the worst I ever sniffed. She’s making tea from the forgetting herbs, same as what I would do for Gruff years later. Momma taught me this magic, it’s the only thing of hers I still have with me, the only magic she let me keep. I guess that’s why Momma never taught me any more of it. She was trying to protect me from men like the Preacher.
“Taste this,” Momma says, holding a big spoonful toward me.
I don’t want to. It smells awful, it smells like death and rot. But she grabs me by the hair and yanks my head back and my mouth opens and she plunges the spoon in. Then another and another. I gag and choke, it burns my mouth, it tastes yucky, my eyes go black. I almost vomit it up but Momma holds her hand over my mouth.
“Swallow it,” she says, and I do.
My stomach swirls and my hands tingle and I feel dizzy. Momma carries me over to the bed and sits me down on it. She kneels in front of me. I almost topple over but she holds me up with both her hands.
“Open your eyes,” she says.
“But, Momma, I can’t.”
“Open your eyes.”
I can hardly see her. Everything is hazy and soft, the white of the light through the window, fuzzy as cat fur.
“Say what I say.”
“Yes, Momma.”
“Last night was all a dream.”
“Last night was all a dream.”
“Mr. Cyrus was never here.”
“Mr. Cyrus was never here.”
“It was all a bad dream.”
“Just a dream.”
“There’s no Preacher coming to see us again. Never has been.”
“No Preacher, never has been.”
“You never saw that man once before in your whole life.”
“Never saw anybody.”
“Your momma loves you more than anything. She’s never gonna let anything happen to you.”
“Momma loves me more than anything. Nothing bad will happen to me.”
“That’s my Goldy,” she says, and pulls me to her. We lie down together on the bed and while she kisses my hair and cries soft so as not to wake me, I think, This is all a dream, this is just a dream, none of this ever happened, until all I see is nothing and all I hear is nothing and finally I’m asleep.
SEVENTEEN
Footsteps crunch the leaves beside my head. I don’t know how I fell asleep, how the memory became a dream again. But there are boots beside me, a man with a bald head peering down at me.
“Well, what do we got here?” he says.
I grab Tommy across his chest and pull him to me. He mumbles to himself, fever-hot, yelling at folks in his dreams.
“Your friend don’t look too good,” the man says. “Might better let me take a look at him.”
I shake my head no, and when the man tries to grab at Tommy I snap my teeth at his fingers. He yanks his hand back and laughs a little.
“You are a mighty tough one, aren’t you? Have to be, to survive out here in these woods. Especially with certain folks afoot. Unwanted folk, prowling around here, if you know what I mean.”
Again I shake my head no and growl at him. He’ll have to kill me if he wants to take Tommy. I don’t trust anybody anymore. The whole world is full of wretched and evil people and even the ones you love like your own momma aren’t perfect, they can be mean and cruel even if they don’t deserve at all what comes to them. My momma with her face all angry, the Preacher crying on his knees, kissing her fingers. Not a lick of it do I understand. Not one bit at all.
The man bends down and squints his eyes at me. His eyebrows crinkle up, fat as caterpillars.
“I don’t expect you to trust me. Heck, I wouldn’t much trust myself out here. But your friend’s got a break in his ankle. A bad break. The bone is poking through. Now you could stay out here, have him lose the foot, maybe his whole leg. Shoot, might be too late for him already. Or you can help me get him back to my place, have ol’ Chester take a look at him. He ain’t any doctor or anything, but in my experience a not-doctor sometimes can out-doctor a real doctor, if you follow me.”
I think maybe I kind of do. That’s what my momma was when she healed people. A good not-doctor. She helped babies and pregnant women and old ladies with hands crumpled up like claws. Momma could soothe them, could make their fingers spread out again. She knew all kinds of things. But I still don’t trust this man. I don’t know anything about him.
“My name is Lance,” he says. “And I’m trying to save your friend’s life. Do you understand? If you stay here, your friend will die. But if you come with me, he might can live. Hustle and we maybe could even save the leg. Besides,” he says, cutting a glance around the woods, “some folks have been knocking on doors, looking for a couple of kids out here in the wild. Saying they’re bandits, demon-possessed. Now y’all wouldn’t want to be out here with any demon-bandit children running around, would you?”
He winks at me, and maybe he knows. The morning is black, clouds scowling at the earth. A cardinal looks down from the trees and tilts his head at me, like he wants to know what I’m going to do.
“Who’s Chester?” I say.
“Oh, you’ll like him. You’ll like him fine. I think you and Chester will wind up mighty tight friends, if you ask me.” He looks up at the darkening sky and sighs. “Look, we ain’t got time to talk. You coming or not?”
Tommy’s hands move in jerks. He’s chomping his teeth, fighting out against some fever demon. His eyelids flutter open and shut, his pupils rolled back so all I can see is white. He looks bad, real bad. I’m scared.
“Okay,” I say, “we’ll go.”
“First you got to help me rig up a splint for him. And we got to keep him from hollering out too much, if you don’t mind.” Lance spits in the dirt and toes it with his boot. “What I mean is, this sucker’s going to hurt. Do what you can for me.”
Tommy’s a little bit awake now, coming in and out, yelping when we jostle him too much. Lance braces his leg with two sticks and begins wrapping it tight with cloth. Tommy screams and his face gets redder and redder. I kiss his cheeks and sing to him one of Momma’s songs, the one my momma used to sing me whenever I got sick. There’s no healing without music, she used to say. Music gets way down past your blood, past your bones even. It gets into the dark of you, where you’re sickest of all. You got to sing all the sick away. You got to fill your darkest places full of light.
“That’s a pretty song,” says Lance.
“My momma taught it to me,” I say.
“Then that’s just the right song to sing.”
It takes us a minute to get Tommy to where we’re holding him up. Lance isn’t all that much taller than me, so it works out okay.
“Let’s move quick,” says Lance, “but smooth if we can manage it. Only about a mile to my place if we keep off the roads. Just watch your step and let’s try not to hurt the boy too much.”
It takes us a good half hour. Twice we almost fall, and twice Tommy howls like we stuck him with a fire poker. But we never do go all the way down, and pretty soon, grunting and sweating and huffing, we get to a cabin in a small bit of clearing off the road.
�
�Home sweet hovel,” says Lance. “And thank the Lord, because I’m wore out. I ain’t worked this hard since I was a farm boy, and I flat hated that junk. Now let’s get the boy some help, shall we?”
The cabin is bigger than mine and Momma’s was, with a good roof and a chimney puffing smoke. There’s a garden out front, full of purples and blues, with an apple tree dangling bright reds. It’s a happy house, I think. It looks like happy people live here. A white kitty with a black tail rubs itself against the door like it wants to come in. Maybe it wants us all to come in too.
What do you say, kitty?
The door opens before we even have time to knock. A straggly-haired man who is maybe sixty bends down and strokes the kitty’s back. “Hi there, Princess,” he says. “Princess Mona.” Then he sees us. “My little Mona, what have you brought us today?”
“Chester, it ain’t the cat that drug this boy out from the ditch,” says Lance. “Just me and this one here. What’d you say your name was?”
“Goldeline,” I say. It feels good to say my name out loud. It feels like I lit a little candle inside myself again.
“Goldeline,” says Chester. “Such a pretty name.”
“Thank you,” I say, and I mean it. It’s been so long since someone said something really truly nice to me.
“And who is this little bird you’ve brought me?”
“His name’s Tommy,” I say. “And his ankle’s broke up real bad.”
“I see,” says Chester, bending down to look at Tommy’s splint.
“Think you can help him?”
“Darling, I shall do my part. That I promise you,” he says, with a little bow. Princess Mona rubs herself against my leg, purring. I like Chester, I think. Him and Lance both.
“Great. Now let’s get the little guy inside,” says Lance. “I’m about sick to death of carrying him and my shoulder’s liable to give out.”
“Old man,” laughs Chester.
“Shoot,” says Lance. “Ain’t any older than you are.”
We follow Chester into the house. It’s lovely, clean, and bright with life. Flowers cut and arranged in vases, a warm fire, and a big grand table. A painting of an old man on the wall, with a little girl holding some flowers. And best of all, books and books, shelves full, on the floor, piled up everywhere, a whole fortune of books. We lay Tommy on the table.
“Where are we?” says Tommy.
“You’re at our home,” says Chester. “I’m going to try and fix up your leg a little bit. How does that sound?”
“Sounds like it’s gonna hurt,” says Tommy.
“Unfortunately, you’re right about that,” says Chester. “But we’ll do what we can. Goldeline? Can you get me that bottle over there?”
He points to a big green glass with a cork stuck in it. I get it from the table, but when I bring it near Tommy he gets scared.
“Don’t make me drink anything,” he says.
I won’t give Chester the bottle until he tells me what it is.
“We got poisoned by an old lady named Bobba,” I explain. “She lived in a tree.”
“Ah,” he says. “Well, no poison here. Just something to calm the boy down. See?” He takes the bottle from me and uncorks it. He takes a swig of it himself, then holds it out to me to sniff. It doesn’t smell evil. This place is different than Bobba’s. It’s a good home. There isn’t any magic here except the kind that comes from goodness. It’s a warmth that fills me all over.
“It’s safe,” he tells Tommy. “But it won’t taste real good, so pinch your nose.”
Tommy does and Chester gives him a glug. Tommy coughs, and Chester makes him drink again.
“I feel kinda loopy,” he says.
“Good,” says Chester. “Then I guess we’re ready to start.”
It takes a lot of blood to set the bones right. The cut is nasty, blue with infection. Tommy screams and cries, even with the medicine. Lance brings cool rags for Tommy’s head. He’s screaming so loud. I’m scared he’s going to die.
“Sing him one of your songs,” says Lance.
So I do. I sing him the nothingsong. It’s wordless, but I sing a story into it this time. I figure maybe I should be sick of stories by now, with all the trouble they’ve gotten me into. But I don’t think stories are good or bad in themselves. It’s like the way the Preacher uses the Book—and all the strange and confusing and lovely things in it—for evil, when its stories can be used just as easy for good. Or the way Gruff lied to me about Moon Haven, how bad it hurt me when I found out. But maybe Gruff’s stories weren’t lies, not really. Maybe they were just the truth about how things should be, how maybe a derelict little orphan girl like me needed a place like the Half-Moon Inn he dreamed up for me. Maybe sometimes the story is more about the teller, and the hearer too, than ever it is about the story itself.
I sing Tommy the story of what the nothingsong has always been to me. About a ghost girl, a girl from the moon. She came down just a tiny thing, no bigger than a fleck of starlight. She was born on earth in a cut of sugarcane. A farmer found her one day and brought her home to his wife. They raised the little ghost girl until she was normal-person-sized and the prettiest girl in all the land. Kings and princes and lords and merchants from all over the world came to woo her, but she didn’t like a one of them. They all smelled bad or talked about politics or bored her with stories of killing wolves and tigers, stories that the girl wished had ended with the tigers and wolves winning, stuffing their bellies full of these awful men.
But there was one boy, barely sixteen, who rode into the ghost girl’s village. He had silver hair and walked with a cane, but the cane had a sword in it. He didn’t bore her talking about all the stuff he killed, or about what was happening at court and all that other junk. Instead, he sang her a song. And the song was the story of her whole life, only said quicker and more beautiful than she could have ever said it herself. The music and the words and the young man’s voice, all of it together scooped her heart up and took it away. It was the singing boy she would marry.
It didn’t work though. Just when it was time for the wedding ceremony, the ghost girl’s parents came back from the moon. They said she had to come back home. The moon missed her, it needed her light, there wasn’t anybody else in the whole starry night that could give enough glow to the moon. It had to be her.
So she waved good-bye to the boy she loved and to her earth parents and floated up into the sky, and that was that.
Sure, the song doesn’t have any words to it. But that’s what it’s about. Anyone with a half a brain can tell that. What else could a song so beautiful be about except a ghost girl and her journey to the moon?
When I finish singing, I realize that everybody’s looking at me. Tommy’s eyes seem soft, and there isn’t a mark of pain in his face. Chester looks at me with wide blue eyes, stitches and thread still in his hand. Lance sits quiet in the corner. All from my little song. Maybe Momma left me a little more magic than I thought.
“Please sing it again,” says Chester.
And I do.
Soon Tommy’s leg is all stitched up and he’s snoozing soft and snoring. Lance has been cooking, and he serves up a big beef stew that smells wonderful, that doesn’t have any beets in it or bad magic. It’s real food, rich and thick. We eat and eat and eat.
“Is Tommy gonna be okay?” I ask.
“Looks like it, darling,” says Chester. “You did a miracle by singing like that. It put him right at peace, let me do my work without him fighting me one bit.”
“Never heard another song like it,” says Lance.
“Momma taught it to me,” I say.
“She must have been one heck of a woman,” says Lance.
“She was,” I say. But then I think about Momma talking about cursing folks, about poisoning fields and turning wine to blood. “I mean, I think she was. I used to think she was the greatest woman in the world, the best and most prettiest. But I’m not so sure anymore.”
“No one’s ever
quite who you wish they were,” says Chester.
“I just miss her a lot is all,” I say.
I think I’m going to start crying again and I don’t want to so I got to think of something else to say real fast.
“I love your house,” I say.
Chester laughs. “Lance here built it himself, about two years back. We used to live in town.”
“You lived in Templeton?” I say.
“Naw,” says Lance, “we’re from Moreberry, about thirty miles thataway. Still too close to Templeton for comfort though. What with that dadgum Preacher stirring everybody up. I like to know what durned religion he thinks it is he’s preaching all the time, ’cause it sure ain’t no gospel I ever heard.”
When he mentions the Preacher I get real sad. We can’t stay here, me and Tommy. Not if the Preacher’s coming. It won’t take long till he finds us. And who knows what he would do to Lance and Chester if he found out they helped us? He would kill them both. I wish Bobba could help us. I know she’s out there in the woods somewhere, still speaking to me somehow in my noggin. But I guess our best hope is just to get Tommy to Aunt Barbara’s as soon as possible, to make sure he’s safe.
“Think Tommy will be able to walk soon?” I say. “At least with a crutch or something? I could make him a crutch from a walking stick, if I had some rags.”
Chester looks at me a little weird. “Honey dear, Tommy’s not going to be able to walk for quite some time. A few days at least. He needs to lie flat, just where he is, else all that work I did will come undone real quick.”
“But we got to go right now,” I say.
“What’s the hurry?” says Chester.
“You’re worried about him hunting you, ain’t you?” says Lance. “It’s the Preacher, Chester. That Preacher’s after them. Saw him when I was out hunting us some rabbits.”
“The heck are they doing out here in the woods?” says Chester.
“That’s why me and Tommy got to go, and got to go now,” I say. “Because he’s not gonna stop looking for us. Not me at least, and not ever.”
“You knew the Preacher was after them, Lance?” says Chester. “You knew that and you brought them here anyway?”
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