“He can’t push us around anymore,” says Lance. “We moved once, out to the woods, to our own land. Ain’t no law out here. He’s got no authority over us.”
“You should have told me,” says Chester.
“I couldn’t just leave a couple of kids out in the woods, could I?” says Lance. “The boy would be dead right now.”
“Have you thought about what will happen to us if the Preacher comes here?” says Chester. “What he will do to you and me?”
They’re fighting because of me and Tommy. I feel awful about it. Everywhere we show up, something terrible happens. That’s why we got to get out of here soon as we can.
“Hush, dangit,” says Lance. He walks over to Chester and puts his arm around him. “You know good and well if that Preacher comes knocking, I’ll be ready.” He nods over to his rifle propped against the doorframe.
“And you think that will help us?” says Chester. Tommy hollers out in pain. “Lord. I’m going to get the boy some more water.”
Chester walks outside. Lance sighs real loud.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to cause any trouble with y’all.”
“Aw heck. Don’t mind Chester. He’ll come around,” says Lance. “It just ain’t been easy for us since the Preacher showed up. I got a feeling you know all about that.”
Chester comes back in with a bucket of water. He sets it on the ground beside where Tommy’s laid up.
“I’m sorry,” he says to me.
“The Preacher scares me too,” I say.
“Both y’all need to hush up with your worrying,” says Lance. “I’ll stand watch all night if I have to. Besides, who’s a better shot than me? Name me one person in the whole dang county who can shoot half as good as ol’ Lance?”
“No one,” says Chester. He smiles a little. “Best shot I ever seen.”
“We’re getting mushy in front of the kiddos,” says Lance.
“I don’t mind,” I say.
Tommy groans over on the table and I go and sit down by him. I put a new cold rag on his head. I sing a silent song for him to get better.
Chester sets to clearing the kitchen. Lance pulls a chair up by the window and sits, smoking, looking out, gun ready. All of the books they have, and I want to read them all. But there isn’t any time. I have to be ready. Because the second Chester and Lance fall asleep is the second I bolt. There’s no way the Preacher would do anything to Tommy with his leg all busted up, harmless and alone.
But if I’m here, people will get hurt, and bad. Because I know why the Preacher wants me dead now. I know so much more about him now, maybe more than anybody else in the whole world knows. I’m the key to what happened to him. I’ve seen what a hypocrite he really is. I’ve felt those words tangle themselves in the air, I know the way they can worm their way into a gentle mind. I know he’s using magic to kill off anybody who disagrees with him, to cleanse the Hinterlands of anybody who doesn’t fit in with his way of doing things. And if what he said in that memory’s true, then I have magic in me too, and the Preacher’ll never stop until I’m dead.
Somewhere far off there’s a thunder grumble, a blink of lightning. The air smells sweet with rain. I know something big is coming, something that will change me and Tommy, change all of us forever. I know it’s close as can be, just on the edge of the forest, ready to come like a tornado and blow us clean away.
The white kitty Princess Mona rubs up against my leg, a purring that tells my heart to stay. I scratch her behind the ears and she scrunches her face up. I’d love to stay here. I’d love to be Chester and Lance’s daughter, to read books and cook and shoot guns for my whole forever, hidden out here in the woods cabin. But a storm is coming, and if I want to save anybody then I got to be gone before it gets here.
EIGHTEEN
The rain starts, a thousand tiny cat scratches on the roof. Lance sighs, leans back in his chair. Chester finishes tidying up and lies down on the bed, reading by candlelight. I ask if I can pick out a book to flip through and he says sure. I find a slim leather-bound thing, with no name and a drawing of a plant on it. The book is in a language I can’t read, but it’s full of pictures of strange flowers. Some are red and on fire. Some look like little blue eyeballs.
The nice thing about a book in a different language is that you can make it say whatever you want. The words are just pictures for your own words and all of a sudden the book is your book, it’s your story that you’re reading. That’s how it is with all books, really, when you get down to it. This book is about a princess and her garden. All these plants are hers. Some of the plants are good, and some are less good. Some might even be evil. All of them are her friends though.
Tommy snores soft on the table. I walk over and kiss his cheek, muss his hair a little. He opens his eyes for a second and smiles at me. Chester’s kept him woozy with herbs and tea, but not in a mean way like Bobba. I know his ankle hurts him so. I’m just glad he can sleep.
I’m sorry, Tommy. I whisper it right in his ear. If I never get to tell you again. I’m sorry about your momma. I’m sorry about your leg. You’re the only real friend I ever had.
I crawl up on the table next to him and hold his hand and burrow myself into him like I seen a cub and bear do once. It’s a safe feeling, warm and cozy. The roof, the fire, the books, Chester and Lance, Tommy. It’s almost a family right here. It’s almost what I’ve always wanted.
Too bad I can’t let it last.
I wait and wait. The steady rain, Tommy’s snoring. Chester sleeps with the book on his chest. Lance even seems like he’s dozing a little in his chair, gun in his lap. His eyes are shut, and I can see his chest rise up with breath. He’s as asleep as he’ll get.
It’s time. I ease myself off the table, just barely touch my bare feet to the floor.
“You wouldn’t be thinking of running out on us now, would you?” says Lance.
He’s still in the same sleep slump, just now he’s got a big eye cocked open and glaring right at me. It’s his house, I don’t feel like lying to him.
“How’d you know?”
“Figured,” he says. “Heck, it’s what I would do if I was you.”
“So you gonna let me go?”
“Not on your life,” he says, grinning.
I know it shouldn’t, but it makes me smile too. It feels good to be wanted around, for someone to try and protect me.
“You know the Preacher will find me here,” I say. “You know he’ll hurt you and Chester. I don’t want that on me. You been so good to me, haven’t made me do anything, haven’t asked anything of me. Didn’t even poison me. Don’t think I can thank you enough for all that.”
“Well shoot, you don’t have to get all sentimental about it,” he says. “Anything happens to us, it ain’t on you. This day’s been coming for a long time. That Preacher was gonna show up here sooner or later, with a posse and a hanging rope. You know it as good as I do. Neither you nor God’s got a thing to do with it. You just got him here a little faster is all.”
“You gonna give us to him?”
“Naw,” says Lance. “I don’t know why he’s hunting you, and I don’t care to know. You’re an innocent to me. Anything that happened to you ain’t your fault at all. Now hush. I don’t care what you got to say about it. It’s tough for the likes of you two out there, kids on the run. Tough being out there in the world.”
“Thanks, Lance.” It’s not enough, but it’s all I got. “I mean it.”
“This is my house. I built it,” he says. “I ain’t hurting no one, and I’m not going anywhere, no matter what that Preacher says.” Lance pats his rifle. “Let him come. I can’t wait.”
The rain falls steady outside. The trees bend and bow and sway. Lightning cuts up the clouds and somehow above us I can still see the moon, just barely, like it’s fighting to look down on us through the storm, like it’s worried about us and wants to see.
The moon wins and she burns her light right through the storm clouds
in a white beam that looks solid enough to climb on. The trees shake themselves like wet dogs and a fury of cardinals, hundreds maybe, fly through the rain and land in the trees until they are full of little fire tongues. The beam of moonlight dances and twirls until it’s not moonlight anymore, it’s a girl, it’s me. All the birds peer down at me with crooked heads, they watch, but I don’t notice, I dance and dance until I’m older, until I’m not a girl anymore, I’m my momma. Momma’s in the long white dress she died in, but it isn’t ripped, it isn’t burned black and gone yet. She looks her eyes at me in the window.
“Momma,” I say.
She has a book in her hand, the same book that I took from Bobba’s tree, the one that mewls and caws like a baby. She clutches the book and walks toward me. But it’s jerky and limping and as she walks farther from the moonlight she stumbles. The book is wailing, Momma thrusts it out to me, and I take it. It’s warm in my hands and it cries until I stroke it, I sing softly to it. It curls up in my hands until it’s a baby, until it’s got gold-flecked eyes that look up in wonder, until the book is me.
The book is me and I can read every word. The symbols in the clouds, the scribbles in the bark, the holler of wolves out in the distance. All of it a new language that I can read with my bones, the blood from my heart, the tingling in my fingers. Every tiny thing is a word somebody’s speaking, God singing the sunrise. This is how you do magic, I realize. You read the stories in everything, you speak the stories of the world.
Momma smiles at me. She smiles and smiles until she crumbles to dust.
The book screams and I drop it. I try to scoop Momma up, all the wind-scattered ashes of her, but the dust rises in the wind and my momma is in the air, I can’t see a place where she isn’t.
The cardinals in the trees cry out. They flap their wings and burst into flames, all of them a tiny fire each that becomes a big fire. The trees, the whole woods are burning. A family of deer burst from the tree line, their fur on fire. A white kitten out in the woods licks its burning paws.
“Goldeline,” says a voice. I turn around and it’s Tommy, fire in his hair, skin blistering, his clothes blackened and burning in front of me. He opens his mouth to scream and fire billows from his mouth. He’s crying tears of flame and I look down and my own hands are fire, they’re made of fire, and everything they touch burns.
I snap awake.
“I was dreaming,” I say.
“Shhh,” says Lance. “He’s here.”
NINETEEN
Through the window I see the Preacher, his long black coat, black wide-brimmed hat, standing alone in the rain and moonlight.
“He’s been out there near an hour,” says Lance. “Just standing there. Ain’t said a word.”
Chester’s huddled up next to us.
“What’s he doing?” says Chester.
“Not a clue,” says Lance. “Waiting I guess.”
“Waiting for what?” says Chester.
Lightning strikes and a big grin flashes across the Preacher’s face. I know what he’s waiting for.
He’s waiting for me. He was waiting for me to wake up.
As if by magic he calls to me.
“Goldeline,” says the Preacher. “Can you hear me, sweet angel? Come out now, Goldeline.”
The wind moans, the trees groan with the weight of the rain, bending low in the storm. The wind hurts the trees. Chester blows out the candle. In the house it becomes all dark, the fire just embers, the lightning tossing its whiteness through the window in flashes.
“Come on out, Goldeline. It’s time for you to be healed, darling. Don’t you want to be free of all this running, all this wickedness and sin? Don’t you want to be cleansed? Like the Book says, ‘To the creature who longs for the fire, so shall the fire be granted to it, and it shall be made clean.’”
The Preacher’s voice is so lovely, full of scrape and holler like the low notes of a fiddle, rich as the saddest songs.
“That ain’t all the Book says,” says Lance.
The Preacher walks toward the house. A gun blast rings powerful in my ears. Lance fired at him through the open window. The shot kicks up mud on the Preacher’s shoes.
“Now I wouldn’t take one step closer, Preacher, if I was you,” hollers Lance. “This is my land. You got no authority here.”
“The earth is God’s, and everything in it,” says the Preacher.
“Yeah, but you ain’t God,” says Lance. “Lest you forgot.”
The Preacher claps his hands.
“Isaac Lancelot Jeffries, that must be you!”
Lance shakes his head.
“Good Lord,” he says, “how does he remember my full name? How’d he know it in the first place?”
Because there’s power in a name, but I don’t say it.
“Who wants to know?” hollers Lance.
“Oh, you know good and well who I am.” The Preacher grins. “And you know why I’m here.”
“And if you know anything else about me other than my name,” says Lance, “then you know I ain’t gonna give them to you.”
“I was hoping you’d say that,” says the Preacher. “I’m assuming you have your fairer half in there with you.” He cups his hands to his mouth. “Chesterfield Leonides Paul, you in there?” he yells. “Your mother is ashamed of you. Ninety-three years old, still weeps for you daily, sick in your sin, judgment yipping at your heels like an old mutt.”
I turn to Chester and he’s crying. The lightning makes crystals of his tears. Lance puts a hand on Chester’s shoulder, touches his face, wipes the tears off his cheek. The closeness they have is theirs and they can’t share it, not with me. But it feels so good, so real to see it, love in all the sick dark of the night.
“We have blasphemers in our midst.” The Preacher looks around the house, beyond it, to the woods, like there’s a whole mass of people I can’t see, like he’s preaching to the trees. “Sinners, given over to a reprobate mind. Oh, they shall receive the full recompense of their error.”
The Preacher shouts into the darkness, waving his hands while the lightning flashes like he’s controlling it, like a dark magician of the skies hollering out to a ghost congregation.
“Filthy dreamers they are, defilers of the flesh, the despised of kings, speaking untruth. Clouds without water, blown about by strange winds. Poisoned trees, without fruit, nothing but chaff for the fire. Wandering stars, for whom is reserved the blackest darkness forever.”
I know that bit. The Preacher’s quoting from the Book, one of the strangest passages, and also one of the loveliest. Too bad it’s about sinners and all the bad stuff that’s going to happen to them. It’s so pretty it should be about the heroes, the good ones that God is glad to have in his heaven. It doesn’t make sense that some of the prettiest parts of the Book are all about evil.
Little eyes of fire shine in the dark. What are those? Glints of metal.
“Why don’t you wake up young Thomas, Goldeline,” says the Preacher. “All he done is on you, you know that, right? You know his sins against the Lord are your very own. His act of theft and violence. That’s yours, Goldeline.”
The Preacher is right. He’s always right. That’s the thing about the Preacher. He knows and he accuses. He’s got his claws deep in me, like he’s trying to yank some wounded bit of me out.
“It’s not your fault, Goldy,” says Tommy. I didn’t know he was awake. He shakes his head at me. “I don’t feel very good.”
I walk over to the table and help him up. He leans on my shoulder, and together we can kind of walk like that. We hobble back to Lance and Chester, all four of us by the window huddled together like a sad battered family. I’m scared, and I don’t want to die, I don’t want any of us to die. But it feels so good to stand with other people, to not be alone. For so long it’s just been one little girl against the dark and now it’s the four of us.
“You can escape your damnation, young Thomas,” says the Preacher. “You can come out here and I will forgive you,
wipe your sins clean. God will do that for you, if you just come out here and be with me.”
“You can go if you want, Tommy,” I say. “I won’t be mad.”
“Heck no,” says Tommy. “Besides, it isn’t God I’m scared of.” He points at the window. “It’s him.”
“Come on out, little one. Come on out to me.”
“Forget it,” says Tommy. “I ain’t coming.”
“Hellfire it is!” roars the Preacher. He seems taller now, fiercer, his shadow against the moonlight stretches all the way to the front door, large as a dragon.
Torches. Hellfire. My dream.
“Lance!” I scream. “He’s gonna burn the house down!”
But I can already smell it, the roof lit up, the smoke.
“How?” says Lance.
“There’s men in the woods,” I say. “Lots of them. They’re everywhere.”
Lance flings open the door. A rush of cool wind and rain swarms in like an angry ghost.
“I built this house,” he says. “I built it with my own hands.”
He steps outside the door and part of the frame is shot off. Lance grabs his hand. He falls back inside the house and I shut the door after him.
The Preacher cackles.
“You’re surrounded! You got a whole heavenly host around you and they are armed with rifles! You step one foot out of that door and we shoot you. You stay in there and you burn. Those are your two options, but the Evil One gets you either way.”
I hear it before I can feel it, the crackling of the fire, the way the wood and straw are swallowed, taken in, and become fire itself. Soon it licks the inside of the roof, shows itself orange and starving, sparks scattering wild as ants across the ceiling, to the curtains, the fire hungry to grasp everything, to take it all into itself. Chester wraps Lance’s hand in a rag. There’s nothing I can do to help. I just watch the fire spread, knowing I brought this smoke and doom on us all.
Cinders fall like snow. The books catch, all the words I’ll never read gone up in smoke like prayers, the whole house like a torch to signal God with. The smoke is so thick, so horrible, like the black storm clouds swooped down from the sky and came in through the window, spitting fire, pouring themselves down our throats. We have to crouch low to get under it. Chester and Lance carry Tommy between them, they try to keep him safe from the flames, from the heat and the burning. A piece of the roof crumbles and falls, embers scattering bright as jewels across the floor. The fire surrounds us, the beams of the house seem to bend down, to dip the flames closer to us. Smoke burns my eyes, it burns my throat. And everywhere is heat, is bright, is fire.
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