“Goldeline,” says Lance. “You get your cloak, the one I found you in. Bundle up good in it.”
The cloak isn’t far from me, the fire hasn’t touched it yet. I crawl on all fours to under the table where I stashed it. I put it on, wrap up tight in it even though it’s so hot in here.
“Me and Chester are going to carry Tommy out,” he says. “When we get to the door you take off around back and head for the woods. They’ll be distracted by us. No way the Preacher will shoot Tommy, wounded as he is.”
“But what about you two?” I say.
“We haven’t got any other choice,” says Chester. He kisses me on the forehead. “We’re ready. At least you’ll make it.”
“Don’t leave me,” says Tommy. He grabs at my hand but I pull it away.
Lance and Chester hoist Tommy’s arms and legs up between them.
“Open the door and let us out,” says Lance. “Then you run for the woods.”
“Don’t leave me!” screams Tommy.
I can’t even look at him. I stay low and pull the door open. When no gunshots fire, Chester and Lance and Tommy run for it. I run too, but the other way, around the house, crouched low, in my smoke-colored cloak. The Preacher’s men are gathered in front of the house, some on horses, some with rifles, some with torches, their faces lit red by the fire. But they aren’t looking at me. They’re all focused on Chester and Lance and Tommy. One man raises his rifle, a sick smile on his face. I run for the darkness of the forest, the freedom of the trees, the dirt-worn bandit roads. If I run and keep running I can stay ahead of the Preacher, I can be free of him, free of the fire and the burning and the death, death, death trailing me like a hellhound that’s got my sniff, that howls low and cold in my heart.
But can I really leave Chester and Lance and Tommy behind? Can I trust the Preacher to be merciful to them, even though they helped me? Is mercy a word he even knows?
I got to make a decision now. I could keep running. I could follow this road forever, I could outrun the Preacher until one of us finally trips up and dies. I could leave a trail of dead people who loved me, who took care of me, bring fire and doom on anyone who was nice enough to give me so much as a cup of water when I was thirsty.
The rain has stopped, the trees glisten in the starlight. The smell of smoke in the darkness, the chipped-bone moon above. Out in the woods an owl makes its music and I can hear it, only I can understand it. Behind me scurries Chester and Lance’s kitten, Princess Mona. She purrs up next to my leg, a warm thing in the horrible burning night. I pick her up and she meows at me, and there’s no doubting what that means.
I understand now. I understand everything so clearly. I touch my hand out on the bark of a tree and I can read it same as it was language. The moonlight sings down on me. The whole world is a warm animal holler blooming out in the deep dark, a beautiful thing, filled with critters and angels and people, the earth a great music maker with a heart of fire. I know now, and I understand.
Ever since Momma died, I’ve been looking for a home, some place where I belonged, where I was safe and happy and everybody loved me. Well, maybe that kind of a home just isn’t in the cards for me yet. Maybe the only home I got right now is in myself. I’m Goldeline. No one can take that away from me. Not the Preacher, not anybody else.
I don’t want to run anymore. I don’t want anyone else dying on account of me. I hold Princess Mona close to me, a good weapon against the darkness. I walk back toward the fire, toward the burning house, toward him. Toward the Preacher.
Men in black cloaks have all gone down and circled Lance and Chester and Tommy. Two stand by the Preacher. I recognize them. It’s Regis, and the third man from the fire. They both got guns at the ready.
“It ain’t too late for you,” says the Preacher. “All you have to do is repent. That’s it.”
But Chester clutches Lance, holds on to him like he’s the only steady thing in the world, like he’s the tall tree in a windstorm, the one that won’t topple. But I can see it from here, the way his head droops, Lance is hurt. Blood dribbles from his mouth and he looks terrified.
I’m past the burning house now, creeping quiet as I can. No one’s noticed me yet. I can see Tommy down by everyone’s boots, laid out and crying.
Regis aims the rifle at Chester and Lance.
I can’t let them die. I can’t have their ghosts follow me too. I got too many ghosts, too many dead ones that haunt my dreams. The world seems small as the three people encircled by guns and fire, huddled together in fear.
“Stop!” I scream in my best Gruff voice, my hair let loose, wild and white, all the mean and tough I got brought up to my face. In my arms Princess Mona hisses and claws. The men lower their guns and make room for me in the circle. I stand right in the center, in front of Chester and Lance, in front of Tommy. I stand, fully scowled, a wicked cat in my arms, a bandit, a witch, just like my momma.
The Preacher cackles wild.
“Goldeline, the little girl lost, she has returned!”
“You can’t shoot them,” I say. “I won’t let you.”
The Preacher crouches down to look me in the eyes. I flinch at his breath, the rotten sulfur stink of it.
“Little one,” he says, “you will find I can do anything I please.”
“I know why you murdered my momma,” I say. The rain begins to fall again, and steam rises from the ground, the crackle and sizzle of rain on fire. “I was there in the window. You know. You saw me. That’s why you been hunting me. That’s why you been trying to kill me.”
“I don’t want to kill you, Goldeline,” the Preacher says, “I want to save you.”
“Save me?” I say.
I don’t understand.
“Don’t you know?” says the Preacher. “That’s why I’ve kept you alive so long. You must repent, Goldeline. Because your mother was a witch.” He says the word nasty, stabs it in me like a twisted dagger. “And you got the same witch’s blood in you. The same devil’s heart. A witch, you are. A sorceress. You deserve to burn, same as your mother.
“But that is not God’s plan for you, Goldeline. He wants you to be cleansed, and so do I. God wants to cleanse you of your mother. He wants to wash you clean of her sin, her witchcraft. God wants to save you from your mother.”
The kitten struggles in my arms. The Preacher’s words swirl around me like bats.
“Because all this pain is your mother’s fault. The people you robbed, that little boy’s hurt leg, your dead bandit friend. They all died because of your mother. She is the cause of all this misery. She was a wicked woman, a temptress, evil to her heart’s core. But it isn’t too late for you, Goldeline. I’ve come to forgive you. I’ll even take you in as my daughter. My own little girl. You’ll have a home, a family, everything you ever wanted.”
The Preacher leans in close to me, whispering, his breath hot on my ear. You remember how I used to be. How I would read the Book to you when you were a child, how I took care of you and your mother. We were happy, Goldeline. It could be like that again. I want to be good to you, like a daddy would. Like I offered to your mother all those years ago.
I am shaking, and the kitten shivers in my arms. The Preacher pulls his face away from mine. He speaks louder now, so everyone can hear him.
“All you have to do is repent, Goldeline. Renounce your mother. Call her what she was: a witch, a servant of the Evil One. Confess it with your mouth. I’ll forgive you, God will forgive you. All you have to do is come with me, be my family, and you’ll be free of your mother forever.”
The Preacher reaches his hand out to me and brushes the ashes from my cheek. His fingers are soft, not at all like Gruff’s. His eyes blue and sparkling, almost pleading.
The kitten hisses and thunder cracks above me. I remember again, Momma talking with the Preacher like they were old friends. I remember the Preacher attacking her. I remember every awful truth of it. I remember his name.
“Mr. Cyrus,” I say. “Cyrus Cantor.”
“Cyrus Cantor,” I say again, louder, more unscared. Because there’s power in a name, magic in who a person truly is.
More cardinals now, two, three, six. They perch in the trees, gathering like judges. The cardinals are listening.
“Cyrus Cantor,” I say a third time, because magic comes in threes.
A single cardinal lands on my shoulder. The kitten doesn’t even flinch at it.
“Yes, Goldeline?” says the Preacher. His eyes are wide, begging me to forgive him.
“You’re a fraud, Cyrus Cantor,” I say. “You’re a faker and a liar, and I’m not scared of you anymore.”
For just a second his eyes wince with pain, like what I said hurt him, and I realize he really did want me to come home with him. He really did want to be my family. But it only lasts a second.
“Do you reject the salvation of the Lord?” says Cyrus, in full booming preacher voice again.
“It ain’t salvation if it means I have to belong to you,” I say.
Cyrus stands to his full height. His nightmare-black suit, his wild white hair. He gestures wide to the circle of men surrounding us.
“You have heard it yourselves! Before a crowd of witnesses she has denied the Lord. She is her mother’s daughter, corrupted through her bones, deep into her soul. God’s mercy is useless on her. She stands condemned.”
He looks over to Regis, whose gun is trained at me.
“Shoot her,” says Cyrus.
I watch Regis’s hands shake, his confused look back to the Preacher and then to the people of the town. Because that’s who they are—I recognize so many of them now in the torchlight. They are from Templeton, the Townies, the same ones who condemned my momma. Mr. Busby, the baker who used to give me sweets, Mr. Smithee, who owned all the pigs. I know these men. I used to. They were there when Momma died. They remember.
All around us more and more cardinals gather in the unburned trees, the full of them bright as autumn, a forest of movable fire. I can feel a change, something quiet and hidden rising up in the invisibles of me, like something broke open inside of me, filling my heart with fire and with light. I stand taller now, I speak louder in a voice I’ve heard a million times, a voice that isn’t mine but has been with me all along.
“You wanted my momma for your own, Cyrus Cantor,” I say. “You came by our house and begged her.”
“I begged for nothing,” says Cyrus. “Shoot her.”
Regis looks back and forth between me and Cyrus. He glances over his shoulder at some of the other men. They open their eyes wide at him, maybe confused, like maybe they don’t know who to trust right now.
“I can’t just shoot her,” says Regis. “She’s a little girl.”
The kitten meows in my arms.
“You loved my momma,” I say. “You brought her flowers at night. You wanted to marry her.”
Mr. Busby takes his hat off, looks down at his feet. He’s remembering. He’s remembering how pretty Momma was, how maybe some time in his life he wanted to bring her flowers too. I can feel it, I don’t know how, but I know it in my heart.
“What’s this about, Preacher?” says the third man.
They’re questioning him now. They won’t do just anything he says. Something is changing, in the sky, in the clouds and in the wind. I can feel a moon rising in my blood. The Townies are waking up.
“Lies,” hisses Cyrus. “Did I not warn you all? Did I not tell you she had a serpent’s tongue? This girl speaks with the very words of the Evil One, with the authority of the grave. They are sweet to your ears but sour in your belly. Is a large fire not set by a tiny spark? Her words are the spark to a furnace full of lies. Shoot her now lest that fire consume you too.”
“You begged her to marry you. You tried to force her,” I say. “I saw it. But she fought you. She fought hard, my momma did. That’s how you got your scar right there, ain’t it?” I’m crying now. This is all I got. “Tell them, Cyrus Cantor, you murderer. Tell them what you did to my momma.”
I point at the Townies, and two or three of them take a step backward, as if I’m accusing them too. One shorter man, I think he was a butcher in Templeton, he meets my eyes for a second. His are gray as a stone, and he drops his head down, like he’s ashamed.
“You can’t murder a witch,” says Cyrus. “You can only give her what she deserves.”
He spins around, his arms out wide, his body making a tall black cross.
“I spent five years doing penance,” he howls. “Five years wandering in the desert. Five years of pain and suffering. Then I saw it. A vision. I saw your mother, Goldeline. I saw her as a snake with red eyes and fangs, gliding across the waters. I saw a white worm cross the sky above me and the earth tremble. I was given a mission. I was to rid the world of all the magic types, of the sinners and gamblers and outlaws, of anyone who didn’t fit in this world. To make a new world, to cleanse it. And I was given the power to do it. See, it wasn’t my fault what happened, what I did. I’m blameless. It was your mother’s.” He points his finger at my face. “Same as you.”
“I heard about enough of this junk,” says the third man. He points his own rifle at Cyrus. No one stops him. The men back away from Cyrus. They don’t want to be near him. It’s like he’s cursed, like he’s infected with some looming disease. His power is waning. They don’t want what’s coming for him to get them too.
I can feel the magic rise up in me, covering me like a white dress, like my skin is made of moonlight. I can feel myself glow. I take a step toward Cyrus. I am growing taller in his eyes, I can feel it. I am growing more lovely and more beautiful. The light from inside me is borne all over my body, it’s shining from the gold in my eyes. I can control it. My light is mightier than Cyrus’s darkness ever can be. I can make Cyrus see what I want him to see.
I smile at Cyrus and his eyes go wide.
Because Cyrus isn’t seeing me anymore. He’s seeing someone else. All he sees now is Momma.
“I loved you,” says Cyrus.
The men gape openmouthed. The trees bow to me in the wind. Cardinals rise over our heads in whirls of fire.
“Oh God,” says Cyrus. “What did I do?”
Cyrus falls backward, stumbling. I walk toward him, slow and brave, elegant, graceful, the way Momma walked. My head held high, my back straight, my hair billowing like a snowstorm behind me. He won’t let me near him, he staggers backward with every step I take toward him, he’s afraid of me. I know my eyes spark gold brighter than fire, brighter than Chester and Lance’s home engulfed in flames, the doorway sagging, the pit of fire Cyrus is backing himself toward.
I’m my own. That’s my magic. Momma named me. I’m Goldeline, and I can do what she couldn’t.
“Stay away from me,” says Cyrus, stumbling backward, his hands covering his face. “Don’t come any closer.”
I don’t stop, I keep on walking, sure now, steady and brave. Cyrus is nearly to the burning house, he has his back right up to it. He must feel the heat lap at him, the flames longing to swallow him whole.
I take a final step toward him. The men watch in awe as Cyrus turns to run away from me, as he flings himself right into the burning house. The roof caves in, embers scattering wild as birds into the black night. The house crumbles and falls. Cyrus vanishes into the flame and crash and smoke.
The cardinals swoop together in a great cloud of red and vanish into the night.
He’s dead. The Preacher is dead. The shadow that stretched over my whole life is vanished. All this running, all this death. It’s over. I don’t know why but I’m sad somehow, like I lost something forever.
There’s a quiet over all Cyrus’s men, the Townies. Cyrus’s spell has been broken. All the men blink awake, their minds unpoisoned for the first time in months, maybe even years. They look down at their boots, at the sky, anywhere but at me. They’re ashamed, of what they’
ve done, of what they almost did. Tommy’s shivering on his stomach, eyes bleary, not even crying anymore.
“Somebody help me,” I say. “He’s sick. We got to get him to the doctor.”
“What just happened?” says the third man. “I don’t understand.”
“This boy is dying. His name is Tommy and he’s my friend. You have to help him.”
The third man sighs.
“We got us a wounded kid here,” he says to the men, “sick cold in the rain. We got to get him back to town, to Dr. Gilbert.”
He and a few others pick Tommy up and sit him on a horse with another man.
“I’m coming too,” I say. “I’m not leaving Tommy.”
The man looks at me for a minute, then nods. I climb up with them, holding Tommy close to me, keep him sitting up, ready to ride back into town. Before we leave I see Regis walk up to Chester and Lance. He bows his head a little in front of them, as if he’s paying penance.
“I’m sorry about your house,” he says.
Lance looks up at him, red-eyed and bleeding. He doesn’t say anything. But something happens, quiet as a sunrise. Maybe an understanding, or what might be. But I don’t get to see what happens next, because we’re riding, riding fast, down the road and back toward Templeton.
TWENTY
It takes hours and hours of riding. I think so at least. It’s hard to tell, I’m so tired. But I hold on tight to Tommy and though he cries sometimes from the pain he never falls off, he never even totters. When we get to Templeton it’s almost morning. The streets are just waking up, some people already going about their Townie business. The strange thing is how I don’t hate them anymore. I don’t forgive them, mind you. I don’t know if I can ever do that. But I don’t hate them either. They don’t look evil or scary to me. An old man with a lump on his head pops his knuckles. A pigtailed little girl carries a loaf of bread to her momma. They just look, well, normal, just folks out in the morning, like anybody else. It’s strange to me how little the town has changed but how different I feel about it, like maybe I’m the one who changed.
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