Seven Wild Sisters

by Charles de Lint

  Downstairs she put some biscuits in her pocket, got a length of rope from the shed, and went out into the fall night with a lantern that she didn’t bother to light. The moonlight was enough. Once she’d closed the door behind her, she stood quietly for a long moment and tilted her face up to the sky, drinking in the stars, the dark, and the wind.

  Then she heard the dog yelp again.

  It took her a moment to decide where the sound was coming from—it was always tricky with a wind—then she started across the back fields, going right up the mountain and into the edge of Tanglewood Forest.

  It didn’t take her long to find the dog, trapped as it was. He had a rope around his neck, the loose end of which had gotten caught in some old barbed wire. By the time she reached him, he was so entangled that his head was pressed right against the old fencepost. A barb from the wire was pricking him just above his eye and there was blood on his fur.

  She approached quietly, speaking in a low and comforting voice. When she was close enough, she put out her hand so that he could smell her. She wasn’t exactly nervous, but you never could tell with dogs in a pickle. When he thumped his tail and gave her hand a little lick, she gave up all caution.

  He lay still while she worked the rope loose, wishing she’d brought a knife. Before she had him completely free, she made a slip knot with the rope she’d brought and looped it around his neck. When she got the last of the old rope untangled, the dog stood up on trembling legs and leaned against her. He gazed up at her, his eyes big in the moonlight.

  “Now who do you belong to?” she asked, ruffling the short hair between his ears.

  He grinned and bumped his head against her, tail wagging furiously. She smiled and brought him home, taking him right up into her room. After the night he’d had, she couldn’t bear the idea of tying him up outside or locking him in the shed. He lay down on the floor beside her bed, but as soon as she got under the covers, he was up on the bed with her, stretched out along her side.

  Mama was going to kill her, she remembered thinking before she fell asleep with her hand on his chest.

  When she woke, he was lying on the floor again, and that was how Mama found them. She always felt that he’d done that on purpose, just to get on Mama’s good side. And it had worked, once Sarah Jane told her story.

  “You can keep him till we find who he belongs to,” Mama said.

  “Maybe we never will,” Elsie said, her face hopeful.

  All her sisters had immediately fallen in love with him.

  “A dog that good-natured has to have someone who loves him,” Mama replied.

  “He does,” Sarah Jane said. “He has us.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Sarah Jane nodded.

  But no one knew whose he was. No one came to claim him. And by the time the snows came, he and Sarah Jane had become inseparable. He couldn’t go to school with her, but wherever else she went, he was usually somewhere nearby. And best of all, he’d made Mama feel safer about when she or Elsie went wandering in the woods, like they were doing now.

  So with Root ranging ahead of them on the trail or crashing through the underbrush on one side or the other, the two girls followed the well-worn path into the hills, walking arm in arm.

  Sarah Jane felt brave enough with the company. But then Root took off and, halfway to the old woman’s cabin, Elsie got intrigued by a hornets’ nest and insisted on studying it for a time. Sarah Jane had been scared of bees and hornets ever since a classmate of hers got stung to death last summer. It was an allergic reaction, she’d heard at the funeral, but she couldn’t shake the thought that it could happen to anybody—like getting bit by a snake. So the last thing she wanted to do was stand around looking at that great big papery gray nest hanging from the branch of a small laurel. And that was the thing—how could such a slender branch support such a big nest anyway? There was just something not right about it.

  “Come on, Elsie,” she said. “What happened to our adventure?”

  “I need to study this,” Elsie said.

  Her voice was distracted and Sarah Jane could tell that she was already in what Adie called full Indian scout mode. When she got like this, you could set off a firecracker under her feet and she wouldn’t notice.

  “You go on ahead. I’ll catch up,” Elsie added.

  Go on by herself?

  Sarah Jane looked up the trail. The sun was breaking through the trees in cathedraling beams and it was pretty as all get-out, but looks could be deceiving. Especially when you knew the trail ended at a witch’s house. Except she didn’t have to actually talk to the witch, she reminded herself. She could just go close enough to have a peek at her house and then come back. That wouldn’t be so hard. And it sure beat staring at that wasps’ nest, waiting to get stung.

  So on she went, but more slowly now, because nothing felt quite the same anymore. It might only have been her imagination, but the shafts of sunlight didn’t seem to penetrate the canopy as brightly as they had before, and the woods felt darker. The sound of the squirrels as they rustled through the leaves was magnified, so that she thought she heard much larger shapes moving about, just out of sight. Bears. Panthers. Wolves.

  Her heart beat far too quickly.

  Stop it, she thought. You’re just scaring yourself.

  She looked back and there was Elsie, still scrunched up in the small space between a bush and a hemlock, happily contemplating the wasps’ nest, oblivious to any danger, either from wasps or whatever else might be in the woods, hungry to have itself a bite of her.

  I’m not scared of these woods, Sarah Jane thought, trying to convince herself that she actually believed it. There was nothing here that was going to hurt her so long as she kept out of its way, and that included witches. She could go and spy on her just like Elsie was spying on those wasps. It was a time to be cautious, yes. But not scared.

  So she squared her shoulders and set off again, whistling for Root. She wasn’t ready to admit it just then, having already convinced herself that she could be brave all on her own, but she felt a great sense of relief when the dog came bounding down the hillside and skidded to a stop beside her. He mooshed his head against her leg, tongue lolling, gaze turned up to her face and plainly asking, “Where are my pats?”

  “Yes, yes,” she told him as she ruffled his short fur with both her hands. “You’re my good boy.”

  Dog at her heel, she proceeded along the path, giving Root a soft call back every time he looked to go off exploring. And that was how she finally crept up on Aunt Lillian’s homestead, back in the hills.

  Aunt Lillian wasn’t doing any sort of witchy things when Sarah Jane finally left the path and crept through the bushes to spy on her. Not unless tending garden had some witchy significance that Sarah Jane didn’t know anything about. In fact, nothing about the old woman’s homestead seemed to have anything to do with the grisly business of being a witch—or at least Sarah Jane’s imagining of what a witch would be like and where she’d live.

  There was no aura of evil and dread. No children’s bones dangling from the trees. No strange and noxious liquids bubbling in cauldrons—unless those were hidden in the house. No capering goblins or familiars or other unholy consorts.

  With a warning hand on Root’s head to keep him quiet, she settled down in the bushes and studied the old woman’s homestead. Closest to her was the garden where Aunt Lillian was weeding her vegetables, using a hoe that was no different from the one Sarah Jane used on their own garden back home. To the right, rising up the slope, was an apple orchard and several beehives. A clapboard house with a tin roof, corn crib, and front porch stood on the far side of the garden, surrounded by the usual gaggle of hangers-on: a woodpile, a chicken house, a smoking shed, a springhouse, and various storage sheds. On the far side of the house and a little to the left, she could make out the roof of a small barn and what looked to be a cornfield, the young stalks no more than a foot high at the moment. The woods pressed close on the far side
of the barn and along the edges of the orchard.

  It all looked so normal. Just as the old woman did, hoeing her garden.

  Sarah Jane was so caught up on trying to find some hidden, shadowy meaning to Aunt Lillian’s work, that when the old woman suddenly started to speak, she thought her heart would simply stop in her chest. The old woman didn’t look directly at her, but it soon became obvious that she knew Sarah Jane was there.

  “Now the way I see it,” Aunt Lillian said, “there are only two reasons a body would hide in the bushes to spy on someone. Either they mean them harm, or they’re too shy to say hello hello, so they skulk around in the bushes instead. I wonder which you are, girl.”

  Sarah Jane held herself more still than she ever had before, her fingers tightening their pressure on Root’s head until he began to squirm a little. But it was no use. The old woman knew she was there as surely as Sarah Jane’s mother could spot a lie. She wasn’t even looking in Sarah Jane’s direction, but it was plain as plain could be who she was talking to.

  “ ’Course I’m hoping you’re just shy,” Aunt Lillian went on, “as I wouldn’t be minding me someone to talk to every once in a while. I’m not saying I get lonely, living up here on my ownsome, but everybody enjoys a spot of company—maybe a lending hand with a strong, young back to put behind it.”

  She didn’t sound so awful, Sarah Jane thought. She didn’t sound like her older sisters’ stories at all.

  Swallowing her fear, Sarah Jane slowly rose from the bushes. She and the old woman looked at each other for a long moment, the woman patient, Sarah Jane not sure what she should say or do. Root broke the silence. Freed of Sarah Jane’s hand, he bounded out of the bushes.

  “Shoo!” Aunt Lillian said. “Get out of my greens, you big lug!”

  To Sarah Jane’s surprise, Root stopped dead in his tracks and carefully backed out of the garden.

  “How’d you do that?” she asked. “It takes me forever just to get his attention long enough to make him stop digging or whatever.”

  The answer came to her even while she was speaking: magic. The old lady was a witch woman. Of course she could make an animal do whatever she wanted it to.

  She wished she’d never asked the question, but Aunt Lillian only smiled.

  “He has to know you mean business,” she said. “That’s all. Dog’s like a fella. He doesn’t think you’re serious, he’ll just carry right on with whatever mischief he’s getting himself into.” She cocked her head and winked. “ ’Course you’ve still got a few years to go before you need to be worrying about fellas. You want some lemonade, girl?”

  “Sure. My name’s Sarah Jane.”

  “I’m guessing you’ll be one of the Dillard girls—the ones living on the old Shaffer farm.”

  Sarah Jane shook her head. “No, it’s the Dillard farm,” she tried.

  Aunt Lillian smiled again. “I’m Lily Kindred, but everybody calls me Aunt Lillian.”

  “Why do they do that?”

  “Same reason some folks ask a lot of questions, I guess, and that’s a different reason for each person. Now how about that lemonade?”

  Sarah Jane followed the old woman back to her house. She sat on the steps of the porch with Root while Aunt Lillian went inside. Though the house itself was shaded by a beech tree on one side and a pair of old oaks on the other, there were no trees growing on the side where she was sitting. She had a fine view of the meadows that ran down the slope to the creek and watched a handful of crows playing in the air, dive-bombing each other like planes in an old war movie, until Aunt Lillian returned with a glass pitcher of lemonade. Ice clinked against the sides as she poured them each a tall glass.

  “The ice house needs replenishing,” Aunt Lillian said as she sat down beside Sarah Jane. “Reckon it’s time to take a walk into town and make me a few orders.”

  “You really live out here all alone?”

  “I do now. Used to live here with my aunt, but she passed away some time ago, God rest her soul.”

  “Without running water or TV or anything?”

  “Without anything? Girl, I’ve got the whole of the Lord’s creation right at my front door.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Aunt Lillian nodded. “I’m happy out here. It’s where I’ve lived the most of my life. It’s not so easy now as it was when I was younger, but I get help. Folks in town will help pack my goods up the trail and there’s a fella lives deeper in the woods comes by from time to time to help me with the heavy work.”

  Sarah Jane couldn’t imagine it.

  “And what about you, girl?” Aunt Lillian said. “What brings you so far from home?”

  Sarah Jane sighed.

  “I guess you just forgot,” she said. “My name’s Sarah Jane.”

  She hoped she didn’t sound impolite, but the way the woman kept referring to her as “girl” felt too much like someone talking about their dog or a cat.

  “I didn’t forget,” Aunt Lillian said. “I may be a lot of things, but forgetful isn’t one of them. I just don’t like to be using a body’s name too often. You never know who or what might be listening in.”

  That was when she first began to tell Sarah Jane her stories about the Apple Tree Man and the other magical creatures that peopled these hills.

  CHAPTER TWO

  o, while Aunt Lillian wasn’t really Sarah Jane’s aunt, she as much became the one that Sarah Jane didn’t have. After that first meeting, Sarah Jane was a regular visitor to the Kindred homestead, sometimes with one or more of her sisters in tow, but usually it was just Root and her. The old woman was happy for the company and Mama didn’t seem to mind Sarah Jane neglecting some of her chores at home because she worked twice as hard for Aunt Lillian.

  “She’s being a good neighbor,” Mama had said one time when Laurel complained that, as far as she was concerned, the rest of them were doing far too many of what were supposed to be Sarah Jane’s chores. “We should all be so lucky to have someone help us out when we get to Lillian Kindred’s age.”

  But chores didn’t seem like work around Aunt Lillian. There was so much to learn—things that Sarah Jane had never even realized a curiosity about before, because there was so much about her life that she’d always taken for granted.

  You needed milk or eggs or butter? She’d always gone to the supermarket. But with Aunt Lillian you had to milk the cow, churn the butter, chase down the secret nests of the hens to find their eggs.

  In the Dillard household you simply put something in the fridge to keep it cold. Aunt Lillian had an ice house that was as easy to use in the winter, but come summer you had to haul in the ice from where it was dropped off for her at the Welch farm, chipping pieces off to make ice cubes for their tea.

  You didn’t turn on the stove to cook. Before you could put on a single pot, you chopped wood, laid a fire in the big cast-iron stove in the kitchen, started it up, and waited for the heat to build.

  Honey came fresh from a comb rather than a jar, though that was something Sarah Jane let Aunt Lillian harvest on her own. “You don’t have to worry about my bees,” Aunt Lillian assured a skeptical Sarah Jane. “I gift the spirits connected to them, so they don’t sting me. It’s the wild ones you need to be careful of.”

  Soap started by making lye—pouring water over the fireplace ashes in the ash hopper, the resulting liquid caught in an old kettle. When there was enough lye for a run of soap, it was brought to a boil, dipping a chicken feather into the solution from time to time to see if it was ready. When the lye took the fuzz off the stem of the feather, it was strong enough to make soap. At that point Aunt Lillian added fat that the Welches had saved for her from when they killed their hogs. The lye would eventually eat the fat and become a thick brown soap.

  Aunt Lillian didn’t take vitamins. Instead she made a tonic with a recipe that included ratsbane, bark from the yellow poplar, red dogwood and wild cherry, the roots of burdock, yellow dock, and sarsaparilla. She boiled it all in water until the
result was thick and black, then bottled it with enough whiskey added to keep it from spoiling. It tasted terrible, but Aunt Lillian took a tablespoon every day and she was never sick.

  And on and on it went. Every new revelation gave Sarah Jane a deeper appreciation for all the necessities that she’d simply taken for granted before this. And then there was the satisfaction of knowing that they had this bounty from work they’d done themselves.

  Food was what really stood out in Sarah Jane’s mind. Everything tasted so much better. The ice cream they made in summer was thick and creamy, bursting with flavor. Biscuits, breads, fried pies. Stews, soups, salads. Everything.

  “That’s because you’re making it from the ground up,” Aunt Lillian told her. “You know every moment of that plant’s life, from when you put the seed in the dirt to its sitting on the table in front of you. It’s like eating with family instead of strangers.”

  Sarah Jane couldn’t explain to her sisters why it seemed like such a better way to live. She couldn’t even remember how she’d once been as incredulous as they were now that Aunt Lillian could simply ignore a hundred years of progress, which, for most, made the business of living so much easier. All she could say was that she liked to do things Aunt Lillian’s way. She finally understood what the term “an honest day’s work” meant because, after an afternoon tending to the animals and working in the garden, she just felt “righteously tired,” as Aunt Lillian would put it. She would return home with a spring in her step, never mind the long day she’d put in.

  And then there were the stories.

  The stories.

  Sarah Jane loved them all. It didn’t matter if it was the simple history of some herb they were out looking for in the woods, the offhand explanation of why a strip of white cloth tied to a stake kept deer out of the garden, or the strange and tangled stories that centered on the magical neighbors who, Aunt Lillian assured her, lived in the woods all around them. It got so that Sarah Jane expected to see fairies, or the Father of Cats, or some magical being or other every time she made the trip through the woods to and from Aunt Lillian’s homestead.