'I need something stronger.'
'You ain't supposed to come out here in broad daylight, Ransom. What if somebody seen you?'
'I'm scared. I ain't coming out here in the dark. It's bad enough when you can see, and it's getting worse.'
'Was you followed?'
'Not by none of the guests. Miss Mamie told them they ain't allowed up Beechy Gap. But the others'- Ransom lowered his voice and hunched his head as if afraid that the cabin's knotty walls were listening- 'you know, them-they's everywheres now.'
Sylva Hartley bent and spat into her fireplace. The liquid hissed and cracked, then evaporated against the flaming logs. She ran the back of her leathery hand against her shriveled mouth. She looked past Ransom, staring down the decades that were as dark as the smoky stones beneath the hearth.
'Lord knows it's getting worse,' she finally said in agreement. She pulled her frayed shawl up around her neck.
'The last charm worked right fair for a while. Kept them scared off. But now, they just laugh at me when I do my warding.'
Sylva thought Ransom ought to have a little more faith. That was the key: faith. All the charms in the world didn't amount to a hill of beans if you didn't believe. Ransom had been raised Christian, and that was all fine and dandy. But when you got right down to it, some things were older and ran deeper than religion.
It was too bad about George Lawson. George was an outsider, not born on the mountain. He didn't know what he was up against. With the proper charms, he might have dodged Ephram's little games.
But maybe not. Ransom was right. They were getting stronger. Ephram was getting stronger. And now George was on their side, too. Along with all the other people Ephram had fetched over in the last hundred years.
'You mind flipping them johnny cakes?' she said.
Ransom crossed the floor of the cabin to the little blue steel cookstove. He turned the cakes in the skillet. The smell of scorched cornmeal filled the room.
'They don't stay invisible no more,' he said, his back to her. 'It used to be just Korban, and you only seen him in the Big House once in a while. But the others, they been walkin'.'
'The blue moon in October. A time of magic. Right magic and wrong magic.'
'What are you gonna do?' Ransom's voice trembled.
She didn't blame him for being scared. She was scared, too, but she didn't dare let it show. 'First off, I'm going to have me a bite to eat. After that, I guess we'll just have to see what the cat drug in.'
Ransom handed her a plate made of hammered tin. He had laid a fried piece of side pork beside the johnny cakes. Liquid fat pooled in the bottom of the plate and dripped out a small hole in the metal. Sylva put the plate on one arm of her rocker so the grease wouldn't stain her clothes.
'It's the people, ain't it?' Ransom asked, the firelight glittering in his eyes. 'The people staying at the Big House.'
Sylva said nothing, just worked the pig gristle between the stumps of her teeth. There was a generous hunk of meat in the fat. Ransom always made sure she got one of the better slabs whenever they slaughtered and smoked one of the manor's hogs. She figured she ate almost as well as the fancy guests.
She swallowed the pork, then drained a cup of sassafras tea. Finally, she spoke, gazing into the fire, at the yellow and orange and bright blue. 'It's the people. And the girl. The one with the Sight.'
Even though her voice was soft, the words were as thick as thunder in the damp air of the cabin. The whole forest had grown quiet, as if the trees were bending in to listen. She was sure a catbird had been warbling out a happy sunrise song only minutes before.
'First he claimed the dead ones, now he's going after the live ones,' Ransom said. 'They's got to be some kind of ritual or other you can use against him.'
'You forget. We got to play by the rules. But Ephram Korban, he ain't beholden to nothing. Not man nor God nor none of my little bags of stoneroot and bear teeth and hawk feathers.'
Ransom touched the pocket of his coveralls.
'But just keep right on believin',' she said. 'The ashes of a prayer are mightier than the highest flames of hell.'
'I'd best be getting back. Got the livestock to tend to. And Miss Mamie's been watching me awful close.'
'Get on, then.'
'You sure you'll be okay?'
'Been okay all along, ain't I? But it's good to be looking out for each other.'
Ransom nodded. His face was in the shadows beyond the reach of the firelight and she wasn't able to see his expression. The sun filled the room as he opened the door and went outside. She winced at the intruding light and waited for the sound of the falling wooden latch. Then she turned her gaze back to the fire and forked up another chunk of corn cake. The fire…
If only they had listened to Sylva's mother. She had tried to warn everybody about the strange Yankee with the well-bottom eyes and the pocketful of money and the sneer that lurked between his lips, the snakish smile that you only saw when he'd let you.
But they fell under Ephram Korban's spell, the menfolk who were after the jobs he promised, the women who came calling on him while their men were out clearing trees or sawing firewood or laying stone walls. None of those women were able to resist him for long. Even the children were drawn to him. Whenever Korban got a few of the young ones together, he would throw a penny on the ground just to watch them scratch and claw each other as they fought over it.
Sylva's mother had resisted Ephram. At least that's what she always told Sylva. But Sylva herself, she went to work in the manor when she was just fourteen. Daddy made her. Said you was never too young to learn the pain and glory of a hard day's work, that there was no reason to laze around the house while he had to get up before the roosters and mix sulfur-and-lime solution to spray on the apple trees.
She started out keeping the manor's fireplace ashes swept up, then was put in charge of the laundry as well. Her spine ached with the memory of hauling those big woven baskets a quarter mile down to the creek, where a barrel of lye-water would be waiting. She'd let the clothes soak a while, then drag them dripping and heavy up to the top of the washboard. Up and down, over and over, while the alkaline ate away at her skin. And heaven help her if she got a cut. That soapy juice burned like a slice of hellfire.
Sylva looked down at her knotty fingers, at the burls of her knuckles. The scars still wove among the blue road maps of her veins. These same hands had betrayed her, all because she had to touch the fire.
Ephram always had to have a fire blazing. The men were ordered to keep the firebox in the back room full at all times. One hired helper was assigned to the furnace room downstairs to make sure the main chimney stayed stoked around the clock. But all the other fireplaces had be lit, too, even in the summer. And, as one of the house girls, Sylva was responsible for the fireplaces on the second floor.
That meant going into the master bedroom. She had always hated the room, especially at night when, as her last and most dreaded chore, she carried an armful of heavy oak and ash and white pine to the fire. She would rest the logs on the hearth, then pile them stick by stick on the bed of embers. She tried to concentrate on her work, but she couldn't help looking around at all the fine things, the oval cut-edged mirror over the bureau, the velvet drapes that plunged from the top of the windows like lush purple waterfalls, the soft silk lace rimming the edge of the poster bed.
She had touched that lace, of course. She knew the fabrics of the master bed better than anyone. She had seen the secrets written in the stains of sleep, and her job was to scrub them away. To erase all hint of corruption.
Sometimes the mistress would already be in bed when Sylva came in. Margaret would watch her without speaking, a little smile of triumph on her face that she tried to hide behind the books she pretended to read. Sylva mumbled 'yes'm' or 'no'm' if Margaret said anything.
Ephram himself was never in the bedroom during her nightly stoking. She called him 'Ephram' in her secret heart of hearts, but she wouldn't dare call him that aloud. No, he was 'master' or 'sir' or, in a pinch, 'Mr. Korban.' She had wondered if he ever slept. Some of the help said he paced the widow's walk, especially when the moon
