'Won't that cause an infection?'
'Nothing's much cleaner than chimney soot. Made pure by the fire, you see.'
The wound would heal fine. Sylva didn't think she could mend the other things that were wrong with Anna, the bad cells that burned inside her. And she didn't think she should, even if she knew what herbs to use. Part of having the power to heal was knowing when to let nature run its course. When to let the dead be dead, and when to let the living move on to other business of the soul.
Anna was marked as clearly as if her fate had been written by a judge. The shame of it was, she was just getting started in her life, just beginning to grasp her mighty and frightsome gifts. But Sylva knew that the young woman's illness also made her powers stronger. That's why it had been so easy for Korban to summon her.
Anna pressed the poultice to her knee and drank from the hand-fashioned clay cup. 'Thank you, Miss-'
'Sylva. Sylva Hartley.'
'And thanks for the water. I've never tasted water as good as you have here on the mountain.'
Sylva nodded and threw a stick of locust on the fire. Anna was putting off talking about it. Nobody liked to remember close calls. And Sylva had learned over the many years of waiting that patience was the only thing a body needed to be good at. She had waited a long time for the October blue moon.
'You about got fetched over.'
'Is that what you call it when a ghost murders you?'
'Yeah. Call it bad luck, too.' Sylva stood and fished her hanging kettle from its hook over the fireplace. She poured some of the steaming water into Anna's cup. Then she crossed to the cupboard and took some leaves out of a ceramic jar. She crumbled a few of the leaves into Anna's hot water.
'Smells good. Sort of like mint.' Anna breathed in the aroma.
'Yep. Mint with a little wild cherry root mixed in. Might ease up your headache.'
'How did you know?'
'They always give me a headache, when I'm spelling them off. Them fresh dead, they're easier to see but they're harder to beat back down into the grave.'
Anna sipped at the tea and gave Sylva a sideways look. 'How come they haven't 'fetched' you yet?'
Sylva gave a laugh that was more of a liquid hiccup.
'Got my cat bones and my snakeroot and my lizard powder and a whole cupboard full of other roots and herbs and reptile skins. And here's my special piece of protection.'
Sylva rummaged under her shawl to the place near her heart. She held out her palm to show Anna the small, shriveled white thing that Sylva wouldn't have traded for a cape of spun gold.
'Rabbit's foot?' Anna's dark eyebrows made arrow-tips on her forehead.
'Not just any rabbit's foot. This is the left hind foot of a graveyard rabbit, snared on a winter midnight.'
'Another one of the old signs, like Ransom told me.'
'They mean as much as you want 'em to. It's all about how strong you believe.'
Anna set her cup on the rough-hewn table. She shivered despite the nearness of the fire. 'What a night. I feel a thousand years old.'
'Old? I expect you wouldn't believe that I'm a hundred and five myself, give or take a few. Then again, you might, but I hardly believe it myself. I keep up with my health and all, but I suspect it's got a little to do with Korban. Like he's stretching my years on out so I don't up and die a natural death before he's done with me.'
Anna rested her chin in her hands. The fire reflected in her blue-green eyes.
Them eyes. Lord, she's Rachel's spittin' image.
'What does Korban want?' Anna asked. 'I've studied ghosts for a long time, but most of them just seem to be trying to escape from here. This world, I mean.'
Sylva stared into the fire along with Anna. The sun was trickling through the east window now, but still the room was dark, as if night was reluctant to leave.
'Korban wants it all back. Everything that was ever his, and then some.'
'Why?'
'Why?' Sylva had thought about it many times over the years, but still didn't know the right answer. 'Calling him evil would be too apple-pie easy. Maybe he was evil back when he was alive, but it's way beyond that now. He liked to own things, shape them up to fit his world. I reckon he still does. Is it evil to want to hold on to everything you ever loved?'
'I'm not sure I've ever been loved.'
The words gripped Sylva's heart. Korban fetched Anna back for a reason. No matter what Rachel tried to do. Maybe nobody ever escaped from here, dead or alive.
'Ephram…' Sylva's voice fell, uncertain. She was sixteen again, awkward but with a flaming heart, as if both she and the world were young and still full of promise. 'I loved Ephram. We all did, the women, I mean. He was mighty handsome in his way, but it wasn't just looks. There was something about him, some magnetism. Nobody could resist him for long.
'I took a job tending the house, like most other women that lived on the mountain then. The men were busy working to clear the land and keep the place up. Nobody really said anything when people started dying. Somebody's ax-head would fly off and cleave in their skull, a tree would fall on somebody's back, they'd find a body in one of the ponds, the skin puffy and their tongue all swollen blue. It was just accidents, in our minds. 'A run of bad luck,' we'd say to each other, though we all knew better.'
Sylva squeezed her fists against her chest. She'd never told anybody this next part. She'd kept that all nice and unbothered and lying in the back of her mind like a lizard in a muddy crevice. But this child had way worse things to go through. Sylva's own suffering was nothing compared to that.
'One night, his fire went out. I was scared to death. That was my one main job, the thing that Ephram made a mention of every time I saw him, which wasn't that often. But every time you seen him, by God, you'd remember it, and you would play it back in your mind, his face, his hands, his voice, until your heart was aching. At least it was that way with me, and I'm pretty sure it was the same with the other womenfolk.'
Sylva fell silent. Even across the decades, the moment still retained its vividness. She was filled with a warm flood of passion, mixed with that same gut-ripping dread. Her eyes were misty, and she didn't fight it this time, she just let the tears roll down her cheeks.
'Ephram, he was in the room. Except it was like his life was the fire. He just laid there on the bed, gasping, kind of. And I was so scared, child, you wouldn't know how scared I was.'
Sylva sniffled. 'But then again, maybe you would. I forget you just had your own run-in. And he made me light that fire and say those words I never shoulda said.'
Anna touched Sylva's knee. The gesture gave her the strength to finish.
'When I finally got the fire lit, Ephram come to me. He took me up in his arms, and I looked into those black eyes, and I would have done anything for that man. And he kissed me and then did everything else he wanted. But the thing was, I wanted it as much as he did. After it was over, he sent me out. Didn't say a word, just buttoned up his trousers and jabbed at the fire a little, like I was a piece of meat he'd just killed for sport.
'I hardly ever looked at him again, I was so scared. Scared both that he'd want me and that he wouldn't. But a few weeks later, I missed my time of the month. Lordy mercy, I was really scared then. But there was no other signs, so I went on about my business, hoping and praying. Months passed, it got winter and then spring. Along about summer my belly first started to swell, but just the tiniest bit. That's when I knew. And I knew it was wrong, as slow as it was going.'
Sylva's heart was thundering now. All the old anger and wasted love was filling her up, poisoning her again. Anna reached for her hand and squeezed it. That settled Sylva down a little. She had to do this, for both of them.
'Korban liked to get up on top of the house in the dead of night. Up there on the widow's walk. Folks whispered that he was calling out to the dark things, invisible creatures that slithered and floated around in the cracks of the night. But by then, I knew what he was really doing.
'He was calling up his fetches. Making them do his bad work. Spelling them. And I crept up them stairs one night. The moon was full, a blue moon in October, like what's coming tomorrow night. I remember the smell of sassafras in the air, and the dew so thick you could feel it on your skin. The little trapdoor that led to the roof was open, so I poked my head through and saw him standing along the rail, looking out over the moonlit nothing.'
The fire popped and exhaled a long hiss. Sylva closed her eyes and finished the story before Korban got up
