“I know what those words mean.”
“Good. You’re learning, Cricket. Maybe someday you’ll be as smart as me.”
Willa signed to her brother using their twin speak: When pigs fly out of my butt.
Harlan snorted. Muted laughter was the only sound she ever heard from her brother.
“When we find enough of ‘em, will there still be time for a story?”
She grinned. “We’ll see.” The despised adult phrasing was nothing more than an evasive way for grownups to say no. When she said it, though, it conveyed a different subtext. If they gathered sufficient forest bounty to appease Serena Jo, and if there was still enough time for a quick yarn, she would spin one. And not just for Cricket’s entertainment. Every time she wrote a story in her mind and told it to an audience, she figured it made her a better writer.
There was nothing Willadean wanted more in life than to be an author of books. It didn’t matter that she was not quite twelve-years-old, or that few people were left in the world to read them. It only mattered that she wrote them.
Mama understood, even though Serena Jo didn’t herself have an interest in fiction. Her job was to keep everyone alive and with full bellies. Mama might act like she carried the weight of the world on her shoulders, but Willadean knew there was a tiny compartment hidden in her soul that loved every minute of it. Everyone put Mama on a pedestal, as well they should...nobody had ever run the holler so efficiently. But Willadean and Pops knew her better than anyone. In secret, they complained about how tough she was, how inflexible she was and how callous she could be when it came time to put someone in the cemetery. They understood that she had to make difficult decisions.
But they had wondered — in private, when not even Harlan was around — if Mama hadn’t occasionally put someone in the cemetery who didn’t truly deserve to be there.
Willadean hoped Mister Fergus minded his Ps and Qs. She had ratcheted up her approval of him after the morning’s lessons. And she had also set her sights on discovering his secrets.
***
“Only a half-bushel of mushrooms?” Mama said while they brushed their teeth in the kitchen. It was full dark now. Time for the holler to go to sleep. “And not one truffle?”
Serena Jo’s face looked...ethereal...in the lantern’s glow. That was a good word. Her mama had the face of an angel, if not the resume.
Willadean was glad Mama hadn’t said anything about their feeble harvest in front of the others. If she and Harlan needed a scolding, it usually took place just before bedtime. That way they could contemplate their misdeeds while they fell asleep and therefore incorporate the necessary lessons into their dreams. Mama put a lot of thought into the timing of everything she did.
“Sorry. The pickings were slim, weren’t they Harlan?”
Harlan signed his support.
“How many of those hours in the woods were actually spent hunting for food and not for pixies?” Mama smiled. That was good. This wasn’t going to be a scolding.
“Three,” Willa replied. It was true if you replaced the word pixies with pudgy X-shaped flying camera. Half-lies were always preferable to full lies. They carried a grain of truth and thus sounded more believable.
“Then I suppose that’s okay. One of the reasons I let you two go into the forest is because you’re children, and children need to have adventures. As long as the...”
“Benefits outweigh the risks,” Willadean finished.
They both smiled.
“So nothing risky happened today?” Mama was fishing now. She’d caught a whiff of something.
Willadean planted an innocent expression on her face, then shook her head. She didn’t trust herself to speak. It might come out wrong. And besides, she answered most questions with a head nod or a head shake. A physical response was the correct move here.
“Good. You remember our agreement?”
“Yes, ma’am. If we see or hear people or see signs of people, we’re to run home immediately and tell you.”
“Very good. All right, time for sleep, you two.”
Mama ushered them into the bedroom. It was clean-sheets night, which Willadean always looked forward to. The line-dried linens smelled like trees and grass and wood smoke instead of Bounce dryer sheets, like back in Knoxville. She would enjoy a few moments of covert journaling before she blowing out the bedside candle. She would not mention anything about the drone.
She couldn’t be sure that Mama never snuck a peek at the hidden diary.
Chapter 4
Fergus
“Tell me about the cemetery,” Fergus said to Willadean after the morning’s lessons. She seemed to be intentionally lollygagging after class.
He could mark ‘day three’ off his mental calendar. He usually avoided fidget monkeys, preferring to engage with mature minds and well-developed bodies. But to his surprise, he had discovered that teaching them was not only rewarding, it was fun. They were receptive. They didn’t measure or overanalyze their words before speaking. They still possessed a sense of wonder, unlike most adults. And there were a few shining stars in the bunch, despite the hillbilly veneers.
The other children had scattered, including the boy twin. Fergus could not get a vibe from the silent one, but his internal radar blared whenever Willadean was nearby.
“What’s to tell?” the golden-eyed cherub replied.
She was a miniature doppelganger of the iron-fisted Serena Jo. Fergus sensed an astounding depth to the adolescent intellect. This little woodland fairy would need to be watched. Closely. He may have a Cthor-Vangt recruit on his hands.
“I’m concerned about ending up there...permanently,” he said.
“Play your cards right and you won’t.”
They were sitting on a large flat rock on the outskirts of
