Bound by Blood and Brimstone (29 page)

Before a week had passed, that fight had me so weary I knew I’d have to find relief or

die. There was only one way, one place I could go to dump my heavy load, and I longed for it as

Mary must’ve longed to drag her Son from the Cross and hold him to her heart. I had to see

Wonnie.

It was Saturday, the last weekend before school started, before I was finally able to sneak

out after chores. She was on the porch, one hand absently scratching Wovoka’s ears, her eyes

trained on the dirt path leading to the cabin.

When she saw me she didn’t move from the porch, but her black eyes sparked, and the

lines in her face rearranged themselves to accommodate a toothy smile. She reached for me

without a word.

All I could do was hold her slight frame against me and breathe in her woodsy scent. I

put my hand on the back of her head and ran it down the length of her thick braid, feeling its

silky weight. I wanted nothing more than to unbind it and bury my face in it, unleash my tears in

it, then dry them with it. I trembled with the effort not to.

Her strong arms tightened around me, her small, calloused hands patting and soothing.

Murmuring something in Cherokee, she gripped my shoulders to push me back a step. “Let me

look at you, Running Deer.”

Her use of that childhood nickname nearly cracked my reserve, but I held firm, allowing

her keen eyes to sweep my form, head to toe. She nodded. “A fine looking woman you are.”

“And so are you, Wonnie,” I countered with a grin. She was wearing a paisley skirt

belted with a gauzy tunic the color of new grass. From a leather cord encircling her neck, a

faceted stone of pink quartz dangled, and tiny spirals of silver wire danced about her ears. Her

own nimble fingers, I knew, had crafted both. “You look so pretty today,” I said. “Were you

expecting company?”

“Only you, child, only you.”

I had to laugh at that. “If anybody else said that to me, I’d keel over in shock, but not you,

Wonnie. Nothing you could ever say would shock me. By the way, you don’t mind my calling

you ‘Wonnie,’ do you? I wouldn’t want to disrespect you, Great Grandmother.”

She waved her hand in a “pooh-pooh” gesture. “Why should I mind? You are a woman

now. And, after all, it is my name.”

We snacked on cold slabs of ham, leftover biscuits, and blackberry dumplings swimming

in cream. The cream was a fresh donation by Wonnie’s lone cow,
Shigigi
, so named, Wonnie

said, because of her habit of “singing” every morning during milking. Only Wonnie would’ve

named a cow the Cherokee word for “katydid.”

Over cups of Wonnie’s strong black coffee I confided in her about my resentments

toward Reese and Momma’s marriage and the backbreaking grief I carried over losing Daddy.

“It never ends. Missing him, I mean. It never stops hurting. No matter what I’m doing or where I

am, I never stop wanting to see his face again or talk to him. How can I make it stop, Wonnie?”

She peered at me over the rim of her coffee cup before setting it down. Her eyes were

intent, guarded, and she held my gaze so long I had to squelch the impulse to squirm. “You

cannot,” she said hollowly. “Just know the hurting will never stop. You must live with it.”

Still, she held me captive to her eyes, and as I groped about for something to say,

anything at all, she reached for my hand across the small table. Such a simple gesture, and yet,

when her fingers touched mine, something slammed me, through me, all the way to my core.

It was heat, and it was light. It was intense pain and unbearable joy, and it was over in a

single flash. My nerve endings sizzled in its wake, and scalding tears burned the back of my

throat and eyelids.

For one heartbeat, I was blinded, in complete and utter blackness. Then, there was

Wonnie’s face, inches from mine. “You did not come here to talk about your mother’s new man,

or about your Daddy. Did you, Ember Mae?”

She can’t possibly know! She lives too far out. If the police had been here I would’ve

known. People from town never come around here, and I’ve never even mentioned Sue Lee’s

name in her presence. I won’t betray Lorrie Beth. Not even to my Wonnie!

“Of course I did,” I finally managed. “And because I’ve missed you. Why else would I

come?” With the frozen smile I managed to plaster on my face, I had the absurd and unsettling

notion that she’d been reading my thoughts, and I forced my mind into a blank slate.

She’d released my hand to sit back and reach for the coffee pot again. “You came

because I willed it.” Though the words were soft, a vibrant power emanated from them, and from

her. Stalling for time, I decided a change of tactic was in order.

I attempted a laugh, but it sounded stilted, even to my ears.

“Come on now, Wonnie. You willed me to come? What’s that supposed to mean? You

got a crystal ball stashed somewhere in those herb pouches of yours? And what was that thing

you did with me just now when you grabbed my hand, the thing with the lights and the heat? Are

you going to let me in on your little bag of tricks?”

I tried for a light, teasing tone, a diversion to still my pounding heart, but when I saw the

flicker of pain shadow her eyes, I knew I’d hurt her and wanted to kick myself.

Squaring her shoulders, she stiffened in her chair and glared at me. “Wonnie Dean does

not do tricks,” she retorted. “My gifts have nothing to do with magic. They are from The Father.”

“I’m sorry, Great Grandmother,” I whispered. “I didn’t mean it that way at all. I think

your gifts are wonderful, and I’m a wretched, ungrateful granddaughter who doesn’t deserve to

live. I’m lower than a well digger’s heel. Why, I’m so bad, even the Raven Mocker wouldn’t

have me!” I declared.

“Okay, okay,” she interjected, the corners of her mouth twitching. “I get it. I get it.”

Deftly, she tossed a hunk of ham straight into Wovoka’s waiting jaws and sighed before getting

up to gather cups and plates from the table. “I suppose you are right.”

“Right about what?”

“The ungrateful wretch part.”

“Witch.”

“Raven Mocker reject.”

“Our first fight?”

“Guess so.”

“Now I suppose I really am a woman.”

“A snot-nosed brat.”

“I love you, Wonnie, truly, I do.”

“I love you, too. Brat.”

Too long without my Wonnie Dean had left us both groping for the heart of the other,

like a blind man seeking his lost bearings. With or without magic, we found what had been taken

from us.

“I have great fear for you, Child. And it brings much weight. Here,” she said, thumping

her chest. We were sitting on the porch watching the sun’s descent beyond Holt Mountain.

Shredded clouds, backlit in burnt orange and pink, chased one another in lazy streamers,

dimming heaven’s drape and shedding mock candle-light below. Home awaited, and I dreaded it.

“Don’t worry about me, Wonnie,” I assured her. “I’ve been taking care of myself for a

long time.”

“Yes, that is so,” she mused, but there is more to see to than yourself. There is your

sister.” She glanced up at me over the piece of maple she was working over with her carving

knife.

I could see the head emerging already, though she’d only started the piece since coming

outside after lunch. Swiftly, skillfully, she angled, curved, and dug, crafting the image in

accurate dimensions. It was an eagle.

I sighed, suddenly aware of the weariness settling in my bones. “Lorrie Beth. There’s

always her.”

“You do not mind, then? Being your sister’s keeper?” The question was asked casually

enough, but was veiled with deeper meaning. Her knife continued its intricate dance.

“No, I don’t mind. I mean, who else will watch out for her?” Bitterness tinged my words,

and I bit my lip, feeling shamed and small somehow.

“Who else indeed.” She grumbled. “Certainly not your Preacher Man.” She stopped long

enough to look at me, stabbing the air for emphasis with her knife. “I told you before about him.

He walks in darkness. And your mother, she is blind. Now, your sister, she has the purest of

hearts. But she has been bruised,” she added cryptically.

“Strange words, Wonnie. The kind I know you’re so fond of. And, as usual, I have no

idea what they mean.” Though the smile I offered her was warm, it was a false front to the chill

within me.
She doesn’t know. It’s impossible. So why do I feel like
I’m the canary and she’s the

cat? Every time she starts talking
in riddles, it’s like she knows, but wants me to tell her first

before she admits she knows.

“I have something to show you,” she stated without preamble, standing to brush wood

shavings into the yard. “Something I would not show anyone. A secret.” Her eyes softened this

time when she trained them on me. “But secrets are bad, I think, really bad when you keep them.

I believe you may be the one to give this secret to. You may understand it better than anyone

else.”

My objection was on my tongue, but before I could shoot it out of my mouth, she was

shuffling back into the cabin with me on her heels. She went directly to her sleeping pallet where

she thrust her hand under the covers and drew out what looked to be a sheet of some sort,

stretched over a frame of shaved wood. It was a homemade canvas.

At first glance, all that registered was the exquisite detail, two figures rendered in coal

and imprisoned in time, but so full of pulsating life, they fairly leapt out of their two-dimensional

world. Forgetting myself, abandoning my guard, I grabbed it for a better look.

“Wonnie,” I said breathlessly, “you’ve been sketching again! How wonderful--” The rest

dove into death on my lips as my eyes adjusted to the waning light. I really saw then, and it was

all I could do to keep from flinging it to the floor.

“It is from a dream,” she said, touching it lightly with her fingertips. “It came to me the

first time when the big snow fell.”

“The first time?” My voice, barely above a whisper, seemed to echo out of a tunnel, a

dry, hollow sound.

She nodded. “There were many times after. This,” she said, tapping the canvas, “is what I

saw each night in my dream. It took my sleep away.”

To conceal my shaking hands, I gripped the canvas tighter and fought to stay on my feet.

It wasn’t an easy accomplishment, with my head spinning and the floor threatening to rise and

smack my face. I had to keep talking or else floor and face were about to meet.

“Do you still have it? The dream?”

The relief was evident in her face when she shook her head. “It left my sleep when I drew

it here.”

She waited for me to say something, studying my face, trying to read what was there. I

struggled to keep my face composed, to contain the nausea swamping me. “It looks so real,” I

finally said in a small voice.

“But, the girl. Tell me what you think of the girl. I have never seen her in life, but I know

she is more than a face in my dream. She lives.”

In the rendering the girl sat naked, her face framed by strings of matted hair. It wasn’t a

pretty, feminine face, but made somehow appealing by the vulnerability in the eyes. They were

haunted, beseeching, with dark smudges underneath. The mouth was contorted in a silent

scream, both hands flung out to ward off the blows being dealt by a man with a makeshift spear.

He had a thick, hulking body, brooding profile, ragged, ill-fitting clothes.

The girl was in a cramped room littered with filth and what appeared to be scraps of

garbage and piles of excrement. Rough planks floored the room. In front of the girl were two

bowls, one with water, the other full of some shapeless dark mass.

Open gashes, jagged scratches, marred the girl’s body, and blackened wounds, small

circles of them, spotted her shoulders and bare chest. The worst of it, though, was one of her

ankles. The flesh was raw and torn from the thick manacle that encircled it. Attached to the

manacle on one end, and to a massive stake in the floor on the other, a short chain held her

captive inside a barred cage.

“Her mother makes him do this.”

Lost in the nightmare before me, Wonnie forgotten by my side, I nearly jumped out of

my skin when she spoke.

“What?”

“She makes the boy do this to the girl. She enjoys watching it.” My stomach roiled and

lurched sickeningly beneath my ribs. Meeting her eyes, I nearly drowned in the sorrow I saw

there. Her lower lip quivered slightly and when she spoke again, I had to strain to hear.

“The mother.” She faltered, swallowed. “She makes the boy lie with the girl. Then she

makes them both, brother and sister, lie with
her
, every night at dark fall.”

She reached for the canvas, pried my icy fingers loose, set it aside, and placed both hands

on either side of my face. “You must tell me,” she pled. “Do you know this poor girl?”