Connor, sweet and, in this moment, kind of dumb, stepped between them—as if whatever his dad might try before witnesses in daylight was anything he could save her from. Dawn joined him, her eyes narrow and her mouth set. More worrying to Tara were the shadows that gathered around her student’s fist.
“We don’t need you here,” Dawn said.
Sweet, and unnecessary. At Pa’s funeral, Tara had been vulnerable—to Grafton, to the world. She was not anymore.
Tara stepped forward. “You don’t have to do this, Grafton.”
Dawn turned to her, angry and questioning. Tara put her hand out, palm down. You’re here, now, not in Blake’s Rest back then. And: I can handle this.
“No one knows these fields like I do,” Cavanaugh said. “I’m here for the village, not for you. The Pastor asked me to come.”
Tara thought about the sin goat. She did not want to know this man’s secrets. She did not want to understand him. He was small and angry and he hurt those close to him. But he was still a client. She held out her hand for the grass ring, and when Connor did not pass it to her she turned to him with a look meant to reassure; it didn’t seem to work, but still he surrendered the ring. Dawn held the book and pen tight to her chest. Her eyes were scalpels. She saw someone else where Cavanaugh stood. “Dawn.” The girl passed Tara her tools, like she might have given a duelist a sword.
And Tara walked with Grafton Cavanaugh.
He could not settle into a pace. When Tara slowed to match him, he’d speed up. When she quickened her step, he eased. The grass ring frayed between them, and a few strands popped. She tried harder. “We rotate corn with barley and pasture here,” he said. “My eldest cares for the cattle. We’re thinking about peanuts, but their draw on the soil is considerable. The cows help, but I don’t know how much rain we can count on what with the unruly weather.” The grass ring strained between them. “What?”
“You need to tell me what makes the field special. What makes it yours.”
“I am telling you.”
“A crop rotation. A farmer contemplating peanuts. I’ve seen plenty of those.”
The old man sucked his teeth. And Grafton Cavanaugh was old, though she had not thought so before: old as her own father. Shocks of gray ran through the curls of his hair. His hands bore scars of work and his limbs were thick. The Grafton Cavanaugh of her memory, her father’s lumbering friend, Connor’s terror, had eclipsed the man beside her, aging and alone.
He said, “My great-grandfather had the planting of this field, and my father, rest him, did not care for it well. He was always off, wandering. When I was a boy this soil was farmed out, all but sand. Your pa and his pa helped me work it when my dad wasn’t around—your Grandpa Abernathy gave me the notion of rotating, which my old man didn’t like, seeing as he didn’t like change much, or thinking about the farm at all. Each new task he had to mind back home was one more nail through his feet into the floor. My brother and my sisters helped me turn the crops. When the fields turned green he called it a miracle.” Tara remembered Connor’s stories, his grandfather playing his flute in the Badlands. Her heart made unexpected motions in her throat.
They did not talk as they walked to the next field. It was pasture for the season, all grass and cows and the smell of grass and cows. She could not see the Cavanaugh house from here, or the village, or the well or the goats, or Dawn and Connor, who’d lingered behind.
This wasn’t so bad, so far.
“Your father came to see me here, you know. The night you left.”
Fuck you.
“Not when that witch spirited you away. The first time, when you were a girl.”
She’d known which time he meant.
“Now, you’ll remember that John Abernathy crossed the country in the middle of the Wars, barely sixteen, fighting what horrors who can say. Despite what he must have seen, he was glib and light, always ready with a trick, and he loved his daughter. When you left he chased you. Followed the caravans for miles.”
She’d known he would. That’s why she was clever about it—rather than joining a caravan in Edgemont she’d walked cross-country to the rails, hopped a westbound freight, jumped off, and met with the caravan at the watering hole she’d arranged with the witch who promised to teach her the basics. She’d brought a small knife and a large knife and a map and dried meat and several poisons she’d brewed according to such recipes as she judged accurate—you never could tell when you’d need a good poison. She knew the rudiments of Craft already, but all the same she was surprised how easy it was when she began to learn, as if she’d settled into her proper groove. At the time, she thought it was destiny. Much later, she’d wondered over the difference between destiny and a predator’s lure.
“He cried in my arms, out here. He was so afraid for you. He was furious—with himself. He knew you would go, because he had gone when he was your age. But you were their only girl, and you never belonged here. When you left, it felt like he’d never made it home from the Wars. The only way I could talk him down was by making a promise I couldn’t keep. ‘She’ll come back,’ I said. ‘She knows you love her. She’ll come home.’”
“That’s it,” she said, fast, sharp, as soon as she could. She didn’t want to hear more. “Next field.”
Barley, this, growing green. Past the edge of the plot stood a ring of tree stumps, the bare earth between them dotted with pipe ash. “We used to play music out here. It’s one thing to play on the green or at the pub, quite another to play for your own self.” He wavered then. “He trusted me for six months, that you’d come home. When you didn’t, he started to hate me. That passed, in the end. Or he learned to hide it. It was my own fault, for giving my word on a thing I could not control. But if I had not told him you would come back, he might have chased you all around the world.”
“Or he might have accepted that this was what I wanted, and let me go.” She did not like this story. She did not want it to be true, did not want it to become a fact she knew, to settle it into the world through Craft.
“You should have given him a chance.”
“I gave them every chance. What the hells was I supposed to do? Hang here and rot like a fruit on the vine?”
“Is that how you see all of us? You tell my boy that’s how you see him?”
She curled around that hit, too deep and physical for anger. The curse bunched and knotted in her arm. “He’s not rotting. But he can’t leave, even if it would save his life. He loves this town.”
“And you don’t.”
“I owe it.” She growled the words. “I couldn’t have come from any other place. But if I stayed here I would not have lived. I’m trying to learn how to love this place now, hard, and fast. Because he would have wanted me to. Because that’s the only way you all survive.”
“You don’t owe this town shit, Tara Abernathy. You left it and never looked over your shoulder once. You swept your trail so you couldn’t follow your footsteps back.”
“That’s not true.”
“You want to talk about what you owe? You owe your pa, and what you owe him you’ll never repay.”
“Then what the hells am I doing here?”
“Trying.” He made that word a sneer. “You want to save us so bad you’ll break us all to bits to salve your guilt. This place is a trap for you. You’ve been learning every secret but the one you don’t want to know. You hurt your old man deep. He sat there, hating me while he played his fiddle, hating me while he passed the whiskey, because I robbed him of a chance to save his girl.”
“I wasn’t his to save.” The whole world pulsed—no, that was her. “I didn’t belong to him.”
He grinned toothily and looked down at his feet. “Field’s done, I guess. On we go. This won’t take as long as I thought.”
Sweet corn, next. She said nothing.
“I was fourteen and working this acreage when he came to tell me he was leaving. John was barely more than a boy and dreaming boy dreams—big city lights and fortunes, a world that was changing every day. He was going to save some rich man’s life, fall for his daughter and work his way up by smarts and his own hands, just like in those books he read, and if that didn’t happen at least he’d see the sights, get knocked on the jaw a couple times and come back one split lip richer. I wanted to stop him. I didn’t want to see him go. I didn’t want him to leave me here alone. But no one ever could tell him the time of day. So we sat with arms around each other as the sun went down. He asked me to go with him. I could imagine him on the streets of Alt Selene, I could see him bright and ready anywhere in the godsdamn world, but I could not imagine leaving.
“There was a storm that night. He left, and then the whole world went mad and Alt Selene fell and I gave him up, but the world gave him back to me. He always did come back. So when I saw him crying so many years later, I took a chance and bet you were made the same.”
She could see the lure, smell the bait. She matched her pace to his.
They reached the last field, which lay fallow.
She did not offer him the ring.
“What?” His voice was sly and sidelong. “I thought we were here to tell stories.”
“Whatever there was between you and my father—or wasn’t—it’s not my business. I loved him. I know he loved me. That’s what matters.”
“None of this is your business. You loved each other, sure. There’s love all over and it trades for pennies a bushel. But he knew you’d not be coming home again. He read your letters to me, when you sent them. He was so proud of you, and so scared. The demon in Alt Coulumb, whatever the hells you got up to across the World Sea, and all the adventures in between, each time you’d send some chipper note back and he’d remember the day he ran away from Alt Selene. He always told me he made it out because he was small. Nobody noticed he was gone, nobody cared. And since he was smart he sussed out how to fold your ma up small, too, and sneak her out with him and save her, before the Wars got her like they got the rest of her family. But there you were, getting bigger and bigger out east. He knew just like everyone knows that this peace can’t last, that it’s breaking year by year. And when it goes you’ll be right in the middle. Why do you think he went out into the canyons chasing my boy? He had to save someone, and he couldn’t save you.”
She couldn’t speak.
“After all that you have the gall to come back and lie to this village, and lie to my boy, and to that girl, and to yourself even, that you belong here. That you’re one of us. You’re not here to help us, or her. You just want to be better-than. You want to be big. That’s all you ever wanted. That’s all any Craftswoman wants. You like it when Esther Braxton comes to tell you her secrets, but you’ll never tell Esther yours. You’ll teach that girl, but not enough to make her strong. You are what they made you in that fancy school and no more. And you left us, and you left your pa, and that killed him.”
She stood heavy as a raised axe, each breath straining with the anger Connor did not let himself feel, and a special electric fury all her own, crackling behind her eyes. The curse echoed her rage. Its wave-whispers merged with the pulse of blood in her ears, promising, tempting—let me out. Let me hurt him. Grafton swelled in her vision, not just ready but hungry for what he thought would come next. For her to smite him with her power and justify his scorn and fear.
Once, she would have done it. But she was older now.
She curbed her power and her rage. She shrank, and as she did so did he, until they were small figures in a large world, and she had to laugh—at her, at him, at the roles they played for each other. Not happy, not scornful. For the most part, sad.
He swayed as if a hard wind had struck him from an unexpected angle.
“Sure,” she said. “I killed him. Why not? And he killed himself. And you killed him. You coaxed him into joining the guard, and shamed your son so he couldn’t share his plans with you, and he went to my pa instead. We’re all killing each other, all the time. You want his death to be Connor’s fault, Dawn’s, mine, everyone’s but yours and his, but I’m done playing that game. Own your shit. The Seer’s coming, and the Raiders with him, and whatever you think of me, I will fight them and I will end them. If you’re sad and angry and you want to hurt someone, join me on the line. But I have better things to do with my time than to listen to you one more godsdamn minute.”
She threw the grass ring to the ground between them. She held out her left hand, relishing the ache of the curse in her arm. The book closed itself and flew to her grip, and the pen. She caught them without looking.
“Tara,” he called after her as she walked away. “We’re not done here.”
“I am,” she said. “I know you well enough.”