CHAPTER ONE

arah Jane Dillard didn’t think the old woman was crazy, though most everybody else did. Folks liked her well enough—they’d pass the time with her when she came into town and all—but what else could you think about a woman in her eighties, living alone on a mountaintop, an hour’s walk in from the county road?

It wasn’t like she was a granny woman who needed her solitude. She had her herbs and simples, and she’d be the first to lend a hand, somebody needed help, but she wasn’t known in these parts for cures and midwifery like the Welch women were. She was just an old woman, kept herself to herself. Not unfriendly, but not looking to step into social circles anytime soon, either.

“What does she do up there, all on her own?” someone or other would ask from time to time.

They might not know, but Sarah Jane did.

Aunt Lillian lived the same now as she had since she was a child. She had no phone, no electricity, no running water. The only food she bought was what she couldn’t grow herself or gather from the woods around her.

So most of her time was taken up with the basic tasks of eking out a living from her land and the forest. It took a lot of hours in a day to see after her gardens, the cow and chickens, the orchard and hives. To go into the woods in season to gather greens and herbs, nuts and berries, and ’sang. Water had to be carried in from the springhouse, the woodbox filled, and any number of other day-to-day chores needed doing.

It wasn’t so much a question of what she did, as there hardly being the time in a day to get it all done.

“But don’t you find it hard?” Sarah Jane had asked her once. “Keeping up with it all?”

Aunt Lillian had smiled. “Hard’s being confined to a sickbed, like some my age are,” she’d said. “Hard’s not being able to look after yourself. What I do… it’s just living, girl.”

“But you could buy your food instead of growing it.”

“Sure, I could, except it wouldn’t necessarily be as pleasing to my soul.”

“You find weeding a garden pleasing?”

“You should try it, girl. You might be surprised.”

The trail to Aunt Lillian’s house started in the pasture beside the Welches’ farm, then took a winding route up into the hills, traveling alongside the creek as it flowed down the length of the hollow.

In spring the creek grew swollen, the water tumbling over stone staircases, overflowing pools, and running quickly along the narrows until it finally reached the pasture, where it dove under the county road before continuing on its way. By fall the creek was reduced to a trickle, though it never dried up completely. There were always a few deep pools, even in the hottest months of the summer, home to fish, spring peepers, and deep-throated bullfrogs, and perfect for a cool dip on a sweltering day.