25

Esther

Easy on.” Jasper’s voice was soft and low. Against Esther’s mossy mind, it felt like velvet, like rabbit fur. “Breathe.”

She did as she was told, taking a deep breath, and then another. She hadn’t opened her eyes, and all her limbs felt heavy, like she were loaded with stones.

An arm wrapped around her shoulders, a sag down—she was on a bed. She smelled the pinewood fire, a squirrel-bone broth boiling in a cast iron. She leaned into Jasper.

Where was the mountain? It wasn’t with her.

She blinked, forcing her eyes open, and saw the cotton of his shirt as she leaned against his chest, as she was pulled upright, a bowl of broth held against her mouth. Esther didn’t question it, drinking, her fingers light on the bowl. Jasper continued to murmur a reassurance, his arm around her.

Esther moved against him after she had finished and tried to speak, but it came out like a croak, as if her throat were coated in sand.

“Rest,” Jasper said, bodily moving her so that her shoulders were against the wall of his cabin. He left her side to get more broth, bringing it back. This time he sat next to her, and she could see him clearly. His hair, which should have been shining and coal black, now had a few silver streaks in it.

“Jas . . .” She reached out for his hair, touching it gently. He smiled.

“Don’t look worried, it’s only been a few weeks.”

“You look old,” she croaked.

“You like older men.”

Esther hit his thigh weakly, and he offered her the bowl again. She took it and drank, closing her eyes. They sat in silence, a comfortable kindness, the fire’s warmth penetrating the bones of her. Birds sang outside—there was the rustle of a creature in the creaking, bare-branched trees. Another sound, like an echo, and she tried to ignore that, but it was like a handshake that wouldn’t ease.

She looked up and saw, collected on the ceiling, hanging from beams, a swarm of jarfly, not making much noise, but rustling their wings. Esther’s heart caught in her ribs. Witch of bugs and possum. Witch of tor and holler.

She closed her eyes.

“What happened to Will?” she finally asked, the bowl resting on her lap.

“He’s alive. Hanging onto a jagged limp, left hand in a splint, but he’ll recover just fine.”

Esther felt Jasper’s hesitation in the air, like she felt the jarflies above her, like she felt the stone calling her, like she felt the sun rising on Kire.

“What happened to you?” Jasper gently put a hand on her wrist, leaning in. She could hear the fear in his voice.

“I spoke to Kire,” Esther said softly. No, that wasn’t right. “Made my last bargain.”

Kire was a god who listened. She had traded her whole soul, no more parts or pieces or remedial bloodlettings. All of her was Kire.

Perhaps the Dandelion Witch was right; she held onto the old ways because they provided comfort. What did Kiron truly need from their Neighbor?

She reached out for Kire and found something missing, a maw, a dark valley in her chest. Where was her killing moon? Where was her last bride-made thing? Above her, the jarflies began to move, began to shuffle on cracking carapaces and jeweled wings.

She had left her anger in Kire. She had left her hatred and fury and rage in the mountain. And Kire was a god who listened. A cold dread ran through her. How was she here?

“I think the truer question is, what did you do, Jasper Calhoun?”

When Esther turned to look at Jasper, he didn’t avert his gaze but stared back at her, dark eyes like loam.

“I brought you back.”

Fear struck her. The swarm began to mass, and she tightened her hands on the bowl of broth. The implications hung in the air like fog on a cold morning.

“You made another deal,” Esther whispered. Jasper had made a second deal with Kire, for more than just years or worship, the small things that he had traded for the mountain to simply reveal its secrets.

“You were gone for three weeks, Esther,” Jasper said, face open and pleading. “And after a week, people thought you dead, and now Halberd’s moved in.” He rushed forward, words tumbling fast, all the syllables muddied together. “And you were right. Kire near on killed Gresham on spite alone, and when you denied him, Kire dragged you into hell instead.”

Esther was breathing hard. Jasper had made a deal. Jasper had tied himself to something greater and stronger. Jasper had made himself a temple.

“I ain’t want this.”

“None of us wanted this,” Jasper said, squeezing her wrist. “But I needed you back. And so does Kiron, whether or not they know it.”

The cyclone of cicadas above them wasn’t as furious, but it was there, a wait before the water rose. Esther tried again to reach for Kire and felt only a faint shudder. What had really happened in the stone? It was more than being kept, it was more than being watched.

“Open the window,” she said, shaking her head. “Let me get the bugs out of your house.”

Jasper hesitated and Esther caught it. She huffed, annoyed. “You got him here.”

Jasper smiled, a little ruefully, and stood to open the window. Sure enough, as the cicadas started to fly out into the woods, she caught a glimpse of DeWitt’s form on the porch. He startled as the jarflies swarmed, and Esther shot Jasper a piercing look.

“None of that.” Jasper stood up. “The industrialist has had a change of heart.”

Esther wanted to say something biting, but she was in no position to deny help, even if it came from unsavory men. She had dealt with worse before. She finished her second bowl of broth as Jasper went over to let the man into the cabin, and DeWitt at least looked ashamed enough to make Esther feel a little less like cursing him again.

“Good to find you well, Miss Esther,” DeWitt said, holding onto his hat with both hands, looking like a chastened child being caught with something he shouldn’t have touched. Esther, for her part, tried to be gracious.

“You’ve found an appropriate jacket,” she said tightly. She looked down and realized she was wearing one of Jasper’s shirts. Three weeks. And Jasper taking care of her in his own home. This was bordering on a disaster. She closed her eyes, and under her, the foundations shivered. “I’d like to know more about this deal, Jasper.”

“I’d like to tell you to bother me later, but you’re not going nowhere, and I know you won’t stop until you get answers.” Jasper sighed.

Esther stared at him, and DeWitt awkwardly moved around the cabin, finding a seat on a stool amid the wood shavings from Jasper’s last whittling project.

“I spoke with Kire,” Jasper said, leaning against the doorframe. “Went into the shaft and talked long enough to pull you out of the mountain’s wicked grasp.”

“At what cost?”

Jasper held her gaze. “Nothing I wasn’t willing to trade.”

Esther stared. Did he truly think that Kire would treat him better, would love him more than she did? He had done this for her, so why did she feel left behind?

“You fool. You have broken my treaty with the god,” Esther said, voice chipped. She felt her face flush red. “You should have left me there.”

“I couldn’t do that.”

“Why not!”

“Because Halberd has truly come to Kiron,” DeWitt spoke up, coming to Jasper’s defense, his blue eyes big, pale, wide. “You were missing. Kiron miners don’t hold your faith, and after what happened with Gresham, they wanted reassurances. Halberd’s technology and resources mean safer mines, and safer mines means more money.”

Esther shifted and put her head in her hands. This was all her fault. If only she hadn’t opened Kire up when she was a child, if she hadn’t destroyed its sleep, hadn’t tapped its power. She could have been a fine hedge witch, but she had traded parts of her soul before she was even a woman because nobody was there to tell her to stop. Her power outstripped her ambition. And now, all her bonds were broken, she only had the magic left in her well, and Kiron was in danger because of her. All the technology in the world wouldn’t be able to stand up to Kire.

“Kire will come for you, Jas.”

“Aye, well, you’ll be set on Halberd and Kire like a great big dog of war, so it’s a fair exchange,” Jasper said, and even looking away from him, Esther could hear his smile. “And you know I ain’t got much love for here. If I become a drink of flesh for an old spirit, ain’t that gonna be an adventure?”

Esther shifted, trying to move out of bed, but her limbs were still leaden, soaked in silt, a waterlogged beam in a deep current. Her heart ached. Jasper had traded his soul for her body. He didn’t know how tenuous her tie to Kire had become. She still had power, she could still reach and find her fire, but Kire had become something twisted, something dark, something more human than any god should be. Her bargains would not hold. And what would a mountain like this demand of Jasper? Would it be satisfied?

“How long till Halberd sets up proper?” Esther asked DeWitt, trying to ignore the way that Jasper stood apart from her, watching her fight to move off his bed. He didn’t offer to help, and she didn’t know if that was out of pettiness or propriety. She hated it either way.

“Another week or so,” DeWitt said. “But . . .”

“But what?”

“If you can convince the miners, we might be able to delay Halberd’s work into the mountain.” DeWitt’s voice became more confident. “We have two months of funds. If we don’t start working by June, our investors will pull out and shift focus farther south.”

Esther paused. Who knew what the town thought of her now? Who knew what rumors had been turned, what stories told and whispered around a still. Was she a ghost, a witch, or a Neighbor? Was she a daughter of Kiron or Kire? She hesitated. She wanted her snakes, she wanted her flowers, she wanted her herbs, and most of all, she wanted the reassurance of her mountain.

Both men were staring at her. It was hard to read what they wanted in the weight of their eyes, but she knew that they trusted her, that they were willing to choose her over Halberd, her over Kire. They believed in her.

Esther nodded, resolute.

“Aye. We will try. Between us . . .” Esther commanded the mountain; Kiron listened to Jasper; DeWitt could expose Halberd’s hand. “We have all the tools we need.”

She had to try. If only for the sacrifice Jasper had made to bring her back, she had to try, one last time, to placate the leviathan, to protect Kiron without expectation. It was demanded that she protect her home, destroy an industry, and fight with all her power for the people of the highland.

Wasn’t she the Witch of the Ridge, who commanded Dameron to Kimbalton? Wasn’t she the moth-eater, adder-eyes, soul-bound? She was Esther of the Rock, and as she shifted to look out of the window, up at the looming Kire Mountain, she felt something open up within her, as big as a spine, as big as Appalachia herself. Wasn’t she made for this?

x

When Esther stepped into the worshipful Church of the Rock, three weeks after she had pulled Will Gresham from the mountain, the entire congregation stilled like a deer sensing a hunter in the brush. Even the snakes, held in wooden cages at the front of the church, stopped moving, the rattlers frozen in their heel, cottonmouths holding their fangs open, showing off. The notes themselves dropped from the air as Esther, Lazarus of Kiron, appeared, back from the dead.

Silas, leading the psalm, started the verse over again, and Esther did not intervene. She stepped into a back pew and pulled a Bible from the keep, flipping through to the proper page. It was pretense, as she had most of the King James memorized, but it was a good show.

This wasn’t an occasion; Silas didn’t pull out the snakes and preach. They stayed in their cages, a silent threat, the fear of God made real in the small, enclosed space of the Church of the Rock. He ignored her, the impedance in the back of his church, the adder in the cradle. That was fine, Esther thought, going through the motions of the Sunday words. She had made her statement. Besides, all the other folks in the congregation were sneaking their eyes back toward her, were indulging in moments of curiosity in between reverence, and Esther knew that she had them, that she was the power once again in this town, alive, dead, and then risen again.

There was nothing, she had decided, that could kill an Appalachian witch like her.

The service ended, and the congregation filed out, most of them only glancing sidelong at Esther as they left. The witch didn’t mind, standing up and letting their regard pass without remark. She didn’t incline her head as the full mass passed through, and within a few minutes, it was just her and her father in the church.

“Should have stayed dead,” Silas spat, walking through the pews, picking up after his flock. Esther could hear the disappointment in his voice. He would truly love to see her corpse.

Esther brushed down the front of her dress. “Hell ain’t got nothing I haven’t seen before.”

Silas shot her a look that would have withered an apple on the branch.

“You scared them. First in your manner of going, now in coming back.”

Esther frowned. She and Silas were aligned, weren’t they? And holding snakes had never been about keeping folks calm. “We can still turn back Halberd—”

“No.” Silas cut her off, standing in the center of the aisle, staring at her, holding a pair of hymnals in his hands. He looked like any other preacher. He turned away from her and continued to pick up the discarded pamphlets, tucking books into the pew. It was a dismissal, a disappointment.

Esther’s hands clenched. In the back of the church, the rattlers began to shake. Under her feet, centipedes and silver bugs forced their way up through the foundation, a skittering, many-legged battering ram, filing through the cracks and weak joints. This was not her magic. She was a part of Appalachia now.

“Kiron will not be convinced by me. I offer everlasting salvation, and Halberd a different kind of balm,” Silas said. “And they will surely not listen to you.”

Esther stared at her father. He seemed different—not defeated, but resigned. What had happened in the three weeks she had been kept in the stone? “I am the one who grabbed Will Gresham ’round his collar and tore him from the bone,” Esther said, as mice found their way into the church, no wariness of serpents keeping them at bay. “I have come from hell a new witch.”

“Aye, and placed yourself as far from a tolerable Neighbor as any I’ve seen.” Silas turned from her, stepping on the bugs without hesitation, a mouse caught under his heel. Esther’s breath caught in her throat. What was she now?

“I will not give in so easily to evil men,” Esther said, drawing on the last of her righteousness, the last thing she could place against her father’s will. “Nor will I suffer them to corrupt my people.”

“Are they your people if you are not of them?”

Silas was behind the altar of stone, hands on the slab, staring at Esther. She had stepped out into the aisle, and around her feet was a halo of creatures of all sizes, circling her, spreading outward from her power, from her call. A squirrel ran across the pews; a possum trundled in. There was the sound of a woodpecker in the eaves.

Esther wanted to break the church in half. She wanted to turn Silas into a thing with boils, she wanted to bring a tornado down on the mountain, God in the whirlwind.

Her will alone wouldn’t make his words less true.

She turned and stalked out of the church, and the creatures and crawling things ran from her, burrowing back into the woodwork and spire.

The congregation had headed down the mountain toward the meeting place in Kiron. They would be there, even the Greshams, sharing a meal, trading gossip, and Esther knew that hers would be the name out of everyone’s lips.

But she needed the town. What good were all her machinations if she left Kiron unsatisfied? Why would any of this matter if Kiron decided that it had had enough of its witch? There was no point protecting Kire if she didn’t protect Kiron alongside it. There could be harmony here, she was sure of it.

She tucked her hands into her pockets, walking slowly down the mountain, pausing at the last turn before she descended into Kiron. It was a ridge above the town, and from here she could see the small village laid out. It was slightly haphazard, but passing fair. The roads were near enough to straight, and the meeting hall was well-built. Most of the cabins had two or three rooms, many had little plots out back. She knew every family in this town, she knew who worked, who tended children, she knew who had a talent for finding ramps and sang, who had an ear for birds, who could trap even the quickest game. She knew Kiron.

Why didn’t they know her?

As the families went into the meetinghouse, she spotted Jasper and his father holding court as they walked, three or four people following them, heads leaned in to better hear Collum’s low voice. The Calhouns were distinctive, with long strides and clothing that seemed to be tailored rather than mended. It was easy to recognize what a man like DeWitt would find pleasing about him.

Then something drew her eye. A slight shimmer, a brume, and to Esther it looked like there was a second man just behind Jasper, a shadow’s shadow. It was the haze of dust through light, a creature that was formless and following. The dim thing stuttered as Jasper went in the door and then it disappeared, melting like pollen into the air. Kire’s bargain come to collect.

Jasper had paid too high a price to return an unwanted Neighbor to Kiron. It struck her that she would have been better kept in the mountain, where she could hold Kire close forever, allowing Kiron to take what it needed. She had been too selfish and too scared to commit to Kiron before, but a lifetime in the mountain for an age of prosperity in the holler seemed the frustratingly obvious solution now. She should have made this bargain before. Could she make it now, or did Jasper hold Kire closer?

Already, she could feel her well of power dwindling. As long as the shaft was open, her own magic would be more difficult to drag out of the rock.

She made her way down the ridge, walking into Kiron and passing the well on her left. As she did, she whispered encouragement and sweetness, and drew up a new trickle from the old spring, despite the hesitation it took to rise, the toll it had on her. It was always a good idea to be kind to the water.

Pausing in front of the meetinghouse, she stood just to the side of where she had seen Jasper’s shade disappear. There was nothing: no extra footsteps, no scent in the air, no shadows or missing parts of the path. It was as if nothing had been there, and if Esther didn’t know what Jasper had done, she would have assumed it had been a trick of the afternoon light.

“You coming in?”

Esther turned to see Dinah Spencer and her two babes hanging off her skirts, her arms full of a cast iron cauldron that reminded Esther of how hungry she was. It would do her no good to imagine enemies here. Esther nodded. “Let me help.”

She took the cauldron and Dinah shooed the children, no older than six, into the hall. They ran through legs and skirts, searching for their friends inside the smoky room. Esther clutched the food tighter and for a second wished it wasn’t wrapped in cloth, wished it would burn her hands and arms, leave a scar, leave something behind.

“Been a while since you came around,” Dinah said, walking in with her. “The women were getting worried.”

“Naught but rumors of my disappearance,” Esther said softly, looking over the meeting hall, laid out with benches and tables, a row of food in the back. She and Dinah headed there, and the miners, mostly men, shot her sidelong glances, giving her a wide berth. She spotted Will Gresham with his thatch of gold flax hair, and the boy immediately tensed, as if he could feel the weight of her gaze on him. “It’ll take more than a mountain to get rid of me.”

“Well don’t go leaving soon,” Dinah muttered, attempting to keep track of her wild offspring. “I heard darling Cora has a sight on university. Will need a mighty conjure to help her get in.”

Esther set the cauldron down, pushing what smelled like squirrel dumpling stew farther onto the wood. A girl from Kiron going to university. “How’d she even hear about that?”

“Papers are coming in every week now,” Dinah explained. “Cora saw an ad at the back, and it struck her fancy. She penned a few letters, saved up for stamps and everything.”

Esther didn’t know what to think. Was she proud or hurt? She had heard confession from many students, flitting to her on soft wings, but what had they known? What were they doing that was so much better than what there was to do in Kiron?

But she didn’t say any of this. Dinah continued, talking about the recruitment booklet, the application process, which seemed to mostly involve an extended correspondence, and the fact that now Cora had two female colleges to choose from, both right nearby. A place called the Roanoke Female Seminary, another called Augusta, bearing the same title. Esther stood and nodded as Dinah went through all of the notes Cora had gotten, the way they wanted to offer her scholarship, how her writing was so strong that it would be a shame to lose her to a mining town like Kiron, where the most she would be writing was preacher’s sermons for distribution on Tuesday, and ain’t Cora got words of her own?

Dinah was glowing. Cora was near enough to her in age that she saw her as a younger sister of sorts, and it was clear that this was nothing but exciting.

And Esther only felt shame. Was Kiron so bad? Was this place so deep in the backwater that even universities were eager to take pity on them? Learning places coming to snatch their bright young women, industries to take their men, government figuring to take their livelihoods? How long did Kiron have before everyone started looking outward?

Esther was about to excuse herself when Jasper came over and tucked his hand against her elbow.

“You mind if I steal her ’non?” he asked, smiling brilliantly. Dinah shooed them off and smiled conspiratorially at them both. Esther glared at him, but Jasper, for ill or worse, didn’t seem to care at all about his mean witch.

“I’m trying to ingratiate myself into the hearts of the people,” Esther hissed. She pulled her arm away as they walked off. “Ain’t that what we want?”

“I just thought I should warn you before—”

The doors opened, and Esther smelled something awful wafting through, a sourness that cut through woodsmoke and salt pork. It must just be her; nobody else reacted to it. The Halberd miners had come to the meetinghouse, bearing gifts and food. Ochiltree walked behind them, a look on his face that was not unlike that of someone who had stepped in particularly ripe horseshit.

Esther’s eyes widened. Jasper’s hand on her arm tightened.

“Before what, Jas?” Esther’s voice cracked.

Jasper glared at her. “Don’t do nothing.”

“You ain’t got the weight to tell me what to do,” Esther hissed.

“I think this time I do.” Jasper squeezed her elbow, and something warm shot through her. She looked at him with wide eyes, remembering that he had been the one to sever many of her bargains with Kire’s foundation, that he had traded something eternal for her freedom.

She clenched her hands, pressed down the urge to ice out the whole valley, turn spring back to winter, to whither crops and make kairn of rutting stags. The desire to beggar Kiron was deep in her, and she stared at Halberd’s men as they walked through the population.

When the Halberd men had come to the winter contra, she ran. When she went to Hatfield to bargain, she ran. When they came into Kiron, offering safety and solutions after Will had been near killed, she wasn’t there. Halberd had been behind her back for too long. But now she resolved to claim them like Dameron and Khates.

Esther glared at Jasper, the lines of his handsome face drawn down in warning. They looked like lovers in a quarrel. She yanked her arm away. “I will not touch them here.”

“If you wait out in the trees like some vulture—”

“That’s an idea,” Esther nearly growled. “A painter in the dark.”

“Esther.” Jasper’s tone brokered no argument. Esther rolled her eyes and pushed at his hand. He didn’t move away from her, and her eyes flicked over the operation, noting their numbers, comparing them to the Hatfield settlement.

She counted quickly. “Most of ’em are here.” Now was the time to strike; now was the opportunity. But Jasper had a faraway look.

Esther frowned. “Jasper?”

He didn’t move. She turned to see where he was looking, and on the other side of the birchwood window, lit from the inside with a tallow candle, something large and dark shifted. The birch fluttered, as if a creature were breathing on it. Kire’s emissary. Jasper had given himself wholly to the mountain, and it was waiting for him.

“Jas,” Esther hissed, turning him around, forcing him to look away from the window.

He turned, as if in a trance, acting strange, and Esther saw more than a few people staring at them. DeWitt, by Ochiltree; Jasper’s father, Collum; the eldest Benneke sister, who had always had it sweet for Jasper, but never thought to approach. And Silas, his eyes narrowed at the two of them. The high Halberd men were here to make friends, to make fast their position, and she was a distraction.

Jasper’s eyes were far away, and the plan Esther had been fomenting to approach the Hatfield camp like a Moses and liberate Halberd’s investment chain by chain. With the great men of Halberd here, she could make a pit of Hatfield holler, but Jasper’s palm was already turning cold. She wouldn’t sacrifice him to take advantage of Halberd’s lowered gates. To attempt it now would destroy her.

Perhaps this was an opportunity lost, and perhaps she was running away again, but Jasper was her friend, and she would not let him be killed by the mountain. If she was resolved to save Kiron and not Kire, she needed to start somewhere.

She had two months to deal with Halberd, to drive them from hut and stead. Surely there would be other chances to cut the head from the adder. She held onto Jasper’s hand and dragged him from the meeting room, pushing dark instinct aside. She only had right now to save her friend.