The Richmond businessman who came to Kiron in a red riding jacket called himself Julian DeWitt and touted his credentials to anyone in town willing to listen. This was much to the chagrin of the entire population that didn’t have no time to entertain city folk looking for opportunity. He said that he didn’t plan to spend much time in town, which was a small relief, but then asked where he might see the Neighbor.
“He might as well call us clay-eating trash,” Dinah muttered, explaining the situation to Esther as they hung wash. Dinah’s child had come home with a fever, and when he had turned an ashen white, she called down Esther to take a look at him. He had eaten some bad sorrel, and Esther had given him goat milk and a white river stone to suck on. Dinah had been so grateful that she had wrangled Esther into helping with chores.
“Hm,” was all Esther said, wondering how she had allowed herself to be convinced to help Dinah after already healing her bain. “And where he gone now?”
“Down Hatfield way. Said he’d be back.”
Esther huffed. “Men.”
“He’s handsome,” Dinah teased, picking up her empty basket. “See if you find him comely next time he wanders through.”
Esther sighed but didn’t protest. Even now, nearly thirty years after the war, women of all ages were in abundance and men scarce. Of course Dinah’s thoughts would turn to marriage, even as she disparaged DeWitt’s attendance. Esther hung up the last of the laundry and retreated into the wood.
The next day, Esther went into town and hid herself in the morning fog, an easy draw from her well, considering her bargains laid cross by lean along the stones. She was less than a rustle of leaves, more than the light of a storm covering the dawn. Just as Dinah had said, the man came into town, comely as he was rumored, and as desperate as only a handsome man denied could be.
“Please—” DeWitt approached Hera Benneke, who had two children hanging onto her dress. He stepped in front of her, blocking her way. Esther nearly cursed him, but held back, whispering Elijah’s prayer under her breath. “I’m not here to cause harm or even seek out dangerous conversation. I seek only a moment of the Neighbor’s time.”
Hera’s mouth puckered as she rearranged her children, her arms laden with the smaller of the two and a sack of ground-up sorghum.
“She in the wood.” She stared flatly at the man. “You want to find her? She must be keen to find you first.”
“How do I make that happen?” he asked, and he looked so clean and sweet that Hera must have felt sorry for him. Neighbors were typically in town. Esther felt a little bad for Hera. It wasn’t his fault that Esther had chosen to eschew tradition for her own pride. Hera sighed, annoyed, and gestured with her chin toward the winding road that led to the miner’s camp, and farther up, the church.
“No way to do so but to go to the wood and wander.”
DeWitt looked confused, and, as if confirming his age, his naïveté, asked, “What if I get lost?”
“Then she might cast her eye ’pon you,” Hera said shortly, pulling her child away. “Bring a blanket.”
He stared at the road and then turned to look at the woods that surrounded them. This was Appalachia, full of oak and hemlock, a lost land that no pioneer had ever truly claimed. Esther knew well the fear he must have felt at the thought of wandering into the vast mountain land.
Esther was grateful he had run into the womenfolk and not the men. The women all spoke to her. The only man she conversed with regular was Jasper Calhoun, and he would have loved to personally introduce this fool to Kiron’s Neighbor.
She left in an orchestra of crickets, going to her cabin in the woods. She would see what this DeWitt was made of.
Hours later, while she was out foraging mushrooms, she found him, his city-shoes scuffed and shoulders hunched, curled up against an old oak tree at the edge of dusk.
“Ach, wanderer,” she said, kicking his ankle and causing him to start, “you’re near enough to trespassing to cause offense.”
“Are you the Neighbor?” DeWitt asked, leaning against the oak to stand, his skin so white it was near blue, like ice on the edge of a well’s bucket. Esther near felt sorry for him, sad little idiot.
“I am,” she said, smiling a little. She was dressed simply and cleanly, her dark green bodice mismatched to her black skirt, but all the cloth was pinned neatly, and she had sewn it all with some skill. She knew that she seemed a child, and could tell that DeWitt was already trying to figure out whether she could be the far-spoken-of Neighbor of Kiron—all of twenty-eight and younger looking for her height and frame, affected by lean years when she was young.
She smiled, nearly flirtatious. DeWitt blinked, clearly confused.
“I’m afraid I’m quite out of sorts, Miss Neighbor.” His eyes were huge, blue as a jay’s wing.
Did he suspect her a Nimüe, meant to lure him into some dark cave? This cunning was mostly for her own estimation, to get the measure of a man who came from the capital and would dare to walk right into her hold, unarmed, practically crawling. What a fool.
“You should follow me,” she muttered, “and consider yourself lucky I’m yearning to know what you’re doing in these woods.” She turned away from him, walking along a path that would only reveal itself once she began to travel it. “So far from home and hearth.”
“You are the Neighbor,” he repeated with a note of wonder.
“I do not lie,” she called over her shoulder, the path closing behind her. “Best keep up, Master Wanderer.”
x
DeWitt followed obediently. Well, Esther thought, that was something for him, at least. He stayed silent until they arrived at the two-room cabin that Esther had made her home.
“What’s your name?” he asked, sitting awkwardly on the bench near the hearth.
“Kiron calls me daughter,” she said, stoking up the fire. “My name is Esther.”
“My name is Julian DeWitt,” he offered.
She knew this, but he was being polite, so she just smiled and continued to tend the fire. Esther had been out gathering herbs when she had heard him sighing against the old basswood, the message delivered on a sparrow-kite’s wings. She had given up on the fool, almost hoping that he had turned back to wherever he had come from.
There wasn’t much in the forest that could surprise her, and, although unexpected, the city-bred DeWitt was no exception; he was simply more clean-shaven and handsome than the last city-bred fool.
She heard him shuffle behind her, could practically hear the questions bubbling up. She kept her laughter down and glanced over her shoulder. “Speak your piece, DeWitt. We both know you weren’t taking a constitutional.”
“I need a dowser,” he said, watching her with those watery blue eyes. He pulled his blanket tighter around his shoulders, sitting a fair bit away from her fire, despite the August chill. “The best.”
“Aye, well that’s the least of my services.” She stepped away from her counter and looked over the man. “But you aren’t from here, and neither are you looking to lay up a home.”
“I’m here as part of Halberd—”
“Then you’ll be leaving soon,” she interrupted. “I ain’t helping Halberd Ore.”
DeWitt was silent then. She stayed quiet, too, standing on the edge of her kitchen, her hands under her apron, dug into her sewn-on bags that served as pockets. The fire crackled as it caught the birchwood spark. The smell of sorghum drippings popping in the hearth wafted through the air, and DeWitt swallowed.
“I have money,” he offered.
“I have no need for money,” Esther said. “I live here, and here my word is coin enough.”
“Everyone needs money,” DeWitt insisted, smiling a little as if talking down to her, as if condescending to the poor backwater mountain girl that didn’t consider money and a paved floor important. “How do you buy clothes or tools? Your knife? I know you can’t make that yourself, no matter how skilled you are.”
Esther eyed him carefully, measuring him up. On second blush, he wasn’t appearing to put on airs around her. He was either sincere or very stupid.
“I trade for it, a more honest way than Richmond deals in livelihood.” Her voice was even, but even she knew the iron would ring out. “And you, DeWitt, don’t have nothin’ I’m keen to own.”
“What about this land?” He was persistent, but it wasn’t comely. “We can make a deal for some surface property rights.”
“I don’t need that, either,” Esther said slowly. She paused, then turned away from her fire to stare at DeWitt. “Halberd has acquired mineral rights to the range.”
As she spoke, she felt the truth of it echo in her cabin. It was an accusation, and such oaths hold power. The wind paused; the flames stopped eating at the wood. In her bones, she felt it, the industry to the north, starting their proud march south and eating the poorest parts of the east coast. There weren’t no stopping it, nothing could deter that continental shift. Some folks, Esther knew, deserved worse than this.
Outside, a stag knocked its tines against a tree, ripping the velvet from its antlers. DeWitt started and tried to turn to look out the window. Esther didn’t offer a word of comfort. Bargains made, unmade.
“It’s getting late, Master DeWitt.” Esther turned away. She held a conjure bone in her hand. It didn’t look like anything but a rabbit’s leg, tied up with birch paper and painted with charcoal to make it black. “You best be heading back to Kiron.”
“Miss Esther, please.” DeWitt’s eyes became wide again, and Esther wondered if he practiced this doe-eyed simper or if it just came natural to lowland folk. “I don’t know the way and can’t possibly hope to find it. I came here to secure a good stead for the company town, to help improve Kiron! To bring wealth to the people here! To recover after the war.”
He believed what he was saying, but he didn’t know what he was promising. She looked at him and knew that his wealth had only happened in the past fifty years, with the rise of industry in Massachusetts, with the evil of factory work, with the pressing of young women into machinery, with the blood of the poor coating his hands and staining his jacket. She hated what he wanted. She hated what was coming, what his star made herald.
The mountain Kire was older and stronger than industry. There would be no hesitation when a Halberd bit caught at one of Kire’s nerves. The mountain bore the hands of Kiron’s miners; it would not suffer the machines of Northern men.
“Are you a faithful man?” Esther asked. She walked to DeWitt, opening the door and gesturing for him to leave. He seemed to recover some of his wits, at least enough to stand and walk out onto the porch. “Do you know the Psalms?”
Outside, Esther stood next to him, shutting the door behind her, not caring to hear his answer. Surrounding her small cabin were three bucks, each of them at least six points each, all of them shedding bloody velvet, strips of skin hanging from their crowns. Blood ran down their faces; one was even chewing on a scrap of skin hanging off its crowning bones.
DeWitt went still next to her. City folk never knew what to make of the world.
“Don’t worry none,” she said. “I’ll shorten it for you, so you can keep it in your head. I’m sure that’ll be tough seein’ as there’s so much learning in there.”
“What are you doing?” He turned to her, wide-eyed, shoulders shaking. “What witchcraft?”
Esther began. “Hear this, all ye people; Both low and high, rich and poor, together. I will open my dark saying upon the harp.”
The stags stepped back and lowered their bloody heads. Esther walked around DeWitt and put a hand in between his shoulders, and he walked forward, compelled. His mouth wouldn’t be sewn shut, but he would be silent during his contemplative walk back to Kiron. She pushed down anger and became righteous.
“Wherefore should I fear in the days of evil, when the iniquity of my heels shall compass me about? They that trust in their wealth, and boast themselves in the multitude of their riches,” Esther incanted. With the declamation, the ancient words echoed around her, and they remembered. The stags turned and began to escort the silent, shuddering DeWitt down the mountain; one ahead, two on either side. She walked behind him, reciting the psalm dutifully.
Around her, the mountain watched. The wind ceased and out of the grove, moths began to follow her, a wedding train out of silken, silent wings. The night had well fallen, and the chill came up fast. She could see DeWitt’s breath misting under the moonlight.
“Like sheep they are laid in the grave; death shall feed on them. Yea, the upright shall have dominion over them in the dawn-light.”
One of the stags shifted and left a strip of bloody velvet over DeWitt’s shoulder as they marched. Esther stopped at the edge of the birch. He looked back, and she knew what he would see: a strange witch of the unmade stone, surrounded by moths and blue jays in a winding upward tornado around her. A woman with two snakes at her feet and great stags at her beckon.
“Please!” He fought through the conjure, turning back to her, eyes wide. “We want to help you! Halberd plans to build Kiron up into a grand city! A gateway through the Appalachians—”
Esther held out the hand that clutched the bone. Around the charcoal-covered bone grew flesh and tendon, until she held a black hare in her hand, its eyes as glowing embers, flickering like a soul. She would make sure Appalachia shut out Northern men. There would be no gate, no hinge, nothing but tor and holler.
“Be not thou afraid when one is made rich,” she recited. Her power writhed in her palm, and the stags lowered their heads, trapping DeWitt between their sharp tines, in a boned and bloody cage. He deserved this unkindness for darkening her doorstep. “For when he dieth, he shall carry nothing away. He shall go to the generation of his fathers; and they shall never see light.”
She put the night-hare on the ground, and it ran toward DeWitt. It jumped and entered his chest, a dark stain like smoke across his heart. It happened too fast for him to flinch, much less run. He pressed his hand to his body, looking up at Esther, panic flickering over his expression. Esther smiled.
The moths around her fluttered selah.
And then she disappeared from his sight and went back to her cabin, snakes trailing at her feet.
DeWitt would make it back down the mountain, at least as long as he followed the stags nicely and didn’t try to run. Halberd would be coming to Kiron, but they wouldn’t be coming to a hillbilly town that would invite them in with open arms at a promise of coin and fancy dresses. Halberd would be facing down a mad witch and her mountain, and there weren’t no industry that could prepare their operatives for her.
She held her hand out. A few moths landed, and she brought them to her mouth, whispering passage, before they, too, disappeared, sending a warning to their long-dead kin.