The Story Keeper (30 page)

By what means could he explain that this journey, this year in the untamed wilderness, even possessed of ill-fated twists and the struggle for survival, was a holy experience he desired to document? Upon the passing of yet another decade, the Appalachian highlands and foothills would doubtless find themselves crossed by railroad throughways and dotted by mill towns not unlike the settlement Hudson had been retained to create. The world was changing.

“I was writing to my family just now,” he replied obtusely. “So that it might seem as if they are not so far away. I know how very much they treasure receiving word and enjoy hearing of the things I’ve seen and experienced here
 
—particularly my sister Lucinda. I think she will be an adventurer herself, when she is grown.” He was again reminded that Sarra, this silver-eyed girl of the highlands, was Lucinda’s contemporary in age, if not position. Spare past sixteen.

She was little more than a girl, yet alone in the world and faced with incomprehensible and cruel circumstances. He hoped to secure for her a suitable safekeeping before his departure, the difficulty being that he possessed no concept of the manner in which such a thing might take shape. The possibilities for a girl
of Melungeon blood were slim, and the obfuscations were many, particularly as Sarra had no family to see after her.

Then did she avert her eyes from him, giving him to wonder at her emotions. “You’re missin’ them a passel.” ’Twas a statement rather than a question, her voice cracking. The delicate line of her jaw firmed with resolve. In the firelight, she was lovely as a master’s work of art, her skin a soft, burnished hue, the long, thick curls of her hair falling black as midnight along her shoulder as she turned to her mending again.

Randolph watched her in consternation. Perhaps she had suspected his thoughts, or perhaps his mention of family had awakened her memories of her Cherokee grandmother in Tennessee.

“Yes. I do miss them. With Christmas drawing near, I cannot help myself, knowing that they will gather together for the holiday
 
—all of them around the table. There will be laughing and telling of fine stories
 
—and my space there will remain empty.” He imagined this as he spoke, and a twinge of homesickness pricked him, as sharp and afflicting as a witch’s needle in a child’s fairy story. “Do you know of Christmas, Sarra?”

“Don’t ever’body?” She cast a queer look his way
 
—half smile, half frown. “Many’s a time Gran-dey’d read us the tale from the Book. Is it Christmas now?”

“Not now, but soon.” He reclined in his chair, sipped Bonnie’s wild wintergreen tea, for which he’d advanced an affinity these weeks, and told Sarra of Christmas in Charleston, his words conjuring the ships in harbor, the chimes of St. Michael’s and St. Philip’s, the floating lanterns released to the tide by
children, and the deep, melodious songs of the Gullah women as they worked. “Not a holiday in all the world is the like of Christmas in the Holy City by the sea.”

A thought seized him then. He sketched a rough representation of the town skyline, crowned with its beautiful steeples, and displayed this for Sarra’s viewing while explaining each of the buildings in its size, shape, and purpose. He imagined that he would one day present the city to her, with its stately old churches and the fine homes of a gentler time standing guard against the sea. He would walk with Sarra along the Battery and bring her to the harbor to view the tall ships there. He envisioned her naive observation of both the magnificent and the ordinary of that place he loved.

What would be her thoughts in those fine, first moments?

As quickly as the pondering arrived, he banished it, feeling shamed by the notion and the flight of fancy it implied. There remained no place in Charleston for a girl of mixed blood like Sarra, nor would such a place exist within his lifetime. Never would tolerance of her be had in polite society. Not abovestairs, and even the women in his mother’s kitchen would not permit her company. Some wealthy man would undoubtedly soon take her to mistress, lured by her exotic beauty, yet ashamed of what she was.

Charleston had nothing to offer to this highland girl, nor did he. To allow the dwelling of his mind on this even momentarily presented a disservice to Sarra and to himself, but most especially to his family.

Yet, just today, as he had wandered along the creek, he had sat long beneath an oak, gazed upon ice-glazed waters, and touched the bark-bare space on a tree trunk where he had carved Sarra’s name. He had fancied that she might delight in seeing her name preserved in letter form, but he’d not shown the etching to her. He lacked the courage.

Still, there remained this and other myriad wonders he yearned to share with her. So very much of the world, but all was certainly as reckless a dream as the image of their strolling the streets of Charleston in polite company. Though by reason he knew this, some other force within him would not cease its cursed imaginings.

Her eyes widened with the brightness of polished coin. She’d halted her mending to listen. “Aginisi give me tales a the sea folk. Her mama’s people come a that place.” She slipped the bone necklace from beneath her blouse, held it reverently, allowing him to see. “This come a them, long time back. Come over the water as they come.”

“Aginisi? Your grandmother gave you this?” His curiosity piqued now, he leaned closer but did not rise and move to her, so fragile seemed the moment that he wished not to disturb it. He had often wondered after the necklace and the meaning of the odd mixture of totems there. “I had assumed she was of these mountains
 
—a Cherokee.”

Sarra considered this. “Our folk come a many places, Aginisi told it. She give me the tale a the sea folk, but the tale a the mountain folk too. Both of them’s in her blood, so she give me
stories from one and stories from t’other. Said it was fer me to keep them stories safe. ‘Sarra,’ she says many a time, ‘all things a flesh and blood pass, but stories is the one part goes on here’n this world. You ken the stories, and when I’m shed a this place, then it’ll be you who’s the story keeper.’”

The flesh dimpled on Rand’s neck, curiosity pulling him nearer as he sat watching her.

“You hopin’ to hear my stories?” She contemplated him then in a way that seemed to pierce him through, riveting him in place.

“Yes, Sarra, I am.”

“I’ll tell first the tale a the Cherokee and how the mountains was made for them.”

“I’d like that very much.” He turned the page in his journal, intending to record the folk legend as she spoke.

“It come long time ago, when all the lands was flat. The Great Buzzard, the father of all the buzzards that’s livin’ now, or ever did draw breath, flew hisself over all the whole, wide land.” Her long, slim fingers outstretched and drew a gentle arc in the air, caressing imaginary vistas. “When the Great Buzzard come a Cherokee country, he was powerful tired by then. His wings begun flappin’ slow and strikin’ the ground as he’s sinkin’. In all the places they hit down hard, there come a valley, and where they’s swep’ up again, up come a mountain.”

By the firelight, she drew the mountain for him to see, mirth creasing the corners of her eyes as if she relished his breathless regard of her. “When all the animals above seen what’d
happent, they’s afraid the whole world’d come a be mountains, so they called back the Great Buzzard, but the Cherokee country, where he a’ready been, it’s full a mountains to this day.” Her lips curved upward as she completed the story, and he found himself reclining languidly in his chair, smiling along with her.

“’Tis a fine tale,” he told her. “And this is the means by which the world has come to be as it is, on the wings of a buzzard, of all things?”

“’Tis a fine tale,” she agreed, mimicking almost exactly the intonation and measure with which he’d said the words. “But in the beginnin’, Father God made the heaven and the earth. Folk learnt of it long ago from the ones that come over the sea. They come in a canoe big’s a cabin, all the way from a fer-off yander place. Place like that one you done made in yer book, I reckon.”

His mind scrambled to comprehend. “Sailors, then? There were seamen who came to these mountains and brought their religion?” He’d heard occasionally of generations-old Creole races descended from shipwrecked sailors, slaves, and native peoples. Perhaps even the progeny of Sir Walter Raleigh’s ill-fated lost colony on Roanoke Island had journeyed here. Given what Ira Nelson had told him of Melungeons
 
—neither black nor white nor Indian
 
—her story of the sea people touched upon the fascinating possibility that Sarra herself could be descended of ancient mariners who’d arrived upon these shores long before the famed founding of Jamestown.

He observed again her fingering of the beads around her neck. “Tell me more of the necklace you wear.”

“It come from the sea people, long time back.”

“And it is an item of worship? I have seen you performing some form of rituals with it.”

“It’s for prayin’,” she corrected.

“Does your box answer the prayers? Does it have special powers?” For some time, he had desired to come to this discussion with her
 
—to give her a correctness of faith and leave her with an unblemished understanding of the teachings of the holy church. If he could offer nothing more to her, he could offer this singular, and most vital, bit of instruction.

She worried her lip between her teeth, laid the necklace against her chest, and returned to her mending. “That there buildin’ got itself powers? You pray to it?” A backhanded motion signified his sketch.

He drew away, shocked and most greatly appalled! “Why, no, of course not! A proper Christian does not pray to
things
, Sarra. A proper Christian prays to the One Most High. The church building is a house of God, a place we go to be close to him.” How could she possibly understand such a thing, never having seen worship, entered a cathedral, or been schooled in the catechisms?

“Mayhap he’s here, too.” She traced the box’s etched cross with her fingertip, then made the same motion over her heart. “And here. Mayhap he’s near in all places.” Her regard rose from the mending. “Who was it formed the mountain and made the wind and the dark a mornin’?”

For, lo, he that formeth the mountains, and createth the
wind, and declareth unto man what is his thought, that maketh the morning darkness, and treadeth upon the high places of the earth, the Lord, the God of hosts, is his name.
The Scripture, among many written in the forward pages of his grandfather’s Bible, murmured among his thoughts, quickly eclipsing all others, and found him unprepared, so as to cause him only to stare mutely into her.

And treadeth upon the high places of the earth . . .

He knew this Scripture well, yet he himself had fretted greatly in recent weeks that, were he to perish here, far from a proper church, he might not be found fit to enter in the gates of heaven. This quite uncomfortably implied that he feared God had not walked with him into the wilderness.

In an instant of dawning understanding, the truth came upon him quite clearly. Indeed, faith was not a matter of routines and external trappings. Faith was a thing in the way of blood, breath, and sinew
 
—an essential part of the man, and as such it traveled with the man.

This place, this wilderness, was not a place apart from God, for in all the world, there could not be such a place. All existed by God and was God’s own. The heavenly Father was neither farther nor closer here, but as near as the thoughts and fears and hopes cast to him. As near as the focus and condition of Randolph’s own heart.

It troubled him to imagine what his family would say of this conclusion, this new understanding of his. It troubled him to consider what they would say of Sarra and her prayer necklace,
which was in essence no different from the cross he carried in his pocket.

“Our Lord has made all things, Sarra,” he said simply, and she returned to her mending and he to his journal to sketch the profile of her alongside the fire and ponder his own thoughts.

With startling clarity as he withdrew to himself, he was given to understand that a great portion of his very being would be left behind when he returned to Charleston. The deepest measures, the corners of the soul he was only beginning to understand, would remain here in the Blue Ridge.

Abandoned would be the portion that thrilled at each sight of this wild country. The part that was slowly coming
 
—though he understood the impossibility of it
 
—to love Sarra.

Yet behind him remained his family, his life by the sea, and that he verily treasured as well. The thought of not watching his sisters grow, of never again wiling away long afternoons on the piazza of La Belle or hearing the songs of the kitchen women drift from belowstairs or feeling his mother’s tender kiss brush against his cheek could not be borne by him.

His family and La Belle had been his heart long before he knew of this far country, long before he looked into Sarra’s face and found himself captured by her. He had given his word to return to Charleston at the closing of the coming summer. To dishonor that vow would be to shatter the hearts of his mother, his grandmother, his sisters. To disappoint the hopes of his dead father and the esteemed Champlain lineage.

As the lone son, it was for him to carry on the family name.
To be the father of children who would be doted upon in the grand halls of La Belle, and who would someday have the place as their inheritance.

Sarra’s children could not fill the halls of La Belle. Indeed, they would not even be welcomed there.

It was not in him to disappoint the understood obligations and long-held hopes that now, as always, rested squarely upon his shoulders.

Chapter 25

T
he first ring shattered the silence in the cabin and propelled me from sleep, the break coming too hard and fast, too unexpectedly. A pulse thrummed in my throat against a sudden intake of air.

Outside, the storm had faded into silence. Sometime after I’d finished reading, rereading, and analyzing the new chapter, then surrendered to the pull of heavy eyelids, the thunder had died, a hush replacing it. The air seeping around the loft window smelled frosty and cool. An oddly vulnerable feeling clung to me, seeming to hang like a mist in the cabin. Maybe it was just the tattered remnants of the family discussion at the birthday party or the reality of another mysterious delivery, this one clearly from a different author, but something didn’t feel right.

I picked up the phone, checked the time. Only 9:50. I’d been in bed less than an hour, but it seemed like longer. The number on the screen was local
 
—not one I recognized.

My thumb hovered over the button and I moved to the window. A light snow had started to fall. Cotton-soft flakes sifted downward in the porch light, quickly melting on the wet ground.

The phone rang again, demanding attention.

“Hello?”

A hum of static answered, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was there. I heard breathing, I thought.

“Hello?”

The faint sound of a sniffle. Someone female. Maybe a misdial? Or could it be Hannah? How would she know my number? I’d left my card with Evan. Maybe it was sitting around his house somewhere.

“Hannah? Is that you?”

“No . . .” The voice was barely audible, thick with tears. “I’m . . .” A stifled sob, and then, “I’m s-sorry. I di
 
—I didn’t . . . I shouldn’ bother you, Jennia Beth. I . . . I didn’t know who else to . . . to . . .”

“Lily Clarette?” My thoughts ran in two completely opposite directions, like a river splitting around a logjam, a whirlpool of indecision forming at the obstruction. Had something terrible happened, or had she just worked up the courage to finish our conversation?

Another stifled sob. “I’m at . . . at the Algers store, b-but they’re closin’. I h-hadn’t got anyplace . . . to . . . N-n- . . . never mind. I . . .”

“I’m coming. Listen, Lily Clarette, do you hear me? I’m coming. You stay right there.” I combed through memories, dredging up roads, locations, directions. “The Algers in Towash, across from the old depot?” What was she doing in a grocery store at nearly ten o’clock at night, calling me? “Are you okay? What happened?” I was already moving around the loft, grabbing jeans and
a sweatshirt as Lily Clarette disintegrated into a whimper on the other end of the line.

“Hurry, Jennia Beth. Ohhh, hur-hurry. If Craig comes ’n’ finds me . . .”

“Lily Clarette, what’s going
on
?” A shiver rattled my body as I struggled to change clothes one-handed. “Tell me what happened.”

“Just come . . . okay?”

“It’ll take me a while to get there. If Craig shows up, you tell him you’re not leaving, do you hear me? If he comes, you call the police if you need to. Lily Clarette? Lily . . . are you there?”

She was gone. I redialed the number, but no one answered.

Friday was on alert as I hurried down the ladder and to the entryway, cramming my arms into my jacket and my feet into wet boots. The latch felt frosty against my fingers.

“You stay here,” I told Friday, and he stopped as I opened the door. His forehead furrowed over his bug eyes as if he sensed that something dire had happened.

“It’s okay. It’ll be okay.” I hoped that was true. The weather here varied from mountain to mountain and bald to gap. I had no idea what the conditions might be between Looking Glass Lake and Towash, how long it would take me to make the trip, or what might be waiting when I arrived. Around the cabin, the snowfall was incongruously quiet and peaceful, but as I ran uphill to the road, the wind cut in, its bite pressing through my jacket and jeans.

Ice had formed a glittery sugar crust over the mailbox and the car door. Teeth chattering, I cracked the seal, slid into the seat, and shut the cold outside. Winding along the cabin road, the car wobbled like a ship at sea, caught broadside by gusts that seemed determined to prevent it from traveling onward.

The wind intensified as I turned onto the highway, flakes flying toward the headlights as if the car were a vortex pulling them in, then casting them loose. Heavy-laden branches hung low over the road, narrowing the curves and obscuring the view of cabins and homes, making the three-mile drive to town seem strangely desolate.

Looking Glass Gap lay quiet and peaceful, the stores dark, a few white-tinged cars parked along the main street. No sign of Time Shifters fans or anyone else. Beyond the shelter of the buildings, the storm picked up again, the wind whipping around curves and outcroppings of rock, slapping the car like a child playing fitfully with a toy.

Halfway to Towash, I tried the number Lily Clarette had left on my phone. Again, no answer.

“Just wait for me.” Somewhere deep within, I hoped that the unseen bond of sisters could carry the words across miles of cold stone peaks and wind-whispered hollows. “Please wait.”

What had happened to Lily Clarette since I’d left the party? Had she decided to run? Would my father or Craig come after her if she did? What would they do to her if they found her?

The questions cycled over and over, keeping time with the wipers, always unanswered.

In Towash, a covering of white had settled over the ditches and framed the tiny rain rivers along the roadsides. Algers grocery store lay shrouded in shadow when I arrived, only the security lights and the old neons burning, the parking lot empty. Cruising past the front windows, I felt my heart clench. No one there. Had Craig already come?

Had Lily Clarette decided to go home with him after all? Had she been forced to?

Cool pinpricks touched my skin as I exited the car, hurried
to the glass, leaned close to block the reflected light. Even from outside the doors, the place held familiar scents. Stillness, dead crickets piled in hidden corners, ceiling tiles slowly turning to dust, salvage groceries, borax powder sprinkled to keep the roaches away.

No sign of my sister.

Where could she have gone? Had she started walking when the store closed? In which direction? It was too cold to be out tonight.

A movement near the corner of the building stopped me. Squinting against the flickering neon, I made out the faintest hint of a face. Gooseflesh raced over my arms, a prickling sense of uncertainty.

“Lily Clarette?”

She emerged slowly, ghostly pale, her arms wrapped around her midsection, her body curled inward. She was shivering, wearing only the dress, shoes, and sweat jacket she’d had on at the party. A fine layer of snow had settled over her dark hair like a veil.

“Oh, honey, you’re freezing. What are you doing out here?” I opened my arms, and she came to me one step at a time, uncertain at first, then running, finally hitting me with such force that she knocked me back a step. I wrapped myself around my sister, breathed in the cold, snowy scent of her. “Why didn’t you let them know you needed to wait inside?”

“They had to
close
.” Her voice was hoarse with tears.

“You should have told them you needed help.”

“I couldn’t,” she whispered, and I understood the unspoken truth. It would never have occurred to her to protest leaving the store when she was told it was closing. The women of Lane’s Hill were always silent and obedient.

“I was afraid you wouldn’t come.” She shivered violently.

“Of course I came.” I stroked her hair, the warmth of my hand turning frost into moisture. “I’ll always come, Lily Clarette.” It was such a strange thing to say, so inaccurate. All these years, I hadn’t been here. I hadn’t done anything to change her life, to help her.

Now, holding her in my arms, I remembered the day Mama had birthed her at home, only a midwife from the church there to help. I’d looked at that downy-haired baby girl in the cradle, and in some way, I had resented her very presence in the world. There was already so little to go around.

How could I ever have thought of my sister that way?

“Come on, let’s get in where it’s warm.” I guided her toward the car. Right now, we needed to leave Towash behind, to be somewhere sheltered and safe so that I could find out what had happened.

But in the car, she closed her eyes and turned her head toward the window, her body huddled, her thin shoulders shaking. I cranked the heater, restrained myself from asking any questions. She needed time to settle and cut the chill. I needed to focus on the driving. The temperature outside was dropping by the minute, the road turning dangerous, the layer of moisture beginning to freeze.

Before we reached Looking Glass Lake, we’d passed two vehicles in the ditch. I should’ve stopped to help, but I didn’t. A jacked-up four-wheel-drive truck was following closely behind us. Wild scenarios as to who might be in it nipped at my heels, dredging up the night I’d left Lane’s Hill without telling anyone, barely eighteen years old, terrified as I stole down Honey Creek under the light of a summer moon, grocery bags full of belongings clutched in my arms.

Every rustle in the woods stole my breath. I was certain I’d been found out
 
—that my father or the Brethren Saints had come after me. Lane’s Hill didn’t give up its own without a fight. Rather than being proud of me for getting the scholarship to Clemson with Wilda’s help, my father had called me to repentance, citing the lies and deceit that had gone into the application process. I had dishonored him and, like my mother, made plans to flee into the sin of the world. I’d been threatened with a caning before the church, and I had meekly complied with the order to repent, all the while tasting the bile of it in my throat, feeling the bitterness grow and harden in me. I knew I was leaving
 
—my plans with Wilda had already been made
 
—and I was counting down the days. My father never would’ve known about it at all if the high school guidance counselor hadn’t sent a scholarship letter home via Marah Diane.

Now, here sat Lily Clarette, seemingly in much the same position. My father and Lane’s Hill had her by the throat.

But this time I was an adult, and I was ready for the fight.

The pickup truck passed by as I pulled onto the cabin road. Watching it go, I caught a breath of relief. No one in my family knew where I was staying. They wouldn’t find us here. I hoped. If they canvassed the area around Looking Glass Gap, would they see my rental car parked on the patch of gravel by the mailbox? Would they recognize it? I didn’t dare pull down to the cabin. We’d never get out in the morning . . . and I was taking Lily Clarette from here in the morning. Straight to Charlotte and then home to New York, where none of these people could touch us.

“We’ll have to walk down. The driveway isn’t good.”

Lily Clarette nodded, still quaking, the dampness clinging to her hair and clothes as she reached for the car door.

“Here, take my coat.” I moved to slip it off as a gust swept through the open door.

“No, I’m fine.” She climbed from the car, huddled over, and waited, then curled close to my side as we made our way down the driveway. Near the horizon, the moon found a slice of cloudless sky. Its glow silvered the new coating of snow and the surface of the lake, painting a scene that seemed strangely peaceful after we reached the shelter of the trees.

“It’s pretty here,” Lily Clarette offered as we stepped onto the porch. She seemed embarrassed, uncertain of where our conversation should go now. Perhaps the gravity of it all had hit her. She glanced over her shoulder toward the driveway, seeming to reconsider things while I unlocked the cabin door.

“Don’t worry. You’re safe now. Nobody knows where I’m staying.” Touching her shoulder, I attempted to guide her across the threshold, but she winced away. I realized she wasn’t just holding her arm because she was cold; she was protecting it.

“Did Craig do that? Does he hit you?”

She stood shivering, scanning the cabin’s interior as I closed and latched the door. On the chair across the room, Friday awakened and stretched, giving our visitor a quick appraisal.

“Lily Clarette, did
Craig
do that to you?”

Her head hung forward as she sank to the sofa, balancing on the edge, hands clasped in her lap.

Shrugging off my coat, I sat beside her, smoothed away the strands of loose hair matted to her cheek. Was the mark there a shadow or a bruise?

“He never has before, really.”

“What do you mean,
really
?”

“Nothin’ like this.” Her body rattled, the quaking traveling from head to toe. She needed some dry clothes and a blanket.
Something warm to drink. But I was afraid to move, afraid that when she really thought about all this, she’d pull away.

“But he’s been physical with you before?”

“Not in a bad way. Nothin’ that . . .” Her gaze searched the floor as if she were looking for answers there, trying to make sense of it all. But none of this made sense.

“Lily Clarette, it’s
not
okay. He shouldn’t be hurting you. Not for any reason.”

“It’s the job of the husband to rule over his wife. It’s in Scripture. He’s worried about me. Worried about the things I’m thinkin’ sometimes.”

I felt sick, not only physically, but heartsick somewhere deep in my soul. Was this what my sisters’ marriages were like? Was this why Marah Diane was so angry all the time and why Evie Christine seemed afraid to even come near me? “There’s nothing in Scripture that says it’s okay for a man to beat up someone who’s smaller and weaker than he is. And Craig isn’t your husband, either.”

“He’s gonna be.”

“Why?” I couldn’t stand this. The idea of this bright, beautiful girl, my sister, being forced into this kind of future was wrong in every possible way. How could she be sitting here with bruises, still thinking about it? Still unable to let go?

“Daddy wants it. Daddy says it’s a good match. Everybody in the Brethren Saints thinks it’s a good match.”