Foretold (2 page)

Catherine was the last, and some would say the least. They called her Pippin for being small as an apple seed. Hazard Root the Younger, whose phantom she was desperate
not
to see, had threatened once to put her in his pocket like a newt, and she said if he tried it she’d sting him like a scorpion, which was no idle threat. Pippin was small, but she was no newt, and she had troubled herself to learn witching from Nasty Mary before the old lady turned owl and swooped off in the night. Or at least, Pippin
said
she had, and she said it in this glittering-eyed way that made even the big boys wary of her.

But not Matty, oh never. Witch she was or witch she wasn’t, he knew he’d nothing to fear from Pippin.

She didn’t have bosoms like hummocks, and she couldn’t pick apples without a ladder, but her face was the shape of a little heart and her shoulders were set and straight, and her laugh could make its way from one side of the orchard to the other, shivering leaves and spinning blossoms as it went.

Not that her life was spilling with laughter, sad to say. Her mother had died birthing her—so sudden she hadn’t even had time to turn creature, and this was a bruise on Pippin’s heart. She could almost have stood it, she’d think, tending her garden all alone, if that kestrel on the branch could
have been her mam watching over her. She’d try and pretend it, just for the feel of company, but it was no good. Nasty Mary had told her in no uncertain terms that the blood had been like a river, and Pippin like a little otter slipping out on it, and just like that, her mam was gone and really truly-and-forever gone.

Her da never married again, so theirs was a quiet home, but the Blackgrace house was near, and she could always go there for a fill-up of elbows and clamor. Sometimes she even got to be part of a sticky kid-pile and fall asleep with all the others, cocoa on her breath and the fiddle floating in at her ears, her and Matty both in the tangle someplace—maybe that was his hand and maybe it wasn’t, but it was enough that it
might
be.

That was done with now, of course. He and she were nearly grown and no longer kids to be tangling together like kittens! And sure she knew that wasn’t the kind of arm-and-leg tangle that she was supposed to wish for now she was nearly a woman, but she missed it just the same. Woman or girl or in between, Pippin was lonesome, and when she dreamed of the end of being lonesome it was Matty’s face she saw, and that was all there was to it.

“Remember,” cautioned Elsie, “after this, no talking.” The rules of a dreamcake were clear. It was to be baked in silence, with just firelight and wishing, wishing and firelight, and not a peep from any girl until morning—not even when their phantom came, no matter what.

“One last thing first,” said Ava, her voice breathy with excitement. “Whoever we see, we’ve got to tell each other first thing in the morning. Promise!” She spoke with the easy eagerness of a girl used to attention.
She’s that sure she’ll see
Matty tonight
, thought Pippin, jealous of such confidence. Herself, she wasn’t sure on anyone’s behalf—not Ava’s or Elsie’s or her own. She didn’t know
who
Matty fancied. He was so nice to everyone there was no way
to
know.

“I promise,” said Elsie.

“I promise,” said Pippin.

“And if you see
nobody
, it means you’re to be an old maid. So don’t be slamming the door on any phantom!” Ava looked sternly at Pippin. “Even if it
is
Hazard. Would you
really
rather be a spinster than a Mrs. Root?”

“Yes by a thousand,” declared Pippin. “I’d rather be the Roots’ old
mule
, by the green god’s mercy, than marry Hazard.” She was thinking to herself that if she couldn’t have Matty she’d vanish in the woods and live like a fairy. Once, he’d told her she looked like one, and he might have meant it because she’d had briars in her hair, wild from tumbling through a thicket, but she’d always thought he meant something sweeter.

“Ready now?” asked Elsie. “It’s time.”

They were at Ava’s house to bake their cake. It was a queer recipe and nothing you’d want to eat; it wasn’t for eating. The flour was just plain flour, but the water stank from a bundle of cloud roses going to rot in it for more than a week. The salt had been buried in the garden and dug back up, and the goose egg was laid under a full moon and shadow-spelled for three nights running, first with an owl feather, then a rowan branch, and last of all a lock of hair from a pregnant woman—Mayfair Tanzy, who said that she’d go bald if one more girl came to her begging locks.

Pippin had earlier wrinkled her nose and declared the batter to be “all druidy-smelling,” and it only got worse as it baked. The girls were quiet and wishful as they knitted by the fire, each dreaming of Matty’s good hands unpinning her
hair on their wedding night. Many a stitch was dropped and a count forgotten, and three crookeder socks you never saw than came of that night’s work.

After the cake was done, Ava took it from the oven, let it cool some, then cut it in three. Each girl took her portion and scratched her initials in its surface. At sunup, if all went right, there should be another set of initials scratched beside their own.

They hugged each other, shared nervous grins in silence, and parted ways.

Ava went right up the ladder to her loft bed. She pulled her braid over her shoulder and unwove it, wondering: would the phantom just be a glimpse, or would it linger with her awhile?

Suppose it
talked
to her. Could phantoms talk? Not that she could answer if it did!

Could they
kiss
? Or maybe there was nothing
to
kiss, just air and dreams.

Ava shivered, hugged her arms around the deliciousness, and then—after a hot-cheeked hesitation—unlaced her dress, yanked it off, and dove under the quilt in her best slip to wait.

As for Elsie, she lived right across the way, so she had only to dart out Ava’s door and into her own. Like Ava’s, her house was empty—no family crowd to put fright to skittish phantoms. There was a fair down at Mosey Landing tonight to keep folks happy, and casks of drink and a cakewalk, and for a special treat some music-makers from across the Bigwater. All strange they were, handsome and dark-eyed and clad in patterns, with scythe-billed birds perched on their heads that made their own shivery songs in tune to the drums and chimes.

Elsie’s hand shook lighting her candle, and unlacing her bodice she fumbled about as bad as if she’d got frozen fingers
from making a snow troll. Finally, though, she was in her sheets, coverlet to her chin and long feet poking out the bottom. She waited, trembling and fidgeting as the flame teased shadows up and down the walls, and every single minute she thought a phantom was come, and almost died of nerves.

Now, Pippin, she was out alone in the night. She lived all the way on the far side of the orchard, no small walk, and she set off quick with her wedge of dreamcake cradled to her chest, her heart tight and sore from all her big wishing, not just tonight but all her life. Little life, big wishing. That doesn’t go easy on a heart, and she thought maybe she’d stretched hers all out, how a sweater neck gets when you’ve shown the poor judgment of dressing the goat—though
that
, she consoled herself, was long ago, and had been all Matty’s idea in any case.

She hurried. If Matty was at the Blackgrace house, his phantom wouldn’t have far to go to get to hers, and she’d better not miss it if it did! But if he was in his own unfinished house, where he liked to go and work or just sit sometimes to dream, he’d have to send his phantom down Century Hill and that would give her a little time. She could get back home and fix her hair at least.…

But Matty
liked
her hair all fairy-tangled, didn’t he?

Pippin hesitated for only a second. She crouched and set down her dreamcake on a tree root, then unpinned her hair. It tumbled to her waist, as shadow-colored as her eyes were sky, and the wind zoomed in at once to get it. This breeze tugged a strand here, this one there, and it was a snatch-grab dance of wind and hair fit for a queen of fairies.

Pippin closed her eyes. She loved the feeling—the stir of it, and the ache as her tame hair came wild-alive. Hairs got used to lying one way, so that it hurt the scalp to muss them up, but it was a good hurt—like the ache from too much
laughing, or the tightness low in your belly when your eyes sparked together with someone special and lightning zinged all through you.

And then, before Pippin could pick up her cake to rush home, she heard voices and froze stock-still.

Now, magic was a true thing; a certainty. No one who had seen their nan turn creature could doubt it. They’d be wrinkled old biddies one minute, just about to gasp their last, and—blink!—they were gone, and owls or hawks were shaking off their nightgowns. Once in a while a cat or a fox, but it was flying they mostly wanted, and so they went with birds. It was a one-time, one-way change, and only women could make it, to the bitterness of the boys and men, who got up to the end of their lives just to die.

There were other bits and bobs of magic too: cures and curses; fairies and treelings dashing stealthy at the edges of sight; sweet moon milk and shadow castings and such like that. Nothing like what the Ancestors had brought here with them on their carved ships, but some things still remained.

As for phantoms on St. Faith’s Day, a lot of folks thought they weren’t real foretellings at all, but just the dreams girls had when they nodded off waiting and saw who they wished. And sure there was reason for doubt. Often enough it happened that two girls claimed the same phantom and argued over it till the red-faced boy in question had to speak his wishes plain, and maybe it was neither girl at all!

Pippin didn’t know what to believe. She
hoped
, was all, but when those voices came clearer and she heard what they were saying, she got a sad insight into the nature of boys, and more than a spark of a doubt as to phantoms.

“I’ll have Ava Gentry, all three of her,” said one with a lecherous laugh.

“No, you won’t, little brother. If anyone will be seeing Ava Gentry with her corset undone it will be me. You can have the giantess for yours.”

It was the Breed brothers—those two thick quarry boys, Thane and Colin, and they were out in the orchard dark laying naughty plans. Quiet as quiet, Pippin moved closer to see, and she spied them rubbing flour into their hair and faces.

They grumbled more over Ava, but in the end it was settled, and trailing flour-dust, they went off, making ghostly noises and taking glugs of whiskey, to play at being phantoms.

Pippin bit her lip. She would have to follow them, of course. Her friends’ fathers weren’t at home, their doors weren’t locked, and the Breed brothers were stupid, strong, and drunk—a woeful combination if ever there was one. But … if she didn’t get home now, she stood to miss Matty’s phantom if it called.
Well
, she thought,
I’ll just be a minute, and any phantom too impatient to wait for me would make a poor enough husband!

Leaving her cake where it was, she tiptoed after the Breeds.

The boys parted in the darkness between the two cottages, and Colin went to Elsie’s door and Thane to Ava’s. As Thane reached out for the doorknob, Pippin took a deep breath and prepared herself to call out, feeling a thrum of fear to be interrupting the two big boys at their mischief.

I’ll be breaking the spell if I speak
, she realized, and she faltered, but she had only to think of her friends in their beds with their hopeful toes curled, and these two falling at them drooling. “If you two are phantoms then I’m a hat” is what she declared, stepping into sight.

They both froze and swung to see her. Then, as one, they burst into gut laughter.

“Pippin girl, out phantom hunting?” asked Colin.

“Sure the only way you’ll see one is if you catch it on its way someplace else!” added Thane, all grinning spite, and that pierced Pippin not a little, because she already feared it was true. “Maybe you should wait a year or three and see if you don’t grow a chest on you.”

“I hear there’s a tonic for that,” said Colin. “You got to rub it on every night.”

“I guess Ava’s been using it a while, then,” added Thane, and the boys got off laughing again.

“I’ll tell,” Pippin said, keeping herself strong. “You go in there and I’ll fetch their fathers.”

“Run and fetch, then. By the time you get back we’ll be done and gone, won’t we, like the phantoms we are.
Oo-oooooo!
”

“Then I’ll have to ring the fire bell, I guess.”

Maybe that sobered them a little, and maybe it didn’t. They were still laughing, but Colin glanced to where it was—the tall post with its bell and rope, part of the signal system used throughout the orchards for warnings. Two short pulls meant come quick. They all knew how to do it from the time they could toddle.

“Pip …” Thane sauntered toward her. “You want a kiss, is that it? Just ask, darlin’.”

“I guess we can spare a minute or two for you,” Colin contributed, following his brother. “The night is young and the bottle’s empty.”

Pippin took one quick step away and that was all there was time for. Behind her, from back the way she’d come, spoke a voice.

“Leave her be,” it said, oh the beautiful, beautiful sound of it!

“Blackgrace?” asked Thane, squinting past Pippin.

For Matty it was. He came to her side and never was there a sweeter sight—though just now he didn’t look sweet so much as furious.

“What are
you
doing here? Are you supposed to be a phantom?” asked Thane.

Pippin’s heart lurched. Not Matty too. Was it a game all the boys played, to chase girls to their beds? No. Never Matty.

“If you are, you’re a poor one, Blackgrace,” said Colin. “Here, have some flour.” And he chucked the sack at Matty, hard, but Matty sidestepped it so it hit the bell post and burst in a white cloud.