Winter's Dream (The Hemlock Bay Series) (10 page)

“You can’t tell me the three of you did all this by yourselves?” I huffed, shoveling more dirty straw into a wheelbarrow.

“Of course not, we have farmhands,” Viola said, raking more of the vile stuff out of the corners of the pen.

I threw my hands up, dropping my shovel. “Then why are we doing this?”

She paused her work and pursed her lips. “Because it doesn’t do any good to be lazy. Work needs to be done so we’ll do it.”

“Okay, so while I’m here I have to be homeschooled, learn all about Gatekeeping, run a farm and be Amish?” I asked. “You don’t think that’s a little much?”

“It’s not,” she snapped. “And we’re supposed to be Mennonites.”

“Okay, I still don’t get that. Why can’t you guys just be kindly old spinsters that take in foster kids?”

She glared at me, presumably for using the word spinster then gave a defeated sigh. “There’s more to it than that. We genuinely only take in family members but we don’t always get to keep them.”

I stared in horror. “You mean they could come get me and take me back to that hellhole?”

“No, no.” She looked around at the messy barn. “Come on; let’s go get a cup of tea. There is some more about our history that you need to know.”

We left our disgusting boots out on the porch and cleaned up in the kitchen. I tried to ask a few questions as we washed and then as we waited for the tea kettle to boil but she kept shaking her head, making me wait.

Finally we sat at the little breakfast nook with our tea and some cookies.

“Gatekeeping has been in our genes for a very long time,” she finally began. “It started with one particularly ugly event between one of our ancestors and a very powerful jinn. He wanted her desperately and she refused him.”

I flushed a little, thinking of Jordan.

“He continued to pursue her, using every trick he could think of but nothing worked and when she married the man she had been in love with since before that jinn had ever even laid eyes on her, he was furious. He cursed her and her entire blood line.”

I shifted in my chair, my tea getting cold in front of me. “So Gatekeeping is a curse?”

Viola shook her head. “No, it was her response to the curse. This wasn’t the first disastrous run in with a jinn and our ancestor knew it wouldn’t be the last. Because of her unwanted connection with that jinn, she was able discern the thin spots and guard them against more jinn coming through. She was the first to guard one, the very one her tormentor had come through. She was the first Gatekeeper and it was through her bloodlines that Gatekeeping was passed on.”

Hollow footsteps on the porch startled us both but it was just Martha and Minnie.

Viola grabbed my hand. “Minnie mustn’t know about any of this. I’m not sure how, but it didn’t get passed down to her.”

I bit my lip, entirely aware of how it didn’t get “passed on to her”. I waited to make sure the girls weren’t coming into the house before asking my next question. “How could the original Gatekeeper just make that happen? Wasn’t she a normal human?”

Viola nodded fervently. “Yes, she was. But she was held captive by him, in his world. Being there, being around him, sort of rubbed off on her.” I thought of Jordan’s explanation of how my looks changed. “No human could just devise away to detect thin spots and guard against them, let alone pass that down through generations. But he accidentally gave her that power by forcing her into his world. We don’t know if what she did was intentional but I don’t think so. Humans don’t intentionally change their looks or become stronger when they spend time around them or in their world, it just happens.”

I nodded slowly, my coppery curls swinging around my face. That explained how well I was able to throw that basin at Jordan’s head.

Viola sat back and gulped her tea down as if that were the end of the conversation.

“Wait, that explains the Gatekeeping, but what about the curse? What is it and what does it have to do with us being pretending to be Amish?”

Viola shushed me as the girls came in the door and mouthed the word “later.”

I gritted my teeth in frustration but kept my mouth shut.

“Ooh, tea!” Minnie exclaimed, rubbing her hands over the hot kettle.

I spent the rest of the day trying to catch Viola or Hazel alone but couldn’t. All of us finished mucking the barn out together and I fumed while I picked up more horse crap. Minnie actually thought it was fun and Martha made it look as easy as dusting. Every stall I came to was a fight between me and the horse who didn’t want to get out so I could clean out his poop. Martha took pity on me and led each animal out with a few gentle words and a pet on the nose. When I tried that I got snorted on.

Just as I was beginning to wonder if mucking out stalls was a form of torture meant to wear me down into compliance, the aunts declared the barn “clean” and led us back into the house to get cleaned up. I did my best to get Minnie into the shower ahead of me so I could have a chance to ask my questions but Martha pushed me into the other bathroom.

I couldn’t stay mad at her for long, not with all her rose scented soaps and fluffy towels.

Leaving the bathroom with a wet head was a bad idea. The house was freezing.

“It always this cold in here?” I asked Martha in the kitchen. I rubbed my arms to warm them up.

She smiled apologetically. “It’s a pretty old house, it gets drafty.” She disappeared and returned with a mauve cardigan. “I knitted it myself,” she said shyly.

Of course you did, I thought. What I said was, “It’s pretty, thanks.”

Martha left again to build a fire in the fireplace and I stood at the window in the kitchen, waiting for everyone to come down. The wind had picked up while I was in the shower but this time actual snow was falling. It wasn’t the gentle fluffy flakes that I was used to but rather sharp, glinting flakes that cracked against the windows. The sky was darkening quickly and to my surprise the ugly cat clock on the wall showed it was only four o’clock even though it had felt like I’d been in that smelly barn for an eternity.

The aunts came into the kitchen whispering furiously. Minnie was nowhere in sight.

“Quick,” I hissed, rushing over to them. “Tell me what the curse is—”

Hazel shushed me. “Not now.”

Viola said quietly, “I think she may know sooner than we think.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” I asked, more frustrated than ever.

Hazel shushed me, her eyes darting to the stairway Minnie and Martha were noisily making their way down. She waited until the girls were in the kitchen before saying, “Oh good, we’re all here. Your aunt and I were thinking we should do an early dinner tonight, what with the storm coming in. We’ll probably lose power like we always do, so best to be done with everything before it happens.”

We worked together to get dinner made and in the oven. There was no camaraderie or joking like there had been the night before. The aunts left in a hurry to “check on things” and Martha was tense and silent. Minnie tried to pull her out of her shell and finally fell silent herself. I could tell her feelings were hurt but I was preoccupied. Something was very wrong.

The aunts came back into the kitchen to help set the table and each plate they set down rattled for a second as they laid it down. From across the room I could see how badly their hands were shaking.

Minnie and I watched, growing more and more puzzled. “You guys expecting a major storm or something?” Minnie finally asked.

“You never know—” Viola said, right atop Hazel.

“—better safe than sorry.”

I turned to Martha for a real explanation but her huge shining eyes and milk white face stopped me from asking. She looked terrified.

Dinner was tense. Martha stared at her plate and didn’t eat a bite. The aunts wolfed their food down, tossed their dishes in the sink and began emptying the cupboards of candles and boxes of matches. Minnie and I ate in silence and exchanged worried glances. I had been through winter storms in Michigan before. Maybe because they were out in the middle of nowhere they lost electricity more and it took longer to get restored. But that sounded hollow in my own mind and didn’t explain why Martha looked so panicked.

As I washed dishes, I watched everyone’s reflection in the darkening window. Martha’s shoulders were hunched and her corn silk hair was curtaining her face. Occasionally one of the aunts would whisper something in her ear as they passed her by in rush to collect candles or stacks of old newspapers.

An electric web of lightning cracked through the whole sky, lighting up the entire yard. Martha let out an unearthly wail and Minnie began crying. I blinked furiously, trying to get my sight back.

“Bixby, Minnie, you two girls go up to bed. If the storm comes it comes, we’ll be just fine in here,” one of the aunts snapped. Her comforting words were at odd with her tone and furrowed eyebrows.

I took a long look at Martha and her pinched face and shaking hands. “Martha—”

“Martha will be fine, she just doesn’t like storms. Now get upstairs,” Viola snapped.

I stared her down, opening my mouth to demand an explanation, to know what had Martha so frightened. From behind her Hazel shook her head gently and mouthed “later.” As she put her arm around Martha’s shoulder I thought I heard her whisper, “You can’t know it will be you this time, honey; it’ll be okay.”

Minnie grabbed my hand and dragged me upstairs. She burst into the bedroom winded and wild eyed. “Do you really think the storm will be that bad?” she asked.

“I don’t think so, it’s just a bad snowstorm,” I said, pulling my clothes off and leaving them in a heap on the floor. My old lady nightgown was a little thin so I put the cardigan back on over it.

“Then why was it lightning?” She stood in the middle of the room, still clothed, biting her lip.

“Are you afraid of storms?”

She nodded.

“Not snowstorms?”

She shook her head.

“Just lightning?”

She nodded. “Since I was a little kid.”

“Didn’t your parents tell you it was just God putting on a light show?” I teased.

She gave me a flat look. “No. My dad just told me to piss off and I would spend the rest of the storm hiding under my bed.”

I groaned and squeezed my eyes shut. “I’m sorry, Minnie, I wasn’t thinking. Why don’t you push your bed up against mine tonight?”

She smiled and changed quickly. It took both of us to shove her wrought iron bed over to mine. The wind whipped around the corners of the house, whistling hollowly in our room. It was knocking the big mercury lights mounted on the side of the barn around causing shadows of swirling snow to bounce all over our ceiling. The pings and cracks of the icy flakes against our windows only added to the cacophony of the storm.

Minnie wiggled under her cover and butted up next to me. As I wondered how she would fall asleep in all the din of the storm I heard her soft snores start. I smiled to myself and wondered how long it would take me to fall asleep.

I was poked in the ribs and my eyes flew open. Abe peered at me. Behind him the store was dark. “Bixby, what are you doing here?”

I shook my head, a little disoriented and grabbed onto the display case. “What do you mean, I thought I was supposed to be here every night.”

“Not
tonight
!” he cried. “Wake up!”

The weird storm and the unknown curse and Martha’s inexplicable fear came rushing to the front of my mind. “Abe, what’s going on?”

“You need to get back there,” he said and grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me.

“For what?” I asked, starting to panic.

“Bixby, wake up,” he yelled in my face but his voice was already fading and the noise of the storm was taking over.

I jerked awake, everything in the room standing out in eerie detail. The snow and wind slamming against the windows across from me ceased but continued on the side of the house. I crept out of bed, careful not wake my snoring friend, and made my way to the window overlooking the front of the house. I looked down on the stillness of the storm and was overcome with déjà vu. I had done this before, when Grandma was taken, when I was locked up.

I held my breath and forced myself to step in front of the window and look down. A globe of calm took up the space in front of the house and it was moving. In the center of it was a girl.

Chapter Ten

I
slammed down the stairs, my
heels drumming against the bare wood.

“Hazel,” I wheezed out, praying they wouldn’t open the front door. “Hazel, don’t open the door!”

I whipped around the corner in the kitchen, ran through the dining and into the living room. Hazel, Viola and Martha all sat rigidly in armchairs.

“There’s somebody outside,” I said, still trying to catch my breath. “I think it’s a jinn.”

Viola snapped her head up to stare at me. “Of course she is. How do you know that?”

“Who else would it be?” I snapped back. “What does she want?”

Martha sniffed and raised her tearstained eyes to mine. “Me,” she said sadly.

I looked from Martha to the aunts and back. One hollow footstep rang out on the porch.

“Why you?” I asked hurriedly. “This is part of the curse, right? Wait, Martha, what do you have to do with it?”

Martha pulled a sleeve across her eyes. “Not me, any of us. They just come and steal us away, one a time.”

My heart froze. “What? Why?”

Another hollow footstep rang out and I could see Martha’s panic increase tenfold.

“Why do they want us?” I cried. “Hurry up and tell me!”

Hazel finally burst out. “When our ancestor escaped that horrible jinni she infuriated him. In his anger he cursed her bloodlines, swearing he would find her again in one of her children’s children and they would be together.”

Another footstep rang out.

“Hurry up,” I rushed her, rolling my hands around to keep her talking. “So what’s the curse? Why is she here?”

Viola spoke up this time, speaking quickly. “This girl comes to a descendent every few months and takes her. All we know is the girl they take is bound with silver bracelets that shine with chains of smoke and she is kept long enough to determine if she’s the match of our original ancestor.”

I forced my mind to focus even as I heard the heavy footsteps come across the porch to the front door.

“So she could be here for either one of us.”

Hazel shook her head. “Maybe, but probably not. Miriam, the original, was a blonde.” More quietly she said, “That
girl
almost always takes blondes.”

The doorknob twisted in the weak light of the lamp and we all shied away. It opened slowly and the silent crackling of the lightning outlined the slim shape of a young woman. She stepped in the doorway and I could make out her features.

She looked surprisingly like Ash but younger and with blank, white eyes. She turned towards Martha but I couldn’t tell if she was actually looking at her or if she could even see anything at all. “Are you ready?” she boomed.