Crime Spells

And it was going to get worse.

I’d been worried that Martha could have turned a jury with her talent. There’s no juror in the world, much less jurist or lawyer, that isn’t a little bit vain. I never figured the way Prout did, that being talented meant one was evil; but I knew better than to rule it out.

I had to deal with it.

I picked up the knife. I wrapped Prout’s hand around it.

We went to work.

Cate found me on the hill overlooking Anderson ’s graveside service. Huge crowd, including Prout. He dressed properly. The only white on him was his shirt and bandages on his face. He stood beside my mother, steadying her, being stoic and heroic.

That was his right, after all, since he’d put an end to the Society Murderess.

“How can you watch this, Trick?”

“Only way I can make sure he’s dead.” I half-smiled. “Think my mother will throw herself on the casket?”

“Not her. Prout. Preening.”

“Why shouldn’t he? He’s a hero. He killed a sociopath.” I nodded toward him. “She put up a hell of a fight before he stabbed her through the heart. I heard his jaw was broken in two places.”

“Three. Cracked orbit, busted nose.”

“Whoda thunk she could hit that hard?”

“Never met her.” Cate shook her head. “How’s your hand?”

“Scrapes and bruises. I’ll be more careful walking to the bathroom in the dark.”

“You know, there were some anomalous fingerprints on the knife.”

“Ever match ’em?”

“No. Was I wrong about you, Trick?”

“I don’t think so, Cate.” I met her stare openly. “They need their heroes. They need someone to fend off the things lurking beyond the firelight. Prout battled to save his family. Its best he never knows how much danger he was in. How much danger they were all in. All their fear and they couldn’t even imagine.”

“I don’t think they really want to.”

“You’re probably right.”

Down below, Martha Raines closed the prayer book and made a final comment. I didn’t hear it. I didn’t need to.

They did, and they looked peaceful.

Witness to the Fall by Jay Lake

The bottles shiver quietly in their rack on the kitchen windowsill. Wind gnaws at the house like a cat worrying a kill. Rafters creak the music of their years fighting gravity’s claim. Outside a groaning window, trees dip in a dance likely to break a back and give me kindling for half a season.

Most strange is the sound. The weather hisses and spits, a long-drawn ess slithering from one horizon to the other. I can yet see the water-blue of the sky, furtive clouds hurrying along the wind’s business. This will not bring rain, no relief of any kind. It is only the hands of angels pushing the house (and me) toward our eventual ashy dissolution.

Down in the town there has been a murder. People will say it was the blow, five days of wind so strong a man could not stand facing it. People will say it was an old love gone sour, the harder heart come back for one last stab at passion. People will say it was a baby, never an hour’s rest since the poor squalling mite was first born into this world.

Me, I listen to the quiet clatter of the bottles, a tiny sound beneath the roaring lion of the air, and hear the song of death as clearly as if I’d played the tune myself on the old piano in the parlor.

Knowing the truth, I turn out my cloak, fetch my bag and inkwells. Soon enough the preacher man or old Cromie will call for me to sit judgment. It has never hurt to be prepared, to remind them of their own belief that I can hear the hammers of their hearts.

That’s not all true, but I never lost by letting them think such a thing.

I am surprised when Maybelle turns up for me. She is the preacher’s daughter, a pretty peach borne off the withered branch that is Caleb Witherspoon. For every glint-eyed slight and patriarchal judgment out of him, she has a smile or a warm hand or a basket of eggs and carrots. Of such small economies are the life of a town made.

Still, she has not before called at my gate on business such as this. A Christmas pie, or a letter come by distant post over mountains and rivers, yes, but she has never come for blood or sorrow.

I open the front door before she can raise her hand to knock. “Hello, child,” I say, though in truth I do not have even ten years on her new-grown womanhood.

The wind runs its fingers through her braids, sending hair flyaway around her in a pale brown halo. The hem of her dress whips wompered about her shins and calves. The practical countrywoman’s boots beneath are scuffed and too solid to be pulled by air. There is a smile on her face, belied only by the worried set of her pale gray eyes.

“Master Thorne,” she says, with a fumbled curtsy that is withdrawn before it can truly take hold. “Please, sir, the beadle and Mister Cromie have asked you come right quick.”

I nod and step out on the porch, my cloak seized in the dry gale as soon as I pass the door. “Death’s a sad business,” I tell her, more loudly than it is my wont to speak, “but there’s rarely a hurry once the thing is already done.”

“Yes, but ’tis my daddy with blood under his nails this day. We need a Foretelling.” She holds her silence a breath, then two, before blurting, “I know he ain’t done it.”

Interesting. The bottles had not spoken clear, or I didn’t listen well. I’d have thought it was a child died for love, not a preacher taking literally the murderous word of God. “All will be well.”

My words are both a lie and a truth, depending on how far away from the moment one is willing to stand. Together we set out down the track amid summer’s brambles and the wind-flattened heads of wild grass caught gold and sharp beneath the noonday sun.

Neverance is a town of small blessings. There is enough of a river to water the horses and fields in all seasons, though it will not sustain navigation from the metropolii far downstream. There are groves of chestnuts and hoary pear trees to lay forth autumn’s windfall and provide children with ladders to the sky come spring. The first white men to settle here had possessed more ambition than sense and so laid strong foundations of stone quarried from the surrounding hills for the city that never came.

In sum, Neverance is a town typical of these mountains-nestled in a valley between tree-clad peaks, sheltered from winter’s worst excesses, surrounded by bounteous fields bearing hay and corn and the small truck grown on hillsides by farm wives and those too old to harness a team to work the larger plantings. The cattle now standing with their faces away from the remorseless wind, clumped like crows on a kill, are symbols of sufficiency as surely as the great beeves of ancient myth.

Wealth, no, but neither is life is too difficult here. Some, especially women fallen on hard times, live at the edges. Most people in the valley show their faces in church on Sunday with a smile. A turnpike might come someday, or even a railroad ushering the restless through the ever-moving Western Gates, but for these years Neverance slumbers amid its quiet dreams of pumpkins and smokehouses and the peal of the school bell.

Not this day, though.

There is a crowd outside Haighsmith’s Dairy. They huddle like the cattle against the wind. Despite the name, the dairy is a co-op serving farmers and townsmen alike. Maybelle leads me to the back of the kerfuffle, intent on pushing through the mass of shoulders to the door, but I tug at her elbow to halt our progress.

At my touch a spark passes between us with an audible crack, tiny lightning raised by the dry wind. Her face flickers with a fragment of pain as she turns toward me.

I cup my hand and speak close to her ear. “I should like to remain out here a few moments, to observe.”