Where The Heart Lives Read online

  WHERE THE HEART LIVES

  By Marjorie M. Liu

  ***

  Copyright © 2007 by Marjorie M. Liu

  ***

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  CONTENTS

  Where The Heart Lives

  Within the Flames, Sample Chapter

  The Mortal Bone, Sample Chapter

  WHERE THE HEART LIVES

  By Marjorie M. Liu

  When Miss Lindsay finally departed for the world beyond the wood, it meant that Lucy and Barnabus were the only people left to care for her house and land, as well as the fine cemetery she had kept for nearly twenty years outside the little town of Cuzco, Indiana. It was an important job, not just for Lucy and Barnabus, but for others, as well, who for years after would come and go, for rest or sanctuary. Bodies needed homes, after all—whether dead or living.

  Lucy was only seventeen, and had come to the cemetery in the spring, not one month before Miss Lindsay went away. The girl’s father was a cutter at the limestone quarry. Her brothers drove the team that hauled the stones to the masons. The men had no use for a sister, or any reminder of the fairer sex; their mother had run away that previous summer with a gypsy fortune-teller, though Lucy’s father insisted his absent wife was off visiting relatives and would return. Eventually.

  When word reached the old cutter that a woman named Miss Lindsay needed a girl to tend house, he made his daughter pack a bag with lunch, her comb, and one good dress from her mother’s closet—then set her on the first wagon heading toward Cuzco. No good-byes, no messages sent ahead. Just chancing on fate that the woman would want his daughter.

  Lucy remembered that wagon ride. Mr. Wiseman, the driver, had been hauling turnips that day, the bulbous roots covered beneath a burlap sheet to keep off the light drizzle: a cool morning, with a sweet breeze. No one on the road except them, and later, one other: an old man who stood at the side of the dirt track outside Cuzco, dressed in threadbare brown clothes, with a thin coat and his white hair slicked down from the rain. Pale eyes. Lost eyes. Staring at the green budding hills as though the woods were where his heart lived.

  In his right hand, he held a round silver mirror. A discordant sight, flashing and bright; Lucy thought she heard voices in her head when she saw the reflecting glass: whispers like birdsong, teasing and sweet.

  Mr. Wiseman did not wave at the man, but Lucy did, out of politeness and concern. She received no response; as though she were some invisible spirit, or the breeze.

  “Is he sick?” Lucy whispered to Mr. Wiseman.

  “Sick and married,” said the spindly man, in a voice so loud, she winced. He tugged his hat down over his eyes. “Married, with no idea how to let go of the dead.”

  “His wife is gone?” Lucy thought of her mother.

  “Gone, dead. That was Henry Lindsay you saw. Man’s been like that for almost twenty years. Might as well be dead himself.”

  Which answered almost nothing, in Lucy’s mind. “What happened to her?”

  A sly smile touched Mr. Wiseman’s mouth, and he glanced sideways. “Don’t know, quite. But she up and died on their wedding night. I heard he hardly had a chance to touch her.”

  “That’s awful,” Lucy said, not much caring for the look in Mr. Wiseman’s eye, as though there was something funny about the idea. She did not like, either, the other way he suddenly seemed to look at her; as though she could be another fine story, for him.

  She edged sideways on the wagon seat. Mr. Wiseman looked away. “People die, Miss Lucy. But it’s a shame it happened so fast. I even heard said they were going to run away, all fancy. A honeymoon, like they do out East in the cities.”

  Lucy said nothing. She did not know much about such things. In her experience, there was little to celebrate about being husband and wife. Just hard times, and loss, and anger. A little bit of laughter, if you were lucky. But not often.

  She twisted around, looking back. Henry still stood at the bend in the road, his feet lost in deep grass, soaked and pale and staring at the woods, those smoky green hills rising and falling like the back of some long fat snake. Her heart ached for him, just a little, though she did not know why. His loss was a contagious thing.

  Honeymoon, she thought, tasting the word and finding it pretty, even though she did not fully appreciate its meaning. And then another word entered her mind, familiar, and she murmured, “Lindsay.”

  Lindsay. The same name as the woman she was going to see. Lucy looked inquiringly at Mr. Wiseman.

  “His sister,” he replied shortly, and smiled. “His very pretty sister, even if she’s getting on in years.” He stopped the wagon and pointed at a narrow dirt path that curled into the woods. “There. Follow that to her house.”

  Lucy hesitated. “Are you certain?”

  “There isn’t a man, woman, or child in this area who doesn’t know where Miss Lindsay lives.” He reached behind him, and pulled out a bulging cloth sack. “Here, give this to her. Say it was from Wilbur.”

  Lucy clutched the sack to her stomach. It felt like turnips. She slid off the wagon, feeling lost, but before she could say anything, Mr. Wiseman gave her that same sly smile and said, “Stay on the path, Miss Lucy. Watch for ghosts.”

  “Ghosts,” she echoed, alarmed, but he shook the reins, tipped his hat, and his wagon rattled into motion. No good-byes. Lucy watched him go, almost ready to shout his name, to ask that he wait for her. She stayed silent, though, and looked back the way they had come. Home, to her father and brothers.

  Then she turned and stared down the narrow track leading into the woods. It was afternoon, but with the clouds and misting drizzle it could have been twilight before her, a forest of night. Birdsong rattled; again, Lucy thought she heard whispers. Voices airy as the wind.

  Ghosts. Or nothing. Just her imagination. Lucy swallowed hard, and walked into shadow, the wet gloom: dense and thick and wild.

  She thought of her mother as she walked. Wondered if she had been this frightened of leaving home, or if it had been too much a relief to unburden herself of husband and children. Then Lucy thought of the old man, Henry Lindsay, and his lost eyes and lost wife and lost wedding night, and wondered if it was the same, except worse—worse, because her mother had chosen to go, worse because her father did not have eyes like that man, or that sorrow. Just anger. So much bitter anger.

  The path curled. Lucy walked fast, stepping light over rocks and vines. In the undergrowth, she heard movement: a blue bird broke loose from the canopy, streaking toward the narrow trail of gray sky; to see it felt like she was watching some desperate escape, as though the leaves on either side of the track were walls, strong as stone and insurmountable. She half expected a hand to reach from the trees and snatch the bird back.

  A chill settled between her shoulders. Lucy heard a whisper, wordless but human. A hush, heart-stopping. She paused in mid-step and turned. There was no one behind her.

  Lucy heard it again, and terror squeezed her. Ghostly, yes; a voice like the wind, high and cool. She caught movement out the corner of her eye—cried out, turning—and saw a face peering from the shadows of the underbrush.

  A woman. A woman in the wood, pale and fair, with eyes as blue as cornflowers. Lucy stared, trying to make sense of it—unable to speak or move as she met that terrible gaze, which was lost and so utterly lonely, Lucy felt her heart squeeze again, but softer, with a pang.

  “Help me,” whispered the woman. “Please, help me.”

  Lucy tried to speak, and choked. Around her, other voices seemed to seep free of the woo
d; whispers and hoarse cries and birds screaming into the cool wet air, a rising wind that blasted Lucy with a bone-chill to her heart, swelling like her insides were growing on the hum of the wood, engorged on sound.

  She heard a shout—a man—but she could not turn to see. Her voice felt far away, lost, and the woman cried, “She’s coming.”

  Something broke inside Lucy: she could move again. She tried to run—heard another shout, desperate, and turned in time to see a brown flailing blur, a streak of silver, a shock of white hair.

  Arms caught Lucy from behind. She cried out as she was lifted into the air, screaming as the sky and trees spun into a blur, so sickening she closed her eyes. She heard the woman sobbing, a man crying a name—Mary, Mary—and then nothing except a heartbeat beneath her ear, sure and steady as a hammer falling.

  Her heart hurt. Lucy opened her eyes and found the world changed.

  She was no longer caught on the path in the woods. A meadow surrounded her, small and green and lush with grass and wild daisies, scattered with heavy oaks; somewhere near, a creek burbled and goats bleated. Lucy saw a small white house behind a grove of lilac trees, and beyond that, the rising forest; only gentler, without the dense shadows that seemed to live and breathe. No women lost in the leaves.

  There were arms around her body, and movement on her left. Lucy struggled, managing to pull away until she could dance backward, staring.

  Two men stood before her, one young, the other older. The elder man was Henry Lindsay. Lucy remembered his face. Up close, however, he did not look quite so aged. His body was straight and hard and lean; he had few wrinkles and his eyes were bright, startling, the color of gold. His white hair was the only symptom of age, but that seemed a trivial thing compared with the fire in his gaze, which was so alive, she thought she must have imagined the man who had stood at the side of the road, with a face as slack and dead as a corpse.

  The young man with him had quieter eyes, but just as bold. He wore a soft blue cotton shirt that had been patched with bits and pieces of rags, the stitches neat, made with thick red thread, a complement to his color: blue eyes, skin brown from the sun, hair dark and wild like a scarecrow. He glanced at Henry, just before the older man lurched toward Lucy: a half step, the edge of a full run, stopping before he reached her as though pulled back by strings. His hands clenched into fists. The silver mirror jutted from his coat pocket.

  “She spoke to you,” said Henry, his voice deceptively controlled: quiet, easy—frightening, because Lucy could tell it was a lie. She said nothing, uncertain how to answer him. In her head she could see the woman in the wood, her pale face and lost eyes: a mirror to how this man had looked while standing on the road.

  Henry said it again, louder: “She spoke. Tell me what she said.”

  Lucy stared, bewildered, and he rocked toward her with a low cry, hand outstretched. She staggered back, holding up her arms, but the young man stepped between them and caught Henry before he could touch her, holding him back with his size and easy strength. Lucy readied herself to run.

  “Stop this,” said a new voice. “Henry.”

  Lucy turned. She had to steady herself—all of this was too much—but she dug her nails into her palm and gazed at the newcomer: a woman who stood a stone’s throw distant, her mature face a reflection of Henry Lindsay, who quieted and stilled until the young man let him go.

  Black hair, threaded with white; golden eyes and an unlined face; a small narrow body dressed in a simple dark red dress, finely mended. The woman stood barefoot in the grass, hair loose and wild; proud, confident, utterly at ease. Lucy felt drab as a titmouse compared to her. In the trees, crows shrieked, raucous and loud.

  “Miss Lindsay,” she whispered, following her intuition. “Ma’am.”

  The woman tilted her head. “I don’t know you.”

  “My father heard you were looking for a girl,” she replied, hoarse.

  Henry swayed. Lucy forced herself to stay strong, to look him in the eye as her father had always said to do, that eyes were important when dealing with strangers, especially men.

  He said, “She spoke to Mary. She spoke to Mary in the woods.”

  “Did she now?” said Miss Lindsay slowly, her gaze sharpening. She moved close, hips swaying gracefully. “Did you speak to someone in the woods, child?”

  “No,” Lucy said softly. “But the woman…the woman in the trees spoke to me. And I heard…”

  She stopped. Miss Lindsay stood near, her golden gaze like fire: hot, burning. She reached out and touched Lucy’s forehead with one finger, just between the eyes, and whispered, “What did you hear?”

  “Voices,” Lucy replied, compelled by those eyes, that searing touch. “Many voices.”

  “Mary,” said Henry, in a broken voice. “Tell me what she said.”

  Lucy looked at him, and finally could see again the man from the road, lost and dull. She was sorry about that, and said, gently, “The woman asked me to help her. And then…then she said…someone was coming.”

  She’s coming, echoed that urgent voice, inside her head. Lucy felt a chill race through her body. Miss Lindsay flinched, and moved away. She turned her head until her hair shifted and Lucy could not see her eyes.

  “You’ll do,” said the woman softly. “Yes, if you like, I’ll hire you.”

  “If she wants to stay,” said Henry, also turning away, his voice rough, shoulders bowed. His hand was in his coat pocket, clutching the mirror. A wedding ring glinted on his finger.

  Lucy stared at them, helpless, unsure what to do. Her gaze finally fell on the one person who had said nothing at all—the young man, who was calm and steady, who watched her with that same straightforward regard. Lucy imagined a clear pure tone when she looked at him, and it was an unexpected comfort.

  “I’ll stay,” she found herself saying—two words that could have been a leap off a cliff for the falling sensation she felt on uttering them. It was dangerous, something was not right; there were ghosts in the woods and spirits unseen, and here, here, these people knew of such things. And she was joining them, would cook and clean for them.

  But it was better than going home.

  Lucy imagined a whisper on the wind. Miss Lindsay briefly closed her eyes, then held out her hand and gave the girl a long piercing look.

  “Come,” she said, in a voice gentler than her eyes. “I’ll show you the house.”

  And that was that.

  ***

  Nothing happened that first week, except for the fact that afterward, Lucy’s life felt irrevocably changed. The sensation crept on her slowly, nudged along by little things that she had never had a chance to experience: reading as a leisure activity, for starters (Miss Lindsay insisted on it, in the evenings); or being treated as a thinking person, something more than a girl or daughter or sister or future wife. Something beyond drudge. An equal, perhaps.

  It was a fine house, much larger than anything Lucy was accustomed to, with a second floor and an actual parlor and fireplace just for sitting and warming the feet. There were books shelved against the walls, more than she had ever seen—a library of them, all around—as well as journals and odd paintings, and stacks of newspapers bound with string. Most of those were crumbling and yellow; Lucy was careful as she cleaned around them, gazing as she did upon faded images of President Lincoln, as well as cramped headlines about the War, some fifty years past.

  Lucy had her own room with a lock on the door, just off the kitchen. Miss Lindsay slept upstairs, as did her brother, Henry. The young man, Barnabus, kept his bed and belongings in the work shed off the garden. He was like her—there for odd jobs—although unlike her, he was treated more like family, though Miss Lindsay explained that he was not. Or rather, not by blood.

  “A child of the forest,” the woman called him, that first night. “Found in the woods as a boy, living wild as the coyotes and foxes. Folks brought him here. It was that or the circus, with those men. So I raised him. Taught him. Oh, he’s a good one, that
Barnabus. Talk to him as you like—he’s as smart as you and I—but don’t expect a word from his mouth. He can’t speak. Not like us. The forest stole his voice.”

  Given what Lucy had experienced, she thought that might be the literal—if not fantastical—truth. And it disturbed her greatly. She did not know what to make of it. The forest was dangerous—she knew that in her heart—and while it went unspoken that she should not walk near the tree line, ever, the others did so all the time.

  No one ever explained the threat she felt so keenly. She tried asking, but Miss Lindsay always managed to change the subject—so smoothly, Lucy hardly realized what she was doing until it was too late and she was off scrubbing a floor or cooking or weeding, and thinking hard about why she was here, and how Miss Lindsay had managed, yet again, to deflect a question about a situation that Lucy found dangerous and frightening and undeniably odd.

  She dreamed of the woman at night, the woman in the wood, and listened to her pleas for help beneath a wail of wind and whispers, endless and cold and pained. Sometimes she sensed another voice beneath the other—Mary, Mary, she would hear Henry cry—and something else, bells and the pound of hooves, and music playing high and wild like a storm of thunder and fiddle strikes.

  And sometimes in her dream she would open her eyes and Miss Lindsay would be sitting by her bed, with that cool hand pressed against her forehead and her golden eyes shining with unearthly light. And in those moments of fantasy Lucy would think of her mother, and stop feeling afraid, and slip into softer, gentler, dreams: buttercups and horses, and afternoons by the river with her feet in the sun-riddled water. Sometimes Barnabus was there, holding her hand. She liked that, though it scared her too. In a different way.

  There were several surprises that first week, the biggest one being that Miss Lindsay had a cemetery on her land, only a short walk away along a narrow wagon track. Her family was buried there, but mostly other folk—from town, the surrounding areas—anyone who did not have the money to be planted in one of the church plots near the bigger towns. Miss Lindsay called it a service to the public, and several times Lucy saw strangers exit the trail through the forest bearing gifts of cloth and food. Payment served.