Now, there were stories come down from the hills that I remembered being told even as a child, and the telling of them was still rich on the tongues of the people who settled in the valley and high country, away from the quarry. Tales of the banshee and hag-riders, and the little folk who Ruth thought she could consort with, though I’d never seen anything but a raccoon sip the milk she left out, nights. I don’t know if I believed in such tales, though I respected the possibility, given the power of the needle and stitch, which had to come from somewhere—and if not the world of the spirit then maybe God, though I did not think He would approve the use for which His gift had been put.
It certainly was not for God that I was a conspirator to murder. And I had no confidence that He had a greater hold of my soul than Ruth.
Took me four years to realize something might be shifty, and by then I was ten. I got it in my head to go raiding some jar of sweets that Ruth kept just for herself, and it wasn’t a minute after my first bite of peppermint that the pain started in, right in my stomach. I doubled over thinking I’d been stabbed, sure to find blood, but nothing was there but the certainty that my insides were going to spill outside.
Calling for Ruth did no good. She was standing right there, watching. Holding a doll made of pale cloth, large as a swaddled babe and cradled in her arms with a fork jabbed into its belly.
Ruth’s eyes, satisfied and cold. “Been soft on you. And now you try to steal from me. After everything I done to keep you whole.”
Well, it took me a week to walk after that.
But it gave me time to think.
—
That new doll, with the blue eyes and crooked nose, remained a silent presence. Ruth worked on it with a steadiness I’d not seen in years, taking care with every stitch, mumbling devotionals over her needles before she’d even thread them. I watched her clean those bone daggers each morning, and when it came time to fill that doll with the hoodoo, she made me go outside in the cold and practice my embroidery, claiming a need to concentrate in peace. It was no consequence to me. I knew what she was doing. Capturing a soul was no secret, even though she’d never taught me the way of it.
“Power makes you greedy,” Ruth said, seven days after needling that first stitch. “I’m no innocent in that regard, as you well know.”
I was standing beside the fireplace, bent over a tin pail that held a mixture of cow urine, fermented these last three weeks, and the smashed hulls of black walnuts. Preparing dye for the thread, spun with my own hands from wool shorn from the sheep that Ruth kept in a pen on the hill.
“Look at me,” she said.
The doll was in front of her on the table, soft limbs stretched out, soft body embroidered with runes and blooms and glimpses of eyes peering from behind twisting vines. I looked for only a moment and then settled on Ruth, who was eyeing me all speculative. I kept still.
“You have never been greedy,” she said, finally. “Never saw a sign of it in your eyes, and I been looking for years, since I showed you that first stitch.”
“I don’t want what you have,” I said truthfully.
Ruth grunted, and pushed herself off the chair. “Good girl.”
I hesitated. “Never asked who taught you.”
Oh, the smile that flitted across her mouth. Made me cold.
“My teacher,” Ruth murmured, stroking the bone needles laid out on the table. “My own granny, with her wiles. My mother had no gift for the stitch, but there was something in me, from the beginning.”
Her gaze met mine. “Same as I saw in you.”
My cheeks warmed. “No use for it, except killing. That’s no life, Ruth.”
“Better life than what you were headed for.” Her fat fingers flicked through the air above the blue-eyed poppet. “Would have been in a grave. Nothing to show for living. Nothing to show those sympathetic bones.”
I looked down at my needles, spread across the table. Each one born from a hand, hands whose names I knew: Lettie, Polly, Rebecca. Mother, Grandmother, Great-Grandmother.
And now I knew the names of other bones from other hands.
All in sympathy.
—
It’d been years since Ruth had ventured off her land, but that afternoon she put on a woolen skirt and coat that moths and mice had been chewing on for a decade, pinned up her long gray hair, and buttoned her blouse until those needles hanging around her neck were hid. Not that showing them would have made folks any less uncomfortable. Ruth walking amongst the good Christians of the valley might be enough to thin the blood of that hollering preacher himself.
We were real silent until the end, just before she limped out the door, and she looked back and said, “There’s a man come to my attention. You go home now, come back tomorrow.”
“You need help?” I asked, but she raised her brow at me, made a clucking nose, and walked on out. The poppet was in a cloth bag that swung from her shoulder.
I followed her, soon after.
Ruth had a fast limp. I had to hustle to catch up. Not that I wanted to get too close, but there was some investment on my part, and so I took a different trail that was roundabout and uneven, steep—too difficult for Ruth to walk, though I myself was too fast, sliding and flirting with loose rocks underfoot, and low-lying branches that might have taken my eye or broken my nose if I hadn’t been quick to duck. All for good, though. I reached the bottom of the trail, certain I was first and Ruth, somewhere above, still huffing and puffing.
I kept to the woods, lungs tight as I forced down deep breaths of cold air, and made my way to a small log cabin settled in a clearing where a man stood on the covered porch, rocking a baby. A stone cutter, still dusty from the quarry, staring at his child like she was sunshine and angels, and so much sweetness I had to look away.
I took another breath, and walked from the woods.
“Clora,” he said, with a tired smile, kind as could be. “Been some time.”
“I’m sorry for that, Paul.” I hoped he couldn’t hear the thickness of my voice. “How’s Delphia?”
Paul glanced over his shoulder at the cabin’s closed door. “Pain’s lessened, I think. That tea you brought seemed to help her sleep. But it’s this one,” and he paused, holding his babe a little tighter, “that’s gotten fussy.”
“Etta,” I murmured, peering into blue eyes that were just like her father’s.
“Oh, but it’s nothing,” said Paul, just as gently, and kissed her brow. “I’m just glad I’m fit to care for her. What with . . .”
He stopped. I looked away again, toward the woods. His wife was dying, eaten up by scirrhus in her breasts. No stitch could cure her of those tumors. Maybe, if caught early. But not by the time I heard. Not for nothing did I think it fair the needle could kill or control, but when it came to healing a mother, all that power was to no account.
“It won’t be much longer,” I said quietly.
Paul’s jaw tightened. “Then just me and Etta. Been thinking of leaving the quarry when that happens, maybe to find work in one of the towns up north. Cutting stone is too dangerous. Can’t let nothing happen to me now.”
I glanced down at the baby. “You have something to live for.”
Paul made a small sound. “Come inside, Clora.”
“Can’t.” I backed away, shaking my head. “Ruth is coming.”
He frowned, holding his daughter tighter. “You shouldn’t spend so much time with that witchy woman. You’ll get the taint on you.”
“Too late,” I said, making his frown deepen. “And didn’t you hear me?”
“Heard.” Paul gave me a disapproving look. “Got nothing to fear from an old woman. Why she visiting, anyhow?”
“Your wife sent a note. She got it in her head that Ruth could cure her.”
His brow raised. “Can she?”
“No.” I stepped off the porch, nearly falling, and suddenly it was hard to see past the tears blurring my eyes. “She’s going to hurt you, Paul. I want you to remember that. It was her doing.”
Her doing, not mine. Her doing, even though it was me that put the idea in Delphia’s head, even though I was the one who carried the note, that note that told a story of how much a woman would give to live just a while longer so that she might not leave behind a little daughter and a good man. A good man who loved her with all his soul, she said.
I knew the interest Ruth would have in a man like Paul: so good, so true. Nothing rarer. Nothing more powerful.
I walked away, and as he called my name, the baby cried.
—