“Towner’s different. She’s one of us.”
“What does that mean, ‘one of us’?” Callie sat forward in her chair.
“You know.”
Callie shook her head. “I really don’t.” But did she?
“I’m pretty sure Towner could hear them if she listened.”
“The trees?”
“Only the oaks.”
“What do they tell you, Rose?”
“A lot of things.”
“And they sing. Better than I do, evidently.” Callie smiled.
A shadow crossed Rose’s face.
“Sometimes.”
“Towner says you are documenting all the oaks in Salem. That you think they can lead you to the current location of the old hanging tree and to the missing remains of our ancestors.”
“They will.”
“Is there a connection between the oak trees and the banshee?”
“There has always been a connection.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a long story.” Rose sighed.
“I like your long stories.” Callie remembered sitting at Rose’s feet, listening to myths and fairy tales she’d never heard before or since, epic stories Rose seemed to make up as she went along.
“You have to go to Thanksgiving,” Rose said.
“I have time.”
Rose seemed reluctant, something Callie had never seen before. Finally, taking a deep breath, she began. “It was an oak tree who was her jailer.”
“The banshee?”
Rose shook her head. “She wasn’t a banshee then, she was a goddess.”
Callie nodded. “Got it.”
“The goddess’s captors imprisoned her in the tree, stealing her power, as well as that of the oak, and changing the nature of both. When she finally escaped, she had turned.”
“Turned?” Callie repeated. Rose had used the word turning in her written confession to Rafferty. Was this where she’d gotten the expression? “What do you mean by ‘turned’?”
“Imprisonment changed her nature, as it tends to do. She ‘turned’ from a goddess to a banshee.”
Callie considered Rose’s own imprisonment. After she’d gotten out of the state hospital, she’d never been the same. She had “turned” into a different person. Was Rose talking about herself? Hadn’t she told Rafferty that she, herself, was a banshee?
“The banshee hid in the tree’s upper branches, sending her mournful cries on the wind to herald death. When she was finished with the Old World, she voyaged to the New, on a sailing mast made from the bloody trunk of the stricken oak, landing in Salem in 1630 with the second wave of Puritans. It was a difficult voyage and only a handful of the passengers and crew survived. She nested in the rigging of the cursed ship and whispered doom on the chilling winds, then followed it with blame. When the crops failed, when the savages bloodied the border settlements, her winds whispered tales of devils into the ears of sleeping Puritans. The whispers built into wails and then to shrieks. As the snows came, the shrieks were heard in every home in Salem Village, turning neighbor against neighbor. When she took her final revenge, it was the oak who paid the most dearly. For they didn’t burn those condemned as witches in the New World as they had in the Old, they hanged them from the branches of the sacred oak.”
Callie stared. Rose had spoken as if the words were memorized, a combination of poetry and fairy tales. It was disturbing.
“You don’t believe me,” Rose said.
“You…surprised me, that’s all.”
“You asked a question. I answered you.”
“I never heard that story before,” Callie said, quite certain Rose had never told her anything like this.
“There’s a lot you haven’t heard.” Rose considered her. “You don’t like the story.”
Callie reached for something neutral to say. “It sounds like the kind of story you were dead-set against when I was a child.”
Rose looked at her curiously. “What do you mean?”
“I mean the kinds of superstitious beliefs that got our ancestors hanged as witches. You’re an academic, Rose. You know better.”
“I’m not speaking of witches, I’m explaining the banshee.”
“And why is this banshee—this evil thing—a woman?”
“She’s a diminished goddess. Trapped by the priests who made her small, imprisoning her and stealing her powers.”
“And a devil?”
“Not a devil, no.”
“But evil. And female.”
“Yes, but not in any human sense. She was once a goddess. So of course that’s female. After her imprisonment, she turned into something else entirely.”
“The banshee.”
“That’s right,” Rose said. “Look at me. And you’ll see her.”
“You’re a banshee?” Callie said without disguising her disbelief.
“Rafferty told you…You know that I am.”
“I don’t accept that, Rose.”
Rose grabbed Callie’s hand urgently and held it tight. “The banshee isn’t a woman in any traditional sense. She represents the change. The turning.” Rose held eye contact as she spoke. She squeezed Callie’s hand and leaned forward. “Do you understand?”
Callie shook her head.
“It’s important that you understand.”
“I’m sorry,” Callie said. “I really don’t.” Rose’s eyes were the most focused and intense Callie had ever seen. “I’m trying, but I just don’t get it.”
“You will,” Rose said. The proclamation sounded like something between a warning and a curse. “Go,” she said, dropping Callie’s hand and turning away. “Go to your stupid dinner. I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” Then, blinking her eyes, pointing a finger at Callie, she spoke again, in a voice that was nothing like her own: “God will give you blood to drink!”
Rose’s voice echoed off the walls.
A chill ran down Callie’s spine. Unlike the unfamiliar story Rose had just told, Callie was certain that she’d heard this phrase before. She waited for Rose to say something else, something that would give her a clue, but Rose was pulling away, turning inward. Her eyes had taken on the same emptiness Callie had seen when she first arrived.
Callie had accepted Marta’s offer to drive her to the Whitings’. But she hadn’t expected to leave Rose so soon, so she sat in her car in front of the tearoom and called Zee. “I think I may have set her back,” she admitted, telling Zee what Rose had said. “I wish I hadn’t pushed her about the banshee—I don’t know what got into me.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Zee reassured her. “She has these outbursts. You witnessed it yourself, the day she woke up.”
“She said something different that day.”
“She has catchphrases. Ciphers. Courting the strike. Blood to drink. She’s used that phrase before. When I asked her about it, she said those were the words the banshee spoke to her before the murders.”
For a moment, Callie felt as if she couldn’t breathe. God, was that where she’d heard those words? The night of the murders?
Zee was still talking, but Callie had lost track of the conversation.
“Are you still there?” Zee asked.