(II)
Wilfrud and Ethel
Hild were the clan’s dowsers. But it wasn’t water they sought; nor
did they hold any forked branches for divining rods.
They’d shed their
handmade clothes—for nakedness better solicited the spirits of the
Earth—and stood now as pale stick figures painted ghostly white by
the moon. Wilfrud’s gut looked sucked-in beneath the ribs, Ethel’s
breasts losing some plumpness. Divining required a three-day fast,
and they’d been divining a lot lately—hence the emaciation. Their
eyes looked huge in thin faces—huge in the trance they put upon
themselves.
“A minute or two
more,” Everd Stanherd intoned from the side. “It takes time for the
ashes to reach their blood.”
Wilfrud and Ethel had
been dowsers since early childhood, and now, fifty years later,
they’d honed their skills—which some would call sorceries—to
expertise.
No, no forked
branches. Instead they’d slit the belly of a newborn snake,
eviscerated it, and then burned its threadlike innards in a brass
censer, along with dried coneflower petals, sweetbriar oil, and
some fabric from one of the girls’ tops—something well-worn and
close to the heart.
The others watched
from moonlit trees as Wilfrud and Ethel then ate the ashes out of
the censer to begin the trance. Some wore stone pendants about
their necks, while others wore lao
pouches, and still more wore crude crosses fashioned from animal
bones or dried vine cuttings. They all looked on silently in their
inexplicable faith.
They walked nude
through the woods. The others followed. No one spoke.
A while later, they
stopped in a small clearing near , the river and pointed
down.
Everd was the
sawon, the keeper of the clan’s
heritage—and its magic. His voice croaked in the dark, his wife,
Marthe, beside him. “Dig here, men. You can see the upturned
earth.”
It was obviously a
makeshift grave they all surrounded now. The younger men quickly
wielded their shovels, routed and emptied the sad mound. Their
women watched from the trees, some sobbing. It didn’t take long
before the pallid body was hauled out.
Marthe clutched her
husband’s arm and burst into tears. The
monster didn’t even kill her first, Everd thought, shielding
his wife’s eyes. The young girl’s fingers were locked in an upward
clench. She’d been trying to unearth herself when she’d finally
smothered. A monster, yes, a monster. The wheat bands around both death-white
thighs confirmed what she’d been doing. Another one had gone
astray, prostituting herself for extra money instead of living by
the clean, honest way of the clan. And
Cynabelle’s dead. Another one dead. Murdered by that
monster.
“At least it’ll stop
now.” Wilfrud’s sorrowful words crept through the dark. “Now that
you’ve taken care of the soulless bastard.”
“I pray so, my
friend.”
They hadn’t found all
of the others who’d gone missing over the past few months, and
perhaps Chief Sutter was right in his suggestion that they’d simply
left town for a chance at a better life. But
not all of them. The dowsers had found four others buried
like this. The men murdered, and women raped and murdered. Everd would not leave them to
graves like this. They’d rebury them on clan land, in earth
consecrated by Everd himself.
“I pray so,” he
repeated, “but I fear not.”
“I won’t hear it,
Everd!” Ethel nearly cried out at the remark. She was coming out of
the trance. “Dwayne’s dead now. He hated us, but now he’s dead!
There’s no reason for more of us to wind up”—she shivered when she
looked at poor Cindy’s body—‟like this.”
“We fear there is,
dear.” Marthe spoke up in her smoke-light voice. “It’s that Felps
man. Everd has foreseen this.”
The sawon nodded. They all paused in a moment of
silence as the others lifted Cindy’s body and began to take it back
to the property. “He wants this land, so he’s having us killed.
People are doing this for him, for
money.”
“For what purpose?
Miss Judy would never sell the land out from under
us.”
“She would if we
weren’t here. She would if we all left. If more of us continue to
disappear, if more of us are found murdered, then our people
will get scared. And they will
leave.”
No one argued with
that.
“We must tell the
constable.”
“That violates our
own laws, and he wouldn’t do much to help us anyway. I haven’t even
let on to Chief Sutter what I know. I let him believe that I think
the missing ones left on their own accord. We take care of our own,
Wilfrud; it’s our law, and it has been since longer than we can
conceive. We will never go to outsiders. We will always take care
of our own.”
At least Wilfrud
seemed satisfied with what he said next. “And we can thank heaven
and earth that you took care of Dwayne. . . .”