Chapter 34 Taboos
Taboos
Lydia Brown
My Morrigan graveyard connects powerful Wiccans, and I can’t wait to tell Kate.
We’ll revisit Birdie’s graveyard and see if it hides an entrance to the tunnels.
Why else would a witch be buried outside the rock wall rather than within?
Why else would there be a note written decades before with directions from Romi to go see Birdie?
The similarity between the Morrigan graveyard and Birdie’s can no longer be denied.
Professor Covey enjoys two cups of tea and a tour of the cottage but is fatigued from our unplanned adventure. I take him back to his car at the bookshop eager to share our news with Kate when I see her car parked outside and find her upstairs surrounded by a half dozen books.
“Hello, Kate.”
“Oh, hi,” she says, distracted. “Nancy unlocked the door and left the key with me. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Of course not. I need to give you your own key. Was today’s search in Micaville successful?”
“Sort of—maybe—but what I found out from Loretty’s Aunt Marris is most disturbing. And now Birdie confirms it in her books.” She holds up a fistful of notes.
“Tell me.” I sit. My news about the note can wait.
Kate begins. “First off, no one is searching for Loretty anymore. No one was at the Dillard home except Buck’s mama.
Buck was off with the children but Jolene didn’t know where.
Sadie was upstairs in bed weak as water.
I couldn’t find Eli, and Marris was chattering about Carly coming since Gladys died in April.
And now I’m ninety percent convinced that the girl I saw in Micaville is Loretty, and she’s with her grandmother Carly. ”
“That’s wonderful! You found proof?”
“Not exactly. Oddly, no one in Micaville remembered seeing a woman and a girl last Tuesday walking by the road. One man thought it might be a local healer called Granny C. When prompted, he said the C might mean Carly.”
“And that led you to believe what?”
“That the healer might be Loretty’s grandma.”
I nod toward the stack of papers. “Does Birdie write that Carly became a healer and settled in Micaville?”
“No. Nothing so explicit. At least I haven’t found it yet.
” Kate responds with her usual edge, always on guard against criticism.
“In the years leading up to Sadie’s birth, Birdie referred to young Carly by her initial C.
The girl was close to Birdie until she got pregnant, married Otis Blue, birthed Sadie, and then left. ”
“So you now think Birdie’s reference to Carly with the letter C is tied to Granny C?”
“Lydia,” Kate rubs her temples. “I’m trying to help, and I might have found something that makes sense and you’re not helping.”
“I’m trying to understand, that’s all. I know the temptation to make things fit that don’t. You began with a girl the age and size of Loretty. It’s logical that you wish they were one and the same, and that you were at the end of the search, not lost in the middle.”
My friend lifts doleful eyes to me and declares, “You might be right, but I did discover there was a double crime committed against Carly. Of that, I’m certain.”
“What crime?”
“The first was incest. Carly’s despicable daddy raped and impregnated her.
” Kate sorts through her notes and finds the entry.
“Birdie wrote, Carly be in the family way and it ain’t from a boy.
It be Walter Hicks. I show C a tea what turn his pecker limp and another tea what end his seed, but she don’t make neither.
Is that blunt enough?” Kate’s on the verge of tears.
“What gives a daddy the right to molest his child? Where does that disgusting disconnect come from?”
“Sadly, it happens,” I admit. “In a lot of places, not only Appalachia.”
She goes on. “And I know this to be true: The horrendous second crime was when Carly’s parents created the lie that their daughter was promiscuous.
That the seed that she carried was from a fancy man.
That she abandoned the newborn and Otis Blue to be with that fancy man.
” Kate spits vile words. “Both Walter and Gladys sacrificed their daughter’s reputation and future for Walter’s wicked ways.
That’s the terrible, horrible kinship sin I found out today. ”
Our hearts are heavy, as they would be for any good soul who knows the difference between right and wrong. Gladys and Walter Hicks did not.
I ask tenderly, “And how does this all tie to Loretty?”
“She knows the truth. About the wicked sin dipped in misery. The kinship violation. That’s what she called it,” Kate explains.
“It was when she heard the vile confession. She may not have understood it all, but she knows the truth about Walter and Gladys. So, I don’t believe Loretty ran away or was kidnapped or is lost. I think she’s on a mission to mend her broken family.
You don’t have to believe me, Lydia, but the folks in Baines Creek defy logic.
They do things and know things that aren’t normal. This is far from the only thing.”
“You can’t shock me, Kate.” I lean forward and when she doesn’t respond, I say, “I believe in magic and psychics and the spirit world. I believe in all the creatures our planet holds from the Little People to tommy-knockers. I believe in reading tea leaves and palms.”
“Well, I don’t,” she says and clenches her hands in prayer.
“But I’ll start with the latest weird thing that happened.
Three boys were sent to interview a taxidermist for the school newspaper, and they found him dead, sitting in a rocking chair, surrounded by stuffed animals.
Then they said the chair started rocking on its own and phantom animals and red-eyed ghosts chased them. How can that be?”
“I can’t explain it,” I speak tenderly. “It’s a lot like faith. A miracle happens, a gift appears, a voice is heard, and you just know.”
Then Kate says, “And then there were the dancing lights.”
“Near Birdie’s place.” I say.
“Yes.”
“When you ran through the dark.”
“Yes.”
“I saw them, too,” I say.
“When?”
“The day I met Birdie but she wouldn’t talk to me…”
“…and yet you stayed,” she finishes my sentence.
“Yes. I sat in her yard quietly thinking and hoping she’d open her door—when she did.”
“She came back out? She talked to you? What did she say?”
“She scolded me. Said my thinking was too noisy. Called my thoughts yammerins. Said she couldn’t sleep and that it wasn’t time for me to know her secrets. You know that now from that entry in her book with my name and our birthmarks.”
“Why didn’t you tell me, Lydia? Didn’t you think I’d want to know?”
“What was there to tell, really? I never spoke to her again. I left as she instructed, and when I got back to my car, that’s when I saw the lights. I guessed they were floating over Birdie’s place.”
“Were you scared?”
“Why would I be? They were mysterious and beautiful.”
“And therein lies the difference between us,” Kate says with a look of resignation. “I like science and proof for my truths, not myths and fairy tales.”
“But myths aren’t false or fabricated stories. They’re based on truth. That’s what C. S. Lewis believes.”
“The writer of the children’s series?”
“It isn’t simply a children’s series. Those books represent Mr. Lewis’s spiritual quest. That intention has been documented. He called those books a study of the connection between the physical world and beyond. He believed myths are that bridge to the other side.”
Kate says, “What other side?”
“The spirit world. Some call it heaven. That other side is why I wanted to speak to Birdie. To understand more.”
“Understand what?”
“The failure I’ve carried since I was seventeen.”
I glance out the window at the dark and then down at my watch. “It’s suppertime. Let’s go home and I’ll warm a bowl of soup, and tell you my story.”