The Key
Back home in California, Flora monitored wildfires in the state and kept track of all storms. The girls could spend hours studying the ever-changing map that their mother had taped to the wall.
Bright orange pins marked the location of every new fire.
Blue swirls indicated cyclones in the Pacific or hurricanes on the other side of the continent.
Gray thumbtacks were tornadoes. Once, a single green pin had marked the town where residents claimed tadpoles had rained down from the sky.
At certain times of the year, the map bristled with pins and tacks.
“There are so many,” Phoebe marveled.
“Yes, far more than there were when I was your age,” Flora told her daughters.
“What does it mean?” asked Brigid. She was twelve now, and she knew everything had a meaning.
“When we catch the flu, what do our bodies do?” Flora asked Phoebe, whose gift for healing had advanced to mending broken bird wings and curing squirrels of mange.
“Sneeze, cough, run a fever,” Phoebe recited.
“Exactly,” said Flora. “That’s how our immune system fights disease. It’s the same for the Old One. Heat is the fever that scorches invaders. Storms are a bit like her coughs and sneezes.”
“What disease is she fighting?” Brigid inquired.
“Mankind,” Flora told them. “And she’ll need our help. The Old One will be coming for the three of us soon.”
The girls had learned about the prophesy the previous summer.
According to Aunt Ivy, Bessie had agreed to allow Sadie to live in the caretaker’s cottage at Wild Hill—a lovely five-bedroom brick home that only a robber baron would have dared call a cottage—on one condition.
There would come a day, the ghost told their great-great-grandmother, when three of Sadie’s descendants would be called upon by the Old One.
The Three, as Bessie named them, would be the most powerful of their kind.
They would usher in a new age in which the mansion would play a critical role.
Until then, the enormous house was to remain closed to the living.
Aunt Ivy was certain that Flora, Brigid, and Phoebe were The Three. She seemed to think it was a great honor, so the girls accepted it. Only later did the vagueness of the prophesy begin to worry Brigid.
“When will we know what the Old One wants us to do?” Brigid asked for the hundredth time.
“Can we get started right now?” Phoebe was eager to be of service. While her sister could be dour and difficult, Phoebe loved nothing more than to please.
“Suck-up,” Brigid muttered.
Flora cupped Phoebe’s face and planted a kiss on her forehead. “Not yet. But when the time comes, we’ll do whatever she asks of us,” Flora replied. She had a way of making everything sound fun.
After their mother’s death, Phoebe would question everything she’d been told—starting with that one simple statement.
But at eleven, Phoebe happily accepted the fate she’d been dealt.
As long as she had her sister and mother, she couldn’t imagine her life being anything but magical.
Their family didn’t have to live by other people’s rules.
No one told them not to curse or belch or run around naked.
The Duncans read whatever they liked, roamed wherever they wanted, and never turned their nose up at adventure.
Of course, over time, it became clear that plenty of people didn’t approve of Flora’s approach to parenting.
Other kids thought it was strange that Phoebe barely knew her father, a Haitian-born artist who lived down in Georgia.
Flora liked to tell Phoebe that she’d been drawn to his scent.
She swore she could smell powerful witches in his family tree. Phoebe kept that part to herself.
Her father was just one of countless men who had fallen under Flora’s spell over the years.
Everyone seemed to find her entrancing. That was one of her gifts.
Even those who thought she was likely in league with Satan couldn’t help but be fascinated.
Once, Phoebe had overheard two moms at school speculating about the source of her family’s fortune.
Phoebe had kindly informed them that Flora had sold a chemical company she inherited after her parents died in a plane crash.
“She’s not a whore, if that’s what you were thinking,” she added in her sweetest voice.
Then she stood there and watched with great pleasure as the women’s faces had burst into flames.
People sometimes said Phoebe had inherited her mother’s charms. Phoebe knew that wasn’t true.
She was pretty, but that was all she and Flora shared in common.
The older she got, the fewer friends Phoebe had.
And that was perfectly fine. When she was little, she’d had playdates every week.
Everyone in school begged for an invite.
The grounds of Flora’s beautiful beachfront estate teemed with animals.
Not just dogs and cats, of which there were many.
There were bunnies in the pool house, alpacas in the backyard, and lizards everywhere you looked.
Several species of monkeys made their home in the orchard.
The tree branches drooped with oranges, kiwis, guava, and grapefruits, and the monkeys were all very plump and happy to let children pet them.
But none of the kids ever asked for a second visit. As pretty and sweet and seemingly perfect as Phoebe was, there was something about her that made them uncomfortable. Hers was a light that never turned off. And sometimes it shone where they did not want it.
“I think you’re mean to the monkeys because your mother doesn’t love you,” she once told a girl who’d been throwing pebbles at Flora’s pets. “Would you be nicer to them if I gave you a hug?”
The girl’s mother had a word with Flora that evening, but Flora refused to apologize. She was proud of Phoebe for defending the monkeys, and she told the obnoxious woman as much.
“I love my children, and I don’t punish them for telling the truth,” she informed the girl’s mother. “Maybe being phony is more acceptable in your circles, but my family doesn’t have to live by your stupid rules.” Then she hung up.
“That’s right!” Brigid had cheered.
When she realized her kids had been listening, Flora had grimaced. “I’m sorry, darling. I don’t think that girl will be coming over anymore,” she told Phoebe.
Phoebe didn’t give a damn. She knew at that moment she didn’t need anyone else.
THE NEXT SUMMER, WHEN IT was time to resume their lessons with Aunt Ivy, Phoebe packed two trunks for the summer at Wild Hill.
Flora insisted she fill one with clothes and shoes.
The second contained only dolls. At the California house, the dolls had their own room, with a door that Phoebe was supposed to keep locked.
It was a precaution that had become necessary after a guest of Brigid’s had stumbled across Phoebe playing with her toys in the den.
“What did you do to your babies?” the horrified little girl had cried.
“They’re not babies,” Phoebe replied calmly. “They’re my patients. I’m helping, not hurting them.”
The girl had pointed a finger at the doll Phoebe was tending to. “You’re sawing off her arm!”
Phoebe sighed. She had no time for ignorance. “I’m saving her life. She’s developed gangrene. Haven’t you heard of it?”
The little girl had not, and nor had her mother, who appeared within the hour to whisk her traumatized daughter away.
“I’m sorry,” Phoebe told Brigid as they watched from a window as the car sped off. It was clear that another girl would not be back.
Brigid shrugged. “She was dumb anyway.” She didn’t always take her sister’s side, but in this case, it would have been ridiculous not to. The games Brigid dreamed up were far darker than playing surgeon.
FLORA HAD WARNED PHOEBE THAT she might not have much time for her dolls that summer.
Aunt Ivy had a great deal to teach them.
So much, in fact, that she’d asked Flora to send the girls on their own, so she could have their undivided attention.
But once they were there, Ivy encouraged Phoebe to play.
She’d even loaned her great-grandniece a wheelbarrow with which to transport the dolls—and a picnic blanket to spread out beneath her makeshift field hospital.
Phoebe always took great care when she loaded her patients into the wheelbarrow. As she walked, she would reassure them that there was a reason she was taking them out to the lawn in front of the old mansion.
“Sunshine kills germs,” Phoebe told them. “It also helps your body make vitamin D. You wouldn’t want to develop rickets, now, would you?”
When she reached the right spot, she liked to spread out the picnic blanket and lay the dolls in a row.
There was Alice, who suffered from hideous boils; Gertie, with a growth that remained undiagnosed; twins Roger and Richard, who shared a liver; and Janice, who suffered from at least a dozen unsightly afflictions and—poor thing—couldn’t have long to live.
On the day the raven came to visit, Phoebe had just finished covering the dolls with the individual blankets she’d made for them out of moss when her guest arrived, chic and somber in a cloak of black feathers.
Phoebe sat back on her haunches as the raven strutted from one end of the blanket to the other, pausing to inspect each patient.
The bird must have been pleased with the care they’d received, for it turned to Phoebe and laid a gift down before her—a silver key blackened with tarnish.
The raven watched Phoebe examine the object and slip it into her pocket.
“Thank you,” Phoebe told the bird.
The bird opened its wings and lifted off toward the sky.