Chapter 22
Cora
Twenty Years Ago
This is how it always starts. With tea and the night and nerves too close to the surface of a person. With someone placing their hand on the door, hoping Cora will open up and make one more bargain with the mountains for them. Just one more, whatever the cost.
Whatever the price.
Tonight it’s Brenda Haggerty, a woman who lost her baby last spring. She miscarried, as many do, but now she hears the baby’s cries at night. When the wind whispers from the east, when it flows past the mountain, all she can hear are the thin wails of a newborn.
She scratches at the door and Ivy lets her in. Cora notices her hands first. How they’re red and swollen, with small cuts in the skin between thumb and forefinger. Brenda catches Cora looking at her hands and balls them into fists.
“I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t desperate,”
she says to the two sisters.
“I’ll get the kettle on,”
says Ivy, leaving Cora and Brenda to talk.
Cora leads her into the lounge, glad at least that Howard is out in the fields. Milly, their jersey, is calving, and Howard will check her every hour until dawn breaks. Her eyes slide to the kitchen as she ushers Brenda into the lounge, still wringing her hands. Cora’s and Ivy’s eyes meet, and Ivy turns away first. But not before Cora sees it, the disapproval. But what did she expect when she gave the book to Cora? That she would hide it in the attic?
“What can you give me for it?”
Brenda asks as Ivy brings in the tea. She sets it down, adding a tot of brandy to Brenda’s, who sighs when she sips on it and briefly closes her eyes. “A potion? Maybe a spell?”
“Earwax,”
Cora says firmly. She doesn’t touch the tea, since she can’t stand caffeine past eight in the evening. She likes to sleep as soon as she’s finished her twenty minutes of reading in bed. “Stopper your ears, don’t open your bedroom window tonight. Leave the rest to me.”
“Ear . . . what?”
Brenda says, forehead wrinkling in confusion.
“It’ll be tonight, it’s a full moon,”
Cora says firmly. “Drink your tea, there’s a love. Tonight, Brenda, you close your bedroom window and you stopper up your ears. Don’t follow the sounds, there’s no baby out there on those mountains waiting for you.”
“But what if there is, what if—”
“Earwax,”
Cora says with a nod. “Stuff it in, you won’t hear that husband of yours snoring either. More brandy?”
After Brenda leaves, politely shutting the door behind her, Cora turns to Ivy. “Don’t start.”
“Is there any point?”
“You think I shouldn’t interfere.”
“I think Brenda Haggerty needs to get ahold of herself.”
“You don’t believe her, then.”
“Cora . . .”
Ivy sighs. “I do believe she’s hearing things, of course I do. You can’t live here and not believe it all, not when there’s proof every which way you turn. I know, if she follows the sounds, she could lose herself to the mountains tonight. But that’s not what . . . What I’m most afraid of, really, is you going up there tonight and doing a working to save her.”
Cora shifts past her sister to place the stone-cold mugs of tea on the tea tray. Ivy hasn’t drunk hers either. “If I don’t interfere, who will?”
“All I’m saying is . . . be careful.”
Cora fixes her sister with a look. “And all I’m saying is, at least one of us Morgans has to do what’s right.”
Ivy bites her lip. “We don’t know yet what you have to give up. What love you’ll lose—”
“Not now,”
Cora says sharply. “Now, are you coming with me, or will you go home?”
Despite how Ivy feels, she still walks the old ways with her sister. They go up the mountain with the moon brimming and full, and in the silver haze Cora cuts her finger. She lets the blood well and drip, speaks a few words over it, kindly words, asking the mountains to forget about Brenda. Ivy is resigned to this casual, secretive horror. But she worries for Cora. She worries for her mind, for her soul. She stays in the shadows as her sister does the working, giving up a small piece of herself in exchange. As they walk back down the path, Cora sways and Ivy clamps an arm around her waist.
“What did it take to protect Brenda?”
Ivy murmurs.
“Not sure yet . . .”
Cora says and swallows carefully, as though it pains her. But she knows she’s done the right thing, the best thing. For a brief moment, the barest thump of a heartbeat, she could feel the magic, and touch it, like touching thread or wool, golden and silken, reaching for her. These flares of magic, these tiny glimpses into something other, something that seems almost absent from the world, are worth every piece of herself she gives.
The following morning Cora wakes and eyes her braid in the mirror. Her twirling hair, once an ashy blond, has silvered overnight. She brushes her fingers down it, loosening the braid into waves over her shoulders. When she learns later that Brenda slept soundly, that she didn’t hear a single wail, she knows in her soul it was worth it.