Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
THE CONJURE
Igrabbed the shovel I’d wedged between the stairs and stepped into the storm.
Dust enfolded me, scrubbing the human smells from my skin.
With a thought the shovel turned back to scales.
I whistled to the whirlwind churning down the dry creek bed behind the mortal’s hovel.
Midnight hooves parted the maelstrom. Scarcity’s mane whipped.
Her tail danced. She burst toward me. In the blink of an eye, I leapt onto her back and we headed for the plains.
For the worst of the storm. For the bones all humans become.
I could not bear witness to Mercy’s life anymore.
Not now that I have felt the potential in her touch.
The power. The tenderness. I could not concern myself with the fate of any human…
even her. I had a purpose—read the signs, send the warnings, weigh the scales.
God wanted to know when his creation bent toward its own ruin.
I wasn’t here to stop the wreckage. I was here to help it along.
My siblings and I walked this earth to eventually end it.
What the humans started, we would finish. Their lives meant nothing.
“She means nothing.” The words fought me. She is not for me, I reminded myself.
Scarcity rode the thunder. Dry lightning bit the ground in our wake. Together we pierced the darkness at the storm’s roiling heart. And then we were the storm.
“How did you do it?” I searched Granma’s face in the weak light of the kitchen’s kerosene lamp.
Even in shadows she was beautiful. High cheek bones, an elegant nose, and lips a prince would treasure above his kingdom, even now.
Had Granma had a prince once? She never spoke of Momma’s father.
She’d never told why she had walked out of the mountains with a small child on her hip.
Up until now, she’d kept her secrets as close as the sachet hidden beneath her dress.
But tonight, she’d set one loose. Momma always said we survived because of Granma’s magic, but I hadn’t understood how until now.
Until that pot full of chicken. Too much chicken.
“How did I do what?” Granma used her coy voice, the one that let me know she enjoyed denying people.
“The chicken!”
“Shush!” In a flash, Granma let go of the dish she was scrubbing and grabbed me by my apron. Her wet soapy knuckles dug into my chest. “You shush, right now.” She wielded the whisper like a sword.
Part of me folded inward, cowering from the coldness in her eyes. But Granma let go of me too quickly. She turned back to the dishes, scrubbing but never rinsing, never drying. She was thinking. So was I.
“I heard you. Tonight.” I whispered up a weapon of my own. “When you thought about the tractor.”
She ignored me.
“When you thought about a dowry.”
She scrubbed some more.
I looked over my shoulder at Raymond and Harvey. They sat in our living room chairs next to the cold fireplace playing cards by candlelight.
When I turned back, Granma was staring at me.
What do you care how much food is in our pot? You’re the picture of health. You’ve never gone a full day without food.
The shrill words pierced a piece of my brain I didn’t even know I had. It was Granma’s voice but tinny, small, and needle sharp.
And what do you care about my husband? He was a bad man who married me for my magic and the money it could make him. He—he did bad things.
She turned back to the soapy water.
I gripped my temples as Granma’s thoughts scurried around my skull like a squirrel on fire. I swayed on my feet.
She gripped my apron again, but this time gentler, steadying me. “Too much mind talk’ll make ya dizzy if you’re not used to it.” She studied me for a moment and then said, “sit.”
I plunked into one of the chairs at the kitchen table. Granma took a long moment to towel her hands off, then she sat next to me.
“What is this?” My voice sounded small and pitiful.
I hadn’t even realized I was shaking until Granma put a hand on my trembling arm.
I stared at her fingers as if they were snakes.
There had been rare moments when she’d looked like she wanted to comfort me, but she’d never actually followed through until now.
I held as still as a jackrabbit in the field.
With an awkward pat, Granma lifted her hand and looked toward the men in the living room.
There weren’t any walls to shield our conversation so she kept her voice low when she said, “It skipped your momma.” She searched my eyes, then continued.
“It skipped my momma too. And that made her plenty mad. Granmomma told me that the conjure was stronger in me than anyone else.” An old, tarnished glimmer of pride flashed in her steel-blue eyes, then fizzled out.
“The conjure?”
“That’s what the mountain folk call it, but it goes by many names and lives inside all kinds a people.”
“How many people?”
“Lots. And there are different types. There are some conjurers who can speak from mind to mind like us. There are some who can work the loaves and fishes like me. There are some with completely different gifts.” Dangerous gifts.
Grandma’s thought voice came through the bone of my head more clearly now but the sensation still startled me.
I leaned close, watching her whisper like she was a stranger I’d just met. In a way, I was just meeting her. Estelle Combs Mizell was a woman I’d never really known.
“What kind of conjure do I have?” I asked this new woman who looked like my Granma.
“Well, we know you’ve got the mind talk. Have you heard anyone else’s thoughts?”
I started to turn my head in Raymond’s direction but stopped. Instead, I just nodded my head.
“Hmm.” Granma’s gaze shifted to the living room. “Is he the only one?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure? There are some whose minds are distant and strange. Their thoughts might not sound the same as ours.” She squeezed the dish towel in her hands.
“What about Sooty? Have you heard anything from him?” Granma’s tone changed, like she was recoiling back into her secrets.
Back into the distant woman I’d grown up with.
“No.” I shook my head, willing her to stay with me, to keep talking.
“Do I have the loaves and fishes too?”
She looked at me as if I was transparent and all God had given me was on display for her—blood, organs, teeth, and hereditary magic.
“More times than not, a certain strain of conjure will make its way through a family. Your great, great grandmother had it. I have it.” She looked down at my sweaty hands where they gripped a moth-eaten placemat, then over at the butter bell in the middle of the table.
“Take a deep breath, close your eyes, and repeat after me,” she whispered.
I kept my eyes wide open as Granma quietly dragged the butter bell over to me and lifted its lid.
Just under half a bowl of butter. She closed the lid quickly to keep the grit out and pushed it into my bloodless hands.
Granma met my gaze, then gave me a cross look for skipping her second instruction. I squeezed my eyes shut.
I heard her take a deep breath. I took a shaky one too.
“With free will, I give this offering to God.” She breathed the words over me.
“With free will, I give this offering to God,” I repeated.
“Jesus, I trust you. I break this bread to remember your sacrifice.”
“Jesus…I trust you.” A warmth poured over my hands as the words found their home inside me. “I break this bread to remember your sacrifice.” My fingers tingled like I’d fallen asleep with them crossed over my chest.
The slap of cards on the living room table silenced.
The hiss of sand against the windows hushed.
The trembling inside me melted like morning frost as a sense of peace washed over me.
A great, drowning calm rose inside me. It tumbled through my veins like rain down a dry creek bed.
It knew me and I knew it, but it had been some time since we’d touched.
Time. Thin as a shroud, but strong as steel wrapped around me, through me, through the house, and the land beneath it, up to the stars and down to the bubbling center of the planet.
The vastness of the cosmos, the chicken in the pot, the thoughts in our heads.
It was the storm outside. It was the rider I’d seen in the dust and his horse and the sad song inside them both.
“Take a breath,” Granma whispered from light years away.
I breathed in the new world as it revealed itself to me.
“Open your eyes.”
I opened them and watched as Granma lifted the lid of the butter bell. Sweet swirls of butter filled the bell to overflowing. Fresh, and thick, and nourishing. The darkened kitchen filled with the warmth of God’s blessing as it trickled from my fingers and vanished.
“Divine provision.” Granma smiled showing teeth I’d rarely seen. The expression transformed her face, trimming years off her age. “The Lord’s abundance.” She covered the butter and searched my face. Did I look different too?
After a long moment of assessment, she pushed the bell to the center of the table and leaned back into her secrets. The magic of the moment evaporated.
“What are you ladies talking about in there?” Raymond called from the living room in a friendly manner. I could hear the falseness of his tone. I could hear and see things now that I’d missed before. Small things with large meanings.
“We were just saying that this storm needs more time to blow out. You two might as well bed down here and we’ll see what morning looks like.” Granma stood, pushed her chair back under the table, and headed for the sink. “Mercy, go fetch some pillows and blankets for our guests.”
I blinked at the suddenness of her change in demeanor. Estelle Combs Mizell, the beautiful conjurer from the blue-ridged mountains of Appalachia was gone. It was just me again and the woman behind the walls.
“Wish we could offer more than the floor, gentlemen,” she muttered.
“The floor’ll do just fine, mam,” Harvey answered.
I turned just in time to catch Raymond’s wink. “Yes, the floor will do just fine.”