The Winter Sisters Read online

  What do I have? My mind and my wits. A gun. My freedom.

  She realized she could go as far as she liked from those hypocrite townsfolk. She never needed to see to their croups and diarrheas again. She could go into the woods for the freedom and silence of the open world. She could find a regiment of soldiers and kill a man rather than cure him. She could go to the Cherokees or the Creeks and pretend she was one of them. She could walk west to Utah, to California.

  When she had been a child, her life had been circumscribed. She’d been drawn into a circle of charcoal with her sisters, with lavender and sage and dove feathers woven into their hair. Long before, the three of them had poured molten wax into a bowl of moonlight to scry for their future. Rebecca had found a knife—a scalpel. Waycross. Effie had found a banjo. Thumb. She hadn’t chosen a piece of wax.

  “Hell, no. Waste of time.”

  Sarah kicked over heaps of broken ends, blackened pieces, twisted metal, and melted glass—just fragments: formless, meaningless, and void. The circle was gone. Her promises were fulfilled. She owed nothing more to the living or the dead.

  Rebecca and I met in the grand lobby of the Rhodes Hotel, sitting in two carved armchairs beneath a heavy red tapestry. “I’m sorry I can’t see you upstairs,” I said. “Mrs. Rhodes doesn’t let mixed company into the bachelor quarters.”

  “Well, you needn’t have taken the bachelor’s quarters,” said Rebecca. The sentence hung in the air for several seconds before Rebecca spoke again. “How’s your jaw? Did you bleed it?”

  A large bruise reached from my ear to my mouth. “No, that would only aggravate it. The bones are fine. The skin isn’t broken. The blood will go away on its own.”

  Rebecca nodded. “You could pack raw meat onto it. But that’s more trouble than it’s worth, I suppose. You’d stink like bacon.”

  I smiled, which made my swollen jaw ache.

  “We’re leaving, Aubrey,” said Rebecca quietly. “I’m leaving. Back to Hope Hollow.”

  I felt like I’d taken another blow, this time to the stomach.

  “The wagon’s loaded up. Not that there’s much—just the few things I had in the Snells’ upstairs room. I’m setting out this noon.”

  I pressed a hand against my stomach to steady it. “I don’t understand.”

  “Mrs. Snell has too much to worry about now, without having to see to house guests. And we don’t have a place to see patients anymore—”

  “Why not here, in this lobby? There’s plenty of space. I’ll ask Mrs. Rhodes. She’s sure to say yes. And if she doesn’t, Richardson will set us up in the courthouse. Or in the tannery. Or we’ll make house calls.”

  Rebecca looked across the lobby. She leaned forward, and her voice dropped. “Boatwright—”

  “Boatwright is broken. Even I saw that. He’ll be on the first mail wagon out of town.”

  “This isn’t my home, Aubrey. Hope Hollow is. I’ve left my garden fallow, and it demands tending. The nightshade is growing wild and angry.”

  I leaned forward, putting my elbows on my knees. “I don’t want you to go, Rebecca.”

  She fiddled with her palms. “I’d be happy for you to come to Hope Hollow. It’s a fine place. Much nicer than the bachelor’s quarters here.”

  I felt an uneasy spasm. “Do you think that would work? Would patients come to see us, now that they’re accustomed to the convenience of having a doctor in town?”

  Rebecca’s hands were in her lap, the fingers intertwined. She studied her thumbs as if the words she needed were engraved there. The half-moons at the bases of her thumbnails were intensely white, but the skin around the left nail was imperfect. She’d bruised or smashed it once, and it had never healed. “Aubrey,” she said in a quavering voice, “sometimes, you are so stupid. Why can’t you understand what I am asking you to ask me? You can be certain of my answer… if only you will ask.”

  I felt a rush of pulse through my hand, but I could not tell if it was her heart or mine that was beating faster. I was a sorry specimen, inferior even to medicine showmen: I had no money, no prospects. Also, my person was divided. My heart was given to Rebecca, but my mind was still tangled with the mystery of Effie. Rebecca deserved all of me, but that kernel of my mind, the dark core of fascination in my mind, still sought for Effie.

  “And… and your sisters?”

  “Damn my sisters! Am I not enough?” Rebecca daubed her hand at the corner of her mouth, settling herself. “Sarah does what she wants. She’ll be lighting out for the territories. She’s not following us. And Effie—Effie isn’t going to Hope Hollow.”

  Green bile churned within me, and a hiccup brought it to my throat. I tasted acid and failure. “So, she’s accepted Thumb’s proposal.”

  “They’re leaving tomorrow or the day after, bound for who knows where.”

  “But she can’t leave—”

  The muscles in Rebecca’s cheek twitched. “She will, and she will be happy. I have never seen her happier.” Rebecca stood up, brushed herself off, and fluffed out her skirts. “But why can’t you be happy for yourself? Why can’t you be happy with me?”

  “Only, it’s that, I—Rebecca, of course, but—”

  “But nothing!” Rebecca’s face was fixed in a snarl, but then, it softened. “Oh, Aubrey, I’m sorry. I should not press you. There’s time enough. But think of me, too. I thought I’d lost you… in a fire…”

  “Rebecca—”

  “No. I want you to think, Aubrey,” she said. “Don’t ask out of pity or emotion because you are homeless or hopeless. I do not want a mindless reply. I want you to be certain of your life. And when you are, come see me. A day will make no difference.”

  She was wrong, though. Everything would be different the next day. Effie would take with her the answer to the question that consumed me, my last chance to answer the question that fascinated me.

  Rebecca spun on her heels, and her skirts circled around her. My head pounded. I fumbled for my flask of ether, but my fingers didn’t obey my demands. The cushions behind my head and below my buttocks prickled at me. Every minute spent dithering was a minute I would never regain.

  I would not give myself to Rebecca as half a soul, riven with uncertainty. Either I would give my whole self to her, in sound body and mind, with no fascinations to distract me from my devotion, or I would not be worthy of life.

  Only one proof of Effie’s powers would suffice: to feel them work in myself. Only rabies would do. I would infect myself, then Effie would cure me. Or I would infect myself, and she would fail to cure me, and that would be its own answer. I’d find the rabid panther and have it bite me, then I would seek out Effie for my cure. That seemed to make perfect sense, the culmination of my personal and professional history.

  It was the most extreme form of heroic medicine, more than a bleeding or a blistering, but science is greater than life, and knowledge is greater than death. Had not great scientists before, believing fully in the rightness of their discoveries, made themselves the first patient? Here, the medicine took the form of a person: Effie Winter.

  A smile broke over my face. If anyone had happened into the lobby, he would have marveled over a grinning idiot in an overstuffed red chair, his eyebrows singed off, ash streaked down his face, his clothes stained with soot and cinders, his future entrusted to a panther, hydrophobia, and the gray, unsolvable eyes of Effie Winter.

  The weather was not ideal for finding a rabid panther or any sort of baleful creature in the piney woods. The crisp, coming winter tinged the wind with freshness. The crimsons and ochres in the trees were vibrant, bold against the blue sky, cleared of the lingering smoke from the fire. The songs of the towhee and the cardinal and the blue jay ornamented rustling leaves. Brilliant-green pines forbade sadness and promised that spring would return, that not all hope was dead.

  I set off for the easy buffet at the grove of a million pigeons. That was the last place I’d seen the panther, but the beast was not among the clouds of guano the wingbeats
stirred. The creature would avoid water. The hill behind Simonton’s farm was the highest point around, dry and windy. I turned my footsteps in that direction.

  The path grew harder with every mile. My collar grew damp, my armpits soaked through with my own stink. A moist swath covered my entire back. But the farther I wandered, the more weariness filled my blood and the more convinced I became of my mission’s essential correctness. Curiosity was a pernicious disease. It possessed me, turning me into a thrall to its own satisfaction.

  The creature caught the scent of sweat. I did not see the panther but heard its cry, high and ragged. I turned off the path and clambered through underbrush, crushing ferns and disturbing rocks grown over with a hundred years of moss. The panther’s keening urged me on.

  I followed the sound to a rocky bulge. In the ancient past, the rock had split, leaving a ten-foot cliff riven with crevices and fragmentary stones. I leaned against the cold granite wall. Beneath my back was the entire mass of the Earth, running in an unbroken block through all the continents, below all the oceans, and to the center of the globe. Anyone else leaning against a mountain was sharing my seat. Anyone else walking upon the earth was treading on my back.

  Warm breath, sour and sickly, tickled my neck.

  Slowly, slowly, so as not to spook the creature, I turned to face my quarry.

  A vertical split, two or three feet wide, had been covered by fallen stones, making a shallow, accidental cave. The source of the breath stirred in its den. It put its snout into the light, and I could see that its white foreclaws were behind its ears as if it were holding its skull against a headache. The creature’s mouth was filled with foam, yet it made no move more menacing than a yawn. The fur around its face was patchy. Raw skin showed in the bald spots. The creature could barely hold its head up. The hydrophobic rage, so visceral and violent, had passed and left a body too ravaged and exhausted to attack. The animal looked at me, suffering in its eyes, intelligence, sadness. In compassion for my fellow mortal, I stretched out my hand to scruff it behind its ears. Then I pulled back my sleeve, exposing the white flesh of my arm.

  Then I realized the foolishness of my action—not only that I was seeking to infect myself with rabies but because I already had it. Ouida Bell’s bite had given it to me. The inability to drink, the headaches, the exhaustion and nausea, salivation—all marked my symptoms. The madness of what I’d considered, to give my whole life over to the fascination of Effie, struck me. I did not need the creature to infect me. I needed a cure for my fascination, but I could begin it there.

  The panther laid its head against my arms as though asleep. Its teeth were hidden. Its face was tranquil, beatific.

  “Thank you, friend,” I said. I ruffled the patchy hair behind its neck. “Thank you for sparing me.”

  Then the beast’s head jerked, and an instant later, I heard the crack of a shot.

  “Whoo-whee! I got him!” Pearson leapt up from behind the bushes. He held his rifle and shook it over his head, a savage rattling a spear. “Finally got that panther! Whoo-whee!”

  “Damn near killed the doctor, too,” said Hodgson, emerging beside him.

  Pearson thumbed his nose. “Yeah, so what else is new?”

  21

  THE ONLY LIE SHE TOLD ME

  My hands were covered in gore from the fatal shot. I wiped them on a mossy rock, leaving it stained red. I still needed to find Effie and beg her for a cure—not for the hydrophobia, but for the fascination. And poor Rebecca—how would she bear the loss of another suitor? It was for her that I needed the cure, so that if I were to die, it would be with all my heart and mind dedicated to her. Small consolation, perhaps, but a full love is better than a partial one, and I meant to love Rebecca fully.

  I walked toward the descending sun, and my eyes became exhausted from squinting. Twilight, when it settled, was a relief. I welcomed the faint flashes of fireflies in the crepuscular shadows. The gloaming paths held no worry for me. I had no possessions anywhere to concern me, and I already had the worst of all diseases in my blood. What is left to fear?

  The cheerful roll of a bonfire illuminated Thumb’s wagon. It was as distinct from ether’s blue flames as the day was from the night. The bonfire divided the dark and cold from the warm and welcome. It was a fire of life, promising my cure.

  As I came closer, my head thrummed with a low, shuddering noise. I put my hands over my ears, but the disturbance grew stronger, spreading from my head and into the trees, their roots, and the vast surface of the earth. The entire world was trembling in B-flat. I wondered if it was a sign of Effie’s power.

  It stopped.

  “Who’s that out there?” called Thumb.

  I hurried behind the wagon.

  “Aubrey!” Thumb slapped his knee with one hand and waved a violin bow in the other. “Come see. Look at what I rigged up.”

  A metal wire, like a guyline, was stretched taut from the edge of his wagon to a large chestnut. The line was above Thumb’s head, within reach but high enough that no one would be decapitated in the darkness.

  “I rosin up the bow, and here we go!” said Thumb. He dragged the violin bow across the line. The wagon, the chestnut, the earth, and the sky resonated in the same B-flat.

  “I thought—” I began. “What do you mean, torturing a fellow like that?”

  Thumb eyed me. “I’m sorry, Doc. It’s a new way to get folks’ attention. Bells are fine, and the banjo, but it’s all tired. A fellow’s got to be new. Daring. Dazzling. I can still set up in three seconds and take down in a hurry, and it doesn’t claim room in the wagon.” Thumb pointed the bow at me. “Hey, want to give it a try?”

  “Hell, yes.”

  I drew the bow back and forth as Thumb dashed up and down the line. He’d grab the string at intervals, trying to get real notes off it. Landing on pitch was hard. He remained an inch sharp or flat. But we stumbled through a reasonable rendition of “The Hayhover’s Fork.”

  “To what do I owe the pleasure of your company, Doc?” said Thumb when I surrendered the bow to him, feeling quite clever in spite of my infection. “You didn’t come all this way in the dark to play the world fiddle, did you?”

  “I need to see Effie.” I was startled to realize that I’d forgotten her for several moments. “To give my congratulations. To her. And to you. Both.”

  The firelight projected a circle of protection around us. At its periphery, oblong shadows gathered, faceless and void.

  “Well, she’s gone for a walk,” said Thumb. “But I’ll drink a toast with you, Doc.” He filled two immense copper steins from a barrel and gave one to me. A great raft of foam sloshed off as we crashed mugs. “Hey, here’s a nice one I stole from a rye drinker.” Thumb locked eyes with me.

  “Here’s to us!

  Who’s like us?

  Damn few,

  And they’re all dead.”

  “I don’t pretend to understand your toast, sir, but I’ll drink.” I quaffed my potation. Ginger beer. The second sip was less refreshing than the first. My hydrophobic tongue expressed displeasure. “Effie’s a fine lady,” I said. “When do you think she’ll be back?”

  “Don’t worry.” Thumb took my stein and replenished them both. “We won’t pull up stakes until you’ve seen her.”

  I refreshed my cup with the last of my ether. I would keep none of it for the next day or beyond. “She went to Mrs. Snell’s, then?”

  “Nope,” said Thumb. “Said she was going to the old mill, Tribble Mill.”

  “What business could she have at those burned-out ruins?”

  “Not my never mind,” said Thumb.

  “It’ll be full night soon.”

  “Nothing’s killed her so far. I figure she can fend for herself.”

  “You mean,” I ventured, “whatever trouble befalls her, she can cure.”

  “Runs in the family, I gather.”

  “But Effie is… more.”

  Thumb’s mule wandered over and scratched its flank against
me. I petted the animal behind its ears. I loved that mule, whose name I could not recall, because it was furry and solid and alive. I ran my hand along the flank until it shook me away.

  “Ouida Bell,” I said. “The hydrophobia. How do you explain that, sir?”

  “Effie’s good for a lot of folks.” He leaned back against the wagon. “Like my tonics are. As long as it works, let’s not wonder why.”

  “And that’s it? You haven’t been the least curious?” He, more than anyone, should wonder at the powers of his companion.

  Thumb pondered his ginger beer, looking into it like a mirror. “This happened to me when I was a small fry. We needed an onion because the baby was sick and Momma was going to make a poultice to get the bold hives out. And when I get to the onion patch, there’s a woman sitting right there. I’d never seen her before. She was white as a sheet, and her hair was black and dirty and stringy, and she was in nightclothes not decent for being outside. Sitting right on the cold dirt. She was crying, just blubbering. Her face was wet all the way down her cheeks and down her neck and even her clothes. I say, ‘Lady, is everything all right?’ The crying woman starts screaming. I’ve never heard such angry, hateful sounds. The woman is trying to say something, but I don’t understand the words. The screaming is so twisted with the crying that I can’t tell what she’s yelling. I’m backing away, but the crying woman stands up. She’s getting closer, tears and spit and foam getting in my eyes. I put out my hand—not to hurt her, just to stop her. And my hand goes right through.”

  “A ghost story?” I said. The oblong shadows beyond the firelight became darker. They whispered to each other in their crepuscular tongue, all whistles and clicks and chirps and croaks.

  “Doc, I didn’t know what it was. But all that racket made Momma come out on the porch with the baby. ‘You quiet down! Don’t wake up this baby, or I’ll fix up some peach limb tea!’ By which she means give me a whipping with a peach-tree limb. And then she sees the woman, too. I run back, hiding behind her legs. The woman doesn’t go away. We all see her. She comes right up on the porch, screaming, howling, mad out of her wits. I grab Momma and pull her inside, and I run for Pa. He’s sleeping on the bed. The sound hadn’t woken him up. I tell him, ‘You’ve gotta come. Hurry!’ And he gets out on the porch, takes one look at that woman, and goes right back inside. He flops on the bed, puts the pillow over his head, and just lies there. The woman’s still outside. She’s stomping and thrashing on the porch. ‘Get up, Pa!’ I say. But he’s asleep, or he is playing at it. She’s slamming into the walls. She rattles the shutters. And Pa never once takes his head from under the pillow. Momma and I are under the table. I’ve got the fire poker, but I know that’s not going to do any good. I’m so scared that, maybe, I faint. Because next thing I know, it’s supper. Momma’s rolling dough. The baby’s got his onion poultice on his chest. I go outside to the onion patch, and there’s nothing. I never see her again. Never.”