Crossing Over - Anna Kendall [10]
“Your mother died at Hygryll, on Soulvine Moor.”
I went still. It seemed the whole world had gone still: leaves didn’t rustle, wind didn’t blow, embers didn’t snap in the ashes of the fire. At Hygryll, on Soulvine Moor. After years of refusing to tell me anything of my parents. My mother.
“Where is Soulvine Moor?” I demanded. “And how? How did she die?”
Aunt Jo said nothing, rigid as stone.
“How? And what of my father—Aunt Jo!”
But Aunt Jo would say no more. She lay down, as stiff and unresponsive as if it were she and not her sister who had died at that unknown place. Unknown now, but I would find it. Now that I had a name, I would find it. And for the first time ever, I would cross over with gladness.
My mother, in her lavender dress . . .
It was a long time before I could sleep. I watched the stars between the branches of the trees. I watched the clouds drift in and cover them. Toward morning, it began to rain. I crept under the wagon. The cold rain didn’t matter; tomorrow I would go. My aunt had told me to run, and now I had a reason, a place to run to. Tomorrow I would go, and I would find the place my mother had died, and I would cross over and find her.
But toward morning Hartah woke me, and everything came crashing down.
“Boy! Get up, curse you, get up now!”
I started awake, sitting up so fast that I hit my head on the bottom of the wagon, a sharp crack that sent spears of light through my brain. Hartah seized me by one arm and pulled me from beneath the wagon.
The little clearing was bedlam. Men ran around cursing, hitching Hartah’s old horse to a wagon that must have arrived in the last few hours. The rain still fell, a slow, cold drizzle that soaked through my wool tunic as if boring inward. Through the gray curtains of rain the men’s lanterns gleamed fitfully, illuminating now a clenched face, now the load upon the wagon bed, which was unseen beneath a tarp.
“Come!” Hartah roared, dragging me with him.
Someone else yelled, amid a row of curses hot enough to blister rock, “She be too early! She be too early!”
We ran behind the cabin and then kept going. There was a second track here, leading steeply downward. As Hartah and I descended in the darkness, I tried to keep my feet on the muddy ground, desperately watching by the light of Hartah’s swinging lantern for firm footing amid the streaming water. The smell of salt grew sharper. I could hear a wagon close behind me, the horse led by someone. We left the trees, and the wind hit me so hard I almost fell. All at once I could hear the sea surging below.
At the bottom of the track we reached a tiny, pebbled beach. The sky was pitch-black, but as lanterns came down with the men, I saw that the beach lay between steep cliffs and the sea. The pebbles were dotted with large rocks, and even larger ones jutted from a wild sea. Dark waves rose and crashed on the boulders, some sending spray inland to dash against the cliffs. Rain fell steadily.
“There!”
“Hurry, damn you!”
“She be too early! Too early!”
“We can still do it. . . .”
Do what? The yellow-haired youth pushed me out of the way, so hard that I fell on the rocks. I staggered up, dazed; no bones seemed to be broken, but I shrank back against the cliff, peering desperately around. No way back up to the cabin except by the one track, and men stood there, swinging their lanterns.
Yellow Hair pulled the tarp from the wagon and tipped it. Such strength! A load of dry firewood spilled onto the beach in an enormous pile. Someone lit a brand soaked in oil and tossed it onto the wood, which flared instantly. Dry, cured, oiled—someone had prepared the wood with great care. The flames mounted high into the windy sky, a great bonfire.
And all at once I saw a light far out on the surging dark sea.
She be too early! We can still do it—
No. No. They were going to—
I had heard of such things. I hadn’t wanted to believe them. It was like witches or like sick-curses, too monstrous to be believed. But here, here and now, my uncle—
Three lights flashed in rapid succession