Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day(25)
“Were you a church family?”
“Not exactly.” There was always so much to be done, with the four of us on our little farm, and me being the sort of kid who never found a mud puddle she didn’t want to be neck-deep in. If there’d been sons, maybe. It was more seemly to work boys to the bone. Patty and I did our share of chores, but we still had time to play and gossip and sit with our parents, Patty reading, me conducting elaborate imaginary scenarios with my dolls. “We made it on the big days, like Christmas, but for the most part, there wasn’t time for that sort of thing.”
“I see.” Brenda keeps looking at her guitar. “Bill and I, we were churchgoers, even with both of us being corn witches. A Jack and a Jenny and our pastor was never any the wiser. I don’t think Father Paul would have minded, really. He was as tied to the land as any of us, just in a different way. We raised three children in that parish. Buried one. And then I buried Bill, and my children were grown, and it was time to leave the corn behind.”
“Why are you . . .”
“I’m tired, kiddo. I’m older than you, remember? I’m tired, and I haven’t gone into the corn for a long time, and I thought this would make me stronger, but all it’s done is make me realize how much I want to rest.” She finally looks at me. Her eyes are bleak. “I’m tired.”
There’s earning and there’s earned; there’s working for a thing because you feel like you have to pay your dues, and then there’s realizing the work itself pays the bill. I offer her my hands before I can think better of it, and when she lets go of her guitar and takes them, I pull her to her feet, my skin touching hers.
Her eyes widen as she realizes what I’ve done, but it’s too late. I can feel the year I’ve taken settling over me, thickening my bones, freckling my skin, extending my hair a few inches past my shoulders. I’m not twenty-six and change anymore. I’m twenty-seven, on the downward stretch toward thirty, and when Brenda drops my hands and starts to scold me, I don’t really hear her, because I can see it, I can see it, my dying day, shimmering in the distance like a promise, like a prayer, like my mother’s hands easing me into bed at the end of a long day.
“Four years, eleven months, three weeks, four days,” I say, and my voice is thick with wonder and dismay, until there’s no picking the two apart.
Brenda stops, staring at me. Finally, she asks, “Are you seeing your due date?”
“My dying day. Yes. Yes, I can see it. I can see it.” I turn back to her, beaming bright. “I’m almost there. I keep working hard, I’ll be there before I know it.”
“You going to keep that year you took?” Brenda holds up her hand, studying it like she could see a difference. At my age, a year changes everything. At her age, a year is just one more page in the back half of a novel, blending seamlessly into the whole.
“Unless you want it back.”
“I thought you had to earn everything you took.”
“I talked to two witches and hosted a house party, and I’m going back to the Hollow,” I say. “That’s earning enough for me. Besides, I’m going to need you at your best, and I know having time taken helps.”
“Sometimes I wish witches left ghosts, just so there’d be some of you who understood how damn tempting you are,” says Brenda. She balls her hands into fists for a moment before she stands. It was only a year, but she’s moving more easily than she did before, smooth and confident, like she knows the ground will be there when she moves her feet. With a year gone and the preternatural thrill of its removal thrumming in her veins, she looks like queen of the corn. She looks like she could take on the world.
I look at her, and I don’t shy away. I am not Jenna-who-runs anymore. I can’t afford to be. That means I can’t be Jenna-who-refuses, either. Taking the year strengthened both of us. I have to keep it. “I have a bit of an understanding,” I say. “You done here?”
“No,” says Brenda. “But I’m close enough that I can come with you. I’ll be back soon enough, I think. My bones have had enough of steel and concrete. It’s time I went out into the green.”
“Then we’re both going home,” I say, and turn and walk away. A second passes before Brenda follows, and we move together through the corn, the ghost and the witch, and I can hear Mill Hollow calling me, and oh, Patty, Patty, I am almost there.
After all these years and all these miles, I am finally coming home.
10: Do What I Tell You To
It takes surprisingly little time to cover the last ten miles between me and Mill Hollow. It feels like it should take eternity, like this is the sort of grand quest that must be undertaken only with the greatest solemnity and care, not by a witch in an ancient pickup and a dead girl who feels like she’s going to be sick.
Then we come around a curve in the road and there it is, beckoning me home:
MILL HOLLOW, KY POPULATION 220 · ELEVATION 1,170 FEET WE’RE HAPPY THAT YOU’RE HERE
Brenda pulls off on the shoulder of the highway, killing the engine and twisting in her seat to look at me expectantly. “Well?” she asks. “Get out of the car.”
The hesitation is writ in every line of my body, in the stillness of my hands and my reluctance to meet her eyes. “Do I have to?”