She Walks in Shadows(15)
To Lavinia.
It was all right for a while. All right after he’d left the village and taken the scrubby dirt track rambling into the hills. Then, somewhere, he went awry, turned left when he should have turned right, or veered right when he should have gone straight. The trees grew closer together, branches reaching to embrace one another, making it harder and harder for Rist to pass between. The ground, covered with briars and creepers, was liberally littered with rocks and stones thrown up by the regular moaning and groaning of the earth; dangerous and unexpected obstacles to a man in his Sunday shoes, the shoes one wore to make an apology to someone.
And if that wasn’t enough, the whip-poor-wills had started their sweetly-dire chorus. He knew he was being fanciful as he wondered if they were waiting for him. A noise to the left, a clattering then a bleat, drew his attention: a goat perched on a hilly slope, watching him with flat black eyes. Rist thought of the Whatley ancestor, occasionally spoken of in hushed tones, whose perverse tastes led him to keep a magnificent Lamancha as consort for seven years before it killed him with a kick to the head. The billy bolted and Rist shuddered, stumbling to a halt.
He looked back the way he’d come, then forward again. There was little difference except one way sloped up, and the other down. He was lost, utterly, and the birds’ looping song seemed to swell the longer he hesitated. His heart beat harder and harder, a double-time thump that threatened to displace his ribs. The air seemed to thicken, the earth rumbled and shook, and the smell of sulphur and shit reached his nostrils.
The avian noise dropped, and another rose to take its place: a humming, a hissing, strangely human, and yet indecently not. Almost a hymn, a cacophony but bizarrely rhythmic. Through the trees, something moved, swiftly, smoothly, around him. Not the goat, nothing brown and hide-bound, nothing on four legs, or at least not consistently. Something pale as snow, pale as bone, pale as milk: the hint of a rounded hip, a nipped-in waist, a breast unfettered. He spun and spun, trying to keep it in sight, almost falling over in the attempt.
Then it was gone, leaving Rist bewildered and unbalanced.
He breathed heavily, turned to resume his trudging, and came face to face with his cousin.
Lavinia’s brown dress made her hard to distinguish in the lowering afternoon light, but her hair, in a loose ponytail, stood out like a beacon. She seemed as surprised to see him as he was her. This close, he could make out the fine lines on her high forehead, the crow’s-feet, and shallow furrows around her mouth. He did not think they’d come of laughter. He gaped, not managing a sound.
“What yew dewin heer?” Her accent, previously unheard, flowed thick as molasses, and they both startled. She tried again, carefully this time. “What are you doing here?”
“I came ….” He swallowed, lifted the basket. “I came to apologize. I’m sorry. I didn’t know what they were planning.”
“Would it have made a difference if you had?” she asked, scorn searing as she pivoted and headed down the incline.
He tripped, almost fell, but followed. “Yes! I’d have stopped them! Lavi — Lavinia, I am so terribly sorry. It was unspeakably cruel. I wouldn’t have let them do that. Please believe me.”
She didn’t say anything, but slowed, allowed him to catch up. They walked in silence for a few minutes, companionably enough. Then she gestured to the basket.
“What’s that?”
“Mother sent it, some fresh bread and biscuits, bacon and cheese,” he said eagerly, then caught her sharp look.
“Thinks we can’t pay our own way?” she asked, pulling a handful of gold coins of ancient design from her pocket. She hid them again before he could ask to examine one.
“Not at all —” he began and she shrugged.
“Matters not a jot — it’ll save me from going back to the store, so thank you. You can carry it, though, ‘til we reach the path.” She looked slyly at him. ”Got lost, didn’t you?”
He nodded, embarrassed. “And the birds ….”
“Not scared of those poor little things, are you? Don’t believe those silly stories about soul-stealing and such.” Lavinia put out a hand and as if by magic, one of the small, brown whip-poor-wills landed there. It did a jig, ducked its head respectfully, then flew off.
Rist had to close his gaping mouth. The woman laughed. “They’re quite tame.”
Rist asked, “How did you know to …?”
“Loafers outside Osborne’s,” she said shortly. “I knew you’d go astray, didn’t want it to happen in the dark. No one would find you in these parts then, except me.”
“You know the land well?” He thought of all the tales he’d heard of Lavinny’s traipsing the hills around Dunwich, of the times when her father took to Sentinel Hill to shout at the sky, of Lavinny’s mother lost then found, dead by terrible violence and the culprit never located.
“Have you not heard this called Lavinia’s Wood?” She thrust her receding chin forward and he knew it for pride. She didn’t seem to need an answer.
At the bottom of the slope, where the trees became less impenetrable, she pointed to the trail he recognized as the one he’d started upon hours ago, it seemed. He glanced up whence they’d come and marveled that he’d been able to make it as far as he had.
“There’s your way. You’ll be safe from here,” Lavinia said, and busily claimed the basket with something he thought might be glee.