The Witch of Tin Mountain(24)

Granny frowns. She tosses a handful of dried cumin and cloves into the water. The spicy smell don’t help matters much. “We’re not making charms. We’re making wards, Gracie. Strong ones. Against him.”

“Bellflower? Care to tell me what this morning was all about? Seems like there’s some history between you and that preacher.”

Ebba glares at Granny. “You have not told her about your preacher, Deirdre?”

“I didn’t see no reason to. That was all supposed to stay in the past.” Granny angrily chops a bundle of mint leaves and adds them to the pot. “Besides, we fixed things.”

“Y’all ain’t makin’ one lick of sense.” I shake my head, fill the kettle, and put it on to boil. We’re down to our last few grounds of coffee, and I’ve already used them twice, so I cut them with crushed acorns and chicory. All of a sudden, my back starts itching something fierce between my shoulder blades. I reach around to claw at it. Chiggers, likely. That’s what I get for laying down on the ground next to the tracks. “I think I got ate up with chiggers last night.”

Ebba taps her ladle on the edge of the pot and shares a look with Granny. “Let me see. Turn around.” She swats my hair over my shoulder and fiddles with the zipper on the back of my dress. As it slides open, a rush of breath hits my skin. Ebba runs a finger down my spine. It might as well be a lit match for how it burns. I flinch away. “She’s marked, Deirdre. Just like you. Marked for a h?xa. Marked for a witch.”



I twist in front of the mirror over the chest of drawers, dressed only in my necessaries. To me, the rash just looks like a bad case of poison ivy. It’s all welted up in the middle, with fingers of red trailing out like the branches of a tree. Sometimes it itches, and sometimes it burns. The compress of mud, honey, and cow piss Ebba smacked on it earlier hadn’t helped matters. It’d just drawn flies and stung like nettles, so I’d washed it off.

Marked for a witch. I ain’t got no idea what that might mean, but after the way Granny acted after she saw the rash—all solemn and serious, I figure there’s something I don’t know.

I pull on my dress and go back to the kitchen. Every muscle in my body aches, and sweat rolls down my temples from the godforsaken heat. I should sleep, but it’s too damned hot and I ain’t seen Morris all day. He might have slept over at Seth’s place as he does sometimes, then gone on to Hosea’s to work, but there’s a raw worry around his absence I can’t shake.

I strain the coffee into a cup and add two spoonfuls of sugar, then go out to the front porch. Granny’s on the steps, looking out at her prizewinning peonies. A cigarette dangles between her fingers. I ain’t never seen her smoke before. The wards we made earlier sway back and forth in the trees. Some of them are shaped like men. Some are shaped like crosses or wreaths. I’d painted all of them with the rank tincture Granny and Ebba had brewed up earlier. A protective circle of asafetida still surrounds the house, but this time it’s mixed with brick dust, cemetery dirt, and salt blessed with prayer. If Bellflower shows up tonight, he’ll have to cross one hell of a spiritual barrier to get to us.

I shudder at the memory of his deep-set eyes and the way he’d watched me cross the yard like I was catnip on two legs. Why is he here? What does he want?

I hand the coffee to Granny and sit next to her with a tired groan.

“Thanks for the coffee, child. You always seem to know what I need before I ask for it, just like Ebba. I’m plumb tuckered out.”

“It’s been a mighty long day.” I lean my head against Granny’s shoulder. “You mind telling me what Ebba was talking about? Your preacher? What did she mean by that?”

She pulls in a deep breath, then takes a sip of her coffee. “I reckon it’s time. There’s things I never told you about Tin Mountain and what happened to me when I was a girl. My pa never told me about what happened to his own mama and why until it was almost too late.”

“His mother?”

She nods. “Anneliese Werner—my grandmother. My Opa Friedrich found her in the woods when she was little more than a babe. Rumor had it she was Owen Sutter’s youngest daughter. The only one that survived. You heard what happened to the Sutters?”

I nod. There’s a graveyard on the hill on the other side of the holler, its flank dotted with crumbling headstones. Story is Owen Sutter had gone mad in the winter of 1818. Heard voices that told him to kill his wife and two of his three daughters. They’re all buried there. All but one. Suddenly, I’ve got the all-overs. Even though the day’s as hot as a cast iron skillet on a stove, I’m chilled to the bone.

“Nobody’d set foot on that piece of land until Friedrich came down with a bunch of fur trappers from around Ste. Genevieve. He was out tracking one day and claimed he heard somebody singing. Found Anneliese down there in the holler. When he couldn’t find her family, he reckoned he’d raise her himself. He fixed up the old Sutter place, and him and Anneliese lived there till he got the sepsis and died twenty-odd years later.

“Anneliese had a queer way about her. A cunning way. Folks were unsettled by her looks and manner, even though she never harmed a soul. She had her son when she was little more than a girl herself—my pa—and after she died, folks claimed he was the devil’s boy.” Granny chuckles. “If you’d known my pa, you’d laugh yourself to death at the thought. No. His daddy was an Osage scout who Anneliese healed after a skirmish with some settlers. She had a lifelong kinship with the Indians because of that. They trusted her. Traded with her. You can imagine how well that went over with the settlers. That’s when the rumors first started to gain their steam.”