The Price Guide to the Occult(2)
It read one word: Witch.
For all the things people have said about Rona — and they’ve said many things — no one could ever say she lacked a sense of humor.
Throughout that first long winter, and well into the following summer, the Original Eight steered clear of Rona Blackburn. They did not lend a hand or make any other offering, of friendship or otherwise.
Rona built a fence and raised a small barn. She purchased a few chickens and goats from a reclusive family whose presence on the other side of the island the others had failed to notice. She found a beehive in the woods and moved it closer to her house. When spring finally arrived and the bees awoke, Rona harvested the most succulent honey. She planted a garden that exploded in a profusion of sunflowers, zinnias, dahlias, lavender, rosemary, hyssop, thyme, and sage. In the hot summer months, there were carrots, cucumbers, beans, and tomatoes the size and shape of small boulders.
And all the while, the Original Eight kept their distance.
And then.
The eight were felling trees to build a steeple for their church. As per Forsythe Stone’s instructions, the steeple would be tall — tall enough to be seen from every part of the island, a holy arrow that would point the godless and faithful alike toward righteousness and glory.
The leather strap used to drag the felled trees up the hill weakened and snapped, sending an avalanche of logs back down the hill and clipping Sebastian Farce on the way.
No one remembered who suggested bringing the doctor to Rona. Perhaps it was Sebastian himself, though by the time they reached Rona’s door, Sebastian had stopped making much noise at all.
Rona must have known that saving one of them could be the path to either acceptance or repudiation. For centuries, Blackburn women had been run off for perceived offenses less serious than causing someone’s death. Nonetheless, Rona stepped aside and allowed the men to carry the injured doctor through her cobalt-blue door. Once the patient was settled, she sent them on their way.
Blackburn women had never been much for an audience.
With Sebastian’s blood still sticky on their clothing, the men turned and headed back to their shacks. Some of them were gravely quiet. Others were wide-eyed and chatty, the adrenaline compelling them to recount the disaster time and again.
Sebastian Farce awoke the next morning, his wounds miraculously sealed, and his blood pumping, as it should, through his veins and not onto the floor.
For the next two days, Rona tended the doctor’s wounds while he read from her treasured volumes of Greek myths, her two dogs curled up at his feet. In the evenings, under a sky full of stars, they passed a rosewood pipe and discussed their shared avocation. He spoke of his leather tourniquets and opium tincture. Rona told him about magicked stitching and countless herbs. At night, they sealed their affair with whispered oaths and christened the bedsheets with sweat.
And then, just three days after the accident, Sebastian Farce reminded himself of his marital vows, of the wife and three children he’d call for in a few months’ time. Telling himself that Rona was nothing more than a brief moral blunder, he snuck out the back door of Rona’s cedar house, skirted the sleeping beasts in the yard, and walked home with the shame of his actions tucked between his legs.
Eventually he told the rest of the men of his misdeed, and they all laughed nervously and easily forgave what they decided was a blameless indiscretion.
“You were beguiled,” said Simon Mercer.
“Undoubtedly the victim of some kind of black magic,” agreed Otto Birch.
“She must have muttered an incantation over your sickbed,” Mack Forgette offered, “or slipped a tincture down your throat.”
“My God, man, how else could you explain yourself,” the port master exclaimed. “To bed a woman such as that? A woman such as her? It was a temporary madness to be sure!”
Thankful that they had evaded the eyes of the witch, the other seven men chose to forget that she had saved one of their lives and hoped she would find her way off the island, if not immediately, then certainly before the arrival of their wives and children.
Sebastian Farce could not forget as readily. He became consumed with darker thoughts.
Unable to sleep at night, Sebastian’s mind began to wander. If Rona had the ability to bewitch him, to use her charms and enchantments to heal him, didn’t it follow that she could just as easily use black magic to harm him? His wife? His children?
Rona was thinking no such things. But she could feel Sebastian Farce’s paranoid thoughts creeping into her mind like an invasive weed. In a short time, this man — whom she had kept warm in her own bed, had fed with food prepared with her own hands, and had baptized with the sweat of her own body — began to fantasize about finding her floating facedown in the lake. Rona was aghast at how quickly his fear and guilt had curdled into hatred and contempt.
The summer droned on, with its long hot days and even hotter nights. Autumn came, painting the island trees with its golden hues. In late October, they awoke to winter’s first dusting of snow. And then, exactly one year after Rona had first arrived on the island, Sebastian Farce decided to take matters into his own hands.
“If we are to purge the island of her,” he said to his brothers in arms, “we must do so now, before she pollutes the minds of our wives and our daughters. And before our sons fall prey to the wiles of the witch.”
They came carrying firearms and torches, ignorance and fear. Their fear rained down on Rona’s burning house like ash. It blinded them to how the flames merely licked her side, like the rough tongue of a wild cat. They didn’t see how easily she strode out the back door with her beasts at her side, how their bullets pierced her skin and then melted, leaving a torrent of liquid lead in her wake. They didn’t see how she stood hidden in the trees, a dark shadow against the night, the hounds beside her growling like low rumbles of distant thunder. Cradling the swell of her growing belly hidden under her skirts, Rona watched the Original Eight burn her home to the ground.