Seer's Blood Read online

  ~~~~~

  He knows there’re strangers here. Other strangers. He calls it Annekteh Ridge. Not Anneka Ridge, as everyone in Shadow Hollers named it, even though the long-abandoned ridge lay just north of them and they should know better. But then, they didn’t have her book to read from...not even the incomplete remnants of her book.

  Blaine hesitated on the porch and watched the man plow with her daddy, handling the tight turns on the sloped ground almost as well as she did. And my, did he care for that dog. And that last smile he’d given her...

  Five year-old Sarie eyed Dacey shyly from the house, then came out onto the porch and tugged Blaine’s skirt. “Mommy says t’ get taters from the springhouse.”

  Blaine made the exaggerated face that always gave Sarie the giggles. “That nasty old place.” But she quickly disentangled her skirt from Sarie’s clinging fingers, leaving the child on the porch while she hastened to do her mother’s bidding. Lottie would be harried enough, what with another mouth to feed and them at the end of their winter rations, and no new crops save the greens.

  She selected the least wrinkled of the potatoes and ran them back to the house, where she was set to work peeling and slicing them. Three women — Lottie, Lenie, and Blaine herself — worked in the too-small kitchen alcove while Sarie ran in and out with table things, imagining herself important as she set and reset the table.

  Though the heat of the cookstove warmed Blaine after the chilly yard, she found the house oppressive. Unlike Lenie, she hated being shut indoors; she found the fuss with stove dampers and cook surface hot-spots tedious instead of challenging. Setting the potato pan on the cookstove where Lottie could keep an eye on it, she escaped to the porch, where she lowered herself into the swing to push herself back and forth on her toes and watch Dacey handling the workhorse. Prince had gone to playing dumb, and she smiled — half amusement, half sympathy.

  Soon after, wiping her face with her apron and pushing stray wisps of hair back into the knot at the back of her head, Lenie joined her. Hers wasn’t a severe bun like her mother’s, but a loose imitation. She claimed it gave her maturity without aging her, and urged Blaine to do adopt the same. “Grow out of those braids and try it,” she told Blaine, far more often than Blaine cared to hear it.

  If Blaine wanted she could make plenty of comments about Lenie’s age and single status, but it wasn’t Lenie’s fault her intended had been killed in a logging accident, and it certainly wasn’t seemly to tease her about it. Besides, Lenie, with her rounded curves and eye-catching blonde hair, was a pretty sight and there was no arguing that.

  Lenie sat next to her. “Never thought I’d see the day you were making eyes at someone.”

  Blaine’s smile disappeared. “Not hardly. I’m watching he doesn’t hurt ole Prince’s mouth. And you mought not primp. He’s from the south and he aims to get back as soon as he can.” South. The seers had gone south after the Takers were killed. Everyone knew that.

  “There ain’t no harm to it. You could use the practice. Get your hair out of those silly braids and put it up like a woman, er you’ll be Daddy’s despair when it comes to matching you.” Lenie plucked at the wrap that kept Blaine’s braids together for the plow work.

  Blaine snorted, easily drawn into the same argument she’d argued uncountable times before. “I ain’t in no hurry to have a brood like ours. Mommy’s not hardly got the time to sit an’ draw a breath for herself. Don’t seem right a body should have to live that way, if you ask me.” Besides, she didn’t say, my face is too thin to wear my hair your way. Two braids, weak brown in the winter and sun-kissed in summer, did best by her.

  Lenie frowned. “Daddy keeps us safe here. It’s only right he should have us caring for him.”

  “That’s not what I meant. Don’t you ever—” she broke off and looked at her sister, then shook her head. “No, I don’t guess you do. Get a man to keep you home, and you’ll be happy enough.”

  “I should say so. And you’ll be saying the same, ten year from now, an’ you still a maid.”

  “I can take care of myself,” Blaine mumbled, knowing that wasn’t a complete truth, knowing that at seventeen, she alone among her peers was unspoken for — a prospect that horrified her but did not yet worry her. Lenie had to be paired again, and she would go first. Besides, no man was wont to cast a longing eye on her — she’d been told that often enough. The men of these hills liked some substance to their women — visible proof of ability to withstand the rigors of mountain life.

  Lenie snorted, unaware of Blaine’s musings. “Wise up, Blaine. This one’s family may be too far off for Daddy’s liking, but it wouldn’t hurt none to practice giving a man a kindly eye.”

  For once Lenie’s advice was meant to be helpful, but Blaine was having none of it — even if her gaze did wander to Dacey again, to the way he’d shed his jacket to take up the plow, and to remember how his eyes, intense blue and green and brown mixed up into a bright kind of hazel, had been so thoughtful. Not dismissive or pitying of her. And his hair, a dark mix of ashy blonds, reminded her of the heartwood of white oak. He wore it longer than the short, bristly cuts of her family’s men; she liked that.

  But he was going back home, far from here, and something made her glad of it.

  “Blaine, Lenie!” Her mother’s call, with a pleased note in her voice telling that the meal had turned out well. “Come help put the food out. And give those men a holler to wash up for dinner.”

  Blaine pushed out of the swing with vigor, setting Lenie to swinging harder than she liked, and leaving her to speak to the men. Let Lenie practice.

  ~~~~~

  Practice, Lenie did. Over fried potatoes, bacon and greens, she braved Cadell’s scowls as she smiled and chattered, and Blaine was free to let her thoughts wander. Not, as they generally did, to whatever strange dream she might have had recently, or to what she’d seen in the mountains or along the creek that day, but to the south, and the seers that had moved there.

  And to her book, the badly damaged partial pages of which she nearly had memorized — and from which she had learned to make her blinder charm. The smooth-worn chunk of wood kept her hidden from the casual eye, as long as she carried it against her skin; it fit perfectly into her palm. She hadn’t tried anything else from the book — the healing teas and poultices, the protective charms, the warnings...she’d had little opportunity, and counted herself glad that no one else knew she had found the book at all, jammed in the cellar corner of a burnt-out house in Fiddlehead Holler that she shouldn’t even have been near.

  Cadell would no doubt throw it out as trash. She’d heard his opinion of seers and seer things. The Takers are dead, he’d say when someone got him started on the subject. The Takers are dead, and the seers done left us. We don’t need none of theirs, not any more.

  Blaine did. Blaine wanted to know the things the book couldn’t tell her, with its thick, hand-inked pages and faded drawings. Mouse-nibbled, stained by dampness, bound in charred and cracking leather...she kept it well-hid in the barn. Dacey came from the south, where the seers’ kin had gone; maybe one of his people had made that book.

  Her gaze wandered to him, found him making some polite smile at Lenie’s words. She had first thought that he was closer to her daddy’s age than to her own, just from his manner, the confident way he’d walked up to their yard and introduced himself. Now, as the waning light from the open door slid off the angles of his cheeks and the high-bridged, barely curved line of his nose to be lost in the shadows beneath dark brows, she realized that age had not yet left any great mark on his features. Six or seven years older than she, perhaps...the light spilled into his eyes as he turned his head and caught her staring.

  She blushed, but realized soon enough that his gaze held appraisal rather than reproach, and that he showed none of the faint pity she often saw in people’s faces when she sat next to Lenie. “Do you know much of the seer lore?” she blurted, stopping all conversation and raising her daddy’s brow. Well, th
e deed was done. Likely she’d not have another chance. “Like the northern sky yesterday, did you see the color?”

  “An odd one,” Dacey agreed, a hint of surprise on his face at the question.

  “Blaine,” Cadell said sharply, “that ain’t table talk.”

  “Sky was just sky-colored yesterday,” Rand said.

  “I heard,” Blaine said — ignoring the darkening expression on her daddy’s face, the somewhat startled look on Dacey’s— “that seers put some meaning to that color sky.” Strange, hazy...and a hint of purple, quickly swallowed by a normal dusk. She knew Rand hadn’t noted it, even though he’d been looking straight at it. She hadn’t puzzled that out yet.

  Dacey watched her, the light still splashing across half his face, hiding one eye in shadow but showing the shine of interest in the other. “Seers used to call it a Taker’s sky.”

  “What’s Takers?” Willum demanded, as only a three year-old can.

  “Something long dead,” Cadell said, plenty of meaning in his voice, and in the look he pinned on Blaine.

  “Smelly dead?”

  Cadell snapped, “Past smelly. And I’ve said it ain’t table talk.”

  “He’s going to hear it sooner or later,” Lottie said. Solidly built on a small frame, her blue eyes the exact same shade as Blaine’s, tonight she looked less tired than usual, engaged by their company. “Tell him some, Dacey. Save me from having to tell it before he’ll put down for the night.”

  Dacey’s silence held while Cadell’s gaze went from Blaine’s studied innocence to Willum’s pleading face and Lenie’s disinterest. Rand shrugged without taking time out from his eating to consider the matter, and Cadell finally gave a short nod. “Give ’em some on it,” he said. “Keep in mind the age of their ears.”

  As if the children were the ones who really cared. Blaine perched on the edge of the bench seat and stuck her elbows on the table, absently toying with the loose tie at the of her braid.

  Dacey obliged. “Some say the Takers ain’t tidy with their powers, and it clouds up the sky. They come from the north plains...they control things there. They call themselves Annekteh. We’ve always thought Takers fit them better.”

  “Why?” Willum said, and his eyes narrowed. “They ain’t gonna take my things!”

  “They’re dead,” Lottie murmured. “This is tales, Willum, not for real. Not no more.”

  Dacey gave a wry smile, one he didn’t explain. “They call ’em Takers because they take people over. Slide inside ’em, control ’em, like.”

  Willum scowled. “No one can c’ntrol me!”

  “Ain’t that the truth,” Lenie muttered.

  “Well, maybe not you,” Dacey allowed, grinning. “But other people. It’s like ole Prince with a bit in his mouth, and me with the reins, if I was a Taker.”

  “Are you?” Sarie asked, not looking particularly alarmed.

  Blaine slid her plate and its leftovers in front of Rand, who winked a thanks. “No, ’course he ain’t. Takers don’t have no form, Sarie. No bodies. No fat little tummies.” She reached over to poke Sarie’s belly.

  Willum looked at her, already well-infected with her daddy’s dismissiveness of her thoughts and dreams. “How do you know?”

  “We all know some, son,” Lottie said. “We’re letting Dacey tell it, tonight, is all; he knows more of it, I reckon, from being around seer folk.”

  “She’s right enough,” Dacey said. “When they need a body, they up and borrow one. I heard it’s like seeing things in a dream. If they want something done, you just watch yourself doing it, and don’t have no say. Or sometimes they Take you just to learn something — say you had a secret, and they wanted to know it. One of ’em might Take you just long enough to learn it — there ain’t no keeping anything from ’em when you’re Took — an’ then let you go again. All they got to do is touch you, and they got you.”

  Lenie wound a loose strand of hair around her finger — pretty, bright hair even in the failing light. “How can they tell of which ’em has Taken who? Spirits, how can they even keep their own selves straight about who’d got who?”

  Blaine flipped her mousy brown braid back over her shoulder, out of sight. Away from where it could be compared to Lenie’s hair. But in truth it suited her just fine to have Lenie asking questions — to have any of them asking questions — except Rand, who always put his mind to eating his fill. Maybe her daddy would forget that she had been the one to start this conversation, when he hadn’t wanted it.

  Dacey hesitated. “It ain’t that simple. They always know.... The Takers ain’t single beings, like I’m me and you’re Lenie. They all know what the others’re thinking...they all think together. When one is in a body, it acts like a...well, like a stream channel, for others. Say I’m Took and they want more of ’em here. So I grab aholt of you — it’s got to be skin on skin — -and channel for another Taker, and that one Takes you. Annektehr, they call the ones inside people, and they’re powerful strong. You ain’t got a chance oncet they grab on to you.”

  Silence followed his remark, and suddenly the house seemed too dim, the warmth from the stove not nearly enough. Blaine simply stared at Dacey, never expecting to find so many answers in one person — never expecting to find anyone who knew so much about a menace from the distant past.

  Then Cadell cleared his throat. “You’ve heard some,” he allowed, “More’n us in these parts. But these days, the sky tells us no more’n the weather, and that’s plenty.”

  Dacey shrugged. “My kin’s fond of a good story.”

  “Stories is right,” Lenie scoffed. “We got so many, old men’s tales. Magic in these hills — I’d like to see that.”

  He gave her a little half grin, one that won him an instant smile in response, while Blaine wondered if she couldn’t see the wryness of his expression, that he wasn’t agreeing with her at all when he said, “So would I.”

  “It’s a dumb story,” Willum declared. “Not a prop’r story.”

  “I’ll tell you a proper one,” Sarie said. She slid off the bench seat and ran over to tug Willum off his folded quilt riser next to Lottie. “Come to the porch, Willum, I got one about bug ghoulies.”

  Bugs and ghoulies together. Blaine hid a smile; Willum couldn’t ask for anything more. She watched out the door to see that the two stopped on the porch, and gave Lottie a nod when they hunkered down to whisper together. “I’ll watch,” she said, and Lottie nodded, nudging the taters closer to Dacey.

  As the conversation between Dacey and Cadell turned to hounds and breeding lines, Blaine thought of the strangers she’d seen, and thought again that Dacey might know of them. Not that it mattered. She couldn’t ask while her family would realize she’d been in the hills, and soon enough the strangers would announce themselves and their trading goods and their needs. Blaine sighed, and swung her gawky leg over the bench. She lit a coal-oil lamp and set it in the center of the table, and headed outside to sit on the swing and attend the lisping syllables of the little ones with their whispered secrets about bug ghoulies.

  ~~~~~

  Dacey stood at the edge of the garden and listened to the pig grunt as Cadell’s middle daughter made her way to its barn-side pen with supper scraps; Mage lifted his nose to take in the smell of the scraps, and dismissed them, nudging Dacey’s hand for a quick lick. The house door hung open yet, and the smell of supper still hung in the air — along with the sporadic noises of clean-up for both the kitchen and the young ’uns.

  Family life in the mountains. He’d been a long time from it.

  He heard a man’s hard-heeled steps behind him, and cast just enough of a look over his shoulder to be taken as greeting.

  “We ain’t got no extra room in the house,” Cadell said, “but you’re welcome to use the barn.”

  “Clear night,” Dacey said. No need for shelter.

  “Clear as they come,” Cadell agreed amiably.

  Dacey hesitated, knowing what he had to say, and knowing it was not likely
to be harkened. “Said I come here on a hunt,” he started, as Blaine’s bucket clattered against the pig pen in her efforts to shake loose the bottom scraps.

  “That you did.” Cadell moved up beside him, offering him an open pouch of chewing tobacco.

  Dacey shook his head. “I reckon you need to know what I’m hunting.” It was a cautious game, handing over such news. “No easy way to say it. I’ve seen signs the Takers are coming back.”

  Cadell stuffed a wad of tobacco in his cheek and spent a moment jockeying it into place. “Up till now, you seemed a right sensible fellow.”

  “It’s hard to find a way to go at this so’s it does make sense, after all these years,” Dacey admitted. “But those that remember best know the Takers weren’t killed at Annekteh Ridge. They were drove off, that’s all. Hurt bad, but drove off, not kilt. Ain’t nothing to keep ’em from coming back.”

  Cadell spat. “Then we’ll drive ’em off again.”

  Dacey said nothing. If it was that easy, he’d not have bothered to come up here at all, seeings or no. As if he could ignore them. Not this time.

  It was Cadell who spoke again, and his voice had taken on an accusing note. “You think you know quite some bit about the Takers, then, don’t you.”

  “More’n I’d tell over a supper table with children present,” Dacey said promptly. “I’ve told how they Take folks for the use of their hands. But it’s more’n that. They like what they can do in a body — the pleasures it gives ’em, and the pains. Especially the pains, it seems. And they don’t take no care about keeping the nekfehr — the Taken — whole, neither — just use ’em up and move on.” No, that wasn’t the sort of thing to say in front of babies like Willum and Sarie. He wished he could have told it to the middle girl, though. She seemed to have an interest, as much as she tried to hide it.

  Unlike her father. Cadell’s silence in the dark did plenty to tell Dacey of his expression, his opinion. Nothing more than Dacey had expected, from the man’s reaction at supper.

  But Dacey wasn’t ready to give up. Not with the stakes what they were. “Last time they come, we almost kilt ’em...but we didn’t. And now they’ve done come back to Shadow Hollers.”