“It’s not what you have taught me,” I answered.
“And what is it I have taught you?” She turned toward me, raised her eyebrows.
Auntie was often giving me these little tests, and I knew I had to choose my words carefully—if I answered wrong, she might ignore me for hours, pretend I wasn’t there; she might even go so far as not to give me my share of lunch or dinner. I had learned at a young age that disappointing Auntie always meant paying a price, and it was something I worked very hard to avoid.
“You always say that death is not an ending, but a beginning. That the dead cross over to the world of the spirits and are surrounding us still.”
Auntie nodded, waiting for more.
“I like that idea,” I told her. “That they’re all around us, watching.”
Auntie smiled at me.
On our left was a narrow stream, and as it was a clear day, we could see Camel’s Hump off in the distance. On our right was a neat row of apple trees in bloom, the scent heady and sweet. Bees buzzed from flower to flower, flying drunkenly, weighted down with pollen.
I moved closer to Auntie there in the cart; her hands on the reins were the strongest hands I’d ever known. I felt safe and thrilled, and as if I was right where I belonged.
Later that night, after we’d sold the furs to the merchant in St. Johnsbury, we camped by the river in a grassy clearing undera willow tree. Auntie had made us a little bed in the back of the wagon, out of a bearskin and blankets. She had a fire blazing, and when it died down, we cooked the trout she’d just caught on sticks, turning them gently over the glowing coals. She’d brought out an enameled pot and used it to brew a sweet tea full of herbs and roots, which we drank from tin mugs. After dinner, after the fire had been rekindled, Auntie sucked on the fish bones until she had removed every morsel of meat. She ate nearly every part of the fish, even the eyeballs. The innards she threw to Buckshot, who’d wandered off from camp and come back with his own dinner, a woodchuck that had been too slow to get back into its den.
The moon was not up, and the night was inky black. We couldn’t see anything beyond the circle of light that the fire cast. The world beyond had turned to nothing but noises: the babble of the river, which had seemed soothing in daylight and now carried strange eerie-sounding murmurs; the occasional croak of a bullfrog; the far-off hoot of an owl.
“Tell my future,” I begged as I plucked at the long, soft grass that grew around me.
Auntie smiled, stretched like a cat. “Not tonight. The moon is not right for such things.”
“Please,” I pleaded, tugging at her coat as I had when I was a much younger child. I loved that coat. The colorful painted flowers along the bottom, the beads and porcupine quills stitched in neat patterns over the shoulders and down the front.
“Very well,” she said, throwing the fish bones into the fire and wiping her greasy hands on her skirt. She reached into the pouch she carried tucked into her belt and withdrew a small amount of finely ground powder.
“What is that?”
“Shh,” Auntie said. Then she mumbled something I did not hear—another prayer, I supposed. A wish. An incantation.
She tossed the powder into the fire. It crackled and hissed, made the fire sparkle with shades of blue and green. The drooping branches of the willow above us seemed to catch the light and glow, and they swayed like tiny arms, reaching for us. Out on the water, there was the splash of a bird landing, a duck or heron.
Auntie stared into the flames, searching.
Then—did I imagine it?—Auntie seemed to flinch and look away. There was a sharp intake of breath, as if the fire had dealt her a blow.
“What is it?” I asked, leaning toward her. “What did you see?”
“Nothing,” Auntie said, looking away from me, but I knew her well enough to tell that she was lying. Auntie had seen something terrible in my future, something dark enough to make her turn away.
“Tell me,” I said, putting my hand on her arm. “Please.”
She shook my hand off as if I were a pesky insect. “There is nothing to tell,” Auntie snapped.
“Please,” I repeated, grabbing her arm again, my hand touching the soft deerskin coat. “I know you saw something.”
Her eyes turned dark, and she reached down and gave the back of my hand a hard pinch. I jerked my hand away and drew back.
“As I said, the moon is not right for such things. Maybe next time you will listen.”
Auntie gazed back into the fire, which was dying back down, all the bright colors gone. I moved even farther away, wrapped my arms around my knees, and slid closer to the heat. My hand stung where she had pinched it, and I wondered if she had broken the skin, but knew better than to look. Best to ignore the pain, to pretend it hadn’t happened.
After a few moments of uneasy silence, she looked my way.
“What I can tell you is this: you are special, Sara Harrison, but you already know this. You have something inside you that makes you different from others.” She looked at me with such seriousness that my chest felt heavy. “Something that shines bright, gives you the same gifts I have. The gifts of sight, of magic. It makes you stronger than you know. And, oh, little Sara, let me tell you this.” She smiled, rocking forward, throwing another stick onto the fire. It crackled and popped as it caught. “If you ever grow up and have a girl child, the gift will be passed down double to her. That girl will walk between the worlds. She will be as powerful as I am, maybe more. I have seen it in the fire.”
