When the mist rises, and the smiling man comes walking, you must avoid large places at night.
Keep to small.
Ollie frowned.
Small spaces,said the woman by the creek.
Well, the woman was obviously not right in the head; maybe the book had set her off somehow? Ollie eyed the epigraph with puzzlement. The rain tapped against her skylight; the wind was working up a temper outside. Ollie turned another page.
I was born just after the end of the war. And I was a child in 1876 when Jonathan and Caleb and their mother, Cathy Webster, came to Smoke Hollow. They were all dusty, the boys barefoot, wearing patchwork shirts. Between the three of them, they had nothing but a little bread and smoked ham tied up in a napkin.
They walked past the farm gate, past the hog pens and the chicken coop. When they got to the barnyard, the first thing they saw was me, as I was then. A pigtailed girl, wearing brown calico, red-faced from the oven and holding a pie dish.
“Mister,” I said to Jonathan. “Pop’s in the north field.”
Jonathan was fourteen then: nearly a man in my eyes. But he grinned at me, like we’d known each other forever.
“We’ll wait,” Jonathan said cheerfully. “I was hoping your pop was hiring.”
4
OLLIE’S ALARM WENToff way too early the next day. She poked her bleary head out from under the covers, heard the rain rattling the roof, said, “Nope,” and pulled her head back in.Small Spaceslay, bookmarked, within arm’s reach. Ollie had stayed up late reading. She wished she’d just read all night. After she finally went to sleep, she woke up twice from the same nightmare: gray skies and burning grass and trying frantically to run to someone she couldn’t see, while an endless stream of giant people holding casseroles crowded around her, saying,I’m so sorry, Olivia.
It was still raining. Ollie’s bedroom ceiling sloped down low over her bed. Sometimes when it poured, she would pretend she was lying in a jungle waterfall. But now Ollie kept herself tucked in her blankets.
“Ollie!” her dad bellowed from the foot of the stairs. “Don’t even think about that snooze button! Rain boots,extra sweater, brush your teeth, and get down here now! You’re going to the farm, remember?”
A large stuffed rabbit, eyeless and noseless, lay face-to-face with Ollie. She glared at it. “Today?Maybe I should hope for detention.”
The rain roared down, as though in agreement.
Their whole class was going to Misty Valley Farm; no little downpour would stop Mr. Easton. He’d been talking it up for weeks. They were going to learn about milking cows and slaughtering hogs (cut the throat and then hang it up to drain!) and growing broccoli (the yummiest flower). It was supposed to make them appreciate Vermont’s agricultural history. Ollie looked out her skylight and was sure of only one thing: it would make them get wet.
Very quietly, as though her father downstairs would hear, Ollie stuck an arm out from under her comforter, reached forSmall Spaces, and pulled it under the blanket with her. The first part of the book was all about Beth’s childhood with Caleb and Jonathan. There was a lot of haying and pie-baking and lambing and fishing. Ollie had been delighted, but it didn’t really explain why the woman by the creek was trying to throw the book away.
But now Beth’s tone had changed.
Dearest, I have told you a little of my youth. Forgive an old woman’s rambling. I wished to set it all down sothat I could live it again, and so that you could remember the good times you did not see. But now I must tell you the rest.
Jonathan told me this part of the story himself. It may seem unbelievable. You may judge for yourself. But I believe him. Listen now, but do not condemn your father. He meant well.
I have told you of our delightful childhood years, after my father hired Caleb and Jonathan and Cathy and gave them a home at Smoke Hollow. The boys were my dearest friends, and Cathy was like a second mother.
But when I was seventeen, my father died. Suddenly I was no longer a child. I was a woman with a farm to manage. Overnight it seemed that Caleb and Jonathan weren’t just my childhood friends anymore. They began vying for my attention, and eventually to grow suspicious of each other. I am afraid I did little to prevent them. I was an heiress, you know, and they loved me. I—I rather liked them fighting for my time. It was like knights-errant, I thought. I was young and foolish.
Of course, I had always known which brother I wanted to marry. I had known since Jonathan smiled at me, the day I met him. When Jonathan asked for my hand, I said yes.
Caleb was furious when he found out. The two brothers quarreled. Jon wouldn’t tell me all that theysaid, but I gather that some of the insults on both sides were unforgivable. The night they argued, there was a storm up. You remember how Smoke Hollow gets when it storms in October. There was ice on the rocks by Lethe Creek; freezing rain poured down. The brothers’ shouting came to blows. Jonathan struck his brother. Caleb, weeping, ran outside alone.
Jonathan, still angry, decided it best to let Caleb go. He would get cold, Jonathan reasoned, and come back.
But Caleb didn’t come back.
One day, two days, and Caleb didn’t come back. Search parties were sent out. They found no trace of him. Their mother, Cathy, frantic, blamed Jonathan for Caleb’s disappearance. Grief made her wild. One night, she and Jonathan fought in turn. Cathy must have been half mad with sadness and shock by then. She told Jon to leave her house and not return until he had brought back his brother.
Jonathan was eaten up with guilt. When his mother ordered him to go out, he went. It was raining, he told me later. Very softly: a rain like cold tears. The mist was rising with the rain, the mist that gives Smoke Hollow its name. It was nearly Samhain, which, in the Old Country, marked the turning of the year.
I cannot excuse what he did next. But Jon was desperate, outside in the wet, grieving. “Please,” Jonathansaid aloud. “Please. I’m sorry. I just want him back. I’ll do anything. Anything.”
