West Virginia, 1898
It was the middle of the night, but the sky screamed with light, knocking Helen Joseph awake. She rolled out of her blanket, almost crushing her dreaming baby sisters beside her on the floor. The cabin was filled with sleep; no one else had noticed that strange, streaky flash. Helen thought maybe she was still sleeping, but flowed along, anyway, following her legs out the door, following the thin, bright trail that lingered against the dark, stretching all the way to the place where it careened down.
Something had landed; she knew it. But she wasn’t sure if it had landed in her dream or on their farm. She walked up the mountain slope toward that twinkling plummet, surprised to feel that the ground was hot under her bare feet. The earth grew warmer and warmer as she drew closer, until she had to skip from step to step. The soil beneath her calloused feet rippled, alive as a serpent, shoving her off balance. Helen landed heavily against the thorny trunk of a cottonwood tree as the earth lurched under the impact of whatever star had just fallen. The lingering wash of light intensified. The brightness made her teeth hurt. She closed her eyes so tightly that her cheeks pinched, and waited for the rumbling to stop. It didn’t stop, not for a long while. With her eyes closed and her body stomach-down in the forest brush, it was like wrangling a semiwild dog, praying you didn’t lose the hot, moving creature to the open spaces beyond.
Helen felt this same kind of desperate holding, a blade of sharp regret waiting to slice through her if she let go and lost it. Eventually, like a settling animal, the earth quieted and cooled. Helen opened her eyes and stood up, straightening her forest-stained nightgown. The sky had grayed with daylight, so Helen didn’t have to squint her way through the wood looking for the fallen thing. She heard a sound humming through the quiet bodies of the trees and tracked it to its source, winding her way around churned-up stones and seasons-ago debris.
A hole in the ground—small, the size of a child’s closed fist—glowed jewel green and sang out at her. Not words. Just a feeling. Helen knew she was supposed to protect it with soil, and to care for it. The thing’s demands coiled around her feet and hands, gently pulling her forward.
Helen’s hands were planting-skilled, so she covered over the opening like she would any seed. Unlike any other seed, though, this one began to grow right away. A bright vine swirled and opened out around her in the space of two stunned breaths, in and out. The plant looped around her wrist, holding her where she still crouched in the dirt. The tie was not sinister. It was a connection. Helen wasn’t afraid or worried—she felt chosen, happy. Happier than she’d ever been. The vine pulsed out at her, a drumbeat of feeling, and she bent toward its caress as though receiving an answer.
As she dipped closer, a link between her and that gleaming astral coal snapped into place. She felt it, sudden and secure, in the space behind her belly button, like a lid on a pot. And just like that, Helen Joseph knew exactly what to do to keep this glowing creature alive.
1
West Virginia, 1998
The garden was quiet, submerged in the kind of heavy, consuming sleep a child needed. Long summer days provoked this kind of thorough repair, from the land itself and the people who tended it. Cello loved these summer sleeps for their forgiving softness, and the nourishing visions they brought him in the night. When Joanie shook him awake in the dark, a finger pressed against her mouth, he almost turned back into his soothing, murky dream. Almost—Cello could never say no to Joanie. He flung himself back into consciousness, back into the trailer with Joanie and his other foster siblings. She gathered her hooded sweatshirt close across her chest and pointed for him to follow her outside. He pulled on his boots and gently closed the trailer door.
Joanie was already huddled over a cigarette, shivering, even though the night was hot. Since the baby had been born, she seemed permanently chilled. Cello reached out to her, but instead of taking his hand like he hoped she would, she passed him the burning Grand Prix.
“I found someone,” she said. The shoulder of her sweatshirt slipped down, exposing a too-sharp clavicle.
“What do you mean?” Cello tried not to look at the crescent of skin, and instead looked away, to where North River Mountain blotted out the clear night sky with its dark hunch.
“A buyer.” Joanie reached out for the cigarette and Cello passed it back without dragging from it.
“What? What do you mean a buyer?” he asked, wishing he sounded more confident, less confused. It was an unexpected proclamation. He and Joanie had nothing of their own to sell.
“Franklin Lees. He came to my wedding—that’s where I met him. He’s been trying to one-up Mother Joseph for years. Wants a crate of cuttings. From the Vine.” A slight tremor began in Joanie’s hands, and Cello saw the lit cigarette end wobble.
“No. Absolutely not,” he said, stepping toward her. He crossed his arms tightly, careful not to touch her. Of all the things at the garden that could be bought or sold, the Vine of Heaven was the only immutable constant. It had been there before them and would go on after them. Cello worked with it every day, but it was still a source of mystery—like cutting keys to doors he would never open. He knew that secretly removing the Vine from the garden was as impossible as removing his eyes from their sockets—it was the rule every member of their foster family understood. Letta would always know. Anytime it was pulled from the earth, she said she could feel it in her body. She had to lie down in the dark anytime a plot was cleared.
“The Vine belongs to me, too. I work hard enough for it. If I want to sell it, I should be able to sell it.” With a vicious tap, she sent a drift of glowing flecks from her Grand Prix onto the ground. “He’ll give me a car, Cello, and enough cash to really get away. Us, I mean. We can’t stay here anymore.” Cello didn’t ask if the “us” Joanie meant included the baby, or him, or all three of them. He saw the determination in the tensed muscles of her face and throat.
She had been closed off since the birth, like the separation of that little body from her own had torn her partially away from this world. But he also knew that Joanie was desperate enough to undertake the transaction without him, and that she would fail without his help. If she failed, and Mother Joseph found out, Joanie would be destroyed. Cello nodded into the dark, like a hypnotized man.
“Wait until tomorrow night, when it’s dark,” Joanie said, and Cello shuddered where he stood, trapped by Joanie’s grim resolve. “And make sure you wrap what you cut really tight. Like you’re smothering it. I’ll take care of everything else.”
“Alright, Joanie. Alright,” he answered, knowing it was what he would always say to her.
When Cello went back to bed, he dreamed of the earth splitting open. He dreamed of a crack running through the garden, upending the trailers and all of the old car carcasses in a rusty wave. The children screamed and scattered, and Joanie was swallowed up by that blank, dark seam, falling farther and farther into the center of the earth. Cello peered down into the crack, at the toes of his boots nearly dripping over the edge. Before he could jump in or run, his eyes flickered back open into their small, ordered world. The thin wail of Joanie’s baby woke him over the other sleeping bodies, and Cello jumped up to soothe him so the other kids could rest a little longer.