At the heart of the open space stood a well.
The posts and well wheel were gone, leaving only a ring of rock about knee high, its surface patched with moss and lichen. I guessed it to be nearly eight feet across, far larger than any well I’d seen before. I felt a stirring in my chest. The low, gray stones, worn smooth with age, seemed to call me. The need to place my hands on the neatly stacked rocks swelled.
I moved on noiseless feet, feeling dragged forward almost against my will. Hesitantly, I reached out. This well was far, far older than anything I’d ever encountered. I closed my eyes and pressed my palms against the stones. The hairs along my arms lifted. There was power here, something strong and ancient. I felt it snaking under my feet, lurking in the dark waters, seeping into the ground to be drunk in by the trees.
I jerked my hands back as though I’d been shocked.
Chafing my fingers together, I willed the ridiculous notion away. Reading so many of Lilah’s stories must have caught up with me. Laughing aloud at the fancy, I shook my head and opened my eyes.
In my peripheral vision, a shadow flitted past.
Squinting, I peered into the dim woods and again caught the quick dart of a small figure. “Hello?” I called.
A face peeked out from behind a mottled gray trunk.
The shock of seeing the little girl nearly startled me into fleeing, but I found my feet rooted to the spot. Her eyes, set in a round face, were deepest brown, rimmed by bruise-dark shadows. Long black hair lay over her shoulders, the same shade as her knee-length dress. She emerged from the gloom, her small, white hands hanging limp at her sides.
I blinked hard, to make sure my vision hadn’t deceived me. When I looked again, she was gone.
I scanned the forest to my left, then right, and spied her disappearing behind another tree. “Are you lost?” I called, going after her.
Slowly, she stopped. My heart jittered against my ribs. “Do you need me to help you find your way home?” My voice took on a hushed tone, the way one speaks in an empty church.
She shook her head. An explanation for this unexpected encounter came to me in a flash. The child must have followed me from the schoolyard. The feeling of being trailed through the trees made sense now.
“You can talk to me,” I said with what I hoped was an encouraging smile. Her face remained blank. Some of the anxiety I’d dispelled crept back in. Her expression reminded me of the few times I’d seen Lilah sleepwalk.
“You need to come with me,” I said, annoyance and unease mixing in a sour brew in my gut. No matter how odd the child was, I couldn’t leave her alone in the woods. “You can’t hide out here all day. They’ll be worried about you at school.”
I reached for her. Without a sound, the girl turned and moved swiftly away. She went straight into the forest, slipping between the trees on silent feet. The black of her hair and dress melted into the dark of the woods as she slid further into the shadows.
“Wait! Where are you going?” I hurried after her, but the laces of my right boot snagged in briars. With a groan of frustration, I sank to a crouch and began quickly untangling the knotted mess.
A creeping, slithering silence wound itself around me. Once freed, I straightened and called after her. No one answered. The little girl was gone. I searched for a while, until at last, only the looming trees watched me turn to go. Hopefully she’d returned to the schoolhouse, scared out of her truancy by our meeting.
When I pushed out of the trees and stepped back onto the road, I inhaled the humid, sticky air with gratitude. I threw backward glances at the woods for the remainder of my walk. The farther I traveled from the trees, the less troubling the inexplicable cold and the encounter with the child felt.
Blanketed by the flawless June sky, I hurried on and let myself think only of delivering Hettie’s groceries and finding the missing horse. I tilted my face to the sun, grateful for the relentless Arkansas heat.
7
Noontime next day found me wedged between Big Tom and Hettie in the surrey, jostling toward the nearby town of Argenta to attend the county fair. Lady May pulled us briskly along under the midday sun.
When I’d limped back to the farm after my walk from Wheeler, I’d discovered my erstwhile mount already there, knee deep in Hettie’s rosebushes. The mare had plodded over to nuzzle my neck in apology. I didn’t even mind the partly chewed rose petals stuck in my hair. Hettie had been less than delighted to see the state of her garden, but I felt only sweeping relief to realize I hadn’t, in fact, lost the Weatheringtons’ horse.
Today, Lady May tossed her mane as we rattled along between sprawling fields sprinkled with wildflowers. She seemed in high spirits, and she wasn’t the only one. When Hettie had announced at daybreak that we’d need to hurry with our chores so we could get cleaned up and head out, she’d actually started whistling. Her cheerful expectation proved contagious, and I found myself excited to visit my first-ever county fair. Even Big Tom hummed a merry melody as we rode. This was, I decided, going to be a good day. If Fortune smiled on me, maybe Miss Maeve would decide to bring Lilah to the fair after all.
Before we were brought to Arkansas, Lilah and I had never spent a single day apart. If I felt ill at ease in this unfamiliar place so often, surely she must be at loose ends sometimes. Thoughts of all the new experiences I’d had in my short time at the farm reeled by—delivering the calf, working in the cornfield, fixing the fence, and slopping hogs. And that was to say nothing of my trek through the woods.
A startled little gasp slipped out. I hadn’t told Big Tom and Hettie about the girl in the woods. Yesterday, after I came back late and on foot, I’d worked with reckless intensity as penance for my failure to even fetch flour and salt without causing added trouble. In my fervor to do better, the strange incident had been forgotten.
Hettie gave me a quizzical look. On her lap rested a small crate packed with Mason jars of pickles and her best pear preserves, carefully selected for entry in the canned-food contest. “What’s the matter?” she whispered, leaning close. “Is your corset laced too tight?” I still wasn’t clear why Sunday best was required for a county fair, but Hettie had insisted.
I shook my head, sending the tulle on my hat rustling. “Yesterday, on my way back from Wheeler, I saw a little girl in the woods.” I felt Big Tom tense beside me. “I thought she might’ve come from town and gotten lost, but then she walked away into the trees like she belonged there.”
Hettie focused on the jars in her lap. For a few seconds, their glassy clink and the crunch of Lady May’s hooves against the gravel were the only reply. “You went into the woods?” she said at last.
“After Lady May bolted, it was the fastest way back.” I adjusted my hat, wishing the circle of shade cast by its brim did a better job of cooling my face. “Are there any houses in the woods? Maybe the girl lives there.”
“A few folks live near the woods—Reuben Lybrand, old Granny Ardith—but no one lives in them. There are stories about folks seeing … things out there.” She cleared her throat, as if the next words had to fight to get free. “Unnatural things. What you thought you saw might’ve been something else entirely.”
“What does that mean?” I asked, looking to Big Tom to elaborate.