she felt and how she hated to do it but it was a lady's right to defend her honor even though it might involve giving the appearance of having no honor but that's why it was so good having such a good, true, wonderful friend.
Ah, the tears that flowed. Ah, the sighs. Ah, the quart of tea she consumed while Arthur leaned on the sill, watching, listening.
Oddly, though, as soon as the tears were done, her face just went clean. Not a streak. Not a trace of redness around the eyes. Not a sign that she had even shed a tear.
The tea eventually took its toll. Vilate slid her chair back and rose to her feet. Arthur knew where the privy was; he immediately jumped from the rain barrel and ran around the front of the house before the door even opened leading out to the back. Then, knowing she couldn't possibly hear the bell, he opened the post office door, went inside, clambered over the counter, and made his way into the kitchen from the front of the house. There was the salamander, licking a bit of tea that had spilled from the saucer. As Arthur entered, the salamander lifted its head. Then it scurried back and forth, making a shape on the table. One triangle. Another triangle crossing it.
A hex.
Arthur moved to the chair where Vilate had been sitting. Standing, his head was just about at the height her head was at when she was seated. And as he leaned over her chair, the salamander changed.
No, not really. No, the salamander disappeared. Instead, a woman was sitting in the chair across from him.
"You're an evil little boy," the woman said with a sad smile.
Arthur hardly even noticed what she said. Because he knew her. It was Old Peg Guester. The woman he called Mother. The woman who was buried under a certain stone marker on the hill behind the roadhouse, near his real mother, the runaway slave girl he never met. Old Peg was there.
But it wasn't Old Peg. It was the salamander.
"And you imagine things, you nasty boy. You make up stories."
Old Peg used to call him her "nasty boy," but it was a tease. It was when he repeated something someone else had said. She would laugh and call him nasty boy and give him a hug and tell him not to repeat that remark to anyone.
But this woman, this pretend Old Peg, she meant it. She thought he was a nasty boy.
He moved away from the chair. The salamander was back on the table and Old Peg was gone. Arthur knelt by the table to look at the salamander at eye level. It stared into his eyes. Arthur stared back.
He used to do this for hours with animals in the forest. When he was very little, he understood them. He came away with their story in his mind. Gradually that ability faded. Now he caught only glimmers. But then, he didn't spend as much time with animals anymore. Maybe if he tried hard enough...
"Don't forget me, salamander," he whispered. "I want to know your story. I want to know who taught you how to make them hexes on the table."
He reached out a hand, then slowly let a single finger come to rest on the salamander's head. It didn't recoil from him; it didn't move even when his finger made contact. It just looked at him.
"What are you doing indoors?" he whispered. "You don't like it indo ors. You want to be outside. Near the water. In the mud. In the leaves. With bugs."
It was the kind of thing Alvin did, murmuring to animals, suggesting things to them.
"I can take you back to the mud if you want. Come with me, if you want. Come with me, if you can."
The salamander raised a foreleg, then slowly set it down. One step closer to Arthur.
And from the salamander he thought he felt a hunger, a desire for food, but more than that, a desire for... for freedom. The salamander didn't like being a prisoner.
The door opened.
"Why, Arthur Stuart," said Vilate. "Imagine you coming to visit."
Arthur had sense enough not to jump to his feet as if he was doing something wrong. "Any letters for Alvin?" he asked.
"Not a one."
Arthur didn't even mention the salamander, which was just as well, because Vilate never even looked at it. You'd think that if a lady was caught with a live salamander - or even a dead one, for