a lie about having the fever.”
Four more days now, we been holed up here in this church in the wood. Four days of nursing, and feeding, cleaning the waste from feverish bodies and praying. Four days of leaving coins in the tree at the edge of the clearing, and hollering to the woman what I need for her to bring me. She’s kindly, merciful and good. Even took the dog home with her so’s to care for it proper. She’ll be good to that dog, I know, and I’m happy for that, but the woman gets more nervous every time she sees us still here. Word must’ve spread about the fever, and folks’ll be wondering, Should they burn this place to the ground to save their family from the sickness?
Them sawmill men could come sniffing after us, too. Can’t take that chance.
Juneau Jane don’t answer me. She just keeps on with whatever it is she’s doing over there by that wall of nailed-up newspapers. Got herself facing into the corner, so’s I can’t see. She’s mostly been a quiet thing since she come to. Confused and scared and twitchy, like the soldiers that wandered the roads after the war, their minds tangled, their nerves skittery and strange. When the mind’s been lost from the body, it can’t always find the way home. Might be that’s the soul’s way of preserving itself. Far as she’ll say when I ask her, she don’t remember a thing about how she came here, or what was done to them by that man with the patch eye or his helpers.
Missy Lavinia ain’t said a word so far. She was a big, heavy rag doll when I washed her clean with a bucket from the rain barrel and got her dressed in the clothes I paid the old woman for. Boys’ clothes and a hat. If we do see anybody on the road, it’ll be a whole lot easier to explain ourselves that way.
“Time we move on.” I keep talking while I gather up the food and quilt and wool blanket I bought from that woman. We can use them to sleep under or stretch over ourselves like a tent. “I got the horses caught. Saddled. You help me push Missy Lavinia up on that mare, now.”
Still not a word comes, so I cross the room and touch Juneau Jane’s shoulder. “You listening at me? What’s over here in this corner, so important you ain’t got time to answer? I saved your life, you know? Saved both your lives. Coulda left you two locked up in that poacher’s room, that’s what I coulda done…and should’ve, too. I don’t owe you nothin’. I said, for you to come help.” I’m about to the end of myself and the sun’s just barely up past the trees. Might be time I just leave, let them shift for theirselves.
“Soon,” she answers, low and flat, sounding older than the child she is. “But I must first complete my task.”
She’s got one of them newspapers pulled off the wall, and her bare foot set on top of it, and she’s cutting the shape of her foot out of the paper, using the tip of the skinning knife the woman brung me.
“Well, I’m sorry if them shoes I got for you ain’t to your pleasure. We hadn’t got time for you to fix paper to pad them. You can stuff them with grass or leaves on the trail. I’d be grateful just to have shoes, if I was you. That woman couldn’t even get me any to fit Missy Lavinia. Have to leave her barefoot for now, worry about that later. We need to leave from this place.”
The girl turns them strange eyes my way. I don’t like it when she does that. Gives me the shakes. She slips a hand under her leg, pulls out a pair of them newspaper feet that’s already been cut and holds them out toward me. “For your shoes,” she says. “To keep the conjures away.”
A witch’s fingernail slides up my back bone and down my rib bones, and along every other bone in my body, making a chill under my skin. I stay away from any and all conjures and even the talk of them.