Amber House (13 page)

He smiled and pulled his hands out from under the covers. He began in a chanting, spooky voice: “Beware the good mother, you’d better beware!” He shaped his fingers into claws: “She lurks in the attic and under the stair.” He walked fingers up one of my arms, in time with his lyrics: “So if you go a-creeping, you gotta take care.” He was milking it, going for maximum sinister: “’Cause she’ll BITE anybody” — and I jumped as his fingers leapt to my neck to deliver a bite — “who enters her lair.” He dissolved into giggles. “I got you, Sarah.”

“Yes, you did,” I said, and I gave him a few finger spider bites of my own on his ticklish spots. Then, “Shh, shh,” I scolded him, and smiled.
God bless him.
No matter what kind of garbage I had to take from the rest of the world, I always had Sammy.

“G’night, Sarah,” he said, smiling in return.

I reached for the light. “G’night, Sam-my-man.”

“I hate to be leaving you here, Cait. God bless you and keep you. Good-bye.”

In a small, dark room nearly filled by two cots, I — she — was hugging a girl of about sixteen. The girl was wearing a nightgown, and she was weeping. I was in a long skirt and cloak. I could see my breath on the air.

I kissed her cheek, slung my bag over my shoulder, and turned into the hall. A fat, red-faced man stepped out of another door.

“Stay until I can get another bond girl to take your place. I’ll pay you good wages.”

“My term was up at midnight. I’ll not stay another minute under this roof.”

“I won’t let you go.” He reached out a thick hand to touch my breast. I knocked it away and struck him with my open palm.

His red face turned scarlet, but still I could see the white-red print of my slap upon it. He raised his arm to strike back. It was caught midswing by a tall young man who had come up behind him. The young man slammed a fist into the other’s gut, doubling him over. Then he brought his fist up hard, and I heard the wet crunch of splintering bone. With blood spurting from his nose, the fat man fell backward like a chopped tree and lay still. I picked my way around the body and threw myself upon the young man, kissing him fiercely.

Then we left that place.

We were on a sailboat, standing side by side in the prow. I saw a river mouth beside a reed marsh. I pointed. “There.”

The riverbanks narrowed and rose. “No other folks up here,” he said.
“The pox took a lot of the Indians, but still a fair number about. You should stay closer in.” As he angled the craft in to shore, a rain began, a soft drizzle turning to harder drops.

“Let’s wait a bit, Sorcha, for the storm to lessen,” my young man said.

But I could not wait.

I hurried up through the woods slicked with rain. Wet earth gripped my feet and small branches slashed at my legs and arms. Vines tried to trip me. I stumbled and fell, but didn’t stop. I pushed up the rest of the way on all fours, fighting the mud that tried to spill me back and down.

The trees thinned. I used a sapling to pull myself up to my feet. I walked out into the meadow on the bluff’s crown, in which stood a single tall tree.

Above me the clouds leapt with light, then cracked open — a bolt arcing down to the lifted branches of the solitary tree. The boom smacked into me, stopping my ears with ringing; my skin crawled with the nearness of the discharge. Half the tree split away and fell, smoldering.

I saw something tumble from the heart of the tree. Liam had caught up with me and took my arm to stop me. But I shook him off and walked forward surely. I knelt down at the foot of the stricken tree and it was there in the grass — a clear, burnt-yellow drop with something in the center of it, some dark flaw at its core.

I lifted it high. “Let it never be forgotten.”

I closed my fist around the stone.

I woke, and lay in bed remembering my dream. Knowing that it had been something more than a dream. That maybe it had been Sorcha and Liam, the way they really were. My great-great-I-didn’t-know-how-many-times-great grandparents.

The thoughts my dream provoked left me brooding and moody, but fortunately, nobody was in the kitchen when I went down. As I stood spooning up the last few bites of Cheerios I’d fixed for myself, Mom made the mistake of calling for me
instead of just sneaking quietly into the room. I assumed she was intent on advancing some party-related agenda, and I was not interested.

I dumped my bowl in the sink and ducked through the door to the outside. I sprinted down the path and around the corner of the house, hoping she hadn’t spotted me through the window. If I could hide until ten o’clock, then Rose would be there to help me with the brownies, and I could completely evade whatever it was my mother wanted from me.

The hedge wall stretched to my right; a dozen yards down, an archway cut through it. Seemed like a good place to stay out of sight. I ran inside. It opened into a long, green corridor floored in grass and flagstones.

At its end stood a little girl, maybe six or seven, with a halo of dark hair, in a gauzy white dress.

And I thought:
She’s beautiful.

She looked my way, turned, and skipped left behind the hedge.

Without stopping to consider, without even wondering who she was or where she came from, I ran after her.

At the corridor’s end, the passage continued both left and right. I cut left and ran to a corner that bent left again. I realized then I was in a hedge maze.

Halfway down the next corridor, two passages crossed, and looking right, I saw a flash of white. “Hey! Wait!” I sprinted faster and hit another choice of turns. A left took me to a dead end.

I’d lost her. I felt an indefinable pang.

I walked back, turning right at the first branching. Seeing three dead ends in all directions. And realizing I’d lost myself as well. I was certain I’d needed to make a right and then a left. I figured I must have missed a turn. I tried going back, went left and left again, and found myself in another dead end.

It occurred to me then that I might end up being late for my brownie-baking session with Rose. Maybe very late.

I decided I’d better be a little more methodical. I started pocketing any rocks I saw to mark the turnings I took. The maze wasn’t endless. Eventually, I had to find the way out.

Ten minutes later, another dead end lay ahead, so I started to backtrack, following my stone warnings to avoid any previously explored corridors and thinking how very clever I had been. At the next choice of turns, one opening was already marked. I was veering away from it when the rock caught my eye. It was the mottled green pebble Richard had found in Deirdre’s room. I’d left it in the pocket of the jeans I had on. Impulsively, I stooped to pick it up again — an ordinary stone could mark that corridor. Then I went around the next corner and discovered, sitting on a bench, someone I was completely surprised to see. She started, looked toward me squinting, and a smile spread across her face.

“Sarah, girl, here you are.”

“Nanga! Thank God I ran into you,” I said, meaning every word.

She laughed. “You a little lost, are you?”

I laughed too. “
Entirely
lost.”

The hedge behind her was shorter than elsewhere, revealing the drop to the river below. I’d worked my way to the far side of the maze without even knowing it.

“Don’t worry, you’re only a few turnings from where you started. I’ll tell you the way.”

She named the turns. I repeated it back to her and then repeated it again.

“Thanks for the help,” I said. “I was getting a little nervous. It’s a big maze. I saw a little girl in here — will she be all right?”

“Don’t you worry about her. She knows the way in and the way out.”

“So she lives around here or something?”

“Yes, indeed. She’s my little friend. She comes to visit sometimes to make my heart lighter.”

I found it strange that Nanga was wandering around the grounds of Amber House. Unless that’s what she was used to doing, when Gramma was alive.

As if she were reading my thoughts, she said, “Ida never minded when I dropped by. I hope you don’t mind either.” She smiled. “Sit a minute. Please.”

The old woman didn’t seem as … discomfiting … as she had the first time I met her. Maybe because she had just finished saving my butt. She seemed, oddly, younger up close.

“What’s that in your hand?” she asked as I took a seat. I glanced down, surprised to find I was still holding the green pebble. She looked as if she wanted to reach out and touch it. “Why, that’s —” She stopped. “That’s verdite. It’s a kind of stone that can only be found in Africa, near where my people come from. Hold on to it. For luck.”

I tucked it back in my pocket. “Jackson said I should go back and talk to you. What did you want? Before.”

“Before? In your room?”

“No. What? No. Outside your house.”

“I promised you a chat.”

The way she said it, it sounded almost like a question. “Yeah. You said there were some things you needed to tell me —”

“Sammy all right?”

“Sammy’s fine,” I said, wondering why she would even ask.

“You know,” she said, “I been around here such a long time, I know just about all of Amber House’s secrets.” She nodded at me, like she was cuing me to speak.

“Um.” I didn’t really feel confessional, but she continued to
watch me in that encouraging way. “So, you know about the —
gift
?” I was embarrassed saying the word aloud.

She nodded again. And I experienced a kind of relief. Someone besides Jackson was telling me this was real. It wasn’t all just in my head. “What is it?” I asked her. “What happens?”

“Well, your grandma used to call ’em echoes, but that’s not quite right. You know how you can make physical marks on a thing, like a scratch or a chip? I think maybe our thoughts and feelings can make other kinds of marks on the things we touched and used and loved. Or hated. And the women in this family — the ones with the gift — can see those marks, especially when they’re in tune with ’em. That make any sense to you?”

“I guess. Kind of. So, they aren’t ghosts?”

She shook her head. “There are no ghosts in Amber House.”

No ghosts
, I repeated to myself, and felt a little better. “What do you mean … ‘in tune with them’?”

“Like calls to like. Need pulls an answer.”

“You mean my thoughts can set off a vision?”

“More like your feelings. Or troubles. Or worries. Sometimes, I almost think the house is trying to help.”

I digested that. “Can you see them?”

“No, child. I can’t see the past.”

“Where does it come from? This gift.”

“A long way back. Fiona said the grandmother who first come here had it. She could find lost things and knew about people just by touching their belongings. Had to leave her home ’cause they thought she had the evil eye. Sold herself into bondage to pay for her passage.”

“Sorcha,” I said.

“You’ve seen her,” Nanga said. “Then maybe you know there was something about this place that drew her. Something that fed her gift. It may be this was always a place of power. Or it may
be the power come here just because so many powerful women been drawn here, like the cause and effect of it, the then and the now of it, don’t really matter.”

“Why is it only women?” I asked.

“Don’t know. Women are a lot different from men. They listen different. They’re like spiders, always spinning connections between themselves and others, always tending the web.”

I nodded, even though I didn’t really understand. And didn’t like being compared to a spider.

“You ever need help, Sarah, you can trust Jackson. He’s a good boy and he will do his best by you.” She cocked her head a little, regarding me. “You know you’re related to him? Cousins way back in the family tree.”

“Really?” That was a disturbing piece of information. On so many levels. Richard had said the Captain was involved in shipping slaves, but I hadn’t ever specifically connected slave-holding with my family. I don’t know why. I hadn’t wanted to think about it, I guess. And if Nanga was saying Jackson and I shared an ancestor, that meant one of my male ancestors had — what? I couldn’t bear the thought. Had
hurt
Jackson’s distant grandmother? I felt disgusting.

“I know what you’re thinking, girl.” Her eyes grew distant. “It was a terrible thing. An unforgivable, unforgettable thing. But a lot of fine men and women came from that evil act. And that woman got justice — justice then and justice in the end.” She nodded, her eyes sharp again. “It’s often seemed to me that in Amber House, time has a way of curing itself.”

Evil act
, I repeated mentally, shaking my head. I hoped that woman got justice. I hoped she got revenge. I guessed I would never know for certain. I needed to think about all of this more. “Okay.” I stood. “I got to hurry.” Rose was probably already waiting. “Thank you, again, for — everything.”

She smiled and waved off my thanks with her hand.

“Good-bye,” I called back, as I started walking.

Nanga lifted her voice after me. “One more thing. Almost forgot. You ever get to feeling confused in one of them echoes, a mirror’ll always show you true.”

I was busy repeating the turns in my head, thinking about the slave — Jackson’s ancestor — hurt so cruelly by some slave-owning scumbag —
my
ancestor. Reflecting on my connection to this place and its people. So I was halfway out of the maze before I even registered that last sentence.

I found the long green corridor leading out. As I passed through the entrance, I spotted Jackson sitting on a stone wall.

“Hi,” I said. “What’re you doing here?”

“Sammy … told me he saw you go in. I wanted to make sure you’d come back out.”

I nodded and laughed weakly. “Thanks. Did you know we’re cousins?”