In the Land of Tea and Ravens

In the Land of Tea and Ravens

By R.K.
Ryals

Copyright © Regina K.
Ryals
, 2014

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Acknowledgements

To my grandmother, because you taught me that there is nothing in this world more potent than a little tea. To Melissa Ringsted, because I know life often puts us in a dark place and leads us down impossible roads. Yet, at the end of each path, there is always a new beginning. To my readers, because sharing tea is often better than drinking it alone.

We had a kettle; we let it leak: Our not repairing made it worse. We haven’t had any tea for a week... The bottom is out of the Universe.
~Rudyard Kipling~

~1~

Once upon a time, in a kingdom far, far away, in a land quite similar to our own, there lived a poor merchant, his humble abode next to the sea. The merchant had three daughters. His two eldest were beautiful and talented. The youngest was not as lovely as her sisters, but she was kind. She was not gifted, but she had a certain affinity for tea …

~The Tea Girl~

It started with a ceramic coffee cup, the handle too big for her hands, a small place in the top chipped away. It was a well-used cup, the color faded by time. There was nothing special about it, nothing remarkable. It was a plain brown mug, thick and comfortable when held.

It was simply a cup, old and empty.
Cold and alone.

It began and ended with a cup.

The sun was just beginning to rise when she approached the house, the hot Mississippi wind beating at her long, thin cotton skirt and white tank top. Her long, mousy brown hair was piled on the top of her head, tendrils of it clinging to her neck.

It was simply a cup.

A rotund man with thinning hair and a sour face climbed down tan brick stairs, a handkerchief clutched in his hand. Occasionally he swiped his forehead with the cloth, his cheeks flushed by the heat.

“It’s going to be a scorcher today,” the man murmured.

The young woman didn’t answer him. Her eyes were glued to a small brown table sitting next to a whitewashed rocking chair, the paint peeling off of it. On the table sat a plain brown coffee mug.

It was simply a cup.

“There
ain’t
much left,” the man added. He waved at the house. “There’s a bad termite problem. It’s going to have to be torn down.”

Once again, the woman didn’t answer. She didn’t care about the house. There were memories there, of course.
Old ghosts that floated in and out of the scene.
Spirits only the girl would understand.
Memories.
Old memories.

She saw only the cup.

“You can take whatever you’d like. No reason to lock the place up.”

When she didn’t reply, the man simply left, muttering something about an ungrateful generation before climbing into his dusty black
Altima
and driving away. The car threw up dirt, turning the golden morning cloudy, the sun burning through fog to shine down on wilted, brown fields, old sheds, and flowers growing wild in an overgrown garden.

Her fingers touched the mug, her hands gripping it.

“Talk to me,” she whispered.

Her eyes fell closed, a thousand emotions descending, cloaking her. It made her thin shoulders shake, her wavy hair growing curlier in the expanding heat. Birds whistled at her, the heavy scent of honeysuckle almost suffocating in the thick, humid air. Moisture beaded up along her brow and rolled slowly down the side of her face.

It should have been a simple cup, but it spoke a thousand words, said a million things. The woman who owned it was as existent in this moment as she had been in life. The silence was louder than a scream, the quiet full of murmured words that would never be spoken aloud again.

“Talk to me,” she repeated.

The cup was hot in her hands, her palms having heated it.

Here,
the cup said,
it’ll make you feel better. There’s
nothin
’ more potent than a little tea.

Tea.
It had been Old
Ma’am’s
cure-all for everything. It had silenced coughs, fevers, and broken hearts.
Tea.
It cured it all.

The young woman sat on the edge of the rocking chair, her hands still gripping the mug, her back falling against the old wood.
Creak,
the chair said.

Back and forth.
Back and forth.

The girl’s eyes lifted, her gaze falling on a long dirt road, the sun highlighting Dogwood trees and hanging willows. Across a field full of waist-high grass, another house sat, the two
level
home having been owned by the same family for generations. It sported new paint the color of a robin’s egg, the wrap-around porch recently whitewashed.

The cup in the woman’s hands felt too empty.

Listen closely,
m’dear
,
the cup said.
There’s a whole universe inside of this old ceramic mug. It’s comforted many a soul.

She waited for the comfort now.

A low rumble filled the air, dirt rising as laughter filled the morning. Distant growling machines chased away the birds, the roaring sound bleeding into the silence.

Tall grass bent as three four-wheelers careened into view, the ATV’s staying to old paths and trails that swept from the house across the field to the older condemned house where the young woman sat now.

The riders slowed when they saw her, one four-wheeler breaking free of the rest. The young man waved the others on, his forehead creased as he shaded his eyes against the sun.

“You a ghost?” he called.

He was a handsome man, the T-shirt he wore missing the sleeves. They’d been cruelly cut away, leaving the fabric frayed. The sun brought out auburn highlights in otherwise plain brown hair, the front a little long. He had a strong nose, his face tanned. A large tribal tattoo covered one bicep, his muscles tensing as he brought his four-wheeler to a stop just below the porch.

“You don’t look like a ghost,” he said as he switched off the ATV.

The girl didn’t answer him. He noticed she had hazel eyes, the color more brown than green in the sun. It was the kind of brown that reminded him of hot chocolate in winter. She couldn’t be much older than twenty, but there was an entire world painted behind those doe-like eyes.

He gestured at the robin egg house beyond. “Grayson Kramer,” he introduced. “My family owns the house across the way. Do you need help?”

The girl’s gaze met his, her hands clutching the coffee mug in her palms until her knuckles turned white. If she’d been strong enough, her grip would have shattered the cup.

“She once said the world could be cured by a sip of tea,” the woman whispered. Her gaze fell to the cup. “Just one drop of warmth, and there’d be no reason to hate or to hurt.”

His gaze followed hers to the mug.

“Must have been a potent cup of tea,” he teased.

Grayson thought he saw a flickering smile, but it was gone as quickly as it had come. The girl was too young to look so troubled.

“Do you think she was crazy?” the girl asked.

The question threw him, and Grayson sat taller, his blue gaze moving to the house beyond her shoulder. Broken glass and dark, white shrouded furniture stared back at him. It was the perfect haven for ghosts. A sense of unease traveled down his spine. The girl had never volunteered her name. She was simply a lonely looking stranger with wide, soulful eyes, a small nose, and hair that took up entirely too much room on her head. She was too corporeal to be a ghost.

“The woman who lived here?”
Grayson inquired.

He hadn’t grown up in the area. His parents owned a home just north of the Gulf Coast, but they’d visited his grandparents often in the summer, and he knew the area well enough. A twenty-five-year-old nomad, as his parents liked to call him, Grayson was a jack of all trades, taking driving, mechanic, construction, and welding jobs wherever he liked before moving on to something different. He’d had quite a bit of trouble with the law, and he’d chosen to retreat to the country. His grandfather’s health had declined over the years, and he’d come to north Mississippi to help him with his land.

The girl stared at him.

Grayson cleared his throat. There was something about the girl’s gaze that disconcerted him, as if she saw something no one else could see. Maybe she could. Ghosts could do anything.

“I’ve heard things about the woman,” he said finally, “but I didn’t know her. She died recently, I understand.”

The girl never blinked, her fingers slowly caressing the cup in her hands.

“She wasn’t crazy,” the girl mumbled fiercely.

Grayson’s sense of unease grew. “Can I call someone for you?” he asked.

The young woman inhaled, her eyes falling shut. She rocked slowly.
Creak
, the chair said.

Awkward silence passed between them. Leaving seemed wrong, but staying seemed like an intrusion somehow.

“If you’re okay …” Grayson began uneasily.

His gaze was drawn to her face. She hadn’t seemed a remarkably beautiful woman when he’d stopped in front of the house, but she’d transformed, her features suddenly ethereal and distracting.

The roaring sound of incoming four-wheelers broke his trance. His grandfather was too weak to do much on the farm he’d spent years expanding, so Grayson had hired hands to help him. Daniel Stevens and Freddie Graham were both young men, the money from the hired work helping Daniel pay for college while it helped Freddie feed a young, unexpected family.

“Everything okay?”
Daniel called out.

The girl’s eyes
opened,
her gaze distant. Standing, she clutched the mug to her chest, the brown cup clashing badly with her dust-speckled tank top.

“Lyric,” she breathed, her graze dropping to Grayson’s.
“Lyric Mason.”

With that, she sauntered down the stairs, a floral scent tickling Grayson’s nose as she swept by him, her gypsy-like skirt billowing around her ankles.

“Lyric,” Grayson repeated under his breath, his gaze trailing her. She moved slowly and gracefully, the land surrounding her embraced her disappearing figure. There was a small car in the distance, an old Ford Tempo that looked a little worse for wear.

“You sure you don’t need any help?” he called after her.

She kept walking.

The droning sound of four-wheelers drowned out Grayson’s thoughts.

“Who was that?” Daniel Stevens asked.

Freddie came to a stop beside him. “Old
Ma’am’s
granddaughter, I think. I heard tell she was in town.”

Grayson glanced at him.
“Old Ma’am?”

Freddie shielded his eyes, watching as Lyric climbed into her car.
“The woman who lived here.
She was bat shit crazy. It’s hereditary in that family.”

Grayson turned the key in his four-wheeler but left it idling, his gaze taking in the thrown up dust left by the doe-eyed girl’s vanishing car. His brows creased.
A sad woman clutching a ceramic coffee mug.

“The woman who lived here was Gretchen Miller, wasn’t she?
The old Miller property?”
Grayson queried.

Freddie shrugged. “I only ever knew her as Old Ma’am. Nuts in the head, but a grand storyteller. Kids loved her.” He drove off then, his ATV rambling over ruts in the road. Daniel followed.

Grayson’s eyes wandered back to the house. A hot breeze worked its’ way through the area, lifting cream-colored curtains now yellowed with age. Ivy climbed up the wood-paneled walls and edged through the broken windows, the leaves clutching at the glass. Pine straw lined the cement porch, and second level shutters hung askew. It was alive, this house.