In the Land of Tea and Ravens (8 page)

~11~

For a week, the tea girl came to the palace, offering tea to an ailing king who didn’t recognize her. For a week, she whispered comforting words and hummed as she helped him sip from her porcelain cup. The tea was not magical. There was nothing special about the liquid, other than the taste and its properties. The girl meticulously gathered herbs and other plants to make her teas; the leaves part of a healing earth. These herbal concoctions bolstered the king, made him stronger and more animated. After the first week, he began to recognize the girl. The second week, he began to speak with her. “Why are you here?” he asked as he sipped his tea. Stunned, the girl replied, “Because you were sick,
Your
Majesty, and needed comfort.” Her words brightened his heart, and he smiled gently. “I have a name for you,” he said. “From this day forward, you shall be known as Mercy.”

~The Tea Girl~

 
The ravens woke Lyric before the sun, their fluttering wings loud against the windshield of her car as they roosted along the Ford Tempo’s hood, their claws leaving scratches in the paint. It had always been this way. She lived a life under the scrutiny of birds.

Sitting up in the backseat of her car, she glanced at the house beyond, her eyes raking its eerie shape in the dull landscape. The house was unlivable, the bugs and debris too much to contend with, so she’d parked her car along the wood line behind the rotting home and slept.

Her gaze skipped to the forest. “Promises,” she muttered.

Reaching into her red backpack, she pulled a water bottle free. The clear plastic container was filled with brown liquid, tea she’d steeped and then poured into it once it had cooled. The faint odor of willow bark tickled her nose.

You need to push him away,
a voice scolded in her head.

The willow bark always acted fast, opening the lines of communication between herself and the spirits of her family. Only one bird always remained silent, the beady eyes watching. It was the one bird she wished would speak with her.

“And if I don’t want to push him away?” Lyric asked stubbornly.

Climbing to the front of the car, she repositioned the driver’s seat and rolled down the window. A raven landed on the door.
You’d prefer he go mad
?
the
bird asked.

Lyric shuddered. “Not all of them do,” she murmured.

Claws clicked against glass as another bird landed on the windshield in front of her.
This isn’t about you,
the bird said.

Lyric’s forehead creased, her gaze taking in the dawn. There was always that moment right before the day swallowed the night—before the sun added a touch of color to the world—where it was just light enough for everything to look black and white. It was Lyric’s favorite part of the day. In that moment, everything resembled a vintage photograph inside of a large scrapbook. The world lost its quality of realism and became a book of memory. Some memories hurt, others were beautiful, but none of them were in real time. None of them could damage her as much as reality.

“No,” she mumbled. “This isn’t about me. I’ll find Old
Ma’am’s
tea book, and then I’ll leave.”

That’s a good girl,
a raven cawed.

There were days she hated ravens, days where as much as she loved her family, she couldn’t help wondering what the birds would taste like in stew. She’d never do it since it was her anger talking, not common sense. She despised her quick temper. Her ease with anger had ruined her life as a child. Anger stole from her. Anger destroyed her.

Lyric inhaled, leaving her window down as she turned the key in the ignition. The car roared to life. Letting the car idle, she sat until the sun swept the fields with its first golden rays, the color destroying the pristine vintage morning. It was then she finally drove away, the car bumping toward the light as if seeking redemption.

Wind cooled by the rain the night before drifted through the open window, slapping at Lyric’s irredeemable hair as she drove over dirt roads and sparse grass toward the main blacktop.

She
hummed,
the familiar tune keeping her focused while her car ate the distance between her grandmother’s old home and town.

There was a truck stop on the edge of Hiccup, and she parked there just long enough to use the showers, brush her teeth, and change her clothes before scurrying from the building, her head down. No one bothered her, but she heard the whispers, felt the hatred building. She wasn’t safe in this town.

Only one place welcomed her. She sought it out, her green and yellow tiered skirt snaking her ankles as she swept into the wooden building on the corner.
A hanging sign outside read
Delilah’s.
People often liked to name things after themselves, maybe to immortalize who they thought their name made them. Maybe it was for recognition, despite the fact that no one person truly owned a name. Delilah’s, however, wasn’t named after the owner. She’d named it after the woman who’d seduced Sampson in the Bible. Juliet, the proprietress, often said, ‘Folks spend all week
sinnin
’ so they can go to church on Sunday and leave the sin behind before
startin
’ the
sinnin
’ all over again. I just give them the place to do the
sinnin
’.
Seein
’ as I give them more a reason to go to church, it
ain’t
all bad.’

Cigarette smoke and the scent of stale beer blasted Lyric in the face as she pushed open the bar’s door. Balls cracked against each other at the pool tables, and low murmured conversations drifted through the cool, dark room. A 1967
Rockola
jukebox sat in the corner, the front lit up. Juliet Johnson leaned against it, a wry smile on her face, her hand poised over the machine.

Nodding at a dirt crusted window, she murmured, “I saw you
comin
’.” Her finger pressed the buttons.

The Beatle’s song,
Eleanor Rigby,
blared, the customers at the pool table groaning.

“That’s
fuckin
’ sad as shit!” one of them shouted.

Juliet grinned, her wizened face crinkling. Approaching Lyric, she mumbled, “Amazing what some folks find sad and what others find profound.” She marched behind the bar and patted the counter. “What’d you come in here for, girl? Couldn’t find that old tattered piece of crap Old Ma’am called a book?”

Frowning, Lyric sat, her gaze locking with Juliet’s. “I can’t leave without it.”

“Why?” Juliet asked. She slid an empty decanter across the counter and filled it with Coke. “Why can’t you just leave it all behind?”

Lyric’s brows rose, a sad smile spreading across her face. “You know why.”

Juliet shrugged. “So take the damned cup, but leave the rest. The book
ain’t
got
no
ties to you.”

“It’s full of history,
our
history,” Lyric argued.

“Then re-write it.”

For a moment, there was nothing but silence and music.
All the lonely people,
the
Rockola
screamed,
where do they all come from?

Lyric gestured at the juke box. “Are you trying to tell me something?”

The woman grinned, her crooked, tobacco-stained teeth flashing. “Don’t even pretend you
ain’t
lonely. I watched you grow up, gel.”

Lyric scowled. “I’m not lonely!”

Juliet shook her head. “I think
it’s
right time you fooled around with someone. I’m impressed it’s the Kramer boy considering your family’s history, but—”

“I’m not fooling around with anyone!”

“She doth protest too much,” Juliet laughed. “You can’t keep shit quiet in this town. Richard Newton pulled Grayson off your property last night.”

“It’s not my property. It’s the
county’s
.”

“And that’s beside the point.” Juliet’s expression sobered. “You need people, Lyric. You need
man
people. It’s crazy as hell that you don’t date. And I say
good
for you if you’re
foolin
’—”

“We had tea,” Lyric interrupted, her cheeks turning red.

Juliet froze. “What? Lyric—”

Lyric swallowed, her gaze falling to the counter. She shoved the glass away, the soda untested. “It was supposed to scare him off.”

Juliet’s hands came down over Lyric’s, her flesh warm and rough. “The boy’s got gumption if it didn’t. What the devil were you
thinkin
’?”

“I wasn’t.” Lyric laughed. “I wasn’t thinking …” Her eyes fell closed. “You’re right,” her gaze opened to find Juliet’s sad eyes, “I’m lonely. Damn it all to hell!”

Juliet’s hand squeezed hers. “There
ain’t
nothing
evil about your family.
There
ain’t
nothin
’ evil about you.
Remember the song. Keep singing the song. Keep remembering where you came from and how it all started.”

Lyric swallowed. “My mother—”

“She should have taught you better!” Juliet hissed. Several heads lifted, and she lowered her voice. “Look, you know what the Grayson boy did, right?”

Lyric shook her head.

Juliet sighed. “He was a young, stupid bastard is what he was. Raised with money, he struggled with school. Managed to graduate, but college was too much.” She paused, releasing Lyric before taking a large swallow from the glass Lyric had abandoned. “He quit and went to work. It was honest work at first, but then like all young men without much sense, he started
lookin
’ for adventure in all of the wrong places.
Got tangled up in some gambling scams on the Gulf Coast.
You just don’t get involved with the kind of people he got involved with and live to tell about it.”

Lyric stood, her gaze shooting to the door. “I really don’t want to know. It’s not my trouble.”

Juliet’s hand shot out, her old grip surprisingly strong where it circled Lyric’s wrist. “You need to know.”

Lyric pulled at her arm. “I really don’t—”

“He got scared,” Juliet interrupted. “He got scared and decided he wanted out. There was a standoff that his sixteen-year-old brother, Ben, innocently walked in on. Both Grayson and Ben were injured. Ben was shot and Grayson was slashed by a knife that managed to puncture his lung. Both were taken to the hospital. Only one of them came out.”

Lyric tugged at her arm again, but Juliet refused to let go.

“Correction,” the old woman said. “Neither one of them came out of that hospital. Grayson’s still there. Even after several years in prison for his involvement with the gambling ring, he’s not been able to let that night go. He was only nineteen. We’re all stupid at nineteen.” Juliet’s grip tightened further, the hold becoming painful. “And seven-year-old children don’t kill their mothers.”

Lyric jerked herself free. “You don’t know …” she whispered.

Juliet shook her head. “I do know, child. I do.”

“She won’t speak to me, Juliet,” Lyric gasped.

They both knew who she was talking about. It was the one raven Lyric kept drinking the tea for.

“She doesn’t speak,” the old woman murmured, “because you’re not ready to hear her.” With that, she pointed at the exit. “Find that damned book if you’re so set on it, but quit
runnin
’.”

Lyric sauntered to the door, her hand pausing on the frame. “We drive them mad.”

Juliet laughed. “You can’t drive a man mad when he’s already insane.”