Seven Wild Sisters

But they didn’t.

  It was strangely quiet around the Kindred homestead an hour or so later, when they came into the last meadow and started up the hill to the house. The little nagging feeling in Adie’s chest blossomed into real worry as they called out ahead and got no answer. It grew stronger still when they heard Root barking from the barn. There was a frantic quality to his voice that made Adie’s pulse beat way too fast.

  The two girls ran to the barn, fumbling to unbar the door. When they finally got the bar off and the door open, Root bounded by them and took off up the hill, running into the orchard. Adie and Elsie exchanged worried glances, then hurried after him. They found him whining by an old apple tree half choked with thornbushes, lying with his head on his paws as he stared at the tree.

  “What is it, boy?” Adie asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “That’s the Apple Tree Man,” Elsie said.

  “The what?”

  “The Apple Tree Man. It’s what Aunt Lillian calls the oldest tree in the orchard.”

  “And that means?”

  Elsie shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s just what she calls it.”

  Adie looked away from the tree, back to the house. She didn’t come up here very often. It wasn’t that she disliked Aunt Lillian. She just found it too weird up here. You couldn’t even use the bathroom to have a pee, because there wasn’t one. There was only the outhouse, where you knew there was a spider getting ready to climb onto your butt as soon as you sat down. Adie couldn’t imagine living without electricity or running water—especially not on purpose.

  “It’s too quiet,” she said.

  “It’s always quiet up here,” Elsie said, but she sounded doubtful.

  Adie knew just what she was thinking. There was something wrong, but neither of them wanted to say it aloud.

  “I guess we should check the house,” she said.

  Elsie nodded.

  Adie remembered what Mama’d said to get her to come up here.

  You’re the oldest and if something happened to Sarah Jane on the way back from Lily’s place, I’d feel better knowing you were there to deal with the problem.

  Maybe she was the oldest, but she didn’t know where to start right now. She didn’t feel at all capable. All she felt was panic.

  She swallowed hard.

  “They’re just inside, where they can’t hear us,” she said.

  “Then why did they lock Root up in the barn?”

  “I don’t know, okay?”

  Elsie looked like she was about to burst into tears.

  “I’m sorry,” Adie said quickly. “I’m worried, too.”

  She took her sister’s hand and started off toward the house.

  “Come on, Root,” she called over her shoulder.

  But the dog wouldn’t budge. All he did was stare at that stupid old tree and whine.

  “Everything’s going to be fine,” she assured Elsie as they approached the house. “They’re probably just gone off hunting berries or something.”

  Elsie nodded. “That’s right. Janey said they were going out after ’sang yesterday. Maybe they went today instead.”

  “There. You see? There’s nothing for us to worry about.”

  They both jumped at a sudden loud, moaning sound, then laughed when they saw it was just Aunt Lillian’s cow having followed them up from the barn. Henny lowed again, long and mournfully.

  “She sounds like she wants something,” Adie said.

  “Maybe she needs to be milked.”

  “But they would have done that before they left.”

  Elsie nodded.

  They were on the porch now.

  “Hello!” Adie called inside. “Is anybody home?”

  They went inside, nervous again. They found no one on the ground floor, and neither of them wanted to check the upstairs.

  “This looks like last night’s dinner dishes,” Elsie said as they looked around the kitchen.

  Adie dropped her knapsack by the door and nodded. “I guess we need to look upstairs.”

  Reluctantly, they went up the stairs, wincing at every creak the old wood made under their feet. The stairs took them into an open loft of a room. This had been where Aunt Lillian slept until her own aunt Em passed away. Now it was just used for storage, though there was little enough of it. Some old books. Winter clothes hanging on a pole and draped in plastic. By the window there was a large trunk.

  “There,” Adie said, only barely keeping the relief out of her voice. “You see? There’s no one here.”

  “What about the trunk?”

  “You think someone’s hiding in the trunk?”

  Elsie shook her head. “But you could put a… you know…”

  She didn’t need to say the word. It sprang readily to Adie’s mind. Yes, the trunk was big enough to hold a body.

  Crossing the floor, Adie went over to it, hesitated only a moment, then flung it open.

  “Still nothing,” she said. “And nobody, either. There’s just a mess of drawings.”

  Elsie joined her by the open trunk and looked inside. She picked up the top drawings.

  “These are really good. Who do you think did them?”

  Adie shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe Aunt Lillian.”

  “I didn’t know she could draw.”

  Elsie continued to explore the trunk while Adie used the vantage of a second-floor window to see if she could spy any sign of Aunt Lillian or their missing sister.

  Under the loose drawings Elsie found numerous sketchbooks, each page filled with sketches of the hills around the house. They were like what Elsie did in her own journal, cataloging the flora and fauna, only the drawings were so much better than hers. Further in, she found stacks of oil paintings on wood panels—color studies done in the field in preparation for work that would be realized more fully in a studio. Under them were still more drawings and sketchbooks. Many of these had a childlike quality to them and were done on scraps of brown paper and cardboard.

  She looked at the paintings again. There was something familiar about them. When she came to one depicting a black bear in a meadow clearing, she caught a sharp breath.

  “What is it?” Adie asked.

  “I’ve seen the finished painting this was done for. Or at least I’ve seen a picture of it in a magazine. The original’s hanging in the Newford Museum of Art. But that means…”

  She started looking more carefully through the paintings and drawings and began to recognize more of the sketches as studies for paintings she’d seen in various books and magazines. Finally she found what she was looking for inside one of the earlier sketchbooks.

  “Look at this,” she said.

  Adie gave the pages a quick study. From what she could tell, somebody had been doodling various ways to write their initials.

  “L.M.,” she read. “What does that stand for do you think?”

  “Lily McGlure.”

  “And she is?”

  “Apparently the name that Aunt Lillian painted under,” Elsie said.

  “I thought she was a Kindred.”

  “I don’t know about that. Maybe she changed her name. Maybe it’s just a pen name. But this is amazing.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” Elsie repeated. “The Aunt Lillian we know is really Lily McGlure. What could be more amazing than that?”

  “So?”

  “So she’s famous. They often talk about her like she was one of the Newford Naturalists, even though her work was done a few decades after their heyday. But you can see why, when you look at her paintings.”

  Adie couldn’t, really, but she didn’t want to seem more ignorant than she probably already did, so she said nothing.

  “She’s supposed to have studied with both Milo Johnson and Frank Spain,” Elsie went on, “though there’s some dispute about that, considering how they disappeared at least twenty years before she started to paint seriously.”

  “How do you know all this stuff?”

  “I don’t know,”
Elsie said. “I like to read about art and watch the Discovery Channel. I just find it interesting, I guess.”

  Adie gave the trunk a thoughtful look.

  “When you said these two artists disappeared,” she said, “what did you mean?”

  “Oh, it’s one of the big mysteries of the Newford art world. They were out painting in the hills around here and they just vanished.…” Elsie’s voice trailed off and she gave her sister an anguished look.

  “We don’t know that anything happened to Janey or Aunt Lillian,” Adie said. “I’m sure it’s just like we thought, they’re out hunting ’sang.” She took the sketchbook from Elsie’s hands and put it back in the trunk. “Come on. Let’s close this up and go back outside.”

  Elsie nodded. She placed the drawings and paintings back on top of the sketchbooks. Closing the trunk lid, she stood up and followed Adie back to the stairs.

  “What do we do now?” she asked. “Do we stay? Do we go looking for them? Do we go home?”

  “See, this is why we really need a cell phone,” Adie said. “Or even two. We could call Mama right now and ask her what to do.”

  “But we can’t.”

  “I know. Let me think a minute.”

  They stood out on the porch, looking out across the garden to the orchard, where Root still kept his vigil by the old apple tree.

  “We should put the cow back in the barn,” Elsie said. “Or at least in the pasture.”

  Right now the cow was in the garden, munching on the runner beans that grew up a pair of homemade cedar trellises on the far side of the corn.

  Adie nodded and fell in step beside her sister. “There sure seem to be a lot of bees around here today,” she said as they reached the garden.

  Elsie grabbed the cow’s halter and drew her away from the beans.

  “They’re gathering the last of the nectar,” she explained, “so that they’ll have enough honey to get them through the winter.”

  “I suppose,” Adie said. “But these don’t seem to be collecting much nectar. It looks to me like they’re just flying around.”

  Elsie studied the bees. Adie was right. The bees were ignoring the last of the asters and such and seemed… well, they seemed to be searching for something, but for what, Elsie couldn’t tell.

  “That’s just weird,” she said.

  “Everything about this morning is weird,” Adie said. “From the way Root’s acting and these bees, to how there’s just nobody around.”

  Elsie nodded. “I think we should put Henny back into the barn and go home. Mama will know what to do.”

  “I suppose.”

  Adie hated the idea of having to turn to their mother for help. She liked the idea that Mama was there if they should need her, but she much preferred to solve her problems on her own.

  They were halfway back to the barn when Adie suddenly put her hand on Elsie’s arm.

  “Do you hear that?” she asked.

  She needn’t have bothered. Elsie had already stopped and turned to look at the woods beyond the orchard herself.

  “It sounds like bells,” she said.

  Adie nodded. Bells and the jingle of bridles. And now that they and the cow had stopped moving, they could also hear the faint hollow sound of hooves on the ground. Many hooves. Adie reached for Elsie’s hand, to take comfort as well as give it, when the riders came into view.

  They were like knights and great ladies out of some medieval storybook. The men weren’t wearing armor, but they still had the look of knights in their yellow-and-black livery, with their plumed helmets and silvery shields. The women didn’t ride sidesaddle, but they wore long, flowing dresses that streamed down the flanks of their horses and trailed on the ground behind them. On either side of the riders ranged long-legged, golden-haired dogs with black markings—some cross between greyhounds and wolves.

  Neither the riders nor their animals seemed quite right. They were all too tall, too lean, their features too sharp. A nimbus of shining golden light hung about them, unearthly and bright. The whole company—men and women, their mounts and all—were so handsome it was hard to look at them and not feel diminished. Adie and Elsie felt like poor country cousins invited to a palatial ballroom, standing awkwardly in the doorway, not wanting to come in.

  “This can’t be real,” Adie said.

  Elsie made no reply except to squeeze her hand.

  The riders came down from the meadow, footmen running along behind, and encircled the two girls. The footmen notched arrows in their bows, aiming at Adie and Elsie.

  “Well, that was easy enough,” said the woman who appeared to be leading them.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Laurel and Bess

  t never made much sense to Laurel that they would still be weeding the garden in September when most of the vegetables had already been harvested. But that was the chore Mama had set her and Bess while the younger twins were in charge of cleaning the house.

  Of course they weren’t just weeding. They were also gathering errant potatoes and turnips and the like that had been missed during the earlier harvest, putting them in a basket to take inside later. When they were done weeding, they were supposed to turn the soil on the sections they’d weeded. After that, one or more of the other girls would spread compost over it all and that would be it until spring. Mama liked a tidy garden, everything neat and ready for next year’s planting.

  “We should’ve gone with Adie and Elsie,” Laurel said.

  Bess shrugged. “This’d still be waiting for us when we got back.”

  “I know. But I’m bored. This whole weekend’s just all too boring.”

  Last night’s dance at the Corners had been canceled, no one was exactly sure why. But there were rumors and gossip, as always. Bess had heard from the postman that the building had become infested with rats and so the county had closed it down. Martin Spry, a fiddler who lived down the road from them, had told Laurel that someone had vandalized the place the night before and the police were still investigating. But Mama said all of that was nonsense.

  “Mrs. Timmons told me the Jacksons got called out of town,” she said. “Something about one of their grandkids getting sick, and by the time they heard, it was too late to get anyone to take over for the night. That’s all.”

  Maybe, maybe not, Laurel thought. All she knew was that they hadn’t gotten to play out since last weekend. Hadn’t been playing, hadn’t been dancing. All they had to look forward to were school starting, chores, and watching interchangeable videos on the music channel.

  Laurel leaned on her hoe. “I really wanted to play that medley of Ziggy Stardust tunes that we worked out—just to see the faces on the old fiddlers.”

  The twins loved the old tunes and songs, but they also had an inordinate fondness for music from the seventies and eighties, which they kept trying to shoehorn into old-timey arrangements with varying degrees of success—everything from Pink Floyd to punk and disco.

  “Instead,” Laurel said, “all we have is boredom.”

  “Way too much, too,” Bess agreed.

  “If only something interesting could happen around here.”

  It was at precisely that moment, as though called up like an answered wish, that they heard the fiddle music come drifting down the hill and across the pastures to where they were working in the garden. The twins lifted their heads as one.

  “Do you hear that?” Laurel asked.

  “I’m not deaf.”

  “Who do you suppose it is?”

  “Don’t know,” Bess said. “But it’s not Marty.”

  Laurel nodded. “The tone’s too sweet to be him.”

  “Doesn’t sound like anyone we know,” Bess added after they’d listened a little more.

  Not only was the player unfamiliar, but so were the tunes. And that was irresistible.

  Laurel laid down her hoe. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “Always.”

  Bess brushed her hands on her jeans, and the two of
them went into the house to collect their instruments.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Ruth and Grace

  uth leaned on the windowsill she was supposed to be dusting and watched Laurel and Bess walk toward the woods with their instrument cases in hand.

  “How come they get to blow off their chores while we’re stuck in here?” she said.

  Her twin, Grace, joined her at the window. “They just thought of it first, I guess.”

  “I guess. Hey, you know what would be funny? If we went down and put all those taters and such back in the ground.”

  Grace shook her head. “Too much work. You know what would be funnier?”

  “What?”

  “If someone hid their instruments and replaced them in their cases with stones wrapped up in T-shirts so the cases would still weigh the same.”

  Ruth turned to her twin with a grin. “You didn’t.”

  “I’m not saying I did or didn’t. I’m just saying it would be funny.” She paused, then grinned as well. “But I sure thought they’d find out before now.”

  “If there’d been a dance last night,” Ruth began.

  Grace nodded. “And there they’d be, invited up onstage and opening their cases.”

  They started to giggle and slid down onto the floor with their backs to the wall, unable to stop, the one constantly setting the other off.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Laurel and Bess

  ama’s going to kill us,” Bess said as the sisters started across the pasture. She carried her banjo case with an easy familiarity to its weight.

  “Only if she catches us,” Laurel said. “I figure we’ve got two or three hours, maybe longer if she stops in to see Mrs. Runion.”

  Bess smiled. Mrs. Runion was a sweet old woman who lived on the edge of town and could talk your ear off if you gave her half the chance. Granny Burrell used to say that she’d been born talking, but Mama never seemed to mind. Mama was like Janey, in that she enjoyed visiting with old folks, saying, “All our history lives in those who’ve been around as long as Mrs. Runion. When we lose them, we lose a piece of our history, unless we take the time to listen to what they’ve got to tell us.”