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 read about it 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 just 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 circled around the two girls. The footmen notched arrows in their bows, aiming them at Adie and Elsie.
“Well, that was easy enough,” said the woman who appeared to be leading them.
2
Laurel and Bess
It 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 to 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 bor-ing.”
Last night’s dance at the Corners had been cancelled, 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 gotten themselves knifed at a stag the Friday night before and the police still had the building cordoned off for their investigation. 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 got to play out since last weekend. Hadn’t been playing, hadn’t been dancing. It was just school—their last year, thank god; they’d turned eighteen a couple of months ago and would be graduating this June—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?” Laure
l 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 think-ing?”
“Always.”
Bess brushed her hands on her jeans and the two of them went into the house to collect their instruments.
3
Ruth and Grace
Ruth 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 thirteen-year-old 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 on stage 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.
4
Laurel and Bess
“Mama’s going to kill us,” Bess said as they 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.”
Beth 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.”
Beth supposed she half-understood. She and Laurel felt the same about music and, while they weren’t much for sitting around chatting with someone like Mrs. Runion, they saw nothing odd about making a two-mile hike up some bush road to spend the afternoon and evening listening to some old fellow scratch out tunes on his fiddle, or maybe rasp his way through one of the old ballads.
Music was something that needed to be passed along, too. Or at least the old songs and tunes did.
“She hasn’t seen Mrs. Runion for a couple of weeks,” Bess said, “so it’s a good bet she’ll stop in today.”
Laurel nodded. “Will you listen to that fiddler play.”
“I haven’t heard a tune I know yet,” Bess said.
“I just can’t imagine who it would be, out in our woods like this.”
Beth laughed. “Maybe it’s one of Aunt Lillian’s fairy people.”
“You’d think Janey would have grown out of those stories by now.”
“You’d think, but you’d be wrong.”
They reached the woods and followed a deer trail that wound back and forth up the side of the hill. With each step they took, the fiddling grew louder and they marveled at the player’s skill. The bass strings resonated, rich and full. The notes drawn from the high strings skirled up among the turning leaves into the autumn sky. There was so much rhythm in the playing that adding a guitar or a banjo wasn’t even necessary.
Grinning at each other, they hurried forward. Finally they knew they were almost upon the fiddler and they vibrated with anticipation. The trail they followed took them into a clearing and there in the middle, where this path crossed another, stood the oddest little man. He was maybe three feet tall and looked like a walking shrub, a bark and leafy man playing a fiddle almost half the size of himself. They couldn’t tell where the wood of his instrument ended and his limbs began. He seemed to have moss and leaves for hair, gnarly twigs for fingers—but oh how they pulled the tune from his fiddle.
He stopped playing at their sudden arrival and the three of them looked at each other for a long moment, none of them speaking, none of them moving or so much as even breathing.
This can’t be right, Bess thought, but her head was too clouded and fuzzy for her to feel alarmed. She knew that such a fiddler couldn’t possibly exist. How could he? But the cobwebs in her head didn’t leave room for her to feel the least bit perturbed by his standing there in front of her all the same. Beside her, Laurel appeared to be just as spellbound.
It was something in the music, a faraway part of Bess’s mind whispered. That, she was sure, was the source of the spell.
Belatedly, she was also aware that the spot where the two deer trails met might well be considered a crossroads, and there were any number of stories about the sorts of people you met at a crossroads. Like Old Bubba, ready to trade you the gift of music for your soul like he did with Robert Johnson. The fiddler didn’t look like Old Bubba himself, but she wouldn’t be surprised if a body came walking up and told her he was some kind of little devil man.
Oh, danger, danger, the little voice in her head whispered, but she couldn’t seem to move, never mind run away.
“So you like music?” the little man said.
As soon as he spoke, Bess found she could breathe again. She didn’t trust her legs to carry her far, but at least she could breathe.
“We love music,” Laurel said.
“And play it, too, by the looks of those cases.”
“We play some.”
“Just exactly what are you?” Bess asked.
“A fiddler, what did you think? Get out your instruments and we’ll play us a tune.”
“I don’t know that we should,” Bess said softly to her sister as they laid their cases on the ground. “There’s something not right here.”
Laurel shrugged. “We’re just seeing that Aunt Lillian didn’t make up all those stories of hers that Janey keeps telling us.”
“I figure we should be feeling a little more scared than I am.”
“What? Of him? He’s not much bigger than a minute.”
“But he’ll be magic. It was magic brought us here.”
Laurel shook her head. “Wasn’t magic brought me—it was music.”
“Same difference,” Bess said.
“I tell you what,” the little man said, either ignoring their whispered conversation, or not hearing it. “Why don’t we make us a bargain? If the two of you can play me a tune I’ve never heard before, I’ll grant you one wish, whatever it is you want.”
“And if we can’t?” Laurel asked.
“Then you come away with me,” the little man told them.
“How do we know you can deliver?” Laurel asked.
“What do you lose to find out? A bright pair of girls like you must know a thousand tunes.”
Beth pulled at Laurel’s arm when she realized that she was actually considering the little man’s bet. Her sister had to be more deeply snared by his magic than she was to even think of agreeing to this.
“This is stupid,” she said. “Nobody ever wins this sort of thing.”
“It seems pretty straightforward to me,” Laurel said.
“It is,” the little man said. “But it has to
be done here, and it has to be done now.”
“Laurel,” Bess began.
But her sister shook her head. “This is a sure thing. If we can’t play him a tune he doesn’t know, we deserve to be taken away.” She turned to the little man. “You’re on, mister. Get that wish ready.”
She unbuckled the clasps of her fiddle case, lifted the lid, then shot an angry glance at that little man. All that was in her case were stones wrapped in a few T-shirts. Her fiddle was gone.
“That’s cheating,” she said.
Beth quickly opened her own case to find that her banjo was gone as well, replaced by similar stones wrapped in T-shirts.
“Forfeit,” the little man said. “Now you come with me.”
“No,” Laurel said. “You cheated. What did you do with our instruments?”
“I did nothing to them.”
“Then lend me yours.”
“Of course.”
He handed over his fiddle but there were so many little vines and twigs and leaves growing out of it that Laurel couldn’t barely get a note out of a string by plucking it. Bowing was out of the question.
The little man snatched his instrument back and stowed it away in a bag that was lying on the ground by his feet. He put his bow in after, then tied up the sack and slung it over his shoulder.
“No more dawdling,” he said. “Come along.”
He held out a hand to each of them.
The twins began to back away, but he was quick and far stronger than he looked. He grabbed each by an arm.
“You’re a lying cheat!” Laurel cried.
She aimed a kick at him but it hurt her toe more through her running shoe than it seemed to hurt him.
“I don’t lie and I don’t cheat,” the little man said.
He said something else in a language neither girl could understand. They both grew dizzy, but before they could fall, the little man pulled them away, out of the world they knew and into his own. A moment later, all that remained at the crossroads were two open instrument cases, filled with stones.
5
Ruth and Grace