Chapter 7

“I wonder where you are, Charlotte Steele,” Jade murmured remembering the blurry and dark photo of the woman in the newspaper had reminded her of the photo of her mother on the dresser in her old bedroom at the farm.

I know it’s you. My mother. Alfredo knows too.

The timing was right. She disappears from Rosencranz and the next day I see her on Wilder Island. 

She had not dared to mention this to Russ lest it enflame him, and another argument would follow. But she had spent many hours fantasizing that in fact, it was her mother that had escaped Rosencranz.

And that’s why Alfredo was acting so weird—he brought her to the island! And didn’t want anyone to know! 

‘Hope Dims’ had been the title of the lead story on the news last night. “The police have no leads,” the newscaster said. “She seems to have vanished into thin air.”

“After three days, the likelihood of finding an abductee alive diminishes,” the detective had said to the camera.

The whole town of Ledford was captivated. They rejoiced when the news came out that the body found in the river was not Charlotte. People seemed to want Charlotte Steele to not be found. Not dead, but free somewhere. Impromptu road signs and flyers popped up around town: ‘Free Charlotte!’ and ‘Run! Charlotte Run!’

“She’s on Wilder Island,” Jade said to the road to Rosencranz as she passed the turnoff. “And Alfredo knows she is my mother.”

She signaled a right turn, exiting the interstate onto County Road 23, which took her into the heart of corn country—mostly all AgMo megafarms—and right up to the old farmhouse where she had grown up. 

One of the few holdouts against AgMo, corporate conglomerate gobbling up all the small family farms. 

Well, they’re not getting mine.

Set back off the road, as was the tradition of family farms, the house nestled behind a small tear-drop shaped lawn, surrounded by trees of gum, maple, and dogwood, plus roses, lilacs, and a million other flowers. Though more than a century old, the farmhouse had been marvelously kept up by Smitty and sat elegantly humble, bedecked in its pristine gray siding and white trim amidst a splendid palette of every color on Earth.

Unlike the surrounding sea of AgMo corn, Smitty’s farm still fostered the strand of woods that had been her personal wonderland all throughout her childhood. A sinuous line of stately basswood and oaks grew all along the little stream that she used to float boats down. Upstream, Chloe’s seed shed where she had spent many hours playing with rocks, seeds, and a few mice.

Like old friends awaiting her return, this old house, those trees…

 I have been away too long.

“Here we are home, WillowB!” Jade sang out—just the way Chloe did when they came home from anywhere. As she stopped the car in front of the porch, the screen door opened and shut with a bang. A matronly woman with curly gray hair burst forth, wiping her hands on her apron. “Hello, Jade!” Mrs Flanagan waved and shouted as she strode down the porch steps.

WillowB sat up. “Miaow?”

“In a moment, Mr B,” Jade said, and opened the latch on his carrier. She left the car door open for Willow B to jump out—which he did instantaneously.

“Oh, darlin’,” Mrs Flanagan said as she pulled Jade into her ample bosom. “I am so sorry for your loss. Our loss.” She let go of Jade and wiped a tear from her eye with the corner of her apron.

It felt good to be hugged like that.

“Thank you, Mrs Flanagan,” Jade said, choking up as her eyes filled with tears. “It was quite a shock.”

“Well, he hadn’t been feeling all that great lately,” Mrs Flanagan said. “Couldn’t get him to go see a doctor, though. ‘Nothing wrong with me,’ he’d just say, ‘other than the warranty’s done run out!’”

Jade smiled. “That sounds like Smitty.”

“Men,” Mrs Flanagan shook her head and waved an arm. “No wonder they drop dead. But for pity’s sake, let’s go inside! I’ve got coffee and apple pie on the table, all ready.”

“It looks so nice in here, Mrs Flanagan!” Jade said after stepping into the house. “Thank you for taking such  good care of Smitty.” Pangs of guilt and grief stabbed at her heart. I should have come home more often.

She still detected a sense of Chloe and Smitty in the house, as if part of their spirits remained. The place was much tidier than she had expected, given what a packrat Smitty was. 

Mrs Flanagan snorted. “As if he’d let me!” She waved a hand at the piles of newspapers, magazines, and old mail that littered one end of the kitchen table. “Smitty, God love him, I couldn’t convince him to get rid of anything.”

“Neither could Chloe,” Jade said with a weak smile. “She made him build a shed out behind the chicken coop for the stuff he couldn’t part with. Mostly old catalogs from Sears Roebuck and WB Grainger.”

“I remember when it burned to the ground,” Mrs Flanagan said, pulling out a chair. “Lit up the whole county it seemed.”

“Precisely why Chloe made him get it all out of the house,” Jade said. Burned to the ground 4 years ago, and still I did not come home.

Mrs Flanagan had set the table with small dessert plates, coffee mugs, and an apple pie. For three.

“Oh, just the two of us,” Jade said. “Russ won’t be here. He’s on his way to Ecuador, for some high level meeting about orchids.” She tried to make it sound cheerful, like it was really alright with her. “He’s been planning it with his colleagues for months.”

Mrs Flanagan prattled on about men, and how they get to thinking too much and the next thing you know they run off chasing after some woman or pipe dream or other nonsense. “Like my Bertram, for instance, who up and joined the army. I could’ve skinned him alive, though I’m glad I dint. Damn proud of him now. Just like you’ll be right proud of Russ, by and by.” Mrs Flanagan patted Jade’s hand. “Not everyone can be a college professor. Or the wife of one.”

“I am proud of him, really,” Jade said. “It’s just that—” she didn’t want to talk to Mrs Flanagan about their recent arguments. “I just need him to be here with me now. Both my parents are gone now and I feel kind of lost.” She stifled a sob trying to escape her chest.

“Now don’t you fret, missy,” Mrs Flanagan said, patting Jade’s hand again. “We’re all here for you. We’ll take good care of you, and the Wake, and after even that—whatever you need.”

“Thank you, Mrs Flanagan,” Jade said as she looked around the kitchen—spotless as if Chloe were still here. She doubted very much Smitty had kept the kitchen this clean.

“I sure miss Chloe. I loved helping her bake cookies when I was a little girl. As long as I can remember, this table was in this kitchen. In this very spot.”

“Chloe and I had many a cup of coffee at this old table,” Mrs Flanagan said, smiling. She ran her old hand over the smooth wood. “Gabbing away about the farm, the laundry, Smitty, you, the sewing circle Chloe organized—we sewed our fingers to the bone at this very table, we did. Why I reckon we must’ve made a hundred dolls. For the orphans at  Rosencranz Hospital, Chloe told us. Always the same pattern. Raggedy Anne and Andy.”

“That’s so sweet!” Jade said. “I had one of them! She never told me you made them for the orphans. I wonder where she is? My old Raggedy Anne.”

In my bedroom closet upstairs, maybe?

“You were one of many babes Chloe drug home from the hospital—Rosencranz you know—where the rich girls went to have their little bastards. Plenty of orphans to go around.”

Jade’s mouth fell open and she dropped her fork. “What? I was born at Rosencranz? That can’t be! Chloe said they found me in the woods…in a basket. She said my mother was alone in the world, and couldn’t keep me.” For the first time ever, that story seemed patently ridiculous. One only a child would believe.

Mrs Flanagan smiled and shook her head. “Well, that was partly true. She brought you home in a basket alright. But you weren’t born in the woods. You were born at Rosencranz Hospital for Unwed Mothers. Chloe was a midwife there. You were an orphan by all accounts, and she brought you home, and she and Smitty kept you, and that was that.”

“I had no idea,” Jade murmured, feeling as if the floor had collapsed under her.

“See, Chloe always wanted a daughter,” Mrs Flanagan went on. “Though when you came along she was old enough to be your grandmother. Why, I remember the first day I ever laid eyes on you, missy. You weren’t much bigger than a Raggedy Anne doll yourself. Well, I’ll tell you though, little bit or no, Chloe handed you over to me, and when I put you on my shoulder, you belched like a sailor. Healthy as a little piglet, you were.”

Jade managed a weak smile. “Russ says belching is my super power. I guess I was born with it.”

Mrs Flanagan laughed. “Baby burps are music to mother’s ears.”

A knock on the screen door took both women’s attention, and they turned to look.

“Oh!” Mrs Flanagan said. “It’s Bertram!”

A tall, burly man with a green and yellow John Deere hat opened the door and stepped in. “Hi, Mom,” he said as he put a hand on her shoulder. He planted a kiss on the top of her head.

Mrs Flanagan smiled and grabbed his hand. “Son, you remember Jade?”

Bertram thrust his free hand in Jade’s direction and said, “I shore do! But you were about knee high to a turnip green last time I laid eyes on you!”

“Well, now she’s all grown up!” Mrs Flanagan said. “And, married to a college professor.”

Yes, bastard that I am, managed to marry well.

Jade shook his hand as Mrs Flanagan said, “Bertram’s a good son. Though he ran off and joined the military soon as he graduated from County High. I cried for weeks.”

“It was the best thing I ever did,” Bertram said to Jade. “I got a pension and health insurance and I’m only 40!”

“Yes,” Mrs Flanagan agreed. “My Bertram made a life for himself in the Army. Twenty years, he did. Worried sick all the while he was in I-rack. I missed him something awful, but—” she smiled up at him. “But he made us proud, he sure did.”

“You ready, Mom?” Bertram said.

“Yes, I am,” Mrs Flanagan said as she rose from her chair.

Jade smiled when Bertram took Mrs Flanagan by an elbow, led her to the door, helped her down the steps, and steered her toward his truck. It seemed more a gentlemanly gesture of respect from a son to his mother than her actual need, for she was a robust woman—a farmer’s wife.

After she had been seated in the passenger seat of the truck, Mrs Flanagan waved an arm at Jade. “Now don’t you worry about a thing, you hear? Me and the church ladies got this Wake all covered. You just go on in and make yourself at home. There’s a dinner plate in the ‘fridge.” Her plump hand gave Jade’s arm a quick squeeze. “You must eat, child. You’re skinny as a rail.”

Jade waved good-by, relieved that Mrs Flanagan was gone. She really wanted to be alone, with the things she had just learned about her past. On her way back to the house, she reached for the medallion hanging from cord under her shirt. Black as black can be—a crow’s wing interlocked with a human hand.

Chloe said my mother wanted me to have this. Why didn’t she tell me I was born at Rosencranz?

She wished she could talk to Russ. But he was gone. 

With Vin.

Her cell phone rang. She pulled it from he pocket and looked at the screen. 

Russ!

After stewing around in her anger all day whenever the thought of him popped into her head, her heart leapt with joy to see his name.

“Russ! Hello! Where are you? Are you—”

“Hey, hon,” he said. “How’s it going?”

And to hear his voice…his calm voice.

“Oh, all right,” she said through a smile that stretched across her face. “I’m at the farm. Mrs Flanagan just left. She told me some amazing things, I can’t wait to tell you.  But how are you? I guess you arrived safely and all?”

“Yes, we did,” he said, “And we’re waiting now for the shuttle to take us to our hotel.”

Her smile fell. 

We. Our.

“Hon? You there?” Russ said after she had not replied.

“Yes, yes. I’m here.” She managed a weak smile.

“Oh, good,” he said. “I thought I had lost you. Hey! Here’s our shuttle, so I gotta run. But I’ll call you the morning before we leave for the jungle. I just called to say I love you!” And he hung up.

“I love you too,” she said, deflated. He didn’t even wait to hear me say that.

Sighing, she fell into one of the wicker rocking chairs on the porch. Willow B jumped to her lap and swished his tail back and forth across her face. “I really needed to talk to Russ, to tell him I was born at Rosencranz,” she said to the cat. “But there was no time. He had to go.” 

With Vin.

Sighing again, she slouched further into the chair. I really need to talk to someone.

She called Kate.

“You are kidding me!” Kate said after Jade told her what Mrs Flanagan had said. “Rosencranz! Really?”

“Really,” Jade said. “Mrs Flanagan told me Chloe was a midwife there, and she helped find homes for babies that were hard to adopt out. But I was a keeper, she said.”

“I wonder why you were a ‘keeper’,” Kate said. ”Could Chloe have possibly been your real mother?”

“No, she was 78 five years ago, and I am 25, so…”

“That’d make her 58 when you came along,” Kate said. “Pretty old to be bearing a child.”

“What I wonder is why I never had a birth certificate,” Jade said. “There was no fire in the Records department at the county, so it seems there never was one.”

“That is pretty strange,” Kate said. “And illegal if there really wasn’t one—considering you were born at an institution. Let’s talk more after the Wake tomorrow. Try to find Smitty’s Will. Hopefully there is one…it may shed some light on things as well as probating his estate a lot less of a pain in the ass.”

===

Jade took her full plate of cold fried chicken and potato salad outside to the porch. Her plate had hardly put a dent in the massive largesse that Mrs Flanagan had made for the Wake the next day. 

“You eat!” Mrs Flanagan had insisted. “There’s plenty for tomorrow. You’re skinny as a rail!” 

“Chicken!” She thought she heard someone say.

“Dibs!” Another, different voice.

She looked around the yard…nothing. Snickering, she said in her best imitation of Russ, “Great, so now you’re hearing voices.”

But she kept an eye and ear out. Just in case…

After finishing her dinner, she put the plate on the table next to her chair and draped her napkin over the remainder. “No bones for you, Blue. Or you,” she said to the cat before pushing him off the table. 

She leaned back in the rocking chair. The sun went down, the stars came out, and the crickets slowed the intervals between chirps.

I was born at Rosencranz. Chloe took me home. Me. Why did she keep me? Oh I wish I could talk to her now…she knows who my mother is.

Jade murmured the poem Chloe used to tell her when it was time to go to bed:

Star light, star bright,

First star I see tonight,

I wish I may, I wish I might,

Have this wish I wish tonight 

“I wish to see my mother tonight,” she said to the rising moon. Huge and brilliant,  the silvery orb bathed the landscape in a mysterious light. She wondered if her mother on Wilder Island was looking up at the same moon.

I wish for my mother. Tonight and every night. 

She watched the fireflies winking on and off as they danced beneath the darkness under the trees. Rosencranz? Was I really born there? Why didn’t Chloe tell me? Instead of that silly story about being found in the woods…

She yawned and stood up. “Well, kids, let’s go to bed before I fall asleep right here.”

Old Blue followed her into the house and assumed his position in the kitchen near the back door. WillowB dashed ahead of her as she ascended the stairs to her bedroom. 

She expected five years of dust on everything when she arrived, but there wasn’t even a day’s worth, anywhere in the house. Mrs. Flanagan’s work, no doubt. Was she Smitty’s girlfriend?—she has been a widow for years. Or is she just a good neighbor? 

WillowB had already assumed his position on the bed when Jade stepped through the doorway. It still seemed a lot smaller than in her memory—though certainly adequate for her and a cat, but the bed was tiny compared to the acreage of the king-size bed she and Russ slept in.

Russ. Vin.

Dismissing them both immediately, before any thought took hold of their sleeping arrangements. Jade picked up the objects on her dresser. Everything  just as she had left it five years ago: the picture of Chloe; a ceramic jar full of buttons she had collected as a child; her favorite rock. All there, as if she had never left.

The grainy picture of her mother. Jade stroked the photo gently with her finger. I know where you are. I will find you. With or without Russ. Or Alfredo.

The bedroom walls were hung with several of her paintings—from childhood all the way up to her marriage to Russ. “Those are my first flower paintings,” she had told him, pointing toward a group of small paintings of six different flowers.

“They’re adorable, in a you sort of way,” Russ had said.

“What does that mean?” she said, pursing her lips and frowning.

Tipping his head to one side, he gathered his words from the images before him. “Well, for one, you blew them up, into extremely enlarged views that abstract the thing so much, and went wild with the colors. You don’t get all hung up in the pre-conceived notions of what a flower is supposed to look like. You somehow make people look at things as they really are.”

“Really?” she said, tipping her head to one side, matching his pose. “I didn’t have any idea about abstract art or anything. I just liked the colors. And I was only seven.” She smiled at the memory of her younger self. “The insides of the flowers were so pretty, so velvety and some of them had little tunnels and caves and I liked to pretend I was really, really tiny, like an ant, so I could wander through them.”

“That’s what I mean,” he said, grinning at her. “You do the same thing now—make us all walk those hidden places with you.”

He disentangled his hand from hers and put his arm around her shoulders. “Your paintings always amaze me, babe. You paint how you see the world. Not how the camera would record, or how people expect things to look. But this uniquely, beautiful Jade way of seeing.”

“Well, thank you, kind sir,” she said, smiling coyly at him. “Want to be my agent?”

“It would be my pleasure,” he said. “But I can only discuss my terms while naked, okay?”

He pushed her down onto the bed and kissed her.

“Better times, I guess, MrB,” she said to the sleeping cat. “I really miss him. The way he used to be.”

She opened the closet door to get her nightgown off its hook. Staring back at her, an old woman in a black satin Victorian dress that rippled with color at the slightest movement. “Oh! Hello there!” she said, a hugely ridiculous smile on her face.

Jade gasped. She shut the door, backed away from the closet, bumped into the bed and sat down. She fumbled for her cell phone to call 911 and report an intruder.

“You’re hallucinating again.” Russ’s voice echoed inside her head.

“No, I’m not!” But she put her cell phone down.

Even when he’s gone, he is still here telling me I am crazy.

“Yet you answer,” said a voice behind the door.

“Who’s there?” she nearly shouted, her heart beating wildly.

“No one,” the voice said. “Just your Guardian Angel.”

Jade stared at the closed door. My Guardian Angel. After the crows broke through the window and scared her half to death that night. Chloe had advised her to paint her Guardian Angel—to help her fall asleep at night. It had hung over her bed for many years. 

“Your Guardian Angel will protect you,” Chloe had said.

“That is true,” the voice behind the door said, as if she had heard Chloe.

Am I truly hallucinating? Or just insane?

“What do you think?” The voice said.

“Oh, for god’s sake,” Jade said. She stood up and jerked the door open. “Who’s in here?”

Nothing but clothes. And the scent of lavender.

Shaking her head, Jade took her nightgown off the hook and closed the door. Hallucinations are a sign of insanity.

After changing into her nightgown, she pulled down the covers. She rolled herself in the sweet smell of sunshine. Chloe always hung the laundry outside to dry—among the things she missed about Chloe. And the farm. 

A gentle breeze blew the curtains inward. The window. The one the crows flew through and scared her half to death so many years ago. Except then it had not been open.

They thought I imagined it all, even though there was glass everywhere.

The dream recurred a few weeks ago, and Jade had insisted to Russ: “My mother is trying to contact me.” But she could not explain how crows breaking a window, flying through it, in order to steal something that used to belong to her mother, correlated to her mother trying to contact her.

Russ had told her it was just a dream. “It wasn’t real, babe,” he had said. “Just something that flew out of that marvelous imagination of yours.”

Jade crawled into bed. As she drifted off to sleep, her mother’s face appeared—as she imagined, as she had painted, as she had seen on Wilder Island. 

Black raven hair and gray eyes, the color of rain.

Jade folded her hands as if in prayer, her mother’s medallion in between. Smitty’s smiling face appeared, taking up the entire field of vision behind her closed eyes…rocking her, singing in his gruff voice, “Rock-a-bye Baby in the treetops…”

Swaying in the branches, spiraling slowly down into the pocket between awake and asleep…between unwanted babies and unwanted mothers.

“…when the bough breaks the cradle will fall…” Smitty’s voice grew far away as the baby fell into Chloe’s hands.

Jade’s eyes snapped open. Listening intently, she sorted the sounds of the house from the sounds of the night. There it was. The singing.

Or was it just the wind, whistling through windows not entirely closed? She held her breath, straining to hear. 

All around the purple heather …

A blast of night came through the window suddenly, and circled the room like a small tornado. Jade dove further under the covers, her heart pounding. She reached for the medallion on the leather cord under her nightgown, and  covered her ears to block out the sound of the open window banging against the wall.

The wind died down as suddenly as it had started. The window stopped banging. She waited a few minutes, listening hard to the sounds outside the open window. 

Crickets. A hooty owl. Frogs.

Finally she crawled out from under the covers. She snuck to the window, slowly rose to her feet and peered out into the darkness. Nothing but silence. Except for the chirping crickets, frogs, owls…

She lay back down on the bed, eyes wide open. After several minutes, she got back up. I’ll never get back to sleep. 

Russ had given her a shot of vodka in a big steaming cup of hot chocolate the night a few weeks ago when she had the dream again. I went right back to sleep. Maybe there’s some brandy in the liquor cabinet…

Downstairs in the dining room, she opened the lower cabinet where the liquor was kept. Numerous bottles stood like soldiers at the ready. A small bottle with the purple label caught her attention—and she smiled.

“Mildornia Wine! Yes!” 

She pulled out the small green bottle with the familiar label that she had painted ages ago—a tiny vignette of mildornia bushes growing along the stream, their bright bluish purplish berries dwarfing the leaves. And, Chloe’s Seed Shed, all surrounded by sunflowers. Smitty had taken the painting to a Ledford copy shop and made a whole bunch of sticky-back labels from it. For Chloe’s special wine.

Jade had never been allowed to even have a sip. 

But now…no one can tell me not to.

“Just a little sip, to help me sleep.” That’s what Chloe said sometimes over the rim of a small delicate crystal goblet. 

“Not until you’re a grown-up!” she would say when Jade begged her for a taste. “It’s not for children, dear. It’ll make you have bad dreams.”

Jade had sneaked a swallow of it when Chloe left it alone on the table in the parlor for a few moments before bedtime the night the crows came. But only a swallow. It was sweet at first, but it tasted weird and burned all the way down. 

She never told Chloe or Smitty, or anyone that she had pilfered a sip. She never touched Mildornia Wine after that. Even now, as an adult with no one looking, she felt a little scared and even naughty opening the bottle.

 She took a small goblet —the one Chloe used to drink from—off its shelf. “Just a little sip to help me sleep,” she said to the cabinet as she closed the glass door.

On the porch, she set bottle and goblet on the end table next to her usual rocking chair. After filling the wine glass, she held it up to the light, watching the rich purple-blue liquid split into many colors.

“It’s so beautiful.”

The first sip bloomed in her mouth smokey and sweet, with familiar and exotic flavors like blueberries and something else she couldn’t name. It was somehow irresistible and she took another sip.

Today’s conversation with Mrs Flanagan roamed around in her brain, again. I was born at Rosencranz! Maybe that’s why I … see things. Wait till Russ hears this, he’ll for sure say that’s why I am so nuts.

“You aren’t nuts, dear,” a voice next to her said. “Just very observant.”

Jade turned and jerked her head sideways toward the voice and she put the goblet down on the table rather harder than she intended. A little old lady sat in the other rocking chair. 

Neither WillowB nor Old Blue seemed to notice the apparition. 

Straight out of the Victorian era, the excruciatingly prim and proper silver-haired  gentlelady sat with her hands folded, holding a pair of black gloves. Her black satin dress rustled crisply as she arranged the fabric around her; brief flashes of color attended her movements creating the impression of sparks. Parts of her face and body faded for an instant, then came back. As if she were a bit under-pixelated. 

Hallucinations don’t do that. Maybe it IS the wine.

“One sip is really all you need,” the Victorian lady said. “Any more is wasteful, and it will only make you very drunk and pass out. Of course, the dreams will be unforgettable.”

Jade felt a little woozy, though not drunk by any means. She did want to take another sip, however, in spite of the old woman’s warnings. Maybe when the old woman leaves…

“But it is addicting,” the lady went on as if she could read Jade’s thoughts. “So best not take more than a sip.”

“Who are you?” Jade demanded, frowning in irritation at the invasion into her thoughts.

“I told you,” the shimmering face said. “I am your  personal Guardian Spirit.” 

“Spirit? As in ghost?” Jade asked, feeling a tad ridiculous for asking. “So you’re not real, then.”

“Real, schmeal,” the spirit said, waving a glove toward Jade. “What exactly is real?”

Jade opened her mouth to answer, then shut it, not knowing what to say about the Reality of Things.

“Exactly,” the spirit said, waving a glove.

The spirit took off one of her black, elbow-length, fine leather gloves, and knocked over Jade’s goblet. “Oh, for pity sakes!” She said. “How enormously clumsy of me.”

“No harm done, other than to your glove,” Jade said and righted the goblet while the old woman sopped up the spilled wine with her glove. Which couldn’t possibly be real, anyway. “So, seriously, who are you? a a figment of my imagination? That’s what my husband would say.”

Jade poured more Mildornia Wine into her glass.

“Phhhht,” the ghost said, waving the clean glove with the other hand. “As if figments do not exist. What does he know?”

“Well, he doesn’t believe in ghosts,” Jade said. “He’s a scientist.”

The spirit laughed. A ridiculously, irresistibly silly sound that made Jade giggle, then laugh heartily, spontaneously, uproariously. From the depths of her being, she laughed. With a ghost in black Victorian satin dress with hues of crimson, blue and green.

“So, um, not to be rude or anything,” Jade said, after getting control of herself, “but what are you doing here?”

“I’m sitting in your porch talking to you!” The ghost said, as a puzzled look crossed her face. She cocked her head to one side—her small beak-like nose cast a sharp shadow across her powdery face. “Why do you ask?”

“Well, I, that is, see—I am known for having hallucinations and I was just wondering. Before you were a ghost, who were you?”

“An excellent question!” The ghost said. “I am known to some as Great Aunt Lizzie.”

“Are you my Great Aunt?” Jade asked. 

“Of course!” Great Aunt Lizzie said. “Probably Great-great-great-Aunt Lizzie—but I lost count of how Great I am.” She laughed so robustly, Jade could not help but join her.

“That’s Great!” Jade said, trying to keep from smiling. “I was worried you were just one of my hallucinations. I see things that aren’t there, you see.”

“I see,” Great Aunt Lizzie said, nodding gravely. Suddenly her face exploded into wrinkles and utter mirth. 

Jade could not help but crack up with her. Again.

“No, seriously,” Great Aunt Lizzie said, chuckling and dabbing her eyes with a lace hanky. “Your sight is just fine, dear. Most folks wander through life with a thick sock pulled firmly over their heads. Not seeing. Not hearing.”

She picked up Jade’s goblet, and sipped delicately and said: “Oh, that Chloe—she could brew Mildornia Wine like no one’s business.”

“I remember!” Jade said, grinning. “I used to ‘help’ her’”—making small quotes in the air with her fingers. “Haha! One time I was trying to see what she was doing, oh—maybe I was 8 or so— and I was underneath her elbows and she stopped what she was doing and said to me, “Am I in your way?”

Great Aunt Lizzie smiled and nodded, “She had such a sense of humor…”

“She never let me even have a sip of the mildornia wine she made, though,” Jade said. “I begged her to let me have one little taste. She never did.” 

“Except that once when she wasn’t looking., eh?” Great Aunt Lizzie said with a wink. “Mildornia Wine is part of your heritage.”

“My heritage? So are hallucinations, evidently,” Jade shook her head and took another sip. She wondered for the first time if she herself had been an hallucination. No, Russ would not have been able to see me…let alone marry me.

“I am not an hallucination!” Great Aunt Lizzie  said. “Any more than you are, or the cat or the dog, or this farm. Do get over what other people think—speaking of hallucinations.”

“Okay then, what are you doing here, Great Aunt Lizzie?” Jade asked. “Other than scaring me, making me laugh, and spilling Chloe’s Mildornia Wine?”

“Ah, yes, Chloe’s Mildornia Wine. I taught her to make it, you know. An old family recipe—it’s been in the family for centuries.”

“Centuries?”

“Or something,” Great Aunt Lizzie said, waving the other glove. “A long time. I’ve quite lost track. What does it matter?”

“Not much, I suppose,” Jade said. “I always thought it was Chloe’s recipe.”

“And it was, child!” Great Aunt Lizzie said. “I gave it to her. Just like my mother gave it to me, and her mother gave it to her, and —”

“So, Great Aunt Lizzie,” Jade asked. “Did you show up to teach me how to make Mildorn—”

“Among other things,” Great Aunt Lizzie said. “But for now, I am here to welcome you home.”

===

Jade’s early morning dreams were a collage of images that flowed into one another. Her mother singing on Wilder Island; Mrs Flanagan’s voice: “You were one of many babes Chloe drug home from the hospital—Rosencranz you know—where the rich girls went to have their little bastards.”
And Great Aunt Lizzie.

The pale gray sky and the chirping birds announced the morning. As did Great Aunt Lizzie’s voice from behind the closet door. 

So I didn’t hallucinate her.

“For heaven’s sake, child,” Great Aunt Lizzie said. “What will it take to convince you?” The closet door slowly swung open.

Oh, sooner or later, I’ll get it,” Jade said with a harsh laugh. “But now it is time for coffee.”

“I will have tea,” Great Aunt Lizzie said. “If you please.”

Jade threw on some jeans and a t-shirt. A quick brush through her hair and teeth, she headed downstairs. WillowB ran ahead of her, meowing all the way.

In the kitchen, Jade opened a drawer looking for a can opener, and picked up Smitty’s old Swiss army knife. She smiled, remembering how Smitty let her play with the little scissors, the toothpick, and the tweezers. But not the blades. The little engraved cross had completely worn off the knife handle over the years—he had used it for everything.

The knife disappeared into her pocket.

She opened a new can of dog food, spooned a chunk onto a cup of dry food, and mixed it all together with hot tap water. 

“Come on, Blue!” she said as she picked up dog bowl and led the dog out the door to the porch. She returned to the kitchen and brought her coffee and a cup of tea out to the porch. Surprised to see that Great Aunt Lizzie was not there, she set the tea down as if she were.

She sipped her coffee and leaned back in the rocker.  A hundred questions bounced through her brain. Things she wished she had asked Great Aunt Lizzie, whose realness, Jade was beginning to doubt.

Why did Chloe ever bring me home? Me.  And then she stopped midwifing. Why?

How could I have been born at Rosencranz? Who was my father? Did Chloe know him? Wish I’d asked more questions before Chloe died. Now there is no one who knows where I came from.

Rosencranz! Maybe I’ll drive over there someday and see the place where I was born. See what, she had no idea. It’s not like my mother would be there. She’s on the island. 

Mrs Flanagan would arrive in a couple hours to bring more food and chairs for the Wake the next day. She’d done everything—the house was clean, food all taken care of. There really wasn’t anything to do but hang out and wait.

“C’mon, Blue, how about a walk?” Jade said, after finishing her coffee on the porch.   “Looks like it might rain, but I think we can do—” her words cut off by a loud thunderclap. 

The downpour commenced immediately.

“Well, never mind!” Jade said. “But what shall we do now?”

She wandered through the house, touching the relics of her childhood—antiques and knickknacks mostly of a by-gone era. The memories these things held provided tangible proof of their lives once lived. 

“Russ hates this kind of stuff,” she said to Old Blue, who was out cold in front of Smitty’s favorite chair. “It’s just so—so bourgeois!” she said, in a deep tone mocking her husband’s favorite soap box.

She opened a closet door, the odor of moth balls wafted outwards. Underneath the coats hanging on the bar, a small painting leaned up against a stack of boxes. “What’s this?” she said as she fished it out. “Oh my god! The Seed Shed! I’d totally forgotten it!”

She brought the painting into the kitchen and laid it on the table. A smile broke across her face. “Oh my god!” she whispered. 

Smitty had just finished painting the new seed shed he’d built for Chloe. Bright white, with a sign above the doorway—a wooden sign, painted black. She leaned closer and the silvery lines depicting a crow’s wing holding a human hand appeared. Her eyes opened wide as she reached for the medallion around her neck. Like my medallion! 

So it wasn’t just a little piece of jewelry her mother had entrusted to Chloe to give to her someday. What does it mean?

The sound of a car motoring up the driveway interrupted her thoughts and she went to the window.

“Mrs Flanagan,” she said, and shut the closet door.

Refusing any help from her, Mrs Flanagan and her son Bertram offloaded the food and chairs. “We’ll see you tomorrow, dear,” Mrs Flanagan said, when they were finished. And they left.

The rain had stopped. 

“Up for that walk now, Old Blue?” Jade said to the dog sprawled on the porch.

Old Blue leapt up wagging his tail and followed her to the kitchen. Outside, the old hound dog wagged his tail and took the lead. He knew where to go,  down a path to the small stream.

They walked under the canopy of a few tall trees, through an orchestra of color. Late summer shouted out abundantly in the vivacious foliage, though a few trees had already started to turn yellow or red. All around came the sounds of living creatures living their lives in a world of abundance. 

A small bridge spanned the little stream that formed a boundary between the flower garden and the cornfields beyond. Old Blue led the way up its meanders, leaping back and forth as if he were a young pup. Jade picked her way across exposed rocks, trying not to fall in, but not really caring if she did. The occasional thick undergrowth scratched her bare arms, and made her wish she had worn long sleeves.

She’d spent her childhood here, far away from cities and the madness that thrived there. The green of everything, speckled with wildflowers, the peaceful sound of the water gurgling by—just like her memory.

This tiny farm had the same kind of ancient feel as Wilder Island, as if it existed within, yet separate from the rest of the noisy, artificial world of humans. The mini forest surrounding the farm comprised a variety of trees, shrubs and flowers—much like the island—growing in robust profusion of color, perfume and texture. 

“Why did I leave?” she asked Old Blue.

“You got married, remember?” said a voice from above.

“Blue?” she said, looking wildly around in a sudden panic. “Blue?” 

Old Blue came bounding out of the underbrush and nearly knocked her into the stream.

“Believe his name was Russ,” said another non-human voice from above.

Old Blue either didn’t hear or he didn’t care.

Jade squinted up into branches above her head. 

“Who’s up there? Who are you?” she asked.

Two crows dropped out of the branch they’d perched on and landed on a couple rocks sticking up above the water. Both bowed low with a wing stretched out parallel to the ground.

“Name’s Jocko,” said one. “This here’s my bro, Chaco.”

“But everyone calls me Chuck,” said the other. “At your service.” He bowed again.

“Welcome home, Miz Jade!” Jocko and Chuck said in unison and danced a little jig around her feet.

Jade finally closed her mouth, and her eyebrows assumed the normal horizontal position over her eyes.

“Oh.My.God.” she said. 

“Where?” Jocko said, looking up to the sky. “I’ve always wanted to see a god.”

Jade laughed in spite of her dismay. “I just meant I am really shocked.”

“You sounded like you saw god,” Jocko said.

“For a fact,” Chuck said.

“I can’t believe this,” Jade said to the air around her. “When did I start hearing crows talk?” She shook her head, frowning. A long time ago, she suddenly realized. She’d understood the crows on Wilder Island—much to her dismay—though she had tried not to and didn’t dare let anyone know.

“Oh, let’s see,” Jocko said turning to his brother. “Do you remember?”

“I do! You were a lot shorter then, MizJade,” Chuck said.

“Yep,” said Jocko. “Just about as tall as us’n, eh bro?”

“For a fact,” Chuck said.

Jade could do nothing but shake her head.

“And one day when one of our brethren—beaked Mrs Beasley.” Chuck said.

“Yah, you stopped talking to us after that.”

Mrs Beasley! 

It was awful watching the little mouse get carried off, squeaking all the way.

“I was really upset with you—that is, your brethren,” Jade said. “And I never wanted anything to do with crows after Mrs Beasley.” Tears stung her eyes, remembering the tiny flowers and little headstone she had made for Mrs Beasley’s grave, even though there was no body—the mouse having been eaten.

“We’re sorry!” Jocko and Chuck said in unison.

“But everybody’s gotta eat,” Chuck said.

“I know. Chloe said the same thing. But still, don’t you guys feel bad when you kill something to eat?”

The two crows looked at each other for a few seconds, then back at Jade.

“Nope,” Jocko and Chuck said in unison again.

“We’d starve to death, elsewise,” Chuck said.

“Yah,” said Jocko. “It is how it is. Everybody has to eat.”

“And everybody has to die,” Chuck said.

“Sorta works, ya know?” Jocko said. “Things die. Living things eat dead things. Win-win.”

“Yep,” Chuck said. “One way or another, we’ll all get et.”

“For a fact,” Jocko said.

Jade laughed. Talking to crows…Well, so does Alfredo, and no one thinks he is crazy!

“Even so, I’d really hate to be hauled off by a bird of prey,” she said, her brow furrowed. “I’m probably safe enough from that, though.”

“Also a fact,” Chuck said.

Back to her mission, Jade scrambled out of the stream bed, and stumbled through a thicket of fragrant bushes. She stood amidst several silver-leafed bushes with purplish-blue blue berries hanging on red stems. “Mildornia!” Jade announced. 

In the Fall while she was growing up, Jade had helped Chloe gather many a basket full of these bluish purple berries. Chloe made wine with some, but most of the berries she used for medicines. Jade had no idea what kinds of medicines, or even who wanted them.

“Mildornia for sure!” Jocko said, as he flew a figure eight pattern above her. “No eating it!”

“Don’t eat it!” Chuck warned. “Unless you want to go to sleep and never wake up.”

“Like Chloe,” Jocko said.

“I only sip the wine,” Jade said. No harm in admitting that to crows. “So did you know Great Aunt Lizzie?” She said as causally as she could.

“Nah,” Chuck said. “But our great great great great—” he turned to Jocko—“how many is that?”

“Four more,” Jocko said. “Eight is great is how I remember.”

“So yah,” Chuck said. “”Our grandmother way back knew her.”

Jade decided not to mention her wine-drinking episode with Great Aunt Lizzie the night before. I wonder if ghosts appear to crows?

A small forest of tall sunflowers announced Chloe’s seed shed. Jade pushed her way through their thick trunks and giant scratchy leaves that ended suddenly at a wavy pavement of old bricks, whose joints sprouted tufts of grass. The actual seed shed was barely visible behind a few seasons of un-pruned growth.

“It sure has gotten overgrown here since Chloe’s been gone,” Jade said as she pulled away at the vines that had nearly covered the entire exterior. 

Underneath the vines, traces of white paint remained stuck to gray wood siding weathered by decades of exposure to the elements. “There are two windows under here somewhere. And a door.”

Remembering Smitty’s Swiss Army knife in her pocket, she took it out and pulled up the largest blade. She hacked away at the vines until the door appeared. After pulling the last of the vines away from the door, she expected to see a wooden plaque bearing the image of a crow wing intertwined with a human hand.

No plaque hung above the door—though there had been one there once upon a time. The wood siding bore evidence that an oval object had once been in the spot where Jade had painted it.

“Where did it go?” she said.

“Where’d what go?” Jocko asked from the roof.

“There used to be a sign above the door,” Jade said. 

“Maybe it fell off,” Chuck said.

“Yah,” Jocko said. “Maybe it’s in here somewhere.” He rummaged through the dead plant debris piled up against the shed—five years of leaves and sunflower stems, plus a bit of bindweed tying it all together. 

“Maybe so,” she said, “I’ll need to come back with a bigger blade to cut through all this.”

“Nah,” Chuck said. “We’ll find it.”

Both crows thrashed around the dead vines and leaves, tossing bits and pieces into the air.”

“Walla!” Jocko announced after his beak hit something hard.

Jade bent over the crows and tore away at the vines. “Yes!” she said and pulled the oval sign out the remaining plant debris. She brushed her hand across the surface, front and back. No words appeared, but a faint silver image against a black background.

“What’s it say?” Chuck asked.

“This,” Jade said. She pulled the medallion out from under her shirt and showed them the crow wing/human hand motif. “I painted this image on it with silver ink.”

“Chloe used to wear something like that,” Jocko said. 

“I think my mother used to wear this,” Jade said, holding up her medallion again. “Perhaps it is a family emblem of some sort.”

She pushed hard on the old door, and it creaked open on rusty hinges. Standing in the doorway, rooted to the spot, she was reluctant to step over the threshold. The air hung still and heavy as stone. Faint odors of familiar herbs—rosemary, lavender, mint—and exotic spices mingled with a few dust particles that hung eternally in mid-air. 

“Just don’t be kicking up dust, Lass!” she almost heard Chloe admonish from her workbench.

Jade stepped into the weakly illuminated interior.

The mid-day sun cast diffused beams of light through windows frosted nearly opaque with age. “I’ve always been fond of sunbeams,” Jade said to the glittering motes of dust and the other tiny particles of who-knows-what that floated up into the sun beam as her feet stirred up the dirt floor. 

Chloe’s seed shed had inspired her entire series of paintings called The Glitter Ones…

The Glitter Ones—human-like people whose skin was coated with tiny squares of glitter that she had stuck into the paint with a tiny, very pointy, wet paintbrush. She hadn’t seen or even thought about the Glitter Ones in many years, though she had always been enamored of painting sunbeams. 

I wonder where The Glitter Ones are now? In the old house, no doubt. With other forgotten paintings from her childhood.  

She walked through the sunbeam—half expecting as she always did—that she would emerge covered in glitter. She supposed the glitter was there on her skin, just too small for her to see. 

“That’s what imaginations are for,” Chloe had told her long ago. “Too show us the things that we cannot see with our eyes.”

Chloe’s workbench loomed larger in Jade’s memory than in fact. It was actually rather short, as was Chloe. Her small garden gloves lay in patient repose, piled one on top of the other as if doffed by their owner only seconds ago. Jade half-expected the gloves to rise up and finish whatever it was Chloe was doing on that last day.

Chloe died right here. They chalked it up to a heart attack. Or a stroke. 

She pinched a small cluster of leaves with shriveled, dark bluish-purple berries off one of the dead plants. 

“Don’t eat that!” Jocko said sharply and hopped onto the workbench. He plucked the leaf cluster from her hands and dropped it to the floor.

“That there is mildornia,” Jocko said.

“She ate some of them berries,” Chuck said. 

“Killed her,” Jocko said.

“Did her in,” Chuck said.

“Dispatched her straightaway,” Jocko said.

“What are you saying?” Jade said. “Chloe knew everything about mildornia! She made wine from the mildornia berries, and she drank it pretty regularly. I can’t believe mildornia poisoned her.”

“Her lips told the tale,” Jocko said. 

“All purple from them berries,” said Chuck.

“That makes no sense,” Jade said, shaking her head. “Chloe never ate the berries raw.”

“She did that time,” Jocko said.

“Now, stop that!” Chloe cried out as she waved the young crows away from her hat. “Be off! The lot of you!”

The crows ignored her insincere demands, and continued to fly circles around her fruit-and-flower-laden hat—all fake, but very colorful. The crows liked to play like they were eating from her hat, nipping at the fruit on a fly-by; but the real fun lay in who got to perch on the fake banana at the very top.

Chloe continued on her way to the seed shed—a processing and storage place Smitty had built for her decades ago. He’d repainted it white so many times since then, she’d lost count. He and the neighbor men dug a long trench into the hill slope next to the small creek that flowed through their farm, and lined it with cinder-blocks. In the early days, before the corporate farms had come, they’d had a small paddle wheel that ground Smitty’s hard spring wheat into flour.

There wasn’t enough water in the stream anymore to drive the paddle wheel. The trench had filled in with the offspring of the plants that grew along the stream.

The plaster walls inside the seed shed regulated the atmosphere; excess moisture from even the most humid days would be absorbed into the plaster, to evaporate back out when the air within dried out. Their neighbor of long ago, Rafael—truly a master craftsman—had come and plastered the walls with a buff-colored mixture of clay and plaster of Paris he had formulated himself.

Chloe learned herbal craft from her Great Aunt Lizzie MacLaren, who learned it from her grandmother, Marya Naprawa, who learned it from her mother, Elizabeth Acker.  Chloe could pretty well recite her Patua’ lineage all the way back to the Reformation, if she took a notion. Even without the mildornia.

She had worked her whole life to repair the effects of the most grievous error of the Patua’: the selling of its Mildornia seeds to the Church. 

“Some like to think the Church stole our seeds,” Great Aunt Lizzie had told Chloe long ago. “If only that were the truth, alas!” Her cloudy blue eyes stared sightlessly into the distance, missing nothing.

Chloe had wondered many times as a child how Great Aunt Lizzie saw so much, being medically blind. “There are more ways to see than with the eye,” Aunt Lizzie would always reply. 

The noisy young crows abandoned the plastic fruits of Chloe’s hat as she pushed open the door and entered the seed shed. She breathed deeply of the combined odors of lavender, peppermint, myrtle, and mildornia. A mouse scolded her from the shelf above as she swung the basket full of leaves onto her workbench. 

“Yes, I am late, lass,” Chloe smiled and gave the tiny creature a small chunk of hardened sourdough bread. “Smitty needed a haircut, all of a sudden.” 

The mouse snatched the bread crumb and disappeared behind the ceramic jars of herbs curing on the shelf. 

“But it’s nice to see you this morning, Mrs Beasley!” Chloe said to the vanished mouse. She cocked her head and cupped her hand to her ear and listened for the tiny squeak behind the jars.

There. Mrs Beasley says thank you!

Chloe smiled, remembering the first mouse Jade had named Mrs Beasley. Little Jade was how old then? Three, maybe? Four? And in this very shed…what memories this place has.

When the first Mrs Beasley had met an unfortunate end after a few months, having been carried off by a crow, Jade had been unconsolable. Chloe had convinced her that mice don’t live very long, and that Mrs Beasley had probably had a long life, and was no doubt a great-great-great-great-grandmother by the time she died.

That was Jade’s first experience of death. And perhaps her first awareness of love. “NO!” little Jade had screamed and had tried to run after the crow. 

The mouse never had a chance.

“It is the way of things,” Chloe had said, gathering a sobbing Jade and her mass of blonde curls up into her lap.

Little Jade held a funeral for the poor little mouse. It took her a few weeks of refusing all meat, but in the end she gave in, largely because Chloe and Smitty were not vegetarians.

“All living things, including bugs and plants, are beings,” Chloe taught her. “We must thank them for their nourishment, and honor their lives. It’s no different whether what we eat is an animal or a plant or water. All things are of the Great Spirit.”

It had touched Chloe deeply, the way little Jade had so seriously taken that to heart. She spent the next few weeks making drawings of Mrs Beasley, the chickens, the tomatoes and squash in the garden. 

Strange how Jade didn’t resemble her mother in the least— her curly blonde hair and green eyes, where Charlotte’s hair was crow-black, and her eyes the palest of blue.

Charlotte.

Chloe sighed and leaned against the workbench, recalling the day they’d brought Charlotte into Rosencranz. In a straight jacket screaming though a gag.

As soon as they took the gag off her, Charlotte’s screams were no longer muffled. All manner of curses both vulgar and hilarious streamed out of her mouth, as she thrashed around as best she could, restrained as she was.

“She’s incoherent,” a nurse said. “Is she off her rocker?”

“Drug her,” the doctor said.

Chloe frowned at the mildornia plants on her workbench. With years of careful cross-breeding and tender care, she had finally gotten mildornia plants that grew to robust bushes laden with plump berries. But, the plants and berries were unpredictable. Some berries had no potency at all, while others were too potent and could kill a person.

As well, mildornia was dying out. Fewer and fewer Patua’ were around to do the required grafting to propagate new plants. The Patua’ had wanted to keep mildornia secret, so they had devised the hybrid that produced sterile offspring.

The potent berries were the prize of the Patua’, for the formulations of medicines, and provided the avenue for the deep trances required by the Keepers of the Ancestors, who recorded the important events, such as births, deaths, marriages, and perhaps most importantly, the Lore of the Seeds. 

Chloe was experimenting with cross-breeding mildornia with various other plants, in the hopes that one of them would be the magic button that allowed mildornia’s offspring to bear fruit. As it was, the offspring looked every bit like a common weed with purple flowers, but bore no fruit.

But occasionally one mildornia plant—a daughter of the her last original—bore fruit. Potent fruit.

Chloe tested each plant for potency by biting into one small berry. If it were impotent, it would taste like a cranberry—very sour and lacking in the smoky undertones of mildornia. If it were potent, it would be sweet, smoky, and would produce an immediate, though very mild result—a numbing of the tongue and momentary dizziness.

She pulled the smallest berry off a stem clump, and bit off a tiny bit, enjoying its smoky flavor and texture. This should be a potent plant. 

Seconds later, the tingling sensation began in her fingers. Dizziness came on stronger and more suddenly than it ought. She gripped the edge of the workbench to keep from falling to the dirt floor. 

Voices and streams of color rotated all around her, and a momentary fear of drowning overcame her. “Smitty!” she rasped, seconds before the mildornia paralyzed her vocal cords. She fell over like a board.

Smitty found her on the floor of the shed, her eyes wide open. A trail of purple traced a sinuous line from the corner of her mouth to her ear.