Page 83 of A Boy Called Lovesong

“Peril be upon you,” she muttered as she began emptying ingredients on the table. “Death be near.”

She pulled out a large kitchen knife, rusted and chipped, and I gasped.

Quickly I took a step back, ready to push Lovesong out the door, grab his hand and run.

But Lovesong was the one who grabbed me, gripping my forearm tight, stopping me from fleeing. “Don’t run. She ain’t gonna hurt us.”

“How do you know?”

“Because if that’s what she wanted to do, she woulda done it by now.”

Lovesong was right. The knife was not meant for us. Babbling to herself, her words indecipherable, Hettie began chopping herbs and flowers, hacking up leaves and pounding seeds with the blunt handle of the knife.

As she began sprinkling ingredients into the bowl, her words became coherent once again. “Amaranth seed, heal broken hearts. Black pepper, protect from evil. Oak moss, give luck. Wood aloe and white bark. Sulfur and snapdragon. Radish and rue.” She then lit a match and holding some grassy reeds over the bowl she set them alight, letting the cinders and ash fall into the bowl. “And cattail,” she cackled. “To bring two together as one.”

She mixed the ingredients together, then poured a good slosh of whiskey into the bowl.

“And what’s that for?” I asked.

Hettie gave a gleeful giggle and replied, “Because everything taste better with whiskey.”

She stirred everything together with the knife, then tapped it on the side of the bowl, picked up her concoction and walked toward us. She offered it up to me first, a maniacal look in her wide eyes. “Drink! Drink now!”

I wasn’t sure whether the pungent stench was wafting from the bowl or from Hettie herself. I screwed up my nose. “Is it… is it safe?”

“There’s only one way to find out,” Lovesong said. His hands reached for the bowl, his fingers feeling for it till he gripped it. He raised it to his lips, a wrinkle of unpleasantness on his face, before taking a long gulp.

He swallowed, then grimaced. “Oh God, that tastes awful.”

Hettie cackled again, then took the bowl from him and offered it to me once more. “Drink! Drink it all!”

Reluctantly I took the bowl.

I raised it to my lips and the stench made me want to barf.

I tried not to breathe, and quickly tipped it into my mouth.

It slid down my throat in chunks, the roughly chopped herbs and seeds and flowers and weeds lumpy and sharp. I thought I was going to throw the whole thing up, but suddenly Hettie pinched my nose hard with her grubby thumb and forefinger and I had no choice but to gulp it all down or choke.

When it was all gone, I spluttered, coughed, and inhaled sharply. “Oh fuck. Whatwasthat?” Instantly my head started to spin, and the entire cabin seemed to tilt like it was about to slide into the swamp. I overcompensated, leaning too far the other way, and lost my balance. As I began to fall, I grabbed for a shelf, but it wasn’t enough to hold me steady and I ended up pulling the shelf and all its contents down on top of me as I hit the floor.

Gnarled roots and several fanged snake skulls came tumbling down, as well as a large jar of alligator feet soaking in spirits, which smashed and washed all over me.

Lovesong was already feeling his way toward me. “Noah! Noah, are you all right?”

I shook my head, trying to steady my seesawing vision, and said, “Yeah, I’m okay. Just a little punch drunk, I guess.” I moved to pull myself up and my hand rested on something hard andmetallic. I looked down to see an ornate old pistol with a wooden handle and a long silver barrel tarnished with age had also fallen from the shelf.

I picked it up, letting it dangle loose between two fingers, and looked at Hettie. “You have a gun?”

“A gun?” Lovesong repeated after me, unable to see the weapon.

Suddenly Hettie snatched it out of my hand like a possessive child and dumped it into one of the drawers in the cabinet. “Is mine. Is my gun,” she snapped. “In case I’s ever sees the Devil again. I’s put an end to that evil once and for all.”

Lovesong was already helping me to my feet as I stammered, “I… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

I was barely on my feet when Hettie’s mud-caked fingers curled around the front of my spirit-soaked shirt and yanked me close. “Keep no secrets,” she hissed. “You wants be safe, you wants to live? Then tell him. Tell him everything. He needs to be knowin’ the truth.”

She released me with a shove, and I stumbled back against Lovesong.

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