Page 21 of The Women of Wild Hill
Why three? Search all you like for explanations. Even if human minds were capable of understanding the Old One’s ways, she might never reveal her motives. Just accept that the number three has power. The evidence is all around you.
When I was alive, people knew the world was a magical place. Now, men of science laugh at the thought. They want us to believe that magic and science are always opposed—just as zealots claim witches are enemies of all that is good. Men of science are no different from men of God. They want you to believe that they have all the answers. They will never admit how little they know.
Magic is like the power of three. It’s what you know to be true but can’t yet explain. Science sometimes catches up and makes magic mundane. Things that seem perfectly ordinary to those born in this century (breath mints, birth control, ballpoint pens) would have gotten a woman burned back in my day.
Science still has no explanation for the number three, but women instinctively feel its power. While men dream of being “the one,” we’ve always preferred trios. We’re focused less on glory and more at home with the unknown. We don’t know why three works, but we know it does. Three is the number that gets the job done.
The Third
When Sibyl Duncan-Fox was born utterly ordinary, her anxious mother breathed a sigh of relief. Aside from a very full head of curly red hair, the child seemed to have inherited nothing from the Duncans. Phoebe hadn’t spoken to the Old One in ages, but as she held the infant in her arms, she whispered a prayer of thanks. The curse, as she’d come to think of it, was over. The prophesy would not come to pass. Her daughter would not be The Third—and she would never set foot on Wild Hill.
Growing up on the Allswell Ranch, Sibyl lived in awe of her radiant mother. No one had ever mistaken Phoebe for an average person, but only those who shared the same roof knew exactly what she could do. She would often disappear into the desert for hours at a time. Then she’d come back at sunset with wounded animals. When she spoke to them, their ears perked up. And when they responded, Phoebe listened.
“Poor thing’s in shock,” she once said of a snake that wouldn’t uncoil. “A big bird dropped it out of the sky. Let’s put him in a sunny window. He needs a little time to relax.”
“How do you know?” Sibyl asked.
Phoebe shrugged. “Just a gift,” she said.
Sibyl’s dad had grown up in Endswell, but her mother hailed from parts unknown. Where Phoebe’s people were from, she refused to say. She made it clear she had no desire to see them and didn’t want to be found. Once, when she was small, Sibyl had asked Phoebe if she was on the run.
“Where did you get that idea?” Phoebe had asked, trying andfailing to make her question sound casual. Then she got serious, and it felt as if the sun had momentarily vanished behind a cloud. “Did you have a vision?”
“A what?” Sibyl had asked. After that, her mom was all smiles.
Her mother loved her. Sibyl never doubted that for a moment. Phoebe hugged her and kissed her and took her with her wherever she went. So it was strange that it often felt like the best way to please her mom was to fail. When Sibyl showed a knack for cooking, her mother gave her a patch of the garden to grow her own ingredients. Within a month, all the plants in Sibyl’s little plot were dead. The leaves were withered and the vegetables bored through by bugs that didn’t seem interested in her mother’s herbs.
Phoebe had been delighted. “That’s okay, sweetie,” she’d said merrily. “One green thumb in the family is more than enough!”
A few years later, when they drove into Dallas to buy Sibyl a dress for her eighth-grade dance, every sales associate in the store had ignored the gawky teen and rushed to greet her gorgeous mother. Even after they were told that the pair was shopping for Sibyl, they only had eyes for Phoebe.
“You have no idea how lucky you are,” Phoebe told her on the drive back. “It’s exhausting having to deal with that kind of attention.”
And Sibyl would never forget the day in tenth grade when she failed chemistry and was rewarded with carrot cake.
“You don’t want me to be good at anything, do you?” she’d asked her mother.
“I just want you to be happy,” Phoebe said.
“And boring,” Sibyl told her.
“Boring is safe,” said the woman who was anything but.
WHENEVER THE TENSIONS IN THEIRhouse began to build to a boil, Sibyl’s father would hand her a hat. Old and wide-brimmed, thehat had once been white. Over the years, it had acquired a golden patina. It was the hat his mother always wore when she hopped on her horse and set off on her own. No one ever knew where she went. No one dared ask. Her family had followed the old tribal ways, and Ed’s mother was the last woman in a matrilineal line that stretched back for centuries. He and his brothers never knew exactly how long she’d be gone—just that she would return. And tucked inside her saddlebag would be whatever their family most desperately needed.
When his mother died, the hat would have gone to the daughter she never had. Instead, it had hung on a hook for years, waiting for the next woman in the family. Now it belonged to Sibyl. She knew what it meant when her father handed it to her. They’d walk out to the barn and saddle up. Then they’d ride until the resentment wore off.
“Why doesn’t she drive you crazy?” Sibyl once asked him when they were out where only the sagebrush and jackrabbits could hear them.
“Who?” Ed was messing with the kid, but the question could easily have referred to any woman in his family.
“Mom!” Sibyl gave him the stink eye.
Ed’s chuckle came out a low-pitched rumble. “I was raised by a woman just like your mother. Good thing for you and your mama I got a high threshold for difficult ladies.” He winked at his daughter.
“Me?” Sibyl made sure he could tell she was shocked to the core.
“Sweetheart, you are just like your mother. Right now you’re both too close to realize it. But I can see it clear as day.”
