Page 23 of The Women of Wild Hill
ONE SPRING MORNING AT THEage of twenty-four, Sibyl woke up with the desire to go for a drive. The urge was rather inconvenient, given that she didn’t own a car and her schedule was jam-packed. Her mushroom man was coming down from the Catskills with the treasures he’d foraged. A shipment of rare oysters would be arriving from Maine. A critic from theLos Angeles Timeshad announced his intention to wait all night for a table if he had to.
Sibyl shook off the idea of a road trip and rolled out of bed. Never a fan of pajamas or curtains, she’d chosen an apartment on the seventh floor of a building that faced Prospect Park so she wouldn’t have to worry about upsetting prissy neighbors who weren’t fans of nudity. And yet, when she turned toward the windows, she found herself facing a pair of amber eyes. A raven perched on the sill tapped on the glass with its beak.
“Hello to you, too,” she said to the raven.
Sibyl’s mother had always been wary of corvids, but her friend Lily adored them. Crows, ravens, magpies, and jays could travel between dimensions, she once informed Sibyl. When they came to you, they often brought messages.
The triple-sealed windows filtered out the raven’s reply to her greeting, so Sibyl walked over to open it. Below in the park, the trees were black with birds. In the three years she’d been in the city, Sibyl couldn’t recall having spotted a raven. She’d only heard them in the distance. Now there were dozens sitting under her window. The message they’d come with was bound to be epic.
“What is it?” she asked once the window was open and the ravenhad hopped inside. But it wouldn’t tell her. “Whenever you’re ready,” she said. “Excuse me while I hop in the shower.”
When she emerged from the bathroom, the bird was gone. The trees below her window were empty. Then she left the house to head for the restaurant and found them. They were waiting for her outside on the sidewalk, posing for photos and forcing pedestrians to make a wide arc around them. When Sibyl appeared, they stopped hamming it up for the cameras and lifted off all at once. She knew what the message was. They wanted her to follow them.
SIBYL MADE IT ALL THEway to Queens on foot before she stopped to call her mother. There was no answer, so she tried the ranch landline. It, too, rang through to voicemail. Sibyl wasn’t worried. She just wondered if Phoebe might know where the birds were taking her. She was starting to have a hunch that the trip was going to take much longer than expected, and her feet were already sore. So she called a car service and asked the driver to follow the ravens. It wasn’t until she’d handed over her credit card as a deposit that the man pulled away from the curb and they set off to the east.
“Looks like we’re going out to the Island,” he told her.
“What island?” she asked.
He caught her eye in the rearview mirror. “You’re joking, right?”
“Right,” she said, though she hadn’t been.
The driver stepped on the gas, and Sibyl felt herself being reeled in.
Three hours later they were outside a town called Mattauk. Sibyl was trying to remember where she’d heard that name when the ravens finally came to a stop. The car rounded a curve and Sibyl spotted them lined up along the top of an old brick wall.
Even without the birds, she would have known she’d arrived at her destination. Wherever she was, it felt like home.
“This is it,” she said. “You can let me out.”
“You’re sure?” the driver asked. The location did seem rather desolate. The wall stretched as far as the eye could see. Woods lined the opposite side of the road.
“I am,” Sibyl confirmed.
He wasn’t eager to argue. It was late afternoon and the traffic would be picking up soon. He swiped her card and returned it to her.
“You got a way back to the city?” he asked.
“I don’t think I need one,” she told him.
THE CAR DISAPPEARED DOWN THEroad, and Sibyl found herself alone with the birds.
“Alright. I’m here. How do I get in?” she asked and received several croaks in return. She got the sense that they wanted her to climb over. “That’s illegal, you know. You’re going to get me hauled off to jail.”
Sibyl wasn’t big on breaking laws. But the birds either couldn’t understand or didn’t give a damn about her spotless arrest record. They repeated their answer. The only way in was up and over.
So Sibyl scaled the wall and dropped down on the other side. The wild ivy had led her to think the property had gone to seed. But the drive appeared well maintained, and the oaks that lined the road seemed happy to see her. Their fluttering leaves whispered their greetings. Chipmunks and squirrels popped out to lay eyes on her.
A few hundred yards in, she reached a fork in the road. Before her, the trees thinned out, with only a handful of magnificent specimens rising from a flower-filled meadow. To her right, the road led to an attractive two-story brick house with dark green shutters and gingerbread trim. A porch circled three sides of the structure, which looked out over the ocean. She was standing, it seemed, at the top of a hill. Below, a pale yellow beach lined the water.
Sibyl took the fork that led to the left, wondering what else there was to see on the property. Soon, a tall, briar-covered wall came into view. As she kept walking, Sibyl realized it belonged to an enormous structure. The windows were grown over, and there were no doors to be seen. But the marble stairs that led out to the lawn were those of a Gilded Age mansion. The view from the top of the hill, even now, was breathtaking.
The wildflowers rippled in waves of orange, white, and purple. Wading through the blooms was a woman in white. She was pretty and plump and apparently naked beneath her white shift.
“Hello, Sibyl.” The smile the woman wore could not have been warmer. “Welcome to Wild Hill.”
She knew the name. She’d heard countless stories about the place growing up—none of them from her mother. She hadn’t believed it was real. Wild Hill seemed as far-fetched as Narnia.
