Page 4 of The Women of Wild Hill
“Not interested,” Phoebe said. “I’m busy today.”
She had tinctures to craft, pills to count, and biscuits to bake. And she’d hoped for another hour with the mayor. She didn’t have time for a message.
She walked around back to the herb garden, fully planning tostay annoyed. But then the beauty of the land took her breath away—just as it had every day for nearly thirty years. Past the herb and vegetable gardens, the orchard rose from a sea of bluebonnets. A creek ran through the valley, separating the farm from the rugged wilderness beyond. Nestled between two boulders way back in the hills was a tiny shack she’d built with her own two hands. At least once a month, she’d pour herself a cup of mushroom tea and spend the night there with the spirits of the land.
Now she turned her back to the wild as she plucked fenugreek, harvested hyssop, and uprooted maca, making separate piles of each in her wicker basket. By the time she’d gathered all the ingredients she’d need for the day, the sun was well above the horizon and the air was broiling. Phoebe paused to fan her face with her hat. That’s when she spotted the pig.
It was sitting among the bluebonnets with its front legs straight and its butt to the ground like a hunting dog. As she walked toward it, she clocked the beast at four hundred pounds—maybe more. Two long, tartar-caked tusks curled over its upper lip and it wore its brown bristles slicked back on the sides and poufed up on top—the same hairdo Wanda at Kuts & Kurls gave half the ladies in town. The stench that wafted off the pig was strong enough to strip paint, but its soulful brown eyes suggested an intelligence that surpassed the average human’s. Phoebe suspected the creature had been watching her the entire time.
Feral hogs were by no means uncommon in Hill Country, where they were deemed a menace and usually shot on sight. But it was rare for one to grow so large—or to arrive at your home bearing messages from the Old One. Phoebe reached out a hand and stroked the hog’s bristles. It nuzzled against her hand like a dog. “Well, Petunia, what is it?” she asked.
Five snorts of different lengths and intensities issued from the hog’s long snout. That’s when Phoebe got nervous.
“Sorry, sweetheart, I don’t speak hog,” she lied. “Come find mewhen you know some human.” As Phoebe began to turn back, two squealing piglets bolted from their hiding spot behind their mama’s ample butt—one piglet moon white and the other golden brown. Phoebe felt the blood drain from her face. When Aunt Ivy had taught her how to read nature’s signs, she’d said they could be subtle, open to interpretation. This was anything but.
“No way,” Phoebe told the pig.
As she hurried to the house, she could hear the massive beast trotting behind her, but Phoebe refused to look back. Over the years, she had always done whatever was asked of her, and no matter how hard, she’d done it without complaint. This was different. This went too far. She’d squat naked over a fire ant hill before she’d comply with the hog’s request.
“I said no, goddammit!” she called over her shoulder and received four insistent snorts in response.
The mayor was sitting on the front porch when she came round. Thankfully, she’d reminded him that guests were expected. He’d emerged fully dressed. The sight of him still made her hot between the thighs. He was a long, lean man with a few streaks of gray in his jet-black hair and thick mustache. His features were those of the people who’d lived on the land long before it was Texas—while his blue eyes belonged to those who’d stolen it from the others.
“You heading off to the office this early?” she asked.
“Yep. Much as I’d like to stay, this town ain’t gonna run itself. You make a new friend out there?” he asked Phoebe. She was always coming home with some kind of animal to fix—orphaned fawns, lame coyotes, even turkey vultures with broken wings.
“That smelly hog is not my friend,” Phoebe groused.
Ed peered around her at the pig. “Want me to shoot it? Head that size would look awful good on a wall.”
Phoebe knew he was joking, but she played along. “You kill that creature and you’re in for trouble. She came here with a message.”
Ed raised an eyebrow. “And what’s that?”
“She wants me to go see Brigid.”
Ed nodded, fully aware of the magnitude of the request. He and Phoebe had been lovers for twenty-eight years, and in all that time, Phoebe had mentioned her sister a half dozen times. He knew who she was. He knew she was famous. But he still had no idea what could have driven them apart.
“And?”
“And I’m not taking orders from a fucking pig.”
THIRTY MILES AWAY, ON THEhighway outside Endswell, Kayleigh Williams slammed on the brakes and steered her Lexus over to the shoulder of the road. As soon as the SUV rolled to a halt, she threw open the door and released a gusher of vomit. The smell of her breakfast cooking on asphalt as hot as a griddle made her empty the remaining contents of her stomach. When there was nothing left, she took a swig from a bottle of water, swished the liquid around in her mouth, and spat it out. She should have known better than to eat breakfast. The early months were always brutal. Not like the last trimester, which kept her bedridden, but still thoroughly unpleasant.
She’d told Curtis she couldn’t handle another pregnancy. Even their doctor had recommended against it. She’d stayed on the Pill for five years after their youngest was born. While her boys were babies, Kayleigh had started taking classes online. Between diaper changes and breastfeeding, she’d performed a small miracle, earning a degree in social work, which she intended to put to use in the fall after Jayson started kindergarten. Then one day, her packet of birth control pills had disappeared from the bathroom medicine cabinet. Its replacement, which she’d hidden in her underwear drawer, soon vanished as well.
“The Lord wants us to have another child,” Curtis said when she confronted him.
“Is that right? Did Jesus say you’ll be carrying it?” Kayleigh shouted, choking on tears of rage. “Because both of us know it could kill me.”
Fifteen minutes later, she was begging forgiveness. Curtis always demanded the same penance. For the sake of her boys, there was nothing she could do but comply. She was pregnant again before her bruises even had time to heal. Curtis added a black eye when her degree arrived in the mail. He didn’t know she was pregnant yet, but he would. He’d downloaded an app onto their phones and was monitoring the situation closely.
In the afternoons, while Jayson napped, Kayleigh thought about the mistakes she’d made. One of the first things Curtis had confided after they met in high school was how much he hated his father, a beloved pillar of the community who ruled his own house with an iron fist. The secret had bonded them, and in it, Kayleigh had seen a promise that Curtis would be a different kind of man. But that promise had been as much a mirage as the shimmering sea just ahead of her on the highway. Kayleigh’s first mistake was believing she’d married a good, God-fearing man. She’d made many more mistakes since then. She was not going to make another.
According to the map on her phone, she was half an hour from her destination. She pulled a Starbucks napkin out of the glove compartment and wiped her mouth. Then she put the car back into drive. Her sister was taking care of Jayson and picking up seven-year-old Brian from school, but Curtis was always home from the bank by six. If she and the boys weren’t there, he’d get suspicious—and he didn’t need proof of wrongdoing to punish her.
There were no clinics left in the state that would help women like her. She couldn’t search the internet for other answers—Curtis always seemed to know what she’d been trying to find. So her sisterdid the googling instead. “I got you a healer,” she told Kayleigh when she called. These days, you never knew who might be listening. “She’ll see you tomorrow at noon.”
