Page 53 of The Women of Wild Hill
“Have you lost your damn mind?” Brigid responded. “She’s your fucking kid. Don’t act like I brought her.”
“I’m not a kid. I’mThe Third,” Sibyl said, putting an abrupt end to the argument.
Phoebe pointed up at the heavens. “So does this mean you can call storms now?” she asked, though she seemed terrified of the answer.
“Nope,” her daughter said. “Still utterly talentless. Just like you always wanted me to be.”
“She has one ace up her sleeve, though,” Brigid said. “She’s got all the dirt on the Duncan family.”
“What did you tell her?” Phoebe barked.
“Will you stop?” Sibyl was fed up with the bickering. “Why the hell do you keep blaming Brigid for everything? I wasn’t even aware she existed until this afternoon. The ancestors were the ones who told me everything.”
Phoebe’s face drained of blood. “Did they tell you why our mother died?”
“Not yet,” Sibyl admitted. “Flora is going to show us. Then you and I are going to have a long chat, just the two of us.”
The Truth Will Out
When the storm ended, the three Duncan women set off in opposite directions, reconvening at the graveyard every half hour to deposit another load on a growing pile of wood. The trees all around had been pruned by the wind, and branches were easy to find. When they’d built a towering pyre, Phoebe struck a kitchen match and laid it on the kindling at the base. A white ribbon of smoke wound up into the air. Though the wood was wet, the sticks and straw ignited at once and flames burst out between the logs. The moon, seeing its cue, reappeared in the sky above.
Every woman in the Duncan family had her own, unique way of communing with the Old One. As a girl, Sadie had simply popped down to the dungeon for a chat with the ghosts whenever she was in need of guidance. Rose would lie on the ground that would one day be her grave and watch the clouds and the birds overhead for messages. Ivy grew herbs that allowed her mind to travel to the place where the worlds met. Flora had always loved fire.
Brigid and Phoebe’s mother had known how to read the flickering of a candle flame. For her, a fireplace could act as a window to another realm. But when the communication was urgent, only a bonfire would serve her purposes. At Wild Hill, she would send the girls out of the cottage to gather wood. Rowan, oak, ash, and all the other sacred trees grew on the grounds. With contributions from each, they would build a pyre at the top of the hill. Once it was aflame and burning brightly, Flora would sit beside it for hours,paying close attention to the crackling, hissing, and spitting, listening to a communiqué from beyond.
Now Flora’s daughters and granddaughter stood before the towering inferno, waiting for her to arrive.
“Hello, Mama,” Phoebe whispered into the wind, and the flames on the pyre leaped into the sky.
Brigid’s bare shoulders were now covered in goose bumps. “Mom?” She, too, felt a presence. Her question was answered with a whiff of her mother’s sandalwood perfume.
“It’s me again, Flora,” Sibyl said. “We’re ready to see what you want to show us.”
A figure stepped out of the flames, but it wasn’t Flora.
“Who the hell is that?” Sibyl didn’t recognize the younger version of the man who’d one day be famous around the world
“It’s Calum fucking Geddes,” said Brigid.
“I knew it!” Phoebe leaned around her daughter to catch her sister’s eye. “I told you he’d be at the bottom of all this!”
“That’s what he looked like when we met him,” Brigid informed Sibyl.
Sibyl whistled. “Damn. He was fine. Who’d have guessed?”
“Eww,” Phoebe said. But even she had to acknowledge how handsome he’d been. The world knew the Calum with gunmetal hair, thick glasses, and a humorless scowl. This version’s hair was already graying a smidge at the temples, but his face was lit by a radiant smile, and his dark eyes were fixed on Flora.
“I HAVE NEVER BEEN SOhappy to see someone in my entire life,” he said.
“Looks like it.” Flora appeared out of the fire.
Calum’s brown dress shoes and navy suit pants were coated in fine orange dust. He’d stripped down to his undershirt and held a blueoxford shirt and a suit jacket over one arm. His hair was slicked back with sweat. His face and bare arms appeared badly sunburned.
Flora seemed dressed for desert conditions in a wide-brimmed hat and a flowing white dress with a hem that skimmed her ankles and sleeves that buttoned at her wrists. Her daughters recognized it at once as the outfit their mother had worn whenever she set out to explore the terrain near their childhood home in California.
Flora handed Calum her canteen and watched with amusement while he drank greedily. “How did you get all the way out here in brogues?” she asked.
They appeared to be in a canyon. Red-rock walls encircled them. Stunted bushes sprouted from crevices. The ground underfoot was sun-bleached stone and sand.
