Hallowed Ground

Chapter Fifteen

The three sisters stood together in the dust, waiting. When The Deacon climbed down from the wagon, he saw them, and nodded. They regarded him without expression, as was their way.

"Let's get on with it, shall we?" he said.

They turned then, and started away from him. Their movements were eerily synchronized, as if joined by some thread or binding that could not be seen, but that they were unable to resist. The Deacon waited until they were a few yards ahead of him, and then followed more slowly. Few of his flock commanded his respect. Most of them were sad, pathetic things, unable to exist outside the tiny world he'd created for them. The sisters had come to him as they were, and they were a strange lot.

The sisters’ tent stood just off to the right at the rear of the great tent. It was old – the fabric stretched taut over its poles and frame like the wings of a great bat. The Deacon had touched that fabric once. The memory was so vivid he felt his gorge rise at the thought of it. It had felt alive, and when the wind lifted and teased at it, flapping it against the posts, it seemed to breathe.

The sisters stopped short of the tent, and The Deacon, though he feared nothing, expelled a breath he hadn't consciously meant to hold in. Their fire smouldered in a ring of stones. There were larger stones circling the fire…three on one side, and only one on the other.

The sisters parted, rounded the fire, and crossed between and behind one another in an oddly intricate pattern before seating themselves. The Deacon hesitated only a moment, and then took the solitary stone for his own.

"What would you know?" The tallest sister asked. Her name was Lottie, and she was always first to speak. If she spoke, her sister Attie, the shorter sister would respond. He had never heard it otherwise, not in a greeting, or an exclamation. The third sister, Chessie, never spoke. She never smiled. Hers was the most expressionless face The Deacon had ever encountered, perfectly framed by her more animated companions.

"There is something in the wind," he said. "Something has raked its claws through the crows and set them to flight. Darkness is on the land, and if that darkness should be headed my way, I want to know. For all our sakes," he added, "I want to know."

Lottie cackled at this. Attie glanced over at her, and grinned. Chessie stared straight ahead into the fire. The Deacon noticed that she now held a leather bag in her lap. The bag had not been there when she sat down. It was too large to have been carried with her. Sweat trickled down The Deacon's neck and stained his dusty collar.

"He's worried about darkness," Lottie said.

"It's dark here," Attie added. "Darker than here, then, very dark"

Chessie was silent, but her skeletal fingers worked the ties on the bag, and the knot released with a soft hiss of leather. She tugged the top of the bag open, but she did not glance inside.

The Deacon fingered the leather pouch at his neck. He frowned. He knew they mocked him, but he needed their knowledge. He had the vague sensation that, though he ruled his small kingdom, and the power that kept it whole was his alone, these three stood outside that circle. They made the hairs on his arms and the nape of his neck stand and dance in the chill breeze, and their laughter cut through him like blades of ice, but they had never steered him wrong. Each and every time they'd answered his call, their words had rung true, and the world had followed their pattern.

"Tell me," he said.

Chessie upturned the bag.

Bones fell in a sun-bleached rain. Small skulls, fingers and legs, teeth and ribs. They tumbled and scattered at Chessie's feet, but still she stared straight ahead. The others bobbed and cackled, but they did not glance down. The bones settled into a pattern – but The Deacon refused to look at it, waiting for their words to give the moment substance. When all was quiet, and the fire settled, Lottie and Attie fell silent, and Chessie began to speak.

"She died," Chessie said. "She died, rose, and nearly died again. She comes. The crows know her – the crows guide her. She follows the sound of a crying child. She follows the drag of un-kept promises on her heart.

"She is his, and she stands alone. Hers is vengeance, and hunger. Hers is the blade and the stake. Hers is the gun..."

As Chessie spoke, she grew agitated. She had been sitting very still, staring into the distance with a placid, emotionless mask. As the words flowed from her lips, her features contorted. Her expression was that of someone captivated by something a great distance away. She frowned. Sweat beaded on her withered brow and rolled down her cheeks. She pulled her feet up onto the stone and clutched her knees tightly, then she began to rock up and back, and side to side. The Deacon feared she'd topple from her perch, but he did not interrupt.

"She will bind the contract," Chessie said. "She will find what has been lost and it shall be free. Her blood is flame. She comes."

Chessie's head turned slowly, almost as if controlled by some unseen forced. Her gaze locked onto The Deacon's. The temperature in the small clearing dropped so far, and so fast that her breath emerged as a blast of misty fog. Her final words dropped from that mist in icy chunks that drove into The Deacon's heart.

"She comes for you."

A sudden wind whipped through the camp and caught the sister's tent. The already taut material made a whip-crack that nearly stopped The Deacon's heart. He closed his eyes, then blinked, then focused.

"No more to see – no more to tell," Lottie said. All the mirth and cackle had drained from her voice.

"No more. She comes," Attie added.

Her voice sounded brittle – old and worn. She sounded drained.

"Who is she?" the Deacon asked. "Who is coming, and why?"

"It is late," Lottie said. "Our sister is tired – very tired. We must let her sleep."

"There is not much left of the night," Attie offered.

The Deacon opened his mouth as if to protest, then clamped it shut. The three made almost no sense on a normal day – after this he was as likely to get a real answer from them as he was to walk in on The Last Supper and take the seat of honor.

The fire, which had burned so brightly only moments before, was no more than a pit of spent coals. Wisps of smoke rose up and around the three women, obscuring them from view.

The Deacon glanced down at their feet. He searched the ground, but found no sign of the bones. The dirt in front of Chessie's stone was bare and undisturbed. He glanced up. The bag rested in the old hag's lap. The drawstrings were tied, and it bulged – as if the bones had not only been returned to it, but augmented in some way – as if there were more bones, or those that there were had grown larger.

He rose, turned, and strode away from the fire. He did not look back, but as he stepped away, he heard – and felt – the flames rising. Whisper-thin voices floated in the air and tickled at his senses, but he could not make out their words.

He rounded a large wooden wagon and stopped short.

The dwarf hung suspended in the air, his head to the earth and his feet to the air. In his hand, he held a paint brush. The Deacon stepped forward and saw that the tiny man's legs were tied to ropes and bound over the top of the wagon. A wire framework dangled over the roof the wagon, and the ropes were threaded through it, giving the tiny man a foot or so of clearance from his work.

The Deacon said nothing, but turned to the wagon. On the side, the image of a man had been painted. The man was upright, but the dwarf who painted him hung upside down. The man's leg was bent, toe to the ground and the sole of his shoe pressed against the opposite ankle. His hands were clasped behind his back, and he stood with his head dead-center on a wooden beam suspended between two tree trunks. The Hanged Man.

The Deacon concentrated and the words came to him. Release. It was Odin's card, the man hanged by his ankle, surrendering himself for knowledge. Then he frowned. The man should have been suspended by his ankle, and yet, here he was depicted upright. It was a symbol of blockage. Of being trapped in something or mired in the world.

But the dwarf was upside down, painting the card … letting go of it? Was the card an upside down depiction of the right side up image? The Deacon glanced down. On a small table against the wall of the wagon sat a Tarot deck. Leaning against the wagon was a single card. The Hanged Man. Reversed. The image spun and The Deacon stepped back. A wave of vertigo swept through him. He tried to concentrate. He tried to think, turning his mind to the dwarf's perspective, to the card being painted on the wagon, and could not pin it down.

He glanced to the dwarf, who spun halfway around and met his gaze. The little man winked, then spun lazily back to his work. The Deacon started forward, not sure if he meant to question the artist, or yank him off his damned scaffold and stomp his misshapen little body into the dust.

At that moment, a cry rose. It was plaintive, keening voice of a child. A very young child. The Deacon turned toward the sound. When he looked back, the dwarf was gone…and The Hanged Man met his gaze, unperturbed.

Over the ridge, the glow of the rising sun filtered up to the clouds as Wednesday faded. The Deacon turned and strode off toward his tent, and his bed. There was little time for rest, and he sensed he was going to need his wits and his strength for the trials to come. The crying of the child had ceased. When he reached the rear of his wagon he heard Colleen softly singing. The words were indistinct, but the tune was soothing, and he smiled. Then he stepped up into the wagon, and closed the door behind him.