Luci

Lucille was four years old when her Verifiably Deceased great-grandmother first spoke to her of the Lore, of the clear, open starlight and the quiet midnight rituals of her ancestors. This would have troubled Luci’s mother, had she known, because the old crone in question had been buried at least a dozen years prior. It did not bother Luci, whose fascination with things and people long dead, had earned her the nickname of Lucifer from her older sister.

Luci had never found death to be off-putting. When she was three, she brought inside a squirrel that had met some manner of recent demise. The squirrel itself had already been ripening for many days, and her sister wrinkled her nose – and then the rest of her face – when she saw what Luci had absentmindedly dragged in by the tail.

“Luci,” she scolded, “that thing’s got maggots crawling in it.”

“No, it hasn’t,” Luci objected. “I scraped ‘em off outside.” Her grubby little fist shook the malodorous carcass at Rose. “See?”

A small clump of maggots fell out of the squirrel’s eye socket and hit the floor with a faint thap. Her sister frowned at the writhing things on the floor, then at Luci.

“They was hiding,” Luci explained.

“They were hiding,” Rose corrected her, “and you’re to take that thing outside this moment before Mum finds it! She’ll have an epileptic fit if she sees another one of your dead animals in here.”

Luci stomped back to the door as Rose called, “and clean up those maggots!”

Luci’s mother, who was happening by with the laundry, asked, “An apoplectic fit about what?”

Luci was already outside, scheming to smuggle the squirrel back inside under her dress, when she became distracted by the dead thing’s tail. Why wasn’t it fluffy, like you saw on the live ones?

…

When Luci was born, she had the barest wisp of blonde hair on her head, invisible except to the brightest rays of the sun. For two years, she looked newborn on account of it, until it finally began to grow in, ashen brown, halfway to the age of three. By the time the child was six, her Hair was nearly prehensile – it seemed to gather to itself no end of burrs, sticks, and bits of Lord Knows What that it had come close enough to snag.

And so, when Luci was six years old, her mother had had enough of this and set about taming The Hair, which was as exhausting as it was emotionally crippling for both. Luci would run and hide at the hint of a brush, and became quite good at hiding, usually escaping outside and gathering more of Whatever She Came Near in her hair, which resulted, in the end, in a Very Unpleasant Bath.

After nearly a year of this tomfoolery, Luci took a pair of scissors and gave herself a Very Bad, Short Haircut. Her mother was horrified, but her father joked about having a second boy in the house and started calling her Luke. This was Just Fine with Luci, as her sister Rose had taken to calling her far less savory names, that absolute wretch.

…

Luci's room was a converted four-season room just by the kitchen that had been added onto their house decades ago. The windows drew frost art in the winter, and Luci imagined she could form it, with her mind, into maps of the woods, or the places that were between the places, the liminal spaces, etched into aged, rattly glass. The room was cold in the winter, even with the old wood fired stove outside her door, and most especially when the fire ran low, in the small, silent hours of the morning.

For these deep blue nights, Luci had a down filled blanket, a gift from her grandmother, and it was twice as big as her bed, so she wrapped herself in it and wore a knit cap, and she didn't mind so much when her nose was a little cold, or that she could see her breath when she awoke.

It was on such occasions that her Nana would visit, and tell her of the people she had known, the friends she had made, the Grand Adventures they had had. Some nights, her Nana was pensive, and spoke to her of the people who had died. Other nights, she told Luci secrets, such as where her mother kept the chocolate (in the icebox underneath the pork cutlets), or what to do when her brother had broken a favorite plaything (thistle prickles in his unmentionables.) The latter had resulted in young William needing a Very Long Warm Bath, and since William was quite nearly allergic to bath water, the cure, for him, was just as awful as the condition itself.

Other nights, Nana would speak to her of the Lore, the Ways of Those Who Walked the Land before Luci had. She spoke to Luci of how to find their footsteps, how to find her way in the woods, what manner of dangerous plants she should avoid, and what kind of trees she could use to make a sturdy walking stick. Luci learned of the sorts of insects and fungi that could be eaten (more than once). She learned of barn owls and great horned owls and tiny screech owls, what they ate, and when and how to ask them for advice.

One night, her Nana asked to see an old scrapbook that was kept in the cedar chest at the foot of her bed. Luci had looked at the pictures and recipes and clippings in this book many times (usually when she had nothing else to do as the result of being found out, and then found, and finally sent to her room for a harmless misunderstanding with Will, may he suffer the agony of a thousand paper cuts.) This time, however, as moonlight flooded the room, Luci saw that the pages were full of finely written text, methodical diagrams, and illustrations of wildlife, plants, and what looked to be recipes, or instructions of some sort, filled in around the pictures and clippings. Luci found that if she closed an eye and squinted just so, some of the images would move in a way that made it easier to understand what they were on about.

Luci read her first book of Lore before she was eight years old, and, although she did not understand all of it, she felt that perhaps, with enough time spent, the Lore would begun to compose an understanding of her.

…

By the time Luci turned eleven, her mother had taken her to see her doctor, who had referred her to another doctor, who had given her mother some Very Strong Pills. The Pills were to be taken prior to going to bed, and they would be Very Helpful to make sure that Luci did not continue to have the Night Terrors that made her feel as though she were awake and speaking to her great-grandmother, and there would be no more Reading Scrapbooks by Moonlight. The Very Strong Pills made Luci feel not even a little bit like herself, so she learned to pretend that she was taking them. Her mother, who had many things to attend to, stopped paying attention to the Pills right around then, so long as she had to refill them on the regular. Luci began to hide the Lore under her pillow, where she imagined that it would whisper its secrets to her as she slept, for she would awaken with a new understanding of where the deer trails wound in their woods, and further yet into the wild and mountainous preserve that bordered their land. The Horrible Medicine would not allow such a thing, but who was she to listen?

…

Sometime in that same year, Luci, who was still giving herself Passable Haircuts (which were a small improvement over her Very Bad Haircuts), found a long, fallen branch of a honey locust tree from the gusty winds that had blown through two nights prior. Unlike the walking sticks she had used and thrown away, this one felt warm, still, and it was both thorny (like she was) and as strong as iron (as she wished to be.) It was quite useful, too, when a hiker came upon her and started asking Rude Questions, some of them with his hands, close enough that she could smell his foul breath. Her answers were given in sharp blows and thorns, because those are the answers that are most Effective and Concise.

…

Luci loathed her transformation into womanhood. Other People began to notice her. She cut her hair shorter still, and took to wearing loose clothing that matched the hues of the trees. Despite her desire to not be noticed, there were still the Old Men who would touch her, on the shoulder, or pat her on the head, or look at her in a way that clearly conveyed that Old Men could still be dangerous, if given the opportunity. She took to carrying a woodsman’s knife on her belt – something good for cutting vines and branches, sharp and full of utility, for her long walks through the woods. And when one of the Old Men from her church happened across her, alone and far from home, his body was picked nearly clean by the time it was found, for he, too, was alone, and far from home. As he made his vulgar intentions to her very clear, she spoke to him in the Words of the Lore, spoke to him in anger, swung her thorned staff – and he looked pained. Sat down. Begged her to call for help. She watched him turn ashen and die, then continued her walk, as her family would not expect her home for many hours yet.

…

For her fourteenth birthday, Luci received some heavy wool cloth to make a new cloak, a small woodsman’s kit for starting fires (she had been using her father’s), and an old chest of her Nana’s belongings that has just made its way from place to place until it found her. In fact, her parents had only given her the first two. Her Nana had given her the third, telling her in just what part of the barn it could be found (in the loft, by the old, dusty horse tack.) Luci had never before noticed it, and she doubted anyone else had, either.

It was empty.

She brought it back to her room anyway, and put her other birthday gifts inside.

When she checked again, it was empty again, which made her very cross indeed. But when she awoke to her Nana chanting nonsense (something she did, Luci supposed, to annoy her), opening it in the moonlight revealed that her cloak and kit were, in fact, inside – with another – wait, two other – three other books. No, there was only one other. Luci read it until the moon set.

…

Luci was fifteen now, and had gone blind in her left eye. Nobody was sure why – it was free of infection – but Luci could not see out of it, and it had turned a milky white. Her posture, too, had suffered, from long nights of reading the Lore. Of speaking Lore that would keep a young field from a late frost, or Lore that would confuse a liar. Lore that would cause young love to wither on the vine, Lore that would bring a good person comfort in their final days. Lore that would bring a person to their final days, bereft of comfort. In great part, the Lore was for finding and growing food, for treating skin conditions and abrasions and rashes. But the dark pages – those that turned black under moonlight – she found that the darker text hidden within held knowledge that would have been best kept from any teenager, no matter how moral. And Luci could read it, but only in the light of the new moon, and only if she shut her right eye first.

…

For her sixteenth birthday, Luci was given an exorcism. A real one, in fact, by a Catholic priest sent from the Vatican itself.

Luci sat quietly with her arms and legs bound to the chair she sat in. She did not flinch when the priest flicked his water at her, when he made those signs at her. Her parents had made their choice, chosen to burn her at the stake. This ritual – this Absolute Cruel Gag – this confession that her parents! The people who loved her, or said they did – believed her to be a monster. How long had they seen her this way? When had it started? She did not know.

But she had known, of course. That they were afraid of her. If they had known the things she had done – in the woods – the Lore she had practiced, the things she had chanted – they might have had reason to fear. But she had shown them nothing but kindness, and for this, they had called an actual exorcist. She watched her parents, watching her. What were they thinking? Her mother looked away. Her father looked at his watch. Luci closed her eyes and waited for it to be over.

The ritual finished; the priest left. Her parents made her some tea, told her that they loved her, explained that they really thought Something had gotten into her… her mother, then, had hatched this. Her father said that they should put it all behind them, that they just hadn’t been thinking straight since Rose had died of a Sudden, Painful Cancer last year. Since Will had gone to join the armed forces. They said that they were just seeing things that weren’t there, finding patterns. Luci comforted them, told them what they were so desperate to hear from her.

That night, her Nana spoke to her for the final time, waking her and telling her of a place in the woods where she could go and stay, for a while, if she liked. Where there were things to eat and places to grow more of those things. If she left now, there would be enough food for a while.

Her skin was starting to show scars from where the water used in the ritual had splashed her. She knew it would, knew that the Lore could only keep the blisters at bay for a couple of hours. The burning, shining pain was worse – it made her want to scream until she had no voice left to scream with. She wasn’t sure that the pain would ever leave altogether, but the woods were calling, and they were a balm to the soul.

She took her books of Lore, and her cloak, and her staff, by the door. Her parents had promised that they would love her until the day they died.

This Promise, at least, would be easy for them to keep.