Goldeline by Jimmy Cajoleas (i read books txt) 📕

I can’t believe it. There he is, Mr. Greencoats, the man me and Gruff robbed and set loose in the woods, a man given my own forgetting herbs. He sits by the fire, low-down and squat and afraid. “Do you not remember the state in which I found you? Do you not recall the way you blathered and blubbered, mind gone blank and eyes baffled wide, the confusion on your face? You could not recall the names of your children, Bolivar Greencoats, you could not recall the face of your mother. You, wandering the forest like a lost son of the desert, half naked and wild. I healed you, I set you free from the little witch girl’s enchantments. Do you recall what I have done for you?”

“Yes sir,” says Mr. Greencoats. I can see the fear in his eyes. The fear of what I did to him, and the fear of the Preacher’s own power, a magic every bit as dark as anything he accused me and Momma of.

“These children are seed sowed by bad fruit,” says the Preacher. “They will grow, and they will become unwieldy. They will spread their evil throughout the land, their blasphemy, their witchcraft, until the land is overcome. Yes, and then they will ravage. Do you now understand why we must catch them?”

“Yes sir,” says the third man. “I reckon I do.”

Is the town really safer now that Momma is dead? Now that Gruff and his boys are killed? The Preacher might be right. Maybe we were bad for the town. Me and Gruff robbed so many people. In my ears I hear every terrified scream of them.

“Wish we would have brought all the other guys, too,” says the third man. “Wish we hadn’t left them back in Moon Haven, while we’re out hunting something so fierce as devils made flesh.”

“Hard to run an army through a forest,” says the Preacher. “We can move quiet, just the few of us. We can find her and the boy faster this way. The Evil One is cunning, both serpent and lion, always on the prowl. We must be sober, and we must be vigilant. The Lord is our strength. He won’t let us fail.”

“Still,” says the third man. “Wish there were more of us anyhow.”

“Get your sleep,” says the Preacher. “Come God’s blessed dawn we got demons to send home. Regis has this hour’s watch, don’t you?”

“Yes sir,” says the other man. “Couldn’t sleep a lick after all this devil talk anyhow.”

“He shall grant his children tender sleep,” says the Preacher, lying down. “And the Lord is good to his word.”

“I hope so,” says the third man, lying down as well. “Hate gotdang nightmares.”

Regis, the man on watch, clutches his rifle and looks toward the fire. There’s a big gleaming knife laid out on a rock by his side. I wait just outside the firelight, belly to the ground, my body hidden by the fog, for what seems like hours. I feel like a cat tracking a bird. My eyes are sharp in the night, I can see extra close, I can see the stubble on the watchman’s chin, I can smell his breath from the flask he sips out of once he thinks the Preacher is asleep. And the Preacher is asleep, far as I can tell. His chest rises and falls steady like, in a rhythm. All I have to do is wait for Regis to sleep too.

I watch that knife, how it calls to me, how I got to revenge Momma and revenge Gruff, revenge myself. I feel it in my bones, my blood, the readiness that comes from fear. I am quiet and cool, coiled tight, a snake ready to pounce. I just have to wait for the perfect moment. I can wait for hours and hours. For the moon to be covered by clouds and the night to become dark, too dark for anyone to see except creatures like me, like the owls, us hunters in the dark. For Regis to take one too many nips from his flask. For his eyes to droop, for his head to nod, for it to bob like a cork in the water and then sink finally, chin to chest, until I know he is good and asleep.

I sneak up so soft I could be a death angel’s whisper. I don’t even rustle a leaf, I leave no tracks, I’m the Ghost Girl of the Woods, the demon-possessed, the one they’ve all heard stories about.

I snatch the knife from off the rock. It’s heavy in my hand. The power of it is wonderful, to carry all this death in my little palm. The fire-glow glints off the blade in daggers of light that slice the night clear. An owl swivels his head around to peek at me, eyes bright as stars. I creep on all fours over to the Preacher. He sleeps on his back, his mouth shut in a slit of a grin. His face is clean-shaven, eyebrows black, with a long scar from his left eye socket down his cheek, like the path of a tear, like it’s his skin that’s been crying.

I raise the knife over him in both my hands. I say the words in my heart, like a silent prayer. This is for Gruff. This is for the Half-Moon Inn, my dreams burned down to rubble. This is for sending me out to the woods to be a bandit, to steal from good folks. Most of all, this is for my momma.

But just before I plunge the knife, Bobba’s voice screams inside my head. Just one word, so loud it makes me deaf to everything but itself.

Remember!

It stops me cold, the knife over my head, the fire crackling just to my side. The moon uncovers itself and sends a white beam right onto the Preacher’s face so that it glows.

The Preacher opens his eyes.

The look on his face, of terror and sadness, his ghost-haunted eyes, a pain so violent