Black Dog, By Elise Forier Edie

Editor's note; Welcome to Throwback Thursday, when I pick a favorite story from the past. “Black Dog” is one of the best stories EC has ever published. This story has magic and a captivating young heroine and is exactly the kind of story  I have loved since childhood. Grab a cup of tea and some cookies and enjoy! KW

 “A stray dog followed me home from my walk,” said Violet to the cook, while scraping the mud from her shoe soles by the scullery door.  “He has black fur and brown eyes and I can’t get rid of him.”

“Well, don’t let him in the here,” Cook said sternly, from her perch by the stove.  She was plump, frowned a lot and smelled of cloves. “And don’t touch him, mind.  You have to be careful of a black dog when he follows you home.”

“Why?” Violet asked.

“It’s bad luck, child.  Now, leave him alone.”

“But what will happen to him?”

Cook turned back to her recipes.  “If he doesn’t go away by sundown, I’ll have the gardener drowned him.”

Violet sighed, “He hardly seems to deserve drowning.” She knelt, looking the subject in one of his mild, brown eyes.  He had lots of curly dark fur, and Violet liked it.  Her own hair was straight as strings and was a trial to keep nice. “He’s just a lost little scrap, really,” she said to Cook over her shoulder.

Cook hopped off her stool in a puff of flour and pulled Violet’s outstretched hand away from the little dog’s soft fur.  “Just shut him outside and try to forget him.  He doesn’t belong to us.  If we leave him alone, he’ll go back to his master.”

Violet looked at Cook. “And if not, he drowns?”

Cook grimaced.  “Black dogs know how to get home,” she said dourly.

Later, in the library, Violet peeked out the window to see if the dog was still by the kitchen door. He was not.  He had taken up vigil in the shade of a rosemary bush. She watched him carefully for most of the afternoon, hoping that he would go away. But he only lay in a small, watchful wheel, his fluff of a tail hiding his nose, his shiny eyes alert.  Sometimes there would be footsteps or distant noises, the clatter of a cart, or the calls of deliverymen and farmers. Then he would raise his head, nose twitching, ears perked.  But he never seemed to hear or smell the right things, because he always put his head back down, (Violet imagined him sighing while he did so), and resumed his watchful vigil.  Violet decided he was waiting for someone very specific.

As evening approached, and shadows lengthened in the kitchen garden, the little dog still remained in his lonely post by the rosemary. Violet thought of the gardener and of Cook and came to a decision.

Quickly, before she could change her mind, she tiptoed down the stairs, shoes in hand, her heart hammering like the cymbals on a wind up monkey. She peeked around the kitchen door, breathlessly waited until Cook’s back was turned, and flew into the larder, where she snatched a crust of bread and a handful of butter.  These she hastily crammed into her pocket (they made the inside of her pocket very messy). Then she sprinted back down the hall, slipping out the side door (after lacing up her shoes with somewhat buttery hands). Once outside, she caught her breath and let the monkey in her heart wind down before she glided through the rose bushes and then through the stone archway to the kitchen garden. She hoped she looked like any innocent child on an evening’s perambulation.

The walls of her house looked purple in the twilight and the sky was a heavenly shade of lavender, sprinkled with stars. The little black dog raised his head as she approached and wagged his fluff of a tail, sweeping his patch of dirt smooth as he did so.

“If you don’t come with me, you will be killed,” Violet said to him, as softly as she could, kneeling to pat his head (gingerly, remembering how Cook had told her not to).  “But I will take you somewhere safe for the night, if you follow me.”

She stood, and the little dog stood too, flapping his black ears.  Then he looked at Violet, as if to say, “Lead on,” and so Violet did, out of the kitchen garden, through the rosebushes and then down the path to the boathouse.

“I know this might seem strange to you,” she said, as they walked. “But Cook never comes to the boathouse, you see, and she’s the only one who knows about you.  Mother hasn’t liked the boats since Father went away, and my brother Edward is at school, and won’t come rowing for a month, yet.  So you’ll be quite safe until your Master comes.  That is who you are waiting for, isn’t it?”

The dog did not reply, but wagged his tail convivially.  Violet took that as an affirmative answer, and so it was with a light heart that she led him down the path to the lake.

The boathouse was old and made of planks and stones.  Violet liked it, the way ceiling reflected ripples from the lake in a wild dance of light and shadow, and how a throng of frogs sang nearby in a tuneful chorus.  She fed the dog the bread and butter, apologizing for its squashiness.  Then she made a nest for him on the dry planks by the docks, with a length of canvas and a rag.  “You lie here,” she told him, “And be very quiet all night, and then you will be safe.”

The dog lay down obediently and thumped his tail. Violet believed he was agreeing to her terms.  She said, “I think you are a very good dog. I’m sorry you are all alone, and I can’t keep you.  I have to go now,” she added, and then ran up the path as quick as she could, to wash for supper.

Colonel Butler was coming for supper again that night, and their neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Pellenheart. They were bringing a famous author named Grundiman (or something like that; Violet hadn’t been listening very closely to the guest list and didn’t really care), who was summering in the country, and wished to meet the famous Egyptologist’s wife (that was Violet’s mother).  Violet had to dine early in the kitchen with Cook and then go to her room and prepare to be presented to the guests later on.  It was a duty she always loathed, but loathed even more now that her brother Edward was away at school and her father had gone to Africa.  Edward was learning Euclid and her father was exploring tombs, and neither would be home for some time. It seemed to Violet that all the merriment in the house had fled with the carriages that had taken them away.  Dinners, even in their jolly summer house, formerly an oasis of fine picnics, clicking croquet mallets and tinkling laughter had become terribly quiet affairs. The guests gave her sharp looks over glinting cutlery, wine decanters rang on the rims of glasses, cards whispered on tables, but nobody spoke much. And Colonel Butler, with his pale green stare and elegant hands, presided over everything in her father’s place, while her mother, who had once had a sweet laugh and told wonderful stories, merely vibrated, like a bell that’s been struck, but can’t be heard anymore.

“I see the dog went away like I said,” Cook remarked, as Violet sat at the plank table in the kitchen, having guiltily washed her buttered-and-dog-petting hands in the basin provided.

“Did you see him leave?” she asked carefully.

Cook shook her chins and passed Violet a plate of meat and gravy with bread.  “But he’s gone all right,” she said.  “Which saves me a load of worry.”  She looked at Violet, a little shyly.  “A black dog following you home can be the worst sort of luck where I come from. It’s a superstition, and maybe nonsense I suppose, but why take chances?”

“How can a black dog be bad luck?” asked Violet.

Cook glanced about before she said, “Why he could be the Gurt Dog, child. Bringing Things on the house.”

“What sorts of Things?”

“Things no child should know about,” Cook said darkly.  “Gurt dogs are of the Devil and bring thunder and funerals on houses of sin. That’s all you need to know.  Now, eat.”

Violet nodded and ate her food obediently. She knew perfectly well the little black dog in the boathouse was no more an agent of the Devil than Cook was really a carpenter.  But she knew better than to argue with Cook about it, who had been known to take her pudding away when she was too fresh.

Later, Violet went upstairs and endured being dressed for presentation. This was arduous, because it involved putting on stiff and uncomfortable clothes with lots of very aggressive lace, and also having her hair curled.  Mercilessly hot tongs were applied to her locks, and the maid’s fingers slipped and often burned her forehead and the silly curls never held anyway.  When it was all done, the maid had said she looked “a picture” and that is how Violet felt, like everything about her had been painted.

Downstairs at the presentation, everything was very strange and quiet. Violet held her head still, so that the curls in her hair would keep their shape. Her mother, flushed even in the candlelight, seemed to be very far away in a dream when she said, “This is Violet, my daughter.”

After she spoke, her eyes slid to Colonel Butler. He seemed to be transmitting some message back with his bright green eyes, one that made his face quite red and (Violet thought) unpleasant-looking.  Violet's mother’s lips parted in response.  The whole silent conversation made Violet feel very strange indeed, like she should stamp her feet and scream.  Instead she said, “Hello,” very dutifully. Her voice sounded loud in the charged silence.

No one looked at her.  The guests were all transfixed by whatever was going on between Mother and Colonel Butler.  Mrs. Pellenheart seemed horrified, Mr. Pellenheart looked like he wanted to hit something and the writer, Grundiman-or-Whoever, looked vastly amused, as if some wonderful pageant was being presented right there on the dining room table.

It was on the tip of Violet’s tongue to ask what was going on when a dog barked suddenly outside, a very large dog, by the sound of it. Everyone jumped at once and Violet saw her mother’s face drain of color.  Then Grundiman-or-Whoever laughed, and that startled the rest of them out of the silence.  The mysterious moment was gone.

“There are always dogs barking at night in the country,” sang out Mrs. Pellenheart, and everyone laughed even more, (although Violet didn’t know why, since it wasn’t a very funny or clever thing to say).

Then things returned mostly to normal and they all looked very brightly in Violet's direction. Mrs. Pellenheart dimpled and called her over so she could exclaim over how much Violet had grown, and Grundiman-or-Whoever pinched her cheek and told her she was “a lovely thing, really lovely.”  Her mother reclined, warm and dreamy, into her chair and Colonel Butler signaled curtly to have her wine glass refilled.  Only Mr. Pellenheart stayed as he was before, grim-faced and bristling, first banging his fork on the table and then folding his arms over his chest.

Later that night, dressed in her nightgown, with her horrid hair free to wilt as it wanted, Violet opened her window and tried to glimpse the boathouse. She hoped that it wasn’t the little dog that had barked and startled the company, and hoped Cook hadn’t heard it too (although really that bark at dinner had been so very large, and the black dog in the boathouse so very small, Violet couldn’t credit it).  The lake had a great silvery stripe of moonlight down the middle, and Violet stared at it while a sweet scented breeze blew the last of the curl from her hair.

And then she must have fallen into a dream because suddenly the little dog was before her, only grown to great proportions, so it seemed the size of a horse, or larger, with red shining eyes like wheels of flame in its face.

“Why it really is the Devil’s dog,” thought Violet, as  a chill raced down her back, and she meant to run from her window and jump directly into bed, but the dog stopped her cold by speaking.

The Dog said. “I shall not harm thee, and never shall, Violet.  For thou wast kind to me, when none other would be, and thou art pure of heart.”

“But aren’t you the Devil’s dog?” Violet said, amazed she could speak at all through her chattering teeth.  It felt very much like her knees had turned as ripply as the moon in water and her stomach had hollowed into a bowl as big as the lake itself.

The Dog laughed, and Violet caught a heart-stopping glimpse of the sharpest, biggest teeth she had ever seen in the creature’s cavernous mouth. “Wast not the Devil made by God, child?  And are not we all His instruments?” Violet nodded dumbly (she was far too terrified to do anything else, although she knew very little about God and the Devil except the usual clouds and harps and pitchforks and things).  “Well then,” continued the Dog. “List, for my Master comes this night and I must soon take leave of thee.  For thy kindness, I give thee three wishes, one to be foolish, one to be wise, and one for luck.  Use them well, child, for you shall not see me again for many years.”

Suddenly, there was a horrible clap of thunder, and a streak of lightening in the clear night sky. A rending, tearing sound seemed to split world in two pieces and at last Violet jumped up from the window seat, not sure if she was awake or asleep.

Then the night was swept by even more noises and shouts, as people from the sleeping house ran out onto the dark lawn, screaming and pointing, their night caps and wraps glowing red in a strange, flickering light. And Violet didn’t know which was more disturbing—that she had dreamed of the giant Dog, that Colonel Butler was standing on the lawn with her mother, dressed only in his shirt and breeches, or that the boathouse was on fire, and would probably be burned to a cinder by morning.

Violet later thought that she might have gone down the stairs and onto the lawn with everyone else that night, but the sight of her mother, clutching the arm of Colonel Butler, pale as a candle in her nightclothes, scared her so much that she didn’t move from her window until long after dawn. Instead, she watched the fire burn all alone. She hoped that the little dog was safe, and wondered at the dream she had had.  Later (she must have been falling asleep again by then), she remembered the three wishes the Devil’s Dog had bestowed and thought what a silly notion had been. “Although,” some dreaming part of herself said, “If it was not a silly notion, and I do have a wish, I wish that my hair might be curly so I can forever escape those hideous tongs.” Then she thought nothing more, until the maid woke her up hours later with a scream.

“That’s the first I’ve heard of child’s hair turning curly overnight,” said Cook. She reached a clove-scented finger out and wonderingly touched one of Violet’s perfect ringlets.

“They scared Clara the maid,” Violet said of her curls. “But I love them. They don’t go away when I pull on them.” She was eating breakfast at the plank table and swinging her feet.  Her new hair felt soft and springy when it brushed her cheeks.

“Nor does the steam in here take them out neither,” Cook said, leaning in to touch her hair again and again.  (Violet found her curiosity almost intrusive, and felt a little like a crocus being overshadowed by a giant box hedge).  “’Tis a miracle for certain. How did it happen?”

“The fire scared me so bad my hair turned curly,” Violet joked.  After all, it was nearly true, and she knew Cook wouldn’t be pleased about the Black Dog and his wishes.

“Were you awake, then?” Cook asked, drawing away and busying herself at the stove. “For the fire?”

“Only for a little while,” Violet said carefully.

“Ah.  Did you… did you see us out there, tending to …to it?” Violet nodded. “Your mother and, mmmmm, everyone?”

Violet paused over her eating.  She knew that Cook wondered if she had seen Colonel Butler.  And she knew also that she wasn’t supposed to have seen him.  And she knew she was supposed to lie and say she hadn’t. Violet knew grownups liked it when children lied about certain things. To say she had not noticed Colonel Butler was like saying Grandmother’s horrible pink silk was “very nice,” or that it was “perfectly all right” that her father was going away to Egypt, or that “it was nice to meet” some boring old uncle with dreadfully smelly breath, who kept planting slimy kisses on her cheek.  She didn’t know why grown ups liked these sorts of lies, when everyone knew lying was wrong.  But she could tell that’s what Cook wanted.

“I didn’t see anyone special,” said Violet obediently to Cook.  “I only saw the fire, really.”

Later that morning, Violet went down to the smoking ruins of the boathouse.  She called for the little dog, but he was nowhere to be found.  She wasn’t really expecting to see him.  She was beginning to suspect that the little black dog and the Gurt Dog were one and the same.  That somehow, through magic, the dog had been small, and then grown quite large; and the dog was supposed to punish sinners, but somehow Violet had changed that, by saving the little dog’s life.

And soon she found herself walking around the lake, thinking about her two remaining wishes.  She did not wonder much at the wishes—there was, after all the proof of her glorious, sought after, perfect hair bouncing around her face.  There was only the matter of what to wish.  She only had two more.  What should they be? In the fairy stories, people always wished for riches, but Violet knew her father didn’t need any more money. They had quite enough of everything, more than they needed, surely.  Also in the stories, people wished for good health, but Violet didn’t know anyone who was sick, and so she couldn’t wish for that, not properly anyway.  She puzzled over the problem of Colonel Butler, for though she didn’t fully understand it, she did know the fact of him on the lawn in his breeches last night presented some kind of dreadful malignancy. But she couldn’t put the how and why of it together quite, so she couldn’t figure how it could be fixed.  She wanted to ask someone for advice, but she also knew she was supposed to lie about knowing anything.  She thought and thought until she felt a headache coming on.

By then she had wandered to the other side of the lake, where the boathouse looked like a smudge of smoke on the shore and her own house, tall and imposing with its terraces and stone walls, sat on the hill beyond, seeming austere and mysterious and somehow very lonely.  Violet left the path and sat on the lake shore with her back up against a tree, and stared at her home. She wondered how having two perfectly good wishes bestowed upon her could have turned into a headache and a burden, when it seemed like it should be such a delicious problem.

“Oh, leave off your wishes for heaven’s sake,” said an urgent voice nearby and Violet jumped, for it was her mother’s voice, and she sounded both frightened and angry.  Bewildered, Violet looked about her.  What did her mother mean she should “leave off,” and how did she know Violet was thinking about wishes?

She opened her mouth to reply when another voice startled Violet into silence.  “I won’t leave off.  They’re driving me mad.  And I’ll not be put off any longer, Jane.”  This was Colonel Butler of course, sounding just as afraid and angry as her mother.

Violet realized they were directly behind her, on the other side of the tree, near the path, speaking in the low, desperate voices of children holding back tears.

“It’s a fool’s request,” her mother was saying. “And I don’t know why you ask it.  I love my children.  I won’t leave them.  And whether he cares or not, I love my husband.  And once upon a time, I would have said the same of you.”

“Of course I – I love them,” Colonel Butler choked, and Violet knew from the way his voice stumbled that he was telling one of those strange, grownup lies.  “I want nothing but the best for them all.  But Jane—“

“And so you must go.  Immediately.  As far as you can get—“

“Not without you.”

“Yes, without me,” her mother cried.  “You’ve already soiled my reputation.  Will you have my whole life, too?  Everything that is mine?”  Violet heard her mother’s voice break, and her own hot tears started as her mother wept.  “Oh, God.  How I wish I had gone with him and taken the children when he asked me to! How I wish I had gone to Egypt with Bruce-to hell with the dangers, and the heat, and the savages-if I had gone with him, when he asked, then you would have never been able to tempt me.  I might even have been happy, in Africa—who knows? I would welcome the reptiles and dead kings now.  I would. The Devil take me for being so afraid.  God, God, what have I let you do to me?”

“I have treasured you.  I have loved you—Jane--“

“You have ruined me,” and with a little scream, as if she had stabbed something into herself, Violet heard her mother break from the path, and saw her stumble on the beach in front of her.  She was clearly distraught; her dark hair had come undone, and her clothes were covered in earth and leaves as if she had been rolling around in the dirt.  Violet couldn’t imagine what would make her elegant, beautiful mother roll in the dirt, and she had half a mind to scold Colonel Butler for pushing her to the ground.

But then her mother’s terrified gaze was on her and she was shaking her bedraggled hair from her wet, pale face and saying, “Violet?  What are you doing here?  And what on earth have you done to your hair?”

And then Colonel Butler was also in front of her, very red in the face indeed, and looking disheveled and murderous and petulant, like a large boy who has been thrashed and had his toys locked away.  “Spying are you?” he roared. And he made as if to strike Violet, but her mother grabbed his arm so he couldn’t, and Violet hid her face in her arms.

There were some scuffling sounds and violent whispers and Colonel Butler said, “I’ll pry it out of her, dammit,” and more whispers.  Through it all Violet hid her eyes.  And then Violet’s mother knelt by her side and said softly, “Darling?  What are you doing here?”

And Violet said, through her hands, “I am wishing your wish.”  She peeked at her mother.  “Will that do?” she asked.

But when she looked up to see what her mother thought of that, everything had changed of course.

Years later, Violet asked her brother Edward if he remembered ever going to school in England, and father being away at Egypt, and she and her mother living alone at the summer house by the lake.

“When?” said Edward, thoroughly puzzled.  They were both very old by then—Violet was nearly fifteen--and she and Edward had both been living in Egypt with their mother and father for many years. They could do all sorts of marvelous things like speak Arabic, dig for mummies and pilot boats on the river. They were sitting on the veranda of their house in the desert, watching the sun set over the golden mounds of sand.  The first of a nightly swath of stars were appearing in the rose streaked sky.

Violet said, “It seems like a dream I had, but it also seems so real. Father went to Egypt without us—“ Edward snorted at this silly idea, “And then mother and I lived by ourselves in the summer house by the lake, while you were at school.  We had a dog, a little black dog—“

“A dog?” Edward interrupted.  “Now I know this was a dream—we’ve never had a dog--”

“Yes, that’s the strangest part,” Violet agreed. “But I remember the dog best of all. He had curly dark hair and a little pink tongue and he followed me everywhere.  I believe he bit that horrible Colonel Butler on the leg.”

Edward wrinkled his brow.  “That terribly boring old friend of fathers’, who always moons at mother when he visits?”  Violet nodded and Edward laughed. “Well, I remember no such time.  I don’t believe it really happened, Violet.  And thank heavens.  It sounds like a stupid and dreadful life, really.  We’ve had so many larks here in Africa.”

Violet sighed. “I know,” she said.  “But it seems like it might have happened.  It seems like that was my life and then somehow I made a wish and it all turned out differently.”  She pursed her lips.  “We had a cook at the summer house who smelled of cloves.  I quite liked her.  And my hair was straight.”

Edward laughed again. “Now I know you must have been dreaming,” he said, and patted her dark curls.  “Your hair has always been the envy of every great lady and little girl we have ever met.”  It was true.  It was universally acknowledged that Violet’s dark curly hair was a glory. “And we’ve always lived in Egypt. Father took us with him the first time he went despite mother’s initial trepidations and it’s been a ripping time had by all since.”

“Yes,” Violet agreed, thinking of the adventures they had all enjoyed, from riding camels, to uncovering treasures, her mother and father always happily together, and Edward by her side.

Somewhere off in the darkening desert a big dog barked gruffly. The clear desert air must have amplified its voice, for it sounded very large and very nearby. “A dog?  All the way out here?” Edward wondered.

“I do hope it’s all right,” said Violet.

“It sounds big enough to fend off jackals.”

They both waited to hear if it would bark again, but it did not.  Instead, the sun set in a boiling golden sky and then a very chill wind blew in from the dunes.

Edward stood.  “We should go in,” he said.

Violet leaned her head back and looked at the stars. “If you had one more wish, what would it be?” she asked him.

“One more wish?  I didn’t realize I’d gotten to have any,” said Edward lightly.

Violet shook her head.  Why had she said “One more wish?”  She laughed. “One wish, then.  What would it be?”

He put his hands in his trouser pockets and whistled up at the stars. “That’s easy,” he said.  “I’d wish for luck.  The very luck of the Devil.  Lucky people stumble on hidden tombs and meet patrons in unexpected places and get appointments at fine universities.  Lucky people meet their true love and get their symphonies lauded and are the first to discover a new element and name it. I would wish for luck for all my days and yours, Violet, dear.”

“I like that,” said Violet. “A wish for luck and only luck. The luck of the Devil.”  She laughed and closed her eyes.

“Now let’s go into supper, shall we?” Edward said.  “We have a big day tomorrow at the dig.  Perhaps father will finally find the hidden tomb entrance.”

Violet stood and said, “I have a feeling he will, Edward.  I have a feeling he will make the discovery of his life very soon and we will all be famous.”

Edward laughed at the fancy.  Then she took his arm and they went into the house.


Elise Forier Edie is a professional playwright and author based in Washington State.

Bonus Story: Lucy in the Sky, By Elise Forier Edie

Editor's note: Elise Forier Edie, one of my favorite fae and fairy tale writers, has supplied us with a wonderfully offbeat and engrossing midsummer story. The full midsummer issue will appear by the end of the month, enjoy!

None of the grown ups liked Uncle Bubba’s friend. Delia heard them talking on the front porch after supper.

“She done starved herself to look like a fashion plate,” murmured Aunt Adelaide, sucking on a Salem Light with the desperation of a child slurping a too-thick milkshake.

“Bubba told me she was vegan? Whatever that is?” Delia’s mama framed everything like a question.

“Means she only eats fruit,” snapped Granny, scratching at her eczema.

Adelaide blew a smoke ring. “Means she’s a damned snot. And that’s all there is to it.”

They snickered, and Delia, who’d been pretending to be a dog since after breakfast, chewed on what the joke might mean, but couldn’t ask about the punch line. Dogs couldn’t talk, after all, and anyway, she had made a promise.

Uncle Bubba’s new girlfriend plain made Delia want to howl. She smelled fresh and meadowy, like mint leaves and sassafras; she was delicate and pale, with a waterfall of thick, black hair. But Delia could see she was crazy. Red spots glowed in her eyes like a vixen’s, and she meant to munch them all with her tiny, sharp teeth. But the grown ups only stared and made snide comments. All Delia could do was shiver.

“Forty thousand dollars for a buncha carvings? She must be from New York City.” Granny’s tone indicated that New York City rested somewhere south of a sour privy hole. 

“Gonna run our Bubba to wrack and ruin. War done started it. This gal’s finishing him off,” Aunt Adelaide intoned.

To that, Delia’s mama said nothing at all, which was how it always was, when anyone ever mentioned the desert war.

Uncle Bubba had come home from it three years before, when Delia was seven, practically a baby. Red eyed, red bearded, meaty and mad, he slept all day and wandered at night, looking and smelling like a grizzly bear. Only the blind dog Dozer seemed happy to see him, thumping his tail whenever Uncle Bubba walked by. Delia mostly just wet her pants.

“Uncle Bubba’s nice?” Mama said, helping Delia change out of her damp underwear one day.

“Then why’s he growl all the time?”

Mama explained that Uncle Bubba was sick with Pea-Tee-Zesty, and it made him think kudzu was sand storms and lawn mowers were landmines. But if Delia spoke softly, and showed him her storybooks, he might stop growling and smile.

So Delia had crammed some courage in her heart and handed Uncle Bubba a volume of “The Greek Heroes.” She had found it in Granny’s spare room and read it because her father had scrawled his name on the flyleaf, “J.D. Strong.” She offered to read it aloud to Uncle Bubba. He nodded. They tried out Theseus. They delved into Heracles. They both loved Odysseus the best. Then they read all the books from her father’s boyhood library – Freddy the Pig, Madeleine L’Engle, King Arthur, Prince Caspian. Sometimes Dozer the dog listened. Once, in the middle of Treasure Island, he farted, and Uncle Bubba laughed.

When the doctor prescribed ganja weed for Bubba’s war disease, he relaxed a lot more. He took up chainsaw carving in the shed. He wore a white mask and goggles and filled the yard with beautiful and richly polished wooden creatures, most of them from storybooks. He made a shy-looking unicorn, some goddesses and griffins, and a giant angel wired to a tree. After carving, Uncle Bubba sat up nights on the porch, swinging his smooth, bare feet while he smoked sweet cigarettes, and sang oldies under his breath. Delia and Dozer sometimes lay on the grass nearby, listening, while fireflies flicked on and off in the brambles. Uncle Bubba’s voice sounded delicious to Delia, salty and sweet, like hot chocolate syrup drizzled on crackers.

“Daddy used to sing that one,” she told him one night, while he crooned about Lucy in the Sky. Delia liked the parts about mirrors and marshmallows.

“Sure he did,” Bubba told her. “Saw her too, I reckon.”

“Saw Lucy?” She sat up. Delia couldn’t make out Uncle Bubba’s face in the dark but the ember of his ganja cigar glowed as he inhaled.

“Yup. Me and your daddy was boys then. We heard Lucy singing in the garden one midsummer eve, and we followed the sound to a path in the blackberry. Next thing we knew, we was in her Land.”

Daisy gaped. “Were there marmalade skies and rocking horses?”

“And a girl with kaleidoscopes.” Uncle Bubba’s voice had gotten very soft. “That was Lucy, a’course. The girl.”

“Was she beautiful?”

“Sure was.” Smoke billowed as he sighed. “But I’ma tell you what. She scared me, Deels. Her eyes were like a tiger’s at the zoo, all yellow and cold. Put me in mind of a loaded gun.” Delia shivered and Dozer raised his blind head. “I ran like hell, right back home. But your daddy, he stayed away for a day and a night. Thought she’d gobbled him up for sure.”

“But she didn’t.”

“Oh, no. Dozer found him and fetched him back.”

“He did?” Delia rubbed the dog’s warm side. Dozer was a white lab, but his fur was always a little pink from lying in the red clay dust of the garden paths. When Delia stroked him, the dust coated her fingertips. “How?”

“He was young back then,” Uncle Bubba said. “Fulla beans, and brave as a Cherokee. Plus, he has them senses only dogs have—smell, and hearing, and like that? But best of all, he has a pure heart, and Lucy ain’t much when you put her up against that.”

“Daddy didn’t love Lucy, did he?”

“Oh, nah, honey.” Bubba shook his head. “You can never call what she gives you “love.” But Lucy spelled him some, that’s for sure.”

“But he didn’t never go see her again, did he?”

Bubba stubbed out his cigar. “Best we not talk about this too much in the garden at night Deels, even with Dozer to guard us. Lucy likes this yard. Always has.”

So Delia whispered, “But did Daddy go see her again?” 

Uncle Bubba didn’t answer. Instead, he shut himself in the shed and didn’t come out for a week.

The next night, Aunt Adelaide poured Delia’s mama a stiff Scotch, and told her she had to get her ass on Christian Singles Dot Com.

“Jaydee ain’t coming back, Penny.” Aunt Adelaide had cracked open a fresh package of Mint Oreos by punching a steak knife through the cellophane. Her cheeks bulged with grasshopper green cream and chocolate. “You gotta start living again, hon.”

Delia, who was lying behind the couch with her legs in the air, had to bite her tongue to keep from yelling. Mama and her both knew Daddy was so coming back from the war someday, and what did fat, smoky, green-Oreo-eating Aunt Adelaide know about it anyway?

But Adelaide plowed on, almost as if she’d heard Delia’s thoughts. “I know as well as anyone Em-Eye-Ay stands for Missing-in-Action, and there’s a chance he’s coming back. But honey, it also stands for Maybe-Is-Axed. You know? And it’s been more’n three years since Jaydee disappeared. Time to face facts and start living again.”

Delia chomped on her tongue so hard, her mouth filled with blood.

Mama said, “But I dreamed about him again last night?” Delia rolled over and spit bloody drool where she lay, letting it run in a silent stream down her chin onto the carpet. “He was out in the garden with all them creepy creatures Bubba’s carved? In the dream, I mean? And he was as frozen as frozen--”

“Now see,” Adelaide interrupted, crunching on an Oreo. “That’s the thing. That is why you got to have your ass on Christian Singles Dot Com. You’re living in dream world, and you owe it to Delia to move on. ” Her voice lowered. “You’ve noticed how little Deels is getting, I hope? Only people she talks to are Bubs and the dog.”

No one else is worth talking to around here, certainly not you, Delia wanted to scream. Instead, she spit out another whole pool of bloody drool. It lay thick and ropy on the rug.

Mama protested some more, but Aunt Adelaide kept on, and after awhile Mama gave in. She signed onto Christian Singles Dot Com, and then Adelaide gave her a makeover and a photo shoot. Before too long they were giggling about some dentist named Daryl with a boat, and whether or not the locksmith Shoupe was just super handsome or a cereal killer. And after a solid week of that crap, Delia decided she had better figure out how to find her dad and fix things. Otherwise, Mama’d go off and marry some guy who drilled teeth for a living or got his jollies stabbing boxes of Quaker Oats. Either way, Delia figured it was going to suck.

So the next morning, she prepared for a Heroic Quest. First, she made a list of rules she would follow, because all her books said magic went bad unless you followed the rules. “Keep every promise,” was the one rule she wrote (from the Bible.) “Don’t eat the food,” was another, (from The Sword and the Stone.) “Don’t stray from the path.” (The Hobbit) “No kissing or getting married to fairy folk.” (“Tam Lin”) “Be polite and kind, even to ugly old witches.” (“The Tinderbox”) “It’s okay to throw a witch in an oven if she tries to eat you.” (“Hansel and Gretel”)

Then she stuck the rules in a pocket of her shorts and slipped out the back door to the dawn soft garden. Blind Dozer joined her, raising his pink snout to sniff. Dew sparkled on beanpoles. Cicadas throbbed in trees. Flies buzzed in a sparkly cloud on a pile of Dozer’s poo. Around her, all of Uncle Bubba’s creatures stood frozen, in a hundred wild and lovely poses, like dreams ensnared.

“Where’s the path to Lucy’s land?” she asked Dozer. “Uncle Bubba says you used to know where it is.”

Dozer trotted straight to Granny’s live oak and pointed his snout at the angel Uncle Bubba’d wired in the branches. He woofed.

Delia liked the angel, even more than the unicorn. Uncle Bubba had given it her father’s face, proud and sorrowful, with a lock of hair falling over its forehead. Uncle Bubba had worked three whole days to get the angel wired securely to the live oak’s branches. He’d had to cut the statue into big chunks, and used a pick up truck, and a chain hoist, and a generator that growled, and spat foul smoke. Granny had glowered in the yard almost the whole time he worked, arms folded over her chest, her wrinkled face white in patches from eczema cream.

“Goddammit Bubs, make sure it’s secure. I don’t want the cotton picking thing tumbling on our heads when we ain’t looking.”

Uncle Bubba assured her it would stay where he wired it, and now it hung, strong and beautiful, poised above the roof. Delia put her head all the way back, looking into the shadowy branches of the tree. They were as thick around as Aunt Adelaide’s hips, and twisted in paths, secret and shrouded. She could imagine a whole city of fairies up there, using the boughs as paths to walk from house to house.

Delia stroked Dozer’s head. “Uncle Bubba said the way was through a blackberry bramble.”

Dozer aimed his white eyes at the angel and whined. So Delia squared her shoulders. “Okay,” she told him. “Here I go.”

He sat and waited while she climbed.

It took a long time to get high enough to where Bubba’s angel lived. By the time she reached it, Delia’s knees and palms were scratched, and even her stomach had sweat on it. Dozer sat vigil below, nose twitching and sniffing, while his cloudy eyes stared out of his pink and white head.

The tops of the tree branches were slippery with black mold. Delia scooted along on her belly, smearing glop on her thighs. Rough bark stung her palms and scraped at her legs. By the time she clawed her way on to the angel’s back, she was panting like Dozer. She rested, spread eagle on the smooth, massive wings.

But after she caught her breath, Delia realized she could see the whole world, like a magic map beneath. Uncle Bubba’s beasts and monsters dotted the garden. Granny’s mossy roof spread in a big square ahead. Beyond it, tobacco fields feathered, striped green and brown.

The angel felt cool under Delia’s hot body. She pressed her ear to its back, and sighed with pleasure. And that’s when she heard her father’s voice, clear and strong as a church bell, on a Sunday morning in spring. He was calling from inside the angel.

“I remember,” she heard him say. “I remember climbing this big ass tree in my backyard. I remember my mama’s house and her vegetable garden. I remember my little brother and me catching frogs in the rain. I remember cutting into the ground in Georgia and seeing good red earth. I remember where I came from. And I know it’s real. And you’ll never take it from me, never.”

Delia lay for a long time, and a smile spread on her face, while warmth bathed her chest. She listened to her dad remember who he was. Then she kissed the angel’s smooth spine and shimmied to the ground where her mama got mad about all the smears of moss and mold on her skin and on her clothes.

“You’re making sure all your T-shirts are fit for the rag bag?” Mama fussed, while she drew Delia a bath in Granny’s blue-tiled bathroom.

“Daddy’s alive, Mama,” Delia told her. “He’s stuck in the grass so incredibly high, in Lucy’s land, but he’s trying to remember where he came from, and I heard him on the angel’s back, ‘cause Dozer showed me, and you can stop looking on Christian Singles dot Com, because we can find him, Daddy’s in the blackberry bramble and Bubba’s been there, so he knows the way.”

Mama blinked at Delia while bubbles popped and bath water clattered in the sky-colored basin. She turned off the faucet. “Honey,” she said into the silence. She sounded very sad, which was horrible, because Delia had been certain the news about Daddy would make Mama happy. “Deels. What am I gonna do with you?”

“Nothing. Let’s go get Daddy,” Delia said. “Come on, Mama. He’s in Lucy’s Land, I know it.”

But Mama didn’t go anywhere. Instead, she ran out of the bathroom bawling. Delia could hear her sobbing through the walls, rhythmic and wrenching.

After awhile, she climbed in the bath and thought about how stupid grown ups could be. It appeared, just coming out and saying Jaydee Strong was alive and a prisoner of the fairy queen was Tee-Em-Eye, too much information. A more delicate approach was called for. So Delia rinsed off the dirt and decided she would talk to Uncle Bubba, instead.

She dressed and grabbed a copy of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, before venturing into the shed. Uncle Bubba was taking a break from carving. He chomped on a giant ham sandwich, his chainsaw frozen in mid-snarl at his feet.

“I been thinking about the witch’s statue garden in this here book,” Delia told him, clambering on a nearby bench. “You know how the witch makes all her enemies into stone, and puts them everywhere in her palace for decorations?”

“Uh-huh.” Uncle Bubba spoke around a beard full of white bread and mustard.

“Well. Granny’s yard’s starting to look like the White Witch’s palace, don’tcha think? All fulla frozen animals?”

Uncle Bubba squinted out the shed door where the hot day shimmered. “Maybe,” he said. “’Cept for it being almost midsummer.”

“Yeah, okay. Anyways, I started wondering if your statues were alive inside.” Delia swung her legs as she talked.

“You did, huh?”

Delia watched to see if Uncle Bubba look in danger of bawling, but he just took another big bite of ham and bread. “So I put my ear on the angel that looks like my dad? And I heard him talking. Daddy, I mean.” Uncle Bubba stopped chewing. Delia took a deep breath, hoping he wouldn’t run away and cry. “Maybe if you listened, you’d hear him too?”

Uncle Bubba sat for a full minute, eyes wide. Delia got worried because he stopped breathing and the bread sat in his mouth in a lump. But then he dropped his sandwich and ran out to the garden, the straps of his coveralls flapping. He knelt next to the unicorn and pressed his ear to its flank.

Delia followed him and put her hand on his big, denim clad leg. “Do you hear it, too?” Uncle Bubba nodded, eyes still wide. She felt her heart warm as she said, “See, I think Lucy has my daddy in her land. And I think she’s trying to make him forget us. But he’s doing his best to remember and hang on. And somehow, your statues are helping. It’s like, by making ‘em, your helping him remember.” She swallowed. “And I think we can get him back, Uncle Bubba. I think he’s real close and we can find him.”

Then Uncle Bubba burst into tears and cried like a little boy. But he didn’t run away like Mama. So Delia waited while he snorted, and Dozer came over and wagged his tail. Eventually, Uncle Bubba quieted, dabbed his eyes with a blue bandana and sniffed.

“You know I thought I dreamed it, Deels,” he said. “Every doctor I’ve seen, they said I been dreaming, but I ain’t, am I? She has him. She really does.” Uncle Bubba lay back in the grass with his hands over his eyes.

Delia and Dozer lay next to him. And while bugs screamed and birds darted above, he told her about everything, from the first time Lucy put a spell on Daddy, until the night he went Em-Eye-Aye.

“After that first time she took him, and Dozer fetched him back, I knew we had to take precautions,” Uncle Bubba said.

“How?”

“Cold iron, honey.” Uncle Bubba shivered. “And pure silver. She can’t stand neither. Cost me a year’s worth of paper route money, but I slang charms around us all. There’s still a few hanging off Dozer’s collar, I bet.”

“Dozer has charms?”

“Should still, I reckon.” Bubba sat up and unbuckled Dozer’s worn leather collar. He pawed along it and then showed Delia how, jingling with some old dog tags, were a cross, a star and a wedged shaped plumb.

Delia turned the collar in her hand, while Uncle Bubba went. “I put salt around the house. Said the prayer of the archangel Michael. Planted rowan at the door-- that’s still growing, see? Left scissors all over. Bet you can find ‘em still, buried in the garden.”

“Did it work?”

“Sure. For awhile. Come Midsummer Eve, Jaydee’d still get restless. Stand out in the garden with his eyes all fulla moons. She was callin’ him, I guess. But Dozer’d be there, too, right by his side, so he never did go back. And when he married your Mama, and pledged his heart to her, right in this here garden, I figured Lucy’s spellin’ was broken for good. After all, how could he stay with Lucy, when he’d given himself under God to Penny Cash?”

“Exactly.”

“But then the war happened.” Uncle Bubba rolled his hips like he had bees in his pants. “And me and your daddy went to serve our country.”

“And Lucy went too?”

Uncle Bubba sucked his teeth. His fingers combed the lawn, and he plucked a couple stems of onion grass. He passed one to her and Delia bit it, hot and juicy. “Well, Deels. She got a name everywhere in the world. Mab and Oona and Celia and Belphebe, Titania and the Faery Queen--”

“Circe, and Jadis, and the Wicked Witch, too.”

“Where your daddy and me were stationed, out in the Middle East, she was called 'Perry,' and sometimes they called her a 'Djinn.' They said she had bones of fire. But to me she was the same old—“

“Wicked Queen—“

“And scary and like a tiger. Still gunning for your daddy, too.”

“But Daddy had Mama. So why would he even notice Lucy?”

“Weren’t no Mama in Afghanistan, was there? And weren’t no Dozer either, honey. Nothing to keep him steady, except me, and I ain’t enough. We was as far from home and family as we’ve ever been, and just as miserable as sin, I tell you.” His gaze roved above them, and Delia knew he was looking at something even farther away than the clouds and swallows in the sky. “Everything that’s green here Deels, it’s a shade of red or gold over there. The whole world’s red and pink and tan, and all bleached out like old calico.” His blue-sleeved arm shot skywards. “It’s a different sun they got, too. We got us a sweet, Georgia sun. Makes the flowers grow and puts a shine on the salt marsh. But over there, in Afghanistan, the sun’s always boiling mad, like it wants to burn everything; or else it’s cold, like it’s giving you the finger, saying “Fuck you, folks. I’m stronger than all-a you.” He flipped onto his elbow and sighed. “Here in Georgia we got humidity, and we think it sucks.”

“It does,” Delia said fervently.

“Yeah-huh, but out there?” He clicked his tongue. “They got sand, Deels, and it’s much worse. Scours under your collar and itches inside your socks. And so dry, you get so you’d give anything to keep the sweat on your body, for even a second.” He plucked another blade of onion grass. “And if you do ever see something green? It’s like you’re having a dream, and you’re afraid it’s going to dissolve, if you blink.“ He looked at her, his face grave. “Everything’s older there, Deels, and harder. This here’s a young country, honey. Tobacco, and heat, and nothing ruined at all. But over there? The wind, the night, the stars. Older and harder and meaner than steel. And she was harder over there, too, Lucy was. She was hard and horny as the Devil’s toenails.”

Delia put her hand on Dozer for strength. She asked, “How did she catch my daddy again?”

Uncle Bubba turned his face back to the sky. “She got him in the hundred and twenty days of wind, baby doll. That’s a season, in case you didn’t know. It’s right about midsummer, right about now I suppose. It’s exactly like it sounds. The wind blows and blows and makes a cloud of grit as high as our live oak and as wide as Dan Jenkins’ tobacco fields. You can see faces inside that sandy wind, gods and monsters, and they plain swallow you if you don’t get to shelter fast enough. That’s why I thought she was a dream.”

He looked at the unicorn, the shine of its polished belly where Delia could see her reflection and his, stretched out and bulging, like when she looked at her face in the back of a spoon.

“I think Lucy must have been calling to your daddy for awhile. Because he kept going out of the tents on clear nights. I’d find him, the way I used to here, staring at the stars in the freezing cold. And I’d be like, “Jaydee. Hey, Jaydee. What the fuck are you doing out here?” You know? “It’s freezing man,” I’d say. But he’d look at me like he was still asleep, or he just woke up--”

“Because she was enchanting him --”

“I think so. I think so, Deels.” He sniffed. “And we didn’t have no charms, see. Just dog tags and guns, and they ain’t any good against her. And when the wind come up, and the sand cloud moved in...” He shook his head, like it itched inside. “I saw her. She was riding on a horse made of sand and smoke, and her hair streamed out behind. She came straight toward Jaydee, with that cloud of sand all around, and she reached from the saddle, and snatched him before I could even open my mouth to yell. And I tried to go after them. My God, I tried. But the sand got in my eyes and my ears, and I couldn’t see and I couldn’t hear and after awhile I had to smash flat and let it blow over me because my face was getting cut to pieces, as sure as if she’d thrown a whole bucketful of ground glass in my eyes. And when it was all over, everyone else said it was an Eye-Ee-Dee got him, or he walked on a pressure plate, or he got lost in the storm. But how would we ever know, anyway? He was gone, gone like he’d never been. And me…”

“No one believed what you saw.”

He flicked at a grasshopper and it bounded away. “They say I’m crazy, Deels. I shouldn’t even be telling you this stuff.”

“No, it’s good.” Delia put a hand on Uncle Bubba’s chest. She could feel his heart leaping like a fish inside his skin. “Because now we can start planning how to get my daddy back.”

They sat by the unicorn for a long time after, while shadows skated and the sun sank behind the trees. Sweat ran down Uncle Bubba’s face, and Granny picked beans nearby with her mouth all pinched and her eczema blooming. But they didn’t stop talking until they had a decent plan.

“She’s a creature of bargains, and gambling and deals,” said Uncle Bubba. “But she don’t know what to do with purity. That’s why Dozer beat her, I think. And that’s why these statues weaken her too.“

"They are purely beautiful.”

“But I expect Dozer’s too old to take her on now.”

Delia said, “But if all three of us went down the blackberry bramble, I bet we could take her. Why, you’re a warrior, Dozer’s a faithful companion, and I love Daddy completely purely. Us and some iron oughta do us fine.”

By then Dozer had gone to the front porch to sleep, and the wooden beasts on the lawn threw long shadows on the grass.

“We’ll follow every rule.” Delia dragged out her list and showed it to Uncle Bubba. He nodded and then passed the paper back.

“Better put in 'Don’t never let go,' from 'Tam Lin.'”

“And 'Be loyal and pure of heart,' like Dozer.”

Later, Bubba said, “I’ll get us some cold iron, fireplace pokers and like that.”

“Tomorrow, we’ll go huntin’, all three of us.”

“Midsummer’s Eve, won’t be better time for it.”

“And we’ll hang on matter what.”

Delia stuck out her pinkie finger for a swear. He extended his, calloused and cracked. They shook, solemn as owls.

Bubba whispered, “Jaydee’s coming home tomorrow.”

Delia laughed and pressed her mouth to the unicorn’s side. “You hear that, Lucy?” she yelled. “We’re getting him back! He won’t be yours any longer!”

Bubba snorted with laughter, but there was a note of alarm in his voice as he said, “Deels, geez. Don’t make her mad. Aren’t we supposed to be polite to everyone? Ain’t that one of the Rules?”

“But I hate her,” Delia said. She thumped the unicorn’s side. “You hear, Loo-loo Lucy? You can’t have my dad. Me and Bubba and Dozer, we’re gonna rescue him for sure.”

That night, even listening to Aunt Adelaide and her Mama giggling over Christian Singles Dot Com, Delia felt good for the first time in an age. Everything would be all right, she felt it deep and solid in her bones. Her dad was coming home, and all night long, she dreamt her was in the garden, calling and calling for Dozer.

The next day, Delia woke early and dressed in a pair of stout canvas shorts and a black T-shirt. She wore high topped sneakers and put on bug spray. She made thick peanut butter sandwiches and packed them in a knapsack. Then she went out into the garden to meet Uncle Bubba and Dozer.

She showed up at the unicorn at eight sharp. But Uncle Bubba was nowhere to be found--not in the shed, not even in his room.

“Where’d Bubba go?” she asked Aunt Adelaide, who sat on the porch, smoking her first Salem Light of the day. An open box of Little Debbie cakes sat on a table by her cigarettes, oatmeal and cream already smeared on the wood. 

“Got a call from an art gallery at six in the damn morning.”

“Art gallery?” The syllables felt foreign in Delia’s mouth, like a mouthful of live crickets, hopping and fluttering.

“Yup. A New York City Art Gallery.” Aunt Adelaide rolled her eyes. “Somebody done drove by, seen his creatures and thinks they’d make a fine exhibit for 42nd Street, though I do not know why. Bubs put on a clean shirt and drove off for a meeting in Atlanta, with some lady. I guess she offered him forty thousand dollars for the lot.” Adelaide stubbed out her cigarette and extracted a crackling cellophane package from the Little Debbie box. “Some people got all the luck.”

“But … we had a plan for Midsummer’s Eve.” The crickets had spread from her mouth to Delia’s belly, where they jumped and rattled, making her feel sick and scared.

“Well, your Uncle Bubba has another plan now.”

“But he can’t—“

“Why not? Telling me we couldn’t all use the money, smarty pants?” Aunt Adelaide spoke around a wad of cake.

“No.” Delia backed away. The brown and white blobs of food on Aunt Adelaide’s chins, along with the crickets in Delia’s belly, made imminent upchucking certain. “Me and Uncle Bubba were gonna do something special is all.”

“Well, I guess something more special than you happened, huh?”

Delia ran into the garden before she threw up on Aunt Adelaide’s terry cloth slippers. After puking until it was just strings of spit, she ran to the unicorn and threw her arms around its neck.

“You witch, you witch,” she whispered into its neck. The wood was cool and smooth against her lips. “I hate you.”

In the grass by the statue lay Dozer’s collar, where she and Bubba had left it the night before. Delia snatched it up. The dangling charms tinkled and sang. She felt her heart gallop, fast and frightened.

She called Dozer’s name. He didn’t come. She checked on the porch. He wasn’t there. She checked the kitchen floor, the hall rug; he wasn’t in any of his places. By the time she raced to the live oak, her heart was ready to bust from her chest.

She sighed with relief when she saw Dozer there, stretched out under the angel, like he’d fallen asleep in the cool shade.

“Doze?” she called. His collar clinked in her hand. “Doze?” she said again in a different tone of voice.

But Dozer didn’t answer. Because Dozer was dead.

***

“Well the poor old thing,” Granny said later.

Mama had dug a grave in the red earth, and carried Dozer to it all by herself. Delia and Granny stood by, Delia still weeping and weeping, her hands scratched and bleeding from cutting Granny’s pink and yellow roses to scatter on his grave.

“He’s at peace now, don’t you worry.” Granny threw an arm around Delia’s shaking shoulders. “Why, I expect he feels better than he has in years, up in heaven with God and all. I would.” She practically strangled Delia, while she reached across her face to scratch a scabby patch of skin on her elbow.

“She fooled him.” Delia sobbed.

“Who did?”

“Lucy.” Delia sniffed. “She called for Dozer all last night, and made it sound like Daddy. And poor Dozer went to find him and he-he didn’t h-have his collar, or his charms, so she k-killed him.” Delia felt like her guts were going to come out of her mouth, she was crying so hard. “B-bubba and me forgot to protect him. We were too busy to give him his iron back. It’s so stupid!”

“Good heavens!” Granny snorted. “What the hell is she talking about, Penny?”

“Honey, you need to lie down?” Mama said. “You need to rest? You are plain over wrought?”

“I hate you!” Delia yelled. Mama’s eyes widened, and her face turned white and then red. “Don’t you see? I’m not over rotten! She has Daddy! Lucy has Daddy and now Dozer’s dead, and Bubba’s gone, how’m I gonna find him? How’m I gonna find him all by myself?”

Mama gasped, and Granny cracked Delia across the cheek, and then Mama started crying, and Delia got sent to her room. But none of that mattered, because Delia had broken the rules again. That was the real problem. She had broken every single rule in the books. She’d been rude and mean, and taunted Lucy. She’d been careless, and let Dozer run around without his charms. She’d called Mama names, and hurt her feelings. Delia was the worst hero ever, maybe the worst that ever lived.

By the time Mama came in her room, Delia’s tears had dried and she lay on the bed, her rage a slow, aching fume.

“I know you’re upset?’ Mama said, sitting beside her. “I know you’re sorry about Dozer?”

Delia wanted to punch her, but instead she said, “It’s my fault he’s dead, Mama.”

“Aw, no. He was old, honey. He was a hundred and thirty in dog years. That’s just a fact?”

Delia sighed. “Well. I’m sorry I said I hated you, Mama. I won’t talk again, until I know I can be good. I promise.”

Mama nodded. She stroked Delia’s shoulder. Delia felt the angry knots inside her loosen.

But then Mama said, “Honey? You said something about finding your daddy?” Mama blinked hard and tried to smile. It was awful, like a doll’s smile. But Delia had promised not to say anything mean, so she folded her lips over her teeth. “You know he’s not coming back, right?”

Anger tightened inside again, like string of barbed wire in her stomach. Delia felt a hundred rude, angry things wanting to bust out of her mouth. Don’t say them! she thought. Don’t you be rude again, or you’ll lose everything to Lucy. So she nodded and smiled, no doubt looking as crazy as Mama did.

“We couldn’t bury your daddy, like Dozer? But that don’t mean he ain’t gone, hon. Okay? You gotta accept that? We both do. I know it’s hard but…things got to change?”

A scream pounded on the inside of Delia’s lips. But she kept her mouth sealed, and nodded like a dandelion in a stiff breeze.

“All right.” Mama patted Delia’s shoulder. “Bubba’s bringing a lady home to supper tonight. And I guess she’s gonna take all his animal carvings to a gallery in New York? He’s gonna be famous? So you mind yourself around her. We can all use the money.”

Delia said nothing. But she thought, Lucy’s coming, and felt cold all over.

After Mama left, Delia rose and grabbed Dozer’s collar. If Lucy was here, she had to be ready. She must be loyal. She must be good. She must keep her heart pure. Dozer saved her Daddy, once. Maybe Delia could do it, too. Squaring her shoulders, she buckled the collar around her neck. It hung loosely and smelled of dog fur and red dirt. She rubbed away the tears burning in her eyeballs. Then she set her teeth, and dropped to all fours.

***

“Oh goddamn, could you be any weirder?” Aunt Adelaide asked, when she saw Delia crawling around on the carpet.

Granny was nicer. She patted Delia head and let her drink water from a bowl. Mama asked would she wear a pretty dress for the dinner party and Delia obliged, though she refused to speak, and ate her supper from a plate under the table.

Of course, Lucy saw right off what Delia was doing. She came in the house on tiny tiptoes, skirts trailing in gossamer drifts around her legs. By her side, Bubba looked as blank as a daisy, like he’d never made a plan, or fought a faery in his life, even when Delia licked his hand and barked. Lucy’s eyes narrowed though, hard as hatchet heads. And she swooped on the floor to pat Delia’s head.

“Why, what’s your name, lovey?” she asked in a voice, so sweet it could have been soaked in cane juice.

Delia felt a powerful urge to answer. Her lips even parted and her throat worked. But all she did was growl.

At supper, Lucy tried again. “Doesn’t the child speak?” she asked. She toyed with her fried chicken, not touching a morsel of meat, but somehow, all the same, clicking the bird’s bones in her fingers like little castanets.

“The old Labrador died,” Adelaide drawled around her food. “Child’s taking it hard, I guess.”

“Children always think they’re so powerful.” The vixen simpered. “They think they can bring something back when it’s gone, just by wishing for it. It must be horrid to be so helpless.” She lifted the tablecloth and peered at Delia, who sat amidst everyone’s feet, glowering. Lucy’s blush rose lips curled in such a cruel smile, Delia’s insides shrank, but she said not a word.

And now Delia curled on the porch, wound tighter than an eight-day clock, while Granny and Mama and Adelaide chatted, like the vixen in the garden wasn’t a danger to everything they held dear. Off in the twilight, Bubba walked by Lucy’s side, touching her black cloud of hair, like a man in a dream. He licked his lips over and over.

Lucy raised her tiny fingers in ballerina gestures. Her laughter drifted on the wind like camellia petals. She grabbed Uncle Bubba’s sleeve and pointed to the angel, as if she had just noticed it, high above them. Delia wasn’t one bit fooled. Lucy wanted that angel dismantled, and as soon as possible. It was probably the whole reason she’d come here—to get rid of every statue, and then to get rid of anything else that calling Daddy home.

Lucy stroked Uncle Bubba’s arm, pretending to listen while he talked. She stroked and stroked and stroked, until Uncle Bubba forgot he was speaking, and only stared at her rosebud breasts. Then his eyes closed.

With a start, Delia realized everyone on the porch had gone to sleep. Granny snored like a band saw, and Adelaide’s Salem Light ash had burned to a long, gray worm. Even the crickets and frogs had gone quiet. The lady’s flinty gaze swept the house and without even meaning to, Delia ran to her side. And to her everlasting shame, she curtsied in the soft grass, her knees folding seemingly of their own accord.

“Little Delia,” said Lucy, “Little Dog. Why are you still awake?”

Delia wanted to tell Lucy, “Because I protected myself from you!” But in the nick of time she remembered her promise not to speak, and so she said nothing at all. “Keep all promises,” was one of the Rules.

“Do you know what it is I want?” Lucy’s glimmering gaze fell like dewdrops on Delia’s face, soft and cold.

Delia glanced the angel, hovering in the tree. Then she dragged her gaze back to the lady, who shined in the dark like the moon.

“I always did like soldiers,” Lucy said, as if Delia had answered her question. “Handsome soldiers and beautiful boys. I marry one every Midsummer Day, and they live with me in my garden.” She added, “I make sure they’re content, Little Delia. I assure you, your daddy doesn’t think of you at all, except maybe in his dreams.”

The vixen was lying, but Delia stopped herself from saying so by clenching her teeth. “Be polite and kind,” was one of the Rules.

“Your faith is touching,” Lucy said. “But you must let him go now, Little Delia, the way your uncle has, the way your mother has. You understand, don’t you?” Lucy went on, “It’s painful for your father. These reminders of his childhood, these dreams your uncle has carved, your whining for him to come home. All this resonates in our country, and your poor father half hears it. It makes his heart ache, though he doesn’t know quite why.”

Again, Delia almost spoke. I thought you said he was happy with you, she wanted to say, with Adelaide’s strong, smoky sarcasm. But again she remembered her promise, and so she held her tongue.

The vixen’s face had whitened with rage. “Listen to me, Delia. I can break your uncle’s mind with a snap of my fingers. I can change your family into forest animals. Even if your father found his way out of my realm someday, there would be nothing here to greet him when he came home.”

Yes there would, Delia thought. I would be here. I will wait in this garden until I’m old like Dozer. I will be like Odysseus’s dog, Argos. And when Daddy walks up to our house again, I will run to him, even if I’m older than Granny, and covered with eczema--even if I can’t see him anymore, because I’m blind.

And she almost faltered one last time, and opened her mouth to tell the vixen of her pledge. But then she realized the vixen already knew. And this was why she had come. For Lucy could do all the things she named. She could change the ladies of the house to pigs; she could move every piece of Uncle Bubba’s sculpture—to New York, or Marrakesh, or Mars, if she wanted. She could marry her dad a thousand times, and wipe away his mind again and again. But she could not take away Delia’s promises. She could not make her give up her love. Only Delia herself could do that.

Delia shook her head. She would not break her rules; she would not break her silence. Everything in the universe depended upon it. Everything that mattered, she held with her tongue.

“Speak, or you spend the remainder of your days crawling on the earth like a dog. Speak, or you will damn every one of your relatives to an eternity as a beast of burden. Speak, or I will bring every statue in this garden to life, and they will turn on you, like the monsters they are. For I command them, Delia. And I command you, too. Now, break your silence, break your vows, lest you bring suffering on everyone you love.”

All the clocks in the world had halted. Even the stars, locked in their great sky wheel, stopped turning. Would Lucy really make her family suffer? Delia was sure she would. But she thought of Aunt Adelaide, already starting yet another diet; of her Mama, ground to powder, questioning all her nameless fears. She thought of Granny’s eczema, and Uncle Bubba’s Pee Tea Zesty, and how her dad was lost. She thought of the way all the people she loved plodded through their days, not knowing what they were about half the time, not even seeing the Faery Queen herself, when she sat to supper at their table.

Why, everyone’s miserable anyway, Delia thought. What can she do to them, that they haven’t already done to themselves? I have no power to save them. All I can do is hang on.

So she lay on the grass at the lady’s feet and waited to be smote. And indeed the lady’s rage was like an anvil on her head. Delia felt her skull crumple. Above her, the angel in the tree looked on. She reached up to its sorrowful face, and everything went black.

When she awoke, dawn had broken. Delia shivered in sodden clothes, soaked by dew. She lay in the garden for a while, listening to birds. A silver spider web glistened by her face.

“What the holy hell happened here?” said a voice.

Delia jumped to her feet, shedding drops of water. Her father stood at the end of the driveway, next to a row of dead washing machines and Granny’s rusted Corvette. He stared wide-eyed at the forest of statues, at the angel in the live oak, and then at Delia herself.

“Good God, Deels. Is that you grown so big?”

Delia didn’t say anything, only ran into his arms, not because she still had to be silent, but because she was crying too hard to talk. She was so big now, her legs dangled almost to the ground, as he swept her in his arms and carried her to the house.

“Does everyone sleep on the porch these days?” her father asked. For indeed, Delia’s whole family, even Uncle Bubba, snored like engines on the planks. “Did y’all have a big party last night,or something?” He squinted at her. “Honey, are you wearing Dozer’s old collar?”

“I dreamed you died in the war,” Delia whispered. “I dreamed you were lost forever.”

“Well, I won’t tell you everything I dreamed,” her dad said. He paused to look at the magical statues.

“But all these creatures were in it. And so were you and Bubba.” His eyes were clear and sad, as he added. “You were calling me, Deels. But it took me forever to find you. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “You had a long way to go.” 

He placed her carefully on the porch. The worn planks creaked, as they looked around at their sleeping family. “I don’t even know what to do,” he said. “I feel like I’ve just been born.” There were new lines around his mouth, and tears in the corners of his eyes.

Delia took her father’s hand. “Don’t worry. We’ll wake everybody up. We’ll have us a party. And Uncle Bubba’ll show you what he made.”

“Is that what we’ll do?”

“Sure, Dad,” she said. “It’s what we’ve all been waiting for.”

Elise Forier Edie is a speculative fiction writer based in Los
Angeles. Her most recent stories have appeared in Metaphorosis
Magazine and on the podcast, Cabinet of Curiosities. You can find
out more about her by visiting her website www.eliseforieredie.com