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with tears, her voice quivered. She took his hands in her own and searched his face. "You have the look
of my sweet Annie. And you move with her gentle ways."
"I suspect you are as Meya' told me," he replied, "a Manitou who visits us in the shape of a dove."
Lilith blushed at his words and shifted her body to include Douglas in their group. "You will be staying
with us for awhile, I hear. Welcome, Douglas Fairchild. I hope you can understand that we aren't all like
those people at the airport."
Cathleen glanced over to the window overlooking the yard and saw that it was open. But then she had
learned long ago that nothing passed by Aunt Lilith's notice.
"I take each person as they come, Miss Corcoran." He spoke softly, as if louder words would topple her
over.
"I am Lilith to all my friends, Douglas. And I hope we will be friends."
"Ladies and gents, dinner is served." Bridget announced from the doorway leading to the small dining
area adjacent the kitchen.
As Elijah lifted Cathleen into his arms, Bridget motioned Douglas to the kitchen. "It will take some time
before Lilith feels comfortable enough to move about in front of you. 'Til then lad, stay out of her sight
when she needs to get from one place to another."
"What's wrong with her?"
"She had polio when she was young. So she can't walk. But I dare say, she gets around just fine."
They sopped up the chicken stew with rashers of heavy bread still warm from the oven. Bridget ladled
more onto their plates as the first portions disappeared.
"How long will you be staying, Elijah?" Lilith asked as she dipped at the corner of her gravy with a crust.
"A couple of weeks, I suppose. Cathleen here wants me to come with her to talk to her father's lawyer
about the estate. And I've got some business of my own to take care of."
"Oh yes, Annie wrote and told me you had become a lawyer, like your father." Lilith beamed.
This was the first Cathleen heard of Elijah's offer, but she understood why he was making it. It would be
good to have so powerful an ally along to represent her interests. "Daddy's lawyers are like a pack of
wolves, Aunt Lilith. I'm going to need Elijah to keep them from eating me alive." She smiled her thanks to
her uncle across the table.
"God love you, child. It doesn't seem right to expect you to deal with this so soon."
"I'll be fine." She tried to wash the fear from Lilith's intense blue eyes with her smile. "I'm cut from the
same cloth as Nana, remember?"
"Put her down here, Elijah" Bridget twisted on the bare bulb above Nana's bed. Cathleen pulled herself
deeper into the high mattress and burrowed her head into the pillows. "You know I've been thinking
about this bed for the last week."
Bridget chuckled and stroked her cheek as she lay, eyes closed, inhaling the dried lavender tied to the
wrought iron cross bar. Lavender was Nana's scent. Even when she was not wearing it, its aura always
lingered marking the air where she had passed. She turned away from Bridget's hand.
"I know, dearie, I know." she sighed and then smiled at Elijah where he sat at the foot of his mother's
bed. "I've set up cots at the far end for you and Douglas. I'm afraid there's not much privacy up here."
"This is just fine." Elijah smiled.
From the time she had started coming to The Hollow, Cathleen could only ever remember one large
room upstairs. That way heat from below could be distributed evenly to all who slept up there. "You just
get used to the sound of other peoples' dreams." Nana would say and then laugh. And the dreams did
come in abundance when all the lights went out and the room became silent in the pitch-black darkness
of the country. Occasionally a car would thunder down the dirt road at the end of the lane. The headlights
would cast crazy patterns across the rough-stuccoed walls, or illuminate a face masked in sleep or a
human mound rising and falling with each breath. There was magic upstairs, ever changing, ever revealing
itself in the heavy void.
When all the lights had been switched off, when everyone else had found their place upstairs, she listened
for Aunt Lilith, knowing that Bridget was listening, too. The floorboards squeaked as she dragged herself
across them to the stairs. Then came the familiar quiet thump as she lifted herself up, one step at a time.
The air moved around her like wings flapping in the dark. Cathleen nestled down into the memory of so
many years.
"Goodnight Cathleen," the form on the floor whispered, almost imperceptibly as she passed by.
"Goodnight, Aunt Lilith. Sweet dreams."
Cathleen woke to the smell of bacon and the lull of hushed voices in the kitchen. By now Bridget and
Lilith had already said the Beads once, she figured, fed last night's scraps to the wild six-toed cats in the
shed and stoked the woodstove to a roaring fire. Upstairs, the chill was quickly banished by the heat that
rose from where stovepipe met grate. In the corner she noted Elijah stirring and Douglas lying on his
stomach, still asleep.
Elijah had leaned her crutches against the wrought iron foot of Nana's bed so she could get at them
easily. She hobbled over to Douglas' cot and lowered herself to its foot. Her uncle rolled over and smiled
at her as she poked at Douglas' back.
"What time is it?" Douglas stretched and grunted into his pillow.
"Do you want to know in white time or Indian time?" she answered.
"Indian time?" he muttered the question.
"Near dawn."
"Ok, white time, then." he sighed.
"Five-thirty."
"Jesus Christ."
"C'mon Douglas, cows need milking." Elijah threw his pillow at the cringing figure and then pulled himself
out of his own cot. "You need help getting down?" he asked her as she pushed herself up onto the
crutches.
"Thanks, I can manage by myself today."
"So this is it." Lilith passed her hand over the rough black cover of the notebook. The house was quiet
now with breakfast dishes washed and the others working down by the cowshed. She donned her
reading glasses and opened it to the first page. Cathleen watched the corners of her mouth tighten as she
read, watched the tears well up in her eyes and then tumble over onto the translucent skin of her cheek.
Lilith drew a tissue from her sleeve and set the book aside. "She wanted so much to tell you when you
were little, to raise you in the light of this knowledge. But she was afraid, Cathleen. If Anthony had ever
caught wind of this, he would never have let you continue seeing her."
"I understand." she whispered.
"We live in better times now. You can't imagine how devastated your father would have been to know he
was a half-Indian." Lilith continued.
"I think I do." Cathleen looked out the parlour window to the woodlot where Douglas was busy splitting
logs for the stove.
"He had to hear the truth eventually, Cathleen. Perhaps it was best coming from you. Maybe he
understood from you that there was no shame in it."
"I don't think so." she sighed, cringing at the memory of her father's terror as the Windigo took him into
the forest mist. She retrieved the notebook from the sofa and flipped through it to a section she had
skipped over in White Earth. It was entitled "Lilith".
"Shall I read aloud, Auntie?"
***
The Past: August 1904
That first night in The Hollow, I was quite at a loss for finding the bed that Aunt Lizzie wanted me
to share with her daughter Lilith in the dark room upstairs. What to do? I was too tired to think,
too desolate to retrace my steps and ask for help.
"Over here." A little voice lit my way. Feather-like fingers found mine as I leaned against the
woodframe to push my bag under the bed.
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