Free When Autumn Leaves: A Novel by Amy S. Foster

beautifully dressed mannequins, and then lose herself in at least two showings of the film playing at the old movie house. But when she brought a magazine home, filled with gossip and pictures of the stars she had just seen, her friends would give her an odd look with narrow eyes.
    There was a boy, a young man really, Bailey Thomas, for whom she always had a special fondness. In fact, just about everyone thought they were going to marry. They weren’t perfectly suited but there were so few boys her age that were suitable at all. Stella liked Bailey, with his wide shoulders and hair the color of husked corn. Even his hands, so calloused and rough, felt good on the parts of her skin that were smooth and soft. But then one day, he simply stopped courting her, stopped really talking to her at all. When finally she walked the short distance to his house to ask him why, he simply said, “I like you, Stella. Hell, I might even love you. But you got a way of makin’ me feel small, like I don’t have enough of what you need. Couldn’t bear a lifetime of that.” Stella knew enough about herself not to protest, and liked Bailey Thomas enough to know that he deserved more. Eventually he married one of her sisters.
    By the time Stella was twenty-one, she had all but taken over her grandmother’s position as mender. It was seductive, what she could do, reach out with her hands and pull sickness out of a body. Pearl did a lot of teaching and explaining, but there were no words exactly for what happened when Stella laid her hands on someone. She felt the essence of who they were jump up to her fingertips. Their energy ran hot and cold on the surface, easy for someone like Stella to read, and sometimes if that energy was wrong she could push it away with her hands.
    It wasn’t as if she laid her hands on everyone, every minute of the day. Most of what she did required good old-fashioned herb remedies and tinctures and teas. She had memorized almost every plant on the mountain, and she remembered what she had seen her Granny do in that circle. Stella wanted to do it all, try every bit of folklore. She knew what Granny Pearl had been capable of: spells. And she had a feeling she was capable, too. She really didn’t think she was a witch. She knew she was different, but after all she did for the community, she was surprised at how wary the townsfolk were toward her. It was as if they could all read the secret longings of her heart and it made her feel smothered.
    At the same time, Stella felt like an old woman. Every day she woke up and found it harder to get out of bed, and when she did she moved a little slower than the day before. She was tired: tired of working for nothing, tired of the struggle. It wasn’t things, possessions, she yearned for, but the idea of living a life of swimming with the current instead of against it.
    When Pearl began to die, Stella ministered to her faithfully. One day, near the end, when she was in and out of consciousness, Stella was bringing her grandmother’s head up to get some water past her parched lips when Pearl grabbed her arm. She grabbed it so tightly that the tin cup flew out of Stella’s hands. She studied Stella’s face with narrow eyes.
    “Good Lord, child! What are you still doin’ here?” Then she fell back into the pillow, into yet another coma-like sleep.
    Stella tried to rouse her. She wanted to yell, “Wait! Wait! What do you mean, here? In this room? Or in this place? And where will I go? What will I do?” But Pearl would not wake. Stella sat on the narrow bed, crying tears of grief and helplessness.
    Something happened soon after, though. Finally letting go of all that water, all those tears, inside her, she could see the light. Whatever her grandmother had meant, she was still there, in the very last place on earth she wanted to be. She knew the town needed her, or someone like her. But she was no martyr. She wasn’t afraid of hard work, but she was fed up with being